Trial by fire: a novel

by Harold Coyle

  armored command post carrier. Noting the puzzled look on his sergeant's face as he held his hands over his head, leaned back and stretched, Stolte smiled. "What's the matter, Buck, losing it?"

  Sergeant Buck Wecas saw the lieutenant stretching and the chair folded behind him on the ground. Putting two and two together, he relaxed and smiled. "No, no. Nothin' like that. I just thought we had gooks in the wire."

  "Gooks in the wire? Where'd you hear that, in a war movie?"

  Standing up, Wecas came out of the command post carrier, stepped down off the carrier's rear ramp, and headed over for the coffeepot. "Ya know, Ken, not everyone was born yesterday. There's still a few old farts from Nam around."

  Closing his eyes and rotating his neck as he continued to stretch, Stolte sighed. "Yeah, you're right on both counts." Dropping his arms, he turned toward Wecas, who was pouring himself a cup of coffee. "You're old and a fart."

  Wecas was about to remind Stolte that his silver bars protected him only up to a point, when the radio blared:

  "Mike one Victor three two, Mike one Victor three two, this is Charlie four Charlie eight eight Bravo, over."

  Stolte looked at Wecas. "Who the hell is Charlie four Charlie eight eight?"

  Shrugging, Wecas took a sip of coffee and walked over to the carrier, reaching in and pulling out a small chart that listed all the radio call signs and frequencies in use that day. "According to this, Charlie four Charlie eight eight is the scout platoon of. 1st of the 141st. Bravo must be one of the scout sections."

  As Stolte and Wecas considered that for a moment, the voice on the radio repeated the call. "Mike one Victor three two, Mike one Victor three two, this is Charlie four Charlie eight eight Bravo, over."

  "Find out what he wants, otherwise he'll keep callin' and callin.' "

  Putting the board down, Wecas climbed into the track, mumbling so that Stolte could hear, "Yeah, we'd hate to have someone call and disturb your reading with business."

  Picking up the hand mike, Wecas keyed the radio. "Charlie four Charlie eight eight Bravo, this is Mike one Victor three two, do you have traffic for this station, over?"

  "Yeah, roger, Victor three two. I am unable to contact my higher, Tango seven Kilo six nine, and submit my sitreps. Can you relay for me, over?" .

  Looking over to his chart, Wecas saw that Tango seven Kilo six nine was the call sign for the command post of 1st Battalion, 141st Infantry.

  "Charlie eight eight Bravo, this is Victor three two. I'll try. If I do contact them, is there something you need to report, over?"

  "Yeah, roger, Victor three two. Tell them I can't reach them from here. I've been tryin' for the last fifteen minutes. Tell 'em I'm still at checkpoint Quebec five two and have a negative sitrep. Also, I would appreciate it if they would try to contact me, over."

  Considering the request for a moment, Wecas decided to honor it. It was not unusual for units to use other stations to relay radio traffic when direct contact had been lost. Even more common was the habit of using artillery units, such as Wecas's, for relay. For some reason, Wecas noticed, artillery units always seemed to have better comms than line units.

  Maybe, Wecas thought, it was because without comms, his firing battery would be worthless. Or perhaps, he thought, it was because the artillery attracted and kept people like him, old-timers who knew how to keep their ancient radio equipment running. Whatever the reason, Wecas knew he had to help this poor jerk out and had no earthly reason for doing otherwise. Informing Charlie eight eight that he would call his higher, Wecas ended the conversation, then looked on his chart for the frequency of ist of the 141st. Flipping the knobs to change the frequency, Wecas set the proper frequency for the ist of the 141st command radio net and passed Charlie four Charlie eight eight Bravo's message to a radio telephone operator at ist of the 141st who sounded as if he was half asleep.

  5 kilometers north of san ygnacio, texas

  0121 hours, 30 August

  After hanging the hand mike of the radio back on a hook made from a coat hanger and attached to the roll bar of the Humvee, Andy Morrezzo leaned back in the backseat and stretched. He had been twenty minutes late checking in with the battalion command post through the artillery unit. It would be another forty minutes before his next scheduled report.

  That one, he knew, had to be on time. It was okay to be late on one, every now and then. But to miss two in a row was unforgivable, even if comms were bad. Scouts, according to their battalion commander, were supposed to be resourceful and tenacious, whatever that meant. Looking at his watch, Morrezzo decided that at one thirty in the morning it was hard to be resourceful. Hell, he thought, it was hard just staying awake.

  Opening the door of the Humvee, Morrezzo decided to get out and walk around for a few minutes. Maybe he'd go over to the armored Humvee and see if the new kid was awake.

  Carefully, Morrezzo reached over, resting his left hand on the tube of an AT-4 light antitank rocket launcher in order to reach the AN-PVS 5

  night-vision goggles sitting on top of the radio located in the front of the Humvee. Taking care not to wake Sullivan and Alison, both of whom were asleep in the front seats, Morrezzo grabbed the goggles carrying case, slowly lifted it, and eased himself back and out of the Humvee. He didn't need to worry about waking his companions. Both sleeping soundly, neither man noticed him leave. Morrezzo didn't bother to take his helmet, resting on top of the AT-4 antitank rockets. Nor did he, in his concern over waking his companions, notice that he had failed to turn the radio back to the battalion command frequency, leaving it instead on the frequency of the artillery unit he had just contacted.

  Once outside the Humvee, Morrezzo paused, taking in a deep breath and stretching. The cool night air felt good. Though eighty degrees was still warm by any measure, eighty degrees without the sun was a damned sight better than one hundred and five with the sun and no shade. Looking about, Morrezzo allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness. In the pale gray light of a quarter moon setting in the western sky, he could clearly make out the form of the armored Humvee parked one hundred meters to the right of Sullivan's. Between Morrezzo and the other Humvee was a concrete and stone picnic pavilion sheltering concrete and stone picnic tables. Checkpoint Quebec five two, selected by the battalion intell officer because of its view of the road and border, had been chosen many years before by some state park official as a great place for a roadside park and picnic site for the same reasons.,

  Walking over to the picnic tables, Morrezzo boosted himself up on the top of one of them. Setting his feet on the bench and resting his elbows on his knees, he opened the hard plastic case containing the night-vision goggles and took them out. Still not fully awake, it took Morrezzo forever and a great deal of fumbling to find the switch to turn the goggles on.

  Finally finding it, he flicked the switch to the on position and looked down at the goggles until he saw the soft green glow that emanated from the eyepieces inside the headpiece. Ready, he lifted the goggles to his eyes and began to scan the Mexican side of the border for banditos and other such bad guys.

  The image of two armored vehicles on the other side of the Rio Grande, their gun tubes pointed right at him, was, to say the least, quite unexpected.

  Startled, Morrezzo jerked upright as if an electric shock had been applied to the base of his spine. Pressing the night-vision goggles tightly against his face, Morrezzo locked onto what appeared to be the nearest of the two armored vehicles and studied it for a moment. Although he couldn't identify the French-built Panard ERC-90 Lynx for what it was, Morrezzo knew it wasn't American and, more importantly, it was on the other side of the river. Hence, it was the enemy.

  After studying the boxlike armored vehicle with the big long gun for another moment, Morrezzo threw his legs over the side of the picnic table, hopped down, and stood up, all the time holding the night-vision goggles to his face as if they were glued to it. Only after he was satisfied that the enemy vehicles were not moving and had apparently not seen him,
did he turn and head back to Sullivan's Humvee to inform him of the sighting.

  The sudden shifting of his target, followed by a quick turn and movement away from him, did not bother Lefleur. He merely continued to smoothly track the target and slightly, ever so slightly, elevate the barrel of the 7.62mm sniper rifle to compensate for the increased range. When he felt good about his sight picture, Lefleur squeezed the trigger, firing a single hollow-point bullet.

  Morrezzo never heard the report from Lefleur's rifle. Nor did he feel the impact of the hollow-point round as it struck the base of his skull. And even if he did feel the impact, it was only for the briefest time, for the bullet struck true, doing what it was designed to do. Penetrating the skull bone at a slightly upward angle, the soft lead of the bullet pushed a chunk of shattered bone in front of it. As the bullet and the chunk of bone continued forward, the bullet began to slow down, spreading out into a wad the size of a quarter. In a single, continuous motion, this wad, with the bone chunk in front of it, began ripping through the soft brain tissue that stood in its path, compacting the tissue that wasn't pushed to either side of the moving mass against the bone plate that formed the forehead.

  When the pressure of the ever expanding mass of bullet, bone, and brain tissue became too great, the front plates of Morrezzo's skull, from his hairline down to the base of his nose, blew out, freeing the wadded bullet from the mass of bone and brain tissue that had obstructed its flight path.

  The wadded bullet momentarily accelerated as the obstructions fell away and traveled a little further before finally falling to the ground. Morrezzo, however, was dead before that happened.

  Lefleur's single shot initiated a fusillade which, in the best traditions of the French Foreign Legion, achieved its objective quickly, violently, and completely. First to fire after Lefleur was the RPG team. They engaged the armored Humvee first, firing at a range of less than one hundred meters. Their first round hit the engine compartment head-on. The jet stream created by the shaped-charge explosion sliced through the upper part of the engine, through the fire wall, and into the passenger compartment.

  Though it missed the two men asleep in the front seats of the Humvee, the white-hot pencil-thin shaft of flame cut through the fiberglass tube containing one of the stored AT-4 antitank rockets, igniting the rocket propellent. This explosion, in turn, detonated the high-explosive antitank warhead of a second AT-4 rocket launcher stored next to the one that had been hit. From where the team sat, it seemed as if the armored Humvee blew itself apart, with doors flying open and a sheet of flame shooting up and out of the open hatch in the roof, engulfing the machine gunner who was standing watch in the hatch. For the machine gunner, as well as the two men inside the armored Humvee, the heavy duty construction and special Kevlar armor of the vehicle worked against them by containing and magnifying, the effects of the explosions better than a simple canvas-covered Humvee would have. All three men were dead in a matter of seconds.

  Even before they died, a hail of machine-gun and automatic-rifle fire raked the left side of Sullivan's Humvee. Sullivan, still sitting in the driver's seat with his head resting on the steering wheel while he slept, caught the full weight of the initial machine-gun burst. Tod Alison, in the passenger seat, was shielded, for the most part, by Sullivan's body. Even so, Alison took one round in the left shoulder and one in his right knee as well as numerous fragments frpm flying glass, fiberglass, and metal.

  The sting of his wounds, as well as the shock of suddenly being under fire, momentarily paralyzed Alison. His first reaction was an instinctive pulling away from the source of the pain.

  Reaching around with his right hand to grab the door handle while he watched in horror as Sullivan's body jerked as more bullets hit it, Alison threw open the Humvee's frail door just as secondary explosions rocked the armored Humvee, lighting up the night. Turning to watch the death of the armored Humvee, Alison realized that there was no escape in that direction either. The first conscious thought that flashed through his mind as he watched the machine gunner of the armored Humvee, his body engulfed in fire and writhing in pain, was that he too was about to die. His next thought was to report the attack before that happened. Twisting about in his seat, his body responding spasmodically as a result of multiple wounds, shock, and panic, Alison grabbed for the radio hand mike.

  Someone had to be told. Someone had to help them.

  The sudden flash, followed by one of the American Humvees blowing up, startled Lieutenant Marti. His first thought was that the Lynx that was overwatching him had fired. Standing upright in the open hatch of his own Lynx, Marti twisted about and looked at the other Lynx. He could see no indication, however, that it had fired. He was still puzzled when the sound of small-arms fire drifted across the river to his position.

  Looking back to the American position, he could see muzzle flashes spewing out streams of tracers at the American recon vehicles.

  Reaching down, Marti grabbed the radio hand mike and lifted it to his mouth. He was about to key the radio and submit an initial report, but he hesitated. What exactly was he going to report? What was it he was looking at? Unable to answer those questions and knowing that they were the first ones that his troop commander would ask, Marti put the radio hand mike down and, instead, ordered his driver to start the engine. They needed to get closer and investigate a little more before they reported.

  Better, Marti thought, that he submit a complete report that clarified the situation than a partial one that confused or caused undue panic at headquarters.

  As

  the engine of the Lynx choked to life, the gunfire on the American side of the river died down. Ordering his second Lynx to cover his move, Marti switched back to the intercom and then instructed his driver to move forward. As they began to roll out of the shallow gully they had been in, Marti watched the far side of the river intently. Whatever had happened, Marti thought, was over. Perhaps that would make it easier to sort the situation out.

  "Any station this net, any station this net! This is Charlie eight eight Bravo. We are under attack! Repeat, we are under attack! We need medevac and backup, over!"

  For several seconds, Sergeant Wecas, back in front of the TAC fire unit, turned only his head and looked at the radio. Lieutenant Stolte, having resumed his position at the table with feet propped up and leaning back in the folding chair as he read, lowered his book and looked at Wecas in the command post carrier. Stolte was about to ask what the last call was all about when the radio blared again.

  "Any station this net! This is Charlie eight eight Bravo. We are under attack! We need help, ASAP! Answer me. Someone, please answer me!"

  Sitting up as if he had been shocked, Wecas grabbed the radio hand mike and keyed the radio. "Charlie four Charlie eight eight Bravo, this is Mike one Victor three two. Give me your location and your status, over."

  There was a pause. While he waited, Wecas was motionless, staring at the radio in front of him. Stolte, realizing by now that something was going on, put his book on the table, swung his feet to the ground, and was in the process of entering the command post carrier when the voice on the radio came back. "We're under attack, damn it. The sergeant's dead. I'm hit. The other Humvee blew up. I need help. Please God. I need help."

  Though Wecas didn't understand exactly what was happening, he understood that whoever was calling was hurt, frightened, and in need of help. In Vietnam he had heard many calls like this one. Young soldiers, often alone and in combat for the first time, trying to find someone, anyone, to help them and their buddies. Although the voice calling itself Charlie eight eight Bravo wasn't the same one that had called before when they couldn't reach their own battalion CP, it didn't matter to Wecas. The first caller might already be dead, or wounded. Wecas didn't know. Nor did that matter.. What did matter was that the fear, the excitement, the anger that came out of the radio speaker in the command post carrier was real. Someone, another American soldier like him, was in trouble out there. Wecas was not about to let
him die alone.

  "Charlie four Charlie eight eight Bravo, this is Mike one Victor three two. Can you give me your location and a target reference point? I can have a fire mission for you in a minute, but I need your location and a target reference point, over."

  The shooting had stopped. For a moment, there was an eerie silence, punctuated only by a low roar of flames consuming the armored Humvee and an occasional pop-pop as small-arms ammo in the armored Humvee cooked off. Thankful that someone had answered his call, Alison calmed down and considered what he should do next. He had no idea who had fired upon them and only a vague idea where the fire had come from.

  Though he thought that the attackers were close and somewhere to the front, he couldn't be sure. Whoever had fired on them was, no doubt, still out there. They might even be closing in. If that was the case, he needed to get out of the Humvee and hide, or at least get into a position where he could defend himself. Dropping the radio hand mike in his lap, Alison reached behind for his M-16 rifle. As he did so, a series of sharp pains wracked his body. Laying the rifle across his lap, he realized that escape would not be possible. Though he didn't know how bad he had been hit, he. intuitively understood that he would not be able to get out of the Humvee and evade his attackers.

  "Charlie four Charlie eight eight Bravo, this is Mike one Victor three two. I say again, give me your location and a target reference point. I need your location and a target reference point, over."

  Looking at the radio, Alison realized that his only salvation was to give whoever Mike one Victor was what he asked for. Letting go of his rifle, he seized the radio hand mike with his right hand and the map, which was wedged under the radio, with his left hand. As he put the map in his lap, he keyed the radio. "Last station, this is Charlie eight eight, give me a minute, over."