The outpost was shaped like a typical navy river base—a wired and bunkered triangle with the wide base against the river. It was more ramshackle and native than Shit City, having had less American influence. Thatched-roof hooches were clustered in the center of the triangle where the families of the defenders lived with their pigs, chickens, geese and kids. The post more nearly resembled a squalid fortified village of the old Strategic Hamlet Program than a military base.
Callahan led the Americans to the Ops Center and brought out a pot of hot black coffee for the Americans and another of tea and a tub of rice sauced with rotted-fish nouc mam for the Vietnamese.
“I’ve got some C-rats if you want them,” he offered.
“I’d be farting all night,” Pete declared. “We need to pull out of here right after dark.”
“Then we’d better get a move on,” Callahan said.
The four Americans inspected the fort’s defensive positions. Only the machine gun bunkers at the apexes and the network of fighting trenches along the inside of the wire perimeter were heavily sandbagged.
Lump advised, “I’d put another layer of sandbags around your ammo and ops bunkers after I moved them back toward the river in the wider portion of the base. I’d also reinforce your defensive bunkers and trenches.”
“What I need is reinforced concrete,” the Chief said.
Pete snorted. “Concrete’s scarce. I hear Uncle Sam’s negotiating to buy some from North Vietnam.”
The Chief blinked. “You’re kidding me, right, sir?”
“It makes good sense when you think about it. We buy cheap concrete from Uncle Ho. He comes and blows it up and we’ve got a trade cycle going. Everybody benefits, Hands Across The Sea in action.”
Callahan looked at the SEAL as though not sure if he were being bullshitted or what. He said to Lump, “Commander Minh has picked up the action. He’s probed us two nights this week so far. Minh’s up to something, but my spies are unable to pick up anything out there in the villages. Nobody’s talking. I’ve gone on fifty percent alert.”
“Better stay there,” Lump recommended as they rounded up the Nguoi Nhai raiders and two Biet Hai who would guide to an ambush point on Canal Six. “Base 35 is a hemorrhoid up Minh’s ass. He might try to get in a few licks before the TET cease-fire.”
The night had turned inky by the time Lump’s overloaded PBR towing its dugout sampans negotiated a confusing labyrinth of boat trails and liquid highways branching off the main river way and reached the mouth of Canal Six draining out of the Vam Tho region. Jungle overhanging the canal shut out the stars. Lump edged the cruiser carefully up-canal through the tunnel for less than a klick, a kilometer, its engines burbling almost noiselessly on cut-back power. Sgt. Piss Hole supervised his men nervously re-checking their weapons and gear.
The PBR nosed into the bank, slipping into the deeper darkness beneath overhanging foliage. Lump cut the engines. Wavelets stirred up by the boat’s passage lapped gently in the fuller silence.
“This is where we drop you off,” Lump whispered to Pete. “The canal narrows from here. We’d be asking to get ambushed to go any further. My River Rats will show you the way.”
Viets quickly loaded the narrow sampans with machine guns, claymores, radios and other equipment, then piled in on top. Cochran climbed into one dugout, Pete into another, while Piss Hole took the third. No use the entire leadership getting wiped out by the same burst if something happened.
“Keep the meter running,” Pete said. Lump lifted a hand in farewell. He and three others of his Biet Hai would man the radios and pull security on the PBR.
Sweating, the raiders paddled the hollowed-log canoes silently through the black night. The guides called a halt where the canal narrowed at a bend about a klick from Vam Tho. The canal at this point stretched no wider than forty meters. It absorbed rather than reflected light. Although toward the river the canal had many mouths, here a single throat led past the village. The target, if it came, had to pass beneath Pete Brauer’s waiting guns. Pete nodded his approval of the ambush site.
Thick grass grew along the banks. The raiders pulled the sampans into the grass and concealed them. Pete encouraged Ensign Cochran and Piss Hole to handle the details of the ambush placement while he supervised. Cochran dispatched two men up-canal to form a blocking security force between the ambushers and the village. He sent a second team down-canal. Piss Hole personally positioned men in a line along the canal bank. He would initiate the ambush with a burst from an M60 machine gun. Once everyone was in place, it became a waiting game. Nothing to do for the next several hours except listen to the swarming buzz of mosquitoes and an occasional animal or bird call or cry.
Pete was beginning to think they had dug another dry hole, that the tax collectors either weren’t coming or had passed before nightfall, when the soft dip of a paddle in black water caught his attention. Dawn was starting to lighten the eastern sky, but it was still too dark for him to use eyesight to corroborate his ears. He listened until he heard the sound again, nearer. Then he gave a sharp tug on the long length of parachute cord that linked the ambushers and served as their silent communications line. He gave two more tugs to make sure everyone was awake and alert. Target entering.
They waited expectantly.
Two long sampans silhouetted with man shadows glided into sight almost within tapping distance of the muzzle of Piss Hole’s M60. Pete laid a restraining hand on the little Viet sergeant’s shoulder. Piss Hole waited for the dugouts to get well inside the kill zone. Poor unsuspecting cocksuckers were about to bite the big one and they had no idea.
Pete squeezed Piss Hole’s shoulder. The sergeant’s machine gun instantly opened up with a sustained blinding blossom of muzzle flash. Its deep-throated discourse reverberated through the night, crashing and echoing and multiplying in volume. Red tracers stabbing at the lead sampan cut it almost in half.
Rifle fire joined in with symphony counterpoint as Piss Hole sprayed tracers toward the second sampan. The canal bank flickered and crackled for a mad minute. A withering hail of fire chewed splinters from the boats and turned the canal surface into churning froth. There was a single agonized cry of surprise, almost otherworldly in its nature, and then no other human sound.
It was over as quickly as it began. An eerie moment of silence followed.
“Bring ’em ashore!” Lt, Brauer hissed, jumping up and running along the bank.
Frogs splashed into the water to retrieve the dugouts and salvage the bodies to frisk for intelligence. Piss Hole’s machine gun had smashed the entire side out of the first canoe. It was nearly filled with water. Two drenched corpses lay in the water in the bottom of it, arms and legs entangled. There were two other bodies in the second boat. At least three other VC had been knocked overboard during the furious fusillade, their bodies sinking. None had escaped.
With childish glee, the victorious Nguoi Nhai laid the trophy stiffs out on the grass bank in a neat row and began plundering them for cash, valuables and anything that might be useful as intelligence. Not a bad night’s work—seven enemy KIA, all tax men or ranking VC officials by the looks of them, and two AK-47s captured.
Let Commander Minh chew on this little offering. Lt. Pete Brauer was back in action. He had drawn first blood.
The Frogs laughed and chattered with excitement as they rifled pockets and bloodstained rucks. They stuck their fingers into bullet holes and opened mouths to check for and pry loose gold teeth. This thing called civilization, as any warrior knew, was exceedingly fragile. Pete produced a plastic bag in which to collect orders, letters, IDs and other papers. Let the Frogs have the remaining spoils. Better them than the noncombatant scavengers sure to come along after daybreak.
Ensign Cochran looked sick. He turned his back to the gore and got on the radio with Lump on the PBR.
“River, Rat One, this is Frog Delta One, you copy? Over...”
“Five by, Frog. How you me? Over...”
“River Rat, Papa Fr
og’s coming hack to the lily. Over…”
It would never do to remain at an ambush aftermath for more than a few minutes. Pete sent three men to retrieve their hidden sampans and re-float them. They returned shortly, nosing the dugouts out of the developing morning fog and against the bank.
“Piss Hole, saddle up the troops” Pete called out. “Lets get the hell out of here.”
“Ohmja Nguoi Nhai!”
Piss Hole jumped back from one of the bodies. He had already sliced off the ears from three of them as war trophies. He was about to remove the patrol cap from the fourth and do the same when the body flinched.
“This one VC him still breathing.”
Pete took a look. It was still too dark to make out the unconscious man’s wounds, so he felt the neck for a pulse. It was weak but regular. He was considering how a live high-ranking VC, properly interrogated, might be able to expose much of the area’s enemy infrastructure and cause Commander Minh no end of grief and losses when the sudden staccato ripping of nearby AK-47 fire shattered the pre-dawn. The higher-pitched rattle of Ml6s answered back.
The security outpost nearest the village had encountered enemy forces, superimposing greater urgency into the ambushers’ withdrawal.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Want me him make prata, Ohmja Nguoi Nhai?” Piss Hole asked quickly, looking up in the direction of the firing.
According to the Vietnamese, pratas were the restless and unappeased spirits of those who died by violence. Pete made up his mind. A dead prata was of little use as intelligence. He grabbed the unconscious VC’s legs and dragged him at a run toward the nearest sampan. Grasping clothing with both hands, like hoisting a sack of grain, he flung the limp body into the bottom of the boat. The guy was tall, but surprisingly light.
“Cochran!” Pete yelled. “Take one of the Frogs, get in the sampan and di-di this gook’s ass back to the glass boat.”
Escape by sampan for the entire force was out of the question. Dawn was on the way; they would be like setting ducks on a pond on opening day. Cochran and a Nguoi Nhai jumped into the canoe, scrambling over the prisoner.
“What about you, Skipper?” the ensign asked in a strained voice. The kid was scared.
“The rest of us’ll rear guard and decoy them away. That sleeping gook is your responsibility. Now get out of here, Git!”
Cochran and the Frog eagerly applied paddles. The boat glided into the graying darkness, disappearing.
The firefight at the security outpost died at the peak of its crescendo. Pete barely had time to position a Frog with an M60 to cover returning security when the two men, shouting at the tops of their lungs to identify themselves, exploded into the perimeter like the Devil was pitch forking their rear ends. One of them ripped off a burst of 5.56 at his darkened back trail. The other ran to Pete, jabbering in Vietnamese with adrenalin rush.
“Him say village like beaucoup ants with VC,” Piss Hole translated. “Beaucoup VC!”
Pete heard pounding sneakers on the trail. The jungle to their front whispered and rustled with quick movements.
“Fire!”
The order was unnecessary. The 60-gunner lay down on his trigger, hosing red tracers into the jungle. Bullets snapped and ricocheted and snarled like a swarm of angry, supersonic bees. The rest of the little force opened up with Ml6s, their tinny magnified rattle sounding like pebbles shook hard in tin cans. Muzzle flashes banged back at them from all angles, crisscrossing enemy green tracers with friendly red. Passing bullets made loud snaps, like cracking sticks of dry hickory. A strange, blind firefight in the fog and darkness.
The unexpected resistance temporarily halted the enemy’s rush. Pete could hope for no more time than that. He raced down the line, grabbing Frogs by their collars or fighting harnesses and slinging them back in the direction he wished them to go.
“Di-di mau! Di-di! Go quick!”
They required little urging. They had eager feet. Once committed to withdrawal, to flight, they were not going to be stopped. They flew through the fogged forest in their blind rush toward the sanctuary of the waiting patrol boat. Piss Hole assumed the lead with Chief Callahan’s two Biet Hai guides showing the way. Pete took the rear to police up stragglers and fire bursts from his carbine to delay the chasing enemy.
Judging from the sounds of pursuit, the VC had found their dead comrades and their shattered boats, along with the two beached and abandoned sampans belonging to the intruders. It probably never occurred to them that some of the attackers may have escaped by boat. Howling like angry dogs, they bound off through the jungle, intent on running down their prey and making short shrift of it. Cochran was likely safe for the time being.
Compared to the average VC, the Frogs were loaded own like pack mules with ammo, canteens, fighting harnesses and boots. The VC had only their sandals or sneakers, their one pocketful of rice and their one pocketful of bullets. They ran off to their quarry’s right flank, keeping pace through the jungle, attempting to cut off the ambushers and bring them to bay with their backs against the canal. Wild shots and shouts rang out.
Pete’s lungs burned with effort and from lack of oxygen. Fear sweat showered from his straining body. Charging through the black forest, rebounding off trees, fighting his way through snarled vines and creepers. Heedless of booby traps and possible counter attackers.
More sporadic gunshots, farther away now and behind instead of to the side. They were actually outrunning the VC. After all, the tiger merely runs for his supper; the deer runs for life. Nothing was going to stop this crazed stampede. If the Nguoi Nhai were headed north instead of south, they would probably gallop panic-stricken all the way to Hanoi. Pete hoped Piss Hole up front retained enough control to stop the Frogs once they reached Lump’s PBR.
I’m getting too old for this shit.
Canal Six curved sharply back to the right in front of them. That stopped the flight. There was some anxious milling around before someone located the PBR concealed in the over-hanging jungle. Terror-stricken Viets plunged neck-deep into the water all around the boat. Ensign Cochran had arrived minutes earlier with the other boatman and their captive. He and Lump and the onboard Viets reached down to the water for thrusting hands and began jerking Nguoi Nhai aboard. Lump had to laugh at the absurd picture of the shadowy Frogs hopping around, almost drowning each other as they scrambled up backs to get aboard the cruiser.
Pete and Piss Hole were the last aboard. A distant rifle shot echoed. Pete tumbled into the boat on top of all the other wet puppies. He gave Lump and Cochran a sheepish grin. By some miracle, a quick head count showed all the men were accounted for. None was missing or wounded, although one had crashed headlong into a tree and split open his forehead.
Lump at the helm reversed the PBR away from shore, then threw in full forward throttle. Twin diesels gnawed deep into brown water, lifting the bow high as though the boat were about to become airborne. Lump circled the boat tightly on the canal. Leaning out, balancing his Stoner in one massive steel worker’s hand, he squeezed off a sustained Burrr-rrrp! into the jungle. He laughed with dry, grim satisfaction in the widening dawn as he turned the PBR toward the safety of the river.
“Ohmja Nguoi Nhai!” Piss Hole exclaimed in astonishment from where he sprawled on the crowded deck catching his breath. “Come look quick! This VC, him not him.”
The captive’s bush cap had been lost in the excitement, permitting long black hair to spray out on the deck. Nguoi Nhai stared. The first light of dawn seemed to caress the unconscious woman’s face with the pink blush of life and vitality. It was not wholly a Vietnamese face. There was Europe in it too. Softer, narrower cheekbones, the eye fold at the bridge of the nose less pronounced, the lips fuller. It was, by standards of either East or West, a beautiful face. Pete bent and wiped a smear of blood off her cheek.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was getting late in San Diego and old Lump’s window opening out toward the bay turned black, only the twinkling jewels of city lights r
eflected in it. He was tired. The strain of memory, of excavating the past as trauma and history and indictment, was taking its toll. More lines appeared in his broad face than had been there before. Gravity drew the ends of his mouth into an inverted U, but he kept on with his narrative. It was like, once started, he had to get it all out. Narrative as catharsis. You couldn’t quit a tour of duty halfway through, not unless you were wounded. He couldn’t quit this now, not even if it were reopening old wounds. I couldn’t quit it either.
“Mhai?” I prompted. “She was the wounded VC?”
“Mhai’s papa was French, I understood, and part of the French administration before the French were driven out of Vietnam in 1954,” Lump said. Old memories about Vietnam were apparently bringing back other old memories, for his voice had gradually deepened with sadness. “Her mama was a cousin or something of former South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem. Her father died after Dien Bien Phu and the family had some kind of falling out with the Diem administration over the Buddhist monks torching themselves in the streets. Pete never told me much about her because he knew I disapproved of the bitch. Cunt or not, the only good VC was a dead VC, and Pete should have known it. I told him that first night to let her die, to knock the bitch in the head and throw her overboard for the fish and turtles to get fat on.”
The old man looked beyond tired; he looked exhausted in flesh and soul. Old man? Hell, I was an old man too. Lump waved off my solicitations. He had to go on, he said, to finish it. I also wanted him to continue, to eat up the rest of the night. I couldn’t sleep anyhow. I wouldn’t sleep. I knew if I tried to sleep now, the different day would return in nightmares made more vivid with horror because of refreshed memory... Sgt. Holtzauer’s blackened face as he looked at Bugs Wortham, the FNG... Bleached skeletons reflected in the door gunner’s wraparound visor...
Lump got out of his easy chair by first shooting himself forward to the edge, grunting and breathing hard, then used both arms to laboriously lift himself free of it. What a cruel joke God played on mankind. Men went through their lives in varying shades of good and bad, only to end up broken and sick and mewling and pissing in their adult diapers. Old age was the final equalizer; death, the great leveler of all. For a while in life God let you think you were immortal, only to sneak up at last and frag you to show you you weren’t.
The Return: A Novel of Vietnam Page 5