by Dennis Foley
Hollister wasn’t happy about their being still twenty minutes from the LZ. If he had had any doubt about it being a night insert, all doubt was gone. He took a deep breath and tried to remind himself there were advantages. His team would be concealed by the darkness and would be less of a target for any LZ watchers.
The ground below the choppers clipped by as Hollister tried to orient himself on the barely recognizable landmarks—the larger river junctions and road intersections. He knew they were close and chambered a round in his rifle. “Lock and load!” he yelled to the others.
The heightened tension in the chopper became more apparent as the insert ship broke out of the formation, along with the chase, while the C & C went forward to confirm the LZ.
Hollister’s team made last-minute checks, scooted toward the chopper’s open side doors, and started making private deals with their maker.
He knew it was the real thing when he felt the chopper starting to sink to approach altitude. He tried to swallow and realized his throat was dry. He turned up the sole of his jungle boot and looked for a pebble lodged in the cleats. Finding none, he raised the other boot. A small piece of gravel was wedged between two of the rubber ridges near the outside of his sole. He worked it loose, wiped it off on his shirt, and popped it into his mouth.
The pebble immediately caused him to salivate. It was a trick he had learned in Ranger School. The saliva would wet his mouth and throat, and what he swallowed would cause his digestive system to settle down a bit—easing the knots.
The door gunner reached over and tapped Hollister on the back. He held up his hand and gave him a V-sign with his fingers and yelled, “Two minutes.”
Hollister gave an exaggerated nod. Thomas and Estlin got the word when Hollister did. Hollister turned to tap the other three. Meadows, Loomis, and Fass spun around from their side of the chopper and moved to the center of the cargo compartment behind Hollister. They would all go out the left side of the chopper—to end up on the same side of their roadway landing zone.
Their faces showed the focus he had seen so many times on men going into combat.
“One minute!” the door gunner yelled.
Hollister leaned forward and looked out ahead for the landing zone. The swampy mangroves appeared to him as a blacker area on the already gray-black ground. He strained to find the roadway and only caught a glimpse of a reflection of one of the gunship’s navigation lights off the standing water in the trees. It would be a long, wet night.
The chopper’s descent marked the start of a short window where the Rangers would be very vulnerable and unlikely to be able to avoid any accurate enemy fire. As the chopper settled onto the ground, the team could feel the moister air and recognized the sudden loss of visibility as the black curtain of trees came up to a point above the rotor disk.
The right skid tapped the ground.
“Go, go, go!” Hollister yelled as he planted his left hand on the deck and hopped up and out.
The others followed while he looked first up the road and then back toward the tail of the chopper for any signs of enemy fire.
The others jumped off the roadway and slid down the three-foot embankment built up to keep the roadbed above the water table.
Hollister saw the top of Loomis’s head disappear into the lush vegetation close to the road. Without hesitating, he followed Loomis as the chopper rolled forward onto the toes of its skids to takeoff.
Inside the tree line, Hollister fell half his height to the bottom of the embankment and came to rest on top of Loomis, waist deep in mossy water. The collision completely submerged his radioman.
Loomis snapped his head up out of the water, coughing and spitting out the slimy fluid.
Hollister tried to help by grabbing him under the arm, only to lose his own footing in the slippery bog and tumble backward, pulled down by the weight of his rucksack and field gear.
He flailed out with his arms and caught on to a sapling with his left hand, keeping him from completely submerging under the water.
Regaining his footing and clearing the mud and water from his eyes, Hollister grabbed Loomis and turned him around so they could see each other. He leaned over and put his lips to Loomis’s ear. “You okay? Can you walk?”
Loomis turned his head, spit out some more debris, and gave Hollister a big nod.
Hollister touched Loomis, Loomis turned and tapped Fass, and the word got up to Estlin, they were ready to move away from the roadway.
They had been moving for less than a minute when Hollister stopped the file and tapped Loomis on the shoulder for the handset to the radio. “Campus Killer Five, this is Six. We are in and cold. Continuing the mission. Over.”
Browning answered immediately. “I roger your message. And that you are going to Charlie Mike. We are moving on out of your AO. Will stand by. Out.”
CHAPTER 12
THE WATER GOT DEEPER not more than a hundred meters into their march from the roadway. Hollister was irritated that they hadn’t known how deep the water was and tried to remind himself to make a point to screen old patrol debriefings in the future. He was sure some time in the past couple of years there had been a team in the area who remarked on the water problem. He was sure his team would make several comments on it when they were debriefed.
Their movement slowed to a snail’s pace as the thready roots in the mangrove swamp grabbed for their legs while they moved through the chest-deep water.
After thirty more minutes, Hollister passed the word up to Estlin to hold up the file—he wanted to make a map check and consider looking for a change in route to the ambush site.
Loomis opened a poncho, and Fass, Estlin, and Hollister got under it to look at a map with a red-filtered flashlight.
“This is fucked,” Estlin said.
“First, we have to find a rally point. I figure we’ve got less than four hundred meters to the site, and I haven’t seen shit for a place to hole up if we need to hide,” Hollister said.
Estlin jabbed his thumb up over his shoulder. “There looks like a tight knot of something growing up ahead—a little to the north.”
“Okay, we’ll check it out. If it looks good, we’ll hold up there while I recon the ambush site. If it doesn’t work—we’ll have to do a little more looking. I do not want to go wandering into an ambush position without a place to head for if we get into a bind.”
“You want to go check it out now?” Estlin asked.
“I think you and I ought to take a look before we drag the whole team around searching for a rally point.”
Hollister turned to Fass. “You keep the team here. If we aren’t back in two-zero minutes and you can’t reach us on the radio—take over and get the rest of this patrol out to safety.”
“Yes, sir,” Fass said. “Count on me.”
“Just make sure you’re ready. Now, we’re going forward. You keep things under control around here. Okay?”
“Will do, sir.”
Hollister let Estlin lead them forward, even though he wanted to do it himself. He knew if he was going to train anyone in J Company, he had to train them, not do for them.
Estlin hesitated too long at pauses, moved too fast through uneven ground—causing him to lose his footing more than once. And he failed to adopt an organized pattern of searching in front and around him. Hollister would take it up with him when he had the time.
Estlin finally stopped, squatted to reduce the height of that part of him sticking out of the water, and pointed off to his right front.
Hollister looked at the tight stand of trees. It was skirted by a dense apron of bushes ideal for the team to hole up in. He was starting to get cold from standing in the water, and he knew Estlin was starting to tire. He motioned for Estlin to wait while he sloshed forward to take a little closer look at the rally point.
There was no obvious entrance into the dense patch, which was good. Hollister knew if there were, it would most likely be booby-trapped.
He circled the brush and f
ound a couple of small breaks—large enough to pass through without making a racket. It would do. He couldn’t waste any more time with it. He had to get the team into position.
Selecting the ambush site was more difficult than finding a suitable rally point. They found the trail they had selected on the aerial recon. It was worthless. While it was not in deep water, the fields of fire from the ambush site to the killing zone were obscured by reeds. Again, Hollister took Estlin and moved toward the path, looking for a better location.
It was difficult to find a site with the elevation to keep the team dry, the fields of fire to cover the killing zone, and the access to get both in and out of the site.
There was also the problem of movement. The more they wandered around in the swamp, the greater their chance of being spotted. Then there was the constant threat of booby traps. And, surviving all that, the team would leave a trail in the fragile marsh.
Hollister considered moving to the alternate ambush location they had picked on the aerial recon. It would mean moving his already tired team five hundred meters to the north through more of the same, only to face the possibility of the same situation.
Suddenly, Estlin tugged on Hollister’s sleeve and pointed off toward a spot concealed by a couple of larger trees. “Over here.”
Moving gave Hollister a view of the area Estlin was talking about. He took the lead and moved to the darkened area that appeared to be on something like higher, drier ground.
After moving slowly to the site, Hollister stopped and tried to make out the terrain. It was weird in the dark. It had man-made features and appeared to have had some of the vegetation cleared from it. He wasn’t going to make any hasty decisions from fifty meters away, so he continued on until he felt his feet climbing a slight incline on the bottom of the swampy ground.
He stopped, squatted, and held his palm over his eyes to shield them from the lighter glow of the sky. It was a dike. An old one, but a dike of some kind built many years before.
Hollister looked back over his shoulder at the section of the trail he would select as the killing zone. It was almost completely visible, save a few branches obscuring a small portion of the trail. He turned back to the dike. The ground rose up out of the swamp, perpendicular to a line drawn to the killing zone. So far, so good, he thought.
He started forward and then stopped himself from climbing the front of the dike. To do so might scar up its forward slope and mark their location. The last thing he wanted was for his team’s presence to be announced by disturbing the ground cover. So he sloshed to the left where the brush stood densely in front of the dike and climbed up out of the water.
Standing on the dike, he saw it was dry, long, and flat. The only problem was, it was narrow—only about eight feet wide.
He walked across the top and down the other side of the dike, into the water again. Turning around, he could look over the top of the dike and see the killing zone. Overhead it was concealed by drooping tree branches.
It would do. They would set up on the dike, and if it got to a shooting match, they could easily slip down behind it for cover. It was the best he was going to find.
It took almost an hour to get the patrol to the dike. By the time they were setting up, it was almost ten o’clock. Hollister posted Estlin as the lookout to cover the trail while he positioned each member of the patrol in his respective firing position.
The first order of business after arrival and assignment of positions was to place claymore mines along the side of the path to cover the killing zone with overlapping, earth-hugging blast patterns. Hollister had decided to try to do as much damage as possible with the claymores.
Hollister stopped long enough to report their situation to Campus Killer base—his operations. He also asked for a weather forecast.
Fass, Meadows, Loomis, and Hollister went down to the trail to set up claymores. As the other three started placing mines, Hollister stepped onto the trail to look up and down it for the approach of any VC. He looked back at the ambush site to see if he could make out Estlin and Thomas still covering them.
It was close enough that Hollister could see them when they moved, but not if they stayed still. He would make sure the others saw what he saw and would tell Estlin and Thomas.
The killing zone was adequate. Easy to see, lighter in color than the surrounding ground—which would help identify someone moving on the trail—and long and curved enough for them to see up and down much of the approaches to the killing zone.
He didn’t like the steep banks raising the narrow path out of the water. On either side there was a three-foot drop-off. Anyone caught in the ambush and not killed outright could roll off the path into the water and be covered from his team’s fire.
Hollister had to decide to go with it as is or place mines on the far side of the path to catch anyone trying to hide there. The problem was the time involved in placing extra claymores there and concealing the detonating wires they would have to stretch across the path. He knew he could probably conceal the wire for the night, but the concealment effort would be plainly evident in the daylight. He decided to risk it and hope any enemy moving down the path would be well within the killing zone before they discovered the wire.
He grabbed one of the claymores from his bag, slipped over the far side of the path, and slid down into the water. He opened the legs on the mine, inserted the blasting cap end of the wire into the detonator well. Making a fast loop around the folding legs to take up any pull if someone tripped on the wire, he sank the four pointed legs of the mine into the bank at the waterline. He tried to line it up so the blast would be parallel to the path, in the low spot where someone would be likely to take cover.
On the path, Hollister stretched the wire across it and left the loose end on the side closest to the dike. He then pulled out his K-bar knife and began to cut a small V slit into the path next to the wire.
Fass and Meadows moved over to help Hollister complete the groove in the trail. In less than a minute, they had dug a little trench, put the wire in it, and covered it with the spoils.
Fass took the lead, and they started back toward the dike, carefully threading their claymore wires behind them as they moved.
They had moved less than twenty meters when someone grabbed Hollister by the shirt at his elbow. He froze, then turned.
Meadows raised his hand for Hollister to see and pointed up the trail.
Hollister listened. Voices. He could hear voices. Two, maybe three, but not more. Shit! Hollister thought. They weren’t in position yet. They couldn’t take a chance of executing the ambush without having the claymores wired in. And they were much too close to avoid the backblast if they did detonate them.
“Do not fire,” he whispered first to Meadows and then to Loomis. Meadows got the word to Fass, and Hollister raised his hand to try to get Estlin’s and Thomas’s attention at the dike. He then gave the down-and-freeze hand signal, hoping they would understand he wanted no one to fire on whoever was coming down the path.
They flattened out and tried to conceal their location without making any noise. The voices got louder. It soon became clear the voices were Vietnamese men.
Hollister held his breath to strain for more clarity. He wanted to know how many men there were and were they walking casually or running and talking rapidly—as if they were coming to find the team. While he waited, he slipped the binoculars out of his claymore bag.
The voices got louder, and Hollister was more convinced it was just two Vietnamese. He raised his head a few inches above the reeds and slowly brought the glasses to his face.
It took a few seconds to orient the binos and recognize what was in his view. Hollister slowly moved the point of aim of the binos to the mottled light pattern on the path.
The trail images changed from pitch dark to somewhat moonlit to a scattered pattern of shadows. He squinted to try to find movement, signs of life, signs of VC.
Suddenly, there was a light. Moving the binos, he found
a pool of light. It was a flashlight! He dropped the binos and tried to locate the light. About a hundred meters from his position there was the unmistakable circle of a flashlight playing on the trail. It was stationary—meaning they had stopped. So had the talking.
He raised the binos again to focus on what the flashlight was illuminating. He recognized the stock of a rifle and the telltale outline of a curved AK-47 magazine. Then he thought they were looking at a box or a rucksack or something about the size of a shopping bag. Looking more closely, he discovered the two men were trying to repair a shoulder strap on a backpack. The strap had come unbuckled. They were simply trying to adjust their gear. They were obviously unconcerned about their security and had no idea Hollister and his men were in the marshy grasses only meters away.
Hollister dropped the glasses and used his finger to wipe away the sweat formed on his brow. He looked around at the others and saw they were frozen and aware of what was going on. He decided not to change his instructions to them. There was no way they could fire on the two enemy soldiers without compromising their position. It would have to be a pass.
He tried to focus on the details: uniforms, weapons, gear, and what they were carrying. Any information was useful.
Raising the binos again, Hollister watched the two men shoulder their loads and begin to walk down the trail—across his front. But no sooner had they taken a few steps when one of them stopped.
This time Hollister was sure they had been discovered. But he was wrong again. One of the soldiers pulled out a pack of cigarettes, put one in his mouth, and lit it. The smell of the cigarette smoke made Hollister want one—and a drink.
Sweat continued to form on Hollister’s face, some of it trickling down into his eye, burning, and blurring his vision for a moment. He tilted his head and tried to get the fluid to drain back out of his eye, resisting the urge to reach up and wipe it away.
The two VC reached the leading edge of the killing zone, and Hollister knew they were only eight feet from the claymore wire he had buried in the pathway. If they found it, things could go sour. He said a little prayer—not to let it happen, not then, not while they were split and unprepared for contact.