The Summer Garden (117 page)

They were very wrong on both counts.

Forty seconds to aim and fire twenty rounds, reload in three—and again. He did that five times. Did he get a hundred heads for his trouble? Tojo, Mercer and Elkins were as desperately as Alexander trying to ward off the advancing Sappers. Mercer too was picking them off one by one, while Elkins was auto-unloading at the dispersing men, and Tojo was blooping rockets down below straight into the village huts. No quiet escape and evasion here, no subtle extraction. Kum Kau was burning in a black, acrid battle for the order of the universe. Did they get a hundred heads each for their trouble?

Richter and his six Yards were spreading out. At Richter’s entrenchment, two Yards were splitting the ascending Sappers with grenades and the other three were pulverizing them with M–16 rounds. One Yard was the M-60, which Alexander knew any second was going to run out of twelve hundred rounds of armor-piercing ammo. Did they get twelve hundred unarmored North Vietnamese for their trouble?

Alexander hoped so, because the M-60 ran out of ammo, and the rapid fire went quiet. In a moment the selective M-16 fire resumed.

The Sappers were not selective. They had their AK47s set on automatic and were just hosing down the elephant grass as they continued to run uphill.

“Where’s Ant?” Alexander yelled without looking behind him at the woods. “Tojo—could someone take him to fucking extraction!” No one heard him.

Richter called Alexander on the radio. “Hook’s waiting. Abandon your position and retreat. Move out to the hook now.” The radio went dead.

Here was the trouble—Alexander couldn’t move out to the hook now. He and his men couldn’t run five feet through the jungle, much less a whole klick, because as soon as they ceased fire, the Sappers quickened their pace and jacked up
their
fire, shooting Alexander’s men in the back. The fucking NVA were not retreating; they were stampeding up that hill, and though they were falling to rockets, to mines, to the grease gun, more and more kept coming. As if in a nightmare, they were pouring out from the underground like nothing Alexander had ever seen. They were like the fucking Hydra, he thought, loading a high-explosive shell into the breech of his missile launcher and pressing the trigger. You kill them, and they just grow new heads.

Alexander’s men couldn’t move out, but they couldn’t stay where they were either—because their position on top of the hill was in five short minutes going to become indefensible. Alexander’s ammo would be gone before all the NVA were gone, that was becoming very clear. Before they were overrun by three battalions of barefoot men in pajamas with Kalashnikovs, Alexander’s guys needed to get a kilometer into the woods to the helicopter, because no matter what else happened, one thing
had
to happen—Anthony had to be on that bird.

Alexander lobbed a CS smoke grenade for more black confusion below, more thick teary havoc, and backed away from his enclosure, running into the woods, where he found Anthony with Ha Si by his feet.

“How is he?” he breathed out.

“Not good,” was Anthony’s reply.

Alexander flipped on his radio to call for one of Richter’s Yards, but Anthony stopped him. “Throw him on my back, Dad,” he said, slowly standing up and putting the Colt in his leg pocket. “I’m not good for anything else. Let me help. You need the Yards for other things. Throw him on my back and push me in the direction of the trail. How far in?”

“One klick, but please fucking hurry,” said Alexander, lifting Ha Si onto Anthony, who started to walk like a rambling drunk man, holding on to Ha Si’s slumped head with his one hand.

Back at the edge of the hill, the situation had gotten only more desperate. The Sappers had so thoroughly dispersed up the sides of the mountain that Alexander realized they were trying to flank his men. And sooner rather than later, the A-team was going to run out of ammo and still be a klick away from the chopper. Someone said, yelled maybe, we’re done for, retreat, retreat.

Richter called Alexander on the radio. “Fuck it all to hell,” he said. “I called in the snakes and the Bright Light team. The critical SITREP: we are
not
getting out of this by ourselves. Just assess the fucking situation. This is prairie fire.” There were three kinds of emergencies: team, tactical, and prairie fire—where you were engaged by a numerically superior force, surrounded and about to be annihilated.

“How long before the Bright Lights?”

“Thirty minutes,” said Richter.

“Richter!” yelled Alexander. “We don’t have
three
fucking minutes!”

One of the Sappers thought to bring an RPG-7. Alexander saw him. Tojo saw him and shouted, “Holy shit! Incoming!” and mowed the man down, but not before a launched rocket sailed through the air, landed twenty feet below Richter’s rocky encampment and exploded upwards into gray sickening smoke.

The radio went dead.

For five seconds as Alexander was running to Richter, there was no sound.

Richter was down.

Three of the six Yards were down.

Tojo fell down and started to cry. “How bad, how bad?” he kept asking Alexander.

“All the fucking way, Tojo,” said Alexander. Richter’s leg was gone, his side gone, his neck had a grapefruit-size hole in it. For a moment Alexander couldn’t speak. He held up Richter and made a sign of the cross on his forehead. Inaudibly Alexander whispered what he had whispered over a thousand men.
Lord Jesus Christ, most merciful, Lord of Earth, I ask that You receive this man into Your arms that he might pass safety from this crisis, as You have told us with infinite compassion.

They had to go and go now. “Tojo,” said Alexander to the weeping giant, “we have to move out ASAP or we’re all fucked. They’re going to flank us in the woods and cut off our retreat. I’ll get Mercer and Elkins. Tell your Yards to pick up their fallen and order those who can to fire at tail. Now grab your commander and let’s go.”

Alexander’s hand had remained on Richter’s head. “You’re going to be okay, Tom,” he said. “Just hang tight, man.” He pressed his lips to Richter’s bloody forehead and whispered, “Hang tight, my good friend.” Because there are many mansions in His father’s house, and He is preparing a place for you. Then Alexander jumped up and ran, as Tojo, continuing to cry, lifted Tom Richter off the ground.

The Yards picked up their own. Mercer had gotten hit in the leg and was limping down the trail with Elkins covering him, Alexander covered Tojo, as they ran through the woods in a single file.

Tojo, with Richter on his back, flew down the trail first and fast, but for Alexander, never did one kilometer, three thousand feet, seem so agonizingly long. There were fewer Sappers following them through the woods because they got hosed by another three Claymores at the top of the hill. Those that got through dispersed, trying to flank the U.S. soldiers, and new ones continued coming up from below, but slower. Just not slow enough. The enemy hid in the vines, and Alexander’s Yard at drag kept getting hit—once in the arm, once in the thigh—and falling down. Alexander had to keep coming back to help him up, to push him onward. Little by little, Alexander was getting left farther behind with his Yard, who was now bleeding from the arm and both legs, but still somehow managed to get up, run, crank off rounds. When the Yard couldn’t walk and fire anymore, Alexander carried him through the bamboo, but he couldn’t continue like this, he had to protect his men. He told the Yard to crawl to the clearing as best he could. Alexander alone remained tail gunner, covering his wounded men as they inched to the hook.

Where
was
that fucking hook?

Mercer got hit again, got up again, slowed down, but never stopped firing. He was very good, that Mercer Mayer. Dogged, stoic, bloody-minded, good. Anthony was right; even wounded, Mercer saw the enemy in the hazel bamboo, saw them and killed them. Elkins, too, but then he got hit in the shoulder and couldn’t hold his rifle with two hands anymore, and became much less accurate. Alexander shouted at him to just bloop the rockets at the moving bushes and forget about sniper fire, and he did.

Alexander ran when he could, hid in bamboo when he couldn’t, and walked half backward, half forward the rest of the time, firing in all directions, trying to weed out the overgrown flanks from the concealed Sappers. He threaded a tripwire like a tail behind him, and quickly set up one of his few remaining Claymores. When the NVA would get close enough for him to see through the foliage, he would lob a frag bomb at the brush; he lobbed three frag bombs, two of his HE shells; he set the woods on fire with his rifle—and still the Sappers kept bunching up; in small groups, hiding, running, shooting and coming.

Alexander thought he heard the sound of the turbine engine and the chopper blades up ahead; maybe it was just wishful thinking. He glanced through the woods. No, it
was
the Chinook, whup-whup-whup-ping only fifty yards away through the thick trees.

Alexander yelled for Tojo, whom he could barely see. “Tojo, who’s on the hook?”

He heard Tojo’s voice right next him as he grabbed and lifted the badly injured tail Yard. “Almost everyone’s on, sir. I’m taking him in or he won’t make it. You, too, let’s go, Major. Run in front of me.”

“No.” Elkins wasn’t on, Mercer wasn’t on. “Go, Tojo,” said Alexander. “Get him on and come back for those two.
Go
, I said.” Tojo ran.

Forty yards.

Elkins and Mercer were helping each other up, bleeding, hidden by the trees, wavering, but still firing. They moved five camouflaged yards when Tojo was already back from the chopper.

“Tojo!” Alexander called, “is my son definitely on?”

A voice sounded right next to him. “No, Dad,” Anthony said. “He definitely isn’t.” The M-16 was at his right hip. He was holding it with his one arm.

“Anthony!” yelled Alexander, glaring at Tojo and then at his son. “Are you fucking crazy? Get on that bird!”

“I get on when you get on,” Anthony said. “So let’s go. And leave Tojo out of it. He doesn’t give me orders. I give him orders.”

But there was no way Alexander could get on, with four of his men,
including Anthony,
still twenty yards away from safety. The remaining NVA men quickly staked out positions trying to move closer to the clearing. The Chinook, which was armed and had a crew, could not open artillery fire blind through the woods where American soldiers were fighting so close to the enemy, the enemy who in one burst of a moment was going to make the landing zone a hot landing zone, a
red
landing zone, and extraction was going to become exponentially more difficult, if not fucking impossible. And once the NVA got close enough to bloop a rocket at the Chinook, no one would get out. Alexander stopped moving forward and emptied his chambers backward to give Tojo, Elkins and Mercer—and Anthony most of all—a chance to get on the chopper. He got off the trail, hid in the cyprus trees, and fired on automatic without moving a foot to the helicopter.

Mercer and Elkins were finally near the edge of the clearing, slowly limping toward the hook, trying to stay by the vegetation and not come out into the open. Tojo, bleeding from his own neck wound, was moving, but all three remained under fire.

Mercer Mayer got hit again. He fell down and this time did not get up. Tojo returned to pick him up.

Hidden behind the trees, Anthony stood, shoulder to shoulder against his father, firing his rifle from the hip. When his ammo ran out, he dropped the empty magazine to the ground, flipped the weapon under his bandaged stump, muzzle down, barely holding it in place and, stretching out his right hand, said, “Clip, Dad,” to Alexander, who passed him another 20-round magazine. Anthony jammed it up, slammed the catch down, switched the rifle back to his hip and resumed fire. The tracer rounds had been loaded very carefully and conscientiously by Alexander near the very bottom of the magazine with two rounds under them to signal when the clip was about to run on empty.

“Clip.”

“Clip, Dad.”

“Clip.”

“Anthony,” yelled Alexander. “Please! Get on the fucking slick.”

“Clip.” Anthony didn’t even reply to his father.

“Are they on?” Anthony was blocking his view.

Anthony looked. “Elkins is on. Tojo is almost on with Mayer,” he said. They were ten yards from the clearing. There were still dozens of NVA hiding in the fern leaves, spot-shooting at them.

“Motherfuckers,” said Anthony. “Clip, Dad.”

Shoulder to shoulder they stood in the bamboo.

“Is this like Holy Cross?” Anthony asked.

“No,” said Alexander. Holy Cross had no bamboo, or my son in it.

“Ha Si didn’t make it.” Anthony emitted a small groan. “Clip, Dad.”

How many were left? God, how many had there been? Alexander unloaded a grenade into the bushes. He couldn’t see who he was shooting at anymore, and he nearly couldn’t hear. Throughout his life, in battles like this, his instincts became wolf-like with the flooding adrenaline: he saw and heard and smelled everything with painfully heightened acuity. But he had to admit that the deafening noise from several thousand rounds of sustained fire and from the hook rotary blades was diminishing him.

Hidden by bush, a Sapper lobbed an RPG-7 rocket right into the clearing. The shell exploded fifteen yards from the chopper, which lifted off into the air for a minute before it could set back down in the flaming grass. The Chinook opened brief fire, but the Sappers were deep in the bamboo; you couldn’t see them, you couldn’t get them. They had two, three locations, maybe four. The Chinook gunner on the mounted weapons thought he was shooting at his own men and was forced to stop.

Anthony said, “Dad, rocket at one o’clock for the RPG bastard.”

Alexander loaded a 40mm rocket into the breech, fired at one o’clock.

Anthony was quiet. “Try one more. One o’clock. Not two-fifteen.”

Alexander loaded one more, fired. “That was the last one,” he said, feeling through his vest and bandolier.

“That’s all the motherfucker needed. That was perfect. Clip, Dad.” Dropped the empty magazine, jammed in the new one, resumed fire.