Under Fire

by Eric Meyer

  Why bother to learn the Vietnamese for kill the bastards? I’m pretty sure it sounds similar in English.

  We waited for them to go, but they took their time. Picking up rifles and magazines, and going through the pockets of the dead, probably to check for any documents that may be of use to MACV. Even then they didn’t go, but they stood waiting by the bodies until more men arrived, and they began to drag them away. I recalled the difficulty MACV had in assessing body count after a battle. We carried our dead away to pay them some respect, to ship them home for a decent burial. The Communists carried their dead away to disguise the figures, to make it seem as if we hadn’t managed to kill so many of their soldiers.

  You could put it down to different cultures. Or you could put it down to an enemy so brutal and bestial they’d stop at nothing to win, and that included sacrificing their own people for little or no gain. According them no more respect after they fell in battle than you would a bag of garbage to be put out for collection the next day.

  We stayed down, hardly daring to breathe as they chatted between themselves, and Tam slid close to me so she could whisper in my ear.

  “They’ve been ordered to stay here and guard the entrance to the tunnel. Which means they’ll be here for a long time.”

  Shit.

  The hours passed, and still they stayed there, talking to each other while all around us the battle raged. In the distance a pair of fighter-bombers swooped in, and black shapes dropped from the wing pylons. The napalm exploded in a thunderous roar, sheets of flame and smoke, and the VC stared at the conflagration and sat down again, giggling. Clearly, they thought the war had gone past them. After a short time they lit cigarettes and lay on the ground resting, not taking their guard duties too seriously. We had to do something. Otherwise, we could be there all night, and besides, the longer we waited, the greater our chances of discovery.

  We’d found the entrance to a tunnel, and that was priceless. MACV spent millions of dollars searching for those elusive tunnel entrances. Many more millions of dollars pounding them with artillery and high-explosive bombs, and even bringing in massive ‘Rome Plows’, huge mechanical diggers to tear them into ruin. But it wasn’t very often they hit the jackpot. Here we were at the entrance to a tunnel over a suspected Vietnam stronghold, a literal highway through the Iron Triangle, and these bastards were sitting on top of it, smoking like they didn’t have a care in the world.

  We waited for another hour, but no more men came. Six remained, and I motioned to Morgan, signaling what I had in mind. He nodded. He was growing as frustrated as me. When the light dimmed and night fell, the VCs would emerge to claim the ground. They’d have the advantage, and we’d have Jack Shit.

  Jesse went in first, slithering through the grass as quietly as a stalking leopard. We followed, but we weren’t as quiet, except for Tam. She was behind him, almost as noiseless, but Goff touched something with his boot, a banana-shape magazine that had fallen from an AK-47. It had been leaning against a tree root, but when he touched it the magazine fell. The noise it made was tiny, and it happened to coincide with a lull in the shooting and the bombing.

  The enemy snatched at their rifles, but Jesse was quicker, moving into the center of them. His knife flashed once, twice, and two men went down. The other four were fast, and one man squeezed the trigger of his AK. The bullet whistled harmlessly into the jungle, but he was so close to Jesse he reversed the weapon, gripped it by the barrel, and slammed the hardwood stock against his head. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, preferring like most tunnel rats to travel light, and he went down cold. Tam fired and drilled him with a single shot to the belly, and I double-tapped another guy who was lunging at Jesse to finish him off. Morgan, Goff, and Erskine came on the run, rifles spitting bullets, and the last of the VCs went down.

  I knelt next to Jesse, and he was unconscious. “He needs a dust off right away,” I said to Morgan, “He’s hurt bad.”

  “Without a radio we have no way of calling it in, and there’s no chance of getting him under cover in the tunnel. Jamie, you and Tam stay with him and make sure he’s okay. Get into deep cover as best you can, and wait for us to come back.” He looked at me. “I’ve had enough of this shit. We’re going down to find this bastard and finish this. You and Danny with me, let’s go find this bastard, and kill anybody who gets in our way. Time’s a’wastin.”

  I felt a sense of dark, black horror engulf me. I'd sooner put a bullet in my head than go down again into that place without Jesse Coles to keep us safe.

  "I don’t know if I can do it. Sarge, the battle has moved on, we should be okay up here.”

  "Yeager, finding that entrance is a stroke of luck. We have to know who else is down there. It could be him. Carl, you have to do this. You're the best man for the job. You've been underground with Jesse and…"

  "And nearly got buried alive. That was after they almost shot my ass off."

  He frowned. "That means you beat all the odds and got out alive. You can do it again, Carl, we're depending on you."

  "I will go."

  Our heads turned to look at Tam, and there was a kind of special pleading in her eyes. She was convinced Trinh was below, cowering in the earth, and she was that close to putting a bullet in him. Morgan looked at me. "Is that the way it is, Private Yeager? You'd let a girl go down instead of you?"

  "It's not like that."

  "What is it like?" He was still staring at me, and in his gaze there was a challenge. A challenge I knew I'd never forgive myself if I refused. I didn't want to do it, didn't feel I needed to prove myself. I'd been into a tunnel, had fought the enemy both underground and on the surface, and I was still prepared to fight them. Just not down there, except for Tam. They knew the Lieutenant was a female, and so far they'd kept quiet about it. But now it was different.

  Am I about to send a girl into that place, because I’m scared? It isn’t me, not the way I was brought up, and not the way I live my life. What if it was Gracie’s life on the line?

  "I'll do it."

  He slapped me on the back. "I never doubted you."

  I doubted myself, but I didn't tell anybody. I took Jesse's Colt and stuffed it into my pants’ waistband. I tried to remember the other things I’d need, and relieved him of his flashlight and the length of string. There was something else, and I couldn't remember what it was until I recalled when we'd been in the tunnel the first time, and he'd used the knife. I took the razor-sharp blade and strapped the scabbard to my belt. In a matter of less than a minute, I'd been transformed. No longer an infantryman, I'd become a tunnel rat. I’d still prefer to put a bullet through my head, except when I died; I had some full notion of dying like a hero.

  I felt waves of terror creeping up my spine, and there was only one way to do this. I went to the tunnel entrance and climbed in.

  It was worse than I could have imagined, the terrible stench, the suffocating claustrophobia, and I waited while Goff tied the string to an exposed tree root. We crawled forward and came to the first bend. There'd be plenty of bends; the idea was to protect the VCs from grenades. We rounded a second bend and incredibly the low roof became even lower, until I was down on my belly, slithering forward like a snake. Slowly, infinitely slowly, and recalling what Jesse had told me, feeling every inch of the way. Floor, sides, and roof, somewhere there'd be booby traps. There were always booby traps.

  I'd gone past the third bend when I stopped. It was the slightest indication; a thin line hanging down from the roof, and my fingers had touched it. Another inch and we’d all have been dead. I twisted my head back and murmured to Morgan, "Booby trap, probably a grenade. There’s a line stretched across the tunnel close to the roof. I'll cut it."

  "Be careful."

  No shit.

  I held the line in my fingers and gently sliced through it. It fell away, and I felt for the grenade I knew would be attached to the other end. I found it, and the line had been tied to the pin, which was already half pulled half out. The moment someone
snagged the line they'd pull the pin, and it was likely the bodies of the victims would be buried forever in the rank soil of Vietnam. I could think of better places to be buried. I could think of better places not to be buried.

  We'd used up our grenades, and this one looked similar to the ones we used. Russian-made, or rather Soviet-made, but it'd do the same job. I pushed the pin in firmly and stuffed it into my pocket. Maybe I'd find a better use for it than committing suicide. We carried on crawling, and after a short time, the tunnel roof became higher, and we were able to make better time, but still slow. There were the booby traps.

  The roof became higher so I could crawl on all fours. I found two more booby traps, both pits filled with punji stakes, and I climbed over each one. Waiting to point them out to the others. The tunnel roof became even higher, so we could walk upright, albeit bent almost double. We arrived in larger cave, and it smelled and looked like a machine shop. Hand pillar drills, benches fitted with vises, files, and even a primitive, hand cranked milling machine.

  “It’s an armory,” Morgan murmured, “They have to come back. There’s no way they’d abandon this, so we know they’ll be back. We need to move on. Yeager, move out.”

  I went to the far end of the underground room where a low tunnel led deeper into the labyrinth. My heart was pounding so loud I reckoned the enemy must hear it fifty meters away. I recalled most of the enemy was on the surface, maybe all of them. That was when a figure emerged and almost fell into my lap. Black pajamas, floppy hat, rubber sandals, and this guy had a pistol in his belt, which made him a senior cadre. The grunts carried rifles. He hadn’t recognized us in the darkness, and he climbed to his feet and walked toward us, calling a greeting in Vietnamese.

  He got close before he realized we weren’t replying, and his jaw dropped open. Except it wasn’t his jaw, it was her jaw. A woman, tiny, little more than four feet in height, and I thought she was the ideal size to flit through the underground labyrinth without banging her head on the roof. She’d gone stock still, and was staring at us. I assumed she was paralyzed with terror. Until I looked into the eyes and there was no terror in there. Only a cold, calculating hatred, and I remembered about a senior female cadre who’d traveled to Hanoi and had returned to the Triangle.

  Despite her diminutive size, there was something about her, a haughtiness, and an inner strength. Like you’d find in someone with the ability to command large numbers of troops in battle. Even now, confronted by three armed enemy soldiers with their weapons pointed at her, she was unafraid. I had no doubt she was working out how to turn this situation to her advantage.

  It could only be one person. “Madame Vo?”

  Her eyebrows shot up. They were attractive eyebrows, like the rest of her. She was breathtakingly beautiful, and she could have enjoyed a career as a model. Okay, modeling clothes for children, but still a model. I could imagine men falling at her feet, entranced by her perfect beauty, and as I looked closer I could make out her clothes. The black pajamas, floppy hat, and rubber sandals were cut that much better than any I’d seen before, and they fitted her like a model; a poster girl for the VC, the nemesis from Hanoi, the pocket-sized demon that stalked the dark places and emerged at night to seize men’s souls.

  “You know my name?” Her voice was musical, as elegant as her appearance.

  “I know. Where is he?”

  “He?”

  “Trinh.”

  She barked a laugh, and it wasn’t musical. Betraying another side of her, the dark side. “You will never find him.”

  “Is he down here in the tunnels?”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. What do you intend to do with me, American soldier?”

  If I’d had an ounce of sense, I wouldn’t have answered the question, just put a bullet in her pretty little head. From what I’d heard, she was as much America’s enemy as Commissar Trinh. A woman responsible for countless brutalities, who could inspire legions of peasants to take up arms against their Imperialist aggressors, in support of the other aggressors, the Communists.

  I didn’t shoot her. There’s something inside a red-blooded man that dictates he’ll find it impossible to cold-bloodedly take the life of a woman, especially a woman as beautiful as this. Instead, I took a pace forward and snatched the pistol from her belt. It was no ordinary pistol, a PSM firing 5.45mm rounds from a magazine with a capacity of eight bullets. Russian-made, like most weaponry used by the VC, and it was both lightweight and tiny. Like the girl who carried it, and I tucked it into my pocket and glanced at Morgan.

  “What do we do with her?”

  “Kill her?” Goff suggested.

  Morgan looked uncertain, and he shuffled his feet. “I dunno. It don’t seem right.”

  “We have to do something,” I said, “The only other way is to take her with us. If we tie her up and leave her, her pals will arrive and let her go. And they’ll know we’re here.”

  He nodded. “Tie her up. We’ll take her with us. Gag her as well, in case she tries to shout a warning.”

  She stood unmoving, staring at me with a faint smile while I used the string to secure her wrists, and I delved in my pockets for a torn, sweat-soaked bandanna. I fastened it around her mouth after I’d pushed a piece of rag that stank of machine oil I found lying on the bench and pushed into her mouth. As bad as the reek of machine oil was, it probably eased some of the rank stench of the tunnel. Even with her wrists fastened and the gag in place, she still looked faintly amused. I wondered if she had something up her sleeve. Literally or figuratively, and I even went behind her to pull up the sleeves of her pajama jacket to check in case she had a concealed weapon. There was none, but I was conscious when I was close to her of her female allure, a faint odor of expensive soap and shampoo, the musk of a healthy young female. Her body seemed to give off a kind of invisible energy. I reminded myself to be careful of this woman, the face and body of an angel, and a soul that rightly belonged in hell.

  I looked at Morgan. “She’s secured, what now?”

  He was still considering what to do, and I didn’t blame him. We had good reason to retreat the way we’d come and rejoin Jamie, Tam, and Coles on the surface and attempt to get help. We could even revert to the original plan to shelter in the tunnel, but suddenly meeting this demon from hell made it seem like an even worse idea than before.

  “We should get out of here. They’ve stopped firing,” Goff suggested.

  It sounded attractive, but Morgan had other ideas. “We should keep going. Who knows, we may even find Trinh. That would complete our mission, and we can go home.”

  I didn’t voice the thought that came into my head.

  How about we get out of this place and go home without completing our mission?

  “Goff, you follow Yeager, and I’ll bring up the rear with the prisoner between you and me.”

  She hesitated, indicating she couldn’t crawl with her hands tied behind her back.

  He fired back a simple answer. “If you can’t crawl, you can’t come with us, which means we have to kill you. Your choice.”

  I led the way deeper into the tunnel system. The floor sloped downward, and I realized we were descending to the second level. I could imagine thousands of tons of earth above my head, and I tried to picture something else to take my mind off it. But all I could think of was Madame Vo, crawling along behind Goff with her heart overflowing with vitriol. My thoughts went next to Trinh and his bloody handiwork. All of a sudden, she didn’t seem so beautiful, and I could imagine her clutching the severed head of one of our soldiers, dripping with blood. Then the thousands of tons of earth above my head didn’t seem quite so bad.

  The tunnel roof was about a meter from the floor, and we crawled for what seemed like hours, although it was probably much less. We reached another hollowed-out cave, this one much bigger, and we’d hit the jackpot. Once again the stink of machine oil assaulted out nostrils, combined with the acrid stench of cordite from expended shells. We stood upright in the large space that was t
hree meters high and several meters square. On the far side a ramp sloped upward. I shone Jesse’s flashlight around to explore the shadows.

  I was looking at the unmistakable component parts of a 105mm howitzer. For the first time, Madame Vo looked uneasy, and I knew we’d hit the motherlode. Morgan prowled around to inspect the metal shapes, while Goff went to explore the ramp that had to lead to the surface. Big mistake, we left the prisoner unguarded. She was as quick as a rat, managing to spit out her gag and scuttle to a low opening in one corner, and she almost got away. Because her hands were fastened behind her back she could wriggle only partway into the narrow space. Morgan raced after her, grabbed her ankles, and dragged her out.

  “The next time you try that, girly, I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

  She showed her true colors then, and her beautiful lips twisted into an ugly snarl.

  “You Imperialist dogs will never get out of here alive, I promise you that. You have no idea what you’re up against.”

  As it happened, I had a pretty good idea what we were up against. Like several thousand Vietcong running loose across the Iron Triangle, and a psycho by the name of Commissar Trinh.

  Does she have something nasty in mind? Her mind is nasty enough. A booby trap we haven’t yet uncovered, or is it something else?

  We found it was the something else. Voices further down the tunnel, coming toward us, and she smiled in satisfaction. “They’re coming to kill you, and your deaths will be slow.”

  We’d forgotten to replace her gag, and she opened her mouth to scream a warning. Morgan was quicker, and he slammed a punch into the side of her head that sent her sprawling to the floor. She was out cold, and I replaced the gag, tying it tighter this time.

  Goff was listening to the voices. “Sarge, they’re coming closer. We need to think of something.”

  He nodded. “I’d like to destroy this thing. There’s no way our artillery can reach this deep, and even the B-52s would only manage the job if they could drop exactly on target.”