Matterhorn (58 page)

There was nothing sinister in this. Blakely himself would not be aware that he’d positioned the machine gun poorly. He’d feel
bad about his casualties for a while. But reflecting on why or for what wasn’t something Blakely did. Right now the problem
before him was to engage the enemy and get the body count as high as possible. He wanted to do a good job, as any decent person
would, and now he’d finally figured out a way to do so. He might actually get to use the entire battalion in a battle all
at one time, an invaluable experience for a career officer.

Around 0300 one of Goodwin’s listening posts started keying the handset furiously. Mellas heard Goodwin’s voice come up quickly
on the net. “Nancy, this is Scar. Whatja got? Key it once for every gook. Over.”

The handset went wild. Mellas lost count.

“Jackson, get down there and get everyone up,” Mellas said. “We got trouble.”

“Why me?” said Jackson.

Mellas said, “RHIP, Jackson. Besides, you won’t show up so much in the dark.”

“You’ll live to regret this, Lieutenant,” Jackson whispered.

“I hope I fucking do.”

Jackson slipped off, and soon Mellas heard the urgent whispers start down the line.

Fitch’s voice came over the air, calling to the listening post. “Nancy, this is Bravo Six. If you think you can make it in,
key your handset two times. Over.”

There was no answer.

“OK, Nancy,” Fitch continued, “we’ve got everyone alerted. You just get down on the fucking ground and stay there until we
say different. Over.”

Nancy responded by keying the handset two times.

A tiny dribble of dirt ran down the side of Mellas’s fighting hole, pattering against his damp back. He could see nothing
beyond the small mound of earth beside his hole. A quiet wind whispered with the fog through the jungle. The radio blurted
out the sounds of other handsets keying furiously. “OK, you other Lima Poppas,” Fitch radioed. “Get your asses back in if
you can.”

Mellas took the radio and crawled down to the lines to alert everyone that the LPs were coming in. Jackson was coming back
up. “You
do
shine in the dark, Lieutenant,” he said, crawling rapidly past.

Rider and Jermain were on LP. Everyone strained tensely. Then a whisper came: “Honda.” A voice whispered back: “Triumph.”
Then there were the sounds of rapid scrambling on the hillside and a slight grunt as someone piled into a fighting hole. Then
a second scramble and a second grunt. Safe.

Mellas had just slid back into his own hole when the night was hacked open by a roar of small arms fire in the jungle below
them. The fog lit up with the barrel blasts.

“Bravo Two,” the radio crackled, “this is Nancy. They got us spotted. We’re coming in.”

The fierce sound of the NVA’s 7.62-millimeter weapons punctuated the lighter but more rapid firing of the Marines’ M-16s.

“Nancy, goddamn it, don’t get up and run.” Goodwin was pleading with his LP not to break cover. “You’ll get shot. Keep your
cool, Jack. We’ll get your ass out of it. Over.”

“We’re coming in, Scar, goddamn it,” the radio answered. Then the firing stopped.

The handset keyed on and a voice different from the previous one came over the hook. It was a voice unused to the radio—a
frightened, lonely voice.

“Uh, Lieutenant Goodwin, sir,” the voice whispered, “can you hear me?” There was the brief static of the transmission key
being let up.

“Shit, Jack. Lemon and Coke. Over.”

The voice came back. “Roscoe’s dead, I think.” There was a long pause of blank transmission as the kid held the key down,
not knowing that he was keeping Goodwin from answering. “Oh, Jesus, get me out of here, Lieutenant.” He let up the key.

“Just start crawling backward, OK? Just keep low and start crawling backward. Over.”

“But the radio’s on Roscoe’s back.”

“Leave the fucking radio. Screw up the channel knobs. Crawl into the fucking weeds, dig in, and wait there. We’ll get to you.
Don’t worry. Over.”

There was a long wait. Then the handset keyed again. “I can’t get the fucking radio off,” the voice whispered, desperate.

Goodwin’s voice became commanding. “This is an order, Jack. Switch the frequency and leave the fucking thing. They can’t circle
around you, because they’d be shooting their own guys, so crawl backward away from them and lay low. Once they get into the
shit with us they ain’t going to be looking for no lone Lima Poppa. As soon as it’s light and the attack’s over we’ll come
get you. Now move, goddamn it. Over.”

Again there was no answer. Then the voice whispered, “Lieutenant, please get me out of here. Please, sir.”

Jackson moaned softly and whispered, “We can’t, you dumb son of a bitch. Just start shagging ass.”

“Please, Lieutenant Scar, get me out of here,” the voice came again.

Suddenly three hand grenades exploded in rapid succession, showing faint flashes through the dark jungle.

“Nancy, Nancy, this is Bravo Two. If you’re OK, key the handset two times. Over.” Goodwin repeated the question three times
before he gave up.

The company waited, but the attack never developed.

“That LP saved our necks,” Mellas said in the quiet that immediately followed.

“At least for tonight,” Jackson replied.

They both knew they lived because two men had died. This was, of course, exactly why companies put out listening posts.

There were perhaps fifteen minutes of silence. Then, from all around them, tiny muffled clinks came from the jungle. It was
the sound of digging.

Mellas called Goodwin on the radio. “Hey, Bravo Two, you hear people digging? Over.”

“You ain’t lying, Jack. Over.”

Fitch’s voice came up on the net. “Bravo Three, this is Bravo Six. How about you? Over.”

Kendall answered softly. “Yeah. Down on the finger that Two came up the other day. Over.”

“Shit, Jack,” Goodwin broke in. “We just got our asses surrounded. Over.”

“You’re a military genius, Scar. Over,” Fitch grumbled.

“How many Purple Hearts you got, Jack? That’s the sign of a fucking military genius. Over.”

Kendall shut his eyes and tried to remember every small detail of his wife’s face, her body.

Mellas started praying silently so Jackson wouldn’t hear him. “Dear God, I know I haven’t prayed except when I’m in trouble,
but dear God, get me out of here, please get me out of here.” All the time he was praying, his mind was racing, casting about
for an escape route, deciding he’d leave the wounded, leave the platoon, anything, just to reach the protection of the jungle.

Mellas was hit by the overwhelming, shattering knowledge that it was very likely he was going to die. Here on this filthy
piece of earth. Now. Life had barely started, and so terribly and surprisingly soon it would be over.

I
n the morning, when the fog turned to dull gray, the Marines began to shift in their holes. Some had laid their ponchos out
behind their holes to collect dew. That didn’t work, but they licked the ponchos anyway. A couple of jokes were passed. Mellas
scrambled across the top of the hill to Goodwin’s hole. Goodwin was standing upright in it, only his head and shoulders exposed.
He wore his belt suspenders and was testing the springs on his magazines. His face was troubled.

Mellas squatted down next to Goodwin’s hole. “Going after your LP?” he asked softly.

“Yep.” Goodwin climbed out of his hole and worked the action of his M-16.

“The gooners can’t be more than a hundred meters from here,” Mellas said.

“I know, Jack.” Goodwin turned and looked into the fog.

It was the first time Mellas had seen Goodwin so serious. A sudden rush of feeling swept over him. “Hey,” Mellas said. “Take
it easy out there, huh?”

Goodwin turned and looked at Mellas. “We going to get our asses out of this shit sandwich?”

Mellas shrugged his shoulders. “All we need is a clear day.”

They both looked up at the clouds, just visible in the early light. Goodwin looked at Mellas. “I don’t know about you, but
I’m fucking thirsty.” He then put two fingers to his lips, gave a shrieking whistle, and shouted out, “Hey, you gunjy fuckers.
Get your asses up here.” He
turned to Mellas and grinned. “I asked for volunteers and they all said they’d go. But Roscoe and Estes were both from First
Squad, so First Squad will go get them.”

He hollered out again. “Goddamn it, Robb, get them up here.” He turned back to Mellas. “Knowing how scared they were last
night, I figure they couldn’t have gone more than thirty or forty meters outside the lines.” The squad moved silently and
slowly up to Goodwin’s hole.

China was sliding the bolt on his M-60 slowly back and forth. Part of him was crying out about how stupid it was to risk his
life going to retrieve a couple of dead chucks, but another part of him was making sure the machine gun worked perfectly.
He looked toward the top of the hill and saw the religious nut, Cortell, sitting by the dead bodies. The fool just couldn’t
see that he’d adopted the white man’s religion. But there was something about Cortell that China envied—Cortell was sure where
Parker had gone. China slammed home the bolt and looked at Goodwin. Jesus, the white cracker moonshine hillbilly son of a
bitch took this
Semper Fi
shit seriously. Here he was about to get his ass shot off doing
Semper Fi
bullshit while Henry was back at VCB doing business. The image of Parker trying to hold back his fear swam into China’s consciousness.
He saw Vancouver heading off in the night to work his way down to the river, and Doc Fredrickson wiping Parker down to keep
him cool.

He watched Goodwin silently counting them, pointing his index finger at each one as he did. It occurred to him that Goodwin
probably mouthed the words when he read, too. Goodwin nodded to the squad leader, Robb, and then crouched low. Ten meters
beyond the holes, Goodwin went directly to ground and started crawling. Robb was three meters behind him. Then it was China’s
turn. He went.

Mellas watched until the entire squad had crawled into the fog and disappeared. The entire hill waited for the firefight.
An hour dragged by. Goodwin wasn’t talking on the radio. Cortell came and sat next to Mellas, saying nothing.

Eventually Mellas spoke. “You pray about shit like this, Cortell?”

Cortell looked at Mellas from under the bloody bandage around his head. “Sir, I pray all the time.”

Within an hour the squad was back, dragging two bodies. Mellas noticed that the LP’s radio was gone. When they reached the
lines, Goodwin gave the senior squid the dead kids’ water and then went through their pockets. “Hey,” he shouted, holding
up a single dark green C-ration can, “fucking beef stew.”

Being besieged is like any other variation of war. Behind the immediate terror of killing one another is tedious, spirit-destroying
boredom. The fog remained thick that morning, and the NVA shelled them only a few times. The NVA were probably afraid of hitting
their own men who were dug in around the Marines. This gave everyone a lot of time to think.

Mellas wandered alone to the stack of bodies on top of the LZ. All he could see were the bleached boots of the veterans, with
their sickly yellow nylon tops, and the black boots, with the dark green tops, of the new guys. Paper tags had been wired
to boots and wrists.

The senior squid squatted beside Mellas. He was holding what looked like photographs in his hand.

“What you got there, Sheller?” Mellas asked.

“Snapshots. Off the bodies. I need your OK to throw these. Division standing order is to make sure nothing risqué goes home
with the corpse.”

“Risqué?” Mellas asked through clenched teeth.

Sheller hung his head, embarrassed. “It’s just something they say to do, sir.”

Mellas went slowly through the photographs, his hands trembling. There were pictures of dead North Vietnamese: blasted, blackened
bodies. One picture was of a body with no head, sitting bolt upright in a fighting hole. A kid from Goodwin’s platoon was
posing next to it,
smiling, with the head in the crook of his arm. There was a picture of three dead American kids all squeezed into one fighting
hole. On it, written with a ballpoint pen, was “Snake, Jerry, and Kansas.” One picture was of a beautiful Thai girl lying
naked on a bed in a hotel room. Mellas looked at it for a long time, noticing her black hair floating across the sheets, her
smooth brown legs modestly hiding her vulva. The fragile beauty amid the carnage took his breath away.

“That one bothered me,” Sheller said.

“He extended, didn’t he, to see her again?”

Sheller nodded.

“Burn ’em all.”

Sheller calmly took out a Zippo and lit the snapshots. They watched the photos slowly curl in the heat, change color, then
burst into flames. And they watched the naked body of a bar girl in Bangkok do the same. No one knew her name, other than
Susi, so no one could tell her that Janc had died. She would find that out when her next letter came back stamped
DECEASED
.

Mellas went back to his fighting hole and scrunched down inside it, trying to stay warm. The two flak jackets provided little
help. Jacobs came up to him to ask if the birds were coming.