by Dale A. Dye
A SHAU VALLEY
Lying on his belly, hanging halfway out the lowered rear ramp of a twin-rotor CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, Willy Pud could easily follow the snarling firefight on the ground below. Red and green tracers lanced through the scrubby foothills of the Annamese Cordillera separating Laos from Vietnam. The NVA were rubbing their backs up against the verdant green velvet that covered the misty mountains of the border area. They were spitting and hissing like a coiled, cornered cobra Willy Pud had seen once on an R&R in Bangkok. And like the wiry mongoose that killed the deadly snake in a 50-baht freak show, the Marines were pressing for a quick decisive strike at an exposed flank. From long experience as a line infantryman, Willy Pud knew the gooks would melt away like dawn shadows once they managed to break contact and slither to the high jungle. The grunts in the assault below also knew they were running out of time and space. Only an hour or two until sunset and they intended to slam the escape hatch on the NVA. Frantic calls for artillery fire missions crackled into his borrowed headset.
Willy Pud felt the rotors change pitch as the pilots put the helo into a higher, wider orbit over the jungle. He struggled to his knees as the aircraft commander’s laconic drawl buzzed into his ears. “Uh, Recon, we’re gonna have to make your insert or call it off before long. Grunts have got some heavy arty inbound, and we need to clear the air space.” Pulling a plastic-coated map from the cargo pocket of his trousers, Willy struggled forward to visually guide the aircrew into the landing zone he had chosen.
He gave a reassuring slap to every shoulder he passed on the way to the cockpit. Six men—seven with Benjamin, the Correspondent, all staring out the portholes, chewing on air and trying to keep the spiders from crawling up their spines. All of them handpicked people and not a goosey bastard in the bunch…all of them on a second or third tour, running with Recon because they wanted to be with other pros out here on the sharp edge.
Willy felt twinge of sympathy for the platoon sergeants and squad leaders from the DMZ to the Mekong Delta this late in the war, plagued with reluctant draftees who hoped the worst was over, dopers who turned their tours into a quest for the ultimate high, and half-trained zealots who thought they saw a light at the end of an endless tunnel. Good money after bad. The Marine Corps—the entire American military—would never be the same after Nam.
Just as the rear landing gear bumped the ground, the helicopter reared like a dump truck to spill Willy Pud and his Recon team into the mountains near the Laotian border. The Marines fanned out automatically and sprinted for a gloomy bamboo thicket. Willy tossed a thumbs-up signal over his shoulder and a gale of rotor wash pushed him into the green and black void. Blade clatter and turbine whine echoed off the craggy mountains for a few moments and then they were left in relative quiet.
Willy knew the silence was an illusion. The jungle was never really still, especially in the mountains that served as monsoon spa for noisy birds, apes, and big cats. It would be a few minutes before his people could control the deafening roar of adrenaline-charged blood and begin to classify those normal, nonlethal bush sounds. Danger lurked in moving or speaking before that time, so Willy left his people in place and tried to formulate a plan for finding a pair of needles in this monumental haystack.
The helicopter pilots were bang on the mark. Willy oriented his map to the ground with a lensatic compass and stood cautiously to look at the misty mountains. They were on the military crest of a long, craggy finger that crooked into Laos about five klicks to the northwest. Below them was a broad valley that meandered parallel to its mountain walls until it reached the border. There was good cover and concealment in those gloomy depths, and Willy knew from aerial photos that they ended in a long tunnel of triple canopy that hid one of the NVA’s primary infiltration routes.
With a sibilant hiss that built rapidly to a roar, another wave of winter monsoon rain began to pelt the jungle. Willy shivered and wondered briefly how a place so fucking hot could seem so cold. When the tympani boom of heavy artillery began to echo off the mountainside, he signaled silently for his team to melt more deeply into the bush.
If his instincts were right, the NVA would have broken contact by now. Cannon-cockers at The Rockpile and Vandegrift Combat Base were stretching high-explosive fingers out into the sunset, trying to slam the back door leading to Laos. Shrapnel would lash the shadows and whip the NVA into the valley below their perch. Willy Pud and his team would run a parallel track for as long as it took, and when the gooks emerged into daylight near the triple-canopy tunnel for the final dash to safety, the legend of Salt and Pepper would either be proven or put to rest.
DANANG
“How long were you in the harbor site before you spotted the NVA?” The MACV colonel looked up from his notebook as Willy Pud paused to pick at a scab on his right elbow. He was losing track of the story. So many impressions, so many emotions; his mind tended to shut down rather than try to sort them all out in sequence.
Willy silently examined the stained interior of the empty canteen cup and groped for the thread of the narrative. Before he could find his place, the Recon Company commander suddenly stepped through the blackout curtain of the muggy tent ushering in a chilly gale of rain-spattered air.
“Beg pardon, sir. But you said you wanted to see these as soon as they were ready.”
The MACV colonel vaulted off his stool and snatched a sheaf of dripping photos from the Marine officer. Willy smelled the pungent developing chemicals when the colonel returned to his seat. There was a tragic, vanquished look on the man’s face as he handed over a black-and-white glossy. It was almost as if the colonel’s martial armor had been pierced by evidence that the lovable, patriotic GI Joe of his youth could become a treacherous turncoat willing to piss on the flag, rape his mom, and stick his dick in the apple pie. Willy Pud felt genuinely sorry for him.
“Sir...these guys...you shouldn’t...”
There was enough heat in the MACV colonel’s glare to cauterize Willy’s sympathy. He bit his lip and accepted the rest of the dripping prints. A familiar emotion twitched in the officer’s eyeballs. Willy Pud had felt the same thing at first glimpse of Salt and Pepper.
“Look closely now, Sergeant Pudarski. For the record, are these two men the ones you saw traveling with the NVA unit you tracked into Laos?”
As he studied the two figures caught in the grainy embrace of high-speed film and a telephoto lens, Willy Pud understood why people pay good money to see carnival freaks. It’s a perverse fascination with the human condition, he realized. Its why people gang up for a glimpse of a mass murderer or a child molester. They’re wondering just what the hell the difference is. Why them and not me?
Salt didn’t appear to be much different from some of the kids Willy Pud had inherited in his own infantry outfits. Feather Merchant. Slight and slim with no obvious physical prowess. The kind of kid who joins the Marines to show his buddies or his girlfriend he can hack it with the big boys. Willy would have adjusted the guy’s attitude in a big fucking hurry. Kind of a pouty sneer fixed around his mouth—but maybe that was the fever blisters.
And Pepper…a big, unkempt ’fro topping a face that had the sweaty sheen of polished ebony. Mean motherfucker with a major-league chip on his muscular shoulder. Wide nostrils and red-rimmed eyes that reminded Willy Pud of the black winos his father had steered him around in Chicago’s downtown Loop. The draft beer drinking Polish stool-owners at his old man’s favorite bar back in those prejudiced days used to say, “There ain’t nothin’ more dangerous than buck nigger with a head fulla Thunderbird.” Smart men would give a guy like Pepper a wide berth, drunk or sober.
“Sergeant Pudarski...?”
“Yessir. I believe these are the two men we seen running with the NVA.”
“Go on with your story.”
“We got to the tunnel area about...I figure about twelve hours before the NVA. They was moving only at night to keep from being spotted by air and dodging H&I artillery all t
he way, so we had plenty of time to set up and get ready.”
LAOS
Hamhock, Willy Pud’s trusted radioman and assistant patrol leader, was relieving the Combat Correspondent near the camera mounted on a low tripod when he spotted the NVA column. They were yawning and bitching as they entered the tunnel of heavy bush, shaking out the cramps and picking up a purposeful stride as they headed into sanctuary, safe from prying eyes in the sky. Hamhock smiled. He always got a weird kick out of looking at the enemy when they couldn’t see him. And these dudes looked just like a platoon of overloaded Marine grunts stretching it out on the homeward leg of a long hump.
He quietly shifted to let the photographer sergeant slip back behind the specially rigged Nikon and craned over his shoulder to spot the spoke in the defensive perimeter where his team leader should be sleeping. As usual, there was no need to wake Willy Pud. Hamhock jealously guarded his sleeping shifts in the bush, but Willy Pud...well, he had that fine-tuned internal alarm system and those little white pills that wired him directly into the situation.
Hamhock caught Willy Pud’s silent query and conveyed the enemy sighting with his hands. Pointing at his eyes: enemy in sight. Two fingers and a fist: about 20 gooks. Three fingers, pointed down and then to the left: approaching below us from the left front, range about 300 meters. Willy Pud nodded and dug around in his rucksack for a pair of rubber-covered 7 x 50 binoculars. At his gentle prodding, the rest of the team began to roll over behind their weapons, forming a barrier against any flanker that might stumble into the harbor site.
Butting his shoulder against the camera tripod, Willy heard the muted snick of the silenced shutter. Sergeant Benjamin removed his hand from the focusing ring of the long telephoto tube and showed thumbs up. There was a tight grin on the man’s filthy face as he kept his eye screwed to the viewfinder. The bush-wise NCO wasn’t about to waste film or risk exposure for NVA family snaps. Even as he focused his binoculars, Willy Pud knew what he would see.
They jumped out of the blur and riveted his attention like a pair of signal flares. Both men stood a head or taller than the NVA troopers humping along beside them. They wore an admixture of ratty GI and VC gear that contrasted starkly with the muddy green of the gooks’ baggy uniforms. There was no longer any doubt. All the stories were true. Salt and Pepper were real.
It looked a little like a prisoner escort situation, but the two tall men were clearly not POWs. They loped along in a relaxed column, holding positions across from each other within the NVA formation. The white man carried an M-16 with two bandoliers full of loaded magazines and a brace of Chicom stick grenades in a pouch looped over his shoulder. Skinny, leech-bitten calves showed between the shredded hems of his GI trousers and the tops of his well-worn jungle boots. The black man wore a ripped Army-style flak jacket, exposing arms corded with muscle and a pair of muddy black VC-style trousers. He carried an M-79 grenade launcher over his shoulder like a squirrel hunter and humped two RPG rounds for the NVA rocket gunner walking ahead of him.
Despite the weapons, Willy Pud noticed the NVA bush veterans were keeping a wary eye on their two foreign comrades. He felt a flash of professional empathy with the gook grunts. It figures. Just like we keep an eye on the former-VC Kit Carson Scouts who get assigned to our units. It’s a good bet a guy who turns once won’t have too many qualms about turning twice.
Sergeant Benjamin’s hands were shaking as he opened the back of his camera and fumbled with a film canister. Willy Pud put a reassuring pressure on his elbow and circled a finger to show the man he wanted to keep rolling as long as Salt and Pepper were in sight. Below them, Salt shifted his M-16 from one shoulder to another and Willy focused on the movement.
The guy had a skinny, scarecrow frame. Not much muscle and what there was looked undeveloped by hard work or hefting weights. He had pale, watery eyes behind a set of black GI glasses held together at one temple by a wad of filthy adhesive tape. Sandy hair stuck out from under a VC bush hat emblazoned with a red star and a peace symbol fashioned from a grenade pin. He wore an admixture of GI load-bearing equipment, but Willy Pud ignored that and focused on the man’s carriage. He had an attitude that showed in his posture, as if he held himself slightly aloof, as if grunting through the jungle was beneath him; a temporary burden to be borne temporarily. The burden is on this dude’s mind and not on his back. What we have here is a candy-ass rich kid. So what the hell is he doing here? And on the wrong side of the fight?
Pepper was the physical opposite. Broad shoulders tapering into narrow hips. Ripples of cleanly cut muscle showed with every move. This splib was a jock or furniture-mover—maybe both—at some time. Mean motherfucker, no question. Blocky face surrounding a broad nose that had been broken a time or two. And that hard ridge of eyebrow was scar tissue. He was a fighter, in and out of the ring, probably. At full magnification, Will Pud spotted a coil of black thread through a lanced earlobe and a bracelet of black, braided bootlaces on the man’s left wrist. When he shrugged to shift the weight of the rocket rounds on his back, Will spotted an ebony carving of a clenched fist hanging from a thong around the man’s neck. Seen that a time or two in base-camp areas. Black Power symbol, and this dude is probably out to kill a few honkys—don’t matter what uniform they’re wearing.
But it was the man’s stride that told the story for Willy Pud. Pepper swung along the trail like a swimmer stroking into a sprint finish: step, swing, reach, and repeat; shoulders rolling, hands cupped somewhere near a fist Willy had walked behind enough ghetto refugees in uniform to recognized the challenge, the brutal anger in that urban strut.
As he watched Salt and Pepper, Willy Pud felt something burning deep in his guts. He clenched his teeth tightly and let the hot bile that flowed up from his stomach drip unheeded out of a corner of his mouth. All the bullshit back in the States, all the bandwagon political rhetoric from kids who wouldn’t know a gook from a gumdrop, a guy could ignore all that. But this was something that couldn’t be ignored no matter how bard a guy in the Nam locked into survival and his personal concerns. A thing like this, once it was revealed that there were American turncoats fighting with the enemy in Vietnam, would light a blazing fire under all the peaceniks and protestors who insisted on blaming good warriors for a bad war.
Tapping him on the shoulder, Benjamin held up three canisters of exposed film. They had proof of Salt and Pepper’s existence. At his other shoulder, Hamhock held up the radio handset and shot Willy Pud a questioning glance. They should send a burst transmission requesting immediate extract, run for the border, and get the evidence into the right hands.
And then what? Willy closed his eyes and tried to think beyond their immediate pressing concerns. It was unfamiliar territory for him but he tried to think beyond this one mission. If America pulled out of Vietnam—and whole units were already being shipped home under Nixon’s Vietnamization Program—these traitors might never be brought to trial. If the ARVN couldn’t hold the fort after the American combat troops disappeared—and he had no illusions about their ability to do that—Salt and Pepper would become heroes among the victorious North Vietnamese. No question they were traitors and he had proof of that now, but their treachery might even be justified by the growing crowd of people who view the gooks as some sort of pitiful oriental elves being beat up by an American giant. This kind of shit is way above my paygrade.
Willy Pud refocused his binoculars and thought about killing. It wasn’t something he did very often in the bush—virtually never when he was deep in enemy territory—but the rage inside him seemed hell-bent on a violent outlet. Like most combat men, Willy Pud viewed killing from a technical perspective. It was something unpleasant made less so by a clinical approach, like making a comfortable load out of a heavy pack or digging a precise fighting hole. After a few firefights, Sunday school morality questions ceased being a bother.
There were other times—-a few in Willy Pud’s memory—when killing was a memorable high, something that seemed to
be charged with righteous virtue. Sometimes you got a shot at unsullied vengeance, tit-for-tat, righting a terrible wrong, and it felt good. You walked away from such bloody encounters proud—there just wasn’t any other word for it—proud to have blown away a sonofabitch that deserved it very much. This was one of those times.
The NVA officer commanding the retreating unit ordered a halt and said something that made his men laugh. Willy Pud watched as he kicked at the decayed underbrush and set his troops to gathering firewood. No problem with a little fire to make hot tea with the tangled bush overhead to diffuse and dissipate the smoke. Wordlessly, Salt and Pepper came together on one side of the trail and dropped into a squat. Salt pulled a stained clutch of paper out of his pocket and began to read. Pepper reached into his pack and began to munch on a ball of congealed white rice. When a thin column of camphor-wood smoke drifted up from the fire and a battered aluminum teapot appeared from an NVA private’s pack, Willy made a decision.
Hamhock’s eyebrows lifted when his patrol leader whispered the orders. It wasn’t that he had anything against killing gooks. A good, tight ambush run by pros could take out 20 easy, Hamhock knew, and still get everybody back to brag about it. But this was something else, he thought, something special, and everyone in the team knew that. There was more here than just another chance to kill the enemy.
Hamhock sucked on a thick lower lip and then whispered into Willy Pud’s ear. “Recon, man...snoop, poop, and scoot. We got what we come after.”
Willy Pud looked through his binoculars again. “l want them two motherfuckers dead, Hamhock—and I want to haul the bodies back to prove it.”
“Too deep and too steep, Willy Pud. We try to haul a couple of stiffs back with the gooks chasing our ass and we won’t make the extract point.”