The Med

by David Poyer

  “They sendin’ us in without cover,” said Cutford. “You know that? How we gonna—”

  “We gonna do it like U.S. Marines,” said Silkworth, cutting the corporal off. “It’s a tricky landing; the people here can cut us to cat meat if we piss them off, and the Man says not to take in anything but rifles. I don’t get it but diplomacy ain’t my job. My job is to follow orders, just like you, and if I wanted to live forever I wouldn’t be wearin’ this green suit. So shut up that wicked mouth, Cutford, and roll out those tubes.”

  I don’t get it either, Givens was thinking, pulling the sleeved rounds from his pack loops. We’re mortarmen—mortars, they always said, were part of company firepower. What was suddenly wrong with them? But he took one look at Silkworth, glaring around like Jehovah with thunderbolts in the middle of the compartment, and decided not to ask.

  The inner door opened and the armorer came in, bent like a Christmas tree under a festoon of M-16s and cartridge bags. “Gitcher rifles here,” he said from beneath the pile. “One ammo pouch each. Sign these cards here. Can’t have the piece without the signature.”

  “Fuck! These ain’t our fucken rifles!”

  “Ain’t got time to check numbers. Just grab one and sign.”

  “Cutford, count ’em off.”

  “Magazines. Can you give us extra magazines?” Cutford asked the armorer.

  “They said one each, but … I brought extras. Just don’t flash ’em around, okay?”

  The corporal passed Givens a rifle. Their hands met on the stock; they stared into each other’s eyes for a long intent second. Then he turned back to the armorer, and began handing out ammo to the others. Will jacked back the bolt and locked it to the rear, checking the chamber, and peered down the barrel. Oily. A reserve weapon. But that would shoot out, or he could swab it himself after they landed. He reversed it and clicked the sights on twelve, sixteen—standard setting when you picked up a strange piece. But how do they expect us to shoot with these? he thought, glancing at Silkworth, but deciding once more not to speak. Over fifty yards, we won’t have any idea where we’re hitting. The infantrymen watched them, amused.

  “This all of it?” said the armorer.

  “Thass right,” said Cutford bitterly. “You got ever’ bit of our mortar gear there.”

  “Gimme a man to carry it.”

  “But what are we gonna do?” Washman muttered. “We go through all that shit training on mortars—now what are we gonna be? Just riflemen?”

  “No, you’ll never be that, buddy,” said one of the grunts.

  In the midst of it the lights turned to red again and they swung toward the door. It was the captain again. But this time he said nothing; just looked at them for a moment, and then jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

  “Helo team thirteen, up and ready!” sang Silkworth. “Let’s go!”

  On the move at last. Will tugged his chinstrap tight one last time and picked up the rifle. They shuffled forward in the red light, bent like old men, weapons dangling. The black mouth of the hatch was filled with night and wind and the scream of turbines, and then with leaping men. Silkworth’s face, turned backward for a parting shout: “Remember, watch the blades! Rear rotor’s on the left!”

  Then it was his turn. He put his arm to Washman’s shoulder and they went through together.

  Night, sound, and rain. They staggered onto a rain-slicked flight deck, caught icy spray on their uplifted faces. Sound struck them like a left hook, the buffeting of rotor-wash like a right. Lights pulsated weirdly in the mist, making the stumbling queues of men leap to existence and then fade to black, the strobe of the rotors slicing each second into a dozen slow-motion frames. Still pictures: men leaning forward into the rain, men looking back to the safety of the ship, two marines helping a comrade up, troops running under the burden of full combat gear. The stationary ballet of the helo deck crew, wands glowing orange, speaking in slow circles to the pilots who waited invisible for their human freight to board. And above and behind the rainswept stage, decks above, the outangled windows of Pri-fly glowed jade and ruby, silhouettes of earphoned figures leaning forward in their boxes, audiences to the dance below, directors to more machines that hovered waiting, pulsating in mist-shrouded aureoles a hundred feet aft of the rolling ship … the helicopters looming gigantic in red-flickering darkness, their screaming presence leaning on the men who ran, it seemed to each one, endlessly across an endless deck toward them, each one blinking through the wind-driven rain toward the loom of his chopper, each man reminding himself Fifty-threes, tailrotor’s on the left. Picking out as he lumbered forward the blunt curve of the forward section, the flickering fatal halo of the rotor, the blue steady flame of the engines as they rounded the tail, still running, packs banging on their backs, rifles at high port. The exhaust kicked up stinging droplets from the flight deck, mixed hot blast with soaking cold rain. Givens tripped on a tiedown and felt momentary panic. He recovered with one hand to the deck and ran on, blundering against Washman as the squad slowed, bunching together, then pounded up the ramp into the lightless maw of the plane. He moved left, felt the seat jam horizontal into the backs of his legs, and groped for the belt. Not till it clacked solid did he feel secure. He leaned back gasping against the bulkhead, staring still into darkness, feeling the others close around him.

  The ramp came up. The engines rose to a roar. The fuselage shuddered, rotated under them, and launched them suddenly heavy into the air. Scared, exultant, he screamed wordlessly into the wall of sound, as loud as he could, the other men screaming too, none of it audible.

  They were off. The deck tilted, the aircraft throbbed, its interior so bright with sound, conversation and thought alike were impossible. The engines cut through the thin aluminum like a cleaver. A dim red bulb came on in the curving overhead, and the rows of faces flicked on as if the light were behind them, behind red translucent masks, half-hidden by the helmets. The deck tilted again and slanted to the side, hard. He caught a windowed glimpse of a lit square of deck, a pulsating ruby cauldron where the next settling wave of aircraft stirred the mist into tornadoes, the rest of the ship black against black ocean.

  The first gust of raw fear tightened his hands on his weapon, lifted his head, thrilled along his back with the buzz of the airframe. It blew his nostrils wide with the smells of oil and hot metal, man-sweat and rain. Staring out between illuminated faces, his gut tight against the straps as the plane shuddered around in its turn, he thought to himself suddenly: I will never forget this. This was no book, no song. This was real, and he knew with absolute sureness that he would remember it all, just as it was in this moment, no matter how many years would pass before he remembered nothing. Because this was life itself, this screaming moment lit in scarlet, tilting through a foreign night in this aluminum coffin toward whatever was to come.

  He lifted his head to the battle; to the trumpets he saith, yea, yea.…

  The deck steadied. The ship rolled backward from the window, replaced by darkness and then a pearl-gray glimmer of predawn as the horizon came up. The helicopter settled, as if into grooves. It ceased climbing and tilted forward. The engines dropped to a deafening drone. The light brightened, showing each of them the eyes of the others and the expressions: Silkworth competently bland; Cutford scowling, still pissed off over the mortars, eye-whites glistening against the total dark beneath his helmet; Washman scared, mouth open, eyes fixed on Givens’, but unquestioning, accepting; Hernandez scared too but alert; Harner blank-faced, eyes closed, fingers laced tight over packstraps; Liebo staring out the window, remote, dreamy-eyed.

  The chopper settled and tilted, vibrating, droning in repetitive patterns through the ribbed riveted metal, through the snake-writhe of wiring and hydraulic lines that the brighter red and now a fine gray wash from the windows, not yet light but just bright enough to be there, showed their inquiring eyes around the interior of the helicopter. The Stallions were big; they carried thirty-five men at a lift, but he had the same feelin
g of eggshell, kerosene-smelling fragility he had in every copter since his first lift at Pendleton. It was like riding in a beer can. He hated to think how little that paper thinness would slow down a bullet. This was not practice; there might be ground fire for real. Sweat broke under his helmet-liner as thought became threat. What had they done in Nam? Sat on their helmets? He looked toward Cutford, half-wanting to ask him, just to hear someone talk who had been through it, but the black corporal was folded into the fuselage with his eyes closed, still scowling.

  The helicopter settled, shaking like the stern of the Spiegel Grove when a sea lifted the tips of her screw out of the water. The men settled too, wedging themselves into the canvas seats, and the vibration sank into them, rattling their teeth, shaking them down like bags of loose sand into something denser, heavier, than simple flesh.

  His head sank, nodding to the thrum that surged through the aircraft, and slowly his mouth sagged open.

  When he jerked awake again he was disoriented, unable to judge how long he had been out. A minute? An hour? The window was just as dark, the predawn glimmer gone. The green glow of his watch dial gave him only numbers. He did not know the flying time to the LZ. He sought the others with his eyes; they looked back but words were impossible, communication was impossible; they were separated and shut off by a wall of sound so loud that it made everything silent.

  Gesture, then. He caught Silkworth’s eye and held out his arm; tapped his watch; looked questioning. The sergeant held up six fingers. The motion went around the helicopter from man to man. Six minutes, he thought. Not long. And as if the pilot heard him the deck tilted back. The pitch of the rotors changed and the speed lodged in their bodies surged them into the straps as the aircraft slowed. With the sick feeling of descent came sudden activity. They checked their weapons, empty chambers but magazines full ready to feed. They cinched their packs, settled their helmets, the last motion hooking their left hands under the buckle of the seat belt. They glanced toward the rear of the helicopter, checking the ramp position, then glanced at each other.

  The light went out. In the darkness they fell, faster now, the whish of the milling rotor coming clearly through the fuselage. He felt his throat close, his hands tighten on the straps. The engine—had it quit? It didn’t seem as loud. He couldn’t hear it!

  He stared into the dark, mouth open, and waited for the crash.

  The engine roared again, and they became heavy, heavy. The helmet bent his head. Something red shot past outside. Before he could think it through the chopper jolted sideways and then slammed down so hard it rapped his jaw on his chest. Motors whined aft and the clack of releasing buckles rippled along the line of men as they stood up.

  Off the chopper. Down the ramp, through the man-filled darkness, turn soon, got to remember turn left turn LEFT. He felt without seeing the openness of the night, heard without seeing the deadly air-flutter from the tail rotor. The man behind shoved him and he turned left. He was down, and running. His boots thudded and swished through dry grass. Dust stung his face, kicked up by the blast. Through the thunder of engines he could hear the noncoms shouting. There was a bang behind him, a scream, but it only made him run faster. He panted through windy dark, caught up in the confusion of a night landing, the minutes when everyone ran in a dozen different directions and a squad leader earned his pay.

  He was sprinting full out, rifle held high, looking around for the rest of the squad, when his boot hit a hole and he went down hard into the dirt, crashing down on his face. He lay there, half-out, the pack pushing him down like a man lying on top of him, and then heard it: the climbing whine of a helicopter coming in to land. At the same moment the ground lit up, bright, distinct, each blade of grass sharp and individual as a razor-edge. He twisted his head. They were landing lights, all right. He blinked up at them for an eternally long second, watching the three blazing lamps spread as the helo drifted down, the rotorblast pressing him into the dirt, thunder building in his ears, his muscles rigid, unable to move. He was frozen like a rabbit in headlights.

  The hand grabbed his pack, left it, groped, and found him; grabbed him under the armpit and lifted him bodily onto his feet and then shoved him stumbling into a run. He heard the copter thud into the dust behind him. The tip blast shoved him along behind the big shadow that still had one arm under his. The shadow turned, and Cutford grinned in the landing lights like a black jack-o’-lantern.

  “Thanks,” he shouted.

  “You fuckhead, Oreo. Takin’ a nap on a LZ not my idea of smart soldierin’.”

  “Ah, eat it,” he shouted, finding the grin sticking to his face, too. The corporal’s hand gripped his shoulder, fingers digging in, held it for a moment, and then released. “Les’ get the squad formed up,” Cutford shouted above the building roar of the second wave coming in behind them. “An’ get that perimeter out. Dawn comin’ up soon.”

  He blinked, pulling his mind from what had just happened, and remembered the disposition. Marine units dug in the instant you ran far enough not to get landed on. They found Hernandez and then Harner. Then they ran into the infantry squad they had boarded with, part of the helo team, and Silkworth and Washman were with them. Silky took charge at once, starting their fire positions to the north of the LZ on a small rise. They began chunking at the dirt with their entrenching tools.

  “You seen Dippy, man?”

  “No.”

  “No, man, I ain’t seen him since the debark.”

  The light came while they dug, gray and pale and cool. Levering the spade beneath a rock, he raised his head to look around. The hills came first, black cuts in the graying sky, and then the men working beside him, and finally the hole. When he saw the tool in his hands he knew that it was dawn. The sergeants had linked the squads up left and right to form the perimeter and now as he tamped the pile flat in front of his firing position and propped his rifle on it he could look to either side and see men strung out along the rise. Behind them, the sound dulled by distance and somehow too by the coming of daylight, helos churned downward out of the sky, the patch team waving them in with the wands. Some of them carried gear, slung beneath in nets, and he could see piles of supplies beginning to build.

  So this, he thought, is Lebanon. Again he had the feeling that he would never forget what he was seeing, that he would always be able to stand here again, be as he was right now, forever, just by remembering. It was that strong. He stretched, holding the tool, and breathed in the dry dusty air, the cool morning smells of soil and unknown trees, of a foreign land.

  “We’re in clean,” said Hernandez, interrupting his thoughts. “I dint see one shot. Now why couldn’t we have took the mortar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s crazy bullshit, that’s what it is.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shut up and dig,” said Silkworth, pausing at the top of their holes. “This is an entrenchment? You’re gonna get your asses shot off. Deeper, you crud lovers, deeper. Like Lily says, I want you in all the way, you’ll break your neck if you fall off once I start.”

  “Aye aye, Sarnt!”

  “Yowzah, yowzah, Massa Silkwort’.”

  “Bad news, guys,” said the sergeant, looking at all of them and none of them. “Dippy got hurt coming off the helo.”

  “Hurt,” said Givens. “How bad? What do you mean, Silky?”

  “That’s all I heard. Sorry. Now get that spade in the dirt.”

  They dug and dug, clawing up the rocky soil, gritty dust and limestone, prying up grass cropped close by goats, and spread it out before them. Dug and spread. It grew rapidly brighter. The exec came by and passed a couple of words with them, told them hot coffee was coming up, flown in from the Guam.

  “Hot coffee?” grunted Cutford. “In whose Marine Corps?”

  “Just don’t get used to it,” said the officer.

  “We be movin’ on inland, Lieutenant?” Washman asked him.

  “That’s the word. Consolidate here and guard the road,
be ready to continue east for the target area when transport comes up.”

  “How’s the landing going at the beach?”

  The officer shook his head.

  “Sir—you heard anything about one of our guys, got hurt debarking? Name of Liebo?”

  “He walked into a rotor. They flew him back. That’s all I know,” said the lieutenant, and went on.

  They dug in silence for a while. “That’s got to be deep enough,” said the Washout at last, and squirmed down into his hole. “Can you see me from the front, Will?”

  Givens obediently crossed ahead of the line, squatted down, and surveyed the position. “Nope. Not even the top of your helmet.”

  “Good. Get in yours, I’ll check you.”

  When they were satisfied with the position the squad squatted gratefully on the reverse slope of the hill, watching the helos offload another unit. “New boys,” said Silk-worth, glancing at them sideways.

  “Not like the old Corps,” agreed Hernandez.

  “Geez, it’s getting hot already. Where’d all that rain go? It quit as soon as we got here.”

  “This is the Med, kid.”

  “Sergeant. Muster over there with the Top. Got some word to pass.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They sat and watched Silkworth jog off toward the helos, his pack slapping his ass as he ran. “Gonna move out soon, I bet,” said Washman. “Just when I got my hole dug.”

  “Cigarette?” said Harner.

  “No, thanks, Buck. You know I don’t smoke.”

  “No harm offerin’.” Harner grinned slowly. “Wasn’t for these magnum cowboy killers, couldn’t hardly take the pressure ’round here.”

  Givens nodded. They watched the knot of noncoms and officers. The sky brightened. The sun came into view for the first time, bursting in red-white flame across the low hills directly into their eyes. The light picked out the dust in the clear air, the brown haze of exhaust above them, making them blink and raise their arms and squint at it, as if it was something new, this morning sun.