Matterhorn (9 page)

“Gook trucks, sir,” Daniels said softly. He had slipped up behind Mellas, so quietly that this whisper frightened him. Mellas
saw that Daniels was grinning and his mouth was smeared red with Choo Choo Cherry, which heightened the flush of his cheeks.

“Gook trucks?” Mellas asked. “What are you talking about?” He turned to Jancowitz, who was watching him with mild amusement.

“Elephants, sir,” Jancowitz said.

“The gooks use them to carry shit,” Daniels said.

By this time everyone had relaxed, and the squad was already in the inboard-outboard defense position, every two men alternating
the direction of sight. Jancowitz pointed at Pollini and Delgado, a gentle-eyed Chicano kid whom everyone called Amarillo,
because it was his hometown. These two reluctantly heaved themselves to their feet and crept out, one on each side of the
squad, to act as outposts.

“So?” Mellas asked. He was uncomfortably aware that trouble was coming his way.

“Don’t you think we ought to call in a mission, sir?” Daniels asked.

“A fire mission? On some elephants?”

“They’re gook transportation, sir.”

Mellas looked at Jancowitz. He remembered a major at the Basic School telling him to trust sergeants and squad leaders—they’d
been there. The major hadn’t mentioned that the sergeants were nineteen-year-old lance corporals.

“He’s right, sir,” Jancowitz said. “They do use them for hauling shit.”

“But they’re wild,” Mellas said.

“How do you know, sir?”

At this point Daniels chimed in. “We shoot them all the time, sir. You deny the gooners their transportation system.”

“But we’re at extreme range.”

“It’s an area target, sir,” Daniels answered. An area target was one that covered a general location, such as troops in the
field, so accuracy was less of an issue than for a single-point target, like a bunker.

Mellas looked at Hamilton and at Tilghman, who carried the M-79 grenade launcher. They both just stared back. Mellas didn’t
want to look sentimental or foolish in front of the squad. It was war, after all. Nor did he want to buck a standard operating
procedure when he wasn’t really sure of his ground. He’d been told to trust his squad leaders. “Well,” he began slowly, “if
you really do shoot them …”

Daniels grinned. He already had his map out, and now he reached for the handset of his radio.

“Andrew Golf, this is Big John Bravo. Fire mission. Over.”

In his imagination, Mellas saw the battery scrambling into action as the call for a fire mission came crackling in to its
fire control center.

Moments after Daniels relayed the map coordinates and compass bearings, the first shell came through the jungle, sounding
like a train speeding through a tunnel. There was a dull thud transmitted through the ground, then a louder shattering crash
through the air. Then there was the sound of brush cracking and the movement of heavy frightened bodies. Daniels made a quick
adjustment, and a second shell roared. Again the earth moved and the air shattered. After that, the muffled sounds could be
heard no more.

Daniels called off the mission. “They’ll be to fuck and gone by now,” he said, smiling with satisfaction.

Jancowitz didn’t want to bother checking for results, since it meant going all the way down in the ravine. To climb back out
again would take hours. Mellas agreed.

When they finally struggled back inside the company perimeter, the squad immediately began cleaning weapons and fixing dinner,
getting ready for the evening alert and the long night of watch. Jackson started his record player and Wilson Pickett’s voice
floated across the tiny manmade clearing in the jungle. “Hey, Jude, don’t make it bad …”

Mellas could barely drag himself up to the CP to report to Fitch. He simply wanted to collapse and sleep. Bass was already
in with nothing to report—as was Goodwin, except for some tiger tracks. Ridlow, Goodwin’s platoon sergeant, however, had discovered
some footprints near a stream. It was impossible to tell how many people had left them. He figured they couldn’t be more than
two days old; otherwise, the rain would have washed them away.

Mellas listened while Fitch relayed the negative reports to battalion. An entire day of patrols, and all they had proved was
that someone was in the jungle, as if a downed helicopter and a bunch of dead crewmen hadn’t already proved that. He also
listened while Fitch turned in the coordinates of the footprints to the artillery battery for harassment and interdiction—H
& I.

When Fitch got off the hook, Mellas asked, “What happens if it’s a montagnard?” referring to the indigenous people who had
been pushed into the mountains centuries earlier by the invading Vietnamese.

Fitch pursed his lips. “If it is,” Fitch said carefully, “then he’s got to be working for the NVA. Otherwise, he’d have cleared
out or come in to the position.”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Mellas said.

Hawke was listening while he poured powdered coffee and sugar into a battered cup that he had fashioned from a C-ration pear
can by leaving the lid attached and folding it back to make a handle. He poured
water from his canteen into the can and placed it on a small wad of C-4 plastic explosive. The cup’s lower half had turned
steel blue from many heatings.

“There’s leaflets all over the fucking place telling people it’s a free-fire zone,” Fitch said.

“You know they can’t read,” Mellas said petulantly.

“Shit, Mellas,” Hawke cut in. “He knows it. You going to call off your H & I because it might fuck up some lost mountain man?”

“I don’t know. I’m the new guy around here,” Mellas snapped. He was so tired that he was beginning to regret he’d even brought
the subject up.

Hawke lit the C-4 and a brilliant white flame engulfed the can, turning it cherry red and bringing the water to a rapid boil
almost instantly. The action stopped the conversation until the flame died. Hawke gingerly touched the makeshift cup, now
filled with boiling coffee. “Well, I’ll tell you, then,” Hawke said. “You don’t. Jim’s fucked either way. If we get attacked,
and he didn’t call in H & I, he’s shit-canned. If he does call them in and kills a montagnard, he’s shit-canned too. Things
have changed since Truman left. The buck’s sent out here now.”

Fitch smiled, thankful for Hawke’s support.

Mellas looked at the ground, sorry he’d lost his temper. “You never did say why,” he said.

“So you don’t get your fucking ass blown away, that’s why,” Hawke said, softening when he saw Mellas look at the ground. He
dabbed at the handle of the cup again and, feeling that it was safe, picked it up with his thumb and forefinger.

“You call off H & I,” Fitch said, “and the gooks have access to this mountain like a freeway ramp. It’s my fucking troops
over any lost mountain man, and it’ll stay that way. I decided that a long time ago.” Fitch looked quickly up at the darkening
sky, seemingly embarrassed over his sudden speech.

Hawke held the steaming coffee up toward Mellas. “Here. Take it.”

“No, it’s yours,” Mellas said.

“I make the fastest cup of coffee in I Corps. This little cup’s been with me ever since I got here. It’s the ever-flowing
source of all that’s
good and the cure of all ills.” He smiled and gestured again for Mellas to take it. “It even cures hot tempers.”

Mellas had to smile. He took the cup. The coffee was sweet and good.

Later that night, outside the perimeter in the blackness, Private First Class Tyrell Broyer of Baltimore, Maryland, on his
first listening post, lay shivering, flat on his stomach, the rain seeping through his poncho. Jancowitz had paired him with
Williams, from Cortell’s fire team, a steady kid who’d been raised on a ranch in Idaho. Williams’s muddy boots were next to
Broyer’s face and vice versa, so they protected each other’s backs. “What’s that noise?” Broyer whispered.

“The wind. Shut up.”

Broyer was tempted to start keying the radio’s handset frantically, just so someone would talk to them. He didn’t care if
he made one of the lieutenants mad at him for getting scared. He shivered again. There was a whirring noise. Instantly the
two of them stiffened, their rifles pushing out slowly.

“What
is
that noise?” Broyer whispered. “High in the air.”

“Don’t know. Bats? Shut up, goddamn it.”

Williams shifted and his boot hit Broyer’s face. Broyer stifled a curse and pushed his glasses back on his nose, aware of
an irony—he couldn’t see a thing anyway. He slowly pushed Williams’s boot away. He put his forehead on his fists to keep his
glasses clear of the ground and smelled the damp earth, feeling the cold edge of his helmet against his neck. He grabbed a
handful of clay and squeezed it as hard as he could. He wanted to squeeze his fear into the clay so he could throw it away.
A gust of wind hit his wet utility shirt, sending a cold shiver along his back. He started praying, asking God to stop the
wind and the rain so he could just hear something. It was then that Williams reached out a hand in the dark and gently patted
him on the back.

That night, God didn’t stop the wind or the rain. The next day, however, the rain did stop for two hours, and six choppers
made it in without
incident, dumping Marines who were returning from sick leave and R & R, replacements, water, food, and ammunition. Along with
that came a large amount of C-4 explosive to help prepare the top of the hill for the arrival of Golf Battery, which was why
Bravo Company was on Matterhorn in the first place.

Mellas grew accustomed to the tense monotony of patrolling. Days slid by, mercifully without enemy contact. Eventually the
artillery battery came in, blasting out gun pits from the clay, digging in bunkers for their fire control center. Matterhorn
was barren, shorn of trees. Nothing green was left in what was slowly turning into a wasteland of soggy discarded cardboard
C-ration boxes, cat-hole latrines, buried garbage, burned garbage, trench latrines, discarded magazines from home, smashed
ammunition pallets, and frayed plastic sandbags. Whole stretches of what had formerly been thick jungle were now exposed,
the shattered limbs and withered stumps turning ashen like bones of dead animals under the overcast sky above. A small bulldozer
made the top of the hill perfectly flat. Then came the howitzers, which were flown in dangling from helicopters like fishing
weights. Within hours of their arrival the big guns were firing, their harsh explosions hurting ears, thudding through bodies,
and, at night, shattering precious sleep.

An intense salvo of the entire battery firing a single time-on-target jerked Mellas awake. It had been just over an hour since
he had crawled into his hooch after the last hole-check of the night. Adrenaline pumped through his body. He tried to slow
it down, taking deep slow breaths. Rain fell in heavy sheets in the total darkness, and the comm-wire moorings of the hooches
snapped with each gust of wind. Mellas pulled his soggy nylon poncho liner tighter around him, rolled over on one side, and
tucked his knees up against his chest, trying to keep what remained of the warm dampness from disappearing into the dark.

No patrol today. It was like a reprieve.

The arrival of the battery had considerably increased the payoff for an attack by the NVA, so Fitch had increased the patrolling
radius to cover more territory. This forced the patrols to leave at dawn and
left them almost no daylight when they returned. The combination of tension from the possibility of making contact and the
stultifying fatigue left everyone drained and irritable by nightfall. Kids were falling asleep on watch. To fight the boredom,
Mellas found himself making up patrol routes just to see various features of the terrain. He paid less and less attention
to where an NVA sniper or observation team might be hiding. In fact, he was torn: he didn’t know whether to plan his patrols
to avoid finding anyone or to find the NVA machine gun and bring himself to the notice of the colonel. He shifted to his other
side, still not wanting to leave the poncho liner. He saw himself taking an NVA machine-gun team by surprise while they were
eating their rice, surrounding them silently, and capturing the entire group. Then he was marching them back, finding out
a great deal of information, and afterward being commended in front of the colonel and his staff. Perhaps there would be a
newspaper story at home about the exploit—name recognition was important—and a medal. He wanted a medal as much as he wanted
the company.

Another salvo ripped sound through the ground and air, breaking off his daydream. He stared into the blackness, now totally
awake, his mind focused on the problem of replacing Jancowitz, who was about to go on R & R. He had map classes to teach,
jungle to clear, and more barbed wire to lay, but no patrol. No patrol today.

He threw aside the thin nylon liner and sat up, his head touching the ponchos strung above him. The greasy camouflage liner
smelled like urine. He did, too. Mellas smiled. He untied his soggy bootlaces in the dark and pulled at a wet boot. It came
loose, leaving a damp sock, parts of it stiff with decaying blood from old leech wounds. He pulled the sock off carefully—especially
in places where the wool, skin, and blood had clotted together over the leech bites and jungle rot. He imagined, from the
feel of his foot, that it must look like the underside of a mushroom. A sudden gust of wind spattered more rain against the
hooch. He began rubbing his feet, trying to stave off immersion foot. He’d seen pictures of it during training. When the foot
was constantly in cold water, blood deserted it. Then it died, still attached to the leg, and rotted until either it was amputated
or gangrene killed the rest of the body. He felt guilty suddenly for not having
checked the platoon’s feet. It would look bad on his fitness report if he had a lot of cases of immersion foot.

Two hours later Mellas was leading a map-reading class for Third Squad, feeling good about being in his own element.

“All right,” he said, “who knows the contour interval?” A couple of hands shot up. Mellas was pleased; the kids seemed to
enjoy the class. “OK, Jackson.”