by Dennis Foley
“You been doin’ this long enough to know that them LRPs”—Kurzikowski jabbed his thumb toward the unseen team hooches—“will do just about anything for a straight-on boss—even if he’s a nutcracker. But they’ll lay down on an asshole in a heartbeat.”
Hollister knew Kurzikowski was right. He was equally sure Fowler would come back to Bien Hoa with fire in his eyes.
Between inserts Fowler called a meeting in his office. He called in Vance and Hollister and made everyone else leave the Orderly Room.
Most of Fowler’s remarks were meant for Vance, but he yelled at Hollister for several minutes for butting in on his radio transmissions. After generally dressing down both men, Fowler finished his speech: “And I want to see each of the platoon leaders before close of business today!”
Vance countered, “Just hold on. You won’t be able to push these team leaders around by telling their platoon leaders to instruct them to behave. These kids have their asses flapping in the breeze every time they step out of this compound, and if you think any threat you make will impress them—I suggest you don’t know what makes them tick.”
“And I suggest you keep your goddamn leadership pointers to yourself, Mister. Now, you two are dismissed. Get the hell out of my office.”
Vance and Hollister walked across the compound toward the officers’ billets. “The guy’s gonna get somebody killed,” Hollister said.
“Don’t be too sure he doesn’t end up in someone’s sight picture.”
“Fragging? Yeah. Heard that somebody down in the Ninth Division got the ass at a platoon sergeant and slipped a grenade under the shithouse while he was in it,” Hollister said.
“So we’re going to have to do something about Fowler before somebody goes to Leavenworth for blowing his ass away.”
“Any ideas?” Hollister asked.
“He’s going to have to step on his dick before anyone up the chain of command thinks he’s unfit for the job. He came down here because they thought he was a water walker, but what do we do with him in the meantime?”
“I don’t know what we do. But we don’t let him get between us. We’re going to have to stand shoulder to shoulder and keep this guy confined to the minimum amount of space we can keep him in. We’ve got to get to the officers and NCOs in the company, the pilots and the RTOs, and make sure everything that happens from this day on is put in writing. Something tells me that if and when the shit does hit the fan, he’ll turn on us and blame everyone but himself. So we have to document it all.”
The next day Fowler caught Hollister coming out of the mess hall. “I want you to supervise the insertion of the two teams next up.”
“Sir, that’s not the best way to do this. Hell, I didn’t issue those teams their operations order and wasn’t there at their briefbacks or on the aerial recons.”
“Again, Mister Hollister, I did not ask you for your opinion. Just get your ass over to Operations and get ready to keep those team leaders from screwing things up.”
Before Hollister could reply, Fowler blew by him and into the mess hall.
At the same time, Kurzikowski came through the door, adjusting his headgear. “Oh, morning, Captain. Glad to see things are smoothin’ out in the officer ranks.”
“Now is not the time to fuck with me about a little friction, Sergeant K,” Hollister said.
“Friction? That’s a real interesting way to describe it. Guess I’ll never understand officer stuff.”
The inserts went well, and Fowler was not involved in any way. That was unusual since he had been involved in everything and had dominated the radio net since he arrived.
By the time Hollister returned to the compound, Fowler was driving in the front gate.
“Hollister,” he yelled.
Hollister turned and rendered a less-than-enthusiastic salute. “Yessir?”
“I want to see you and Vance in my office—now.”
It was getting to be a regular thing, Vance and Hollister standing in front of Fowler’s desk while Fowler yelled.
“Why didn’t you tell me that both of you were sending documents from this command to Field Force Headquarters without my approval?”
“Approval?” Hollister asked.
“Yes, you do know what the word means, don’t you? From now on any scrap of paper or report of any kind that leaves here for Field Force Headquarters will go out only after it has my chop on it,” Fowler said.
Only headquarters rats used the term “chop” to mean signature or initials.
“Sir, I don’t understand what the problem is,” Vance said.
“Mister—you better damn well learn that higher headquarters only knows what you send them and if it isn’t perfect, then this unit will look less than perfect.”
“On paper, you mean?” Vance added.
“Don’t give me any of your shit,” Fowler said.
“Whatever you say,” Vance replied.
“From this day forward, anything—and I mean anything—that goes to higher goes by me first. You both got that?”
“Everything?” Hollister asked.
“Everything!”
For the next two days, each report Vance and Hollister drafted went to Fowler. He marked them up, revised them, and sent them back for the changes he wanted. For the most part, the changes were nitpicking. He sent one commo maintenance report back because it had two erasures on it. There was nothing in the report that could reflect badly on the company. Still, Fowler insisted that it be retyped, twice. Each time it took twenty minutes for a clerk to type it with the necessary carbon copies and another few minutes for Hollister to proofread and sign it.
There was plenty of grumbling going around about the administrative emphasis being placed on things in the company. It finally got to Hollister when he crossed the compound between the officers’ billets and the Orderly Room and found Vietnamese laborers placing whitewashed rocks in straight lines down the borders of the footpath.
It was about midnight when Hollister finished his letter to Susan and began drafting the Daily Operations Summary that had to be in to Two Field before daylight. As he accounted for teams out, teams ready, and teams not deployable, the radio traffic started to pick up.
Team 1-5, Nessen’s team, had found a stretch of commo wire just before dark and had set up to watch the area near it and to tap it, hoping to hear some voice traffic. If they were lucky, they would put their Hoi Chanh on to listen and translate. But by a little after nine, they found they were getting only evidence of battery power on the line, but no communications traffic.
Hollister told them to stick with it.
At four o’clock Hollister was called back to Operations. Nessen had called in movement, but said he was pretty sure it was not enemy. He had seemed pretty confident that it was wild boar or dogs, but he didn’t want to take the chance of not reporting it at all.
While Hollister was drafting the report, Nessen called in a revision. He was hearing more noise and was now sure it was not animals.
Hollister grabbed the mike. “What do you think you got?”
“Voices, coming up the wire. Two hundred mikes away—north of my position,” Nessen whispered.
Hollister turned to the RTO. “Go alert the pilots for a possible contact.”
The RTO ran out of Operations, and Hollister continued talking to Nessen. “You think they’re checking the wire? Maybe heard your tap?”
Nessen clicked the transmit button on his handset twice.
“Have you got a place to pull back to?” Hollister asked.
Nessen’s voice came back on, hardly audible. “Affirm, but I’m afraid they’ll hear me moving.”
“If you stay there, will they definitely bump into you?”
Nessen clicked twice again.
“Then you haven’t got much of a choice, do you?” Hollister asked.
“Negative,” Nessen whispered into the handset.
“Roger. Keep me advised. We are prepping to give you what you need.”
> Stanton and Edmonds appeared in the doorway.
“We’re going to have to pull a team. I’d bet money on it,” Hollister said as he moved over to the situation map to look at Nessen’s position again.
“They have a good PZ right behind them. I think we ought to lock and load. One way or another—they’re coming out.”
“We’re on it,” Stanton said as he bowed at the waist to Edmonds. “After you.”
The pilots left and the Artillery FO came in, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and buttoning his shirt.
“Should we wake up the major?” Kurzikowski asked.
“Naw,” Hollister said, pulling his rifle off the hook on the wall and inspecting the chamber. “Wait till it gets serious. I’m going out to pull them. There’s not much he can do from here.”
“’Cept Monday-morning quarterback,” Kurzikowski added.
During the flight to War Zone D, Hollister stowed his gear at arm’s reach, made sure all the supporting aircraft were ready to pull Team 1-5, and cleared artillery plotted into the area.
Nessen kept reporting the voices getting closer to his location. But he hadn’t moved away yet.
“You got any way to slow them down?” Hollister asked.
“I might be able to turn my claymores down the wire.”
“If you feel that you can do it safely and that you have time—do it,” Hollister said.
“Roger your last. Stand by one.”
Hollister waited impatiently. He grabbed a cigarette and lit it. “You got a better feel for them yet?”
Nessen keyed the mike and whispered in an even lower voice, “Stand by.”
Hollister looked over at the door gunner, who was listening in on the conversation. The gunner raised his fingers in a crossed good-luck symbol.
“Three. I can see nine—that’s niner, victor Charlie’s one zero zero mikes north of my position.”
“Okay. Let’s make this easy on you. Do you think you can engage? Yes or no only,” Hollister asked.
Nessen clicked no.
“Okay … then get out of there. Can you mark them after you are gone?”
Nessen clicked yes.
“All right. At your discretion—make your move,” Hollister said.
Nessen clicked an acknowledgment.
“Everyone ready?” Hollister asked over the intercom.
Banking slightly for a better view of the ground situation, Edmonds raised his gloved hand and gave Hollister an okay.
“Guns? You set?” he asked over the radio.
Hollister could hear the turbines and the blade noise of the lead gunship as Stanton keyed his mike and replied, “Ready.”
“One-five, let us know, when you can, how much progress you are making so we can be there when you are ready.”
Hollister switched frequencies and talked with the Artillery FO about placing steel on target just as soon as the gunships lifted their fire. He wanted to make absolutely sure the artillery didn’t start too soon and wasn’t delayed by some minor complication. Finishing, he went back to Nessen.
“One-five. When you are far enough away from the enemy element, say so and we will roll on your mark.”
There was a long silence as the choppers loosely circled the landing zone that Nessen’s team would use.
“Look!” the door gunner yelled, pointing at the heavily wooded area where they all assumed Nessen’s team was moving.
Hollister looked and just caught the fading flash of an explosion.
“Three. One-five!” Nessen yelled over the radio. “We have blown our claymores. We might have dropped a few of them. But there are plenty more there. Request gun runs two five north of my mark.”
No sooner had Nessen stopped talking when the small detonator of a grenade made enough of a flash for Hollister to see the grenade arc through the trees. The grenade landed, detonated, and shot a conical plume of luminous white phosphorous smoke and flame up through the trees.
“We got you, One-five. Inbound with minigun fire—first time. Please adjust,” Stanton said as he laid over the lead Cobra and dropped to firing altitude.
As Hollister watched Stanton lead his flight into the target area, he keyed his mike. “One-five. Gimme a SITREP when you can.”
“We are …” Nessen started, then stopped, then came back—very much out of breath, “… nearing papa zulu. Negative casualties. We’ll be ready for pickup in …,” he stopped and took another breath, “zero five.”
“That’s good. We’re lining up now,” Hollister replied as he looked back toward the gunships getting in position to make a second pass, the first having stitched up the area west of the mark.
“Negative! Negative!” Major Fowler’s voice suddenly broke in on the radio net.
“Negative what?” Hollister asked, intentionally avoiding recognizing Fowler.
“Negative on the gun runs! Check fire! I want that team turned around.”
“Oh shit!” Edmonds said from the front seat of the C&C.
“I do not understand your transmission,” Hollister lied.
“This is Six. Don’t jerk me around. I said for you to cease fire and send that team back to sweep through the area of the contact. NOW!”
“Six. Three,” Hollister said. “Let’s not discuss this on the Tactical freq. Can I meet you on the Admin?”
“Negative! You follow my damn orders, and do it right now. I am inbound to your location and will replace you on station. Do you understand that?”
Hollister declined to answer.
Fowler issued the instructions himself. “One-five. This is Six. You will turn your element around and engage any remaining members of the enemy element.”
One-five also didn’t respond.
The door gunner reached over and tapped Hollister. He pointed at the copilot. Hollister loosened his seat belt and looked back at the copilot.
“Sir,” the nineteen-year-old copilot said, “Captain Vance just called me on our freq. He wants to talk to you on your alternate Admin push.” He pointed at the chopper radios. “I just dialed it in for you,” he said, raising his gloved fingers to indicate what toggle switch was pressed into service.
Hollister nodded and switched to the freq. “Five. Houston Three. Over.”
“He’s hot. Don’t let him screw people up,” Vance said, no pretense of radio-telephone procedure in his transmission. “When you get back here we’ll figure out what to do. But I just don’t have the answer yet.”
“Start by keeping a very detailed record of all this …” Before Hollister could finish, Fowler’s voice overpowered all other cross talk. “One-five. Do you hear me? I want you to move. Now!”
“This is One-five. Negative. I think that is unwise at this time. The size of remaining enemy element is too large for us to engage on the move, in the open. We do not have the firepower, and we are not prepared to engage.”
“This is Six. I don’t want any goddamn argument from you. Now you get those people moving, or turn your element over to your second in command. Do you understand me?”
After a long pause, Nessen responded flatly, “Understood.”
“Good. Report to me when you are closing the earlier location. Break. Three. This is Six,” Fowler called.
Hollister switched from the Admin frequency, where he had been talking to Vance and monitoring Fowler. “This is Three. Over.”
“I am on station at your six o’clock. Take your chopper back to the rear, and get ready to send the horse element if we develop this contact into something,” Fowler said.
“Three. I strongly recommend against this course of action,” Hollister replied.
“And I did not ask for your appraisal. Now get off this net and get back to the base. Out!”
It was getting to be first light when Vance met Hollister’s chopper. “He’s fucking out of control!” Vance yelled over the chopper noise.
Hollister shouldered his gear and hustled toward Operations with Vance. “He’s going to get someone killed. Look
,” Hollister said, pointing to clusters of teams sitting around radios outside their hooches listening to the traffic on the company radio net. “I’ll be surprised if they don’t all ask for a transfer out. They aren’t stupid.”
“One thing at a time. Right now we’ve got to worry about Nessen’s people,” Vance said.
Inside Operations the radios were still buzzing with cross talk. Hollister lit a cigarette as he scanned the radio operators’ duty log for recent entries. Nessen had moved closer to the location where they had last spotted the approaching VC. Hollister put the pages back down in front of the RTO and tapped the top sheet. “Every word. You got it? I want every word of every transmission taken down.”
The RTO gave him a solid “Yessir,” and Hollister walked to the map. He looked at the greasy square that marked Nessen’s team location. “The Cav been alerted?”
Kurzikowski swiveled around in the desk chair he had scrounged somewhere. “’Bout a half hour ago, sir. They’re standing by. We can have them in the air as soon as the choppers wind up.”
Vance tapped Hollister’s shirt pocket, looking for a cigarette. Hollister pulled out his pack and handed it to Vance.
“He’ll never last.”
“Nessen?” Hollister asked.
“No,” Vance replied. “Fowler.”
“How do you figure?”
“I have faith that he’ll be discovered like shit on a boot and removed.”
“Hope you’re right,” Hollister said.
The radio broke the moment of silence. “Six. We have a problem.” It was Nessen’s voice.
“What? It better be a contact or you can just keep moving,” Fowler said.
Kurzikowski didn’t miss the look of disapproval on Hollister’s and Vance’s faces. “Think it’s time for me to get some more coffee. Can’t stay in here without a flak jacket,” he said.
Neither Vance nor Hollister replied. They just stayed focused on the radio traffic.
“We seem to have stumbled onto something,” Nessen said.
Fowler’s strain was evident even before he replied. They could hear him key the mike and take a deep breath before speaking.
“Just tell me you are moving to contact!”
“Negative. We have stopped,” Nessen said.