Night Work: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 2)

by Dennis Foley

  Two years earlier he and others used to complain about the discomfort they felt in the Vietnamese tiger-striped fatigues they used to wear. Things had not improved by changing to the American cammies with the ripstop cotton. Hollister wasn’t sure, but he thought they might be even hotter.

  Sounds. They were so different in III Corps. When he had been in the Highlands there were rain-forest sounds. But the collective sound there had not been much sound at all.

  Now he was listening to a sky full of the complete inventory of American aircraft. He could hear vehicle noises and flocks of mud ducks and cocks. Since he had arrived in Hau Nghia Province, there hadn’t been an hour when he hadn’t heard a rooster crow.

  He didn’t like the feeling of being surrounded by things that could compromise his location, his security, and his life. He knew that many of the problems that might make his tour difficult would come from the overpopulation of his AO.

  Now Hollister could feel someone watching him. Turning back toward the perimeter, he saw Harrold staring at him. Harrold put his palms together and raised them to the side of his face. It was the signal for Hollister to try to get some sleep.

  In the patrol order, Harrold had insisted that they try to get some rest during the days because he feared they would be out five full days—the length of patrol for which they had supplies. He made a point of explaining how his greatest worry in the AO on this patrol was complacency and fatigue. He knew that if he didn’t force patrol members to get some sleep during the day, they would doze off at night—a fast way for a patrol to get overrun.

  Hollister would be one of two to sleep at this time. He knew that the other four would be awake and that he would be able to get in at least two hours of sleep if he could ignore the discomforts of lying on the damp ground in the baking tropical heat. He smiled for a second, thinking how good the kudzu and red clay back at Fort Benning would look now.

  Harrold reached over and tapped Hollister on the foot. He then handed him a set of binoculars and pointed off toward a point far up the canal, toward the Cambodian border, nine thousand meters west of them.

  Clearing the fog from his deep and dreamless sleep, Hollister sat up and wiped the sweat and grime from his face. He took the binos and found the right focal length on the thumbscrew. Using his knees like a tripod, he steadied the binos in the direction Harrold had indicated. There, at a distance of at least two thousand meters, a single Vietnamese boy sat astride the broad back of a water buffalo. Hollister didn’t like the sight of either one. He knew how dangerous they both could be.

  The boy was pretending to be tending the water buffalo and not paying attention to much else. The thing that made the scene ring with a dull tone was that there was no reason for the boy to be tending the animal there. It was not farmland nor was it a place where the boy might either feed or wash the animal. The kid, who looked about twelve, was a lookout of some sort.

  “Think he saw us move in here?” Harrold asked in a voice that was barely audible, though spoken only inches from Hollister’s ear.

  Shaking his head no, Hollister watched the boy kick the water buffalo with an almost imperceptible flutter of his left heel. The animal responded by clumsily moving closer to the empty canal.

  He handed the binoculars back to Harrold and stood up slowly. He pointed his index finger at himself, and then toward the limbs on a nearby tree. He next pointed upward.

  Harrold got the message, but didn’t speak. He took Hollister’s M79 and helped him get out of his web gear.

  Hollister took the binoculars back from Harrold and began to climb the small tree. He was only able to get six feet off the ground before he ran out of limbs that would support his weight and branches that would conceal him from the boy—or anyone else who might be watching their position.

  A second look through the binoculars confirmed Hollister’s suspicions. The boy was maneuvering the water buffalo to a point where he could step down and be right at a small sluice gate that separated the dry canal from a bend in a substantial but wandering stream that went off in another direction—eventually spilling into the Dong Ngai River.

  He took the binos from his face and looked around. It was getting late, and farmers were finishing their chores, packing up bundles of produce and hand tools for their walk home at the day’s end. Hollister knew the boy could crack the gate and start flooding the canal, and it would be after dark before anyone would discover the flooding. For all Hollister knew, it could take hours for the rising water level to be noticed. That would give the VC a wide window to use the canal.

  Hollister saw the boy slide down off the back of the huge water buffalo and stand next to it for a moment, looking around casually while flicking a small bamboo switch to keep the flies away from the animal’s eyes and backside.

  After a few moments of shepherding the animal, the boy bent over and splashed some river water on its back, as if to cool him from the sun’s baking rays. He did it three more times, and the fourth time he reached out and pulled the wooden locking pin from the gate, then raised it slightly. The water squirted through the slot horizontally and began to eat away at the loosely packed earth on the far bank.

  The amount of water didn’t seem sufficient to fill the canal deeply enough for the VC to float skiffs. But Hollister couldn’t be sure.

  He watched the boy get back on the water buffalo and head off to the northwest, then he climbed down the tree.

  As soon as he was down, Hollister leaned over, took his gear back from Harrold, and whispered what he had just seen.

  As if they were both thinking the same thing, Hollister and Harrold looked at their wristwatches. It was just after six, and the sun was sinking quickly into Cambodia. Harrold smiled. They had guessed right, his expression seemed to say. He nodded his head at Hollister as if to say, “Good job.”

  By the time Hollister had slipped his rucksack straps loosely over his shoulders, settled back into his assigned position, and scanned his sector of fire, Harrold had finished writing a note, a situation report that would be passed to each member of the patrol so that he could understand what Hollister had seen and what it meant. It didn’t take them long to read the note and nod affirmatively—they were ready.

  By the time the note got back around to Hollister he could almost guess what Harrold had written, but he read it anyway. He wanted to make sure they were in agreement, not just close. The note read: BOY=VC. FILLING CANAL, GOOKS ALMOST SURE TO COME DOWN CANAL AFTER DARK. ACKNOWLEDGE.

  Hollister knew that he was going to like the way Harrold did things, and he hoped that the others were as good as Harrold was.

  Damn! As Hollister read the note and thought about Harrold’s performance, it came to him. The way to get enough water into the canal to use it quickly and delay anyone from discovering it and redraining it was to dam it somewhere before it spilled out.

  He hurriedly scribbled a note on the next page in Harrold’s notebook: BET THERE ARE A FEW VC AT FAR END DAMMING WATER!

  He began to write another sentence telling Harrold to call the guess in to Operations so they would send choppers out to look for the other half of the VC team. But he stopped. He had promised Harrold he would let him run his patrol and not pull rank on him. That meant not thinking for him or being too helpful.

  He put his pen back in his shirt pocket, returned the notebook to Harrold, and fought the urge to oversupervise the junior sergeant. He knew he would have to trust Harrold to make the right moves.

  After reading the note Harrold didn’t need to give Hollister the big grin and nod that he gave him. It was obvious from the expression on his face that he knew exactly what to do.

  Another page of the notebook was used to compose the most concise message Harrold could write. Hollister watched as he carefully chose his words and then reread them for completeness. He could see that Harrold had written the acronym S-A-L-U-T-E at the top of the page before drafting his message. It would help him make sure to include information on size, activity, locat
ion, uniforms, time/troops, and equipment.

  In less than two minutes Harrold had drafted and proofed the message and reached for the radio handset. He took off his floppy hat and wrapped it around the mouthpiece to make a kind of cup to surround his mouth as he transmitted the message.

  By dark the ground they were lying on was crawling with water leeches that had discovered their presence and traveled the few inches from the surrounding paddy water to the ledge they were on.

  Each man knew that for every five of them that they picked up and pitched back out into the water, at least one found its mark and was burrowing into fatigues, under belt lines, and down their boot tops. None of them had any confidence that they would make it through the night without feeding at least a couple of the quiet and slimy vampires.

  Night between Saigon and the Cambodian border was nothing like any Vietnam night Hollister had been in before. In every direction he could see lights. Cook fires, lamps, smoldering trash fires, headlights, chopper navigation lights, flares, and tracers—they all interrupted the dark. For no apparent reason, tracers would arc up into the sky. There were no targets for the fires of the South Vietnamese automatic rifle fire. And only on rare occasions would a stream of green Communist tracers whip up trying to hit a passing helicopter.

  The noises continued. There were night sounds of insects, plenty of frogs and crickets, but they were almost drowned out by the continuous and irritating high-pitched sputter of Honda motorbikes. Their sounds seemed to come from every direction but Cambodia. It was just another mental note that Hollister made. He was sure the sounds and the lights might be exploited in some way to help teams on the ground. He just didn’t know how at that moment.

  He pulled the unbuttoned sleeve of his fatigue shirt away from his watch and checked the time. It was after nine. Two things bothered Hollister. There was no sign of movement on the canal. And there had been no indication that any effort had been made to re-con the other end of the canal by chopper to see if the VC were damming it.

  The night seemed to drag on. Hollister tried every trick he knew to stay awake and still found himself drifting off with his eyes still open. It made him very angry with himself. It was a sign that he was tired, that the heat and newness of the humidity was getting to him. He looked around to see if the others knew he was having a hard time staying awake. No one seemed to even be looking in his direction. Still, setting the example was very important to him, no matter who was leading the patrol.

  Just then, Hollister felt a pebble bounce off his shoulder. It was Harrold trying to get his attention. He was allowing each man to get an hour’s sleep before midnight and one before sunrise. It was Hollister’s turn. He made an exaggerated nodding gesture to let Harrold know he understood him and was going to follow his instructions.

  Harrold then turned to a sleeping body just outside his reach and rolled over so he could gently wake him without startling him.

  It seemed as if it had only been a matter of seconds since Harrold had told Hollister to get some sleep. But someone was pulling on his trouser leg.

  Hollister sat up silently, but with a start. Must be something wrong, he thought. He looked at his watch. It had been just over an hour. He was back on. He turned over and looked back out toward the black where the canal would be, if he could see it. But the moon had set and visibility was severely reduced. As he began to look around the tiny perimeter, he caught something out of the corner of his eye. For a moment he didn’t believe he actually saw anything.

  He stopped moving and looked once more. There it was again—the glow of a cigarette cupped in a hand but glowing brightly as the smoker dragged on it.

  He turned to pass the word and came face-to-face with Harrold. The kid didn’t miss a thing. Hollister wondered if he had even taken the time to get some sleep himself.

  Without talking they both agreed that what they were watching was at least one person coming down the center of the canal, smoking a cigarette.

  Chapter 9

  THE CIGARETTE WENT OUT, and the figure in the dark continued down the canal toward the LRP position. Hollister stood up, full-length, his body pressed against a small tree to camouflage his form. With the binoculars he tried to determine if the smoker was alone or if there was someone following him in the canal. The binoculars were a small help in cutting through the dark, but he couldn’t be sure of what was in the canal.

  This upset him. He knew they couldn’t open up on the leading VC unless they were absolutely sure it was VC and that there was no other enemy element nearby that could swing out wide and attack the patrol. If they fired, anyone in the area could nail their location in a matter of minutes and bring accurate fire on them almost immediately. And the patrol would have nowhere to move since the green patch that concealed them was hundreds of meters from the next nearest clump. The flight time of their choppers would be at least twice the time it would take the VC to find, fix, and destroy the small team.

  The whole issue could have been avoided if they had their own choppers standing by, available to crank up and stand by for a contact call. But that wasn’t the case. IIFFV told Juliet Company that they would get choppers when they needed them, and that in the event of a contact they would get priority by declaring a tactical emergency to the chopper outfit assigned to support them. Another totally unacceptable feature of Hollister’s new company.

  Harrold whispered into Hollister’s ear, “Called for gunships to roll up the canal and fire up the VC.”

  And? Hollister shrugged.

  Sergeant Harrold turned his palms up, hoping the choppers would arrive on time and at the right location.

  Hollister raised the binoculars again and took another look at the approaching figure in the canal. The image had improved with the reduced distance, and Hollister could identify the figure as a Vietnamese carrying a rifle diagonally across his back and wearing a ChiCom ammo pouch on his chest.

  He poked the binoculars toward Harrold to let him see the VC, feeling better about considering the man in the canal a target.

  As he waited for Harrold, he tried to figure out an alternative to calling gunships or firing their own weapons at the VC. He thought that a single shot from a sniper rifle would do the job. But they didn’t have any. He made a mental note to check into it when they got back to Cu Chi.

  Harrold returned the binoculars to Hollister, who continued to watch the lone VC haul a small boat loaded with supplies. He again wished he had a scoped rifle with a trained shooter. It would allow them to get just one shot off and drop the VC without advertising their location.

  Suddenly, he spotted a second and then a third VC—evenly spaced about three minutes apart—almost out of sight of one another. They, too, were hauling supplies on the calf-deep water in the canal. Hollister looked back toward Harrold, who waved that he, too, had seen them.

  The luminous dial on Hollister’s watch read just after one A.M. And no choppers. They had waited for over forty minutes, and the first VC had made the turn in the canal in front of the team and was walking out of sight. The second VC was just approaching the turn, and the third was clearly in view behind him.

  After ten more minutes the sounds of the choppers grew out of the east. A few minutes later Hollister could make out the rotating beacon on the tail boom of the lead chopper.

  Harrold tried to establish commo with the chopper on the air-to-ground frequency and on the company frequency—with no luck. The choppers, two Huey gunships, locked onto the canal a couple of miles east of the team and started following it toward the bend in front of them.

  Every few thousand meters one of the choppers would break out of the formation and circle the other one, playing its chin light on the fields on either side of the canal. Every so often one of the choppers would fire a burst of machine-gun fire into clumps of vegetation in order to recon by fire.

  The search took over fifteen minutes to reach the LRP team, and Harrold still had not made contact with the choppers, even though he had tried a
ll their frequencies and even called back to Company Operations for help reaching them.

  Each man in the patrol was aware that the choppers were unsure of their location and that there was a chance they could stumble onto the patrol and mistake them for the VC. None of them wanted to think of the possible results. They had all seen the damage a pair of gunships could do in a matter of seconds.

  “Harrold! Choppers!” the RTO whispered loudly, to be heard over the sounds of the chopper blades and turbines.

  Hollister watched the reactions of the other team members as Harrold reached for the handset and spoke with the chopper pilots. Most were splitting their attention between the lost images in the canal and the choppers slowly crawling toward them.

  Harrold reached up to the left side of his harness and slipped his strobe light out of its upside-down carrier. He pulled the shield off the body of the strobe and attached it to the glass end that covered the high-intensity-light coil.

  By the time he stood up, the choppers were less than two hundred meters from the team and getting closer. Harrold turned on the strobe, and the high-pitched squeal cut the chopper noise. He raised the strobe and pointed it directly at the lead chopper. By the time the strobe had fired the second time, the lead chopper had turned off all its lights and turned them back on again—to let Harrold know he had them located.

  He hadn’t realized how long he had been holding his breath, but Hollister finally exhaled, releasing some of the tension in his chest.

  Harrold came to Hollister’s position and explained what had happened. It was a bust. The choppers had found nothing along the canal and had trouble with the communication because they were not given the right frequencies for the LRP team.

  Hollister nodded that he understood, but it was obvious he was not happy with the turn of events. To him it was a series of screwups that should not have happened. He was only consoled by the fact that there didn’t seem to be any fault on the side of the LRPs. He knew that all the problems would be his to solve as the new Operations officer for the LRP company.