“And the camp?” he asked, shaking away the anger and concentrating upon the matter at hand.
“Only thing we can reach them with is the one-seven-fives,” the DivArty commander replied.
“Shit!” Gutierrez swore. The 175mm cannon had tremendous range, dropped a shell containing over a hundred pounds of explosive, and with its largely automated firing system could pump out those shells rather quickly. It had originally been designed for the European battlefield, its primary purpose the delivery of tactical nuclear shells into the Russian tank battalions the planners continually expected to sweep across the plains of northern Germany. And therein lay the problem.
Tactical nuclear shells, obviously, had a tremendous damage radius. It wouldn’t matter a whit if the impact point for such a shell was hundreds of meters off that which was planned, if you were going to destroy everything within a kilometer radius anyway. Thus the designers and manufacturers hadn’t had as a first priority the accuracy of the weapon.
Put quite simply, you could not depend upon the one-seven-five for close-in work. Call it within fifty meters of your position, as you often had to do since the North Vietnamese had long since come up with the tactic of “hugging the belt” of their adversaries, and you were as likely to have it drop on your own position as you were theirs.
This meant, of course, that the camp defenders could not depend upon artillery to keep the attackers out of the wire. Its only use would be to pound rear areas, in the sometimes forlorn hope it would hit something vital. Unlikely in the extreme, he knew, since the NVA would be thoroughly burrowed into secure caves in those rear areas.
“Sorry,” the DivArty lieutenant colonel said. He was well aware of the limitations of the piece. Way back, when he had been a young forward observer, he had seen firsthand the effects of trying to call in a one-seven-five strike as danger-close. Some of the shells had hit where they were supposed to. Some had blown up empty jungle. And one had landed squarely upon the command element of the forward company. He had been lucky enough to be on one of the outposts. Otherwise he would not have been there at that moment.
Not that he was pleased to be. He was as frustrated as the Green Beret commander. He supposed he should have been grateful for the position, a lieutenant colonel in what was usually the slot occupied by a full bull, or even a brigadier general. But with the drawdown, those officers were studiously avoiding positions so pregnant with the possibility of disaster.
If everything went right, it would be a bright spot on an already distinguished record. If it went wrong, as was completely likely, he would never make O-6, much less flag rank.
Worse than that, men like himself, men who still thought the profession of arms was honorable, who continued to put themselves in harm’s way, would die. He might live through not making general. He didn’t think he would ever get over knowing something like that was his own fault.
“What about ARA?” Gutierrez asked.
“That I can help you with.” ARA, the Aerial Rocket Artillery battalion, was made up of heavily armed Huey helicopters. Each bird carried twenty-four 2.75-inch rockets in pods slung under each door and could fire the rockets individually, in a ripple, or in salvos. And the ARA battalion had been kept up to nearly full strength, someone in the command structure realizing that with the drawdown they had to have something to guard against disaster.
“Only one problem,” the DivArty commander continued.
Gutierrez’s expression was wary. What now?
“Weather’s supposed to turn to shit tonight. Meteo is calling for zero-zero.”
Gutierrez shook his head. One thing was just piling atop another. Not that he was surprised. It took no feat of logical thinking to realize the North Vietnamese would know about the weather as well. The monsoon season was already late, which meant when it came in, it would do so with a vengeance. Once the clouds closed in around the mountain camp, they wouldn’t open up again for weeks or perhaps months. The choppers, of course, had no integral radar capability, couldn’t fly in conditions like that without the very probable result of crashing headlong into a mountain.
“Shit,” Gutierrez said.
That about neatly sums it up in one word, the artillery-man thought. Shit.
Finn McCulloden, now back in the command bunker, received the news from Gutierrez. “Well, ain’t this just ducky!”
“I’m still working on it,” Gutierrez said. “What else can I get you? Ammo, rations, water? Best try to get it in before the weather closes in.”
“How about calling up God and getting us some pre-plot lightning,” Finn replied. “Failing that, let’s go back to yesterday and start all over again.”
“I’ll see what the chaplain can do,” Gutierrez said, and they both laughed. Chaplains didn’t go out where the Mike Force went. Bad for their health.
“For the shape we’re in, we’re not in bad shape. Everything’s dug in, the perimeter defenses look reasonable, we’ve got plenty of ammo, chow, medical supplies, water. We can hold out, they don’t throw any real shit in the game.”
Finn wished he was as confident as he was trying to sound. In truth, if the NVA came at them in waves, as they tended increasingly to do these days, they’d be within the wire in seconds, crossing past the claymore belt atop the bodies of the fodder they would have put in the first ranks. Once past the claymores, it would be every man for himself, little battles that would decide the overall outcome breaking out all over the camp.
Policy was to retreat to the inner perimeter at that point. That would consist of the command bunker and the concentric fighting positions surrounding it, all protected by yet more razor wire and another band of claymores.
And if they got past the inner perimeter?
Sorry ’bout that, he thought.
What the hell, Finn, he told himself. Who promised you that you were going to live forever?
“Even if the weather does close in,” Gutierrez was saying, “we can still do Sky Spots. B-57s out of Tan Son Nhut are standing by, got five-hundred-pounders.”
That was something, anyway. Every camp in South Vietnam was registered on the Sky Spot system, had reflectors placed in strategic locations, reflectors that would show up loud and clear on the airplane radar systems. The man on the ground would give a reference, tell the plane azimuth and distance from this or that reflector, and soon a bomb would come whistling down. In earlier days the system hadn’t been completely perfected; bombs might come down on you as easily as they did on someone else, but over the years the system had been fine-tuned. If you didn’t have too many wind shifts caused by unpredictable currents in the mountains, if the humidity didn’t affect the trajectory of the bomb, if you had a sharp pilot and bombardier, it could be very effective. Within a certain distance, that was. No one in his right mind was going to call in a Sky Spot on danger-close.
“Rest of the battalion jump off yet?” Finn asked.
“Yeah,” Gutierrez replied. “So far, so good. Very light resistance—not even enough to call it delaying tactics.”
“That must be making Charlie Secord feel good.” Secord was Finn’s second-in-command, a junior captain who had earned his bones with Delta Project. And the comment was sarcastic. Light resistance certainly meant that the NVA were conserving their forces for a big fight. They’d shadow the battalion with spotters and trail watchers, firing signal shots to indicate direction of travel and proximity. Secord could expect a big ambush somewhere along the way. But he would know that.
“He’s making haste slowly,” Gutierrez said. “Said he knew you’d understand.”
Indeed Finn did. It would do little good to rush the other two companies to the camp only to have them destroyed along the way. Killing a lot of people to save a few had never seemed a good tactic to Finn McCulloden.
“So you think they’re going to try it tonight?” Gutierrez continued.
“Hard to say. What you told me about the weather makes it likely, but we haven’t had any artillery or rocket
barrages for the last couple of hours. Seems like they’d be trying to soften us up more. Occasional mortar round comes in, just to piss us off, that’s about it.”
“Maybe the air is keeping their heads down?”
“Shit! Be the first time it stopped them. Up at Khe Sanh, they kept shooting even when the B-52s came in. Any chance of a little Arc Light, by the way?”
Arc Light was the code name for B-52 bomber strikes. The B-52 carried 108 five-hundred-pound bombs, and each strike consisted of six planes flying in staggered formation. An Arc Light strike saturated an area the size of the Washington Mall from the Potomac to the Capitol. Finn had participated in a number of bomb-damage assessment (BDA) missions, flying into the strike zone while the ground was still smoking. If they were lucky enough in their targeting, catching the unwary enemy above ground or in shallow defensive positions, there would be virtually no survivors. Too well he remembered the sight of loops of intestine hanging from shattered trees, like bloody ornaments. Anyone not caught by shrapnel was generally killed by concussion, and those few who were far enough away to suffer the latter to a lesser degree wandered around like zombies.
Of course, if the NVA commanders had seen fit to burrow into the ground, as they increasingly did these days, many of the soldiers would be virtually untouched. And they would come swarming out like a hill of disturbed ants, eager to exact vengeance on the BDA team.
Not that Finn blamed them. He thought he’d probably feel the same way.
“I’m told no. Rumor has it, they’re busy up north. Bringing the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table, they say. And a merry Christmas to all.”
Damn, Finn thought. I’d completely forgotten it was Christmas.
Back in the World, people would just now be settling in on couches, complaining about how much they’d eaten. Staring dully at the detritus of ripped-up wrapping paper, wincing at the noise of the toys, trying to find something good on television.
And that evening Walter Cronkite would be on, with the latest film from Vietnam, the latest statistics on killed and wounded. Sounding appropriately magisterial and disapproving of the whole effort.
And unless the viewers had someone actually involved in the fighting, they really wouldn’t give a shit. After all, those people were soldiers, they would be saying. They knew what they were getting into.
And some of them, Finn hoped it was only a few, would be nursing their own hatreds. Hoping that even more of the warmongering bastards would die, that the ever-valorous and brilliant North Vietnamese would cause such terrible damage to the war machine that it would never recover. These were the ones who would spit upon a man in uniform, call him a baby-killer, rejoice in the sight of missing limbs, tell the man they wished it had been worse.
Finn had, despite warnings from the processing detachment in San Francisco, chosen to wear his uniform home on leave, the last time he’d been back to the States. Mostly he’d just attracted hateful stares. But one particularly aggressive young man, his hair long as was the fashion of the times, his eyes clearly showing the effects of his drug of choice, had pushed his way through the crowd, hacked up a great clot of phlegm, and spat it upon Finn’s ribbons.
Luckily, the policemen who had pulled Finn off him had been veterans. They’d suggested in the strongest possible terms that the captain get himself to the airport and out of the city, and to avoid passing through it on his way back to Vietnam.
His own father and mother, back in Arkansas, would be wondering what he was doing, hoping he was okay. Wondering, as they always did, why he kept going back over there, when anyone could tell he’d done his duty, and more, a long time ago.
Pressed to explain it, he couldn’t. Not even to himself. The closest he could come was that there was a war on, and his friends were busily fighting it, and if he were to quit now, he would always wonder if he should have done more. Intellectually, it made little sense, and he could admit that.
But intellect had little to do with it when a friend died. Too many of them already had. More would. Perhaps he would too.
No time to think about that now.
“Anything else you need?” Gutierrez was asking.
“A Christmas miracle?”
“Fresh out of those. Good luck, my friend. God be with you.”
I’ve had enough of this, Sloane thought. Captain McCulloden was still ignoring him, seeming lost in thought after signing off his conversation with Colonel Gutierrez.
“If I might have a word with you, sir?” he said, forcing himself into McCulloden’s reverie.
“Lieutenant Sloane,” Finn said. “I’ve been intending to get around to you. Come walk with me.”
He turned and left the bunker, giving Sloane no choice but to follow. Does he know how much I hate him? Sloane wondered. And not only him, but all of them. Treating me like a child, like a know-nothing. Just because I didn’t serve in Bad Tolz or Panama or some other godforsaken place, didn’t have to hump an ANGRC-109 radio, didn’t get drunk on ouzo in Greece, or any of the other damned things they keep talking about.
He often felt like a very junior member of some exclusive club, a club moreover, that didn’t really want him as a member, but had to put up with him for a little while until they could get rid of him.
I’m just as good as any of you! he wanted to shout. His freezing up at the thought of going once more into the sniper’s killing zone was now forgotten. They didn’t need me at that point, he had told himself. After all, if McCulloden had been killed helping Turner to the chopper, who would have taken charge? They taught you that back in West Point—never sacrifice all the command element. That these people would ignore such a basic tenet just showed again how superior he was to them.
McCulloden stopped a little down the trench, turned to face him. A small smile curled on his lips. “Wanted to tell you, I thought you did a good job, you and Stankow. Billy Joe would have been a goner. He and I go back a long way—hate to lose him.”
Sloane, disarmed, stopped the complaint he had been formulating. So someone did appreciate him, after all! It was a strange feeling.
“You probably know that Colonel Gutierrez wanted you relieved,” Finn said. Sloane opened his mouth to protest, was stopped by a gesture.
“I don’t think we need to do that,” Finn continued. “There were some stupid things done here, things that got us in the position we’re in now, but I don’t know that all of it is your fault. I did some stupid things as a lieutenant, but I always had a couple of the senior NCOs keeping me out of trouble. Looks like that didn’t happen here. Don’t know if they didn’t try, or you didn’t listen. Going to give you the benefit of the doubt. You agree with that?”
Sloane indicated that he did. He was almost pathetically grateful. Almost grateful enough to tell the captain, who he suddenly realized was only a couple of years older than himself, the truth.
But not quite.
McCulloden, after giving Sloane his orders and responsibilities, had also considered telling him the truth. That the only reason he hadn’t been relieved was that they were going to need every rifle they could put on the line. Sloane didn’t seem to lack for bravery—only good sense. Finn had already decided to put both him and SFC Stankow in for the Bronze Star for valor for their actions with Turner. If he lived long enough to write up the citations.
He looked at his watch, shaking it to make sure it wasn’t stopped. Looked up at the sun to confirm the reading, though it didn’t seem possible. Yep, not even at zenith.
It seemed impossible that so little actual time had passed since the briefing that morning. It should have been days, but was only hours. Heat waves shimmered off the runway, a harbinger of things to come. The jungle beyond rippled like a live thing, green and full of menace. If you looked hard enough, you could see the jaws, waiting to rend.
Or you could see the spots where the bombs had struck, the shattered timbers, the yellowed vegetation that you thought looked like cat’s eyes.
It was eas
y to give rein to superstitions in this country. The local Montagnards, animists for the most part with a thin veneer of Christianity overlaid by French Catholic missionaries, believed everything had a life of its own. The trees spoke to one another, whispering of times gone by and the puny efforts of the worms below. The jungle cats, grown fat with the leavings of war, howled at night with the voices of the dead. Even the ground seemed to have a life of its own, producing fungi that would quickly overwhelm the left-behind corpse, making it nothing more than a bump in the forest floor.
The leavings of a thousand years of war called to you, asked you to join them in the eternal rest you so richly deserved.
Would it be rest? Or would you be forever condemned to fight the battles over and over, skeletal shadows eternally clashing, destroyed, rent to shards, only to begin again upon the next celestial day.
Finn shook himself. Didn’t pay to have too much of an imagination in this business. You dealt with facts, with the things you could touch, hear, see. The things you could put a bullet into.
“Cap’n?”
He turned to see Washington and Inger. “Got something going here,” Washington said. “You need to come and take a look.”
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