Suddenly Ben was beside him.
“Our center and left flank are covered,” Ben yelled over the racket of bugles, screams, and pouring rain.
“Yeah, but our asses are hanging out on the right,” Hunter yelled back.
It was true. While there were some Legion positions to the right of Bozo, they were unmanned.
“Help the guys inside,” Hunter told Ben “I’ll see what I can do over here.”
With that, he was off into the torrential downpour.
Mortar rounds exploding all around him, Hunter ran about fifty feet before he spotted an abandoned M-60 machine-gun post at the edge of the wire. He dove in, head first, landing in a pool of thick mud. Wiping the sludge from his eyes, he saw the position was unmanned; the gunner and ammo feeder were lying in a crumpled heap at the back of the hole, cut to pieces by shell fragments. Judging by their skeletal appearance, they had been dead for quite some time.
Then he heard the screams. The attackers had reached the wire. To his far left, the front-line Legionnaires were meeting the onslaught head-on. To his near left, the gunners on Bozo were wisely holding their fire.
Leaping to the front of the post, Hunter cracked open two boxes of ammo, quickly loaded one belt into the big M-60, found its end, and with expended links that littered the hole, clipped it to the lead of the ammo in the second box. Then he quickly rolled over, jammed the butt of the gun against his right shoulder, and steadied himself against what was left of the sandbag wall.
The front of the first human wave was now less than fifty feet away from Bozo. For the first time he could see the faces of the enemy. To a man, they had that glazed look of a fanatic, one who was not only unafraid of dying but who seemed eager to embrace death in combat.
But there was something else that startled Hunter. The enemy soldiers were outfitted in exact replicas of the old field uniform of the Communist North Vietnamese army—the dreaded NVA. They were carrying AK-47s, wearing pith helmets and rubber-soled sandals. Hunter felt like he’d been suddenly transported back in time—to 1968, to the original battle of Khe Sanh.
It was very strange.
The front element of the human wave was now only thirty feet away. Their screaming got louder, their bugles were echoing, and the rain was coming down even harder.
Hunter waited a few more seconds—then he pulled the trigger.
His first burst laced across the center of the enemy charge now just twenty feet from his position. A dozen Minx dropped in their tracks. But more raced over their fallen comrades, screaming so madly Hunter thought he could see foam running from their mouths. He continued to fire, waving the smoking barrel back and forth, cutting down anything immediately in front of him. To his left, he could hear the roar of the guns on Bozo open up, the multitude of weapons blasting away at the main force of attackers. The rain was coming down incredibly hard now, totally blotting out the sun and making it as dark as midnight. Even the muzzle flash of Hunter’s big gun barely cut through the torrential downpour. He was firing blind—but he knew his bullets were finding their marks, simply from the screams of agony he heard between bursts.
But a big problem was looming. He was already through the first box of ammo and was now deep into the second. There were at least ten more boxes of ammo at the far edge of the gun post, but how was he going to get to them? The vanguard of the attackers were less than twenty feet away, with at least three more waves behind it.
Just then, Hunter sensed someone was in the hole beside him, Whirling around, he was startled to find a soldier, dressed in U.S. Marine combat fatigues and carrying no weapon, had apparently jumped into the gun position with him. Even though there was a serious puncture in his helmet, the Marine didn’t appear to be hurt. Nor did he seem to be concerned with the human wave assault that was almost right on top of them.
Hunter yelled to him, indicating the other boxes of ammo lying nearby. Then he turned, pointed the big M-60 back in the direction of the attackers, and began firing again.
But the man just smiled—and didn’t move.
Hunter ran out of ammo just as the first Viet Minx soldier reached the lip of the foxhole. Swinging the big gun around, The Wingman smashed the barrel into the enemy soldier’s face, sending him sprawling backwards. Another Minx leaped on top of Hunter—but Hunter rolled hard, kicking the man away. Rolling again, he slid up against the ammo boxes, and quickly broke one open with the gun butt. Another Minx was dispatched with a hard kick to the groin. Then Hunter jacked the lead round of the new belt into the M-60 and began firing once more.
One long burst took care of the seven other Minx who had overrun the gun post. Hunter ran back to his original position, dragging two more boxes of ammo with him. The man in the Marine uniform was still there, sitting as calmly as if it were a summer’s day at the beach.
“Thanks for the freaking help,” Hunter yelled at him angrily.
“You’re doing OK by yourself,” the Marine calmly replied.
“No thanks to you,” Hunter barked back over the chatter of the gunfire.
“I just want to offer a little advice,” the Marine told him.
A smoking hand grenade landed with a thud in the center of the gun post. In a flash, Hunter picked it up, hurled back at the charging Viet Minx, covering himself just as it went off in midflight.
“Are you crazy?” Hunter screamed at the Marine over the roar of the battle. “You’re going to get your ass killed!”
The Marine just laughed.
“Either help me or get the hell out of here!” Hunter yelled at him, pulling the M-60’s trigger once again.
But then in a voice that seemed to cut through the raging battle, Hunter heard the Marine clearly and forcefully say, “Don’t let what happened to us happen to you.”
Hunter hastily fed yet another ammo belt into the big M-60. “Yeah? What the hell happened to you?”
“They made us go about this thing the wrong way,” the Marine answered evenly. “They never let us ever get to the heart of the matter. Never let us fight it on our own. Just don’t make that same mistake again.”
Hunter stopped for a moment and stared into the man’s eyes. They were almost entirely white.
“What the hell outfit you with, anyway?” he asked him. “I haven’t seen anyone in Marine uniforms around here.”
“Charlie Company, First Battalion, Twenty-sixth Marines,” the man answered. “Oh, and another thing, get your head down.”
Hunter had already ducked on his own. An instant later, an RPG round exploded not five feet behind him. Hunter never heard the sound, he only saw the flash. If he hadn’t ducked, he would have been decapitated. Still, the concussion had been powerful. A heavy blackness enveloped him. He was floating … floating … floating away….
The next thing he knew, Ben was shaking him violently.
“Hawk; Hawk!” he was yelling into Hunter’s face. “Wake up, buddy …”
“I’m all right,” Hunter groaned slowly. He reached up to his throbbing head and found that it was sticky with blood. He had been wounded.
“It’s OK,” Ben told him, “looks a lot worse than it really is.”
Hunter glanced around. He didn’t know how long he’d been out. Could have been seconds—maybe minutes—maybe longer. But the rain had stopped and the attack was over. Hundreds of enemy bodies littered the ground around the gun post and up and down the entire base perimeter. He heard a sizzling sound and looked down to see that the barrel of the M-60 he had been using was still red hot and evaporating the mist hanging in the air around it. Only then did he remember exactly what had happened. The gun, the ammo boxes … the Marine. His blood suddenly went cold. He looked up at Ben, his face as white as a sheet.
“Jeeez, Hawk, you look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Hunter froze for a second.
“I think I just did,” he replied.
Chapter Seventeen
LIEUTENANT TWANG WAS WET, angry, and more than a little depressed.
Twang had used that morning’s human wave assault as a cover to get to the small underground observation post located not twenty-five yards from the southeastern perimeter of the enemy base at Khe Sanh. And now he was stuck in this stinking pit—appropriately nicknamed a “spider hole”—with water up to his ass and bugs eating his extremities. His orders: to report any and all unusual activity inside the enemy base and especially around the two crashed airplanes directly to the High Command itself, via his radio. In other words, he, the three-time recipient of the highest honor possible, had been reduced to the lowly position of being a spy.
But maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.
He was, at last, away from the Minx High Command, an institution that, medals aside, treated their soldiers as little more than disposable products. The trip out to the hole, through the bloody carnage all around, had opened his eyes to that.
Because he was an officer, Twang had been spared duty in the body-churning human wave assaults; coordinating sniper squads had been his previous mission. That morning had been the first time he’d seen one of the suicidal attacks up close. He was astounded not only by the ferociousness of the assault and the crazed intensity of his fellow Viet Minx, but also by the resoluteness of the defenders. Hundreds of his comrades had charged right by his little spider hole and into the guns of the Caucasian enemy. And now most of them were dead. Their bodies lay all around him, twisted in bloody grotesque poses. He could still hear the screams of the wounded and dying, but he dared not risk his hiding place to go to their assistance. It was against his orders, and besides, there wasn’t anything he could do for them.
So between the cries and the blood and the mud and the water in his hole, Lieutenant Twang was very uncomfortable. And tired. And scared.
But at least he was still alive.
Chapter Eighteen
HUNTER GINGERLY TOUCHED THE wound on his right forehead and winced slightly.
Night had fallen, and he was sitting in the pilot’s seat of Bozo, amid the remains of the smashed cockpit. Frayed wires hung like vines all around him. The glass from busted readout screens and the shattered windshield littered the flight deck floor. The wind was whistling through the hundreds of perforations in the skin of the C-5, the smaller ones caused by the MiG attack over the Gulf of Tonkin, the larger ones from the two battles they’d fought since dropping into this little piece of hell.
He rubbed the wound again; the swelling had gone down considerably and his self-diagnosis techniques confirmed that he didn’t have a concussion. Only his crash helmet had prevented a serious head injury.
But the fact he was on the mend didn’t raise his spirits a notch. Just the opposite. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so low. Where was his vaunted luck now? Where the hell did this whole pipe dream come from? A great air fleet to free the oppressed on the opposite side of the globe? Some idea. Some great thinking. What they’ve got for their troubles was the near-tragic encounter with the pack of MiGs, the scattering of the air fleet, a crash landing in the middle of a very one-sided battle, and a close call in the next. There was no chance for rescue; no chance to even send out a SOS. And the only thing they had to look forward to was another murderous assault from the fanatical enemy hidden in the hills.
He leaned back on the ripped and tattered pilot’s seat, knowing it would be impossible to even relax for one second. Geraci’s men had begun their nocturnal relocation just an hour before, and now much of their equipment was locked inside Bozo. It made for a stronger defense, but also tighter quarters. Everyone on the crowded gunship had carved out a space for themselves, and Hunter had chosen this place, the battered flight deck. Now the irony of it was slugging him in the stomach.
What cruel fate would sentence him to sit in the pilot’s seat of an airplane that would never fly again?
But there was something more. Something that was gnawing at him even more deeply than the present dire situation. Something that challenged his very sanity. If the cosmos was going to dictate that he was to die, here and now, in the muck and mud and blood of a foreign land, then he deserved from them the answer to one last big question.
And the only one who could provide that answer was a crazy man.
He stood up, and had to steady himself for a moment. He was off-balance, a state that terrified him. He slipped his crash helmet gently over his head wound and strapped it loosely around his neck. Then he picked up his M-16, checked its full clip and slid down the access ladder and out into the steamy jungle night.
There were mortar rounds dropping all over the encampment, but there was little doubt that they were being fired randomly, more for harassment purposes than against any one target. There was also the constant zip-zinging of sniper’s bullets, but the old battlefield maxim of “if you hear it, it ain’t going to hit you” usually held true.
Still, he leaped from one of Bozo’s battered landing gear struts directly into a nearby ditch, just as a hail of enemy bullets zipped overhead. Running in a low crouch, he made the length of the ditch, and then scrambled over to one of the Legionnaires’ near trenches, diving in headfirst just as a pair of mortar rounds came crashing down twenty-five feet away.
He picked himself up and brushed some mud from his eyes. When his vision cleared he found himself staring right into the empty eye sockets of two skeletal faces, Legionnaires who had died weeks ago. Both still clutched their weapons in hand, their mouths were wide open as if caught in a scream.
Hunter moved on.
He ran through two trench intersections, once coming upon a mercenary machine-gun crew who were firing tracer rounds randomly into the nearby hills. Their gun pit was littered with piles of empty shell casings and five skeletons, all in some state of dismemberment. They did not acknowledge his presence in any way as he passed by—he could have been a Minx sapper for all they knew. They simply kept firing, one on the trigger of the big .50 caliber, one feeding the belt, eyes staring straight ahead, partners in a combined madness.
A particularly intense mortar barrage held him up near another trench crossover; sheer frustration caused him to unleash a stream of tracer rounds back towards the general area where he calculated the enemy rounds were coming from. The barrage stopped—temporarily. But it was just long enough to allow him to continue his journey.
He finally reached the main entrance to the Legion’s headquarters bunker. As before, there were no guards posted outside, no security measures in place at all. Out of habit, he checked his gun clip and found it three quarters full. Then he paused for a breath and made the last dash to the bunker entrance.
This time he had no idea what he’d find inside.
What he did see chilled him to the bone.
There was the crazed Colonel LaFeete, in his dress uniform, standing on a chair placed in the middle of the otherwise empty bunker. One end of a rope was tied around the center roof beam. The other end was fashioned into a hangman’s noose and wrapped around LaFeete’s neck.
“Stay where you are, American!” LaFeete shouted to Hunter in his raspy, heavy accent. “Do not come a step closer.”
Hunter froze.
Just then a mortar round dropped outside the bunker and the entire place shook. The chair rocked back and forth beneath LaFeete’s feet, but he managed to stay upright.
“It’s all over for me, my career is finished,” LaFeete declared in a maddeningly matter-of-fact voice. “I have failed my men. I have failed France.” He reached up and gently tightened the noose around his neck.
Hunter began to slowly edge towards the deranged officer.
“Colonel,�
� he began, “I think you ought to reconsider. You’re needed here. Your men need you.”
“Nonsense!” LaFeete shouted back with steely determination. “When I first came here, things were much clearer. We knew who the enemy was, and for the most part, we knew where he was. We came here to free these poor people. To do the job we failed to do in 1954. We came here to be heroes—finally. But it is different now. Now the enemy is everywhere. I hear them inside the wire, inside my bunker, and sometimes, I hear them inside my head.”
“We all do, at sometime or other, Colonel,” Hunter replied, moving even closer to the distraught officer. “What you’ve been through would take a toll on anyone. But it’s not over, sir—not yet. There’s still time….”
“Yes, time,” LaFeete sighed, once again nearly losing his balance. “Time is something we all have—some just more than others.”
A burst of 7.62-mm bullets raked across the front of the bunker, thudding into the sandbags outside.
But LaFeete didn’t hear them. Instead, he began to stroke the noose around his neck. “I am, in the end, a grand failure.”
Hunter took a deep breath. For a brief moment he wondered if it was just as better to let this man go. For such a tortured soul, death might seem a reprieve. But in the next moment, he knew he couldn’t. It was a human life hanging in the balance here. Nothing on Earth was so precious—crazy or not. Besides, he needed to know something from the man.
He took another deep breath.
“Sir,” Hunter began. “Are there any U.S. Marines stationed here? Or soldiers in your command wearing old U.S. Marine uniforms?”
“Marines?” LaFeete laughed, nearly losing his balance a third time. “The only American Marines I saw here, my friend, were dead. And they had been dead for a long, long time.”
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