It reminded her of the time Bill had saved her from the grenade in almost the same location. But the bullets had been closer than they knew. As they got to their knees again, the RTO saw that Bertie had been shot clean through the heart and was lying beside them. “Oh fuck …” He checked for a pulse and there was none, as fresh fire erupted nearby, and a dozen GIs ran past them waving their M-16’s and opening fire at what they thought were two more snipers. “Get your ass out of here,” the RTO shouted at Paxton, “go back.” But as she moved, they opened fire on them again from a different angle, and he lay on top of her as he frantically called for help. There were more than two snipers out there. “Mother Goose … Mother Goose … this is Peter Pan … come in … we’re out in the clearing and they’re taking pot shots at us, I’ve got one visitor down, and a Delta Delta on my hands out here … draw them off and I’ll bring her in.…”
“We read you, Peter Pan … this is Mother Goose.…” It was the operator at the base, and they would instruct some of the troops to try to draw off the snipers, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
“We’ve got two choices,” the RTO explained as he almost smothered Paxton. “We can run like hell, back the way we came, or we can go ahead into the trees, which is shorter.” But it was also where the snipers were, and a lot more dangerous for them, and he didn’t know what the hell to do with Paxton. He was a boy about her own age, from Maine, and the last thing he wanted was to get her killed and have to bear the blame for making the wrong move in the heat of the moment.
“I vote for the trees,” she said calmly as another round exploded near her knees. “In fact”—she pulled away from him and rolled over—“I think we ought to move fast.” And as she said it, she lunged ahead, and he followed and as they ran, the spot where they had been lying took a direct hit from a grenade. The VC were definitely not kidding. She didn’t even think as she ran. And as they approached the trees, she dove into them and lay on the ground, panting, as the RTO slid in beside her, and at that exact moment the M-60 opened fire, and beyond it there was a huge explosion.
“There goes the pig,” the RTO explained, and then made contact with the base again.
“This is Mother Goose,” the base answered. “Peter Pan, where the hell is your Delta Delta?”
“I got her.” He smiled at Paxton, and she wanted to laugh. It was crazy. The VC were trying to kill her, and her own people were still calling her a Doughnut Dollie.
“Any injuries?” The voice at the other end sounded worried.
“She looks fine.” As best he could, the RTO looked her over and confirmed it. “Can you get us out of here?”
“We’re trying. There are more of them than we thought.” There always were, and at Cu Chi they always seemed to infiltrate in numbers. They knew the old tunnel system too well, and the recent discovery of the new network proved that there were always more. Somehow, no matter what you did, Charlie was always one step ahead, and he always seemed to be winning. “We should have you out of there in a few minutes, Peter Pan. Just sit tight.” There was another round of fire, and Mother Goose announced that one of the snipers was wounded and had been captured. The RTO told Paxton to stay where she was, he was going to go up front and see if he could help them.
“I’ll be right back.” But as soon as he left she heard shots behind her, and she didn’t know which way to move. There seemed to be no choice, except to follow the RTO, and suddenly before she knew it she was in the midst of the fire again, and there was a boy lying on the ground beside her. His whole back had been blown open and his head was thrown back, and as Paxton looked, she saw that it was the boy from Maine, with his radio beside him. She was sure he was dead as she approached, but as she lay next to him, she saw that he was still breathing. He was unconscious, and so were two boys next to him, and then the fighting moved away again. But she could hear the grenades and the M-16’s, and the M-60. And without thinking she grabbed the radio from the boy’s hands, and did what she had seen him do before, to rouse the base.
“Come in, Mother Goose.” She spoke into the mike cautiously.
“I hear you … this is Mother Goose … who is this?”
She hesitated for only the flicker of an eyelash. “This is Delta Delta. The RTO is badly wounded. I’ve got two other boys hurt here too.”
“Where are you?” Mother Goose sounded panicked.
“I’m not sure. We’re in the bushes, and the fighting’s not too far from us. There must be more than just snipers out there. Can you get us out?” Her voice sounded strong, but as she held the radio, she could feel her hands shaking. One of the boys had stirred and let out a moan, and she kept telling herself silently not to panic.
“We’re trying to get you out, Delta Delta … have you got a flare?”
She started to say no, and then remembered that she had one in her backpack. “Yes.”
“I want to know exactly where you are, Delta Delta. Just wait a minute. Don’t do anything till I tell you.” And when he stepped away from the phone, he shouted across the room to anyone who could hear him. “Get me the lieutenant, someone. I’ve got a woman out there with three wounded guys, and we don’t know where the fuck they are, they’re out there somewhere in the bushes.” The lieutenant came running within seconds, and a few minutes later someone got Ralph, and he came back to the base and stood nervously listening to the radio with the others. They were still trying to draw the sniper fire off out in the brush, but someone had seen more VC by then, and it had become obvious that they were dealing with an NVA unit from somewhere up north.
“Great,” the lieutenant groaned. “Just what I needed. Regular army from Hanoi, and a female journalist from San Francisco.” He closed his eyes for a minute while he thought, and looked like he was praying.
“Can you get her out of there, Mack?” Ralph looked terrified.
“For chrissake, Ralph, I’m trying. I don’t know what the hell we’ve got up there, and I don’t know how she wandered into it. But it’s beginning to sound like the whole fucking North Vietnamese Army.”
“On the edge of the base like that?” It seemed hard to believe, but nonetheless it had happened. It happened everywhere, they tiptoed right through your midst while you were sleeping. And they slit your throats, or stole your rifles, or didn’t. But their presence was no secret today, and where Paxton was lying, she could see the action. They were tossing grenades at each other now, and the M-60 machine gun was in full action.
“This is Mother Goose,” the RTO at the base spoke into the phone. “Delta Delta, can you still hear me?”
“I hear you fine, Mother Goose. Could you send a cab please?”
Ralph shook his head, wishing he had never asked her to come to Cu Chi with him on the story.
“We’ll have a cab out your way any minute.” And almost as he said the words, the fighting seemed to move away from them, and deeper into the brush and away from the base. It was finally working. “How are your wounded?”
She had just checked everyone. One of them was conscious now, and the other two were still breathing.
“We’re okay,” she said to the base, “but barely. Can you make it quick?”
“Give us two more minutes and we’ll have a Dustoff out your way. You got your flare?”
“I’ve got it.”
“We’ll tell you when, Delta Delta.” And in the next five minutes, the fighting moved farther away, and almost at the same moment, she heard the whirring of a chopper, and saw the Dustoff in the distance. “Can you see the cab, Delta Delta?” The voice was calm, and she felt tears sting her eyes when she saw him. It had been quick, but it had been very, very scary. And it reminded her that she was back in Viet Nam. This was not San Francisco or Savannah. People were dying here, and going home without legs or arms, or blind, or deaf or without faces. And for a minute there she had thought they were going to get her. But she didn’t have time to think about it now, all she could think about was getting the wounded boys into the chopper.
“I see the cab, Mother Goose,” she confirmed.
“Show us your flare, Delta Delta.” There was sweat running down Ralph’s face as he listened from the control room. Dear God, don’t let those assholes kill her.…
And in between transmissions to her, the RTO at the base was talking alternately to the guys in the brush, and the medevac unit.
“We see you, Delta Delta. They’re coming in to pick you up.” And after that, the men in the control room stood and waited, while Paxton lay where she was, as the helicopter came down, right where Bertie had been killed. She saw them put his body in the chopper and then two men with a stretcher ran into the trees where she lay with the three men who’d been wounded.
“You okay?” They glanced at her as she nodded, and they rapidly put the first man on the stretcher and then ran back for the two others, and then beckoned to her. “Come on, quick …” She ran through the enormous dust cloud they had caused, and the wind from their chopper blades, and without saying a word, they dragged her into the chopper and took off, and flew the short distance to the 159th MDHA unit on the base where they had a helipad all set up, and a cluster of nurses and corpsmen waiting.
“This is Mother Goose … come in TWO One Alpha Bravo, you got her?”
“We got her,” the pilot said calmly. “She looks okay. How are they doing downstairs?”
“Fine so far. You’ve got all their wounded.”
“Over and out, Mother Goose. We’re coming in now.”
Paxton was still clutching the radio to her as they came down, and her whole body had started shaking. The radio still had the RTO’s blood on it, but he was doing fine in the hands of the medics. Paxton let them unload the wounded first, and then she thanked the pilot again, and climbed gingerly out of the chopper. And almost as soon as she did, she felt herself grabbed and swung around so hard, her helmet fell off her head, as her golden hair spun around her.
“What the fuck were you doing out there?” She didn’t even understand who it was at first. He was shaking her like a child, and for a minute she thought he was going to hit her. “Don’t you know you could have been killed? Why the fuck did you go out there? The whole fucking area is restricted!”
“I …” And then she saw him, his black eyes blazing at her in fear. It was Tony Campobello.
“Don’t you follow rules? Or do you think you’re too important for that? You could have gotten yourself killed, and everyone with you!” But all of a sudden she couldn’t take any more, and she wasn’t going to take it from him. She’d been through this before, and he wasn’t going to make her feel guilty again. It hadn’t been her fault this time, and maybe it wasn’t her fault when Bill died either.
“Don’t give me that shit!” she shouted back at him, her green eyes blazing into his like M-16 rifles. “I didn’t do anything! And no one got hurt because of me! You’ve got the whole goddamn NVA out there, mister. And if you guys aren’t smart enough to keep them out of your own goddamn base, don’t yell at me! All I did was walk ten feet past where I was supposed to be, and I got shot at!”
“What the fuck do you expect out here? Ladies serving tea? This is a goddamn war zone!” The two of them were standing there screaming at each other, and the wounded were long gone, and the chopper had taken off again, and they were still screaming, and the men around them figured it was a personal gripe, so they didn’t interfere. And it was. It went back a long time, and now the air needed clearing.
But as she shouted at him, her eyes filled with tears suddenly. They were tears of anger and frustration. “Don’t shout at me!” she railed back at him. “It wasn’t my fault those boys got hurt!”
“No, but it could have been!” he shouted back as Ralph and the lieutenant drove up in a jeep and watched the two yelling and waving their fists, and Ralph groaned in irritation.
Tony backed off when he saw his lieutenant arrive, and Ralph glared at him in totally unconcealed fury.
“You at it again?” he asked with open anger.
But he wasn’t afraid to tackle Ralph either. “She could have gotten her ass blown off,” he said to him by way of explanation.
“Thank God she didn’t,” the lieutenant said. He was older than Bill, and he looked shaken by the events of the morning. “Maybe I was a little premature inviting the press in to look at that tunnel.” Their photographer was dead, Paxton could have been, and Ralph looked gray as he contemplated what had happened.
Ralph looked at her pointedly as he spoke. “Maybe we need to be a little more careful. What in God’s name made you walk out there?”
“I don’t know. Bertie said he wanted to get a few quick shots, and I wanted to see what he was doing. I guess I was just following him, and the next thing I knew, someone opened fire on me.”
“If you hadn’t taken the radio, young lady, you’d still be in there,” the lieutenant said with respect. “You kept your head, and you probably saved those boys’ lives.” She glanced angrily at Tony, still fuming as he said it.
“The sergeant here thinks I tried to kill them.”
The lieutenant smiled at what she said. Campobello was one of his best men, although a little hot-blooded.
“I didn’t say that,” he growled. “I said you almost got yourself killed.” … and he had accused her of killing Bill … but that was another time, another story.
“That’s closer to the truth,” Ralph said, and as Tony and Paxton got into the jeep with them, still glaring at each other, Ralph talked to the lieutenant about getting Bertie’s body back to Saigon. Everyone had loved working with him, and it would be a real loss now that he was gone. Another man gone. Another death. It was hard to live with.
“I’d like to thank your RTO at the base,” Paxton said quietly before they left. And the lieutenant introduced her to him. And there were suddenly tears in her eyes when she met him.
“I just wanted to thank you …” She didn’t know what to say to him. He had saved her life with his transmissions and cool action.
“Anytime, Delta Delta,” he drawled. He was also from the South, but she didn’t ask from where. “Sorry we got you into a hot spot.”
“You got me out of it. That’s more important.” She knew by then that the other guys were okay. Only their friend Bertie wasn’t. And Ralph was very upset about it as they drove back to Saigon.
They hadn’t seen Tony again before they left, but Ralph was still furious with him, and he vented some of his frustration by shouting at Paxton. It had been a tough day for all of them, an ugly day in an ugly war, and they hadn’t even gotten the story they came for. Ralph said he’d come back another day, but he had to get back to Saigon and report back to the AP and make some arrangements.
“What is it with you? Every time I see you two together, you’re screaming at each other like lunatics.” He was annoyed at her, or appeared to be. But in truth, he’d been scared to death, and now he was so relieved she was alright that he was angry at her.
“He accused me of trying to kill those guys by being careless.”
“You were careless with yourself, which is worse. You’re here to write about this war, not get killed to prove a point. And I don’t know what his problem is, but I think he’s crazy.”
“He is.” She confirmed it with a venomous glance. She was filthy dirty again, and covered with the RTO’s blood. It reminded her of other missions she’d been on, and why she had come back to Saigon. It wasn’t that she loved it. But she knew she had an obligation to be here. But an obligation to whom? To herself? To her country? To the paper? Or Ralph? Or Peter? Or Bill? It was an interesting question. And as they drove back to Saigon, they didn’t speak again. It had been a stinking day for both of them. And even for Tony, who had gone for a long walk, fuming to himself, and trying to figure out just exactly what it was he felt for Paxton.
CHAPTER 21
Ralph was still annoyed with her when he saw her at the AP office the next day, but she took him to lunch, and after a couple of drin
ks he relented.
“You jerk, I thought you’d had it when you were lying out there in the brush with those guys. I figured they’d pick you off next. I could just see the story.”
“So could I,” she admitted, drinking a café sua. It was strong coffee sweetened with condensed milk from cans, and a year before, she’d thought they were disgusting. Now she loved them.
“Were you scared?” he asked in an undertone, and she smiled.
“Afterwards, I was. Right then, I’m not sure … for a minute I started to panic, wondering what would happen if they grabbed me and didn’t kill me. That really scared me more.” It had already happened more than once, journalists who were taken prisoner, but usually they were released. The North Vietnamese wanted to give them a little propaganda to write about, but there was always the possibility that next time they wouldn’t be as friendly. And the stories of torture and beatings at the hands of the Vietnamese were legend. “Right then, all I could really think of was getting those boys out before they died.”
Ralph nodded, thinking. “Poor Bertie.”
“Was he married?” Paxton didn’t know him that well, although she’d always liked him.
“No. He had a girlfriend here. A girl from Cholon, I think. Other than that, I don’t think he had anyone. No wife, no kids. I called the embassy for him. They’re sending him back to London tomorrow.” She nodded, thinking of when Bill had been sent back to Debbie. And then Ralph looked at her, and for a moment he looked very tired. “Don’t you get sick of this? The dying, I mean. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a place where people only die from things like cancer or falling off ski lifts.” She smiled, knowing what he meant, although she’d been away from it for a while. But it was still hard. It still hurt you. And yet none of them seemed to be able to leave it. They couldn’t go home and leave unfinished business. That was what had happened to her when she’d gone back. It all felt so wrong being home again, because in her heart, she knew it wasn’t over.
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