Night Work: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 2)

by Dennis Foley

  “It hurts like shit!”

  “I’ll bet,” Hollister said, looking at Green for any sign of relief.

  “I can’t give him any morphine—never with a head or a belly wound.”

  “You got anything else?”

  “I just gave him two Darvons with codeine.”

  Reaching over to reassure him, Hollister patted Ayers on the shoulder. “We’ll get you out of here just as fast as we can. You gonna be able to hang in there?” He grabbed him by the upper arm and gave it a squeeze to punctuate his words.

  “Yessir. Can do.”

  As he stood, Hollister looked at Green for any contrary assessment and got only a shrug, presumably a sign that he had no idea if Ayers would see again.

  “Sir, Cav’s here,” someone said.

  The lead element of the Cav troop reaction force was made up of a buck sergeant in regular fatigues and a steel pot. He was followed by two PFCs and a second lieutenant.

  The lieutenant walked around the others and sought out Hollister. “Sir, where do you want us?”

  “Stevens,” Hollister said, recognizing the platoon leader who had attended briefing after briefing without ever being committed to bail out a team in trouble.

  Pointing across the stream, Hollister swung his arm left and right. “They’re over there—if you haven’t scared them off. I’d act like they are staying. Can’t go wrong that way.”

  He turned back to the lieutenant for a sign and caught him nodding. “You bring your people in here and relieve us. I’ve got to pull this team out, and I’m going to need at least a squad to cover our move to the choppers. That possible?”

  “Sir, my orders are to help get you outa here and await further instructions. You want it that way. You got it.”

  “Good man.”

  Ayers and the other three wounded men went out on a medevac chopper. Hollister sat with his back to the transmission on one of the two pickup ships. The bodies of Montford, Caps, and X-man were wrapped in poncho liners and laid out just behind the pilots’ seats.

  The prisoner sat, tied and blindfolded in the center of the chopper, his feet touching Hollister’s boots.

  No one spoke.

  Having reached a safer altitude, the door gunner locked down his machine gun and offered Hollister a cigarette.

  Hollister, who was tired and getting angrier with each minute, took the cigarette to try to get his mind off the feeling of failure that was closing in on him. He looked at the prisoner. Had he been a ploy? Had they been set up? Shit! he thought. The word “suckered” kept going through his mind.

  A strong urge came over him to reach across and smack the shit out of the prisoner, wiping the smug expression off his face. Hollister had never felt that before. To keep himself from getting angrier, he decided not to look at the prisoner or the dead LRPs again.

  He put his head back against the insulation on the fire wall. After going so long without a cigarette, Hollister felt the smoke burn his throat and make his head swim a bit. He realized he had to do something. His time in III Corps, so far, seemed to have been a series of losses or draws.

  He hated the fact that contacts never seemed to be theirs. It was always the VC who decided them—when they would happen and how long they would last. It seemed to him that the only thing he could control was the degree of response and the amount of lethality he could bring to the contact. And even that was spotty, depending upon the willingness of other U.S. and allied units to divert combat resources to his contacts, his battles, his needs. It sucked.

  He knew one thing—if the rate of success was going to change at all, it would be up to him to make it change.

  An unusually large crowd had assembled at the chopper pad to meet the team. Hollister guessed that some wanted to see what the prisoner looked like. He cleared and locked his rifle and stuffed the magazine into his pocket. The others followed suit.

  The Hoi Chanhs came to the chopper to take off the bodies of their fallen comrades. The usual grab-ass and cross-chatter was gone. No one spoke.

  Once the others got out of the chopper, Hollister stepped out and dragged his rucksack behind him. The lack of strength in his arms told him just how tired he was. And as he took a step toward the pilot’s door to thank him, the pain in his bad leg shot bolts of fire through the muscle tissue to the thighbone.

  Vance stood by the pad, silent.

  “Hey, Peter. What’s the word from the Cav?”

  “Here, gimme your ruck,” Vance said, reaching out to help Hollister.

  “Naw. Don’t want the troops to think it takes two captains to carry one rucksack.”

  Vance smiled. “They swept through the area where you had your contact and found a hasty ambush position set up. You guys racked a few up though. They counted four KIA and enough blood trails to guess you might have waxed another four.”

  Without answering, Hollister stopped long enough to watch the Hoi Chanhs carry the bodies of X-man and Caps to a three-quarter-ton truck. Somewhere in the compound the Zombies were singing “Time of the Season.” He looked around for the source of the music and saw T.T. standing on the back step of the Officers Club wiping her hands on a dishrag. She was watching, too. But her attention was focused on Bui who, despite his difficulty walking, was carrying one of the bodies by himself.

  “Wasn’t worth it,” Hollister said and continued toward Operations.

  Vance didn’t argue with him.

  Vance and Hollister entered the briefing room. Most of the other team survivors were already there. Kurzikowski fished around in the cooler and found a beer for Hollister.

  “There any for the troops?”

  “Those that want ’em got ’em,” Kurzikowski said.

  “Thanks.” Hollister spun a folding metal chair around and straddled it. He dropped his rucksack next to his left leg and balanced his M16 across the top of the webbing holding the ruck to its frame, the muzzle pointing toward the wall.

  “We’re still waiting on Sergeant DeSouza,” Kurzikowski said.

  “Where is he?” Hollister asked.

  “Rose is pulling a piece of frag out of his back. He took some shit, I guess.”

  The news was just that much more depressing for Hollister. Another man wounded, wouldn’t say anything about it, just kept doing his job. The feelings of pride and anger only served to confuse his mood more. He nodded at Kurzikowski to let him know they would wait and reached around and up under his cammie shirt skirt.

  His fingers found his demo knife. He grabbed the braided nylon lacing attached to the loop on the end of the stainless steel knife and pulled it from the nylon carrier that held it to his web belt. He pulled out the can-opener blade and punched down into the top of the beer can. He left an angled slice not quite perpendicular to the rim of the can. He then made an intersection with the first by making a pie-shaped cut.

  Pressing the tip of the hooked blade into the center of the V, he folded it down and away, making an opening every bit as good as a real church key would have made. He spun the can half around and did the same on the opposite side of the top.

  The beer was cold, but it was Carling’s Black Label. Like every can of beer he had tasted in Vietnam, it had that taste of spoiled beer. He didn’t care. It was just another thing he had built up a tolerance for—or at least blocked out of his mind. Another in a lengthening list.

  He lit a cigarette and looked around at the others. They were as exhausted as he was, chatty, superficial, and very glad they were there to talk about it and not in the back of the three-quarter on the way to Graves Registration.

  “Where’s Bui?” Hollister asked.

  “He’s with the prisoner. He and Lieutenant Potter are shaking him down,” Kurzikowski said.

  “Think they’ll get anything out of him?” someone asked.

  “I’ve never seen Bui that mad. I wouldn’t want that little fucker sweating my shadow to the wall,” Vance said.

  They all laughed nervously.

  A hissing noise c
ame from the other half of the Ops building. Hollister jumped to his feet and stepped to the doorway that connected the two rooms. He stuck his head through the door and raised his voice: “Hey, quit spraying that shit now!”

  The radio man spraying GI DDT didn’t understand what the problem was. “Sir, I was just trying to kill the biggest fucking spider I’ve ever seen.”

  “Use a .45. That shit makes me puke.”

  No one said anything in the briefing room as Hollister stepped back in and sat down again. He quickly realized that he sounded like an asshole, but had no idea how to explain his behavior. He took another long sip of his beer and hoped they would start shooting the shit again.

  “Tench-hut!” Kurzikowski yelled.

  They all snapped to attention, thinking Kurzikowski was calling them to their feet for Major Sangean, but that was not Sangean’s style.

  Turning to see who had entered, Hollister saw Major Fowler and Colonel Schneider, the new G-3, and a brigadier general Hollister had never seen. He remembered Sangean’s words about being back at Bien Hoa: too close to the flagpole—the fuckers turn up for lunch and call it visiting the troops in the field.

  Fowler, as unctuous as ever, spoke as if the LRPs were familiar with him and his expectations. “How about some more chairs, Sergeant?”

  Kurzikowski suppressed his contempt, stepped into the other room, and instructed the RTOs to bring three more chairs into the briefing room.

  The general stepped around Fowler and Colonel Schneider. “Where’s the patrol leader?”

  “Sir, I’m the patrol leader,” Hollister said.

  The general stuffed his hand into Hollister’s. “So you’re Hollister. Good to meet you, son.”

  He knew that General Stone was the deputy commander of IIFFV. Hollister spotted the CIB and master blaster wings over his pocket and the 101st Airborne combat patch on his right shoulder and assumed that the man was probably an ex-infantry officer with some idea of what his patrol had just been through.

  “Looks like you folks had a tough night.”

  “Yessir. We did,” Hollister said flatly, not buying into the comment yet. He still wasn’t sure where the man stood on LRPs.

  “I’m very impressed with the work you folks have been doing. You’re the Operations officer, aren’t you?”

  “Yessir. Just taking out this heavy team to get a feel for the new AO. I can’t work an area I don’t know,” Hollister said, looking over at Fowler. He had made the statement for Fowler, not the general.

  “Good. Good. Staff officers should spend more time on the ground.”

  The tendons on the sides of Fowler’s jaw tightened as Hollister looked directly at him. He had to fight the urge to laugh at the major, who was wearing a pistol belt and harness, canteen, .45 and holster on his right hip, an ammo pouch and first aid packet. All the equipment was bright, clean, and new. But the thing that got to Hollister was the hunting knife taped upside down on his right harness strap. Hollister knew that no right-handed soldier would put his knife in the hollow of his shoulder if he had ever spent any time carrying a rifle in the field. The man was a joke and an embarrassment to Hollister.

  Sangean popped through the door. “Sorry I’m late, but that prisoner is spitting up info faster than we can take it down.” He nodded an acknowledgment to the general and his two staff officers, but didn’t fawn over them. That pleased Hollister and seemed to irritate Fowler. And that pleased Hollister.

  “What kind of stuff are you getting?” the general asked.

  “Seems that he really wasn’t a VC, but he was a sympathizer who lived near the site where he was snatched. The VC made a deal with him.”

  “Deal?” the general asked.

  “Yessir. He was allowed to stay on his land and work if he would act as a guide for the new VC units moving into the area. But he didn’t seem to be aware that he was being used as a setup for the ambush on Hollister’s team.

  “Before I got over there, he told Bui and Potter that the night before he was snatched he had noticed something wrong with the trail and told the VC. They told him not to worry about it, that they would check the area out.

  “My guess is that the VC knew we were in the AO and let the prisoner get snatched, knowing the snatch team would surely move to a nearby PZ for extraction. They set up a hasty ambush and got lucky. They picked the right PZ.”

  The news hurt. Hollister began to wonder if they would have lost anyone if he had picked a different PZ or if they had let the guy go by and waited for another, less wary VC to snatch?

  Sangean could read it on Hollister’s face. “It was a lucky shot on their part. There are only so many PZs out there. If we had picked a less likely PZ, the team stood just as much chance of making contact by traveling the added distance.” He didn’t say it to Hollister, but he said it for him.

  Like so many other visiting firemen Hollister had seen visit the LRPs, the staffers sat through the entire debriefing. He was sure they would sit around the Field Force Officers Club that night casually mentioning that they had “spent the day with the LRPs.”

  At the end of the briefing, Sangean asked General Stone if he had any questions or anything he wanted to say. This was expected.

  The general got to his feet and walked to the front of the briefing room. Sangean moved from the podium to give him the floor when the general stopped him. “Don’t go anywhere. I have an announcement to make.”

  He looked up at Fowler. “Major, please.”

  Fowler stood, pulled a set of orders out of his pocket, and stepped toward the general. He then reached back in his pocket and handed the general something else.

  “Read ’em,” the general instructed.

  Fowler stood at attention and opened up the folded paperwork. “Attention to orders.”

  Everyone in the room stood and came to attention.

  Fowler continued, “Headquarters, Department of the Army. Effective this date, Major George V. Sangean is promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Army of the United States.”

  The general reached up and pinned a silver oak leaf on Sangean’s right shirt collar over the sewn-on, subdued major’s insignia. Sangean smiled at the surprise.

  “Congratulations. The Field Force commander wanted to do this himself, but he is at a meeting at USARPAC and didn’t want you to have to wait until his return,” the general said, still sounding very official.

  The room broke out in cheers and applause for Sangean.

  Chapter 27

  IN HIS ROOM, HOLLISTER dumped his gear on the floor, hung his rifle on the hook on the wall, sat down on the bunk, and dropped his head into his hands. He needed a few moments to get it all straight in his head. But even that was denied him by the tiny knock on his open door frame.

  He looked up and saw T.T. standing there holding a double Scotch on the rocks in a cheap tumbler. “For you.”

  His initial instinct was to tell her it was too early in the day for a drink. But he knew better than to refuse the drink; it was obvious she had something on her mind.

  He took the drink. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Cap’tan Jim.”

  “For what?”

  “For my Bui. You bring back.”

  He could see how shaken she was. He had seen it in her face when they got off the choppers. “No sweat, T.T. He’s a good man. He did a fine job.”

  “Please.”

  “Please what?”

  “Please don’ take he back to field again.”

  “It’s important to you, isn’t it?”

  “Beaucoup importan’ to me,” she said, dropping her head—embarrassed. “I hab nobody. Only hab Bui.”

  Walking over to T.T, he reached down and took her two hands in his. She looked up at him. “No more. Bui’s field days are over. I promise.”

  She smiled and then as quickly showed concern. “You no speak Bui. Please, Cap’tan Jim.”

  “I no speak,” he said, squeezing her hands for emphasis. “Now you get
back to the bar before he thinks you butterfly me.”

  “No, no,” she said quickly. “Tich no butterfly.”

  He smiled, and she must have realized he was trying to tease her out of her mood. She returned his smile with her bright grin and ran down the hallway to the club.

  Standing in the doorway watching her run away, Hollister realized again that there were other lives and other couples being ripped up by the war.

  Weapons cleaned, rucksack repacked minus the things he carried in his claymore ready bag, Hollister stepped into the shower. He wiped the water drops off the small piece of broken mirror wedged into the support frame of the shower stall.

  He let the water run down on the crown of his head and just stood there—trying to gather strength to go on with his day. He was nagged by the events of the morning as he leaned out of the shower to get the glass of Scotch on the window ledge only to find that T.T. had slipped in and brought him a refill.

  A long sip of the drink burned but relaxed the tension he was feeling. He leaned against the shower wall, somewhat overwhelmed with a sense of futility, but knew that throwing up his hands was not the way to handle it.

  He finished his drink and continued to scrub himself as he tried to make a mental list of things to do. He had to convince himself that he was doing everything he could to reduce the enemy’s grip on the initiative. He knew there was still room for much more training, which he would insist on. Training would sharpen the troops, speed up their reflexes, increase the accuracy of their fire, and diminish their uncertainty in the event they were caught in other contacts.

  Being smarter about operations and trying to outsmart the VC was something he, Potter, and Sangean had to work much harder on.

  He also knew he had to get a handle on his mood swings. They had been troubling on his first tour, but this tour seemed even worse. He no sooner got the sense that things were getting manageable when combat losses, illnesses, and reassignments were ripping up the teams and the company headquarters—all causing backward steps.

  A quick trip to Operations to check on the teams still out and a report on the team members who had gone to the hospital for treatment and Hollister was out again on his way to the mess hall. There he grabbed a thick slice of tough roast beef and some bread.