13th Valley (96 page)

“My toes! My foot! It's shot away.” Hill is screaming. There is enemy fire coming from above and right. 1st Sqd is battling left. They are diverging. Cherry reloads. It is his fifth magazine. Hill crawls inward, toward the center, away from the firing. He slips under a bush for cover. His right leg drags. Blood is spurting from his ankle. “Medic,” Andrews screams. “Medic!” Fuck codes. Doc McCarthy is with 1st Sqd. He and Numbnuts are pinned down. They do not fire. They do not move. Andrews lays his rifle down carefully. He strips the pants from Hill's left leg below the knee. Blood is everywhere. It shines brightly on Hill's white skin. It saturates Andrews' pants where it spurts. Andrews rips Hill's battle dressing from the wounded man's web belt. “My leg,” Hill screams. “My foot. It's blown off.” “Shut up,” Andrews snarls. “Bite your tongue. You want a gook zeroin in here.” Andrews slaps the dressing over the now flowing wound and wraps it over the holes. The ankle is shattered. Tendons are broken. The foot flops lifeless. “Aaaaahh,” Hill cries, pain firing up his leg as Andrews clamps his hand on the wound. Direct pressure, Andrews thinks. Hill is thrashing, moaning, under the brush.

Fire from bunkers or fighting positions above slices through the brush, shattering it, smashing it. Marko sprays back into the noise, into the streaming lead, his machine gun ripping smashing ferociously. “Keep em down,” Egan yells. He throws a frag at the bunker thirty feet away. He runs, dives, advances six feet, crawls. Marko keeps firing. Jax fires. Denhardt fires. “Move yer fuckin ass,” Egan screams firing. The grenade explodes harmlessly below the bunker. Jax advances. Marko keeps firing, mixing fire with enemy fire. Jax throws a frag, his last. He fires. Egan rushes up left. Jax' grenade explodes. Trying to throw a one-pound grenade into a two foot wide slit from thirty feet while taking fire is impossible. Numbnuts with his XM-203 firing grenade rounds would not have been more effective, was he trying, but he had buried his head in a bush with the first volley. He is crying, weeping. “Let me go home. Let me go home.” Doc McCarthy raises his eyes. He hears Andrews call. He can't move. He is trembling. An RPG round explodes above him. His stomach twists, he vomits. He tries to move away from his vomit. Machine gun fire cracks over his head. He drops flat, face-down in his own retchedness. He curses Numbnuts for infecting him with fear. “Medic!” he hears Andrews scream. I can, he says. I can. I got to. Doc McCarthy crawls. “Where ya goin?” Numbnuts cries. “No,” his teeth chatter. “No, Doc.” He hears, feels a sachel charge erupting up, up there, between Egan and Marko. He flattens, cries. He is sure he is pinned down forever. Mc-Carthy's gone.

“Rover Two,” Brooks' voice comes urgently over the radio. “Rover Two, Quiet Rover Four. Over … Rover Two, Quiet Rover Four. Over.” Marko's firing steady. The barrel of his 60 is burning. Lairds and Denhardt firing bursts alternately. Reloading alternately. Most of 1st Sqd firing, Egan charging. At the bunker. Egan dives into the bunker with his 16 flashing. He sprays downward left right. It is not a bunker. He sees it immediately. Knows it immediately. It is a trench running horizontal, arcing about the knoll. There is no one in this segment. They can be anywhere. Move anywhere. Fighting is raging to the right.

“Rover Two, Quiet Rover Four,” Brooks whispers frantic.

“Four, Two. Over,” Hoover answers.

“Sit-rep? Over,” Brooks asks urgently.

“We got em running. Over.”

“How large an element? Over.”

“Fifteen. Maybe eighteen. We can kill em. Over.”

“What's your position from basket? Over.”

“200 … maybe 150 mikes. They're running to the sidelines. Can we get ARA on them? Over.”

“Affirmative. Will try. Cut to the basket. Direct your niner, cut to the basket. Set up number five. Over.”

“Medic,” Hoover hears Thomaston scream from the center. Thomaston is with Hill. Hill is still moaning. His dressing is slick with blood. Thomaston grabs him, unfastens his belt, makes a tourniquet about Hill's thigh groin-high. “Keep it tight,” Thomaston directs Andrews. He grabs Andrews' radio. He hears Brooks and Hoover.

“Affirmative,” Hoover says.

“Negative,” Thomaston cuts in. “Right forward engaged. Double whiskey india alphas. One priority. Over.”

“Shoot for the hoop,” Brooks comes on the net. “Set-up five. Over. Out.”

1st Sqd sprints for the trench, leaps, jumps dives in. Denhardt leaps from the trench uphill, Lairds follows. They rush foot-by-foot, run crouched, meter-by-meter, toward the center. Egan stays in the trench, runs, fires semi-automatic, rounds splatting in the trenchwalls before him. Jax and Marko cover the left flank, one above one below the trench. There is no fire from above. There is an explosion in the trench. Egan's legs burn whitehot, his equilibrium lapses, he cascades forward still running. He has triggered a booby trap, a sachel charge, stone shrapnel burns in his legs. He drops his rifle. The sound of the explosion reaches his brain. He feels instant nausea. It is not a big explosion, he thinks. RPDs, AKs, RPG fire explode from the trench before him, beyond his sight, around the curve. He hears Harley scream, “Medic.” Egan grabs his 16. Carefully now, he checks it. He ejects the magazine and inserts a fresh one. He chambers a fresh round then tries to crawl. His legs burn, his back feels hot, wet, sticky. Egan pulls his knees up under him, rocks back and stands. He charges down the trench.

Cherry charges the trench from below, his eyes blazing. He has enemy soldiers in his sights. He fires killing one. The other is fleeing. Cherry leaps. He is on top of the enemy. The soldier falls. He is small, lean, hard, but no match for Cherry. Cherry is on him gouging his eyes.
“Choui Hoi,”
the enemy yells cries into Cherry's madly punching fists. The man gashes at Cherry defensively. Cherry is infuriated. He digs his fingers into the enemy's face. The soldier bites Cherry's hand. Cherry bites his face, the nose crushes, Cherry bites, mad-dog, bites and rips the soldier's neck simultaneously thrusting his bayonet into the enemy stomach. Blood explodes in Cherry's mouth. He freezes. He feels Egan standing over him, staring at him.

Firing erupts sporadically all over the valley. The firebase is being mortared, the C & C takes fire. The NVA's coordinated plan is now being implemented. All four US perimeter companies are being attacked at once. It is costly to the NVA. They have at least thirty-six killed. American helicopters are strafing NVA concentrations. Red smoke is billowing from a dozen US marking grenades, marking US front lines or NVA positions.

American units do not advance. They are too close to each other for artillery or tactical air support. The NVA are attempting to have them fire at each other. From the C & C bird the GreenMan sees their plan. He also suspects, as does Brooks on the ground, that the NVA plan does not include Alpha Company, that Alpha has indeed lost itself in the valley and the ruse of not resupplying has worked. Only a skeleton crew of enemy soldiers is protecting the headquarters complex.

They are sweeping northwest through the brushforest. The sun is playing in the valley vegetation throwing dappled shadows against vegetation and ground and men. The shadows seem to dance in the stalks and leaves as the men sweep silently. They are in three rough lines, the front line men seven meters apart, too far, they think, yet that is how Brooks ordered it. The second line is three to four meters back, splitting the distance between the men in front, each second row man walking slack for two front row men. Behind, the third line are the reinforcers, the reactors, and the co-ordinators. The sweep has advanced 300 meters. They have halted, listening to 1st Plt's fight, waiting to be directed to help.

“Hey, L-T,” FO whispercalls. “Hey,” he gestures quickly at a camouflaged mound, a swell not eight inches higher than the valley floor around it. “Hey,” he whispershouts, “we're on top of a bunker complex.”

Brooks looks. He stares. It is not FO's style to conjure up nonexistent bunkers yet Brooks does not see a bunker. The commander and the forward observer are fewer than two meters apart. They are kneeling behind the front two lines. Brooks stares. FO is covering the mound with his 16. He has risen and is advancing on the mound. The immediate area is silent. 1st Plt's battle for the knoll is quieting. Brooks stares, he sees nothing. Then the form emerges from the camouflaging background. It is like an optical illusion which, once seen, one cannot easily reverse. Brooks scans the area. He sees what FO has seen. There are bunkers everywhere, before them and behind. The camouflage seems to melt away, and there is a field of bunkers, a field of low square mounds buried beneath growing layers of brush and vine and some bamboo and some low trees. A few of the bunkers are beneath what appears to be old Montagnard thatch hootches that have collapsed and rotted.

It happens to Pop Randalph at the far left and to Nahele at the far right. Some still see nothing even as others point out mounds to them. Never have any of them seen such perfect camouflage. There seem to be no openings. A spooky feeling sweeps across the invaders. Where are they? Brooks thinks. Where are the little people? Why haven't they hit us? He directs the unit to squeeze in at the flanks and bulge at the sides. “Have them form a perimeter,” he tells El Paso. “We'll clear from inside out. Get Nahele up here. And McQueen. And Pop.”

The boonierats react as if they were muscles in Brooks' body. They operate silently as if they communicate by telepathy and not by voice. Fear keeps them silent. Nahele is the first underground. He dives into a bunker opening that FO has found, one of only three discovered in all the square mounds Alpha has now investigated. With a .45 and a flashlight Nahele dives in as an underwater demolition expert on patrol might dive into a harbor across from his target. He comes out in only seconds. “It's empty,” he whispers. “It's a vacant room. There's three tunnels leading out a it.”

Brooks and Pop and McQueen follow Nahele back in. Brooks follows a tunnel south. The tunnel is large enough for him to walk hunched. It curves right then left and opens into a second room larger than the first. There is another tunnel leaving it. The sides are stacked with cases and crates. Holy fucken Christ! Brooks thinks. Pop is behind him. Then Nahele. McQueen has stayed in the empty room to guard against enemy coming from the other tunnels. Brooks comes from the second room with a case of mortar rounds. He pushes it up, out, above ground where FO grabs it and pulls it aside and helps Brooks from the hole. Brooks moves quickly now. He grabs Cahalan, grabs the handset of his radio and calls the GreenMan. In the second-long pause before the battalion commander answers, Brooks directs El Paso to tell Lt. De Barti that he, Brooks, wants Baiez' squad immediately. “Red Rover,” Brooks addresses the GreenMan, “we've found it. We're in it.” He continues explaining. “The tip of a iceberg,” he says. He hears the GreenMan laughing joyously in his C & C bird circling three thousand feet over the valley. He hears the GreenMan laughing and saying, “This is it. Get it all out. I'll get ya a back-up element for security. This is what I've been looking for.” Brooks hears, feels the GreenMan's enthusiasm. It makes Brooks feel good.

And up it comes. Cases, cartons, crates. Cases of 82mm mortar rounds, each individually wrapped in corrugated cardboard.

Cartons of fuses. Boxes of paper-like explosive propellent discs that the NVA mortarmen used instead of the powder bags used by the US and ARVN forces. Baiez and Shaw are grabbing the supplies, stacking them, building piles. They are breathing hard, sweating. The day is becoming a scorcher.

Below ground it is cool. Pop is investigating a third set of rooms. I bet they're all connected, he thinks. I bet they're connected to Whiteboy's Mine up on the ridge. He and McQueen go into a fourth room. It is filled with radios and communication equipment. They take, one radio and drag it through the tunnel network to the entry room. Brooks orders four more men below ground. The air is filled with discovery. Never have any of Alpha's boonierats seen such a cache, captured such quantities of equipment. They are smiling, laughing quietly, working eagerly. Brooks thinks, this is an NVA haven, a refuge for their battle weary soldiers. They could crawl into these bunkers and hide here for weeks. And it is their command and communication center. We have it. This is what it should be. Brooks is elated. This, he thinks, is the headquarters of the 7th NVA Front.

Jenkins on the right flank discovers another opening. He and Spangler slip in and find an entry room with tunnels leading northeast and south. They investigate moving south. More equipment. The C & C bird is now circling at fifteen hundred feet. Escort Cobras circle above the C & C. The stack of equipment grows. Chi-com claymore mines fill one entire room. Cases of 37mm anti-aircraft rounds fill another. There are RPG rounds and cans of RPD machine gun ammunition and three thousand sachel charges. The GreenMan can see the stacks growing from one thousand feet.

Suddenly fire erupts at the south perimeter. 2d Plt's CP and 2d and 3d Sqds are receiving fire, returning fire. All hell has broken loose. Molino is at the center. He cannot tell what is happening. He has hit the dirt with the first burst. He hears someone screaming, “Bravo! Bravo!” Then he sees Doc Johnson running across the top of a bunker. Doc is breaking his way through brush and small trees. He carries his medical bag in his left hand and he is firing his .45 pistol with his right. Doc disappears from Molino's vision. Molino cannot see the wounded because of the thick undergrowth. He sees Pop Randalph running. Pop has sprinted from Alpha's center. He is running in the direction Doc ran. He is screaming in his hoarse high voice, yelling at the top of his lungs. He has a grenade in his left hand and grenades strapped to his web gear. He fires his 16 and yells. Molino cannot understand the words. Pop disappears into the foliage. The fighting is building. The noise is fogthick in the steaming air. Molino hears shrapnel slashing into the vegetation to his left. Someone is screaming. Molino looks leftright. He cannot let them go it alone. He hunches his back, brings his legs up under him, his hands are on the earth, his rifle is stuffed in the muck. He is sprinting. He throws a grenade. He did not even know he had prepared one, he did not know he knew the enemy location. He is firing. He is with Doc and Pop and Calhoun. Doc Hayes is wounded. Doc Johnson is applying battle dressings to his chest. A horrible sucking gurgle is coming from Hayes' chest. Blood froths from Hayes' mouth. It disgusts Molino. The NVA disengage, disappear, dissolve. Pop wants to charge them, pursue them. They have wounded his medic.