Long Range Patrol: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 1)

by Dennis Foley

  It was Davis’s voice that broke the silence. He was out of breath, but talking rapidly. “Six, this is Two-three. We have three seriously injured. I need an immediate medevac right now! Over.”

  “What is your situation? Are you under fire? Do you have contact or not?” Michaelson asked.

  “Negative, Six.” But the rest of the transmission was garbled, and Davis had let up on the transmit button on his handset.

  Michaelson turned to look at Hollister to see if he had understood what was going on down on the ground. But Hollister wasn’t sure and shrugged his shoulders.

  “You’re broken. Say again, Two-three. What happened?”

  “You ain’t gonna believe this. We spooked two water buffalo. They charged us!”

  Michaelson turned to Hollister. “Oh, shit!” He pressed the mike button. “Two-three, Six. Okay. Let’s go through this by the numbers. I don’t want to get anyone else hurt. Are you clear of your ambush site? Are you moving?”

  “Negative on the moving. We are still at the same location. Can’t take a chance. I’ve got a back and a possible head injury that I don’t think should move. I’m working on blowing a couple of trees for a one-ship LZ just east of my position. Too far to move to my primary PZ. Let me know and I’ll mark. Over.”

  “Standby.”

  Michaelson turned and talked to the back of Captain Shelton’s flight helmet. “What d’ya think up there, front seat? You game?”

  Shelton lifted a gloved hand, his thumb pointing skyward.

  “Okay, Two-three. We’ll bring in a slick to get your injured out. Give me a mark, now. Over.”

  “Stand by,” Davis replied, still out of breath.

  Hollister pointed down at the strobe light just east of the stream fifteen hundred feet below them.

  Shelton flashed the chin light for Sergeant Davis to let him know that they had him.

  “I think we are going to need a little help. You okay with some flares?” Michaelson asked.

  “Rog on the flares. I could use the light,” Davis replied.

  Michaelson called Operations and laid on artillery flares to light up the area.

  While Michaelson adjusted the flares, Shelton coordinated the upcoming actions with the other pilots on another frequency. Shelton then pulled the chopper out of its orbit.

  The C&C quickly descended to treetop level to take a look at the new PZ that Davis was preparing. It was very tight, but enlarging it to a more comfortable size would take several more hours and cause other problems. Michaelson and the pilots decided to send in one slick to take out the wounded, and use the chase to extract the remainder of the patrol. That way each chopper would carry a light load, which was better than having one chopper pick up the entire team and then try to maneuver out of the tight PZ. Michaelson decided to take the risk of exposing both slicks to get them out.

  After Michaelson announced the plan, the slicks and the C&C circled the team while the gunships prowled the treetops in a lower, wider orbit, trolling for ground fire.

  Finally, Davis announced that they were ready for the first pickup—the injured.

  Captain Michaelson directed the pilot’s course and speed since the C&C had a better view of the small hole in the trees than the approaching chopper did.

  Hollister held his breath as the slick slipped over the near edge of the LZ and settled into the center of a hole only slightly larger than its rotor disk.

  No one spoke—listening and watching the area around the pickup chopper for any indication of trouble or enemy activity.

  Then the radios crackled. “Coming up,” the slick pilot announced.

  The crews of the orbiting choppers watched as the slick pilot expertly brought his chopper to a high and dangerous hover and then rolled forward over the trees. As he gained speed and altitude, he called his progress. “Six, Two-three. WIAs are out. We are ready for the next lift,” Davis announced.

  Michaelson took a breath. “Okay, stand by. Gladiator One-nine, the chase ship is a minute out.”

  “Negative! Negative!” the chase ship yelled over the headsets. “I’m aborting. I got a chip light and a master caution. I might have to put it down. Lemme check this shit out.”

  Shelton’s voice took over the radio cross talk. “Wave off. You got that clearing to your three o’clock?”

  “Affirm. I’m going on over there and see what’s wrong with this pig. If I have to park it—that’s where I’ll be.”

  “Guns?”

  Iron Mike Taylor didn’t even hesitate. “Gladiator, I’m going to widen my orbit to include the team and your busted slick. If you go down, we got you covered.”

  Shelton switched to the intercom to give Michaelson the setup. “Okay, the chase hasn’t figured out what the problem is yet, but he doesn’t want to be hovering over those kids and lose it all. We can go in and get the three remaining on the ground. We just gotta hope that the slick doesn’t lose it while we’re going in, but I can’t wait. I don’t want to leave them on the ground while we are fucking with a maintenance problem.”

  Michaelson clicked the transmit button twice and then switched his radio back on. “Quarterback, this is Six. You copy our situation? Over.”

  “Good copy, Six. We’ve alerted the necessary stations. Over,” Marrietta said from the base camp radio.

  “Rog. Break. Two-three, we are coming in with the C and C to get you. We are zero two out. Dump what you can—we can use the weight break. Over.”

  “Wilco, Six. We’re ready.”

  It went silent again as Shelton dumped the collective on the C&C, causing it to fell rapidly from its orbiting altitude to one more suited to approach the hole in the trees.

  Hollister fingered his rifle on the seat next to him while Michaelson pulled out his Browning 9mm pistol, chambered a round, checked the safety and reholstered it, leaving the flap unfastened.

  The door gunner reached up, grabbed the handles on the back of the M-60 and pulled the weapon down into firing position. He then took off his gloves and stuffed them into the neck of his flight suit to get a better feel for the weapon and the ammo he would have to handle. That done, he wrapped his fingers around the handgrips, his thumbs resting on the twin triggers.

  Hollister looked down. The trees were barely feet below the skids as the chopper slowed to a crawl, pulling its nose high. After several seconds Shelton pulled the chopper to a full hover over the hole.

  There was no room to make a normal landing—a gentle, controlled glide. Instead Shelton leveled out the chopper and dropped into the hole by letting the chopper settle into it.

  The trees rose in front of Hollister’s face. In the seconds before the skids touched the ground, the exterior of the chopper was a blur of activity. As the trees whipped around, Davis’s remaining team members scrambled over the deadfall on the PZ and crawled toward the chopper.

  “Fuck! Look!” the door gunner yelled over the intercom.

  Hollister looked toward the margin of the landing zone. There, only a few yards away, was a huge water buffalo, bleeding from a large wound on his left side. In the flashing of the chopper lights and the white wash of the artillery flares, he looked terrified, threatening and unpredictable. He was disoriented by the lights and noise and it was clear that it wouldn’t take much for him to charge the chopper while it squatted in the tiny clearing.

  Hollister knew that they had to do something, but couldn’t until everyone was accounted for. He spun around to Davis. “You got ’em all in?”

  Davis bobbed his head up and down.

  Hollister relayed the word to Michaelson, who couldn’t turn far enough to make eye contact with Davis. He registered Hollister’s message and leaned over, slapping the door gunner on the shoulder. “Fire. Shoot him. Don’t wait!”

  As the door gunner opened up on the water buffalo, Michaelson gave the word to Shelton, “Outa here. Go! Go!”

  The stumbling, terrified water buffalo took hit after hit from the machine gun. Its eyes flashed the whites i
n a show of panic. Every fifth round was a tracer that streaked from the weapon to the animal’s flesh in a flash of red only extinguished by the animal’s bulk.

  The chopper strained under the nine-man load and slowly rose till they had nearly cleared the treetops.

  Shelton leaned the cyclic forward to pick up some airspeed. As he did, the chopper sank and the blades cut into the trees with disturbing chopping sounds. In a few seconds the chopper started forward with even more of a sinking sensation.

  He looked back. Crazed with pain and confusion, the wounded water buffalo thrashed wildly around the small clearing.

  “He’s still alive, sir.”

  “Shit! Poor fucker.” Michaelson looked out. “Iron Mike, Six. Can you put that animal out of its misery for us?”

  “If you got everyone up.”

  “Yeah, we’re clear.”

  Remembering the other chopper, Hollister looked out several hundred yards at the troubled chase ship. The pilot had fallen into an orbit above the emergency landing zone that he had picked out, but he was still flying.

  By then the C&C was picking up altitude and airspeed. As Shelton started a lazy left turn to head back, the gunships rolled in on the water buffalo, firing 40mm grenades at him.

  After the second pass the animal lay on his side in the center of the small LZ with steam coming from his nostrils. Soon even that stopped.

  It was well after midnight when everyone assembled in the mess hall. Michaelson had decided to hold the debriefing there in order not to distract the duty NCO and officer in the Operations tent. There was still a team on the ground, and it deserved the attention. Michaelson also wanted to allow those involved in the extraction to get something to eat or a cup of coffee during the debriefing.

  Hollister found a chair in the corner of the room where he could listen and take notes on the table next to it.

  Michaelson looked at the silent group of LRPs and pilots, focusing on the three survivors of the stampede. “Let me take a minute to tell you what I know about the rest of Two-three. But let me start by saying this was nobody’s fault. Just a fluke. One I hope we don’t see again.

  “Clearing tells me that Doc Norris has a broken collarbone and a handful of broken ribs. He’ll be okay, but he’s short, so they are sending him back to the World as soon as they can.

  “Vinson has a banged-up leg and a fractured wrist. He’ll be back here for light duty in ten days.

  “Lieutenant Virgil wasn’t so lucky. He has a broken back and neck. They’re pretty sure he won’t walk again.”

  The silent room got even quieter.

  Finally Michaelson said, “He would have made a real fine platoon leader. I’ll make sure to tell him how you all feel.”

  Michaelson picked up his cigar from the edge of a mess table and relit it. He blew the smoke upward, as if to avoid someone in front of him. “Those fuckin’ water buffalo cost us a lot tonight. Can somebody tell me how it happened? I’d like to try not to get in a fix like that again.”

  “I can, sir,” Sergeant Davis said.

  Michaelson looked at Davis, who was pretty beaten up—like he had been in a good fistfight. He stood up and turned to the larger part of the group to speak.

  “If this hadn’t been so serious, it would be funny. How they got to us is anybody’s guess. Anyhow, we started gettin’ movement on the trail between us and the stream we had rigged for ambush. We had no reason to believe that it wasn’t folks—good or bad guys. We couldn’t see ’em, but we could damn sure hear ’em.

  Davis shifted his weight on what seemed to be a sore leg and continued. “Whoever they were, they were in a bad place for us to consider firing on them. So, I passed the word to let ’em go by if we could and blow ’em away if they came for us.

  “It went okay for a while. It seemed like whoever was below us was just sorta milling around. I figured it must have been someone who didn’t know we were in the area—and that they just might pass on by. Suddenly Vinson felt a jerk on his Claymore wire and he punched it off. He thought somebody was either trying to disarm it or turn it around. He didn’t want to give them a chance to do either.

  “That’s when all hell broke loose. The water buffalo spooked and ran our way, hitting us like a couple’a buses. As fast as they were there—they were gone. And they were as close to bein’ in a shit panic as I’ve ever seen any animal.

  “I realized how bad the casualties were and passed the word to blow the ambush. I figured it would spook ’em some more and maybe keep ’em moving away from the water and away from us.

  “I guess you know the rest.”

  Hollister entered the darkened, musty tent and stripped his shirt off. He didn’t even want to know what time it was. He could tell by how he ached. His feet hurt from wearing his boots too long, and his waistline was sore from the constant rubbing of the rough fatigues against his hipbones. His eyes were burned from the cold night air in the chopper and the smoke-filled mess hall during the lengthy debriefing.

  As he sat on his bunk, he inventoried the detachment’s losses for the night. In addition to the loss of two good men, Captain Shelton had announced in the debriefing that the C&C would have to go in to maintenance to fix three bullet holes that the chopper took sometime during the extraction of Davis’s team.

  No one had ever been aware that they were being shot at, much less hit. It was an unnerving thought to Hollister—that he could be shot at and not know about it.

  As Hollister unlaced his boots, he cradled the field phone in the crook of his neck and cranked the handle on the side of the case.

  “Operations, Specialist Bernard, sir.”

  “Hey, Bernard—Lieutenant Hollister. Can you roll me out at 0530?”

  “I can handle that for you, sir. But do you know what time it is now?”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Yessir. Airborne.”

  Hollister hung up and stood to drop his trousers. He dropped back on his bunk in his shorts and T-shirt. No one wore underwear in the field. It was sign of a REMF. He laughed halfheartedly. Him, an REMF! How many REMFs had nights like he had just had?

  He dropped off into a black void.

  Hollister was angry when the runner woke him up. He had promised himself to get a letter started to Susan the night before. It had been three days since he had written her or anyone. As he dressed he realized why: he just didn’t want to write until he had something positive to say. He didn’t want to tell her about the team being trampled or the lost team from first platoon or so many of the little tragedies that seemed to happen, one right after the other.

  He tried to remind himself to take some stationery with him and work on a letter to her during the few moments he might be able to steal out of the day. He could even tell her what he was doing during the day. It would be something that wouldn’t tell her anything more than how busy things were for him without alarming her.

  The letter didn’t come along well. Hollister lost the morning to patrol briefings and briefbacks. After that he was saddled with the lengthy accident report on the water buffalo stampede, which had to be forwarded to the Brigade Safety officer.

  Hollister’s initial reaction was that it was just so much chickenshit to have to write up multiple-copy reports on water buffalo. But he knew that it just might come back down the chain of command in the form of recommendations for units to warn their people about the likelihood of such an accident. If Davis’s people had any idea that water buffalo might have been the cause of the noise outside their tiny perimeter, things could have turned out better.

  Hollister found an out-of-the-way corner of the orderly room to finish his tasks. Easy helped him with the myriad of Brigade Safety regulations that he had to read and respond to.

  As he was finishing the paperwork, Easy gave him another task. “Lieutenant, the Old Man told me to ask you to handle the inventory on Lieutenant Virgil’s gear.”

  “I’m not surprised. With Rogers out on ambush, I’m back to being th
e low man on the pole.” He made a note and nodded. “Okay, Top. I’ll take care of it.”

  Easy smiled and pulled another piece of paper out of the stack in his hand. “How about some good news for a change?”

  “I wouldn’t know how to handle it. What’s the catch?” Hollister asked.

  Easy read from a column of names. “Take your pick. You are up for R and R, and you can have Bangkok or Honolulu—but you have to make up your mind yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Sorry. The paperwork got lost somewhere between Brigade and my in-box.”

  Hollister took the R&R allocation notification from Easy and stared at it. Honolulu, he thought—Susan! God, was it possible? Could he get her to meet him there? He read down the page-he would have to leave the next morning or lose the allocation.

  “Shit—I’ve got to get moving!” He handed Easy the accident report. “Can you get this stuff typed and forwarded? I’ve got to get to the MARS station.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Hollister shot out the door. Easy laughed. “Bernard, lad, ain’t it wonderful what love does to the heart of a warrior?”

  Without bothering to look up from the Morning Report Feeder that he was trying to type, Bernard replied dutifully, “Whatever you say, First Sergeant.”

  The MARS station was filled with soldiers from the Brigade, all trying to make phone calls home by radio.

  Hollister checked in with the NCOIC and got a number indicating his priority—first come, first served, with a catch. He would have to wait behind all the troops who were making emergency calls, and the ambulatory patients from the hospital who were letting their families know they were okay.

  Finding a dry spot on a sandbag parapet outside the tent, Hollister sat down to wait his turn. He pulled the letter out of his pocket and then realized that he would probably be seeing Susan before she got the letter, if he finished it. He decided not to take the time to finish it. Instead he started a letter to his parents.

  He had the same problem with his folks—tell them the truth, and it would worry them. Tell them anything else, and he would be lying by omission. He split the difference and told them a much diluted version of the water buffalo patrol. Then he told them about getting alerted for Fort Benning. That would make his mother happy.