Suddenly Brooks, Alpha, the knoll and the valley are rocked by a concussion, a fantastic flash and explosion like none any boonierat has ever seen. Then comes a series of secondaries while the first explosion is continuing to erupt. The munitions at the bunker complex are exploding, a room below explodes. Shockwaves flip the diving Cobra that has initiated the explosions. The pilot is hanging on trying to regain control. There is a huge black cloud. More secondary explosions. Dirt and shrapnel gust up with explosive force then rain down. The flash burns from outside in, the edges turning immediately black, fire and flame roiling inside, breaking through. The huge cloud seems to detach itself from the ground.
Then it is over. It has not lasted a full minute. The cracking rifle fire in the valley seems to make no sound. A laugh cracks from Alpha’s perimeter. Then another. “Gawd Damn!” Pop yells. Cherry whistles a blood-curdling shriek. They are laughing, cheering, clapping. “Gawd Damn!” Pop yells again.
“I ain’t NEVER seen nothin like that,” Calhoun squeals. He slaps Pop on the back.
“Gawd, that exploded quicker than a cat covers shit.” Pop is dancing.
“God! That’s like the time the ammo dump at brigade blew,” Baiez laughs.
“Better.” Shaw is hysterical. “Better en badder.”
Brooks too is smiling. He is pleased. That’s what we came to do, he thinks. He wants to let them enjoy it, enjoy the show. They’ve earned it, he thinks. They paid the price.
“Raggedy-ass mothafucka,” Doc Johnson screams at him, drowning the applause. Brooks snaps his attention to Doc. Doc has come down from the tree. “Where my medevacs?”
“Where you going to land them?” Brooks snaps back.
“I got men need medevacs, Mista. Get me a fuckin bird.”
“Show me what you’ve got,” Brooks says firmly.
The perimeter positions settle down. A jittery tight-trigger tenseness settles on them. They are hot, thirsty, out of food and out of water. Ten men are hacking the brush from the knoll top and dumping it over the cliffs.
Brooks and Doc squat by the base of the tree. At the base gnarled roots splay across the knoll in a ten-meter radius humping and dipping and crossing themselves. Doc has the wounded lying in a protective cove, a canyon created by the root ridges and the tree trunk. Doc McCarthy and Doc Korman are administering to the wounded. The bodies of Doc Hayes and Nahele lay crumpled, not yet covered, at the cove edge. Brooks grits his teeth. Hayes didn’t have a chance, he tells himself. He wouldn’t have made it had he been shot that way right inside an operating room. Brooks gulps. No one looks at the dead.
Brooks inspects the wounded one at a time. Kinderly’s entire upper head is wrapped, his eyes covered. There is blood on the bandages. Doc Johnson whispers to Brooks, “He gonna lose both eyes, Mista, you doan get him out a here right now.” They move on to Bill Frye. He is conscious, not even dazed. He is sitting scratching his chin, shaking his head. “You okay, Cookie?” Doc says to him. Frye pulls his shirt open. His left side is bandaged heavily. He looks up and nods. Then he says, “I’m sorry, L-T. Really. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Cookie,” Brooks answers.
“I saw the fucker, L-T. I saw him shoot me. I shoulda got him first. Crazy Cherry saved my butt.” Frye shakes his head.
Brooks sees Egan. He did not know Egan had been hit. He spins quickly to Doc.
“Fucked up, Mista,” Doc says.
“He’ll be all right,” Doc McCarthy says. “I don’t think none of it went in too far.” McCarthy is holding a bag of plasmatine above Egan. Egan is conscious. His face is empty, his eyes unfocused. He is lying on his side facing into the tree, babbling deliriously.
“He all shot up with morphine,” Doc Johnson says bending over Egan, counting, timing his respiratory rate. “Dumb fucka,” Doc Johnson raises his thick upper lip gesturing at McCarthy, “shot em up twice. He lost lotsa blood an I think he gonna have spine trouble.”
“There aren’t any holes near his spine,” Doc McCarthy says. “He hurts. That’s all.”
“Shud up, Mothafucka,” Doc Johnson curses roughly. He wants an immediate medical evacuation.
“What about Hill?” Brooks asks. Hill is moaning, lying on his back with his right leg up on a high root hump. His head is on a near-empty ruck. He is staring straight up, glassy-eyed. There is a small break in the tree’s leafage and the sun is shining down, shining, illuminating all the smoke and dust particles in the air, casting a beam all the way to the ground and to the base of the tree.
“He’s hurting but he’s okay,” McCarthy says.
“Mothafucka, I told you, shud up,” Doc Johnson says. There is anger and hate in his eyes. His body is tense like a cat ready to spring. He has seen men with minor wounds die waiting for medical evacuation. He does not like to see any of his brothers wait.
Brooks puts his right hand on Doc’s arm. “We’ll get them out as quickly as possible,” he says. He stands. He walks to where El Paso and Brown and FO have set up the CP. Cahalan is on guard overlooking the sparsely guarded north cliff.
Brooks talks to the GreenMan by radio. They converse in staccato radioese. They talk about extracting the wounded and all of Alpha. It will be dangerous to bring birds in on the south slope. “Blow the big tree,” the GreenMan says. “I’ll have a bird to you in one-five with a demo-kickout.”
“Yes Sir,” Brooks answers. He is pleased with the plan. It will save lives. No more wounded. No more dead. The wounded, he thinks, can wait. They are priority and routine. They are not urgent. Urgent means near death. Egan and Kinderly are stable—priority—evac ASAP but no heroics. Hill and Frye, priority. Hayes, Nahele, oh God, poor fuckers—routine.
El Paso is on the hook to the platoons with orders for the kickout. He is laughing to himself. He has just awarded a Silver Star to the GreenMan. In his mind he is watching Father Raul read the citation at an awards ceremony.
AWARD OF THE SILVER STAR
For heroism and gallantry in ground combat in the Republic of Vietnam, 13 to 25 August 1970. Lieutenant Colonel Dinky Dau GreenMan distinguished himself while serving as commanding officer of a bunch of dumbass troops during operations near Firebase Barnett. During the entire operation the GreenMan repeatedly supervised ground and air forces which got fucked up looking for a meaningless bunker complex. The GreenMan directed artillery and tactical air support against enemy hills, trees and grass. He listened on the radio repeatedly as his units were ambushed and attacked. After the enemy forces were routed, he, without regard for his personal safety, tabulated the reported dead. From the air he repeatedly urged boonierats on and he engineered attacks and counter-attacks for them to carry out. During the operation the GreenMan also managed to take twelve hot showers in the rear, eat thirty hot meals and read twenty-seven Fantastic Four comic books. The GreenMan’s personal bravery and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.
Doc Johnson is sitting among the wounded in the root cavern below the giant tree. He has given them all clean water from two canteens he has saved just for the wounded. For three days he has been drinking riverwater or swampwater. Doc has also lit cigarettes for Frye and Hill and has held a smoke for Kinderly who is conscious though unable to see and afraid to move. “Hey, Eg,” Doc says forcing a laugh. “I ever tell you bout the medics at Phu Bai?” Doc laughs a knee-slapping put-on laugh. “Heyhey. There ol Charles there in the dispensary. He say ta Dorf who standin near this microscope, Dig?, ‘Dorf, you see anything on that slide?’ Dorf look up an say, ‘No. You see anything, Charles?’ ‘Naw,’ say Charles. Then ol Charles pause an he say, ‘Dorf, you look at the slide?’ Dorf say, ‘No, Charles. You look at it?’ Ol Charles scratchin his head en he say, ‘Naw. Ah, do that mean it’s negative if we doan see nothin?’ ‘I guess so,’ say Dorf. ‘If we doan see nothin, it caint be positive.’ ‘Hum,’ Charles go. ‘I guess that right.’” Frye tries to control himself bec
ause it hurts his side to laugh but it feels so good to laugh with Doc. Doc winks at him. “Hey, Eg,” Doc calls. “Dig it, Mista?”
Egan is staring into the tree. He has been in the same position for a year, he thinks. The morphine has dulled the pain in his legs and back and he is no longer angry with Doc McCarthy for having drugged him. He is not angry at anything or anyone. The morphine has hit him hard. It has warmed him, relaxed him, made him feel suspended. He is floating. The first injection had eased him but then the pain had built up higher than the drug effect and had spilt over tidalwaving impulses fought without success. His body shock reaction team was inadequate. He had been angry at that, at his body giving up on him. And then the second injection hit him and he was delirious, delirious with morphine and shock and pain and exhaustion and with the happy knowledge it was all over. The war is over, he had told himself. Just get me out and I’m gone forever from this bad mothafucker.
They had carried his body to the tree and had laid him down and given him blood. He had watched them do it though they did not know he was watching. He had heard Doc and Jax and the L-T and Doc Mc-Carthy. How? he asks himself. I have been with Stephanie. He is with Stephanie now as Doc jokes behind him. “Wouldn’t it be nice, Steph,” he whispers to her, he is looking into her silver eyes, “wouldn’t it be nice,” he says, “if we could go back and relive some of those times. The beautiful times.” Egan can see a village street with him and Stephanie skipping past a park. They stop. They kiss. She is singing, laughing. “We’ll sing in the sunshine, we’ll laugh every day, we’ll sing in the sunshine, now that you’ve come back to stay. Now your year is over …” It stops. Stephanie is not here. He is looking into a cavern created by the dark gnarled roots of the large tree. He cannot see the top or the sides of the tree. He is immobile, on his side, staring into the cavern. The place stinks, he thinks. It smells of rancid meat. His eyes focus into the dark chamber. It is clogged foul with spider webs. His chest ceases. He tries to push himself back but he is immobile. The webs take on a pattern. He can see a swelling of tree wood, the knoll, surrounded by webs leading throughout the valley. A beam of sunlight is glistening on moisture clinging to the silk threads. Then he sees the creature. Again he tries to move, to react, yet his body will not respond. Something is blocking his mental orders and they are not reaching his muscles. The creature is large and red, blood red. Egan thinks he can see through the skin of the spider. It is almost translucent. No, he thinks. It is the morphine. It is a hallucination. The creature moves. It is as large as a hand. Its legs appear webbed. It is strangely delicate, beautiful yet fearsome. The spider is devouring a mosquito. Egan can see its jaws, its spinnerets, its claws. There are silken wrapped insects suspended everywhere in the web network. Egan closes his eyes. He thinks he is shaking his head. You gotta be the biggest, baddest mothafucker in the valley, Egan thinks he says aloud to the spider. Why the fuck doesn’t Doc come here, he thinks. He moans. He wants to run. Doc, he wants to scream. He is immobile and mute.
“Hey, Eg,” Cherry whispers. Cherry has left Marko and Jax at the log on the perimeter. “Hey, Man,” Cherry whispers, “how ya doin?” He does not see Egan respond. “Hey Doc,” Cherry calls, “can he hear me?”
“Course he can,” Doc says.
“Doc, could you ask hjm if I can take his ammo? Anything he’s got left. We’re pretty low on the berm.”
“Jus take it,” Doc snaps. “He ain’t gonna use it.”
Egan is not listening. He is watching the spider. It is walking toward him. He moans.
Cherry looks at him. He puts a hand on Egan’s arm. He can feel the tension in the frozen muscles. Egan moans louder. “It’s okay, Man,” Cherry says. “It’s o … HOLY JESUS MOTHA-FUCK! Holy Fuck. Okay, Man. Doc, get yer ass over here.” Cherry has seen the spider.
Doc springs over. Fear shows on his face. He is afraid he has let Egan die. He grabs Egan’s throat to check for carotid pulse. Before he can feel, Cherry shrieks, “WHhooeee!”
“Whut’s it?” Doc is angry.
“Ugly fucker,” Cherry growls. He spits at the spider. “Look at that ugly fucker.”
The spider raises two side legs. They look mechanical snapping up and bending at the knee joints stiffly like marionette string puppets. The legs snap down to the web. Two front legs snap up. These legs vibrate tentatively, mechanically, above the web.
“Come on, let’s get Eg back,” Doc says. He does not want to look at the spider.
“Wait a minute,” Cherry says. He is kneeling behind Egan’s prone body, kneeling as if the body were a bunker parapet. He grabs a twig and tosses it toward the creature. It snags in the web. The spider jerks vibrating the entire network violently, defending his territory and snagging the intrusion. The spider eight-legs forward.
“Cut it out, Mista,” Doc says hatefully. He gently slides one hand beneath Egan’s head and the other beneath Egan’s waist. Cherry does not move. Instead he searches the ground about Egan for a stick. He picks up a small branch perhaps eighteen inches long. He reaches over Egan and holds the end of the stick over the spider’s head. Then like a drum beat he bops the spider. The spider dashes forward with incredible speed. Cherry jerks his hand back. The spider stops. Slowly it retreats on its mechanical looking legs.
“mmaghmm … kill,” a faint moan-cry breaks from Egan’s throat. His body is shivering. Doc eases him back a foot. Cherry does not move. Egan’s legs touch Cherry’s kneeling thighs and Egan winces. The pain is returning but worse is the spider.
“Get the fuck outa the goddamned way, cocksucka,” Doc shouts releasing Egan and turning on Cherry. He shoves Cherry.
“Cool it,” Cherry says calmly. “I’m goina kill that ugly fucker. I’m goina kill it for Eg, Man. For Eg. You know,” Cherry laughs shrewdly, “Eg hates spiders.”
“You a perverted mothafucka,” Doc curses Cherry. “Get outa the goddamn way.” He lifts Egan’s legs ever so gently nudging Cherry with his own hips. Egan moans. Inside his head everything seems so clear. He can see everything, hear everything. He can speak, he can move. He knows he can yet he does not have the will. The will stops just before the muscles. It is all inside. He retches, upchucking bile burns his throat and lips. He can smell it, taste it, feel it. Get me out of here, he thinks he yells. Doc is cleaning his mouth. Get me away from that monster. His heart is beating rapidly.
“I’ll give you a hand in just a second, Doc,” Cherry says leaping right and immediately returning with a larger stick. This stick is twice as long, twice as thick as the first. Cherry now stands, crouches, between Egan and the spider. “Watch this,” he says. Doc looks disgustedly. Egan watches. Cherry raises the stick twice as high as he had the first stick and he belts the spider twice as hard. The stick is rotten. It snaps against the tree, a section breaking, hitting the spider. The spider, wounded, retreats into the cavern.
“That bastard just don’t wanta die,” Cherry absolves himself. A chill runs up his back and neck and up behind his ears. He smirks, wipes his nose nervously. He picks up a larger, sturdier log and tests it on the ground. It is solid. “Come on you little fucker,” he snarls. He swings hard inside the cavern, ripping years of webs, crashing hard solid against the inner tree. The spider eludes the blow and charges toward Cherry.
“Use this,” Doc yells throwing Cherry a rifle with bayonet affixed. Cherry jumps back, jumps over Egan’s legs, catches the rifle and spins, thrusts the blade into the spider’s back. The spider squirms. It is inches from Egan’s chest. Cherry slashes at it again and again. He leaps back over Egan and stomps the creature, grinding it into the mud. Cherry looks up, surprised, relieved. The sounds of machetes and ETs chopping at brush and vines are covering the hilltop. Egan is looking up at him, horrified. Doc is trembling.
“You guys going to sit here bullshitting or you going to help blow the LZ,” El Paso calls coming down, joining them. “¿Que pasa, Doc? Come on, I’ll help you move Egan to the other side. Stan, The Man, Kinderly, how are you doing, Man? Doc, if we’r
e going to get a bird in here we got to take down the tree. Doc? You okay, Doc?”
The perimeter force has thinned. The valley has become quiet. Of Alpha’s sixty-six able-bodied and semi-able-bodied men twenty are at work cutting, clearing, cleaning the landing zone. They are not carefully silent. They call to one another, joke, curse. Anyone in the valley who is interested can see exactly what Alpha is doing. There is no other way. Brush is slashed with single strokes or ripped up. Boonierats grunt with their straining. Small trees, up to six-inch diameters, are chopped down by machete. The cuttings are dumped off the cliffs or used for barriers on the south slope.
When Brooks had told De Barti that he and Pop were to blow the tree De Barti had emitted a high surprised “Blow that tree?!”
“That one.”
“That tree?!” It was impossible to comprehend. It was not a tree, it was a monument.
“Blow it, Goddamnit.”
“L-T!”
Then Doc and El Paso had moved Egan to the southern edge of the knoll top. Cherry had carried the wounded man’s ruck and weapon and had rejoined the perimeter force. Now Doc brings Hill and Frye down while El Paso leads Kinderly. Others help to bring the rucks and Doc’s gear. No one wants to bring Hayes’ body so Doc returns. McQueen brings Nahele down. He has cared for him the entire time. He would not have it any other way. The knoll top looks strangely barren. Everything except stumps and leaf debris and the giant teak have been cleared. The ground is drying where the sun is angling beneath the teak’s canopy.
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