The Horror

by Martin E. Silenus

  THE HORROR

  Book Three

  The Vietnam Trilogy

  By

  Martin E. Silenus

  Be sure to visit

  Martin E. Silenus

  At

  http://www.martinesilenus.com

  for free books and special offers!

  Contents

  Chapter1: Firebase Foxtrot

  Chapter 2: Bien Ho

  Chapter 3: The Mission

  Chapter 4: Carnage

  Chapter 5: The Enemy

  Chapter 6: Bomont & Gerard

  Chapter 7: Johnson

  Chapter 8: Lee & Jackson

  Chapter 9: Reaction

  Chapter 10: Boyle

  Chapter 11: Extraction

  Chapter 12: Home

  Chapter 1: Firebase Foxtrot

  Clunk...pop...hiss”, Clunk...pop...hiss.

  WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM ...

  “Ya muthafucka’s...”

  WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM ...

  “Take that ya muthafucka’s... die you cocksucking bastards!”

  2:43 am, bathed in sweat, partially stoned, partially drunk, partially awake, the parameter sentries firing flares, the heavy slapping concussion of a .50 caliber machine gun killing shadows...or not.

  Distortion...yes...no, social distortion...no, no, reality distortion...yes, reality distortion...so violently, horribly distorted!

  Hendricks’s guitar howls from Roseler’s hooch, “s’cuse me while I kiss the sky”, sounds, and notes bent, stretched and distorted. That’s what it is ... some form of unrecognized reality hell with the devil himself leaning on the whammy bar, distorting, stretching, bending, howling!!

  The Devil screaming and laughing...blood red Fender guitar...howling!

  What do you cling to when reality is so distorted you cannot recognize it anymore? What and where are your pillars of sanity which hold up your world? Death, destruction, carnage, mayhem, and insanity in all directions striking at any time. Explosions, fire, shattered bodies, body parts littering the camp. The stench of blood, shit, piss, and fear gagging! How do you rationalize and cope with this fucking horror? Where is there any form of sanity I can please, please christ, please cling to?

  Hang on Hud my love, please hang on, believe in us, I hear Daria’s voice in my mind. I feel her calming presence...!

  Firebase Foxtrot, Vietnam, fifty clicks from Pleiku, on the edge of the La Drang Valley, real close to Cambodia. Less than two acres on top of a high hill stripped of vegetation, all red dirt, with a collection of dirty bunkers and ratty sandbags surrounded by coiled razor wire and minefields. The epiphany of hells asshole!

  Our happy little home, with rats in the bunkers scurrying around in the shadows and the dark corners. Still it does offer some degree of protection with the sandbags and the proximity of fellow grunts. And the choppers coming and going gave us a false sense of being connected into the rest of the world. Not like being out in the jungle just you and your spotter for days trying to stay alive against the insects, reptiles, predators, to get one damn shot and then fade away like smoke.

  My name is Gunnery Staff Sergeant Hudson (Hud) Reynolds, 24 years old, Marine sniper, ho-yah, 35 confirmed gook kills. We snipe in teams of two, a spotter and a shooter. I shoot a tick better, so P-man spots. Corporal Phoenix (P-man) Wall is a good lad, solid as the day is long, good man to have at your back, a Canadian volunteer. We’re short timers, less than two weeks left in our rotation.

  It is very hard for me to talk about this, or P-man either for that matter. We suppress the whole fucking horror show and work hard to push it into the back corners of our minds and desperately strive to lock it up so it cannot get free to torment us. We are only partially successful.

  I suppose in retrospect we all feared this type of tragedy might happen. What the hell options did the villagers have really? The Cong came and went at will and hid supplies and weapons in the villages. If the villagers did not like it they were shot. So what choice did they have? Then we would come along and find the weapons stash and demand to know who of the villagers were Cong, when in fact none of them were. And we were not exactly gentle in our interrogation techniques. If the interrogations went bad and we did not get answers we liked, the villager would be shot. What the fuck could they do, the poor buggers were caught in the middle and shot either way.

  So statistically you just knew it was only a matter of time until the devil got his way and a village was massacred. You just fucking knew it was a combination of the right tension and stress level and some little trigger to set the whole horror show off. But we had no idea we were going to be right in the middle of it.

  Chapter 2: Bien Ho

  Bien Ho was a Vietnamese village about a click away from our firebase. Bien Ho was what it was named as best we could tell, although it seemed to have other names as well depending on which of the villagers you were attempting to talk to. Our interpreter explained it was not unusual for a village to have several names as the generations of villagers lived and died there. It was a lovely little place, close to a stream deep in the jungle, so nice and green and cool under the jungle canopy, a great spot to go in the shade and rest. We became quite close to the villagers. Although the elders, while they smiled and nodded, were not quite as convinced of our good intentions as the younger villagers were. The children were beautiful wide eyed innocents hopping around and we would give them gum under the disapproving eyes of the parents. Of course the parents really enjoyed our cigarettes. We would sit and smoke together and watch the children play. The happy kids remind us of our lives before this fucked up war. Their innocence and enthusiasm make us feel calm and energized. Perhaps this is why we fight this war, for the kids. The war seemed very far away. We had never found anything of any military interest in Bien Ho.

  One of the guys had managed to get hold of a soccer ball when he was in Saigon on R & R and he brought it to the village children. Fuck, what a wonderful commotion of excitement it caused. We set up some sticks for goal posts and played soccer with the kids all afternoon. They had never seen a soccer ball before and were in great awe of how they could kick it without hurting their feet. It was a wondrous object to them. Some of our lads had played a little soccer so they showed the boys some moves for handling the soccer ball. By the time we left they had a basic idea of the game and how to control the ball. Kids of all ages from toddlers up to 10 or 11 years old laughing, giggling hysterically and running after the ball. No teenagers though, sadly I suppose they were off fighting us in some other corner of the jungle.

  The elders did not seem to approve at first and were pretty stiff about the whole thing. But the glee of the children won the women over first and soon the men were watching and laughing along with everyone else. Happiness is very contagious and at times like this we could forget for a while the horror of the war and why we were there.

  God, it was so important to have these times to feed our souls, soothe the jagged emotions, and mend the torn mental images.

  Chapter 3: The Mission

  3:20 am, there is movement in the doorway of our hooch, my guts clench as I fear a suicide gook bomber. Accordingly, we have designed a right angle trap in the entrance to our hooch. The gooks know where we are and are very eager to kill P-man and I for political, troop morale, and general marketing reasons. They cannot allow us to get out of country alive, cannot!!

  “Fucking cocksuckers!” I growl and fire three thunderous warning shots from my .45 caliber sidearm into the sandbags which constitute the trap at the entrance to our hooch. P-man rolls off his cot and grabs his cut-off pump shotgun and touches off a couple of rounds. The noise is fucking deafening!!

  Major Farris’s hollers “For fuck sake, are you two fuck-ups done killing sandbags?�
�� He waves a bottle of Jack Daniels around the corner of the entrance.

  I’m pissed off and scared. “Fuck you; what are you doing sneaking around our hooch in the middle of the fucking night? I could have shot you, you asshole, and come to think of it I probably still should!”

  “Gunny, given the current situation I am going to ignore that remark.” replies Farris as he lumbers his bulk into the hooch. “Holster them smoke poles!”

  Major Farris is a huge black man! He should be a linebacker for the NFL Miami Dolphins and make millions by crushing fools playing football. But he is here, and big, and imposing, and has too many connections to spooks and things which should not and cannot exist but do.

  Raised in Philadelphia in a good black neighborhood, parents were professionals, good schools, solid schools, money for University, degrees, college football and so on. Farris did very well, bright and street wise. Recruited by the military, here things get a little hazy, somehow comes to the attention of Colonel Smith. Recruited by Smith and disappears into black ops world for a few years. Then pops up as a Major of Firebase Foxtrot in Nam, but still has ties to Smith and things that go bump in the night, and access to assets other Majors only have wet dreams about. He is also my boss in the military, P-man and I are accountable to Farris, whether we like it or not. He is a tough no nonsense fucker for sure, but fair as he can be given the situation. One thing for sure, nobody and I mean nobody fucks with Major Farris, on that you can bet your life, we know, cuz we have!

  Farris is drunk, not bad drunk, but kinda drunk. Man his size is likely on his second or third bottle of Jack.

  He grabs three water glasses, pours them half full, and drains his in two swallows.

  “We need to talk boys”, as he lights his cigar. “We have a situation, so to speak!”

  A “situation” at 3:20 am in the night, in Vietnam, in a war zone, with Farris, is not a good thing, not good at all. I look at P-man, he keeps his hands on the pump shotgun and looks calm, but I know he is not.

  We drink, Farris pours again, we drink again. Farris is struggling, I can see it in his eyes. It scares the hell out of me as I have never seen this man blink an eye at combat. We wait, and we drink!

  Finally he blurts, “The village, Bien Ho, was destroyed tonight, just hours ago, I got word from..., I got word our boys destroyed the village, and killed everyone, it was massacred and burned!”

  His words hang in the stale cigar smoke and whisky air of our hooch like demons...! Farris drinks again.

  I am stunned, maybe not realizing what he just said.

  P-man says, “Not the Bien Ho village just a click from here?”

  “Yeah, that one” says Farris, and he looks like he is going to cry as he drinks another glass.

  “What the fuck do you mean, our boys destroyed it?” I manage to whisper.

  “Colonel Smith just let me know what was supposed to be a routine recon mission by the Snakes went to hell and blew up. The village was massacred and burned!” says Farris.

  “The Snakes did this?” asks P-man, while I just stare dumbfounded.

  “A Special Ops Patrol from the Snakes, 6 guys,” whispers Farris.

  “Fuck Major, there is nothing in Bien Ho but kids and old people, we have been there visiting, smoking with the elders, and playing soccer with the kids for over a year,” I say.

  Farris nods and looks tortured as he pours three more glasses of Jack.

  “It gets worse ... Colonel Smith and I want you guys to hunt down and kill the boys from the Snakes responsible for this horrific goat fuck, terminate with extreme prejudice!” rasps Farris.

  There is silence, silence stretching to a breaking point as we stare at one another.

  I snap, this is well beyond fucking insane!

  “Well fuck Smith and fuck you, you crazy nigger asshole, we are days to rotation and you actually want us to hunt down and kill our own fucking men?”

  Farris moves with the speed of a Panther, grabs my uniform and lifts me off my feet and holds me in the air.

  “You may call me a number of things Gunny, but one thing you will never call me again is a crazy fucking nigger,” hisses Farris.

  There is a click-clack of a pump shotgun; P-man has the muzzle of the shotgun at Farris’s ear.

  “Put him down Major!” says P-man calmly.

  Farris turns his head and looks into P-man’s eyes, puts me down gently and sits down, pours another three glasses of Jack and drinks.

  None of us say a word, we just drink.

  Finally Farris says, “Boys, I am very sorry I have to ask you to do this. But Smith and I agree you boys are the only ones to handle this. No-one must know about this and the Snake boys have to die in a manner which is combative or accidental in nature. There can be no trace of you boys, none what so ever. I know you are low time, so you leave tonight and never return. When you have terminated all six Snakes you notify Colonel Smith on this scrambled radio, give him your position, and a black-ops chopper yanks you out. Out of country immediately, done, gone home.”

  Silence...time frozen...! The bottle Farris brought is empty. I fumble under my cot and find a full one, pour three glasses and we drink. We watch one another, together, yet are looking inward at our souls.

  Farris puts a file folder on the table. A file folder with six American soldiers’ pics and bio’s in it.

  P-man says, “I cannot believe any walking swinging dick would kill those people of Bien Ho, christ, we had such good times there with the villagers, there was no enemy there!”

  “Yeah, I know,” says Farris. “I was there a couple of days ago and played soccer with the village kids. The Snake boys must have been fucked up pretty bad to do what they did.”

  “Fuck, it is one thing to kill gooks, but our own guys? Fuck me, just doesn’t seem right,” I mutter.

  “We don’t fight war by massacring innocent civilians and burning villages,” replies Farris. “Those responsible for this have to be killed in combat so their story never gets out, no court martial, no press, no uproar back home, just make them dead! The spec-ops team has and is being disbanded as we speak to cover this fucking mess up. Each member is going to be re-assigned. You will need to hump yer ass to get them RFN before they slip away and the word leaks out. So get yer gear and be out of here within the hour. Colonel Smith has a gook weapons cache as indicated on this map you will find very useful. Remember no fucking trace of your work; it has to look like the gooks!”

  P-man and I look at one another in stunned silence. There are a million questions, but nothing to be said!

  Farris stands and salutes us, “Good hunting gentlemen, get home safe, and the Army is eternally appreciative of your efforts and contribution.” Major Farris is sober as a judge and all business as he sticks out his huge hand to shake our hands. As he goes out the entrance to our hooch he pauses and looks at P-man, and asks, “Would you have pulled the trigger on that alley-sweeper you had in my ear?”

  “In a heartbeat Major,” replies P-man.

  Farris nods slowly, smiles, and says, “So would I, so would I!”

  The Devil is howling, his head is back and he howls into the dark sky. He laughs and claps in glee and screams at us, we are always for eternity his horsemen of mayhem and death...!!

  Chapter 4: Carnage

  Daria, my love...this horror of war has moved to a new level...we have to hunt our own rogue grunts...how fucked up can this get...I’m not sure I can do this...

  It is dawn, we are loaded up, geared up, camouflaged up, greased up, in the jungle and in the zone, sober, alert and on edge. Bien Ho is burned rubble. Smoke hangs and drifts in the air looking for a place to go. Burned bodies litter the place, the stench is revolting. It is one thing to see a dead, burned adult, as horrific as that sight is, but it is a new level of horror to see dead children, shot, ripped asunder, and burned.

  “When I look at the remains of these children that just days ago I played soccer with, I do not have any doubts about killing those res
ponsible. Gonna kill the fuckers worse than what these villagers suffered!” mutters P-man through clenched teeth wiping tears from his eyes. “The fuckers did this are going to die fucking screaming!”

  I am numb, stunned, it is just off the scale for me. I look, I see, I smell, I weep, I vomit!

  “Christ aw fucking mighty, let’s get out of this hell-zone, I can’t think.” I gag.

  As I turn away a movement on the edge of the jungle catches my eye, I pause and fear a gook patrol, but a huge tiger silently steps out into the open. The massive cat must be 12 feet long and weigh 900 lbs. He views the carnage, lifting his head to smell, he watches us, unafraid, then turns and with a sweep of his tail slips back into the jungle. I notice the last foot of his tail is crooked.

  We move back into the jungle and climb up a low ridge where we can breathe without puking.

  “That’s the most god fuckin awful sight I have ever seen, don’t ever want to see something like it again,” I mutter.

  “It’s the bodies of the kids, fucks me up bad,” says P-man shuddering.

  “Who could do such a thing, what kind of fucked up animal slaughters kids?” I ask.

  “Those who have are going to pay more dearly than they can ever imagine.” states P-man.

  “And jesus christ, did you see the fucking tiger?” I ask.

  “Yup, one giant mo’fo cat to be sure, maybe the smell attracted him,” says P-man.

  “Mutherfuckers, what are our odds on this clusterfuck? Ya know Charlie is hunting hard for us, and we cannot even rely on our own troops cuz we are hunting some of them. What the fuck chances do we have?” I ask shakily.

  “Be surprised if our chances were one in three, maybe...jungle is against us, Charlie is hunting us, and the pukes responsible, and their troop buddies will be hunting us too soon enough, and maybe the fucking tiger too.” replies P-Man softly.