by Sean Parnell
Both men nodded. They were game for anything. Pantoja glanced over at them. Garvin lay against a tree, Baldwin’s belt wrapped as a tourniquet just below his shoulder. He looked wan and weak.
Next to him, Baldwin lay in the reddish dirt, blood coursing from a hole in his boot at shin level.
“We need to get over there now,” Pantoja said as he finished wrapping and taping Howard’s hands with gauze.
“Howie, can you put that 240 between them while we pull them out of there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go now.”
Hands bandaged, Howie cradled his machine gun and sprinted through the fire. He hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when a mortar round buried itself in the dirt not fifteen meters to his right. He was fortunate. The shrapnel sprayed away from him. A second later, the concussion wave struck Howie and he went down on one knee as a fresh fusillade of machine-gun fire flayed the hilltop. He got right back up—no hesitation at all—and ran on until he reached the edge of the perimeter. He deployed his 240 and joined the fight.
Do I watch and stay by the radios? Do I get back into the fight?
Or do I do the only thing that will save my conscience?
Sometimes, being the leader I was supposed to be meant retaining elements of the man I already was, even if it meant putting the greater good at stake.
I turned to Pantoja. “Doc, We gotta do this too. You coming?”
“With you, sir. Always.”
“Ready? One . . . two . . . three!”
We broke cover from behind the Humvee and charged flat out for Baldwin. A bullet cracked right past my ear. Another round tore into my assault pack again. One chewed up the ground where I was about to plant my next step.
Doc Pantoja stayed right with me, a few meters to one side.
Something exploded to my left. The concussions slammed into me, blowing me off my feet just as a furnace of heat struck my side and back. I hit the ground and tumbled side over side until dirt, sky, trees, and rocks all vanished in that terrible dark void once again.
Thirteen
Desolation Walk
There was a rush of white noise in my ear, as if I’d fallen asleep in front of a TV whose station had gone off the air.
Forcing one eye open, I found myself lying on my right side about ten meters from Baldwin and Garvin. Doc Pantoja had reached them. A Mexican national who had joined the army to gain U.S. citizenship and pay for college, Pantoja took care of his wounded with such devotion that he’d long since been known as one of the best medics in the battalion.
He drew a syringe from his aid bag and stuck Garvin with it. Morphine, no doubt. Then he went to work trying to get a better tourniquet onto his arm. Garvin’s head fell to one side, and I saw anguish on his face.
Baldwin ignored his wound. He was on the rim of our hilltop now, his M4 at his shoulder, picking targets. He knew the score. Every rifle was needed for this fight, but as the blood kept bubbling out of that hole above his boot, I knew that he could not stay on the line much longer. If we didn’t get him out, he was going to die.
On the far north of the line, an RPG exploded next to Greeson’s rig. Bray was in the turret, manning the Mark 19 grenade launcher. The blast sprayed the side of the Humvee and knocked the weapon out. Bray frantically tried to restore it to action.
To Greeson’s right, Private Lewis climbed into Sabo’s turret and began picking targets with the fifty-cal. Lewis was new to the platoon and was so quiet, I’d hardly gotten to know him. Now bullets spanged off his turret’s armored shield, but he paid them no attention. This was his first patrol with Outlaw Platoon. So much for easing into a combat deployment.
The white noise in my ears diminished. As if somebody had turned down a stereo’s volume, I began to hear the sounds of battle again.
Garvin let out a crazy laugh. His head lolled; a smile broke the clutch of pain on his face. The morphine was kicking in. I wanted to move, to get to them both, but I couldn’t gain control of my body. All I could do was lie there, a spectator to the suffering of my brothers.
Something oozed from my ears. It slid down my neck like Jell-O. With a supreme effort, I brought up a trembling hand and swiped it off my skin. Was I hit? Was it blood? I focused on my fingers. No. Whatever this was looked clear with a little bit of pink. I’d never seen anything like this come out of a human being before. It smelled vaguely like bananas.
Fuck it. It isn’t blood. No need to worry about it.
A monarch butterfly flitted past my face. It alighted on a small weed growing out of the dirt a few inches from my head. I couldn’t take my eyes off the fragile creature. A thick black band outlined its gold wings while its tips were spotted white. Such beauty.
Beyond its perch on the weed, I could see Baldwin’s leg still bleeding into the dirt. Garvin’s disembodied laughter rose over the sounds of battle while Doc Pantoja struggled to stanch his arm wound.
Violence and pastoral serenity. To which world did I belong? Who was the insignificant creature here? The tiny butterfly or the broken man lying nearby watching it? In the grand scheme of things, did either of us matter?
The butterfly leapt into the air.
I hope you make it through this, little guy.
Garvin’s voice cut through the din of gunfire. “Hey, you fuckers!!” he shouted. “I got my Purple Heart! I got my Purple Heart!”
Baldwin looked over his shoulder at our medic. “Get Garvin out of here!”
Another mortar exploded on the crest of our hill. Doc Pantoja jumped across Garvin’s body, shielding him from the shrapnel whirring past.
Enough was enough, I had to get up.
That was easier said than done. I rolled onto my stomach and tried to push myself up onto one knee. The effort seemed extraordinary. My head rocked and rolled. A wave of nausea struck me.
Get the knee up. Good. Push up, come on. Come on.
I felt my boots meet moondust. Swaying, the world spinning, I stumbled over to Garvin and Pantoja. Just as I reached them, Doc lifted himself off Garvin’s body. As his head came up, he suddenly jerked sideways and spun into the dirt.
“Doc! Doc!”
He lay motionless. I reached for him, calling his name repeatedly. Garvin, high on morphine, lay on his back mumbling about his Purple Heart.
Finally Pantoja moved. He rolled over, his face a mass of blood. He’d been shot in the cheek. A wedge of white fat hung limply from the wound.
“Sir, you okay?” he asked me. Before I could respond, he crawled over to me and started looking over my head.
“Doc, your face . . .”
“Let me check you out,” he insisted.
I turned my head. More of that pinkish fluid, sticky and thick, leached from my nose and both ears.
“I’m good, I’m good,” I said to my medic. “It isn’t blood. Get Garvin out of here.”
Ignoring the blood flowing down his ruined face, Doc clawed his way over to Garvin. “Hey, Doc! I’m getting a Purple Heart! How about that?” Pantoja grabbed him by his body armor and pulled him upright. Standing now, he slipped Garvin’s good arm around his neck. He called me over to help, and I reached for Garvin’s wounded arm to keep it above the level of his heart. Together we staggered through the fire toward my Humvee.
Now it was Baldwin’s turn. He’d been shooting his M4 down at the onrushing enemy horde, but now he began to inch his way back toward the center of our perimeter. He was about thirty feet away from me, scrabbling through the dirt by pushing himself along with his one good leg. As he clutched the ground to pull himself forward, a bullet smacked the dirt an inch from his outstretched hand. The bullet missed his body but scored a direct hit on his psyche. It seemed to flip a switch inside him. Perhaps for
the first time, he thought of Regina and the kids. The full weight of his situation hit him.
He rolled onto his back, his helmet rolling forgotten from his head.
“Baldwin!” I shouted.
His head turned, as if in slow motion, to regard me. His eyes were flat and desolate. He had given up.
No way. This isn’t going to happen. Not to this man.
“Doc! I need help!”
I lumbered to my feet and drunk-ran toward Baldwin. When I reached him and grabbed the handle on the back of his body armor, the look of abject surrender vanished, replaced by pure relief.
Baldwin was a huge load to move. Six-four, two-twenty. With one leg disabled and so much blood lost, he was too weak and immobile to get to his feet. I grabbed his IBA and tugged him forward. He moved only a foot or so. He had me by at least thirty pounds. Once more I pulled him forward, and I felt him kicking with his good leg, trying to help me with what leverage he could offer.
And then Doc was by my side. His facial wound ran from his jawline across the bridge of his nose. He looked as though he had lost a knife fight. He reached down and seized Baldwin’s arm.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Together we dragged Baldwin back to my Humvee. Safely concealed behind the rig, Baldwin was at last out of the direct line of fire. Silently Pantoja went to work on him, cutting open his saturated pant leg to dress the wound in his shin.
“Stay here. We got this,” I said.
But Baldwin had no interest in staying put. “Sir, you need every rifle out there.”
“Stay here!” I ordered again. Before he could respond, Greeson sprinted by, carrying ammunition from one position to another. I was amazed at how fast he could move, especially given his shoulder wound. He was five foot six, bowlegged, and forty years old, but he possessed the speed and agility of a twentysomething track athlete.
“Sir, Campbell’s been hit. Lewis is down, too. Shot in the head,” he reported as he went past.
Pinholt appeared beside me. “Sir, we’re about to be overrun. We need to Z out our radios.”
“No way,” I said instinctively. In worst-case scenarios, we were trained to erase the frequencies on our communication systems so the enemy could not listen to our chatter. By doing so, we would lose all ability to call for more fire support or troops.
“Sir, we need to do it,” Pinholt insisted.
“No. We cannot lose our link to the FOB.”
Both enemy assault elements had cleared their own slopes now and were pouring across the valley floor, a hundred men at least. How many did we have left? A dozen? Maybe Pinholt was right.
We lose our radio link, we all die.
“Reuter!” I shouted, turning to my forward observer, who was sitting in my Humvee with the radio handset to his mouth.
“Sir?”
“Call in everything you can. Work the fire missions. Danger close, got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
He keyed the handset and began barking coordinates.
I looked at my RTO. “Do not Z out these radios. They go down, we all go down, got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Grab a radio and come with me,” I told him.
It was time to walk the line. I looked left and saw Bray at the far north, his gym-sculpted figure still in Greeson’s turret trying to get the Mark 19 grenade launcher into action. Next in line was Sabo’s ruined rig. Nobody was in the turret. Lewis must have been shot out of it just as Emerick had been. Sabo grabbed a can of .50-caliber ammunition out of his rig and ran through the fire to Baldwin’s rig. He passed the can up to Campbell, who quickly loaded a fresh belt into his Ma Deuce. Sabo had always been paranoid about ammunition, an effect of his last deployment’s firefights, and he always jammed extra cans into his truck. I was grateful for that now.
On the far right, Private Dugin, our platoon head case, manned Waites’s turret. We had an extra fifty-cal that day, and Dugin was not as familiar with it as Campbell, Bray, or Emerick. I could see him fiddling with it, trying to get it to fire more than a few shots at a time. The Ma Deuce is a tricky weapon and requires finesse to get the head space and timing just right so that the weapon will fire full auto without jamming. Incorrectly set, the fifty becomes a big bolt-action rifle.
Dugin worked on it, his hands shaking. He was a young kid who’d only wanted to fit in with the rest of the platoon, but instead of being himself, he had tried to ingratiate his way into the inner circle with transparent and outrageous lies. He’d claimed to have played Big Ten football, said he owned the most popular bar in Watertown, and once told the men that he had played in a well-known rock band.
Dugin racked the fifty’s bolt and tried to trigger off a burst. No joy. The weapon fired once and jammed. He went back to tinkering with it.
Next to Waites’s truck, Wheat lay prone with his scope to his eye, scanning for targets. I couldn’t see Waites. Wheat coolly took a shot. His M4 bucked, and he adjusted his aim. Above him, Dugin tried to fire his machine gun again. It barked once, then jammed.
Wheat pulled his eye away from the scope and said, “Dugin, what the fuck?”
“I don’t know what’s wrong, Sergeant!”
As Wheat gave him advice, I started across the hilltop for him. I hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when a spout of gray-black smoke entwined with fountains of dirt erupted between me and Waites’s truck. Shrapnel splashed away from us and tore limbs off a nearby tree. The blast wave struck before I could react, driving me sideways onto my knees. It felt as if someone had just hit my head with a baseball bat.
“Hey, sir, you okay?” Pinholt asked, pulling up beside me.
The world was spinning. I had vertigo. “Yeah, I’m good.”
Weakly, I struggled to my feet as another barrage of RPGs struck our hilltop. More plumes of dirt and smoke peppered the scene. A mortar exploded on the far side of the perimeter. The enemy machine gunners continued their merciless work.
Pinholt and I reached Waites’s truck and took cover. Dugin tried to fire the fifty again. This time he unleashed a long burst that chewed through most of his hundred-round belt. Then an RPG exploded near the Humvee, sending shrapnel pinging off its armored hide. The concussion hit Dugin and threw him against one side of the turret. When he recovered and tried to fire the fifty, it jammed again. He went to work on it with his Gerber.
“How you doing, Wheat?” I asked.
“Goin’ good here, sir, but we’re about to have company.”
He pointed down the hill. Perhaps twenty enemy fighters had broken off from Galang’s southern attack force and were moving laterally around the base of the hill.
“They’re tryin’ to get aroun’ behind us, sir,” Wheat noted casually.
Dugin’s fifty plus the four men assigned to Waites’s truck were all that stood between us getting overrun by this new threat.
I said to Wheat, “Okay, get ready.”
Wheat nodded. “Don’t y’all worry now, sir. We’ll handle ’em.”
I wish I had Wheat’s calm.
“Dugin!” he shouted. “Hold up! Fire on my mark, got it?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Dugin waited. Wheat lay down again and stuck his eye into his scope, watching patiently. He wanted to pick his moment for absolute maximum shock value. Finally the flanking enemy reached an open stretch of ground perhaps a hundred and fifty meters away.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
Dugin mashed his thumbs down on his butterfly triggers. The Ma Deuce bellowed once, then jammed. He racked the bolt and fired one more shot. I wondered if the RPG had damaged the weapon.
“Dugin, what’s wrong?” Wheat asked.
“Dunno. Dunno.”
He racked the bolt. A shell casing flew out of the chamber. Before he pulled the trigger, he threw his Gerber into the dirt beside th
e Humvee.
What the hell?
Another pull on the trigger, and the weapon jammed again. This time Dugin had no tool to fix it. He jumped out of the turret, slid off the hood, and grabbed the Gerber. Wheat’s calm demeanor cracked. Face red, he said through clenched teeth, “Dugin, what the fuck are you doing?”
Dugin climbed back into the turret. He tweaked the head space and timing again, then tossed the Gerber overboard a second time. Incredulous, we stared at him as he jumped out of the turret to retrieve it. When it happened a third time, Wheat scooped the Gerber up and climbed onto the Humvee. He made a few quick adjustments on the Ma Deuce, test fired it, and swung it back into Dugin’s waiting hands.
“Good to go!” he yelled and slapped Dugin on the shoulder. He leapt back to the ground and landed beside Pinholt. He looked at my driver and asked, “You ready?”
“Roger that!”
“Wait a tick. Let ’em get a little closer,” he said. Pinholt nodded once, his eyes a bit wider. How close did Wheat want them? In our laps?
Galang’s men were less than a hundred meters away now, still sliding around our southern flank. Another few minutes, and they’d be behind us.
Dugin blasted off a long burst. The fifty’s deafening roar had never sounded more comforting. The enemy dived for cover as the heavy bullets tore through bushes and trees, shattering rock formations and men with impunity.
“I’m about ready to get on this shit,” said Wheat.
He spotted movement and placed his eye to his scope. “Ah, there ya are,” he mumbled. His M4 snapped twice. Double tap. Down the hill, his bullets knocked a man off his feet. He flopped to the ground, two red stains center mass, his rifle falling beside him.
Pinholt joined in. Dugin’s fifty hammered away. Wheat triggered off another pair of bullets. Another man dropped.
They stopped moving laterally now and began to assault up the hill. Wheat killed another man with two more shots. That made them cautious. Some went to ground and began to shoot back. Others crept forward using the available cover.
Dugin’s fifty thrashed them. Wheat’s precision sniping claimed another victim. The attack was breaking down.