Sand in the Wind (64 page)

An idea that had been recurring for weeks finally took hold — a way of leaving Vietnam that left little opportunity for subsequent guilt or regret. He could have figured out easier ways; but no, he refused to make it too easy. He knew that only by refusing to kneel, by adding a last curse of bravado that would flaunt not only the universe but also its henchman, Chance, could he look back haughtily on what he had done. Childs became excited by the absurd danger of this plan too simple even to be a scheme. There wouldn’t be any phony illness to explain to doctors, or self-inflicted wounds during an artillery barrage. He’d do something crazy, yet far saner than any of the actions of those men around him. ‘No hammer for me,’ he thought as he withdrew a grenade from his pouch, at the same time slapping his flak jacket for reassurance of the protection it afforded.

Childs jerked the pin from the grenade. It was now too late to change his mind, and the excitement of the moment took hold of him. He tilted his helmet back until it rested on his flak jacket and protected his neck. He stopped walking, so that Chalice would be out of the grenade’s range. His determination began to wane. Childs knew he had to throw the grenade immediately. He was just about to do so when a horrible thought occurred to him. He quickly reached in his pants and drew up his balls. With his hand still in his trousers, Childs flung the grenade ten yards behind him and cringed in expectation. By reflex, he almost yelled, “Fire in the hole.” Seconds seemed somehow to expand and he thought the grenade would never go off. Only the part of his body below the waist lay unprotected — ‘My poor ass. My poor ass.’ He began to squat just as the grenade exploded. Its concussion pushed him forward without knocking him to the ground.

Chalice was startled by the explosion. He rushed back to help Childs, finding him feeling up and down the backs of his legs in disbelief, mumbling feebly, “I’m not hit.”

“What happened?” Chalice asked excitedly.

“I’m not even hit,” Childs said in a quietly depressed tone.

“What was it?”

“I can’t believe it, not even a pin prick.”

“What was it, a booby trap?”

By this time there were a number of men standing around Childs. “Yeah
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
yeah
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
a booby trap. Make sure I’m not hit.”

As he said this, Childs turned around, thus exposing his shredded flak jacket. Hamilton looked at it with astonishment. “God, what a mess.
  
.
 
.
 
. But not a drop of blood on you.”

“Are you sure?” Childs asked hopefully.

“Not a drop,” Hamilton insisted.

Only now had the shock of the incident worn off Chalice. “God Childs, you’re the luckiest motherfucker I ever met.”

“Yeah
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
I guess I am,” Childs answered in a stunned, disbelieving tone.

Kramer had just stepped from the tree line into the rice paddies when he was startled by the explosion. His first thought was, ‘booby trap.’ It seemed impossible that so many men had been able to pass it without injury. Kramer was doubly surprised to find out the victim had been Childs. He couldn’t conceive how Childs, his best point man, could be so effective while walking point, yet inept enough to trip a booby trap when he was the last man in the column. Kramer ordered his men to move out again, thinking, ‘At least no one was hurt.’

When Second Platoon reached the perimeter, most of the men gathered around Childs to find out exactly what had happened. The failure of his attempt had left him bewildered. Even if he’d understood the questions asked him, he would have been in no condition to think up answers. To his relief, attention was soon drawn away from him by the return of Third Platoon with three NVA prisoners, all of them wounded. The body of another NVA soldier had been left behind. It was Marine Corps policy not to risk night medivac missions for enemy soldiers. Enough daylight remained to get a chopper for the wounded prisoners, but Trippitt didn’t bother to send for one. This meant they would have to wait until morning.

The men didn’t waste any time before starting to dig their foxholes. They not only feared a blooker attack, they expected one. For this reason there was no complaining when Trippitt passed the word not to build hootches. They wouldn’t have had time anyway, and doing so would have made them easier targets. When the foxholes were finished, barely enough daylight remained to heat C-rations. All around the perimeter, men sat in small groups, their ponchos wrapped around them as protection from the light drizzle as they ate.

Kramer tossed aside his empty C-ration can. Bland and pastelike, at least the food had been warm. And tonight this was enough. His rotting uniform stuck to him like a coat of slime. How long had it been since he’d felt dry cloth against his skin? A month, at least. When was the last time he or anyone else in his platoon had gotten six whole hours’ sleep? Too
many
months ago. At least the food had been warm.

Kramer watched as the last hint of light faded into the mountains. Two of his men, now no more than sepia patterns, rose up and moved across the horizon. He had no idea who they were, but he respected them. He thought about Childs — not about his curses towards the heavens, but about the way he had spotted the booby trap. Even though Kramer had been warned about the booby trap, he’d come within inches of stepping on it. How could he not respect Childs, knowing that more than one man would now be dead or wounded if he himself had been walking the point? He thought with confidence about all of his men, realizing how he had always fought against having any feeling for them. But they had somehow won much more than his respect. No longer did he look down on them, as he had done at first and would have continued to do under circumstances where the life of one man didn’t depend upon those around him. He respected the newer replacements as much as the men who had been with the platoon longer than he had, knowing that in time they too could be depended upon.

Chalice and Forsythe sat silently in the darkness, legs dangling into their foxhole. During the previous few days, Chalice had often been kidded about not being able to protect his squad from the Phantom Blooker. He’d taken these remarks more seriously than they had been intended. Ever since the Phantom Blooker had renewed his attacks, Chalice thought little about anything else. These thoughts had bothered him to the extent that he refrained as much as possible from asking questions about or even mentioning the Phantom Blooker. But now, as the sky darkened, he could no longer keep his silence. “Forsythe, why do you think the Phantom Blooker laid off us so long?”

“He was on his R and R.”

“No, seriously.”

“Maybe he was after one of the other companies.”

“No. I heard Kramer talking to Milton about it.”

“You’re the professor. You should have all the answers.”

“Maybe I do.
  
.
 
.
 
. At first I thought he might have been out of ammunition, but he sure as hell used a lot of it the last couple of nights. It got me thinking. Everytime —”

“That’s dangerous.”

“Everytime a supply chopper gets shot down, the Gooks come out at night and strip it, right?”

“Right,” Forsythe answered in a bored tone.

“Well a lot of times they’re carrying blooker rounds, so the Gooks probably give him as much as he can use. The only thing is, he can’t carry them all around. He has to stash them somewhere. The choppers never see him anymore, so he must do all his traveling at night. The only way he can keep following us is if he’s got hiding places all over the Arizona where he sleeps and keeps his ammo.”

“So what?”

“I don’t know.
  
.
 
.
 
. I mean it makes him seem more like a human being, doesn’t it?”

“What else would spend all its time trying to kill people.
  
.
 
.
 
. I’ll tell you one thing though: I’d rather stay in the perimeter tonight than go on any ambush — the odds are better, and every patrol we sent out today made contact. There’s Gooks all over the place, and you can bet your ass they know we send out ambushes every night. They’ll be waiting for someone.”

Trippitt realized this also, but he was willing to take the risk. Again he assigned four ambushes, three of them long. Within Second Platoon, it was Charlie Squad’s turn. Ramirez had previously decided to sandbag if assigned a long one. To his relief he drew the short ambush. Of the three squads that were assigned long ones, two decided to sandbag. This made it necessary for their squad leaders to pick patches of high ground that were close to the perimeter and large enough to afford cover. The ambush party from First Platoon chose a spot twenty-five yards outside Second Platoon’s sector of the perimeter. To prevent themselves from being fired upon by their own company, their squad leader arranged for Tony 5 to caution his men. Chalice and Forsythe’s foxhole faced this patch of high ground, so First Platoon’s ambush party left the perimeter from their position.

As was now the custom, the men remaining within the perimeter sat quietly around the radios waiting for the ambushes to notify them that they had set-in. They heard three of the ambush parties do this, but a burst of AK-47 fire told them that the fourth never would. What they eventually heard was an excited voice telling them that three men had been wounded, two seriously. A medivac chopper was immediately called in, but sniper fire drove it away. Puff was then called in, and the men within the perimeter started worrying about their friends who had sandbagged and weren’t in their proper positions. The ambushed squad finally made it back to the perimeter, and in minutes the medivac chopper landed within it and picked up the wounded. Before many of the men who had guided it in had time to return to their foxholes, the Phantom Blooker began firing. Even over the roar of the ascending helicopter, anguished screams testified to his accuracy.

Puff began spraying rounds closer to the perimeter as the men sat crouched within their foxholes, worried just as much about their friends sandbagging as they were about a blooker round finding them. Soon another medivac chopper was circling the perimeter for those men wounded on the last evacuation. The whir of its blades became deafening as it quickly descended. Just when it was a few feet above the ground and the wounded were being rushed towards it, a perfectly aimed blooker round sent sheets of flaming gasoline all over the perimeter. The chopper hung motionless for an instant before another explosion brought it crashing to the ground. Its blade tore lose and sliced through the radioman that had tried to bring it in. All over the perimeter men were shouting for help for themselves and for their friends. The burning chopper lit the entire perimeter with a hot orange light, and the only crewman able to escape rushed out of it, himself a squirming, twisting torch.

The panic diminished to a wary silence, broken only by the feeble, excruciating moans of the wounded. It took Puff’s machine guns to cut the tension of those protracted moments by drowning out the moans. It was soon joined by helicopter gun ships that swung low over the perimeter as they strafed the area around it. This continued for almost an hour before the perimeter was again silent.

The Phantom Blooker had long ceased his assault when the third medivac chopper picked up the wounded. Chalice and Forsythe sat stunned in their foxhole as the engines faded in the distance and the perimeter alternated back to silence. Chalice stared out at the patch of high ground where the party from First Platoon had chosen to sandbag. If they had been any farther from the perimeter they’d probably all be dead. Suddenly he heard a moaning sound behind him. He and Forsythe turned and were barely able to discern a human figure crawling towards them. Forsythe reached out and dragged the burned and bleeding NVA prisoner up to their hole. Even in the darkness, they could tell that a pathetic few minutes would be enough to trace out the death of something already less than human. He had managed to outlive his two comrades, but these last moments were filled merely with delirium and agony.

The perimeter was again silent as Gunny Martin moved around it to check each position. He was as much shaken by what had happened as anyone else in the company. “You all right, men?” he asked in an almost fatherly tone.

“Yeah.”

“We’re okay.”

Just as Martin turned to walk away, a metallic sound came from the opposite tree line. Forsythe and Chalice flinched in dread, hoping Martin hadn’t heard it. “What was that?” he asked in an excited whisper.

“What was what?” Forsythe replied.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Chalice added.

Martin had pulled out his pistol, but he now reholstered it. “Guess it’s my nerves.” Just before he’d finished speaking, a similar sound came from the tree line. Martin jumped into their hole and whispered, “There’s something out there.”

Forsythe heard the faint voice of someone in the ambush party warning someone else to keep quiet, and he tried to drown it out with his own words. “We’ve been —”

“Shut up!”

“ — watching all night.”

“Shut up!” Martin repeated. He noticed Chalice’s blooker and whispered, “Lob a round into that tree line. Hurry up!”

Chalice had enough self-possession to start fumbling with the blooker as he said, “It’s jammed.”

Martin grabbed it out of his hands and fired before Chalice could stop him. There was a moan from the tree line, and somebody called out, “I’m hit.”

“They’re Marines,” Martin murmured in a dazed tone.

For the fourth time that night a medivac chopper had to be called in. Three men in the ambush party had been wounded, none critically. The chopper arrived just as dawn broke over the mountains. Only after it had taken off did Trippitt have time to expel his anger. Most of the men were gathered in the center of the perimeter when Trippitt called for the squad leader from First Platoon. The sight of him approaching enraged Trippitt. “
What the fuck were you doing in that tree line?
”