13th Valley (40 page)

Rafael was outwardly quiet yet inwardly turbulent. His father had been destroyed by an ever closing trap which he had always hated, destroyed solely to give the boy a better future. Rafael felt cheated by the death, bitter when the mourning was so quickly over, guilty for having spent so much time with the priest and so little time with the ancient laborer.

The priest continued coming to their home for several years but Rafael's mother was now in her mid-forties and the priest too was getting old. On the nights the priest came, Rafael wandered the streets with other boys until he knew the priest would be gone. Finally the priest came no more and Rafael's mother stayed alone and complained that Rafael was not watching after her. Again he felt guilty but he knew he must wander as his father had wandered. And there was the cause.

La Raza.
The Race—a revolutionary organization dedicated to returning the lands of the southwest to the brown people from whom it was stolen. In the schools it was an underground organization that initiated the young males into their first gangs and into self-righteous hatred of the Anglo oppressors.

There was a simple law in the southwest and along the border where the Anglo oligarchy controlled the lands: No man is guilty of anything unless he is a Mexican. It was the same law against which El Paso revolted many years later when it was applied by Americans to Vietnamese—the It's-Only-A-Gook Law. In the southwest the society was so structured as to continue the vicious circle of poverty, to trap the menial labor force in their mosquito-infested
barrio bajo,
a reinforced plague of illiteracy and unemployment. From this grew violence and revolutionary politics and to this Rafael was attracted. Father Raul would caution the boy with a resignation born in the carrying of a cross, “My young friend, you are going to get hurt and you are going to hurt others. I wish I knew how better to talk to you. You can work within the system to change it. You do not have to go out and do violence.”

The priest had little effect yet slowly some of the boys changed. They became more political and less violent and
La Raza
became a significant political force.

Rafael had to go his own way. There was always something causing him to break from gangs and political parties and personal relationships. He always moved on toward open spaces. Someplace, sometime, in his adolescence, he was encouraged to study history, to go into law. In high school he studied hard and was influenced by two teachers who prodded him and helped him gain admission to the University of Texas at El Paso. In college he was a loner. After graduation and one year of law school he enlisted and by the spring of 1969 he was in Vietnam as an infantryman with the 7th of the 402d.

Rafael never spoke of his past or of his family. He listened to the others and he became the arbiter and the negotiator of intra-company squabbles. No one—not Jax, not Egan, not even the L-T—knew what happened in El Paso's mind, although they all knew that if El Paso said a dispute was solved then that was the decision and it stood.

On the perimeter some of the guards must have realized the time. They all had wristwatches. They could not all have been dreaming. Perhaps those who realized that the company was not yet up simply felt it was not their place to stir their sleeping brothers. Besides, most of them did not want to move at that hour.

At almost 0330 Cherry whispered to Egan, “What's that? I think I hear something.”

There was a pause as Egan listened. “Like what?” he asked.

“Like, maybe a small animal. Listen. There.”

“Fuck! It's one a them spiders. I hate spiders,” Egan cursed lowly. There was the sound again, very close to Egan's and Cherry's heads. “Fuck,” Egan's voice quivered. He very silently worked his body down, away from the sound.

“Are they poisonous?” Cherry asked, shaken.

“They're fucken big,” Egan blurtwhispered.

Cherry giggled. He lifted his rifle and gently poked the brush where the sound had been. Something scampered away. Egan wiggled his body back into place.

An hour later the noise was back. Egan punched Cherry. “You hear that?”

Cherry lay very still. He reached over to Egan and placed his arm on Egan's chest. “Don't move,” he said.

“Oh fuck,” Egan shook. He was sweating. He felt for sure the spider was on him. He opened his eyes. Two feet above them both, there was a slender black silhouette. Egan froze. It was a banana spider, a long narrow spider body with twig-thin angular legs spread in an eight-inch ellipse against the gray-black sky. From the brush beyond their feet to the vines above their heads, filaments of silk had been woven into a parachute web. The spider twinged the taut web. Egan's heart stopped, sputtered. Cherry, one arm over Egan still, lifted his rifle. One by one he snapped the supporting threads on his side of the web. The spider charged the muzzle then retreated into the brush.

“Oh fuck. Oh fuck, oh Fuck,” Egan sat up. Web clung to his face. “I hate fucken spiders,” he whispered vehemently. “I can't stay here. What time is it?”

“Four thirty-five,” Cherry said. He could hardly believe it. Hardass Egan afraid of spiders. He giggled silently, his whole body shook with the laugh without emitting a sound.

“What's so fucken funny?” Egan demanded but dropped it immediately. “Hey,” he said, “we're supposed ta be movin by now.”

It was cold but the wind had ceased. There was a vague glow in the sky coming through the clouds. On the jungle floor nothing could be discerned in the blackness. To see a man's form the observer would have to squat and silhouette the observed against the sky. Egan radioed El Paso. Within minutes the entire company was up. They were already a half hour behind schedule.

Perimeter guards retrieved their claymores, rolled the wires about the mines and placed them in their rucks. The people who set up the MAs very cautiously disarmed them by disconnecting the batteries, then dismantling the trigger and trip wire. Radio calls went out to the LPs to return. Soldiers cleaned and oiled their weapons and cleaned their ammunition. Everyone had a cigarette going. They smoked with their hands cupped over the ember or with the ember end held in an opaque foil bag from a C-ration accessory packet.

Very carefully Egan brushed the night's dirt from his fatigues and poncho liner. He folded the liner and placed it in his ruck. Then he brushed his teeth. He used no water, simply allowing toothpaste and saliva to foam. He ejected a white stream of foam into a tiny hole and he covered the hole with dirt. Then he sucked the remaining foam from the bristles and swallowed. He carefully replaced the brush in a plastic carrying case, placed the case in a sock and placed the sock in the ammo can at the base of his rucksack. In the sock the case could not rattle against the inside of the ammo can. Egan checked his ruck carefully again for loose items. He tightened this, adjusted that. He checked his canteens. One was two-thirds full. He took a drink and passed it to Cherry who was also packing up. Cherry drank and handed it back. It was still a third full. Egan emptied the water on the ground. He did not want it to slosh as he walked.

Cherry was as imprecise with himself and his equipment as Egan was precise. He did not brush his teeth. He crushed his poncho and stuffed it into his ruck without cleaning it. He made no attempt to straighten his clothing, comb his hair or clean his face. He stuffed his poncho liner crudely about the cans in his ruck only at Egan's insistence. He cleaned his weapon but he carelessly spilled and splashed the LSA (Lubricant, Small Arms) onto his fatigues. Egan was appalled but after the thing with the spider he decided to say nothing. Doc McCarthy came by with the daily-daily (anti-malaria) pills. The column was ready to move out. It was 0509, thirty-nine minutes late.

Brooks led off. He descended by the same path that Whiteboy had taken, descended as quietly and slowly in the dark as Whiteboy had in the green-gray light below the canopy yesterday. Brooks moved steadily. He was becoming warm even in the chill of the night. He moved like an animal stalking prey, moving in the manner learned from animals and learned from the NVA and perfected through self-criticism within the company. NVA tactics in an NVA stronghold in an NVA war. Better than the NVA. Stronger. More fire support, more intrinsic fire power. Walking into a potential ambush. Brooks reached the terminus of Whiteboy's trek, the point where he had stopped the column's movement. He breathed controlled even breaths through an open mouth so as not to be heard breathing. He glanced at a trail he could not see in the blackness, his slow moving feet feeling each step down, securing each unseen foothold. The crest of the ridge was to his left. He could feel it there looming high above his left shoulder. Forward. Downward. The entire column in motion behind him.

If I were NVA, Brooks thought, I'd set up ambush on both sides of the saddle on the crest of the ridge. They know where we're going. They're going to be there. The trail steepened. Almost straight down. Like descending uneven crooked steps blindfolded with no handrail and with a hundred pounds of equipment on his back and in his hands. The draw would be at the bottom of the stairs. Down. Slowly. Down. Quietly. Brooks could hear Egan behind him. Almost imperceptible but there. A mosquito buzzed at his ear, sniffed the repellent and departed. Egan was perhaps three feet back. El Paso an additional three feet and then the gun team from 3d Sqd of Beaford and Smith—a total of ten. Brooks paused. Listened. Looked up. Either the clouds were thinning and the moonlight increasing or first light was lightening the sky. It was still black below the canopy. In another step he would be in the draw.

Behind the gun team was Cherry. Beaford carried the 60, Smith was AG. Cherry kept his left hand in constant touch with Smith's rucksack. He was like a newly blinded man being tortured. But he was trying. He tried harder than he had ever tried at anything in his life. Behind Cherry, Polanski was sporadically touching Cherry's ruck for guidance and from there back the 1st Pit descended like one continuous chain, each soldier linked to the soldier before him, forced to place complete trust in touch and in the accuracy of the touch of the men before him. Smith turned to Cherry, found his outstretched hand and pressured it down, signaling him to sit. Cherry turned and pressured Polanski to sit and up the column the signal was passed and the column halted.

Brooks was absolutely still. Behind him Egan froze. They waited. Brooks sniffed the air, opened his mouth to taste the air. Imperceptibly he inched one pace forward into the draw. He knelt. He touched the ground with his left hand. It was smooth and packed. He duck-walked across the draw keeping his left hand on the ground. It was level and smooth and packed for six or seven feet. At the other side the narrow trail snaked up the next ridge. Brooks searched the sides. Packed. He could feel ridges in the earth from thin wheels. He returned to where Egan waited motionless at the base of the descent. “Red ball,” Brooks whispered. Egan nodded. The draw contained an intersecting high-speed trail which rose from the valley to the north and fell toward the valley to the south. Brooks motioned for the column to come forward.

As each man reached the red ball in the draw Brooks directed him into position. Beaford and Smith moved to the right flank along with the 2d Sqd, the M-60 machine gun team of Marko and Brunak to the left along with the 1st Sqd, Whiteboy and Hill straight ahead with the 3rd Sqd on line about them. With the twenty-seven men of the 1st Plt in place in line surrounding the base of the peak with the bunker complex Brooks ordered a pause. The pause gave 2d Plt time to move down and spread out behind 1st, and 3d Plt time to move down and spread out on the side of 848 thus being in position to cover a retreat if necessary.

The sweep up the peak west of Hill 848 was tactically perfect. It could have come straight out of an infantry manual. “Stay off the trail,” Brooks directed Whiteboy. “If they're going to booby-trap us, it'll be on the trail.” At first light 1st Plt moved out.

Step. Step. Climbing now. Climbing slowly. Climbing through the thick brush. The men in front waiting for the men with more difficult climbs. Staying in line. No sign of the enemy. Waiting for the first shot. Not even feeling their thighs twitching from the weight and the exertion of the climb. Not seeing, feeling the black before them. The sky became lighter, the floor remained dark. Not thinking. Like men with brains removed. No judgment. Just up. Step. Step. In line. Weapons on full automatic, aimed forward. Step. Not stopping. Step. Cherry could feel his biceps quivering. His back aching. Step. Step. Coming out of his rucksack and bending forward over his shoulder was his radio's antenna looking like a thin bamboo shoot. It caught in the vegetation. His ruck was caught by a vine. He frantically worked to extricate himself as the line advanced without him. Step. Step. Light now penetrated through the jungle ceiling down to them. Up. Step. Step. Toward the hilltop the canopy became thinner. Step. Step. The slope became more gentle. They surrounded the eastern side of the peak. Up, onto, over the top. Nothing. No one.

“Search this motherfucken hill,” Thomaston cussed. “We gotta find something.”

1st Plt formed a perimeter about the north end of the peak, dropped their rucks, removed helmets or hats and passed canteens of water around. They now lit cigarettes and smoked without caution. Thomaston directed 1st Sqd to remain on perimeter defense and 2d and 3d to sweep the top and north and northwest slopes. 2d Plt came up in column, dropped their rucks, smoked and moved off to sweep the south and west faces. Everything was quiet except for the occasional whisper, “Mothafuck this shit.”

Cherry sat with 1st Sqd. Egan and Thomaston went to the company CP to discuss the situation with the group about Brooks. Silvers had his journal out and was writing. He looked up at Cherry and said, “This valley is more beautiful than I thought.”

Cherry looked out from the hill. He had not noticed that it was possible to see the valley. He had been looking at the ground so hard and was now so tired from the climb that he had not looked up and did not even realize day had fully arrived. “Wow!” Cherry said softly.