As they discussed the mission a series of engagements progressed slowly up the west side of their AO. First RT Mary’s MA detonated. Jenkins radioed the results almost immediately. Three NVA killed or wounded and now dead, and two rifles captured. A few minutes later RT Irene sniped and killed an enemy soldier and sent half a dozen fleeing north. They did not pursue. The same enemy squad ran into RT Beth set up across the trail. In the ensuing firefight Beth killed two. Juan Rodriguez was wounded though not seriously. Alpha’s four-day total now stood at forty-seven NVA KIA versus one US WIA.
The briefing continued while the fighting went on to the west. The recon team would move east then south to the river. Three men would cross traveling as lightly as possible. They would recon the knoll as much as possible, before dawn, then recross the river and return. They could decide among themselves who would go, Brooks said, though he suggested they pick the strongest swimmers. They should leave Campobasso by 0330, in ten minutes.
Brooks was concentrating well now. He did not think of conflict. Nor did he think of Lila. And the DEROS/Extend question also had dissolved. He would DEROS when the GreenMan was through with him which should be in as little as four days. Now he did not have to think of those things. He had only to think of Alpha, the valley, the knoll and the NVA. Brooks concentrated on the topo map, buried himself beneath a poncho and with a flashlight stared at the map until it engraved itself on his mind, until it told him what the land already knew, what the enemy must do. He moved Alpha on the game board in his head and he saw the NVA counter his move. He tried his unit there and saw the pitfalls. He moved the NVA. No, they would not do that. I wouldn’t do that if I were them. That’s a bad move. He moved them again. He attempted alternative after alternative and he countered each. They would be out for Alpha. He knew that. Alpha had been their nemesis. They would play extra hard to destroy it.
Major Hellman radioed. “Where in the name of hell are your resupply lists?” he demanded. “Charlie, Delta and Recon are ready for resupply but Alpha hasn’t even checked in with S-4. What the hell are you doing, Lieutenant?”
Brooks kept cool. Hellman was only the XO. The GreenMan would be, might be, flexible enough to allow Alpha to postpone resupply and carry out Brooks’ plan. Brooks had Cahalan compile the lists. They needed food for seventy-four men, clothing, socks, dozens of personal items. They needed radio batteries. Not just the normal replacement number but enough to replace the reserve they carried unknown and unexpected by the command. And they needed ammo. Claymores, frags, 60 and 16 rounds and 79 rounds for the new XM 203 over/unders.
“Call it in,” Brooks said. “Tell them we’ll resupply last.”
The recon team moved fifty meters upriver from where Egan had splashed in. They set up a small perimeter and ambush five meters from a red ball/river intersection. They had spent an hour moving 800 meters. It was 0430 and they were behind schedule. Egan, Cherry and McQueen stripped off all excess gear. They would not attempt to engage the enemy. They had, at best, two hours to cross, to observe, and then to get the hell out. They carried no rifles, no radio. Each man carried three frags and a bayonet. They removed their boots and tied them to their waists then eased into the dark current. False dawn lightened the sky but the knoll, indeed even the south bank, was invisible through the fog. They swam. Cherry led, breaststroking quickly, quietly. He reached the far bank, crouched in the shallow water and awaited the others. McQueen swam into him. Then Egan. They put their boots on, crawled up the bank and waited soundlessly. Then they moved very slowly, very quietly away from the river. They listened to the river current babbling over tiny snags at the bank. The sound faded as they dissolved inland. With each step they paused. They crossed first one trail, then another, then a red ball. They headed south, then west until they were behind the knoll. To that point the valley floor had been about like the valley floor everywhere they had walked: grass, discontinuous brush, secondary scrub and bamboo. Now it changed. It rose steeply, almost a cliff. Egan led the group farther west across the base of the peninsula of the knoll. All the while they climbed. Not so steeply now. The vegetation changed. It resembled the ridge foliage and it was silhouetted against the clearing sky. At mid-peninsula they discovered two parallel trails. The paths were narrow and ran toward the top. Beyond the second trail there was a trench. It also ran toward the top. They crossed it and burrowed into the undergrowth and sat. Egan checked his compass. He checked his watch. It was 0520.
On the far side of the river Minh, Doc and Snell sat next to each other trying to stay warm. Snell had camouflaged his radio by sticking to it six pieces of grass, just enough to break up its square appearance, and he had pushed the set as far from himself as the handset cord would allow. He sat and waited too.
To Minh the wait was terrifying. The Americans were becoming restless, too restless with him. They had begun looking at him as if he were a gook. Even Brooks had changed. Oh yes, Minh thought. He had felt it. He could feel the hungry eyes on him, the cold breath of these crazy men. Doc is my only friend, Minh told himself. If it were not for Doc they would destroy me. Minh thought about the North Vietnamese. They had developed greatly from the time three years ago when Minh knew them.
They will kill all these Americans, Minh thought. And they will kill me too. It is as Doc said, a suicide mission. Perhaps I should slip off into the jungle. They would love to capture me. How easily I could rid myself of these American fatigues and become one with them. Oh, what am I thinking? They too would murder me. They would torture me as they did my City of Hue. It is only with Doc that I am safe.
At Campobasso they waited too. Night was passing. Had the recon got off all right? Brooks wondered. From the ambush vantage point Snell had reported watching the three vanish into the fog and dark at midstream. That’s balls, Brooks thought. Egan, Cherry, McQueen. Balls. The goddamned biggest brass balls in the Nam. No company should be without boonierats like those.
False dawn had come and gone. First light was approaching quickly. The scattered rover teams were becoming restless. For days they had lost themselves in thorn thickets and beneath mist. For days they had paid no attention to time. They had become disoriented. Time had lost its sequential pace. Beneath the mist day and night lost contrast. The boonierats slept when the sky was coal black and when it was slate gray. They moved with equal ease day or night. Within their sections they pulled guard in shifts, ate in shifts, slept in shifts. Each shift lasted no more than two hours. Had they been on a spaceship with no night or far beneath the sea with no day they would have been equally time disoriented. Only one thing kept them from total insanity, saved them from the burden of being lost in time: to most of them it meant nothing. Time was not measured in sunrises and sunsets, not in days. It was measured in shifts and resupplies and operations and tours. For the rovers the operation would not end until they conquered the knoll or were destroyed trying.
As the sky lightened the knoll materialized above them. They had ascended to a height where the fog was thin. Below them ground mist and blackness obscured even the closest foliage. But above, above there was a shadow, a black blur against a gray fog sky, an immense black blur which seemed to envelop them. The sky became brighter. The top of the blur was a single tree so immense it seemed to dwarf them and the knoll.
Cherry heard them first. There seemed to be only a few. They moved quietly though casually. Cherry hefted a grenade and stared through the brush at them, at them approaching. Egan laid his hand lightly on Cherry’s, then more firmly. He motioned downhill and froze. Cherry dared not turn to look. Now he heard the second group too. He heard Mc-Queen breathe. The groups met on the trails before them. Those descending yawned. They handed something, scopes, to those climbing. They chatted softly, easily, then parted, those climbing, continuing up, those descending, continuing down. Then one stopped. He walked to the side of the trail and looked into the trench. He squatted, looked at the trail edge, then at the trench again. He called softly to the others but they had gone. Quickly t
he soldier picked up a handful of dead leaves and scattered them over the spot he had scrutinized. Then he relieved himself. Cherry could see his urine steaming. He was nearly urinating on McQueen. When he finished he strolled down into the mist and darkness.
* * *
Rover Team Jill arrived at Campobasso at 0620 hours, just after first light. They were restless, hungry, exhausted. Jax was wired. For ten minutes neither Brooks nor FO was able to ask a question. Finally Jax shut up long enough for the debriefing to begin. What had they seen since their contact with the mortar teams? Who, what, when, where? Details. Details. Brooks wanted more pieces of the gameboard. He and Jax reviewed the topo map. He noted every trail, every enemy sighting. He noted the times. Then Brooks, FO and El Paso connected the dots again. Where were the little people? Where do they come from? Where do they go? What would they know about Alpha from the contacts? Could they pin down Alpha’s location? With the earlier morning contacts the engagements of the last four days made a box around Alpha. Could the NVA still think, did they ever think, that the contacts were made by elements of Delta coming down the cliffs and Charlie coming up the valley? Very unlikely, Brooks thought. It was time to go.
“Brown,” Brooks called his command net RTO.
“Yes L-T.”
“Take these three to the berm. Let them sleep for the next six. You pull guard for them. Okay?”
“Roger that, L-T.”
“Make them sleep,” Brooks said. “If you need anything send a runner. Conserve your batteries.”
“L-T,” Cahalan called. Brooks looked at the krypto RTO. “It’s Major Hellman on the hook. He says he can have log birds at our station at dawn plus thirty.”
“What?”
“The resupply, L-T. Hellman’s got our shit already to fly.”
“Augh fuck. FUCK resupply! When’s the GreenMan coming back?”
“I don’t know, L-T.”
“Tell that assh …, tell the major we’ve got too many men out on X-rays. Tell him better than half the company is out humping and won’t be in before, ah, noon.”
Cherry emerged from the water onto the river’s north bank alone. He was winded from the swim. About his waist he had the end of a heavy rope. He crawled into the vegetation and put his boots on. It was 0720, thirty-one minutes after sunrise. The river and the valley floor were still cloaked in mist but it was thin and above was light. The sun was out.
“Sssstt. SKYHAWKS,” Cherry called.
“SKYHAWKS yer cherry ass,” Pop whispered back. “Where in hell’s Egan en Queenie?”
“Here,” Cherry said quickly. “On the other end a this.” He untied the rope from his waist. Urgently he said, “We’re goina need everybody to haul it in.”
“They daid?”
“Goddamnit, Pop! No. Course not. They’re guiding the cart. Now get em over here. The dinks are goina be madder’n hell when they wake up.”
“What?”
“Git.”
Pop scrambled back into the brush and in seconds had Snell, Denhardt, Calhoun, Doc and Minh heaving on the rope. Nahele and Woods moved up the trails to pull security.
“Pull,” Cherry began a soft cadence. “Pull. Pull. Pull.” The rope came toward them.
“What the fuck is it?” Calhoun asked.
“You’ll see,” Cherry gasped. “Pull. Pull.”
They pulled. The mist was too thick for them to see the far bank but they heard the clatter and the splash and the tension on the rope quadrupled almost pulling them all into the river.
“Pull. Pull. Pull.” Cherry continued the cadence.
They pulled, they strained. The rope came toward them steadily now. They grabbed forward, pulled back. Then, about mid-stream, it appeared, or they appeared. McQueen and Egan seemed to be hanging on, guiding it, keeping it from capsizing. The damn thing was half-boat, half-cart. An amphibious cart with a bow rope. There were double bicycle wheels on each side, half-out of the water. The inside appeared full. The cargo was heaped high though it was covered with a tarp. The recon squad pulled harder. Cherry quickened the cadence.
“I’ll be dipped in shit,” Snell laughed. All of them began chuckling.
The cart wheels hit bottom on the near side. McQueen and Egan lurched for the bank and scrambled into the covering vegetation. “Get it up and get out,” McQueen spurted the words out.
“They’ll be here, there,” Egan pointed across the river, “any minute.”
They rushed. Four of them slid down the bank and surrounded the cart. They pushed and lifted. The others pulled on the rope. The cart seemed to weigh tons. The wheels lodged against the bank. The cart wouldn’t climb the steep mud wall. Three more boonierats slid into the current. Seven lifted. Pop and Minh pulled with all their might from the top. All strained. The wheels dislodged from the muck. Boonierat feet sunk in deep. “Up,” Cherry whispered. “Up. Up.” Up they surged. Up rose the cart, up over the lip. On its wheels it shot forward, nearly running Minh over. The boonierats clambered up the bank. They caught the cart and rolled it away from the river, up a narrow trail, then in under cover. Cherry whipped the tarp off the cargo. There were seven 122mm rockets, four rocket boosters, four vehicle mount radios and an envelope of documents.
“What’s that one say, Minh?” Doc asked.
Snell had radioed the haul to the CP immediately after they had set up a perimeter. “You got a what?” El Paso had asked.
“An amphibious cart loaded with one-two-twos and radios,” Snell reiterated.
No one in Alpha, no one in the battalion, no one in the entire brigade, had ever seen an amphibious cart. The concept of it gave the NVA greater logistical flexibility than anyone dreamed they had. A cart like that would eliminate the need for bridges or ferries or boats, Brooks realized. Brooks radioed the GreenMan. He was still away from the station. “Say again, Over,” Major Hellman had Brooks repeat the description a third time. Then he ordered Brooks to have his men rig the cart for extraction. He would come in with the GreenMan’s bird himself and lift the cart out.
Pop and Egan attached the bow rope to the cart’s stern corners, jerryrigging a sling for the extraction. Then they filled in at the perimeter allowing Doc and Minh the freedom to translate at least a few of the documents before the envelope was taken away with the cart.
“What’s that one say?” Doc repeated.
“This says,” Minh translated as he read, “‘the great American people are behind us and against their own army. The firebase they call O’Reilly is already making American newspapers. The people of the United States are up in arms against their Imperialist War Lords. We should take strength from the proletariat, our comrades in America. If we are strong we can repeat the effectiveness of Firebase Ripcord on the American people and their Congress.’”
“This is fucked,” Brooks moaned to himself. “Why in hell didn’t they just look at it? Report it? Fucken Hellman. He’s going to bring a bird in here. That’s it. It’s over. They know our exact location, our exact plan.” Brooks called in El Paso and FO and Monk, Moneski, who had just arrived with RT Danielle. He settled himself down before he addressed them. Then he fed them his thoughts and apprehension.
El Paso acted frustrated and angry and sympathetic. This time he was no help. FO plotted the recon river crossing and suggested an immediate barrage on and about the river’s south bank. Brooks agreed and had FO call Armageddon Two to lay it on. The Monk, weary from his rover team ordeal, shrugged. “Aint no problem,” he said. “Have em push the cart upstream a klick.”
“Of course,” Brooks agreed. He lit up. “Hey, sure, of course. Monk, that’s genius. El Paso, get Pop on the hook.”
Alpha’s recon team moved reluctantly. The ground mist was thinning with every passing minute. It was no longer dark or gray on the valley floor although visibility beneath the fog was still less than twenty meters. Pop led the patrol. Egan and Cherry walked a double slack. In order to move the cart they had to stay on a trail and expose themselves to the potential of booby t
raps, ambushes and snipers. They moved slowly, laboriously. They took turns pushing and pulling. The cart rolled easily but the exposure was terrifying. Each of them bitched separately. Sometimes they bitched in twos.
“Pop smoke. Over,” Hellman radioed.
“Pop smoke,” Snell whispered to Egan. Egan set off a deep green smoke grenade and the smoke billowed and mixed with the mist. “Smoke out. Over,” Snell radioed back.
“I see Lucky Lime. Over,” Hellman called.
“That’s affirm,” Snell verified the color. He could hear the helicopter making its passes. First high, then low.
“Pop smoke,” Hellman ordered again.
“What the fuck,” Snell cussed. He tossed out, a purple canister. “Smoke out. Over.”
“I see Goofy Grape. Over.”
“Roger that, Red Rover. Goofy Grape. Over.” Then aside, “Goofy Fucker.”
The helicopter hovered over their location, the rotor wash pushed the ground mist away creating a hole in the fog. The sun was blinding. The pilot rocked the ship side-to-side enlarging the hole, giving Major Hellman a chance to see the ground and the cart and the troops below. Egan stood atop the cart. He was holding up a loop in the rigging. The crew chief stood on one skid directing the pilot down. Major Hellman stood on the opposite skid. “Great job,” he screamed into the roar of the helicopter engine. On the ground Doc and Minh watched him. The other boonierats had set up a wide, loose security perimeter. Doc signaled Egan that the lines below him were okay. “Great job,” Hellman screamed again. He threw a half-full mail sack toward Doc and waved. Egan secured the rope loop to the hook on the belly of the Huey and signaled the crew chief. The bird rose slightly, then more. The lines became taut. Egan jumped from the cart and grabbed his M-16. The bird lifted, rotated. The cart rose and swung. The bird gained altitude. The ground mist closed back in. Doc had grabbed and opened the mail bag. He had seen it purely by accident. On the very top there was a letter for Egan. He reached in and pulled it out. The squad reformed quickly. Doc stared at the letter. Pop urged the squad to leave quickly: “To the north and then west,” he said.
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