13th Valley (44 page)

For a month after that weekend Brooks tried to get a date with Lila, even for lunch. He apologized profusely over the phone. He dated no one else. The homosexual called him several times but he refused to even talk to the man. Rufus finally arranged to see Lila but she broke the date. He tried again, then again and again. He needed her badly but every date made was broken. Finally they had it out.

“Look, you want to know what's going on,” he yelled at her. “I'll tell you what's going on. I've been trying to get a date with you for a month. That's right, Lady, a month. Every time I phone you're all booked up and you say, ‘call me back.' But every time I call you you always have a sick girl friend to take care of or something. So I, like a sucker, say, ‘What about the next day or the next?' and you say, ‘Well I'm going sailing on Saturday and it's going to run into Sunday with the regatta and I'll be too tired Monday. Why don't you call me on Tuesday?' Lady, that's been going on all month. Lady, you just go off with your rich boyfriends. I wish you the best. That's right. I really do. I'm happy to have known you.”

“My goodness,” Lila said coldly, nastily. “You're jealous. You really are, aren't you? You think just because we've gone out you own me. Aren't we getting awfully possessive? Do you think you own every woman that lets you touch her? You bastards are all alike. You lay a guy once and he thinks he owns you.”

“At least, Lady, I'm only out with one woman at a time. How many men do you have chasing you, hanging around cause you're in heat?”

“Why you lousy … lousy … honky's fag.” That's what she said. He could hear her say it now. “… honky's fag. You jive with them cocksuckers in Fag Hilton.” He stopped. The fight had passed. Making up from the fight had been terrific. He probably would never have thought of it again had it not been for Hawaii and then the divorce papers.

Rufus and Lila dated more and more frequently and finally exclusively. At times she bickered and complained that she was being lost in the narrowly directed course his life was taking but he was always able to overcome her arguments with an intellectual logic she could not refute. And he was so happy. That meant a lot to her. He brought enough love to their relationship for the two of them. They fought but they always made up and they had such good times. They married and soon he was on active duty.

Brooks craned his neck. Then what happened? he thought. Brooks cleared his mind. He breathed deeply and said to himself, the roots of conflict and the expansion and escalation to violence are similar whether interpersonal or international. That's the beginning of the answer. Perhaps conflicts caused by …

Brooks' thoughts were interrupted by the crackbarking of an M-16 close by. Then the popping of an AK, two AKs opening up. Then more 16s.

Cherry sat motionless for what seemed like a year. Behind him Roberts had also heard the twig snap. Cherry went rigid. The blood in his veins seemed to squeak, his tired bones and joints creaked, his watch ticked thunderously. Slowly, slower than he had ever moved in his life, he turned right. He looked behind him, moving only his eyes. Roberts had stopped cleaning his fingernails and was watching him.

Someone was coming up the trail. Cherry reached down with his left hand and silently moved the selector of his M-16 from safe through semiautomatic to automatic. Very slowly he lifted his rifle to his shoulder. He could feel his arms quivering, his stomach cramping. He examined the trail below him, scrutinizing every leaf. Again he heard something. A footstep.

His mind clicked to being a soldier. The first general order shot over his tongue. “I will guard everything within the limits of my post and quit my post only when properly relieved.”

Roberts could not see the red ball from where he sat but he too heard the approach and he aimed his rifle toward the noise. The second man behind Cherry was beyond the sight of either of the two poised with their weapons.

Throw a frag, flashed through Cherry's thoughts. Throw a frag. Goddamn it, I don't have a frag. Training took over. Cherry had an instantaneous flash of an entire platoon on an infiltration exercise. The men low-crawled slowly through the woods at Ft. Dix. There were thirty men crawling and it was difficult to tell anyone was there at all.

From the depths of the trail, amidst the vines and brush, Cherry could distinguish a man's shoulder. Then a head and chest. Cherry waited. The man approached with extreme caution. He was carrying an AK-47 automatic rifle. He wore Ho Chi Minh sandals, khaki shorts and shirt and a pith helmet.

Go away! Cherry's mind ordered the soldier. Do something.

Still the man approached. He was less than twenty feet away. With underhand beckoning typical of Vietnamese he motioned for someone to his rear to come forward.

Get the fuck outa there! Oh, God. Cherry was furious and frightened. Why me? If Egan were here he'd know what to do. Maybe he's South Vietnamese.

The soldier moved forward another step and all thoughts vanished from Cherry's mind. Cherry's arms steadied, the soldier's nose rested above the front sight post of Cherry's M-16. The man stepped forward into clear view. Slowly, Cherry squeezed the trigger and a volley of eight rapid shots cracked from his weapon. Instantly from below the first enemy soldier, two AK-47 rifles discharged long volleys of explosive bursts. The AK fire hit to Cherry's right and left and one round smashed into the dirt below his left foot.

Again Cherry squeezed, this time aiming only at the sound of the enemy rifles. His and Roberts' M-16s drilled the trail and jungle below them cutting branches and leaves. Cherry ejected the magazine and immediately inserted another and continued firing until the AK fire stopped. The action seemed to take minutes but Cherry knew it was only seconds. Cherry retreated toward Roberts. He dove and lay prone on his stomach. Peering from behind a tree he pointed his weapon toward the last burst of enemy fire. His breathing was deep and quick. Roberts leaped and set up beside Cherry. Sklar, Lairds, Denhardt and Polanski closed into a defensive ring, all searching the jungle.

“What'd ya see?”

“I got a dink,” Cherry babbled frantically. “I saw him fall.”

“Shhh,” Roberts ordered. Again they waited.

“Where's everybody else?” Roberts asked quietly.

“I don't know,” Cherry whispered. “They're up the hill. I've been waiting for them to …”

He was interrupted by Moneski's voice shouting from about forty meters up the red ball. “It's us. Don't fire. Anybody hurt? We're comin down.”

C
HAPTER
18

“Let's go over it again,” Brooks said to Cherry, Roberts and Moneski. All four had cigarettes going.

It was late afternoon. The last of the patrols were just returning to the company position. The men who had remained behind had already dug foxholes and most had eaten. The returnees ate, rested for a few minutes, then picked and shoveled at the resisting earth. It was a repeat of the motions from the day before except this time it was more complex and more confused and they were more tired. The boonierats were back in the boonies without any vestige of REMF mentality.

“Dude from 1st Plt got'm a gook,” they whispered to each other. “They sayin he blew the dink's head clean off.” Even the two squads from 3d Plt which had remained on 848 were whispering it back and forth. “New cherry in 1st Plt KIAd one NVA.” It excited them all.

The clearing of fields of fire and the digging in continued. Lt. Hoyden, FO, called in DT and H & I coordinates. De Barti and Thomaston checked the NDP shape to insure overlapping fire then chose the men for LPs.

“Tell me exactly what you saw,” Brooks said to Cherry. Moneski had already traced the red ball's location on Brooks' map. “Which way were they heading?”

“He was coming straight up the trail,” Cherry said. Cherry's eyes were like those of a deer run at night by dogs and frozen in the powerful beam of a poacher's light.

“He? I thought there were two. Now, try to remember,” Brooks interrogated.

“There must a been two,” Cherry said. “I think I saw two but I don't remember seeing the second one.”

Egan and Thomaston had come to the CP and were now squatting behind Cherry. Thomaston kept touching his M-16 which he carried in his left hand. Egan massaged a frag on his belt. “I'm gettin too short for this shit,” Thomaston said.

“How many days you got now?” Egan asked him.

“Twenty-seven en a wake-up,” Thomaston said.

“Twenty-four en a wake-up, you cherry,” Egan laughed.

“There was at least three,” Roberts said.

“Did you see them?” the L-T asked.

“I didn't see nothin but I heard two AKs open up and that first dink woant firin.”

“God,” Cherry said. “I felt like a subject in a sensory deprivation experiment. I felt like I was hallucinating.”

“Close your eyes and try to picture it,” Brooks said. “What did the second man look like? What was he carrying?”

Cherry shut his eyes. “We were sitting there for about twenty minutes and I was very conscious of the sounds my, ah … my watch was like ticking real loud and I heard a twig snap.”

“I heard it too,” Roberts said.

“Try to see the second man,” Brooks encouraged.

“I saw this guy. He had shorts on and he had a rifle with a wood stock. I lifted my 16. Then I brought it back down and switched the selector to automatic.”

“Yeah. I watched him do that,” Roberts said. “So I did the same.”

“He kept coming. He's motioning like this with his left hand.” Cherry waved his left hand back and forth behind and below his hip.

“Can you see his hand?” Brooks asked.

“No,” Cherry said. “All I can see are his eyes.” Cherry opened his eyes and jerked around quickly and started to rise.

“It's okay,” Brooks stopped him. Cherry looked at Brooks, through Brooks, beyond Brooks. “It's okay,” Brooks said more casually. “Look, jungle tactics are basically two-dimensional problems—time and coordinates. We've got to work things so we don't run into the enemy when he's set up. We want to come up behind him or we want him to walk into us when we're set-up. If he second-guesses us we're in a world of hurt. That's why it's important you remember every detail.”

Cherry repeated the part about two enemy rifles opening up and the hand signal the first man had made but he froze up when he tried to remember anything beyond looking into the first man's eyes.

“What happened when you went down there?” Brooks asked Moneski.

“I took half the squad down to check it out,” Moneski said, “and Smitty pumped another six or eight rounds inta him.”

“Was he alive?” Brooks asked.

“I don't know but he wasn't when Smitty finished. We stripped him and took his bag an weapon an skyed.”

“He didn't bleed much,” Roberts said. “Never saw nothin like it. First round musta stopped his heart cause he just had all these little holes in him but there wasn't much blood. They coulda been made by leeches. Cept his head.”

“He was one big gook,” Moneski said. “He musta stood five-ten, maybe even six foot. I bet he was Chinese. He was clean too. And he had a fresh haircut, I think. Least what was left of his head looked fresh cut. We didn't stay there long. I think the dinks dee-deed too.”

“He was carryin about twenty-five pounds of rice,” Egan said from outside the circle. “Rice, one lacquered gook rice bowl, two spoons, two extra uniforms, a can of AK rounds, six Chi-com frags, gas mask, sleeping blanket and a bunch of papers. That's a lotta shit for a dink dude on patrol.”

“They're movin,” Thomaston said.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Brooks said. “He may have been the rice bearer for his squad. They may have been a mortar squad and the men behind him might have had the tube and base plate.”

“I think they're movin back in here,” Thomaston said.

“Maybe they were goina mortar us,” Egan said.

“Yeah. Maybe. Damn, I wish I knew what that second man was carrying. Cherry,” Brooks said, “I want you to think about it. If you remember anything let me know immediately.”

“Yes Sir,” Cherry said meekly. He stood.

Egan rose and put his hand on Cherry's arm. “Go down to our spot,” he said. “I set up behind Jax, over there. You'll see it.” Cherry lit another cigarette.

The two squads from 3d Plt did not reach the NDP until 1830 hours. It was cooling and clouding up as they trudged in. The valley was thick with fog, the white mass rising steadily up the escarpments. Above, the sky was clear. The breeze rising from the valley carried wisps of the fog which tumbled about the peaks like ghosts and vanished into the drier air.

The helicopter that was to have picked up the civilian photographer from 848 had been hit by small arms fire while leaving Bravo Company and it had flown directly back to Camp Evans to have the damage assessed. The squads had no choice but to wait until the GreenMan's C & C bird landed and picked up the photographer and his escort. By then it was 1700 and the squads had had to hump to the new NDP and with double and triple ammunition loads. The trail had become more slippery with use and they struggled hard to be silent, moving at double time, trying to be off the trail before dark. When they marched in and dropped their rucks and the extra ammo they were drenched with jungle slimesweat head to foot. The green canvas of their boots was black with wet and white-ringed with salt stains. Armpits and backs and crotches were soggy. They collapsed silently about the CP.