by Dennis Foley
He used the tape to secure the ammo pouch to Hollister’s rucksack, and thereby avoided having to look for a new pouch so close to liftoff time. “You need a new pouch back here. I got it nailed down for now. But you’ll need to replace it, sir.”
Finished with his inspection, DeSouza slapped Hollister’s rucksack and gave him the traditional “Okay.”
The teams loaded the two insert choppers before the pilots cranked. This gave everyone a chance to get settled in and to talk. Normally, there was so much chopper noise that the chatter stopped when they started to walk toward the idling choppers.
As the pilots began their preflight checklist routine, the conversation about girls and cars and the World faded.
They were all alike, Hollister thought. All were anxious and worried about how many patrols and how many chopper flights they could walk away from before the law of averages ate them up.
Bui was looking toward the officers’ billets and the club’s back door. There was a faint outline of a woman standing in the door. It was T.T.
Hollister didn’t know how, but T.T. and Bui had somehow worked it out for her not to leave the base that night like all the other day laborers. Hollister was glad that Bui had T.T. back at the compound waiting for him. He wished he had Susan close.
The sky was starting to promise dawn when the choppers finally descended into the LZ. As they sank toward the clearing, fear of the unknown—and fear of the known—took hold of Hollister’s chest and squeezed. There was no denying it. Bits and flashes of the shoot-down that had almost killed him before wouldn’t go away.
DeSouza was efficiently warning and counting down the steps for the team. Hollister scooted out into the open doorway of the chopper and grabbed the corner of the door gunner’s seat to give him some stability if the ship made a quick move.
“Go! Go! Go! Go!” DeSouza yelled as he leaped from the still-moving chopper just before touchdown. The other six team members leaped only fractions of a second behind him.
The impact with the ground sent sharp pain up Hollister’s hip. It was all he could do to keep from crying out. His first step was faltering and awkward. He prayed that none of the others saw how unsteady he was.
Over his shoulder, Lopaka’s team burst from the chopper that had landed to the left front of Hollister’s. They were already half the distance from the chopper to the trees that would conceal them. DeSouza had taken the lead. He had his team oriented to cover the right side of the combined teams’ route as Lopaka’s people were watching left. Caps was bringing up the rear—and facing that way. Hollister was second in order of march as they sprinted across the open area There were three men behind him, with Bui and Caps in the rear. He took a quick look at Bui. Crippled, he still bounded across the ground in a hopping motion, putting most of his weight on his good leg. He was having no trouble keeping up, even though his movements looked painful and very awkward.
When they finally reached the concealment offered by the trees, Hollister’s thigh was burning. The pain was so intense that he stuffed his cravat in his mouth and bit down on it to distract himself from the burn.
By the time the pain was gone and Hollister’s breathing had returned to normal, the two sergeants had established a tight perimeter and were putting out claymore mines in all directions. Hollister called the C&C ship and reported that they were in and cold.
Major Sangean acknowledged the transmission and wished them luck. Then the choppers cleared the area entirely.
Daylight began to filter through the sparse single-canopy tree cover that concealed the LRPs. Hollister pulled his map out of his pocket and balanced it on his knee. He made a quick orientation, aligning the map’s north with what he guessed was true north. In the trees he had no terrain features to use for terrain-association orientation, so he pulled out his compass and quickly got a solid indication of where magnetic north was.
Adjusting for the deviation indicated in the declination diagram on the map’s margin, Hollister confirmed that he had north pegged where it should be.
The very broad and very gently sloping finger they would be heading out on was just to Hollister’s left front. He was able to identify it because every other direction sloped off at a greater angle. The finger was almost level—at least from his limited point of view.
Using an intentional offset, Hollister instructed the patrol to move in a direction that would allow them to intersect the trail they would be watching well above the point they had picked by air and map recon.
He didn’t want to miss the point or track it up with American-sized footprints. So he picked a point that was not only higher than their snatch site, but had more solid ground because it was exposed to more sunlight. It would allow them to work their way down to the snatch sight, rather than walk uphill to it. It also used the hardest, driest ground.
They moved toward their layup position for forty-five minutes and then ran out of darkness and adequate concealment. Hollister had been afraid they might have that problem, but couldn’t find a better place to put the team in and not give away its direction of march to anyone watching or coming across them. It meant they had to find a place to hold up until dark fell again.
He held up the patrol, took Bui and Ayers—the RTO—and walked slowly up to a point off their route of march that looked like a dense stand of trees.
Once there they got down and crawled up to the knot of trees and peeked into it. It was perfect. It was a patch of a few tall saplings, spaced about five feet apart and densely undergrown with some kind of broad, flat leaf.
The inside of the stand of trees was unused and showed no signs of any foot or animal traffic. That would minimize the chance that someone would stumble on them while they laid up for the day.
The sun came up as if jerked over the horizon. The LRPs welcomed it for a few minutes and then cursed it, for it brought the flies and the noise of the day.
Finding a spot in the shade, Hollister pointed to his nose and then to DeSouza, who was on the other side of the half circle his team made up. DeSouza recognized that Hollister was letting him know their camouflage stick was fading and needed to be touched up.
Reaching into his shirt pocket, Hollister pulled out his signal mirror by its nylon string. He was careful not to handle it in such a way as to foolishly catch the sun and fire shafts of sunlight out of their position, giving them away.
He dropped it on the ground between his knees and leaned over it. His face was dirty from the remains of camouflage stick applied before liftoff, along with the dirt, sweat, and grime he had picked up since.
He was able to find his camouflage stick in his rucksack’s outer pocket without any difficulty. He popped the tube’s tin cap and pushed some of the lighter loam color out to apply to his face. He started at his throat—to lighten what was normally darker to break up facial features.
He made a lazy, kidney-shaped pattern under his jawline and then turned the tube around and did the same with the dark end of his chin.
The idea was to lighten things that were dark or receded on the face and darken the prominent features like cheekbones, nose, chin, and brows. The result was a confusing pattern as the eye tried to find a face in all the shadows and highlights.
By midday it began to rain again. Hollister had opened one of the dehydrated LRP rations they had recently been issued and checked it out for readiness. He had poured half a canteen of water into the brown plastic-wrapper container at around nine and refolded the packing, leaving it in a sunny spot on the ground. Until it had started raining, the sun had warmed it and the water had softened the contents—chili.
He took a white plastic spoon from his pocket and scooped up some of the mixture inside. The flavor was good, but some of the beans were still crunchy. He considered letting it go for another half hour, but decided that he was hungrier than he was picky. He ate the ration and washed it down with the remaining water in one of his canteens.
To Hollister the cost and inconvenience of the LRP ration
s were more trouble than they were worth. Sure, they were light and easy to pack, but it took a whole quart of water to eat one, half a quart to soften and dissolve the dehydrated contents and the other half just to wash it down.
The rations had almost unanimous appeal back in the base camp. With some doctoring, some added goodies like Vietnamese hot peppers and scallions, the meals were good. And heated and stirred in a larger container, they were even more appealing. But out in the field they were not getting rave reviews.
After lunch it was Hollister’s turn on watch while others got some sleep. He looked around the perimeter and was pleased to see that four of the thirteen LRPs were alert and paying attention to the sectors of observation assigned to them. The others were dozing or sound asleep.
Bui should have been sleeping, but wasn’t. Hollister assumed he was wired and trying to show the others how capable he was. It amused Hollister to remember the conversations he had had with Bui about being a field soldier. He had told Hollister that when he was a VC he hated being a soldier.
It was Hollister’s guess that the complaining about his field duty as a VC soldier had to do with how well he had done it. Bui was very sensitive to criticism and jealously guarded his own self-image. What else could explain his pleas to Sangean to let him go along on a patrol?
Their eyes met, and Bui was quick to give Hollister a broad smile and a thumbs-up sign. Hollister returned the smile and the gesture and went back to scanning his piece of the perimeter’s exterior.
The rain never let up. By nightfall the patrol was a sad-looking bunch. Every man was soaked and had picked up a dark mood, reflective of the weather. None of them wanted to go into the night wet and chilled. But with dark came the expectation that they would be moving out for their snatch site. The movement would warm them up and take some of the aches out of joints sore from sitting all day in the rain on cold ground.
Just after dark the rain started to pour down harder than it had all day, a mixed blessing. The extra noise the rain made would cover the noise of their movement. But it would also limit their ability to hear movement around them and severely cut their visibility.
The ceiling was no more than a hundred feet, and the visibility was less than that, which meant that if they needed choppers they were out of luck until the weather improved. Hollister said a little prayer and moved out behind Ayers.
As they moved, single file and five meters apart, Hollister heard the swishing of the fabric of his cammie trouser and the constant patter of the rain on the broadleaf vegetation.
Suddenly, the team stopped. It was not a stop because someone was hung up in the brush or to let the point man cautiously cross an open area. It was the kind of halt that was urgent, marked by the man in front rapidly dropping to his knee and taking up a firing position.
Fourth in the line of march, Hollister stepped around Ayers and moved to DeSouza, who was walking slack for Caps, who was walking point.
DeSouza grabbed Hollister by the sleeve and tugged him down to a squatting position. He stuck his arm out—straight, at shoulder level—and pointed off to their left front.
There, through a very small hole in the trees and shrubs, Hollister could see a flicker of flame. He stopped breathing long enough to listen for any voices—and heard none. He estimated the fire to be not more than forty meters away and slightly below their elevation.
Leaning over to get closer to DeSouza, Hollister whispered in his ear, “Pass the word—quiet!”
DeSouza nodded and gently rolled off his knees into a crouching walk, then stepped back to the next man in the file.
While he passed the word to the others, Hollister reached into his ruck and pulled out his binoculars. He raised them to his face and tried to find the small break in the trees in order to see the flame. The binos showed nothing but darker shades of tree branches, leaves, and tall bushy weeds. Then the flash of light filled the lenses and was as quickly gone. Hollister tried to find it again by scanning the area more slowly.
It worked. He was looking at a left knee, an elbow resting on it, and what appeared to be the back of the owner of the limbs. He steadied his grip on the binoculars and scanned in a small circle. It appeared to be a single Vietnamese male sitting next to a very small fire. He was either cooking something or stoking the fire. There was no sign of anyone else, but Hollister could see only a very small portion of the man’s campsite. To assume he was alone could be a serious mistake.
Hollister widened his search of the area. He couldn’t find any path or break in the vegetation the Vietnamese had used to get there. He handed DeSouza the binoculars, waited long enough for him to get a look, then motioned for him to fall back to the rear. Before following, Hollister reached forward and tapped Caps—letting him know to come back, too.
The entire patrol moved back another twenty-five meters—away from the lone Vietnamese figure. There, Hollister decided to take a scouting party forward to see what they had. It would be easy just to fire the area up and drop a lonely VC too stupid to put out a fire at night. But they were out there to grab a prisoner, and one might have just dropped into their lap.
He picked Caps and Ayers, figuring it was better to leave Lopaka’s team intact and strip DeSouza than to take people from both teams. He instructed Lopaka to take charge of the patrol if the shit hit the fan.
The plan was for Hollister, Ayers, and Caps to move forward to get a better look at the man at the campsite. They would try to figure out a way to snatch him and come back for more firepower if they needed to. Hollister designated a rally point in the event the patrol got separated by contact and told Lopaka and DeSouza to give him an hour.
Caps needed almost no instruction. He took up a course that brought the three-man recon party downwind from the campsite and missed nearly all the noisy deadfall.
Walking just behind him, Hollister was impressed with the technique of movement and the path selections he made. He seemed to glide through the bush instead of getting it to submit. Inside twenty minutes, Caps had taken the trio to a point that looked down into the very small clearing that held the lone figure.
Stopping for another visual assessment, Hollister pulled out his binoculars. From the new vantage point, he could see that the man was alone and that there were two bags or rucksacks in the shadows near him. But nothing else. Hollister was looking for signs that would confirm him as a VC, or a bearer, or something else incriminating.
Standing behind the kneeling Hollister, Caps tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at something on the near side of the fire. Not able to see, Hollister had to get up and take a second look. There in the foreground was a small pile of strange, woven bamboo strips. Hollister couldn’t make them out. He turned to Caps for some sign.
Caps pointed up at the tree branches. The signal meant nothing to Hollister. He shrugged.
Caps was frustrated, but didn’t want to speak since they were so close. He finally put down his rifle, tucked his hands under his armpits, and flapped his elbows. He looked ridiculous, but it was clear to Hollister that he was trying to indicate something that had to do with flying or birds.
Hollister looked through his binoculars, and the Vietnamese leaned over to get something out of one of his bags. As he did, Hollister noticed that the other bag was uncovered.
Hollister watched for a long time, trying to recognize what was in the bag. It was very dark, and the dull flickering of the fire was no help in distinguishing outline or texture.
They were traps! Hollister thought. The bamboo devices were traps or snares. He looked at them and at the bag. Birds! The man was a bird hunter, not a VC. He was simply a hunter, sitting out the cold rain over a tiny fire.
The sinking sensation in Hollister’s chest gave way to an almost audible groan. They had lost at least an hour of movement checking this guy out, and now he would have to get back to the others without letting the hunter know they were watching him. They would also have to change their route of march to avoid the hunter’s campsite.
/>
While the hunter posed no direct threat to the patrol, he was likely to be stopped by the VC and questioned. Hollister also worried about a trail they had left getting around the other side of him. The hunter now had tracks from the Americans on at least three sides of his position. If the rain didn’t wipe out the tracks and cause the brush to spring back, he might discover the passing of the Americans in the morning.
Back with DeSouza and Lopaka, Hollister explained the disappointment and got on with plotting a new route to their snatch site. Hollister didn’t much like to change plans in the dark and without an adequate reconnaissance of the new route.
The changes and the stop to check out the man at the fire had killed off nearly two hours. Again on the move, Hollister checked his watch. It was nearly midnight, and they had just about lost all hope of getting to their snatch site, setting up, and having a shot at catching someone on the trail at that hour.
They closed on their RON at just after two in the morning and quickly got the perimeter organized, security tied in, and claymores out. Hollister then called DeSouza and Lopaka into the center to make and change some plans they had left Bien Hoa with.
Lopaka and DeSouza were as tired as Hollister was. None of them had been able to log in more than a total of two hours sleep in the past twenty-four hours. Preparation for the patrol and the activities of the first day didn’t allow for much rest. Their mood was dulled by the delay and the added knowledge that they had to worry about civilians. They didn’t discuss it, but they all realized they could have made a serious mistake and grabbed the hunter, thinking he was a VC.
“We’ll leave for the trail in one zero. Any problems?” Hollister whispered.
Lopaka looked at his watch. “Better get there before the rush hour,” he said, a trace of sarcasm in his voice.
The comment didn’t go by Hollister. He knew the most likely times of travel on the trail they had picked out were late evening and early morning—before dawn. There was a risk of compromising their presence, or even making a chance contact moving to the trail, but they had little choice. If they waited until early evening of the next day to recon the trail, make adjustments in the plan, and move the patrol into position, they would lose time and have less flexibility. Worse would be finding the trail site unacceptable. That would require a move to an alternate site. All of that would mean they might lose a full day.