Red Flags (36 page)

We crossed carefully, one at a time. It always surprised me. Like all flowing water in Viet Nam, it looked cool but the stream was warmer than my body and not the least bit refreshing. The flora thinned further as the canopy cover increased. Birds chirped, lots of them. Willie led us toward the sound until we could see feathers flashing, vivid orange and yellow against the green. Parrots, myna birds, canaries, skylarks scattered and took flight. Willie pointed to the reason for the gathering—a cache of rice bags piled on a low platform with a tarp roof. Each bag was imprinted with the logo of the American international aid program: one dark hand, the other white, clasped beneath a Stars and Stripes shield. A bag at the bottom had split open, drawing the beautiful, wild crowd.

A path led toward the stash of rice from the other side. Willie followed it. Forty yards on, stumps of young trees and saplings dotted a light area where strong, straight timber had been cut down for construction. Tracks went every which way. Willie took one, seemingly at random. We passed garden plots next to a flooded bomb crater. Something broke the surface. Reflex swung our rifles toward the splash.

Fish. The crater was stocked with live fish.

We had stumbled upon a base camp for a hundred men. An NVA company. The occupants couldn't be far. Wet shirts hung on branches. Thirty feet away, the unmistakable odor of human waste announced their latrine. A-shaped bunkers bulged out of the ground, covered with earth, some interconnected by trenches. Outside a large one, built from heavy timbers and soil, were impressions in the hard ground, unmistakably a mortar's, probably an 81-millimeter. Like the camp, the bunkers were empty. Nobody home.

Three Bren-like Czech ZB-26 rifles and cans of their Mauser ammo lay tarnished and damaged alongside rusted grappling hooks trailing ropes—devices the enemy used to drag their dead from the battlefield to their improvised graves. A volleyball net of woven vines stretched across a dirt patch. Huge trees arched high overhead, their canopies thick and dripping. Around the court stood bamboo platforms: classrooms with easels, mess platforms with chopsticks protruding from empty number-10 cans, storage platforms with nylon sheets protecting mounds of salt, sleeping platforms with mats—one of them occupied.

We trained our CARs on him. Cong in the flesh. Barefoot, in dark green shorts and armless gray undershirt. The scourge of our Free World Forces. He slept with mouth open, dead to the world, the crook of his arm across his eyes, ribs protruding. He was tiny, maybe ninety pounds, frail, half naked, hair spiky, unkempt, consumed with fever from the look of him.

Grady eased up to the youth, making sure he was unarmed. He pointed away. We didn't linger. Cox signed to Willie, who led us silently on a southeast heading. The signs of habitation fell away. We were back under triple canopy and moving well, praying we were walking away from and not toward wherever the People's Army was having its jamboree.

We covered a thousand meters and reached the fording point where we would lie in wait for the VC courier and his minders. They were due to pass by in the wee hours of the morning, urgency making them risk daylight travel, albeit under jungle canopy.

The modest river, no more than the width of a road, lay at the bottom of a trough cut by past monsoons. The water was only knee high. We descended the bank and crossed quickly, one at a time.

Grady selected a slight knoll in a grove of saplings we could exit from in any direction, and we hid out. Cox set the two Yards to provide security, and the four of us stuck our heads together under a poncho liner.

Grady whispered, "This place is crawling with major VC."

"Yeah," Cox whispered back, snapping on his red-lensed flashlight to study the map. "It's sure not uninhabited jungle anymore."

"What do we do about the ambush?" Grady asked, directing the question to all of us. "If we don't do this real quiet, they'll know we're here. The odds of a chance meeting are sky-high. Even if we dust his babysitters without being detected and nab this commo guy, I don't know what we'll run into around the next bend between here and the extraction point. The VC keep their larger units spread out as a precaution. But we could be in an interval between smaller elements."

"Or between battalions," Cox whispered.

"You saying we should scrap it?" said Ruchevsky.

"I'm saying it's a total gamble. They could be anyplace. How many more campsites like that one are out here? We don't know what shit we're in the middle of."

Cox shifted the light toward the sergeant. "You're the man, Grady. It's your call."

"Hell," he said. "It's too hinky now for me to call it by my lonesome."

He put it to each of us in turn. No one was going to be the one to veto the thing, even as everyone prayed someone would. It was unanimous: proceed as planned, testosterone and glory. Fuck.

"Jeez," Grady said, grinning. "You're crazier than fire ants. Okay, most likely our man will be somewhere in the middle of the line. Wherever he is, don't kill 'im. I'll wait until the radio gook is past me in the ambush before I spring it. Remember—if I fire, it's on. If I don't shoot, we pass it up and sneak the fuck home. If it's gonna happen, I set it off. No one fires unless I do."

He looked us over. "Once it's sprung and we take 'em down, we beat feet right away and go for the landing zone. So don't miss. Check your silencers. You don't want the NVA hearin' this. We need kill shots, right between the antlers. Knock 'em down fast. We gotta be away from here quick. Fifteen seconds."

He pointed to where we were on the map and to the landing zone.

"It's thirty minutes to the LZ, John says. There's a narrow trail. As soon as we're on the way, Captain Rider radios for the pickup. Anybody got anything to add?"

Ruchevsky said, "None of our long-range recon units have snuck in here. It's virgin territory. So Charlie should be feeling safe—and let's hope a little lax."

"Amen," Cox said.

"Okay," Grady said. "Everybody stay cool. Everybody stay lucky."

We used the remaining daylight to set up two mines on our flanks and prepare our positions. At sunset we bedded down together on a slight slope. I radioed in for two seconds and we set the guard schedule for the night. We were exhausted but too wired to sleep. When I finally did, it was like falling into a black hole.

We were nudged awake. Before I could rub my eyes, three VC passed our position in the dark, heading north toward the base camp. Judging from how chatty they were, they had no suspicion of our presence. Since they weren't laden down with packs and a radio, none of them was our quarry. Cox gave up on sleep and took a dex candy. Just as I radioed in at midnight, a heavily loaded raft floated by on the river, pushed along in the shallow water like a scooter. Four more bamboo rafts floated by. For an isolated region, there was an awful lot of traffic.

Two hours before dawn, we rose from the night perimeter and shifted into our places in the one foolproof and perfect military configuration: the firing squad. Rot crossed the river in the direction they would come from to lie in wait for their rear guard, in case their last man didn't cross with the rest of the party, which was likely. Willie hid up ahead to deal with their point man once he moved away from the party on our side.

I couldn't make out my colleagues among the fronds, and I knew where they were. Ruchevsky, the closest, unpacked his second weapon, an M-79 grenade launcher that looked like a stubby shotgun. He loaded a single fat shell, a beanbag round to knock down his target if needed but not kill him.

I was groggy from interrupted sleep and immobility, and grew steadily unhappier with whatever bugs were sharing my fatigues. Chiggers, ants, spiders—all God's creatures taking communion on my flesh. I looped "California Dreamin'" nervously in my head to distract myself as they dined.

The light was still vague when we heard them approaching. The song in my head switched off. Big John's intel was impressive. The silencer would slow velocity but this close that wouldn't matter. If they bunched up, I was putting all eighteen rounds in my targets in one burst.

The Charlies' point man arrived at the river's edge and waited on one knee. The rest caught up and paused with him. The first man crossed and stopped to take in the jungle. He listened to the insects, a good sign, and signaled.

Five more forded one at a time, a few seconds apart, not terribly alert. Three in NVA helmets and khaki, two in
cao ao
pajamas. After the fifth man, I raised the muzzle a quarter inch, waiting for them to advance along the trail into our kill zone. Mercifully, it was just growing light and they presented as little more than silhouettes, faceless shadows I wouldn't be disinclined to pull the trigger on.

At that moment, on the far side, a sixth helmeted soldier stepped out of the jungle and proceeded to cross. A seventh waited on deck and then waded over. No others followed.

Seven on our riverbank. Possibly an eighth bringing up the rear, Rot there to dispatch him with his crossbow. More than we expected. The kidnap victim for John to deal with—was he identifiable? Number four's squarish pack bulged: the radio. The stub of an antenna stuck out of it. My pulse leapt.

Would Grady spring the ambush or give them a pass?

Their point man didn't start out from the riverbank ahead of them as he should have. That meant six VC for three of us to take down, leaving John to wrestle the seventh. I'd have to knock out the three in front; Cox and Grady, the trio in back; John, the radioman in the middle. Three head shots seemed risky. I'd spray the torsos. Body mass. They just needed to stay close.

They started forward, bunched. Grady fired ... then Cox and me. A muzzle flashed back.

One burp had emptied my clip.

With all the firing, I'd missed it, but now the unmistakable
clack
of a Kalashnikov echoed back to us along the valley. A shot one of them had gotten off. Fuck. We'd been announced.

I slapped in a new magazine one-handed and advanced, eyes on the three in front. All of them were down.

"
Dung le ban,
" the radioman squealed. Don't shoot.

Ruchevsky, lying on top of him, whispered for him to shut up. I covered as Cox helped strip the radio off. Big John cuffed and gagged the radio guy and bound him at the elbows. They were on their feet, the captive's eyes like silver dollars.

I stepped toward my downed targets. The light seeping through the jungle turned faintly white. The third man I'd hit was in a black top and shorts. There was no mistaking him. His teeth were filed down like a Montagnard's. Pronounced five o'clock shadow darkened his cheeks. Wolf Man.

I motioned Cox over to confirm his identity and tore away his rucksack. Ammunition, salt pork, a Russian Zenith camera. The canvas satchel on his shoulder ... paper! I turned him to get it. The exit wound in his back was a bright red bowl. Ribs and a lung gone. I tossed out everything but camera, maps, and papers, and slung on the bag and his weapon.

The next body wore a field uniform. NVA didn't wear insignia, and he wore no distinctive Commie belt buckle, like some officers. But he was armed with a pistol, an American .45, which meant he might be one. I unstrapped his ruck. Besides a Hungarian transistor radio, it was full of medicines and morphine in a nylon bag. A medic, maybe a doctor. I liberated the medicine bag and tossed the pistol and rucksack into the jungle.

Rot was crossing the river in a hurry, exuberant with his success. Willie appeared from up the trail, looking disappointed he'd missed out. Cox, standing over one of his targets, popped a coup de grâce shot.

I moved to the point man, sights fixed on his chest. Shit, he was breathing, still alive. A barefoot Montagnard VC in shorts, carrying nothing but ammunition and a sleeve of cooked rice. My heart sank. It was the father of the child we'd delivered, Roberta and I. He choked, grunting from pain, blood trickling from his chest. His eyes blinking, disbelieving.

Cox came up to me, signaling to hurry, then saw his face. He recognized the dad too. In one motion he covered the man's face with his boonie hat and filled it with a muffled burst from his CAR. Gratitude and revulsion swept through me.

Willie touched Cox on the arm. He was looking off the trail, toward Grady. We pushed through the foliage to where Sarge lay against a tree trunk, pressing a field dressing hard against his groin. The gauze and his fatigue pants were sodden.

"How bad?" Cox said.

"It must've hit bone and zigged everywhere. I'm cut up all over inside. Feels like a piece is comin' out my lower back. I think I'm bleeding out my ass. I'm sittin' in blood."

Cox said, "Cut away his pants," as he sawed a strap off a rucksack and hurriedly tightened it around Grady's thigh. I exposed the wound. Cox rifled the medic's musette bag. Grady took him by the arm.

"Don't."

The heavy caliber had devastated the leg, split it open all the way down the back, ass to ankle. White bone shone through the filleted flesh. The tourniquet slowed the bleeding but not enough. The leg seeped steadily, a rich heavy red. An explosion that took off a leg might cauterize the wound and stop its bleeding, but nothing sealed the arteries severed by a caroming bullet. If he was medevaced to a hospital, the surgeons could use Teflon and Dacron tubes to replace them, but here we could do nothing but slow the blood loss.

"You won't get to the bleeding," Grady said, voice hoarse. "The leg is hamburger in back. I'm leaking like a stuck pig. Just lousy luck. Wolf Man had a round in the spout and the safety off. Must've jerked the trigger when he got hit."

Cox looked scared. "We can't get a helicopter in here. We'll have to carry you."

Grady grimaced, teeth clamped. "In this heat, through this shit? You can't."

"Sarge—"

"All that jostling, I'll just bleed out faster."

"Grady—"

"Don't give me that nobody-left-behind crap. I don't want to be tits-up in Arlington with them ring knockers and honky fucks. I'm gonna kiss the bitch right here."

The Montagnards had finished dragging the bodies off the trail and took up defensive positions facing the far bank of the river and up the trail.