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

by Dennis Foley

  “Deal.”

  The inspection of the landing area turned up some bad cracks in the hard-baked mud that could easily reach out and grab an ankle, but nothing that looked like a booby trap or any signs of mines or other antipersonnel devices.

  “I’ve seen all I need.”

  “Want to head home?”

  Looking at his watch, Hollister thought of what was on the schedule for the remainder of the day and clicked the floor button twice. He then folded up his map and slid it into the cargo pocket on the side of his trousers.

  “Lunch?”

  “No, I want to get back for mail call,” Hollister said.

  “You expecting someone to write to you?”

  “I always expect that, but mail call is the only place you can get a feel for what the troops are thinking.”

  Stanton reached a cruising altitude of fifteen hundred feet and leveled off for the trip back to Cu Chi. “What’s that mean?”

  “Means that when the troops are most themselves is waiting for mail call. Everyone shows up. There’s little in the way of demands on them, and you can get a feel for their morale by looking at how they move, dress, talk. You get a feel for how much kidding around is happening. It’s a better thermometer than a briefing, or a PT formation, or a reveille formation. They are more themselves there.”

  “How about at chow?”

  “Uh-uh. Not all of them eat all meals. That gives you a bad picture. Nobody misses mail call, and nobody is worried about how they are going to perform at mail call.”

  “You worry about that kinda stuff, don’t you, Hollister?”

  “You bet, man. Without them, we’d be out of a job.”

  They both laughed. But they both knew what he meant.

  Before the teams were launched, the team leaders were taken out to the training area to make an overflight recon of the landing zone.

  Back at Cu Chi everything progressed as if it were the start of a real patrol. Each of the teams sat lined up at the side of the chopper pad with their gear grounded in front of them.

  The team leaders went over the sequence of events while reinspecting the gear their teams would be taking with them.

  Hollister and Sangean stood at the doorway looking out at the scene from inside Operations. “So we’ll alternate supervising the inserts and then do the same thing with teams coming out,” Major Sangean said.

  “Yes, sir. That should allow each of us to get at least one look at each team.”

  “While you are up, I’ll be here. And vice versa.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “In the event we make contact, we drop what we can in terms of training and go for the situation.”

  “In case we get someone hurt—without contact?”

  “We’ll handle it like a battle injury. We’ve alerted Dust-Off that we might have a need to call them.”

  “I’ve been over there… ’cross the perimeter to their operations office myself,” Sergeant Kurzikowski added. “They know who we are, and I’m feelin’ pretty good about them. They seem to act like they care if we have problems out there.”

  “Nice to hear. We square on freqs and call signs?”

  “Yessir, and so are all the team leaders,” Kurzikowski said.

  A captain entered Operations. He was tall and wore a faded one-piece flight suit. He stopped, looked over Sangean and Hollister as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light inside. He snapped his baseball cap, topped with Senior Aviator’s wings, from his head and stuck his hand out to Major Sangean.

  “Major, I’m Keith, Scott Keith. I’m the air mission commander for today.”

  Sangean took his hand and looked over his shoulder toward the choppers landing and shutting down. “You were at the briefing?”

  “Yes, sir. I think I’m up on the mission, unless you folks have made any last-minute changes.” He smiled. “And I’m pretty sure we can handle just about anything you need—as long as we don’t exceed the fuel requirement I’ve laid on.”

  “Well, you’re gonna have to go over the last-minute stuff with Hollister here. Your people eat lunch yet?” Sangean asked.

  “Yes, sir. But we might be able to handle some coffee or cold drinks if you have ’em and if we have time.”

  Sangean looked at Hollister. “You call it.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to find any major changes, but let’s go over it again,” Hollister said, nodding at Sangean, then leading Keith back out the door toward the mess hall.

  On the pad and in the open field behind it stood two sets of insert choppers—one set cranked and one waiting. Hollister was already inside the C&C for the first lift, checking out the commo, his headset, and his own personal gear.

  He watched Team 1-5 load the insert slick, then he rechecked his notebook for an extra look at the call signs and frequencies. He knew he had the important ones written on his forearm in ballpoint pen, but didn’t want to trust the longevity of the markings on his own skin.

  He made one last-minute check of his own gear to be sure he had everything. He was wearing light web gear with ammo, first-aid packet, canteen, compass, and URC-10 radio. On the bench seat running the width of the chopper, he had secured his rifle with the seat belt. Under his jump seat he had wedged a PRC-77 radio and handset. He had learned never to trust his communications capability to a chopper. If it went down—so did his ability to get help beyond waving his arms at passing choppers.

  The 1-5 team leader, a slim redheaded buck sergeant named Nessen, was doing a decent job of loading his six-man team and communicating his readiness to the chopper’s peter pilot.

  Behind the insert ship, an empty chase ship gently rocked at flight idle. Inside, Hollister could make out the shadowed outline of 1st Platoon’s platoon sergeant, McCullen, who was riding as belly man.

  Hollister looked back toward the teams that were still waiting. They were from the 1st Platoon, and Hollister searched for the platoon leader, who was going out as a patrol member to get some more experience. Hollister spotted him in the third chalk. He had an unfortunate name for an infantry officer—Patten—spelling notwithstanding. Almost no one could pass up making some comment about it when meeting him. Hollister was happy that he was able to resist.

  Patten had spent six months in a rifle platoon with the 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta, and while he had as little rank as an officer could have, he did have some field experience. Seeing him suited up and in war paint was enough to satisfy Hollister that his instructions about officer training were being followed.

  “Clear?” Captain Keith, the command pilot, asked.

  “Clear left—clear right,” the door gunners replied, looking out their respective sides and to the rear.

  “We ready back there?” Keith asked over the intercom.

  Hollister raised his hand and waved affirmatively. He knew the copilot would see the signal and pass it to the aircraft commander.

  “Roger that,” Keith said over the intercom as he brought the fairly new Huey D model up to a point where the skids lost their spread and the chopper was barely exerting any weight onto the pad.

  “Okay, people. We are on our way,” Keith said as the chopper came up tail first and seemed to drag the nose forward and up—reluctantly.

  The chopper made that predictable dip at the point where its forward motion fully replaced any upward motion. Hollister leaned forward and out to look at the choppers behind them. The insert and the chase lifted off simultaneously—the chase staggered to the left rear of the insert ship. He took his eyes off the slicks and looked out and above the C&C for any sign of the other choppers.

  The copilot caught Hollister’s search. “Sir,” he said, “the guns are lifting off the arming area at the airstrip now. They will rendezvous with us as planned—just outside the wire, heading west.”

  Hollister raised his hand to the copilot, who was to his rear, and nodded his head to acknowledge the information. He had made the decision to leave the armed gunships at the ai
rfield rather than park them near the Old Warrior Pad because so little parking space was available—most of it taken up by teams and extra lift choppers.

  Making a quick check of the call sign on his arm, Hollister flipped a toggle switch in the small overhead switch box in order to transmit on only one frequency. “Falcon this is Houston Three. Over.”

  While he waited for a reply from the air force forward air controller, Hollister continued to scan the air around him.

  “Houston Three, this is Falcon,” the FAC pilot’s voice responded over Hollister’s helmet headset.

  “What’s your location?”

  “I’m over the LZ, at thirty-five hundred feet, enjoying the view. Over.”

  “Good deal. We are en route. You should see us coming your way in a couple of minutes. What’s the condition of the LZ? Over.”

  “Haven’t seen anything that bothers me. There are some civilians about two klicks to the south, screwing with a Lambretta engine along the candy stripe. Over,” the FAC replied.

  “Well, keep an eye on them. They just might be LZ watchers.”

  “Roger that. Standing by here.

  “Roger. Break. Reptile Six, Houston Three. Over,” Hollister said into his mouthpiece, trying to establish communications with the gunship lead.

  “Your ten o’clock, Three,” Captain Stanton said from the backseat of his Cobra.

  Hollister caught the full disk of the lead chopper two thousand meters in front of his C&C, making a hard right turn to keep from running away from the slick flight.

  “Okay—got you. You set?”

  Stanton clicked his mike button twice.

  “Stand by,” Hollister said as he leaned out again and looked back at the insert ship. He wanted to make one more check with the team leader. “Houston One-five, Three. Commo check. Over.”

  Hollister could hear the sounds of the buffeting inside Sergeant Nessen’s chopper as soon as he keyed his mike. “This is One-five. Lima charlie. Over.”

  “Same here. You up?”

  “We’re ready, sir,” Nessen said, a little false bravado in his voice.

  “Good. We’re going to put you and the chase in a short orbit while I make one last victor romeo of the LZ. I want to make sure we don’t have a welcoming party.”

  “I can dig that. Over.”

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Hollister said, trying to lighten it up for Nessen a bit.

  “You get that?” Hollister asked Keith over the intercom.

  “Rog. We’ll be there in zero four, and I’ll hold everyone else in an orbit above us.”

  “Houston Control, we are zero four out for a reckie. If no problems, we will begin insert immediately after that. Over.”

  “Roger, Houston Three. Three Alpha Romeo standing by,” the Operations radio operator said.

  Hollister’s headset was quiet for less than thirty seconds before Major Sangean’s voice broke in. “Three, this is Six. We are at flight idle on the pad. Two-one is also standing by for you to take them in. Let me know when you are clear, and we will start our insert into LZ Bravo. Over.”

  “Roger, Six. Will notify you when One-five clears. Over.”

  “Understood. Out.”

  Captain Keith came up on the intercom for all to hear. “I got it,” he said, taking control of the chopper from the copilot. The chopper immediately began to lose altitude. “Chief? You guys awake?” Keith asked the crew chief and door gunner.

  “Cocked and locked,” came the reply.

  The door gunner next to Hollister had a tight grip on the M60 machine gun mounted on a pedestal welded to the chopper. He kept the muzzle up and slightly toward the approaching LZ as he scanned it with his eyes shielded by his aviator’s sunglasses.

  “We’re here, folks,” Keith said.

  Hollister clicked his mike button twice. He leaned out as far as his seat belt would allow and surveyed the large open area dead ahead of them. “Let’s look over the alternate LZ first and then check out the primary.”

  Keith raised his Nomex-gloved hand to signal Hollister, then laid the chopper over and then back to adjust the approach to cover the touchdown point on me alternate LZ.

  At not much more than twenty feet off the tops of the weeds, Keith flashed across the LZ at seventy knots. No one inside the chopper spoke. All eyes were on the nearest tree lines and the pathways they had spotted earlier.

  A flock of mud ducks feeding in a puddle of water near the far end of the clearing took wing in panic and followed a leader in the flock to a nearby field that had taller grasses.

  At the far end of the open area, Keith pulled the nose up, slowing the chopper and easing it over the stand of brush and small trees. He laid the cyclic over toward his right knee and pushed a little right pedal to begin a lazy turn back toward the clearing—and toward the primary LZ. “Nothing up here.”

  “Clear. Nothing,” the gunners said.

  “Well, I sure didn’t see anything. Let’s hope the other one is clear, too,” Hollister said.

  The landing area they were about to use also appeared to be clear. Hollister made one final commo check with the FAC, guns, and Sergeant Nessen as the C&C took up its position above the insert chopper.

  “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  The insert ship broke out of the orbit and headed for a low-level approach to the LZ. The chase followed a hundred and fifty meters behind, while the Cobras shot forward with their greater speed to prowl the LZ before the arrival of the slicks.

  Hollister swallowed hard and pressed the mike button on the drop cord that tied him into the chopper radios and intercom. “Houston, Houston Three. We are beginning first insert. Out.”

  Chapter 13

  THE COBRAS BRACKETED THE landing zone as they flew down the flanking tree lines, barely feet above the treetops. At the far end of the LZ, they turned, crossed over each other, and started back on the side opposite their first pass.

  The insert chopper reached the last clump of vegetation before it would make its descent onto the paddy field. As it did, the pilot raised the nose of the aircraft, which slowed it measurably.

  Above and behind the insert ship, Hollister watched the chopper’s progress, checked the location of the chase ship, and looked around for a last check of the others. The Cobras, still searching the trees and hedges for VC, were targets for ground fire. The FAC was more than a mile to the west, making lazy figure eights in the sky.

  Looking back at the insert ship, Hollister could see Nessen and his men moving closer to the open cargo doors, some stepping onto the right skid as they readied themselves to leap off.

  The insert chopper reached a point just short of the desired touchdown point, and the pilot pulled back on the cyclic to stop forward momentum. The chopper halted, settled onto the ground with a rocking motion, and Nessen’s team bolted from the right side of the chopper.

  No sooner had the last man’s feet hit the ground running than the pilot pulled pitch. As he did, he announced his intentions to advise the other choppers: “Comin’ up and right.”

  The chopper completely cleared the LZ, and the chase ship followed the same path the insert ship had taken, though it failed to touch down. It, too, passed beyond the far end of the LZ and broke right and up.

  As the two slicks gained altitude to fall into formation with the orbiting C&C, Hollister watched Nessen’s team move from the touchdown point to the cluster of trees that would conceal them—for the time being.

  The team members moved quickly, but were too close together, and no one was looking to their rear. All were watching the other three directions while moving to their rally point.

  They disappeared into the trees, and Hollister checked his watch to give him a better idea of how long each insert and each extraction would take. He ran his fingers down the helmet cord and found the mike button. He moved the mike closer to his lips and pressed the button. “Houston Six, Three. Over.”

  “Six, go.”

  “You can launch now. Over.”
r />   “Any problems?” Sangean asked from Cu Chi.

  “Negative. But One-five still hasn’t reported the LZ condition yet.”

  “Roger,” Sangean said as his C&C lifted off the Old Warrior Pad with a pickup flight ready to take Nessen’s men out of the LZ.

  “Roger. We’ll be returning for the next lift as soon as I get an up from One-five.”

  “Roger. Out,” Sangean said.

  Dropping the mike cord, Hollister looked down at his watch, worried that Nessen hadn’t reported in yet. He grabbed the mike button again. “Anybody see anything?” he asked the chopper crew.

  “They’re in trees all right. I haven’t seen anything that looks hinky, though,” Captain Keith said.

  “Well, they’re taking their sweet time.” Unable to wait any longer, Hollister switched back to the Tactical frequency. “Houston One-five, this is Three. Over.”

  No answer.

  He raised his voice, as if it would make any difference. “One—five … this is Three. Over.”

  A crackling sound came over Hollister’s headset. It was broken up, but understandable. “… is One-five. We are in. LZ is cold. Handset trouble. Do you hear me? Over.”

  “This is Three. I understand you have commo problems. You are in and cold. Is that correct? Over.”

  “That’s … ’firmative. Over.”

  “You able to fix the problem with commo?”

  There was a long pause—no reply.

  “Damnit, man, stay with me,” Hollister said to himself out loud.

  Suddenly, the quality of the transmission changed for the better, and Nessen’s voice, though whispering, came through loud and clear. “New handset. How now? Over.”

  “Lima charlie. How me? Over.”

  “Same.”

  “Okay. Six is off Old Warrior and inbound to pick you up. We will be clearing out. Reptile Six is remaining on station. You have a problem, let him know. Out.”

  Nessen clicked his handset twice, and that ended their conversation.

  “Let’s go pick up another load,” Hollister said to Keith.