The War Within (16 page)

Robinson cut her eyes at the trio of infantrymen staring in their direction. “Nothing’s been decided yet, ma’am.”

“Ma’am? Why must you be so formal? Are you the shy, retiring type, or are my charms simply lost on you?”

“I don’t know what you mean, ma’am.”

How could a woman so intelligent be so ignorant of the way things were? Meredith cleared her throat and indicated the men standing guard. Helen followed her gaze. A look of recognition crossed her face, quickly followed by one of resignation.

“Oh, I get it.” Helen picked up her camera and snapped a picture of Lt. Col. Daniels surrounded by smiling children. “It’s unfortunate you two are unable to be open about who you are.”

“But I’m not—”

Robinson quieted her with a look mixed with equal parts anger and disappointment. Meredith felt disappointed, too. In herself. Why had she been so quick to try to correct Helen’s assumption about her?

“Times are changing. It’s a different world out there.”

Robinson opened a bottle of aspirin and shook out two pills. “You’re not in the world right now, ma’am. You’re in the ’Nam.”

Helen swallowed the aspirin with a sip of water from Robinson’s canteen. Then she scribbled something in her notepad. “That’s a good line. I may have to use it in a story. Are you sure you don’t want to sit down for an in-depth interview?”

Robinson offered her hand and pulled Helen to her feet. “What could I possibly have to say that would interest your readers?”

“Plenty. I’ve got an hour’s worth of tape in my pocket and I have enough in here for a week’s worth of copy.”

Helen held up the notepad. A neat round hole appeared in the center of it as if by magic. Shreds of paper floated to the ground like flakes of snow, a rare sight this far from the mountain regions. Meredith watched the flakes fall, suddenly realizing this year would be the first time in a long time she wouldn’t have a white Christmas. Helen seemed just as hypnotized. Robinson broke both of them out of their respective trances.

“Gunfire! Get down!”

Meredith dove for cover. Robinson and Helen joined her in the trees. Helen lay on her belly like a soldier in the trenches, her camera pointed at the action. Her fingers worked the shutter and film advance lever so fast Meredith doubted she took time to focus on what she was shooting.

Robinson wrapped her arms around her helmet, brought her knees up to her chest, and curled up tight, making herself as small a target as possible. Meredith mirrored her position and squeezed her eyes shut.

In her mind, she could see George shaking his head in disapproval and hear him saying, “I told you so.” In reality, what she heard was the steady pop of gunfire and the clamor of competing voices. Lt. Col. Daniels and Sgt. Meadows barked orders, though their commands seemed to be at odds. Sgt. Meadows was telling his men to return fire while Lt. Col. Daniels was telling them not to shoot because women and children were in the line of fire. On the other side of the village, male Vietnamese voices were yelling something Meredith couldn’t understand. Chaos reigned.

Throughout it all, Meredith could hear the constant clicking of Helen’s camera as she snapped picture after picture. Meredith thought of Dickey Chappelle, the female photojournalist who had been killed two years before while on patrol with a Marine platoon on a search and destroy mission south of Chu Lai. Chappelle was the first female reporter in history to be killed in action. Meredith wondered if Helen was about to be the second.

Meredith forced herself to open her eyes. Men dressed in black were swarming out of the jungle on the other side of the village. The muzzles of their AK-47s flashed and bucked as they fired round after round. She had heard about these men. They weren’t the uniformed, professional soldiers who launched well-planned offensives at the front lines. These were local guerillas, teenagers given minimal amounts of training after being pressured or shamed into joining the Vietcong.

“We’re outnumbered!” Lt. Col. Daniels yelled above the noise of the firefight. “We can’t win this one. Let’s get out of here with as little collateral damage as possible.” She gave the signal to retreat.

Sgt. Meadows ordered his men to lay down cover fire while the medical personnel ran toward the jungle.

“Damn!” Helen sounded so distressed Meredith thought she had been shot. Meredith was trying to see where she had been hit when Helen held up her camera and said, “I’m out of film.”

“You can change rolls when you get back to the chopper,” Robinson said. “Can you walk?”

Helen tried to put weight on her injured ankle. She fell to her knees before she managed to take two steps. Robinson moved toward her.

“Meredith, help me do a fireman’s carry. I’ll take the left side. You get the right.”

Meredith quickly moved into position. Helen wrapped her arms around their shoulders while they reached under her legs and locked their arms together.

“Ready?” Robinson asked. “On three. One, two, three.”

Meredith used all her remaining strength to help lift Helen off the ground and carry her through the jungle. She ducked each time she heard a bullet fly past her head, hoping the next one wouldn’t find its mark. She wanted to stop when they reached the clearing, too tired to go on and too scared to run out into the open.

“Almost there,” Robinson said. “You can do it.”

The adrenaline surge provided by Robinson’s gentle encouragement gave Meredith the burst of energy she needed to make the final push. She half-walked, half-ran as they carried Helen to the waiting helicopter.

“Where’s the rest of your crew?” the copilot asked as they climbed onboard. “We need to get off the ground now.”

“They’re on the way,” Robinson said. “About two minutes back.”

“From the sounds of that firefight, we don’t have two minutes.”

Meredith peered out one of the windows. The gunfire was getting closer. The jungle moved as if it had come to life. Then Lt. Col. Daniels burst into the clearing. Sgt. Meadows and his men were right behind her.

Meredith counted heads, starting with the people still on the ground and ending with the ones already on board. “Eighteen.” Everyone had made it out of the village and, miracle of miracles, no one seemed to be hurt.

Then Lt. Col. Daniels went down.

“Billie!”

Robinson leaned forward, straining to help but unable to do so from afar. Meredith grabbed her and held on to make sure she didn’t bolt out of the chopper and try to rescue Lt. Col. Daniels on her own. Meredith held her breath as the LTC writhed on the ground in obvious pain.

“Look,” Robinson said. “She’s getting up.”

Lt. Col. Daniels staggered to her feet favoring her left arm. A patch of red had bloomed on her shoulder and was beginning to spread. She moved toward the helicopter. The faster she ran, the bigger the patch began to grow. Meredith hoped the bullet hadn’t hit an artery or she could bleed out before they made it back to base. If they made it back to base.

Lt. Col. Daniels and the infantrymen were a few feet from the chopper when their pursuers appeared at the edge of the jungle.

“Hurry up!” the pilot yelled. “We need to get airborne before they get set up.”

Meredith looked at the enemy soldiers. Two were on their knees. They lifted rocket launchers to their shoulders and took aim. Defenseless, all she could do was pray their weapons wouldn’t find their mark.

Robinson pulled Lt. Col. Daniels up the ramp. The LTC collapsed as soon as she was onboard. Robinson draped her across her lap and cradled her head in her arms. Robinson’s eyes were wide, but showed no signs of panic when they settled on Meredith’s. Meredith felt the connection that had formed between them. No matter what happened during the next few minutes or over the course of the war, they would be bound by the events of this day for the rest of their lives.

“Now’s the time for you to do that thing you do,” Robinson said after the ramp lifted and the chopper slowly—too slowly—began to rise into the air.

Meredith reached inside her shirt and pulled out her dog tags. She fingered the engraved metal as if each letter were a rosary bead.

She heard a whoosh as the first rocket flew into the air. She braced herself for impact. She prepared to die.

As she comforted herself with thoughts of walking down the aisle in a flowing white dress and carrying, bearing, and holding a child, the rocket passed less than a foot in front of the chopper’s nose. The second just missed the front rotor. The copilot called out each near miss. The chopper’s engine whined as the pilot gunned the throttle.

“Okay,” the copilot said with an audible sigh of relief, “we’re out of range.”

Meredith’s body sagged as all the tension she had built up since the Vietcong appeared suddenly left her muscles. She felt simultaneously drained and exhilarated. Coming so close to death had made her appreciate life. She had so much to be thankful for, starting with the brave people on the chopper with her and ending with a wonderful man who was anxiously awaiting her return.

“Show of hands,” Lt. Col. Daniels said weakly. “How many of you could use a change of underwear right now?”

The men laughed, accepting her as one of their own. Meredith crawled over to her to take a look at the bullet hole in her shoulder.

“Where the hell did the VC come from?” Lt. Col. Daniels asked after the laughter died down.

“Tunnels under the village,” Sgt. Meadows said. “I spotted the entrance to one of them just before all hell broke loose.”

“Does Command know about this?”

“They will as soon as you get back to base and debrief General Westmoreland.”

With Lt. Col. Daniels wounded, Meredith had expected Sgt. Meadows to break the chain of command in an attempt to earn brownie points with high command. He was obviously a man of honor instead of ambition.

“How’s the wing?” he asked.

Lt. Col. Daniels peered at her bleeding shoulder as Meredith examined her wound. “It’s a through and through.” She raised her head to get a better view. “I’ll end up with a nasty scar—two of them, in fact—but I’ll live.”

“Looks like you got your ticket punched.” Meadows sounded almost envious. “You’re going to make it home before I do.”

Lt. Col. Daniels shook her head. “I’ve got too much to do here to even think about going home. A couple stitches and I’ll be fine. Right, Chase?”

“You’ll need more than a couple stitches. More like a couple dozen.”

Lt. Col. Daniels shrugged. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”

Robinson passed Meredith a pair of scissors from her first aid kit. Meredith cut away Lt. Col. Daniels’s sleeve. Then she disinfected the wound and packed the hole to stop the bleeding. She wrapped the wound tight and secured the bandage with medical tape.

After she finished tending to Lt. Col. Daniels, she found a seat and tried to come to terms with what had just happened. She examined the sea of faces surrounding her. Everyone talked and laughed easily, bonded by the traumatic experience they had just shared. Was this how it was for men in the bush? Was this how lifelong friendships were formed? If so, Meredith thought she had forged several today.

Helen, who had changed film when she boarded the helicopter, quickly exhausted another roll. “How does it feel to complete your first mission?” she asked, reloading yet again.

Meredith couldn’t put what she was feeling into words. She had never felt such camaraderie. She was honored to be able to serve alongside these men and women. She was so proud to be part of this group—and even prouder to have Lt. Col. Daniels as her commanding officer. Was there no limit to what she or any woman could do?

“I’m just glad it’s over,” she said, but it felt more like the beginning than the end.

“Why the beginning?” Jordan asked.

“You might say it sounds strange, but that was the day I realized how much I cared for…everyone. I thought I was going to lose Natalie. I thought George was going to lose me. For me, that was the day everything changed.”

“You fell in love with Papa George while bullets were whizzing over your head?”

“Nothing that dramatic. My feelings for him began to shift in a more romantic direction after Saigon. In Xom Que, I was too busy trying to stay alive than fall in love. Over breakfast that morning, I could tell how much George cared about me. As I lay in the jungle a few hours later praying not to die, I regretted not sharing my feelings with him and everyone else I cared about. I regretted not saying, ‘I love you,’ when I had the chance.”

“Well, you weren’t exactly the touchy-feeling type back then, Gran.” Grandma Meredith winced as if her words had struck a sensitive spot. Jordan pretended not to see it. “But at least you’re making up for it now. I’ve always heard there were no atheists in foxholes. I didn’t know they were overrun with romantics, too.”

“There’s no faster way to get in touch with your feelings than to come face-to-face with your own mortality. When I was curled up in the dirt trying not to get caught in the crossfire, all I wanted was for the people I loved to know how much they meant to me. I wanted to get out of that jungle and tell them so.”

“And you did.”

“And I did.”

Grandma Meredith seemed even more surprised by her story of survival than Jordan was. Jordan tapped the brakes, slowing to five miles per hour above the posted speed limit. She usually drove at least ten miles over the designated limit when she was on the interstate, but she wanted Grandma Meredith to finish her story before they got to Jekyll Island. If she dropped the thread now, she might not pick it up again when they arrived. She’d be more concerned with unpacking the car, shopping for groceries, and getting settled into the house she had rented for the summer. Even now, she was digging out the long list of instructions the homeowner had sent her. Those things were important, but Jordan wanted to know what had happened during the rest of her tour. It had taken her this long to detail two months and there were another ten to go.

The needle on the gas gauge hovered over the quarter-tank line. Jordan decided to fill up sooner rather than later. She moved into the right lane, took the next exit, and tried to find the cheapest prices. A BP station was closest, but she hadn’t stopped at one since the company’s negligence contributed to the oil spill that had devastated the Gulf Coast. She pulled into an acceptable station, parked next to an available pump, and shut off the engine. She unbuckled her seat belt but didn’t get out of the car.