Matterhorn (21 page)

Pollini suddenly looked as though he was going to cry. “I’m not stupid,” he said.

“You’re fucking stupid,” Jackson said.

“That’s enough, Jackson,” Mellas said.

He turned to Pollini. “Shortround, you’re just going to have to learn to think about things. The choppers are due in about
five minutes and here you are farting around and eating up your food besides.”

“I didn’t get any breakfast.” Pollini was getting stubborn, his back to the wall.

Mellas felt his nerves, already jangling, begin to fray despite the enforced coolness. “Make sure he’s ready to go, Jackson,”
he said, deciding it would be better to drop the subject. He walked away and settled back on the ground. He shut his eyes,
hoping to look as if he’d gone to sleep. He gradually became aware of a plane droning overhead, lost above the clouds. He
knew it was an airplane and not a helicopter because of the smoothness of the drone and the absence of the flat
slapping thud a helicopter’s rotors made against the air. He looked up from where he lay, seeing nothing, scanning the area
where the sound was coming from with the interest of any bored person in a distraction. For a moment he caught a glimpse of
a large plane, a quick leaden flash amid the cloud cover. Then it disappeared again. It seemed to be circling in lower. When
it finally broke out of the cloud cover, it was far off to the northeast, over the valley into which they were to be dropped.
It was a large propeller-driven aircraft.

“Looks like a transport plane,” Mellas said to Hamilton. “What do you think he’s doing?”

“Fucked if I know, sir.” Hamilton didn’t even bother to look. He was memorizing radio frequencies and codes.

The plane turned in a lazy circle, gaining altitude up above the ridgeline that extended from Matterhorn to Helicopter Hill
and into the east. When it swung around again it was directly in line with the ridge, heading straight toward them. It kept
coming. Quite a few people were watching it by now. A fine faint plume fell from behind it, a darker grayish silver cloud,
hardly distinguishable from the overcast backdrop. The drone grew louder. The plane continued straight on. A few more Marines
rose to their feet.

“What the hell?” said Mellas. He too stood up.

The plane roared overhead, its U.S. Air Force markings clearly visible, the sound of its four turboprops deafening. Within
seconds they were enveloped in a chemical mist. People were coughing, wheezing, shouting obscenities. Mellas could see Fitch,
tears running from his eyes, shouting over Relsnik’s radio to battalion, demanding to know what was going on and trying to
get battalion to stop it. The plane was dwindling into a speck to the southwest, climbing for altitude over the Laotian border
until it was lost in the clouds. The only evidence of its passing was that the whole hill reeked, as if covered with mosquito
repellent.

Hamilton raised an imaginary glass to the air. “Here’s to the fucking Air Force.”

Mellas, his eyes still tearing, walked over to where the company CP group was sitting. Fitch was holding on to the hook, clearly
waiting
for a reply from battalion. “I’ve got Bainford, the battalion forward air controller, on it,” he said when Mellas got within
speaking distance.

About a minute later the handset squawked and Mellas could hear a tinny voice saying, “It’s a defoliant. We put an order in
for it for tomorrow, but it looks like we got a fuckup someplace. Sorry about that. It won’t hurt you. It’s just to kill plants.
It’s called Agent Orange. It’s so the trees won’t give any shelter to the enemy. The Air Force has used it a lot, and it won’t
bother humans.”

“Well, it bothers me,” Mellas said loudly. Fitch ignored him.

“Roger that. Bravo Six out.”

Fitch turned to Mellas. “You heard him—it’s for killing plants. Zoomies. God damn them.” Fitch kept muttering curses as he
wiped his eyes.

Hawke walked up and handed Fitch his pear-can cup, steaming with coffee.

The sound of the birds coming in from the south finally broke the nervous lethargy. Mellas rushed into his gear, rechecking
ammunition and weapons, then realized that Goodwin would be going in first and sat down again.

The first bird came in fast. Its roar filled the air and its blades lashed the puddles of water in the muddy clay. Goodwin
rushed across the open ground with his heli team. He slapped their backs, counting them, as he moved them into the opening
jaws of the chopper’s rear. The tailgate closed and he was gone. Almost immediately a second bird flew in, and then a third.
Mellas saw Sergeant Ridlow, his big .44 strapped to his hip, run across the LZ. Then Mellas too was running across the LZ,
Hamilton scrambling beside him, his radio buried under all his other gear. Mellas counted his team into the bird. He gave
a thumbs-up to the crew chief, and they were swallowed and sliding off into space, the chopper dropping down from the hilltop
to pick up airspeed. Mellas had his compass out, continually checking directions so that when they hit the ground he’d be
oriented immediately.

Off to their right the looming black ridgeline that had been their constant companion on the hill, and had required a full
day’s effort to reach, slid by in seconds. Below it were steep jungle-covered slopes carved by large streams. The jungle stopped
when it hit the valley floor and elephant grass took over. The map was a confused series of contour lines. In several places
the contour lines didn’t even join—the mapmakers had given up.

The deck tilted and the pitch of the blades changed. The roar of the engine increased. Mellas’s throat was throbbing again.
The grass rushed up toward them, changing from its illusory smoothness to its ten-foot-tall reality. The chopper hit with
a crash, throwing everyone back on his rear end. The doors opened and they scrambled out, hitting the mashed grass beneath
their feet at a full run. Mellas immediately headed to the left and began placing everyone in his assigned place in the zone.

Nothing happened. Smiles broke out over rifle barrels pointing outward into the grass. A few minutes later Mellas saw Fitch
and Hawke running across the LZ toward the Charlie Company CP group. Mellas walked over to join them. As he did, he saw that
the kids of Charlie Company were nearly exhausted and their clothing, dark and wet, was clinging to their bodies. Their jungle
rot was even worse than what Mellas had seen at Matterhorn.

Mellas saw a radioman and walked toward someone who was lying on the ground but looked like a platoon commander. He looked
up at Mellas wearily. His face was wide and he had a short thick mustache. There was no way of identifying rank except by
intuition, but this man seemed to be in charge. “Hello. I’m Lieutenant Mellas. First Platoon Bravo Company. You guys look
tired.”

The man scratched his ear and grimaced. He reached out a beefy hand. “I’m Jack Murphy. Charlie One. We died two days ago and
I’m having post-death hallucinations about sitting on an LZ waiting to get out of this fucking place. This is Somerville.”
He indicated the radioman. “He’s not really here either.” Then Murphy’s face twitched and his head gave a brief jerk. He seemed
unaware of it, as did his radio operator.

“They fucking humped us to death,” said Somerville.

“What’s the terrain like?”

“Awful,” Murphy said. Again there was the quick sideways jerk of the head and the facial twitch. “Fucking mountains. Cliffs.
Covered in fucking clouds.”

Mellas pretended not to see the tic. “Hard resupply, I suppose.”

“No. It was easy.”

“Oh?”

“There wasn’t any.”

“Oh.” Mellas decided Jack Murphy didn’t feel like talking. But Mellas wanted information. “I heard you got hit.”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

Murphy grunted and raised himself to a sitting position. He brought his pack up with him as if it were simply part of his
body. Then he lurched to his feet. He was about two inches taller than Mellas. He pointed into the elephant grass, indicating
something unseen. “Out over that way the country gets real steep, lots of fucking streams and shit. You got ropes?”

“Yeah. We carry one per squad.”

“Good,” Murphy said. “Well, about four days from here, maybe less if you follow where we went and risk getting ambushed, there’s
a steep fucking hill. The gooks have dug steps out of it, so they’ve obviously had plenty of time to prepare bunkers. The
point man and one other started up and all shit broke loose. The gooks got both of them and two others.”

“You get any?”

“Who the fuck knows?” Murphy told Mellas the story. They had been strung out along a river that ran just below a hill. The
terrain wasn’t suitable for goats. Under the cover of their M-79 grenade launchers, they pulled the bodies back and didn’t
go any farther. They had to build a landing zone quickly in order to get the wounded medevaced in time. They were socked in
by the monsoon and there was no good place in that impossible terrain anyway, so they humped downhill as fast as they could
to get out of the cloud cover. One more died on the way down.

Murphy suddenly sat down again, worn out. “Save your fucking food.” He twitched two times.

“Thanks,” Mellas said. Murphy only grunted in reply.

Mellas moved on. He joined Fitch and Hawke and someone he guessed was Charlie Six, Charlie Company’s commanding officer. The
man wore a battered pair of glasses with tape wrapped around them. His utilities were black with water and rotten elephant
grass. They clung to his body. He kept glancing nervously at the sky.

“Mellas,” Fitch greeted him, unfolding his map, “just who we want to see.”

“Your enthusiasm is hardly contagious,” Mellas answered. Fitch didn’t smile.

Hawke broke in, imitating W. C. Fields, “My boy, you do learn fast.”

Fitch laughed nervously.

The conversation with Murphy had left Mellas on edge, and the W. C. Fields imitation, a form of humor he had always considered
low-brow, grated on his nerves.

“Enough, Jayhawk,” he said.

“Yes,
sir
.”

Mellas immediately regretted having said anything.

Fitch, licking his lips nervously, was oblivious of the exchange. He pointed to the map that he had laid out on the ground,
and they all knelt over it. “This is about where the ammo cache is,” he said. “Captain Coates here figures it’s about three
days if we follow their trail and risk ambush. Four or five if we take the safer way up along the ridgeline here.” He bit
his lip, suddenly silent. Then he looked up at Mellas. “I want First Platoon on point. We’re going to make our own trail so
I need someone who’s good with a map. Right now we’ve got to clear out of the LZ fast. The gooks are probably already setting
up their mortars. Follow Charlie Company’s trail until I say otherwise.” He licked his lips. “Tell your point man that Alpha’s
coming down the fucking trail with a body so don’t get trigger-happy.” Fitch’s voice trailed off, and he gazed uncertainly
into the damp rustling elephant grass. Mellas could feel Fitch’s uneasiness. It was his first major operation commanding the
entire company.

Captain Coates was sound asleep, slumped on his pack next to his radio operator, who was also asleep.

Mellas felt a stirring of hope. Here were two company commanders, one unsure of himself, the other giving in to exhaustion,
yet both had received commands. Then why not himself? He saw himself telling people back home he had commanded a company in
action, 212 men. No, 212 Marines. He looked over at Hawke, feeling Hawke’s presence as an impediment, knowing the company
would go to Hawke and not himself unless a captain showed up when Fitch rotated, in which case it still wouldn’t go to him.
He simply needed more time.

Hawke, mistaking Mellas’s look for a silent question, nodded toward the sleeping commander of Charlie Company and began to
fill in Fitch’s instructions. “Charlie Six could only describe the cache area. He couldn’t actually locate it on the map,
because the map’s inaccurate. So where the battalion says it is ain’t necessarily so. Coates says the map is a good six hundred
meters off in some places. Tonight we’re going to try to make an old gook base camp they found, up here.” Hawke circled his
finger around, indicating a broad area. “The jungle’s so thick he wasn’t sure exactly where he was, but it sounds like a good
defensive position. Your first sign will be brush cuttings. Either that or you’ll hit Charlie’s trail from the uphill side.
You start seeing signs, stop and give Jim a call and he’ll come up and take a look. I’ll be humping
way
in the rear with Staff Sergeant Samms.” Mellas knew that Samms, Third Platoon’s platoon sergeant, was regarded as competent.
But Samms was saddled with Lieutenant Kendall’s poor map-reading skills until they could get Kendall over his mandatory ninety
days in the bush and get him back to his motor transportation unit.

“What about the Kit Carsons?” Mellas asked, referring to the scouts assigned to the company for the operation, former NVA
soldiers who had deserted and taken better pay with the Americans.

“They’re on fucking strike,” Hawke said. “They’ll just hump along with the CP group.”

“You want me to pull out now?” Mellas asked.

Fitch came back to the present and told Mellas to take his platoon about 200 meters up Charlie’s and Alpha’s trail and then
wait for the rest of the company to wind out of the landing zone. Mellas was surprised when Fitch told him that it took about
half an hour for a company to snake single file out of a zone.

“Where you walking?” Hawke asked Mellas.

“Number five.” The point man would lead, followed by the dog, Pat, and Corporal Arran; another rifleman and the squad leader
were at positions three and four; and then came Mellas, followed by Hamilton and the radio.

“Good. I don’t want the company going off on a fucking bear hunt because some squad leader can’t read his compass. You’d better
know where the fuck you are all the time.”

“Yes,
sir.
” Mellas said, smiling and trying to understand why Hawke was suddenly so testy.