The organism is a parasite, Cherry thought, forced the thought to expand. The earth is a parasite sucking life from a far more complex animal which in its turn lives in a small cage in a small shed on a small plot of the surface of a very immense planet, a planet which is tiny and insignificant in its own universe. God, Cherry smiled to himself, to have a thought to play with without that fucken gook stickin his head into it. Cherry pursued the idea. Someone on that immense insignificant planet has captured the animal in which the earth is a parasite. It is a doctor or scientist. Cherry could see the scientist working in his white lab coat. He could see it all now. It opened like The Book of Revelations before him. The scientist was operating on the animal to find the cause of its sickness. To the scientist the earth is the size of a molecule. To the earth the pathologist shall be forever unknown. After all, Cherry smiled, we have not yet explored even neighboring molecules much less the organ within which the earth feeds. The perspective from earth to intestinal wall is unimaginably vast. If there is a wall at the outer boundary of the universe, what lies beyond the wall? Stomach? Rectum? Skin? Air? A surgeon? Cherry laughed to himself. If I can imagine all this, he asked himself, is not my imagination larger than all of it?
Cherry was sitting upright, still shivering. The moon crested the mountain ridges and flooded the upper canopy. It was full. Flat colorless light fell into the valley and diffused in ground mist. The jungle floor on the side of Hill 636 remained black. Cherry looked around. The sound of the mity-mite throbbed in his ears. A guard on the perimeter coughed.
Gotta stop thinkin. I gotta sleep. I oughta jerk off. I wish I was with Linda. Oh please stop. World stand still. That’s a fuckin order. Oh God, I wish I could plug my brain into a tape recorder and look at the results after I DEROS. Maybe it would make sense then.
As the moon rose a thin shaft of light penetrated the canopy. A glint triggered Egan’s nightmare. A sapper was by his side. The silver machete was in his hand. Moon beams sparkled upon the blade as the dark foe raised the huge knife higher, aiming, cocking, striking down toward his eyes …
Egan snapped up, spun and landed on his fingertips and toes, like a cat, ready to leap. Adrenaline fired him awake alert paranoid. He smelled the night, listened to the night, swept a paw into the night. To let the machete fall would be to accept his own death.
* * *
“Somebody said if you ate it, you’d either get high as a kite or sick as a dog. So I ate it.”
“Just blow the fucken claymore. You got movement out there? Blow the fucken claymore.”
“I can’t. There aint no C-4 in it.”
“Numbnuts, where the motherfuck is the C-4?” Steve Hoover quietly removed another grenade from his gear. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing and he was pissed.
“I ate it. I ate it. I figured I’d get high. After today’s hump, Man, I had ta do somethin. Maybe I’d get sick see? Then Doc’d have ta medevac me. I’d get medevacked see? That’s good. Or I’d get high. That’s good. Either way it had to come out good.”
“Fuck you. Just fuck you. Go out there and blow yerself. When did you eat the fuckin C-4?”
“This afternoon.”
“Did you get high?”
“No.”
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Fuck you. You whore sonavabitch,” Hoover whispered seething, staring into the jungle.
“Well at least I put out my claymore. Where the hell’s yours?” Numbnuts whined.
“I’m goina stick mine up your ass. You hear anything more?”
“No.”
“Go over an tell the L-T we got movement and that our claymores are fucked up and won’t blow.”
“Maybe it was just the wind.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you too. Of all the guys in this fuckin platoon, I gotta get stuck with some dude who’s got a three word vocabulary.”
“‘Fuck you’ is two words bat shit. Now go over and check out the L-T and see if Jax heard anything and don’t make any noise.”
“Where’s the CP?”
“Wait here. I’ll go.” Hoover began crawling away from Numbnuts.
“Hey, a …”
“What?”
“I aint really sure I heard anything. Maybe we should just wait.”
“Listen mothafucker, you either heard somethin or you didn’t.”
“I don’t know.”
“What time is it?”
“Three-thirty.”
“You fucken bat shit.” Hoover shook his head and crawled back to his position. He lay alert and strained his ears trying to differentiate the night sounds. The mity-mite and artillery rumbling came from behind them. A slight breeze rustled the vegetation all around. “Okay, mothafucker,” he snarled after eight or ten minutes. “You listen close. I’m sackin. You don’t fuck with me unless you hear somethin. You hear somethin or even think you hear somethin, get me up. Get a fix on the direction. Keep your fuckin eyes pinned open and if I get killed cause a you, so help me I’ll come back an haunt you till the day I die. How much C-4 did you eat?”
“Just a little. Tee-tee. I didn’t want to get too high or too sick. I got the rest in my ruck.”
“How long you been in the Nam, Man?”
“Four … over four months. I got held up at Cam Ranh for a while cause they didn’t have a unit for me.”
“Four months in Nam and yer already eatin your claymores. Man, that stuff aint good for you. An Jack, you don’t go gettin high up here. You aint in Saigon, bat shit, you up the Sông Bo. There’s dinks out there. You so fuckin dumb, I can’t … What was that?”
“I didn’t hear nuthin.”
“Shut up. Somethin’s out there.”
“You see …”
“Shut up.” Hoover keyed his radio handset breaking squelch on all the radios. He did not speak. He rolled slowly to his left. In his right hand he grasped a frag. Very slowly he worked the pin out. Very gradually he slid from his position and moved to alert Silvers and Jax.
Numbnuts was petrified. He cocked his M-79. He squeezed the claquer firing device on his defunct claymore. Even the blasting cap did not explode. Sweat ran down his face. He shook nervously. Hoover did not return. Numbnuts fired his thumper. Whooaaccck, the round blew from the barrel. Then KaBuaccck, the small grenade exploded. Numbnuts was sure he could hear the enemy scatter. The mechanical ambush up the trail triggered and exploded, a violent thunderclap. To his right and left boonierats tossed frags. Claymore mines exploded before half-a-dozen positions. Boonierats could hear NVA dragging bodies through the heavy growth. They fired at the noises. Brown at the CP called the firebase and within minutes pre-arranged DTs were flattening and burning the vegetation in a wide circumference about 1st Plt. The fusillade gradually died, exhausted, numbed by a lack of return fire.
SIGNIFICANT ACTIVITIES
THE FOLLOWING RESULTS FOR OPERATIONS IN THE O’REILLY/ BARNETT/JEROME AREA WERE REPORTED FOR THE 24-HOUR PERIOD ENDING 2359 15 AUGUST 70:
IN A NIGHT-LONG BATTLE CO B, 7/402 ENGAGED AN ESTIMATED COMPANY-SIZED NVA FORCE IN THE VICINITY OF YD 173329,
THREE KILOMETERS WSW OF FIREBASE BARNETT. A FIRST LIGHT SEARCH REVEALED 34 ENEMY KILLED AND NUMEROUS BLOOD TRAILS. CO B CAPTURED 16 INDIVIDUAL WEAPONS AND SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF OTHER ENEMY EQUIPMENT. US CASUALTIES WERE ONE KIA AND 11 WIA.
AT 0340 HOURS FIREBASE BARNETT WAS MORTARED. NO DAMAGE OR CASUALTIES WERE REPORTED.
AT 0715 HOURS, A SQUAD FROM CO B, 7/402 WHILE FOLLOWING A BLOOD TRAIL, ENGAGED A REINFORCED SQUAD OF NVA KILLING EIGHT.
THE RECON PLT OF CO E, 7/402 WAS AMBUSHED ON HILL 848 BY AN UNKNOWN SIZE ENEMY FORCE. THE UNIT RETURNED ORGANIC WEAPONS FIRE AND THE NVA BROKE CONTACT. CASUALTIES WERE ONE KCS WIA. AT 1100 HOURS, ONE PLATOON OF CO C, 7/402 WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE MOUNTAIN RIDGE SOUTH OF THE KHE TA LAOU AND WAS REINSERTED ON THE VALLEY FLOOR VICINITY YD 130317. THE LANDING ZONE RECEIVED FIRE FROM THE NORTH AND EAST RESULTING IN TWO US WIA. NVA CASUALTIES WERE ONE KIA AND ONE P
OW CAPTURED.
AT 1145 HOURS ONE KILOMETER SOUTH OF FIREBASE O’REILLY THE 1ST REGT (ARVN) RECEIVED 82MM MORTAR, RPG AND SMALL ARMS FIRE FROM A COMPANY-SIZE ENEMY FORCE. THE ELEMENT RETURNED ORGANIC WEAPONS FIRE AND WAS SUPPORTED BY AIRCRAFT FROM THE 2/17 CAV (US) AND 4/77 ARA (US). A SEARCH OF THE CONTACT AREA REVEALED 15 NVA KIA AND THREE CREW-SERVED WEAPONS CAPTURED.
A GROUND BDA BY ELEMENTS OF THE 2/17 CAV AND THE HAC BAO COMPANY FOUR KILOMETERS NORTHEAST OF FIREBASE RANGER RESULTED IN THE DISCOVERY OF 12 BUNKERS, EIGHT HUTS, 60 NVA UNIFORMS, 14 MEDICAL KITS, 2640 POUNDS OF RICE, 100 122MM ROCKETS AND MISC DOCUMENTS. ADDITIONAL ELEMENTS OF THE 1ST INF DIV (ARVN) KILLED 27 ENEMY IN THE VICINITY OF FIREBASE O’REILLY.
AT 1330 HOURS CO B, 7/402 WAS ENGAGED BY AN NVA SQUAD USING A .51 CALIBER MACHINE GUN. CO B CALLED IN ARA AND THE MACHINE GUN EMPLACEMENT WAS DESTROYED. AT 1430 HOURS, B/7/402 WAS AGAIN MORTARED AS THEY DISCOVERED THE ENTRANCE TO AN NVA FIELD HOSPITAL BUNKER COMPLEX. A FULL REPORT ON THIS ACTION IS CONSOLIDATED UNDER SIGNIFICANT ACTIVITIES 16 AUGUST 70.
1ST PLT OF CO A, 7/402 DISCOVERED A TUNNEL AIR SHAFT FOUR KILOMETERS SW OF FIREBASE BARNETT AT 1520 HOURS. THE UNIT PROBED THE SHAFT THROUGHOUT THE AFTERNOON AND EVENING WITH NO RESULTS.
AT 1855 HOURS FIREBASE BARNETT CAME UNDER ATTACK. THE ATTACK WAS REPULSED USING ORGANIC WEAPONS FIRE. ONE HUEY UH-1D HELICOPTER WAS DAMAGED.
AT SUNSET, VICINITY YD 160295, AN ELEMENT OF CO A, 7/402 WAS ENGAGED BY AN UNKNOWN SIZE ENEMY FORCE RESULTING IN THE DEATH OF ONE SCOUT DOG.
CHAPTER 22
16 AUGUST 1970
Egan and Whiteboy cussed bitterly when the ground collapsed. Brooks and El Paso shrugged their shoulders dejectedly and walked away. They had argued their best. Cherry did not fully understand. Generally, 1st Plt believed it was a mistake, felt they were victimized into committing an error. The entire day had been erroneous and demoralizing. It had been the kind of day champions lose to cellar dwellers and honor students fail easy exams. When the 1st Plt of Alpha blew the tunnel at 1300 hours and all that ground caved in the situation seemed perfectly normal—all fucked up.
No one had fallen asleep before first light. After the Numbnuts-initiated mad minute, the perimeter went on 100 percent alert. Cherry and Egan crawled outward and reinforced Whiteboy’s squad. The night became colder. Ground mist rising, flooding the dark crevices between already black jungle, drained heat from boonierat bodies and dampened clothes and poncho liners. All pairs cuddled, side-to-side, back-to-back, shivering, awake, miserable, exhausted.
Throughout the night the mity-mite and distant omnipresent artillery bursts rumbled and echoed. Black mist changed to gray. The jungle remained dark. The leaf-vine canopy silhouetted menacingly against the dull sky. First light dispelled the night. Half of 1st Plt fell asleep. They slept past sunrise at 0639 and they slept through a spectacular show as the sun broke over the east ridges and peaks and splashed and refracted in the sky turning the clouds red and the sky purple. “Only in Nam,” Egan smiled at the sky. Half the platoon slept on through routine morning activities, slept until the sun burned away the mist and clouds.
The other half did not sleep. Egan rose at the earliest sign of light and silently prepared his web gear for morning patrols. There was a feeling of relief and happiness amongst the waking, relief that day had arrived. During Nam nights boonierats often feared someone somehow would devise a method of eliminating daylight and daytime would never again arrive. It was always a relief when the sky changed and a boonierat could see his brothers still there.
Doc Johnson and El Paso moved silently through the dispersed squads checking and accounting for the L-T. “How’d the night go?” Doc asked here and there. A thumbs-up sign or a nod were the only responses. Doc McCarthy delivered a daily-daily pill to every soldier, a tiny white pill designed to inhibit falicipreum and volvax malaria. Everyone accepted a pill but half the pills found their way, with a wish, over shoulders. It would be better to be medevacked out with malaria than to get wasted in the valley.
Egan gathered a small team for a first light check. They disassembled the down-trail mechanical ambush, then patrolled west, uphill. The higher MA had blown. Artillery rounds had smashed small craters into the jungle. There were no bodies, no blood trails, no signs. It was as if no one had been there last night. The patrol returned.
“Oh, Man,” Hoover chuckled to Jax and Silvers. “You shoulda seen Numbnuts last night. That fucker says he ate the C-4 from his claymore so he’d get sick. Then he says he hears somethin. I tell him he’s full a shit. I think he pissed his pants. Man, you shoulda seen that dumb fuck. Scared shitless. When I skyed he was near cryin. I know there aint nothin there and I knew what that dumb fuckin shit was goina do.”
Egan returned to his and Cherry’s position. He broke out his C-rat can stove, a canteen cup, water, a piece of C-4 and coffee packets. Cherry woke, shook his head, looked at Egan through bleary eyes. “Twenty-two and a wake-up,” Egan announced cheerfully.
Egan washed as best he could using the corner of a towel and a C-rat tin of water. He concocted a breakfast of virtually inedible C-rat ham and eggs, doctoring the yellowish muck with peach jam, a dash of Tabasco sauce and several splashes of coffee. Egan mixed the mush with his bayonet then ate it with a plastic spoon. The sight of it being eaten turned Cherry’s stomach. Cherry ate a cold can of pork slices, a tin of crackers with cheese spread, eating first the cheese and then the crackers, and his last can of fruit cocktail. Egan cleaned and packed his ruck carefully checking the tightness of every strap. Cherry crammed his gear into the pocket of his pack, as before, then sat on it. Egan retied and tightened his bootlaces, checked his web gear, cleaned his ammo and weapon and then brushed his teeth. Cherry dusted the cover of his M-16 with his hand and sat waiting, expecting word to come to move in zero five.
“Man,” Egan shook his head. “You’re a mess. Look at you. I never seen a dude get so filthy in so short a time. You need a shave.”
“What’s this lifer crap?” Cherry barked back snidely. “Want me to spit-shine my boots too?”
“I want you to be clean, Asshole,” Egan snarled.
All about them boonierats were moving now. Moneski led 2d Sqd out on patrol. Brooks talked with the GreenMan, and FO called the FDC on Barnett with more coordinates. None of Alpha’s three platoons had found a sign of the one hundred and fifty NVA soldiers seen by aircraft two days earlier. The mity-mite continued pumping and the hole continued accepting the smoke. Above the valley and as far west as the Laotian border helicopters searched for smoke rising. None was spotted. Brown called forward supply with a coded, up-dated request list. “… charlie-charlie-uniform one, delta-delta-juliet one, alpha-alpha-foxtrot eight, delta …” He spoke on and on into the handset. On the firebase a supply clerk translated the message into meaningful figures on a cage-sheet, a list to which only the quantity needed to be added. Brooks talked to the Old Fox about the hole. He radioed 2d and 3d Plts and instructed them to return to the LZ on Hill 636 for resupply. He told them the CP and 1st would rendezvous with them at 1300. Routine activity continued and most of the boonierats became bored and simply rested in the shade.
“Jax,” Egan said excitedly, “let me take yer E-T, okay?” He grabbed Jax’ entrenching tool.
“Bro, yo aint gowin back down there, is yo?” Jax asked, incredulous shock beaming from his tired eyes.
“Right on, Jax,” Egan gleamed, spun and trotted toward the tunnel opening.
“Oh, Man,” Jax shook his head. “Dat fucka crazy.”
“Better en havin em tell either you or me ta go down there,” Silvers whispered.
At the opening Egan stood in a cluster of CP soldiers, Whiteboy, Thomaston and Cherry. He had tied off his pants legs at the crotch and knees and bloused them tightly about his ankles. Over his torso he wore a T-shirt, a long-sleeve jungle sweater and a fatigue blouse. As additional protection against the tear gas crystals in the hole he wore gloves and a hat. Like the day before he donned a gas mask and carried two flashlights and two .45s.
Cherry secured the rope about his waist and Egan plunged in.
The trip down was identical to the earlier one except now smoke residue shortened the effective length of the flashlight beam. Egan turned it off and proceeded in the dark. Slowly down. Deeper. Deeper. It was almost routine. Whiteboy gave three sharp tugs on the line indicating Egan was 100 feet out. Egan pulled once. He forced himself left against the tunnel wall, held the flashlight in his right hand, extended it to the opposite wall. He paused a moment, aimed a .45 down the tunnel and clicked the beam on, one two, off. His eyes registered an empty tunnel. Egan proceeded repeating the lighting at fifteen-to twenty-foot intervals. At 145 feet Whiteboy jerked the line four times. Egan yanked back. He should be in the small room. He turned the light on. The tunnel continued down. Egan inched lower, flicking the light at random. No room. At 170 feet he was stopped by a 250-pound bomb. He could hear digging sounds on the other side.
3d Plt had spent a restless night also. They had backed themselves into a small gorge after retreating from the sniper. Caldwell had placed an ambush team at the top, LPs on the flanks and three fighting positions across the front. He placed his platoon CP at the center in a thin natural trench. The dog handler and the tracker spent the night with the ambush team as far from Lt. Caldwell as possible. “That mothafucka’s dead,” the handler passed sentence on the platoon leader. “He gonna wish he nevah saw the light a day. What kinda man let a dog die? Just let him whimper en die en not even send a squad afta the dink who done it. Just turn around en run. What kinda man is that? I’ll tell you. A daid one.” His feeling penetrated almost every boonierat in 3d. A feeling of total disbelief and disgust had grabbed them all.
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