Red Flags (32 page)

"Damn," he said. "The five Buddhist provinces want out, the Montagnards want autonomy for their twelve. How in hell is this country going to hold together? You got anything else I should know?"

"Three hours ago the NVA jumped a company of the First Cav forty-five miles northwest of us. They're fully engaged."

"See any connection to Cheo Reo?"

I bit my lip and pondered. "Not really, unless maybe they're trying to keep everyone focused elsewhere, away from here."

Bennett nodded, preoccupied, and dismissed me.

Nobody was going to get much sleep. I retired to the blacked-out signal shack. It was impossible to concentrate so Miser and I played cards with Little John, who turned out to be a real shark. After he'd taken us in half a dozen hands of poker, Miser urged me to show him the game I'd learned from a tailor in Saigon, an old Viet Minh company commander who had fought at Dien Bien Phu.

The tailor would lay out sixteen buttons in a pyramid: one button ... three ... five ... seven. You took turns, removing as many or as few buttons as you wanted, but only from one row at a time. Whoever picked up the last button lost. I laid out the cards in the same formation. Miser urged Little John to try it but he wouldn't take the bait. Miser played instead. As usual, he lost over and over. My pot grew. He hated losing.

"What damn kinda game is this?" he groused.

"Don't know. Vietnamese. Maybe French. You go."

Miser picked up seven cards, wiping out the longest row. "How did you figure it out?"

"I kept asking the tailor but all he'd say was 'You play.' Later I'd play it by myself, backward, again and again, and cracked it a bit at a time. One day I beat him and he broke out his cognac. I'd figured it out."

"So what was the secret?"

"You lose in the middle before you even know it."

A couple of exchanges and he conceded again.

"Damn."

"Me play?" Little John said, tempted by the scrip piled up on my side. I finished off Little John in seven games and rose to go outside for some air.

"
Nuc?
" Little John asked, miming drinking.

"Water, hell," Miser said, "have a beer. May be your last chance in this life."

Out in the dark, I leaned on a wall of sandbags and gave Miser back the money he'd lost. "Stay away from that hustler," I said.

We stared in the direction of the river and let our eyes adjust.

Miser said, "Remember that wild VC in the wire at Dak To that Stolz and everybody shot at and couldn't hit because he was jumping around the minefield like a madman?"

"Yeah." I laughed. "Finally figured out it was an ape."

Whump.
A mortar round launched into the quiet night.

Miser yelled, "
Mortar, mortar,
" as we dove back inside for cover. Two more shells thunked in quick succession, arcing toward us through the black sky.

The first whistled in and exploded by the water tower. The second blammed down between the gate and the back of the mess, peppering walls with hot fragments, spraying gravel and shrapnel onto roofs. A woman screamed. The third mortar round followed the second: the Charlies were trying for the main generator. A propane tank spewed gas and expired. Westy's generators kept churning.

After the three mortar rounds—silence. Helmet straps and rifle slings jingled as shadows trotted to bunkers. We took up our positions on the perimeter and waited. I had a thousand rounds in magazines stacked at my firing port. I seated the first round and checked the safety.

"This is gonna look like New Year's Eve," Miser said, ragged teeth white in the darkness. He was smiling, helmet set at a jaunty angle. Damn if he wasn't enjoying himself. Rowdy, at his assigned spot, sounded like he was reciting Hail Marys. Macquorcadale unexpectedly swung his rifle around, smacking Miser in the shoulder.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Miser snarled. "Look alive, fucktard. I don't appreciate no fucking gun barrel crackin' me upside the head. And close that chin strap. This ain't no halftime. If you get blowed up and your brain bucket comes crashin' down on me, you'd best be in it, fuckwit."

Someone's rifle slid off the sandbag wall to the ground.

The sarge fumed. "Whichever peckerhead's weapon that is, he'd best pick it up—now!" Somebody gathered it in. "If it's out of your hands again," Miser growled to him, "I'm gonna use your asshole for a gun rack, you doofus motherfucker. And stay away from them jars before you blow us all to shit. I ain't runnin' your sorry ass through a strainer to send you home to your mama."

Even the possibility of VC surging into the perimeter was preferable to Miser's spewing, those ruined teeth an inch from the kid's face. A couple of them giggled nervously.

"What are you ladies gawking at?" Miser snarled. "Macquorcadale, you giant bimbo, ain't you noticed you're too fucking tall for your firing position. Dig a hole!" Miser barked.

The soldier stood dumbfounded, looking at Miser like he had lost his mind.

"You got sand in your pussy or something?" he shouted at the Canadian. "Dig a hole to stand in, before I use that entrenching tool to realign your brains. You"—he pointed to our two privates—"help 'im."

The three of them dug at the hard ground, using helmets and a shovel like pickaxes, their fear momentarily forgotten as they obeyed the absurd order. The rest of us trained our weapons on the perimeter wall.

"Last man standing," Miser announced with glee, "pop the thermite grenade in the crypto van."

A tense hour passed. Ten o'clock. Nothing.

I left Miser with the detachment and circled the defensive positions, where I ran into Colonel Bennett and Joe Parks. We went to ground at the southernmost corner, behind the sandbag bunker housing the .50, and stayed flush with its perforated steel walls.

"What do you think, Captain Rider?" Bennett said.

"Seems too early in the evening for a ground attack."

"Two in the morning would be more their style," said Joe Parks.

I said, "Do you get the feeling we're supposed to keep our heads down?"

Joe nodded. "Yes, sir. They're on the move and don't want us to see them."

"Passing that close?" Bennett said, concerned.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Okay. We stay turtles."

I went back to patrolling the compound. At half past midnight, I noticed a lanky figure slipping along the bungalow walkway, heading to the medic's room. At 0300 Sergeant Rowdy sought me out.

"Captain," he whispered, "you should know. Either the ARVN stopped answering their field phone or the landline's cut. Gate guard wants you too."

I stayed in the shadows and announced my arrival with a hoarse "Hey, what's up?"

Something struck the roof behind us and tapped its way to the ground.

"Like that," Hump said. "Sticks and rocks have been coming over for the last quarter hour."

"Probers trying to draw your fire?"

"Or ARVN harassing us again from across the street."

"The signal shack called over there but they're not responding."

A stone struck the ground and skipped toward us. Another clanked against the steel of the encircling outer wall. Somewhere Deros was barking. If the enemy was coming, we'd know it when they scaled the perimeter or stormed the gate.

"Fire only if you've got a target or you're taking fire," I ordered. "Pass the word. I'm going for a look. Put up a flare."

I snuck up to the wall, hunched over, and peered over the top. No human sounds. A handheld flare punched into the air, whooshed up, and ignited, drifting slowly back to earth. Nothing moved except the odd quivering shadows cast by its magnesium light.

Not thirty feet away, five NVA wearing pith helmets perched like ravens on top of the steel wall. Hump cut loose with his M-16. AKs flashed rounds back. Hump fired again, and there were three. I blew the closest Charlie off the wall with a burst, hyperventilating as I did. The remaining pair smacked the sentry box with green tracers. Hump knocked another one backward. I accounted for the last one, discarded my empty magazine, and snapped in another.

The flare extinguished. I tossed a grenade over the steel wall and sprinted back toward Hump, yelling, "It's me, it's me!" The grenade crumped, throwing up dirt. My toe caught and sent me sprawling headfirst.

Hump spat curses, breathing rapidly, eyes white. I groped around for another flare. Hump beat me to it and launched one. Somewhere on the perimeter a short burst of a 16 clattered.

I crawled into Hump's position and shouldered my weapon, waiting for the artificial light. The flare popped and floated down. No one scaling the wall. No one in the barbed wire securing the gate. The field phone whirred. The colonel. I gave him the report: five North Vietnamese regulars probing the gate area, repelled.

We waited for the full attack. A short volley chattered from a bunker, red tracers arcing out. No other firing. The ARVN battery finally launched three illumination rounds, turning the world silver and black, straining our eyes with their intense, quivering light. Boots scurried toward us. Four more men joined our position.

Long minutes ticked by under the completely black sky, with only a little starlight. Hump fell asleep standing up, slumped against the sandbags, rifle butt at his shoulder. I was fully awake, high on adrenaline, my pupils like raisins. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through pursed lips.

It seemed like yesterday I'd processed stateside for the last time with a bunch of grunts like Hump. A short truck ride had brought us to an overnight shelter, a tent city for transients. All the flaps were raised. Each ten-man tent was encircled by a two-foot-high wall of sandbags, just slightly lower than the cots inside, hardly affording protection from small arms, and none from mortars. The transients bedded down and were asleep inside of two minutes. Nobody even removed a boot. The camp went black; no lights, no cigarettes. The unlucky few, myself included, drew guard duty.

Half the sentries were green newcomers; the other half, mangy GIs with just hours left in country. White rings of fungus spotted our sunburned complexions. The newbies were coming, we were going. The veterans, bleary and thin, worked out their angles of fire and guard rotations. None of them gave a thought to a formal guard mount and I wasn't about to line them up for one. They were not to be fucked with their last night standing guard in Viet Nam.

The first watch filed out of the guard bunker. The rest passed out on bare cots. In seconds the short-timers were cutting Zs. They were skittish sleepers, coming sharply awake from time to time. Seeing where they were, they instantly fell back asleep again. In the distance, big guns and small arms occasionally barked and burped. The new guys lay awake, thinking about those going home to the land of milk and green money, and wondering what lay ahead for the ones staying.

It was some ungodly hour when we landed in the States. In a rare gesture, the Army was laying on chow around the clock in a dolled-up mess hall, anything you wanted. Steak, chops, grits, ice cream, banana cream pie, rhubarb custard, whatever. You could indulge like a condemned man. No one did. Just drank milk pretty much continuously, plain and chocolate, and waited. For new uniforms, for leave papers, or to muster out. Nobody said anything. Just played with light switches or examined their empty glasses, not having seen a glass glass in a year. Or real milk.

Now, waiting in the dark, I wondered where they all were. How they'd made out. Why I wasn't with them.

It was nearly four in the morning, too late for an attack. Bennett appeared, and he and I spent the rest of what darkness was left checking the American defenders and the Montagnard sentries. The sunrise was overcast and hazy, but to me it was spectacular.

My left sock was soggy. I'd been slowly bleeding into my boot. I limped to the dispensary, leaving bloody footprints on the concrete walk. Roberta finished wrapping a private's palm and what was left of his thumb. The first sergeant led him away. Dark circles rimmed Roberta's eyes. Curls stuck to her face.

"We have to stop meeting this way," she said, trying to sound brave.

Roberta cut the left leg off my fatigue pants, exposing a bloody gash across the back of my leg. I could see the sweat in her scalp. Her hands trembled slightly. A shard of something was stuck in the meat of the calf muscle. I hadn't felt much of anything when it happened. Now it screamed as she numbed it with Novocain and worked the jagged metal loose, sterilized the wound, and stitched it closed.

"Self-inflicted?" she said.

"Yeah, well. You can't blame a guy." The bravado sounded hollow. We were both exhausted. "You okay?"

She bit her lip. "Scared to death, but otherwise having a lovely evening, thank you." As she snapped off her rubber gloves, she kissed me on the forehead.

"I like your bedside manner."

She doused the wound with sulfa and dressed the sewn-up gash. "Get out of here," she said, and turned to a kid waiting by the door holding his arm, blood seeping between his fingers.

"Thanks, Doc," I said. She didn't reply, already focused on him. I limped to my room barefoot and put on fresh socks and boots.

An hour later, Sergeant Divivo snuck out the back with six men for a short first-light reconnaissance. No sign of the probers we had shot off the wall except for blood trails. Divivo radioed in that there was something odd at the designated escape-and-evasion pickup point we were supposed to sneak to in the dark if the compound fell.

Parks keyed the mike. "What?" he said. "What's odd? Over."

"Better come. You'll want to see this for yourselves."

Parks and I drove out to the pickup coordinates. A field. Olive-drab underwear hung head-high on wires strung like clotheslines between the few saplings, an American grenade lashed to each, the pins crimped flat, loops tied to the wire. The downdraft of incoming helicopter propellers would lift the T-shirts and shorts, yank the wires taut, pull the pins, arm the grenades.

"So much for superior technology," Joe said.

"I don't believe these dinks, Sarge. Now they're attacking us with our own underwear. I'm never wearing any again."