The Med (52 page)

“Hurry up and wait,” muttered Liebo.

“Ain't we going?” said Washman again. This time no one answered him.

Half an hour later the door banged again. This time it was the Top. He stared around at the sleeping men, then bent to Silkworth and shook him. The sergeant blinked and sat up. The senior sergeant, squatting beside him, whispered rapidly for several minutes. Halfway through he was interrupted by Silkworth's cursing, but the Top cursed him right back, into silence again, till he was done. When he had finished he stood up, only five-feet-five in combat boots, but still big enough to fill the compartment by himself. “And that's your orders. Any questions? Gear man'll be around in a minute.”

“It's crazy, Top. Fucken crazy. We're going to need those tubes. There's fucken Russians ashore here, man.”

“We don't know what it's like ashore. They do. And those are orders, and you're a marine. So get moving.” The Top looked around the compartment once more, then slammed the hatch hard as he left. The men stirred.

“On deck!” bawled Silkworth angrily. “Listen up, listen up! We got to turn our mortars in, and like right now.”

“What the fuck, Silky!”

“What he mean, turn them in?”

“Shit if I do, man!”

He waited out their griping for perhaps three seconds, then bawled louder than all of them put together, “Gaw-
damn!
You people cry like fifteen monkeys fucken' a football at how much gear you got to carry, then you don't want to leave it when you're ordered to. Give me a troop of palsied old-maid librarians in front of you bastards, at least they'd do what they was told. Shit fire, if they was free blow jobs waitin' ashore, you'd whine how you had to unbutton your flies. Now break that gear out! Cutford, count it all, make sure we leave every piece of the weapons and every round 'a' mortar ammo.”

“They sendin' us in without cover,” said Cutford. “You know that? How we gonna—”

“We gonna do it like U.S. Marines,” said Silkworth, cutting the corporal off. “It's a tricky landing; the people here can cut us to cat meat if we piss them off, and the Man says not to take in anything but rifles. I don't get it but diplomacy ain't my job. My job is to follow orders, just like you, and if I wanted to live forever I wouldn't be wearin' this green suit. So shut up that wicked mouth, Cutford, and roll out those tubes.”

I don't get it either,
Givens was thinking, pulling the sleeved rounds from his pack loops. We're mortarmen—mortars, they always said, were part of company firepower. What was suddenly wrong with them? But he took one look at Silkworth, glaring around like Jehovah with thunderbolts in the middle of the compartment, and decided not to ask.

The inner door opened and the armorer came in, bent like a Christmas tree under a festoon of M-16s and cartridge bags. “Gitcher rifles here,” he said from beneath the pile. “One ammo pouch each. Sign these cards here. Can't have the piece without the signature.”

“Fuck! These ain't our fucken rifles!”

“Ain't got time to check numbers. Just grab one and sign.”

“Cutford, count 'em off.”

“Magazines. Can you give us extra magazines?” Cutford asked the armorer.

“They said one each, but … I brought extras. Just don't flash 'em around, okay?”

The corporal passed Givens a rifle. Their hands met on the stock; they stared into each other's eyes for a long intent second. Then he turned back to the armorer, and began handing out ammo to the others. Will jacked back the bolt and locked it to the rear, checking the chamber, and peered down the barrel. Oily. A reserve weapon. But that would shoot out, or he could swab it himself after they landed. He reversed it and clicked the sights on twelve, sixteen—standard setting when you picked up a strange piece.
But how do they expect us to shoot with these?
he thought, glancing at Silkworth, but deciding once more not to speak.
Over fifty yards, we won't have any idea where we're hitting.
The infantrymen watched them, amused.

“This all of it?” said the armorer.

“Thass right,” said Cutford bitterly. “You got ever' bit of our mortar gear there.”

“Gimme a man to carry it.”

“But what are we gonna
do?
” Washman muttered. “We go through all that shit training on mortars—now what are we gonna be? Just
riflemen?
”

“No, you'll never be that, buddy,” said one of the grunts.

In the midst of it the lights turned to red again and they swung toward the door. It was the captain again. But this time he said nothing; just looked at them for a moment, and then jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

“Helo team thirteen, up and ready!” sang Silkworth. “Let's go!”

On the move at last. Will tugged his chinstrap tight one last time and picked up the rifle. They shuffled forward in the red light, bent like old men, weapons dangling. The black mouth of the hatch was filled with night and wind and the scream of turbines, and then with leaping men. Silkworth's face, turned backward for a parting shout: “Remember, watch the blades! Rear rotor's on the left!”

Then it was his turn. He put his arm to Washman's shoulder and they went through together.

Night, sound, and rain. They staggered onto a rain-slicked flight deck, caught icy spray on their uplifted faces. Sound struck them like a left hook, the buffeting of rotor-wash like a right. Lights pulsated weirdly in the mist, making the stumbling queues of men leap to existence and then fade to black, the strobe of the rotors slicing each second into a dozen slow-motion frames. Still pictures: men leaning forward into the rain, men looking back to the safety of the ship, two marines helping a comrade up, troops running under the burden of full combat gear. The stationary ballet of the helo deck crew, wands glowing orange, speaking in slow circles to the pilots who waited invisible for their human freight to board. And above and behind the rainswept stage, decks above, the outangled windows of Pri-fly glowed jade and ruby, silhouettes of earphoned figures leaning forward in their boxes, audiences to the dance below, directors to more machines that hovered waiting, pulsating in mist-shrouded aureoles a hundred feet aft of the rolling ship … the helicopters looming gigantic in red-flickering darkness, their screaming presence leaning on the men who ran, it seemed to each one, endlessly across an endless deck toward them, each one blinking through the wind-driven rain toward the loom of his chopper, each man reminding himself
Fifty-threes, tailrotor's on the left.
Picking out as he lumbered forward the blunt curve of the forward section, the flickering fatal halo of the rotor, the blue steady flame of the engines as they rounded the tail, still running, packs banging on their backs, rifles at high port. The exhaust kicked up stinging droplets from the flight deck, mixed hot blast with soaking cold rain. Givens tripped on a tiedown and felt momentary panic. He recovered with one hand to the deck and ran on, blundering against Washman as the squad slowed, bunching together, then pounded up the ramp into the lightless maw of the plane. He moved left, felt the seat jam horizontal into the backs of his legs, and groped for the belt. Not till it clacked solid did he feel secure. He leaned back gasping against the bulkhead, staring still into darkness, feeling the others close around him.

The ramp came up. The engines rose to a roar. The fuselage shuddered, rotated under them, and launched them suddenly heavy into the air. Scared, exultant, he screamed wordlessly into the wall of sound, as loud as he could, the other men screaming too, none of it audible.

They were off. The deck tilted, the aircraft throbbed, its interior so bright with sound, conversation and thought alike were impossible. The engines cut through the thin aluminum like a cleaver. A dim red bulb came on in the curving overhead, and the rows of faces flicked on as if the light were behind them, behind red translucent masks, half-hidden by the helmets. The deck tilted again and slanted to the side, hard. He caught a windowed glimpse of a lit square of deck, a pulsating ruby cauldron where the next settling wave of aircraft stirred the mist into tornadoes, the rest of the ship black against black ocean.

The first gust of raw fear tightened his hands on his weapon, lifted his head, thrilled along his back with the buzz of the airframe. It blew his nostrils wide with the smells of oil and hot metal, man-sweat and rain. Staring out between illuminated faces, his gut tight against the straps as the plane shuddered around in its turn, he thought to himself suddenly:
I will never forget this.
This was no book, no song. This was real, and he knew with absolute sureness that he would remember it all, just as it was in this moment, no matter how many years would pass before he remembered nothing. Because this was life itself, this screaming moment lit in scarlet, tilting through a foreign night in this aluminum coffin toward whatever was to come.

He lifted his head to the battle; to the trumpets he saith, yea, yea.…

The deck steadied. The ship rolled backward from the window, replaced by darkness and then a pearl-gray glimmer of predawn as the horizon came up. The helicopter settled, as if into grooves. It ceased climbing and tilted forward. The engines dropped to a deafening drone. The light brightened, showing each of them the eyes of the others and the expressions: Silkworth competently bland; Cutford scowling, still pissed off over the mortars, eye-whites glistening against the total dark beneath his helmet; Washman scared, mouth open, eyes fixed on Givens', but unquestioning, accepting; Hernandez scared too but alert; Harner blank-faced, eyes closed, fingers laced tight over packstraps; Liebo staring out the window, remote, dreamy-eyed.

The chopper settled and tilted, vibrating, droning in repetitive patterns through the ribbed riveted metal, through the snake-writhe of wiring and hydraulic lines that the brighter red and now a fine gray wash from the windows, not yet light but just bright enough to be there, showed their inquiring eyes around the interior of the helicopter. The Stallions were big; they carried thirty-five men at a lift, but he had the same feeling of eggshell, kerosene-smelling fragility he had in every copter since his first lift at Pendleton. It was like riding in a beer can. He hated to think how little that paper thinness would slow down a bullet. This was not practice; there might be ground fire for real. Sweat broke under his helmet-liner as thought became threat. What had they done in Nam? Sat on their helmets? He looked toward Cutford, half-wanting to ask him, just to hear someone talk who had been through it, but the black corporal was folded into the fuselage with his eyes closed, still scowling.

The helicopter settled, shaking like the stern of the
Spiegel Grove
when a sea lifted the tips of her screw out of the water. The men settled too, wedging themselves into the canvas seats, and the vibration sank into them, rattling their teeth, shaking them down like bags of loose sand into something denser, heavier, than simple flesh.

His head sank, nodding to the thrum that surged through the aircraft, and slowly his mouth sagged open.

When he jerked awake again he was disoriented, unable to judge how long he had been out. A minute? An hour? The window was just as dark, the predawn glimmer gone. The green glow of his watch dial gave him only numbers. He did not know the flying time to the LZ. He sought the others with his eyes; they looked back but words were impossible, communication was impossible; they were separated and shut off by a wall of sound so loud that it made everything silent.

Gesture, then. He caught Silkworth's eye and held out his arm; tapped his watch; looked questioning. The sergeant held up six fingers. The motion went around the helicopter from man to man. Six minutes, he thought. Not long. And as if the pilot heard him the deck tilted back. The pitch of the rotors changed and the speed lodged in their bodies surged them into the straps as the aircraft slowed. With the sick feeling of descent came sudden activity. They checked their weapons, empty chambers but magazines full ready to feed. They cinched their packs, settled their helmets, the last motion hooking their left hands under the buckle of the seat belt. They glanced toward the rear of the helicopter, checking the ramp position, then glanced at each other.

The light went out. In the darkness they fell, faster now, the whish of the milling rotor coming clearly through the fuselage. He felt his throat close, his hands tighten on the straps. The engine—had it quit? It didn't seem as loud. He couldn't hear it!

He stared into the dark, mouth open, and waited for the crash.

The engine roared again, and they became heavy, heavy. The helmet bent his head. Something red shot past outside. Before he could think it through the chopper jolted sideways and then slammed down so hard it rapped his jaw on his chest. Motors whined aft and the clack of releasing buckles rippled along the line of men as they stood up.

Off the chopper. Down the ramp, through the man-filled darkness, turn soon, got to remember turn left turn LEFT. He felt without seeing the openness of the night, heard without seeing the deadly air-flutter from the tail rotor. The man behind shoved him and he turned left. He was down, and running. His boots thudded and swished through dry grass. Dust stung his face, kicked up by the blast. Through the thunder of engines he could hear the noncoms shouting. There was a bang behind him, a scream, but it only made him run faster. He panted through windy dark, caught up in the confusion of a night landing, the minutes when everyone ran in a dozen different directions and a squad leader earned his pay.

He was sprinting full out, rifle held high, looking around for the rest of the squad, when his boot hit a hole and he went down hard into the dirt, crashing down on his face. He lay there, half-out, the pack pushing him down like a man lying on top of him, and then heard it: the climbing whine of a helicopter coming in to land. At the same moment the ground lit up, bright, distinct, each blade of grass sharp and individual as a razor-edge. He twisted his head. They were landing lights, all right. He blinked up at them for an eternally long second, watching the three blazing lamps spread as the helo drifted down, the rotorblast pressing him into the dirt, thunder building in his ears, his muscles rigid, unable to move. He was frozen like a rabbit in headlights.