by Eric Helm
Bromhead saw what was happening. He turned and aimed at the oncoming soldiers, shooting as each target appeared. When the bolt of his weapon locked back, he dropped the magazine onto the hard wooden floor of the crowded bunker. He snatched up another, and as he reloaded, he realized how hot it was. The air inside the bunker was stifling. It reeked of sweat and fear and burnt gunpowder.
The strikers with him were working to keep the machine gun firing. The M-60 chattered, ejecting the hot brass so that it bounced off the sandbags, stinging the defenders.
As Bromhead aimed again, there was a shattering explosion only a few feet from him. The concussion knocked him to the side, slamming him into the sandbags. He lost his weapon and the bunker filled with smoke and dust. Around him he could hear the men coughing, one of them throwing up so that a new odor was added to the others.
Bromhead scrambled to the left on all fours as he searched for his rifle. He was no longer aware of the heat or the smoke or how much his eyes stung. Coughing, he ran his hands over the rough, dirty floor, cutting them on splinters or burning them on the hot brass. But he found his weapon and turned as an arm appeared at the firing port. He didn’t aim. He pulled the trigger and felt the weapon jerk in his hands. From outside came a scream of pain and then another explosion. This one wasn’t as loud or as deadly as the first.
Bromhead rubbed his eyes and blinked at the night. He fell back to the entrance of the bunker and found one of the strikers crouched there. The man’s face was wet with blood, and he was mumbling something over and over. Bromhead grabbed him and tossed him out into the night, and then followed.
As he cleared the bunker, there was another explosion in it and smoke and dust boiled out the door. Bromhead turned and saw an enemy soldier standing in front of it. Again he fired and saw the man lifted from his feet.
He shook his head then. The cooler air outside seemed to revive him. He felt the sweat trickling down his sides. His uniform felt clammy, as if he had been swimming in tepid water.
He leaped to the left, using the bunker for protection, and searched for the enemy. Now he heard the firing from the other strikers as the VC and NVA attacked into a crossfire. There were shouts and screams. The enemy’s bugles blew. Grenades exploded all around and trip flares continued to burst.
Bromhead emptied his weapon into a squad of attackers. Two of them went down. When his bolt locked back, Bromhead dropped to the ground. Sitting with his back against the ripped and leaking sandbags, he put his head down, feeling tired, feeling as if he had run a race in hundred-degree weather wrapped in wet towels. His breath rasped in his throat and burned his lungs. Around him it sounded as if the earth were destroying itself.
Without realizing it, he pulled the spent magazine from his rifle and slammed a fresh one home. He turned, got to his knees and aimed. But there were no enemy soldiers close to him. They were fleeing into the tall grass. Their weapons had ceased to fire.
Bromhead leaped to his feet and ran south. He passed a burning hootch and a sandbagged bunker that was a smoking ruin and ran over the debris from a hundred mortar hits. When he reached the bottom of the fire control tower, he stopped. He glanced up at it, at the ladder that left him exposed to enemy snipers, and hesitated. Finally he slung his weapon and scrambled up the ladder. He dived over the sandbags. He lay there for a moment panting, trying to catch his breath. When he got to his hands and knees, he saw the grinning face of his heavy weapons man.
“What’s the status?”
“Lost some bunkers on the north to enemy fire. Crew-served weapons and mortars are still intact. Heavy casualties on the north, but light elsewhere.”
“Situation?”
“Hell, Captain, I thought you knew. The little fuckers have turned tail.”
Santini joined Madden in the Fifth Special Forces Headquarters. For a moment Madden stayed where he was, listening to the sound of the mortars falling and to the wail of the incoming warning horn. When he saw Santini, he snapped his fingers for attention. “What’s it like out there?”
“People running all over the place with no one sure what’s going on. We’ve taken some wounded and some killed in the mortar attacks.”
“Think we should get out to the perimeter?” asked Madden.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Hell, man, you were out there. You’ve seen the situation. Now I know they can’t overrun the base — it’s too big — but they could penetrate the wire and create havoc.”
Santini entered the major’s office and dropped onto the couch. He leaned his head against the plywood wall and closed his eyes. For an instant the scene outside the club replayed itself. He saw men falling. Men dying.
He was tired. He felt the sweat drip, and if he paid attention he could smell himself. He ached all over, the result of hitting the floor and having men land on him as they tried to find cover. Being a soldier assigned to the big base had slowed him down. He hadn’t expected the enemy to hit them, and yet he knew they would because the girl had told him they would. Hell, all the signs were there.
At least he had gotten her off Nha Trang and out of the clutches of the local Vietnamese. Had he failed to do that, she would probably be dead now. He knew that the Vietnamese interrogators would kill the prisoners in retaliation for the attack tonight. He had saved her. He hoped he wouldn’t be sorry he had.
“Sergeant,” said Madden, “I think it’s time we acted like soldiers.”
Santini opened an eye and saw the major standing next to his desk. He had donned a flak jacket and a steel pot. In his right hand he held a CAR-15. Santini couldn’t help laughing.
“You going to a costume party?”
Anger flashed across Madden’s face and then he laughed. “Yeah, I am. Local CO has decreed that we all wear our flak jackets and steel pots.”
“And you suddenly got the urge.”
Madden took off his helmet and set it on the desk. “Why don’t you get your weapon and we’ll go find ourselves a place on the line?”
Santini forced himself to stand. He returned to his own office and grabbed the flak jacket that he had stuffed into the bottom of a filing cabinet. Then, after finding his helmet and getting his rifle, he looked into the major’s office and said, “I’m all set to go.”
They left the building together. Madden thought about taking a jeep, but decided it was the last thing they needed. For a moment they stood in the darkness, listening to the sounds around them: firing on the perimeter, outgoing artillery and the wail of sirens all over the compound.
Madden stopped at the corner of the building and looked back to the east. He could see the glow of fires in the distance. Jets roared from the runway and choppers popped their rotors as they got airborne, going out on countermortar.
But there was nothing coming in. There were no explosions on the base, other than rounds cooking off in the fires. There were no more mortars or rockets falling on them.
“I think they’ve stopped,” said Santini.
“Yeah,” agreed Madden. “Just harassment to let us know they’re thinking of us. I’ll bet some of the camps are really catching hell.”
“Yes, sir.”
Madden turned and ran back to one of the jeeps. He set his weapon in the back where it would be easy to retrieve. As Santini climbed into the passenger’s seat, Madden said, “I doubt we’re needed on the perimeter. I think we’d better head over to the TOC and see if we can make radio contact with the camps. See if there’s anything they need.”
“You think they’re the real targets?” asked Santini, afraid that he’d gotten the girl out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Madden reached down to turn the ignition switch and then sat up, the engine running. “No,” he said, “I don’t. I think they’ll take harassment fire, too, but if this is as widespread as we suggested it would be, the targets will be Vietnamese — the provincial capitals, Hue, Saigon and Da Nang — with only a few pushes at American bases.”
For some reason Santin
i found that estimate comforting. He relaxed, feeling the tension drain from him as if he had just learned that a tumor was benign. He closed his eyes as the major pulled out of his slot, opening them once as they hit a pothole and again when he heard shouting to one side. Then they were at the TOC and there wasn’t time to relax or worry. He was busy with the radios, learning that the attacks were widespread but the casualties and damage light.
In the darkened city room Hodges and the boys were crowded around the hammering teletype machine, sure that they were all going to die sometime before sunrise. Horrified, they watched the list of attacks grow. The teletype told them of losses at Hue, Quang Tri and Da Lat. They tried to make some sense out of it because there was so much going on.
Hodges finally tired of standing in front of the machine and reading the lines as they were printed. The tiny light above the machine tended to wash out the ink, making it hard to see. And the ribbon needed changing, but no one wanted to shut down the machine long enough to do it. They were forced to read the faint words.
Hodges collapsed into a chair and leaned an elbow on the table so that he could hold his head up with his hand. His fingers dug at his scalp as if trying to get rid of an itch. Occasionally he would sigh and say, “God, this is terrible. For the American Army to take a beating like this. I never thought I’d see it.”
“They’re holding their own,” ventured Crown. “I mean, the losses all seem to be Vietnamese.”
“You don’t understand,” moaned Hodges. “You don’t understand. The enemy was defeated, everyone said so, and now suddenly, out of nowhere, there he is. Thousands of them.”
Crown looked at the editor and wanted to shout at him. He remembered Morrow standing in the city room only hours earlier, telling Hodges that something was brewing. But the editor and all the others wouldn’t listen. They’d seen and heard only what they’d wanted to see and hear. Now their preconceived notions were blowing up around them.
“This is worse than Custer at the Little Big Horn,” said Hodges. “Christ.”
“But…”
Hodges suddenly snapped up, staring. It was almost as if he had seen the headlines on the newspapers after the Custer massacre and realized that it was a hell of a story. The defeat of the American Army by a third, hell, a fifth-rate power.
“We’d better get out in the street and get some things nailed down,” he said. “I want someone over at the embassy and I want someone to backstop Morrow at MACV. I want someone at Tan Son Nhut.”
“What are we going to write?” asked one of the reporters.
“Use your head, man,” said Hodges. “We’ve got a hell of a story here. Shocked people in the street. The American Army retreating all over South Vietnam. This is stacking up as a major defeat.”
“Maybe we’d better let things settle down before we decide that,” said Crown.
“We’re not deciding anything.” Hodges moved to the teletype machine and pointed at the paper rolling through it. “The enemy has already decided it. We’ve got to cover it. Get out there and see how badly we’ve been hurt.”
“Maybe we should wait to see how our boys respond,” tried Crown again.
"Man, you just don’t get it, do you? This is a major setback for us. I don’t like it, but it’s a story that we’ve got to print. We’d better get on it.” He grabbed at the paper in the teletype, reading about more disaster in South Vietnam. “I don’t like it at all,” he repeated, but there was a smile on his face.
CHAPTER 17
THE STREETS OF SAIGON
Morrow stood in a doorway and watched the people around her. Something had changed subtly in the past few minutes. There was no longer an air of celebration. It had become an air of panic. Fright was evident on the faces of men and women as they scrambled for cover. The bursts of machine gun fire and firecrackers that had marked the party were now things to fear. Snipers seemed to be everywhere, taking shots at the people in the streets. Rockets and mortars were falling sporadically and people were dying.
The streets, which had been filled with celebrants, were rapidly becoming deserted. Around her there were men and women hiding, watching and waiting. Occasionally someone would scamper from cover, and if there were no shots, more people would run. But then the sniper would shoot again, and everyone would dive into doorways or behind cars or dodge down an alley.
In the distance more firing erupted. At first it was only a couple of weapons and then the tempo increased until it sounded as if a major firefight was developing. Morrow moved from the doorway to the sidewalk, looking in the direction of the shooting, but she couldn’t see anything.
Instead of running down the street she ducked back into the shadows and then crouched. Feeling tired, sick and scared, she pressed her face against the rough stone wall of the building. Sweat stained her khaki-colored jumpsuit, but it wasn’t from the heat and humidity of the night.
She realized that she was badly frightened, just as she had been several times since her arrival in Vietnam. First there had been the men forcing their way into her room in Hong Kong and then there had been the VC and NVA who had overrun Camp A-555. Men who had beaten her badly for no apparent reason. Men who felt that she was an enemy because she was an American.
Morrow closed her eyes and pushed herself into the corner and let the fear take control. She didn’t want to get out of the corner. There was nothing she could do anyway. Nothing she could see and nothing to report on. For the moment the enemy didn’t know where she was and she was safe. She should have taken the trip home when she’d had the chance, but she’d had to prove how brave she was.
At that moment she didn’t feel brave. She felt her legs shaking and wished she was with Gerber and Fetterman. They would protect her. Every time she’d gotten into trouble they’d gotten her out of it. They’d been late doing it, but they had eventually arrived. Except that this time they didn’t know where she was and she wasn’t sure where they were. They had been in Saigon that afternoon, but given the circumstances they could be anywhere by now.
The panic she felt was beginning to grip her completely. She whimpered once. The sound was alien to her. It was like that of a lost puppy, like that of a person who’d lost the ability for rational thought. She took a deep, slow breath and forced herself to open her eyes.
The scene before her hadn’t changed. The lights in the building across the street were out, but the neon signs still burned. The multicolored lights gave the street scene an unnatural look. Skin was blue and green, and the blood from the body sprawled in the center of the street was black.
She knew she couldn’t stay where she was. She had to get moving. In her mind she could see herself on her feet, sliding along the front of the buildings, slipping out of danger. But she couldn’t bring herself to get up. She wanted to, desperately, but her muscles wouldn’t respond.
Then, as she concentrated on it, she realized she was on her feet. She hadn’t been aware that she had stood, but suddenly she was on the street, her back pressed against the stone building. There was a man lying there, and Morrow thought he was hiding until she realized that half his head was missing. She stepped over him and hurried on until she came to a corner. The cross street was dark. Without thinking, she turned down it.
The firing that she’d heard was behind her now. She knew that as a reporter she should head toward the sound of the guns, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to find somewhere she could feel safe. She wanted out of the battle before it developed into something more than the scattered snipers and small firefights.
She stopped, hiding behind a huge palm tree, searching the street in front of her. From the right there came a shattering blast and a burst of machine gun fire. Small arms erupted all around, and she knew that the American embassy was under attack. It wasn’t far from where she stood.
Le Tran had her hit squad abandon their vehicles down the block, away from the wall of the American embassy. When she stepped into the street, there were only a dozen or so people mi
lling around, waiting and watching. She pulled the .45 taken from the body of the American MP, thumbed the hammer back and pulled the trigger twice, firing into the air. The people scattered, disappearing immediately.
The men with her jumped from the truck and climbed out of the cars. They grabbed the equipment and then, without orders, split into small groups as they spread out. Le Tran whipped a red cloth from her pocket and laid it across her upper arm. With her free hand, she looped it once, caught an end in her teeth and formed a knot. Satisfied that she could now be identified as a Viet Cong soldier, she joined the group of men who carried the small rocket launcher.
Hugging the shadows, they worked their way down the wide palm-lined boulevard until they were opposite the wall that ran around the embassy. Le Tran held up a hand and the men scattered, taking the little cover they could find. She waited until everyone on the assault team was in place, then touched the shoulder of the man with the rocket launcher.
He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was in the way of the backblast and then aimed at the wall. He pulled the trigger and rocked to the rear as the weapon fired.
Across the street the rocket slammed into the wall and exploded. There was a mushrooming of smoke and dust and a flash of bright orange light. Debris sprayed back toward them, bouncing on the street and flipping up into the air. The roar of the detonation washed out all other sound.
As soon as the smoke cleared, Le Tran was on her feet, running across the street. She dived onto the ground, crawled forward rapidly and peeked over the smoking lip of the hole. Through it was more rubble from the wall. There were palm trees, a stone fountain and bushes covered with flowers.
She was joined by two of the sappers. One turned, looked and then dived through the hole into the embassy grounds. The second man followed, and as Le Tran watched, the rest of her sapper squad entered the embassy grounds and spread out.