Under Fire

by Eric Meyer

  He didn't miss, and he used the machine gun like a scythe, swiveling the muzzle from side to side, and the VCs charging toward him died as his bullets chewed into them. I tried to ignore the bullet wound in my side, which was bleeding into my ODs, but when you're faced with the alternative of life or death, life suddenly becomes much more appealing. A man could ignore any kind of pain while he fights off a serious threat to his mortality. I fired, emptied the magazine, reloaded, and fired again.

  There must've been a dozen VCs who attacked us, and Byrd’s M-60 accounted for at least half that number. Our combined rifle fire took down most of the rest, and when I heard someone blasting away next to me, I looked around to see Tam had told the truth when she said she knew how to use a rifle. I heard her shout, “Trinh” and she continued to blaze away with the rest of us. I saw another VC flung forward into the dirt when a burst of fire from her rifle stitched into him.

  We stopped firing when there were no more targets, and a silence descended on the tiny village. We were alive, with just a few wounds, more like scratches, none of them serious, and in front of us the dead bodies of VCs. Except one man who was moving, and Coles climbed to his feet and strolled toward him. Like he was walking into a bar to order a beer. His knife swept out in a single flowing motion, and I remembered the time he'd killed the VC at Tam Son Nhut. He merely bent down, wiped the blade across the exposed throat, and wiped it again across the black pajamas. He checked the rest of the bodies, and they were all dead, but we hadn't got them all.

  "I saw two get away," Byrd grumbled, as if he’d missed racking up a decent body count.

  "Where’s Butcher?" Morgan called softly.

  We looked around the center of the village and there was no sign of him. Tam got to her feet and walked into the hut where we’d found the tunnel entrance. He was in there, sitting on the ground, legs pulled up to his chest and arms around them, curled up in a ball. He was shaking violently, like he'd just emerged from immersion in an icy pool.

  “They’ve gone," she called to him, "You can come out now."

  "They're all dead?"

  “Most of them. Two got away."

  “Christ, they could come back any time. We need to get out of here fast. Sergeant, call in a helicopter to take us out of here before it's too late."

  I disliked the guy more and more, but we were stuck with him, at least for the time being, and I nodded to Morgan I'd handle him.

  "Butcher, there aren’t any helicopters available right now. We came in on foot, and we leave on foot."

  He looked me over, and he saw the blood oozing from my side. "Wait, you're wounded. You can tell them we need a dust off. It's an emergency. Dammit man, you could die."

  "I'm not going to die. It's just a flesh wound."

  He looked closer. "Are you sure? It could be serious."

  "Sure, I'm sure."

  I wasn't sure, but I found out after the bullet had pierced the skin and exited the other side without touching any main organs. An antiseptic dressing was all I needed, and Tam told me to keep still while she taped it on underneath my shirt. It was a strange feeling having her touch my skin, and I couldn't make up my mind how I felt about it. I said nothing, for I’d promised to keep it a secret. I intended to keep my word, but in truth she wasn't a soldier. Although I’d seen her shoot, and I had to admit she could be handy in a fight.

  Morgan gave me another curious glance but said nothing. By now Butcher had recovered from his blue funk, and he realized he was stuck with us for the duration. There was no getting out of this place, except on foot, and that could mean fighting our way out.

  "Where did they come from?" I asked Tam, "There was no sign of them in that tunnel we discovered, yet they must have come from somewhere."

  "There’ll be other tunnel entrances close, and we know at least two men escaped, so it's a sure bet they’ve gone underground. If we could track them we could find the entrance they used."

  "One was wounded," Goff said, "I put a bullet through his leg, and I saw him limping away. He must have been losing blood, so we can follow the blood trail.”

  Morgan nodded. "That sounds like a plan. Okay, let's see if we can pick up his trail."

  We walked past the bodies of the men we’d killed, and there was plenty of blood on the ground, but after a few meters we found what we were looking for, a trail of blood heading west. We followed it for two hundred meters when it stopped in the middle of nowhere. There was no sign of any more blood, no sign of a tunnel entrance, no sign of a wounded VC hiding in the bushes, nothing. Coles decided to take an interest.

  "I’ve seen something like this before. What it means is the entrance is so well disguised it's virtually impossible to see. But there are other ways to find it."

  "Like what?"

  He took out his knife, knelt on the ground, and began stamping around the jungle floor. He was probing for a very thin layer of earth over a sheet of tin or plywood, and we covered him with our rifles. Butcher had suddenly decided to be a bit more pleasant. Probably he could smell the story like most of us could smell horseshit.

  "Sergeant Morgan, I need to call in to Cu Chi Base and let them know I'm okay. They said they’d contact my bureau in Saigon for me. Do you mind if I use the radio?"

  He shrugged. “Make it quick."

  Goff gave the handset to Butcher, who spoke quietly to someone the other end. I wasn’t listening to what he said, but there was something furtive about his expression that made me suspicious. The bastard was up to something, and I tried to figure out what it was. Maybe he was still trying to call in a helicopter to take him away from this place of blood and death, or maybe he'd been telling the truth and it was a routine call. But I had other things on my mind, like who was about to pop out of a hole in the ground and start shooting. I concentrated on Coles as he struck the ground in an ever-widening circle, until he stopped. He’d struck something, and instead of the blade going deep into the jungle floor, it hit something hard.

  He looked up. "There’s something here. They may know we’ve found the entrance to their tunnel, so heads up. I’ll open it up, slip inside for a look, and see if I can drum up any business.”

  I looked at that dark entrance; smelled the stench of the grave and of corrupt decay. Not as bad as before but bad enough, and I recalled the name Tam had shouted.

  “You think he’s close, Trinh?"

  "I...yes, I’m not sure."

  "What made you think it was him?"

  She hesitated, and she blushed. I'd never seen her looking more female than she did at that moment. I only hoped the others hadn't seen it.

  "It was just a feeling. Maybe it was the odor of patchouli, although I don't have any conscious recollection of what it was. I knew it was him, and yet I don't know why." She gave me a helpless look, "Perhaps it's because I know he's in the area, and I wanted it to be him. Wanted to see him in my rifle sights and gun him down like a rabid dog."

  I've learned to listen to a woman's intuition. Even one dressed like a guy. We have different qualities, men and women, and intuition is one quality a woman possesses a man should listen to. I listened.

  "Do you think he could be down there?"

  "It's possible. Yes, it's more than possible. This is his operational area." She gave a helpless shrug, "That's all I know."

  I wanted him dead as much as she did. To drill a hole into his belly, pour a pint of battery acid inside, and watch it smoke and burn as it slowly ate away at his entrails. He’d scream for every second of his death agonies, and then I snapped out of it. That was stupid thinking, and I'd be putting myself on the same level as him. To see him dead would be enough, as long as it wasn’t too quick.

  Coles was getting ready to descend, checking the load on his Colt M1911, and I knew it was stupid. Knew it was the last thing I should have offered to do, but if he was there, he was mine. The faces of the men in my platoon floated in front of me, and I was saying the words even before I’d formed them in my head.

 
"I'm coming down with you."

  They looked at me like I was crazy. A second later Butcher came toward me and grabbed my arm, his eyes filled with enthusiasm.

  “Yeager, if I lend you my camera, would you snap some pictures for me. I'll set it up ready, and you'll have a flashbulb so you can use it in the dark."

  "Thanks, Butcher. Lend me the camera, and I'll stick it up your ass."

  He chuckled. Mr. Rhino Hide. “I know you don’t mean it. How about a few words before you go in there, and I'll send them on to your folks? If you don’t make it out, your wife will want to hear your final message."

  “Here’s a few words for you to send to her. Gracie, find a reporter by the name of Mark Butcher, and kick his ass all the way to Alaska and all the way back. No, forget all the way back. Kick his ass all the way to Alaska, and pray he freezes to death."

  "That's not funny," he snarled.

  "Neither are you, so fuck off out of my sight.”

  Coles was staring at me, and for the first time I saw something different in his eyes. Was he looking at me like I was a dead body waiting to happen? Or was it respect for getting up Butcher’s nose? "Are you sure about going down there?"

  “Lead the way."

  "Your funeral. Tell me, why’re you doing this?

  "I made a promise, Coles. And when I make a promise, I keep it." Even if I’d sooner dance on the surface of the sun than go down there. It was just something I had to do.

  A shrug. "A promise worth dying for?”

  “We all have to die sometime.”

  He dropped down into the shaft. One moment he was there and the next he was gone. I peered down, and all I could see was darkness, but he shone his flashlight for a split second to indicate the depth. It was less than two meters, and I dropped next to him. Once again the stench was appalling, and I almost gagged. But I’d committed, and no way was I going back out now. We started crawling along a tunnel that was no more than a meter high and very narrow. So narrow I had to squeeze through, at times brushing both my shoulders on the sides.

  I was about to ask him if it got any narrower than this, but his hand reached back and clamped over my mouth. I got the message, and he crawled on. It seemed endless, and the stench was getting worse. I assumed the foul stench meant we were close to the enemy. Eventually, the tunnel widened and opened into a wide cave, around four meters wide and two meters high. Once again he blinked his flashlight for a quick look and beckoned me on. I guessed no enemy were nearby, and so I followed before he ducked into the next tunnel.

  "What is this place?"

  He answered in a low murmur. "They have classes, political indoctrination, stuff like that. Sometimes they use it to store rice, like those sacks you see stacked on the far side. It’s rotting rice. Worse than the stink of decaying corpses, and personally I'd sooner shoot myself than spend the war living down here."

  "What now?"

  "We keep going. According to my calculations, we're heading back toward Bong Trang, which is around ten kilometers from where we entered the tunnel. It's going to be a long crawl."

  "I can make it."

  “Whatever. You're looking for this guy by the name of Trinh, is that right?"

  “Commissar Trinh, the piece of work who hacked my platoon to pieces."

  “If you want revenge, you're in the wrong place. There's only one word you need to remember down here, and that’s survival. If we manage to…" He stopped talking and struck a finger to his lips, "Quiet.”

  I heard them. They couldn't have known we were there, for they were talking without any attempt to muffle the noise, but they weren't close. Coles took my hand and pointed downward. They were coming up from a lower level, and I dragged out my Colt.

  He shook his head and put his mouth close to my ear. "Forget it. They could hide any number of men in those lower levels, and if they're on the way up, your popgun won't make a tiny bit of difference."

  "What do we do?"

  "Hide."

  We retraced our steps, crawling backward, and he found a side tunnel I hadn't noticed on the way in. A narrow opening, maybe a foot wide, and with great difficulty we squeezed in sideways. Coles wriggled further in until the tunnel widened, and he helped pull me through.

  We heard them coming, and there were a lot of them. They were talking amongst themselves, chatting in Vietnamese, and then I heard a name that rang loud alarm bells in my head. Trinh.

  I scrambled back toward the narrow passage but Coles dragged me back. "Don't be stupid. This isn't the time."

  He was right, but I’d still have given anything to kill the slant-eyed bastard. Revenge can be sweeter than the juiciest of steak dinners with ice cream for dessert, and revenge is much cheaper, the cost of a few bullets. That sounded like a good deal to me.

  They stopped adjacent to the side tunnel and stopped to talk. A hubbub of many voices, and I knew we were in trouble when one man started toward us. I heard his clothes brushing against the sides, and that could only mean they knew intruders had penetrated their lair. He was slithering through like a snake, much quicker than we’d managed, but like most Vietnamese, he’d be short and skinny. Besides, these people lived their lives in a state of semi-starvation. Obesity sure wasn't a big problem in Vietnam, definitely not a major cause of death. There were plenty of other causes. They didn’t need to add obesity to them.

  I saw the face push through into the space where we waited, not daring to breathe. At first, he didn't see us. After the head emerged, shoulders pushed through. He smacked his pajamas on the side of the shaft, turned to free himself, and started to push through again. Then he saw me, and his eyes bulged with astonishment. Coles was already moving forward to use the knife, but the VC was fast like a striking cobra, and he snatched out a handgun from a holster on his chest. Suddenly, he was taking aim.

  I didn't have any choice, and I squeezed the trigger of my big Colt. The explosion in the tiny, dark space was enormous, almost like a bomb going off, and the muzzle flash lit up the scene like a bolt of lightning; the VC, his pistol pointing at us, Coles' knife, glinting in the bright light, like a frozen tableau caught in a strobe light. The bullet slammed into the VC and threw him back. I heard Coles exclaim, "Fuck it, now they know we're here."

  It didn't sound like he was grateful for me saving his life, but we had other problems to contend with, like his pals, an unknown quantity of Vietcong who were clamoring to reach us. Except the body of the man I'd shot was in the way, and until they dragged it out we had a brief respite. Coles was playing his flashlight around the walls, looking for an alternative way out, but there was none. He took out his automatic, sat on the floor, and waited. Cool, calm, as if he was waiting for a store to open on the morning of the Thanksgiving sale. I backed away from the entrance as the body started to move. They were dragging him out, men screaming orders, and without any doubt Charlie was feeling mean and pissed. When they reached us, they'd tear us apart, and I made a mental note to save at least one bullet for myself.

  What rankled more than anything was dying before I’d reached Trinh and made him pay. Something had preyed on my mind ever since I saw those bodies in the well. I metaphorically died. There was nothing else worth living for, not until I’d settled the outstanding account. They call it survivor's guilt. I should have been with them. Since then, I'd been living on borrowed time, a corpse walking, with one last mission to carry out before I left this mortal soil. To kill the bastard, and now I’d failed.

  I crouched down next to Coles. "Any ideas?"

  "Nope."

  I couldn’t believe he was so placid, so accepting, although maybe tunnel rats gave up on life when they first descended into the dark depths. Knew their lives were effectively over, and it was just a matter of time before the darkness swallowed them for good. But I still had the task to carry out, a promise I'd made to honor the memory of those good men, and I was wracking my brains trying to work out any way we could get out of this trap. All I wanted was to carry on a bit longer, enoug
h time to finish it. I needed time.

  "Coles, there has to be another way out."

  He shook his head. "Nope."

  "For Christ's sake, what're you planning to do, sit here and die?"

  “Nope.”

  “Then what?”

  "Sit here, wait for them to come, and take as many with me as I can."

  I decided I had no choice but to join him. Sell my life dearly, and die like a man, like a soldier. Keep shooting until they finally pulled the body out of the way, and a volley of bullets tore through the darkness. And hope when it happened I’d meet up with my platoon somewhere in the afterlife and tell them I did my best.

  We moved away to the sides so they wouldn't have a direct line of fire when they came, and we waited. They cleared the body and another VC appeared. I shot him the moment his head came into the foresight of my Colt. Coles edged closer to the side of the entrance and waited for the next man to come. A rifle poked into the room, he grabbed hold of the muzzle, and dragged the guy who held it inside. His knife flashed, and the guy didn’t even cry out. Couldn’t cry out, not when a heavy, razor sharp blade had sliced through his neck, vocal chords, and windpipe.

  That made three we’d taken out, but how many more were out there? Twenty, fifty, a hundred? However many, it was too many, and they weren't stupid. Three dead men, and the next arrival wouldn’t be a man. It would be a grenade. Tossed into the room, and it would become a nightmare of red-hot shards of metal zipping and hitting around, chewing up everything in in their path, including me and Coles.

  "We need a miracle."

  Without realizing I'd spoken aloud, but the word ‘miracle’ was barely out of my mouth when it happened. Call it a miracle, call it anything you want, but the earth trembled and shook. At first I thought it was an earthquake, and I looked up, waiting for the roof to cave in and bury us, so we’d die choking for breath. A VC grenade would have been better than being buried alive. I felt a rising sense of panic, claustrophobia, sheer, naked terror. I was about to be swallowed up by the earth, but before I completely lost it, another massive explosion shook the earth even closer, and another and another.