Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War

by Karl Marlantes

  Parker pulled out his K-bar.

  “Hey, man,” Cortell said, “put away that shit.”

  “I don’t take no shit like that,” he said to Cortell, but stayed focused on Pollini. “Maybe you and Jesus do.”

  Pollini started to back away, looking for help. He fell backward into a partially dug fighting hole. Parker was on him instantly, knocking the wind from him with his knees. Pollini gasped in tiny ineffectual breaths, his face contorted. “What’s the matter white boy, not smart enough to breathe?” Parker had the point of his K-bar’s blade pressed against Pollini’s Adam’s apple. Every time Pollini tried to gasp for air, the motion would jab the knife’s point against it.

  There was the sound of a round being chambered and then Williams’s calm cowboy voice. “Parker, I’ll shoot you if you don’t get off of him.”

  “That’s right,” Parker said, still holding the knife to Pollini’s throat. “You protect you little sawed-off brother here.” He looked around him, angry. “Where my own brothers, huh?”

  Mallory laid his M-60 on the ground and pulled his .45 from its holster. He shoved back the action and let it snap forward, chambering a round. His hand was shaking, but the pistol pointed at Williams.

  “Now there,” Parker said. “We even up, ain’t we, Williams?”

  At this point Jackson intervened. He quietly said, “OK, you two, put the shit down. This between Parker and Shortround, not between chucks and splibs.”

  “It might not be between chucks and splibs,” Parker said, his knife still on Pollini’s Adam’s apple.

  In a tight constricted whisper Pollini wheezed, “I take it back. I didn’t mean nothing, Parker.”

  “Oh, you didn’t, huh? I ought to cut you nuts off for what you said. But I’m going let you go because you so fucking stupid. But I don’t forget things.” He looked up at Williams, who stood his ground with the M-16.

  “Come on, you two,” Jackson said, ignoring Parker and addressing Mallory and Williams. “Put the shit down. We got an ambush to run tonight.” Then he moved into the line of fire between the two of them.

  Williams flicked his eyes quickly at Jackson, then lowered his rifle and put the safety on. Mallory eased the hammer of the .45 forward.

  “It just between you and me now, Shortround,” Parker said. “And I’m going to let you go, ’cause you so stupid.” He pushed back from Pollini, smiling, and stood up. Then he jumped in the air and stomped hard on Pollini’s stomach with his boot. Pollini cried out in pain and Williams immediately ran for Parker, slamming his rifle against the side of his head. Parker came around in a low crouch swinging the knife, just missing Williams. Jackson tackled Williams, rolling him away from Parker’s knife as they hit the ground, knocking the rifle aside. He stayed on top of Williams, who struggled to get free, and turned his head to Parker. “You keep the fuck back,” he said.

  They heard the sound of running feet. Bass had his heavy shorttimer’s stick and was shouting. “What the fuck’s going on around here?” The lieutenant was just behind him.

  Parker put his K-bar back in its sheath.

  “What the fuck’s going on, Jackson?” Bass asked. Pollini was retching in the partially dug hole.

  “Nothing, Sergeant Bass,” Jackson said. “Williams and I got into an argument.”

  Mellas went over to Pollini. “Who the hell got into an argument with Shortround?” he asked. He put his hand on Pollini’s shoulder. “Who was it?”

  “No one, sir,” Pollini answered. He was doubled over, tears running into the vomit on his chin. “I fell in this fucking hole. Honest, sir.”

  Bass turned to Parker. “Listen, you fucking puke—”

  “It’s OK, Sergeant Bass,” Mellas said quickly.

  “Sir, I know this fucking excuse for a man—”

  “It’s OK, Sergeant Bass.”

  “I’d string him up by his nuts.”

  “We’ll handle this with office hours.” Mellas looked around. “Everybody here. Fighting while on duty. We’ll take care of it when we get in. Goddamn it, I’ll bust every one of you.”

  Williams and Jackson got up off the ground. Williams checked his rifle for dirt, brushing it off, moving the mechanism. Pollini struggled to his feet. Bass picked up Pollini’s rifle, now covered with mud, and handed it to him. “You better get it cleaned up,” he growled. He stalked back to his hole.

  Mellas looked around at everyone. Mallory was trying to look as though he was inspecting his .45. “I don’t care what happened right now,” Mellas said. “We’ll deal with it later. We got an ambush to set up in about twenty minutes.”

  Pollini stifled a groan. He had his rifle in two pieces. “You able to go on the ambush, Shortround?” Mellas asked.

  “Yes sir.” Pollini suddenly grinned at Mellas and held up the two muddy halves of the rifle. “I thought I’d get it real clean so it’d open right up when we sprang the ambush, sir.”

  “That was good thinking, Pollini.”

  “Yeah, Shortround, he a real sharp dude.”

  “Knock it off, Parker,” Mellas said. “You’re in enough trouble.” He turned to Jackson. “I want this squad ready to go in ten minutes. Get the shine off their faces.”

  When Mellas returned, Cortell was rubbing unnecessarily large amounts of mud and charcoal onto Pollini’s face. Mellas wanted to say something right away but was reluctant to show favoritism.

  Pollini was trying to be a good sport. “Hey, Lieutenant,” he said, “make him stop.”

  Mellas couldn’t help laughing. Pollini was just funny to look at. “Go a little easy on him, Cortell,” Mellas finally said. Cortell stopped rubbing it in so hard.

  Jackson arrived.

  “Don’t look so worried,” Mellas said to him. “It’s bad enough with me looking worried.”

  Jackson smiled, but his anxiety was clear to Mellas, who hadn’t really thought about the ambush yet. Suddenly Mellas realized he still didn’t know what he was doing. His mind started to churn through all the relevant points he’d been taught about ambushes: front and rear security, assembly points, initiating signals, communications wire or string to tug on for silent signals, kill zones. The mechanics of sudden death were as complex as they were violent.

  The Marines of Third Squad collected around Mellas, waiting nervously in silence. Mellas began figuring. “I’m guessing the trail will take a bend somewhere. We’ll set up an L-shaped ambush. Mallory, you’ll be on the little end of the L with the M-60 and shooting straight down the trail so if you miss someone in front, you’ll hit someone behind him. Just make sure you get the gun pegged in so you don’t shoot off the trail in the dark and hit one of us.” Mallory nodded.

  “Tilghman, you’ll be next to me with shotgun rounds. We’ll need two men each, for front and rear security. You got a team for that, Jackson?”

  Jackson thought a moment. “Yeah. Cortell, you can lay out in the boonies for a while.”

  Cortell groaned. His friend Williams cleared his throat and looked into the jungle. Cortell spoke up. “Shit, Jackson, you get some power and you turn on you friends just like that.” He snapped his fingers. Jackson nodded his head in affirmation and smiled at him. Cortell looked at Mellas. “What can I say, sir?”

  “Nothing.” Mellas waited a second. “Who you want in front and who you want in back?” It was Cortell’s fire team—it was his choice.

  “I’ll take Williams up front with me. Parker and Chadwick can go behind.” Mellas was relieved. For a moment he feared that Pollini was in Cortell’s team with Parker. Then he remembered—Pollini was with the team headed by Amarillo, the kid who kept doggedly telling everyone that if they had to nickname him something that meant yellow in Spanish, the least they could do was pronounce it correctly. Of course no one did. It had become a running joke.

  “OK, then. No one makes a move or fires a shot until I do. If the unit is too big for us to handle, I’m going to just put my head down and hope like hell they walk on by.” Mellas turned to Cortell. “The warning will be three tugs on the comm-wire. We’ll give three back. Then you give a pull for every man you count going by you. Same for you, Parker. Everybody got it?” They all
nodded. “OK. I’ll select the assembly area, about twenty meters off the trail. We’ll move into position from there. Everyone meets there afterward. If you get separated, we’ll wait ten minutes. If you don’t make it back by then, we’ll assume you’re hit. Don’t move. We’ll get you if it takes the whole company.”

  Jackson spoke up. “The code word tonight is Monkey-Cat, so if any of you dudes gets lost, make sure you holler Monkey before you try and come home.” He grinned. Williams and Amarillo let out brief bursts of air, just short of laughter. With night encroaching, voices all around the perimeter were dropping to whispers.

  Mellas looked around at the group. They were all carrying poncho liners, ammunition, and grenades. Their faces were black, and their bush covers were pulled down low or crumpled. Helmets weren’t used on ambushes, because the profile was too easily recognizable.

  As the squad filed past the holes in the twilight, the rest of the company was still digging in. Mellas selected an ambush site about 200 meters down the trail and located the assembly area, and they moved into position quietly, stringing wire from hand to hand and out to the security teams. Mellas chose a very dense part of the jungle on a slight downhill slope, figuring that anyone coming uphill bearing a load would probably have his head down and be breathing hard, making it harder to see and hear. The trail curved sharply, and at the bend Mallory and Barber, the A gunner, set up the machine gun. Mellas took the middle of the long side, next to Jackson, who had taken the radio. They settled in to wait.

  It got dark: black, sightless dark. Mellas could no longer see the trail in front of him. The darkness seemed to push down on him from the clouds. He heard Jackson breathing next to him. His own wristwatch sounded like an alarm clock. He tried to stuff it under his belly, but the effort itself made noise, so he stopped.

  It occurred to him that if the NVA could hear his wristwatch, they deserved to live. But did they deserve to die if they couldn’t hear it? It was a zero-sum game. One side won only if the other side lost. Mellas was starting to nod off.

  He struggled to alertness and gave one tug on the wire. Everyone awake? There was a tug back from both sides. Everyone was awake. Mellas shivered. Goddamn the cold and the dark. Impenetrable blackness. He was blind. He felt the fog settle in low through the thick jungle, whispering about them. The radio, set on the company frequency at its lowest volume, made a quiet hiss. “If you’re all secure, key your handset two times.” It was Bass, back inside the company’s position, on the radio. Mellas keyed twice, having taken the handset from Jackson, who was lying close enough to pass it back and forth. It was so dark that Mellas felt suffocated. He couldn’t see Jackson even though he could touch him. Mellas leaned his head on the cold dewy top of his rifle, the steel feeling cool and comforting against his forehead. The rest of his body ached with cold and damp. Only six hours until daylight. He wished he were back on the hill or back home in bed with the trees rustling outside the window. The school bus will be here pretty soon. Mommy will have breakfast ready.

  An anguished scream jerked Mellas awake, but it choked off immediately. It had come from the forward security post.

  “What the hell?” Mellas whispered. The entire squad was tense. He could feel the others, but no one could see a thing. They heard a grunting sound, a gruff cough that chilled Mellas through, and then the sound of brush crackling. Then nothing. Suddenly the wire on Mellas’s wrist was being tugged furiously again and again; there was no order, just wild tugging. Then they heard Cortell’s voice. He was nearly hysterical, but he was still careful to whisper. “I’m comin’ in. I’m comin’ in. Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, Lord Jesus.” They could hear him crawling along, hitting bushes in the dark. He was trying to follow the trail. “Oh, my Lord Jesus. Lieutenant? Jackson? Where are you?”

  “Over here, Cortell,” Mellas said in a normal voice, trying to control his fear. The radio net burst into activity. The whole company had heard the scream, and Fitch was trying to determine what was happening.

  Mellas answered. “It was us. I don’t know what’s happening yet. We’re aborting the rampage. Over.”

  “Roger that.”

  Someone reached out and pulled Cortell in. He was panting in short gasps. Jackson and Mellas crawled toward the sound, Mellas holding on to the handset and Jackson leading the way, the radio on his back. Both still had their poncho liners wrapped around them.

  “Hey, man,” Jackson said, “what’s the matter?”

  “Oh, Jesus, Jackson, it’s Williams,” Cortell gasped out. “A tiger got him.”

  “He all right?”

  “He ate him, man. He jumped him and dragged him off and ate him. Lord God, we was just layin’ there and all a sudden there’s Williams screamin’ and I hear this tiger bat him, like across the neck or somethin’, and then crunch him right through the head.” Mellas couldn’t see Cortell as he talked, but Cortell’s voice conveyed his horror. “Oh, Lord God, sweet Jesus.”

  Jackson moved over, held on to Cortell, and talked to him in low tones. “Hey, man, it’s all right. There’s nothin’ you can do. Hey, man, take it easy, huh? Be cool.”

  Mellas keyed the handset. “Bravo, this is Bravo One Actual. Our security was attacked by a tiger. We think he’s dead. Can’t see a goddamned thing. Over.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Fitch’s voice answered. “See if you can find him. Maybe he’s just mauled. Over.”

  “I tell you we can’t see shit out here. I can’t even see my radio and I’m using the goddamned thing. Over.”

  “Roger that. Wait one.”

  Mellas waited, sightless. “Jackson, tell everyone to set in tight and keep their ears open. Get Parker and Broyer in.”

  “Right, sir.” Jackson slipped off the radio and crawled away, using the wire to guide him.

  “You all right, Cortell?” Mellas asked into the blackness.

  “Yes sir,” Cortell’s voice came back. “I’m OK now. Jesus, sir, I hope he ain’t dead, but I heard his head go. I think it just popped open, sir.”

  The radio hissed a static burst. Fitch’s voice came out of the handset. “We can shoot you some illumination rounds. Maybe it’ll scare the cat off and you can find your man. Over.”

  “Sounds fine. Go ahead on it. Over.”

  “Roger that. Out.”

  Routine procedures like talking on radios seemed out of place to Mellas. Yet they didn’t change, even if a tiger attacked. Mellas couldn’t have been sure that anyone was still around him if it hadn’t been for the sound of breathing. “Well,” he whispered into nothingness, “nothing to do but wait. No sense getting all split up.”

  They waited five minutes. Then Fitch said “Shot” over the radio.

  “Shot. Out,” Mellas repeated. Soon they heard the funny whiffling noise of the illumination shell. There was a pop high in the air to their south as the tiny parachute deployed. Then they could hear the hiss of burning phosphorus. The trail and jungle were cast into eerie quavering relief. Jackson’s and Cortell’s faces shone through the mud and charcoal covering them. Jackson slipped back into the radio’s carrying straps and Mellas rose.

  “Let’s go. Cortell, you lead.”

  Cortell led off, rifle at the ready, Mellas directly behind him, followed by Jackson and the rest.

  They came to where Cortell and Williams had lain. The ground was slightly depressed, and both of their poncho liners were there as well as Williams’s rifle. There was a dark stain of blood on the grass.

  They heard another illumination round, whiffling unseen with the sound of a small Fourth of July rocket. Everything grew brighter again. As the round fell, vague diffuse shadows changed position.

  They came across Williams’s bush cover almost immediately. It was wet and stained with blood. It was also torn through. Mellas wondered if tigers defended their food and how far they dragged it to eat it. They kept looking, occasionally seeing a bit of blood. They fired off some rounds to frighten the tiger away. They had covered 100 meters when they came on Williams’s body. His legs and backside had been ripped open and partially eaten. It looked as though he’d been killed with one quick blow
to the skull, breaking his neck. Puncture wounds from long sharp teeth were sunk deeply into his face and temples.

  They wrapped the mess in Williams’s poncho liner and moved back up the trail toward the company, sweating and stumbling through the eerie light.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Until dawn, Fitch pleaded for a helicopter. No choppers were flying. The rain and fog had shut down operations all over northern I Corps. It would be suicidal to try to find Bravo Company in the mountains. The order to blow the ammo cache stood.

  The squad threw fingers to divide up Williams’s food and ammunition. Pollini won the throw for his poncho liner.

  Fredrickson and Bass wrapped Williams’s body with comm-wire to keep the torn pieces together. The body looked like beef in a cold storage locker, hardened blood mixed with pale skin and exposed meat. They tied the ankles, knees, elbows, and wrists closely together and then wrapped the torso in a poncho, leaving the arms and legs out. They tied the arms and legs to a long pole so they could carry the body, swinging, beneath it. Fredrickson wired Williams’s head, which had been lolling loose inside the poncho, next to the pole so it wouldn’t throw the carriers off balance.