Napalm Dreams

by John F. Mullins

  Stankow grinned. “Same thing we were gonna do. Only fast.”

  Turner forced himself to dig his elbows into the dirt, using them and his good leg to move slowly, achingly forward. Now there was pain, from the jaw, from the hip, from every-place, it seemed, on his body.

  Easier just to lie here, let it happen, he thought.

  No! That’s just what they want you to do. They know somebody is going to try to come and get you. You lie here, they’ll end up killing someone else.

  Crawl, damnit!

  A round smacked into the dirt two inches in front of his face, kicking dirt into his eyes. Then another, and a third, all three within an inch of one another. Slow, measured shots.

  Playing with me now, Turner thought. Telling me he can take my head off, anytime he wants. Telling me to lie still, don’t move.

  “Fuck you, Jack,” he tried to say, his swollen tongue filling his mouth so thoroughly it came out as a grunt.

  He crawled forward.

  Staff Sergeant Benjamin “Bucky” Epstein finally reached the gun position toward which he’d been crawling. The Montagnard crew was nowhere in sight. Probably in a bunker, he thought, waiting for the next attack. Don’t blame them. The position was terribly exposed, as it almost had to be to be effective.

  He was relieved to see that the 106-millimeter recoilless rifle—stolen from the First Cavalry Division—seemed to be unharmed. The 106, a direct-fire weapon, was mounted on a little hill at almost the exact center of the camp. It had to be mounted high to be able to clear the structures around it both for its trajectory and because the backblast when it fired would rip the top right off a bunker or tear a man in two. The lower part, along with ammunition stores, was shielded by a triple wall of stacked sandbags, and it was behind these that he now took cover.

  In successive bobs, looking like a duck continually diving beneath the surface of a pond, he determined that the .50-caliber spotter rifle was loaded, and that a round of high explosive was in the tube of the 106.

  Now, he sent his thoughts out to the unseen sniper, where the hell are you?

  “Ready?” Sloane asked.

  Stankow grinned. “Vy not?”

  Sloane took another deep breath. Stray thoughts ran through his mind.

  Is this going to be it? Am I going to die here on this godforsaken piece of ground, trying to help a man I don’t even like? Will anybody recognize what we did here? Will anyone care?

  Will it get me what I want?

  And the answer came back, a resounding NO!

  Then best I don’t die, he told himself, even as he scrambled up over the edge of the trench, barely aware that Stankow was only fractions of a second behind him.

  It was like one of his nightmares, the one where he was fleeing some unknown enemy that sometimes took on the look of his father, the one who, if it caught you, would do some unimaginable evil. And you were trying so hard to get away, but your legs felt like they were moving through thick molasses, feet sticking to the ground so hard you had to use all your strength to pull them out, and all you wanted to do was lie down and let it happen, but you couldn’t, and you kept going simply because there was no other choice, and OH, GOD, here it comes….

  The sniper, well hidden under a canopy of freshly picked leaves and branches some six hundred meters out, cursed as he tried to track the runners through the relatively small field of view of the scope on his Dragunov rifle. He wished he had the Leatherman scope they’d shown him back in school, captured from a Marine sniper outside Da Nang. But the Russian instructors had used the Leatherman only to show how superior was their own technology. And truly, the optics had seemed better. But only when shooting at stationary targets.

  Not against people like this, who seemed to have wings on their feet.

  His first round went somewhere that he could not see, and his spotter told him he was inches—inches!—behind the bigger one.

  Never mind. Another round was already in the chamber—the advantage of having a semiautomatic rifle instead of the bolt actions the Americans favored. And there were eight more behind that. All he had to do was hit one of them. Then the other wouldn’t be able to pull both men to safety. He would have to either abandon the attempt or pull them one at a time out of the exposed zone.

  Either way, he would win. One more American-Killer medal. More whispers around the campfire, the other soldiers eyeing him with almost superstitious awe. He sighted through the scope again, this time allowing for six inches more lead. He pulled the trigger.

  This is it, Sloane thought as they reached Turner. No way in hell is he going to miss again.

  Six rounds had been fired at them since they’d entered the open area. Each one getting closer and closer. The only reason, he supposed, they hadn’t already been hit was that Stankow and he were varying their pace, moving as erratically as possible. But now they’d have to try to scoop up Turner and make the other twenty-five yards to the safety of the nearest trench.

  They’d never make it. One or both of them was going to take a bullet, and then it would all be over.

  He considered his options. Keep on running seemed to be the best. No one could blame him for refusing to die for no reason. Turner was a goner. He would shortly bleed to death. Did it make any sense for them to join him?

  With a groan he grabbed Turner’s left arm just as Stankow grabbed his right. The sergeant seemed impossibly heavy. Was he already dead? Was all this going to be for nothing?

  Turner groaned in pain as they hoisted him, each wrapping an arm around his shoulders, moving forward as quickly as possible as they did so.

  It wasn’t going to be quick enough.

  Now! the sniper told himself as he centered the reticle on the head of the heavy one, then moved it two inches forward. His concentration was so intense that he paid no attention to his spotter, who screamed in fear as a heavy round smashed into the tree inches above their heads. A puff of white smoke, for a second obscuring his vision. He cursed, again took up the sight picture.

  It all ends here, he thought.

  Bucky Epstein had finally caught the muzzle flash of the sniper rifle. He centered the spotter scope on the spot, fired the .50-caliber spotter round. The tracer arced outward, seemingly slow in its passage but in reality moving at twenty-six hundred feet per second. It finally hit a tree just above the spot where he’d seen the flash, the white phosphorous smoke bright against the green.

  Good enough for government work, he thought, and fired the main gun.

  Sloane and Stankow heard the roar of the recoilless rifle, followed shortly thereafter by the far-off impact of the high-explosive shell. They were dragging Turner toward the nearest trench, both tensed against the impact of the bullet they knew had to be on its way.

  Ten feet, fifteen, twenty. And still no bullet. For a moment Sloane allowed himself just a little bit of hope.

  Then came a scattering of small-arms fire, kicking up dirt in random patterns around them. Not out of danger yet.

  But this was not the precision fire that they’d been waiting for. It was a bunch of NVA, cheated of their prize, trying by barrage to take it back. This was chance fire. And chance was all they needed.

  And suddenly it was there. He dropped down into the trench, pulling Turner gently in behind him, as Stankow did the same from the other side.

  It was over. The firestorm died almost as quickly as it had started.

  He would have laughed in joy, but didn’t have enough air left in his lungs.

  Chapter 3

  Though he had done it many times, it never ceased to amaze Finn McCulloden how quickly you could get chilled riding in the open door of a Huey. Down in the jungle, hundreds of feet below, it would be so hot you’d suck the bottom right out of a canteen after walking a couple of hundred meters, your tiger-stripe fatigues blossoming with white salt stains. Here, the wind whistling by at over a hundred knots, you always cursed yourself for not wearing a sleeping sweater.

  No matter. He’d be back
in the heat soon enough, and probably wouldn’t have had time to take the sweater off and store it anyway.

  He wondered how many hundreds of North Vietnamese troops were watching the flight overhead, watching and waiting. They wouldn’t be potting any stray shots, not unless they were fairly certain it would do some good. The “snakes,” Cobra gunships that accompanied the formation, made sure of that. They just loved to swarm on some poor, unsuspecting troop who made such a foolish mistake.

  A patrol had once found a shot-up North Vietnamese lieutenant, still raging about the stupidity of his troops. “I told them, no shoot at skinny helicopter,” he told his captors. “But they no listen. Now look.” And he pointed to a wiped-out platoon, bodies already swelling from the jungle heat.

  No, the danger wasn’t here, not at least unless the NVA had managed to move in some of the radar-guided ZSU-23s that were increasingly showing up. In such a case, the first they’d know about it would be when the first round exploded somewhere under the Plexiglas of the cockpit, with the rest of the burst walking down the fuselage. In which case, there wouldn’t be time to worry about it anyway.

  No, the danger would come when they swung around, dropped altitude, and started flying down the riverbed. The snakes would be providing suppressive fire, but if the enemy was dug in, as they were likely to be, the suppressive fire of rockets and miniguns wasn’t going to do all that much good.

  He couldn’t imagine that they were going to make it unscathed. The only question was, could they make it at all?

  Somewhere deep in his brain was the question, should we be doing this? Some might have argued that the camp was lost anyway, that one Mike Force company wasn’t going to do much to help. Why send good after bad?

  It was a measure of how things were, and how they’d always been among the members of the Special Forces, that such things were kept to the back of the brain, like some dirty little secret. Your friends were in trouble, you went in to get them. That’s just how it was. No matter if the “friend” you were going in to help was a complete stranger, or as had happened at least once, it was someone who had been caught screwing your wife back at Fort Bragg.

  The ship banked a hard left and started losing altitude. His gut tightened up as it always did, muscles squeezing the diaphragm so tight he had to forcibly gasp for air. The Montagnards sitting next to him, almost as one, tucked the Buddhas they wore around their necks between their teeth. If you died with Buddha in you mouth, they had told him, you were assured of reaching nirvana.

  Often he wished he had his own religion in which to believe. Unfortunately, he didn’t. The Southern Baptist preachers of his youth had permanently turned him off anything to do with God or the hereafter. He’d told one particularly persistent chaplain, there to bless the troops before a combat operation—never mind that there wasn’t a Christian in the bunch—that of course he believed in the hereafter.

  I plan to be live so long, I’ll be here after you’re gone, he’d said.

  False bravado. Now he was as frightened as he’d ever been. He didn’t want to die, felt that the universe simply couldn’t exist outside him. The thought of not-being jangled with his here-and-now, with no room for compromise.

  Down now, almost on the treetops. The chopper had to flare up to miss a particularly tall one, scattering the monkeys inhabiting the upper branches into chittering flight.

  I know how you feel, he told them.

  And then they were down into the riverbed, the trees now flashing by on both sides, the chopper fire-walled. Hell, he thought, they don’t have to shoot us. All it would take would be a good strong wire strung across the stream. No way to see it in aerial photos, no time for the pilot to avoid it even if he did catch a glimpse of taut-strung metal. Down they’d go, the crash killing them all. Then the fuel would go, which would cook off all the ordnance. All a Bright Light team would find, assuming they could ever get in there in the first place, would be chunks of tooth and bone. He knew. He’d had to recover remains of just such crashes often enough.

  Behind them the other choppers dropped down into the riverbed. Smart guys, he thought of the NVA who must now be taking them into their sights, attempting to judge the necessary lead to bring down the fast-moving choppers. One ship might get through, but the ones following are sure to run into the burst. Get one, and the others are going to have to try like hell to avoid it, there being scant seconds to pull pitch and get up over the wreckage.

  And still he hadn’t heard the telltale spang of bullet meeting sheet metal. He wasn’t much of a gambler, but would have bet a couple of months’ pay that they would be taking heavy fire by now.

  Up front Cozart looked for all the world as if he were taking a pleasure trip, stick held loosely in his hand, swerving just in time to match the winding course of the river, his mouth moving in a steady stream of conversation with the other pilots.

  Finn knew just how deceiving the impression was. He’d gotten drunk enough with Wes Cozart to know he was as scared as anyone else there. His hindbrain would be chattering in fear, just as Finn’s was now. But what he called his “manual override” would be in charge, doing exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment. You didn’t have that, he’d said to Finn, your fear will take over. Then you’ll make a mistake. And it will be your last one.

  The snakes were holding fire, conserving ammunition while they waited for a target. If it hadn’t been for the wind roaring through the door and the whop of the blades, it would have been eerily quiet.

  Finn recognized the characteristic bend in the river that marked the halfway point, flashing by underneath as Cozart neatly banked the chopper. Maybe, just maybe, Wes had been right. Maybe the NVA commander wouldn’t have thought anyone so foolish as to come up the riverbed.

  Which meant, of course, that they would be concentrated around the camp. Right under where they’d have to come up and over the trees to get to the LZ. And by now the watchers who were absolutely sure to be beneath them would have radioed the warning.

  The easy way is always mined, he remembered an old team sergeant saying. Never more true than today.

  He saw the final checkpoint coming up just as a stream of green tracers reached up toward the chopper, the gunner quickly adjusting for lead. Here it comes, he thought.

  A Cobra pilot who just happened to be in the right place at the right time centered the spot in his sights and let go a burst of minigun fire, the sound like an elephant fart. Every fifth round was a tracer, the gun shooting so fast that it looked like a hose of fire. The last green tracer winked out just behind the tail boom.

  And amazingly, there was no other willing to take the chance. Scared them enough? Finn wondered.

  Not likely. He had a great deal of respect for the men down beneath them, particularly when it came to discipline. Likely they would be just as frightened as he, but they would hold their positions, obey their orders, until they could not.

  Just like him. Just like the troops he led.

  Nope, he thought. They’re just waiting. Likely that last gunner didn’t get the word and paid the price for it. Always that 10 percent.

  Cozart was pulling pitch again, the chopper straining to come up over the trees. Finn caught his first glimpse of the camp, looking more like a derelict refugee village than a fighting institution. Fires flared here and there, and a heavy pall of smoke obscured the south perimeter. Two hundred meters to the wire, he estimated, and another hundred to the LZ. Zigzag trenches everywhere outside the wire, with hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of rifles, machine guns, and rocket launchers pointed directly at his scared ass.

  He realized he was, inexplicably, smiling.

  Stankow cocked his head, listening. “Choppers coming in,” he said. He bent back to his work, trying to splint Billy Joe Turner’s leg so movement wouldn’t cause any more damage.

  Sloane listened. Sure enough, there was the whop-whop of an approaching Huey.

  He could only hope that the team, what was left of it, would t
ake care of the matter. Right now he couldn’t do much. No radio, no means of communication at all, unless perhaps you wanted to sprint across that open ground again…

  No. His bravery was gone, emptied out of him like water from a broken crock. He was content to stay here in the trench, help Stankow with Turner, try not to think about what might come next.

  “Ve’ll have to get him to the LZ,” Stankow said. “Get him out of here. No more fighting for you, my friend.”

  Turner glared at him with the one eye that wasn’t covered by the clumsy bandage Stankow had wrapped around his head in an effort to stop the profuse bleeding from his mouth and jaw. His tongue was far too swollen to say anything, though it was clear that he wanted to.

  They’d gotten Turner into the shelter of what was left of the trench leading from the medical bunker, only to find the entire building had collapsed. Stankow had rooted around long enough to find morphine, serum albumin, and an assortment of bandages. Turner had asked with his eyes about Otis Matthesen, the senior medic, whom he had heard crying for help.

  Stankow just shook his head. Matthesen’s arm had been taken off at the shoulder by a fragment of the rocket. He’d bled to death while they had been in the race with the sniper.

  If Turner had been standing right next to him, Stankow knew, he wouldn’t have been able to help. There was simply not enough limb left to put a tourniquet on.

  But he also knew that Turner would forever blame himself for not getting there in time. As he would probably have, himself. That was just the way things were.

  He looked up over the trench again, this time seeing the bulbous nose of the Huey approaching, not a hundred yards out. Becker ran out of the command bunker and popped a yellow smoke. The pilot adjusted for wind direction, then quickly set the bird down, followed within seconds by another chopper. The skids hadn’t touched the ground when the people spilled off. Stankow spotted a tall figure.