Men in Green Faces (31 page)

He scanned the river once again, then went back to the briefing room to study the map. Not the map of the combat area he’d be following Cruz into, but a map of the northeast. Colonel Nguyen’s area. Impulsively he took Nguyen’s shoulder patch out of his pocket, stuck it on the map with a black pushpin, and hung Willie’s gold cross over it. Intently he studied all possible areas in which the colonel might be found, comparing intelligence reports in relation to the many sightings reported.

Sometime later, Jim and Cruz entered, to set up for the PLO. Before they could cross the room, Gene had put the shoulder patch and cross back in his pocket.

“Anything I can do, You-O?” he asked.

Cruz shook his head.

Gene left them, and went back to the hootch to get ready for the PLO and into combat gear and green face for the op. When he entered, the squad was getting dressed, donning their operating gear and painting their faces. The paint had become a weapon in and of itself. The sight of green faces streaked with black horrified people of the Mekong Delta, keeping them in constant fear of those who wore it, and who always left dead and wounded behind.

The rest of the squad left for the PLO. Gene, hand on the light switch, looked around the hootch. In Delta’s half, Marc and his fellow squad members slept. Their area was dark, the nets pulled down around their beds. That half of the hootch had an empty look. Almost all of them had their equipment packed and staged outside. In less than forty-eight hours, they’d be on their way back to the good old U.S.A.

In full combat gear, Gene turned off the light and started to leave the dark and silent hootch, then stopped. Walking soft, he went to the Eagle’s rack. For a moment he stood and listened to the regular breathing that told him Marc was in deep sleep. His whisper was barely audible. “In case, my friend, I don’t see you before you leave, thanks for your silence.” They’d faced death together many times, seen the devil’s face in the fiery hell, and walked out laughing with their weapons still smoking. “I’ll miss you, Eagle. Take care. God be…”

Gene went silent. He couldn’t finish the sentence. “Take care, my friend.”

Silently he left the hootch.

When he reached the briefing room, Cruz stood at the front, ready to give his Patrol Leader’s Order. Jim sat at the back of the room next to the chair Gene always took. They acknowledged each other with a look before giving Cruz their full attention.

“Tonight’s mission,” he began, “is to search and destroy a weapons cache located two rivers west of Twin Rivers.” He pointed to the map and gave the exact coordinates of its location. “Intel,” he continued, “has been received by interrogating POWs that came out of the area. Intel states that about twenty NVA remain.

“They’ve been staging the weapons to the west in an attempt to get them moved to the north. The weapons are under the seventh grave site on the left side of the graveyard.”

Shit, Gene thought, and glanced at Jim, who grinned at him, then motioned toward Doc, who had suddenly sat straight up in his chair. Cruz continued.

“The enemy’s camp is five hundred meters to the south and the west. Back here.” He pointed to the location on the map.

Gene shifted the 60’s position slightly, listening as Cruz went on to cover every detail, everyone’s actions expected, and what to do under different conditions they might encounter. You-O, he thought, is standing tall up front. You’d never know it was his first PLO.

“No friendly forces,” Cruz said. “There is air support and boat support if needed. They’ll be standing by.”

When he’d covered everything, he added, “Any questions?” and when there were none, he smiled and said, “Well, what are you sitting there for? Let’s go kick ass and take names.”

Outside, the squad jumped up and down again, to see if anything they wore rattled or came loose. Then they boarded the boats that would take them to their insertion point.

Gene checked his watch. It was 0215. Moving down the river made the night seem cool. Cool for Vietnam anyway, he thought. The sky was clear and star-studded.

Cruz passed the word. “We’ll be heading down Twin Rivers in a few moments. Everybody stay down. Have your weapons ready. No noise.”

Gene looked up. By watching the stars, he could see the change in direction to the left that the boats made. He couldn’t help but wonder just how safe Twin Rivers would be. So many had died trying to get into the area. He stayed low and waited.

When they reached the fork that split the river into two, they took the one to the right. He thought of Raggedy for a second, whose village and the factory had been to the left. To his knowledge, this was the first time anyone had taken the river to the right. All other ops had either been blown to hell before that point or taken the left fork to try to find the weapons factory and then were hit.

Gene shifted position slightly to keep his legs and feet from going to sleep or cramping. So far, so good. He glanced around. Everybody was facing outward. Three to port and four to starboard, they were ready to rise from below the bulkheads and return fire instantly if they got hit.

The boat moved slowly down the steadily narrowing river. The banks were so close, the trees on each side were joined over the water.

“Get ready,” Cruz whispered.

The boat turned into the west bank and stopped. One by one the SEALs inserted. They moved immediately into the concealing bush and set security until the boat moved back out.

Concealed in the foliage, Gene looked around and listened to the sounds of night. He took careful breaths, smelling the air, making sure no one was near, hoping no one saw them insert. Two finger snaps caught his attention.

Cruz waved, signaling
move out.

Gene watched Brian take point, moving on the compass bearing given during the PLO. With the rest, he dropped into file formation. Slowly, silently, they snaked through the heavy bush.

The clear night had brought out every bug. The air was so full of flying creatures, it was like walking through massed spiderwebs. Gene breathed slow and easy, trying hard not to inhale any of the tiny insects. Keep moving, he told, himself. Just keep moving.

They rested about every hundred meters, listening, then moved on.

The terrain was a bitch to patrol through—a virgin area. Gene doubted that other humans had ever come into it. It was too hard to move. Passage was too slow to be of any use—except to SEALs. The enemy would never expect them to come this route.

Finally the jungle opened up a bit more, and the mud grew less deep. The patrol halted. Brian and Cruz disappeared into the bush ahead. When they returned, Cruz went to each man to say they’d reached their target. Back in position, he gave the sign to move in.

Gene stepped out of the jungle and into the graveyard. The left fork of the river flowed slowly by. Cruz and Brian had been right on the money. With all the weaving in and out they’d had to do to get there, they were right on the target. Lucky. In almost all the other ops, they’d hit the right place but had to shift one way or the other to move into the target area.

From fifteen grave sites away, Gene watched Brian, Cruz, and Roland at the seventh grave. They were using their knives to probe for possible mines that might have been laid to protect the weapons. Finding none, they began to remove earth from the grave. The one thing they didn’t know was how deeply the weapons were buried.

Setting security, Gene was closest to the river, and to the south of their area, where he could look in the direction of the NVA camp. Nearby, Jim, Alex, and Doc, the rest of the squad’s security element, also watched for anyone who might come in.

Gene waited, silent and unmoving, for the weapons to be unearthed. The digging was a painstaking process. Cruz and Brian, with Roland setting security next to them, were inserting their knives slowly, feeling for mines, then removing earth no deeper than the length of the blade, before probing again. The dirt was fairly soft, the grave only a few days old. There hadn’t been time for the soil to settle and become hard-packed.

Cruz and Brian had dug down about two feet when a horrible, reeking stench filled Gene’s nostrils. He cringed. Roland stood up, holding his hand over his face. Somebody gagged. Cruz and Brian lifted a decomposing body out of the grave.

Gene’s fingers tightened around the 60. Even fifteen grave sites away, the smell was god-awful. He was grateful he wasn’t on top of it. He’d have lost anything in his stomach. It felt as though he might anyway.

Cruz and Brian removed their sweatbands and tied them over their faces to aid their breathing, before continuing to dig.

They’d be breathing through their mouths, just as he was. It figured that the enemy would think anyone finding the body would give up. It was possible the weapons were under the body, just inches deeper.

After the two had dug down another foot, without finding a trace of the weapons, it was obvious to Gene that intel was wrong on the grave site. Inspecting all of them, to try to determine which one housed the weapons, would be fatal. You-O would realize that. The stench from the body contaminated the air. Anyone within a hundred yards could smell the rotting corpse. If the NVA smelled it, they’d investigate, knowing someone was looking for the weapons.

Cruz and Brian rolled the body back into the grave. Using their feet, they shoved in about a foot of din, to cover it up as fast as they could. Gene, trying not to gag, heard a chuckle. Crouched near the mound of dirt next to the grave, Roland was choking back laughter almost, but not quite, silently. Cruz and Brian were attempting to wipe off their hands with their headbands, at the same time gagging and trying to keep from puking their brains out. On the other side of Jim, Doc looked like he was about to have a fit.

Since the weapons hadn’t been found, they had to take out those who’d hidden them, so nobody would be able to find the cache. If the weapons had been there, they’d have blown them up with C-4. Each of the squad carried some of the explosive. Put together and detonated, the C-4 would have blown the entire graveyard away. Now they’d use it on the NVA camp across the river. They had about two hours of darkness left to complete the second phase of their mission and be extracted.

At the river’s edge, Cruz asked Gene if he’d seen anything at the graveyard while setting security toward the NVA’s location.

“Damn,” Gene whispered, instantly covering his mouth and nose. “You stink! Get away.”

“Suck wind,” Cruz whispered back. “You see anything?”

Gene, face covered, shook his head.

Cruz snapped his fingers softly and waved for a river crossing. Gene set security covering the left flank, and Doc took the right.

The river, about fifteen feet from bank to bank, was almost at low tide, but when Brian got about halfway, it was over his head. He started to sidestroke, holding his weapon in his right hand, parallel to the river’s surface, ready to fire at anyone waiting for him on the far side.

Cruz passed the signal to inflate life jackets. Using them, everyone would be able to keep their heads above water.

Gene wondered just how deep it was going to be. With eight hundred rounds of ammo, five pounds of C-4, and the 60, there was no way he’d be able to stay above the surface.

Brian reached the far bank, disappeared into the bush, and finally returned to wave the rest of the squad over.

As each man entered the water, crossed, and got out, Gene was remembering a crossing in which he’d almost drowned. About the same size river, but the tide had been high. They’d inflated their life jackets then too, but just two feet in from the steep-banked side, he’d gone under. The jacket couldn’t keep the combined weight of his person, plus the 60, the ammo belts, and his other gear, afloat.

Underwater, he had kicked off the bottom, but the riverbed was so soft he’d barely made it to the surface for air. As he had kicked off, he’d tilted his head back so his nose and mouth would break the surface of the water and allow him to suck in a quick breath. And it was real quick. Next to no time to suck in what air he could before the weight took him back underwater. Once on the bottom, he had thought he could walk across until he was able to reach the far side. Hell, he’d told himself, it was only fifteen feet.

He’d leaned forward and felt himself sinking into the soft mud. Then he started trying to run, but with each kick of his feet, the bottom gave way, and he’d move forward only inches. He increased his leg action, trying to run faster, but still the movement forward was only inches, and with the amount of exertion, he knew he was burning up a lot of oxygen.

He also knew the other members of the squad would not be concerned, because they were all very strong swimmers. They’d be looking for the enemy. He kept kicking at the bottom, and his chest began to pound, his body crying for air.

He didn’t know how far he’d gotten, but he started to think about breaking off the belted ammo and letting it drop, as well as the 60, which weighed almost twenty-four pounds even after being cut down. He pushed the 60 to his back, letting it hang on its sling, continued to try to run, and, as a last resort, pulled at the water with both hands.

If he couldn’t get air, he’d black out. There was no way of knowing just when he’d simply pass out and go limp. When it occurred during training, instructors jumped in, pulled people out, revived them. A very controlled situation. But in Vietnam nobody was standing by. He felt himself start to panic.

He broke off the first belt of ammo and let it drop, still kicking, hoping to reach the far side, to reach air. Reaching for the second belt, he felt the top of his head break the water’s surface just before the point at which he knew he’d black out. Using the last ounce of air in his lungs, he pushed off the bottom and sucked air frantically when he broke the surface, before going back under. It was just enough that he knew he’d make it, that his head would be above water in a few more inches.

He had moved as fast as his legs could go, pulling with both hands, and had come up. For the first few breaths, he sucked hard, making enough noise to alert someone nearby. Realizing that, he controlled the sound, telling himself to be quiet, breathe slow. Finally he pulled himself out of the water on hands and knees and lay panting in the mud on the bank.