Fields of Fire (18 page)

The concertina gate creaked open. A column of hulking, exhausted figures filed slowly down the narrow road. In front of them, the river shimmered red with sunrise. The patrol followed the outer wire and passed the inside hook of the J-shaped hill where one string of sappers had broken into the compound. There were more than a dozen bodies caught along the wire, like fish snagged randomly by a wide net.

A transistor radio cut into the silence. “Gooooo-o-o-o-ood morning, Vietnam!”

Hodges bristled. “Tell Bagger knock off the sounds.”

The order passed quickly up the column. The radio went silent. The only noise now was the blunt scraping of sawgrass on their legs.

Finally Wild Man stopped. He was standing in a short ditch, among four poncho liners half-buried under clumps of dirt and branches. Hodges waved him on. “Left. Down the streambed.”

Hodges peered into the looming treeline. The twelve-seven lay awkwardly on its side, half-buried under riven earth, one leg of the tripod jutting into the air. He felt his lips go tight. Well. They certainly got their twelve-seven.

Just beyond the poncho liners Smitty's helmet lay in the ditch, abandoned in his frantic crawl to catch the rest of the team. They followed the streambed for seventy meters more. Finally, the team sprawled before them, surrounded by the buzz of feasting flies and the cooked aroma of drying blood.

Wild Man halted by Smitty's corpse. The rest of the patrol bunched up behind him. They stared silently for a long moment, absorbing the gut-wrenching impact. Finally Waterbull spoke in a barely audible tone, as if he were mimicking a sportscaster.

“Senator's O.K. Senator made it.”

Goodrich still sat next to Ottenburger, who lay dead over a large scab of blood that buzzed with flies.

Goodrich's helmet was in the streambed and his head was between his knees, the forehead resting on one crossed arm. He looked up slowly when Waterbull spoke, then gazed numbly at the cluster that was peering mutely at him.

“I can't talk. Please. Don't ask me about it.”

Hodges called to the compound for an amphtrac. Snake approached Goodrich and put an arm on his shoulder, offering him a cigarette. Goodrich pushed Snake's arm away.

“Leave me alone.”

Goodrich stood with effort, and found that he was shaking uncontrollably. He reached down to pick up his weapon and stared numbly at Burgie's corpse. His lower intestines rumbled fiercely and he felt his anus spasm wildly and he dropped his weapon, running ten feet down the streambed as he yanked his trousers open. He squatted shakily in the sawgrass and excreted a gush of brown water that was odorous with his last night's fear. He held his head in his hands, not wanting to view the rest of the squad that stood nearby. Sawgrass scratched his ass cheeks. Flies discovered his excretum and buzzed lazily below him. The sun cooked up his moisture and he was surrounded with the stench of fear. He rolled forward to his knees and retched, great dry heaves that drained a spittle of bile from his already empty stomach.

Snake walked over and offered him a canteen of water. “Take a drink, Senator. You'll feel better.”

Goodrich drank with effort, still shaking. “God, I'm so fucked up.”

“Put it outa your mind, man—”

Goodrich began to cry. He shuddered, his chest heaving. “Put it out of my mind? Oh, shit. What do you know? You want to see me cry? There. See? Are you happy?” Snake reached for him and he backed away, still sobbing. “Go away.”

“You need to get some chow inside you and catch some Zs.”

“I'll go myself. I don't need you. Leave me alone.”

Goodrich walked back toward the compound, sobbing, catching his breath. He retrieved his poncho liner from the abandoned LP site, getting his first look at the huge gun that had caused his terror. He saw limbs and uniform pieces scattered among the clods. It upset him more.

He couldn't think. His mind was scarred from fear, bludgeoned by a new self-hate. He cried and the red dust of the road stuck to his face. His sweat melted crusts of Ottenburger's blood on the back of his hands, making rivulets of pink run down his fingers. He threw his rifle into the weeds next to the road and walked several steps, then went mechanically back and retrieved it. Neither act required a decision.

The compound was in front of him. They were still throwing bodies onto trucks and hauling them away. The mortar crew was already firing new missions into the Arizona. Last night it had been an unreachable haven, but now it was a wire-encircled prison.

I'm in hell, Goodrich sobbed over and over. I'm in hell I'm in hell I'm in hell.

THERE was no patrol back to the compound. A few caught a ride on the loaded amphtrac, sitting on top after the dead men had been loaded inside. Others walked in twos and threes, at their own leisure. Snake and Hodges strolled slowly up the dust road together, kicking at its red powder layer, smoking pensively.

Finally Snake spoke. “A bummer, man. I never seen anything like it.”

Hodges kicked at the dust. “I have to write letters.”

Outside the wire, a caterpillar tractor was scooping up mounds of earth, preparing a mass grave for the dead NVA soldiers. Snake gestured toward it. “They better dig a deep one. I bet we killed a hundred gooks last night.” He reconsidered. “Eighty, anyway.”

“Yeah, but what can you say. ‘Dear Mrs. Ottenburger. We got a hundred gooks and three Marines. Sorry about that.’ ” Hodges shook his head. “I just can't write the goddamn letters.”

“Then don't. Sir.” Snake put his arm on Hodges’ shoulder for a brief moment. “I'll do it. I wrote 'em for Vitelli and Marston. Hey. Don't let it get to you, Lieutenant. If you start crying, we're in the hurt locker.”

THEY reached the compound and Phony was sitting on a bunker at the edge of the road, popping a wadful of gum. “Hear the news, man?”

“What's that?”

Phony grinned ironically to Snake. “My man Kersey's gonna get himself a Silver Star.”

Snake glanced at Hodges: was I right, or what? “For last night.”

“That's affirm. Him and the Colonel.”

Snake squinched up his mouth. “I'll bet they never left that bunker over there.”

Phony grinned again. “Well, Kersey did. He just went down for chow.”

“Hmmph. The only thing that surprises me is they didn't put each other up for the goddamn Medal of Honor.” Snake considered it. “Prob'ly didn't have enough casualties.”

Snake and Hodges walked through the tent area, toward the platoon tents along the finger of the compound. Kersey approached, his utility uniform still clean, carrying a mess tray filled with food. He glared at Snake.

Snake smiled blandly to Kersey. “Hey-y-y-y, Lieutenant Kersey. Hear you're gonna get the Big Star. Yes, sir. Some day you'll be a General. Yup. It's gonna look real nice up there with your—Purple Heart.” He threw the final words like daggers.

Kersey scowled at Snake, his face washed with hate. They passed on the dirt road, then Snake shrugged ironically. “Yes, sir. That's another reason why.”

“Why what?”

“Why I'd kill that man in a minute, if I ever had the chance.”

12
PHONY

Knock on the door and hide. If somebody answers, wait until the door is shut and make your bird. If nobody answers, knock again. Loud. Peep the neighbors out. If a neighbor comes to a window, wait until they go away, then make your bird. If nobody answers and no neighbors notice, go on in. Break a pane of glass. Shimmy a loose door. Ain't no biggy.

Don't take too much. Hard to carry. Hard to fence. They notice quicker and they remember more.

Find yourself a fence. They're everywhere. Some fences give you skag. Ask for a taste before you trade. If what you got is good enough, they'll give you a taste. But after that you better trade. If you don't, somebody's gonna do you.

Or play hit man. So many stupid people. It ain't hard. Catch somebody right, like when their arms are full. Hold you a knife or a gun if you got one and start to take their money. If they move, bonk 'em one. Do 'em quick. Don't cut 'em. Don't shoot 'em. Too much trouble if you're caught. If they get the drop on you, run away. Make that bird.

If you get caught, play scared. There's room for that, too. No sweat. They'll send you to a home, only it's a jail. Juvie Hall. Be good in jail. They're mean bastards, anyway. If they want a piece of you, be sweet. If you're good, they let you out. Foster home again. Be cool for a couple weeks. Then you run away and find a door and knock on it and hide.

If you don't get caught, that's cool. Trade you for some skag and bring it back. Throw down a Twinkie and a Coke for dinner and then lean back against the bare wall, right there on the floor with all the dirt and roaches, and shoot up. Rip. Pow. It takes your breath and leaves you there all low and floating, there ain't any feeling like it.

That's living.

THERE were a dozen foster homes, where he'd learned The Smile. The early years of agonizing days spent under disapproving glances when emotions were unveiled, as if emotions, other than a pleasant front, were unnatural and condemnable. As if a cry for help were a weakness and, more important, an intervention and a bother. The only solution, the only workable attitude, was to keep The Smile in good repair, to be careful not to ruffle the Man or the Bitch, and then to fight like hell, any way he could, for what was his. Or for what he wanted.

At ten he started running. By thirteen there was no way in hell they could keep him in. He'd found the freedom of the street, and he dealt with its chimeras in the same way: grin at it until it turns around, then unload. And run like hell.

By sixteen, he was in the Federal narcotics farm, after having come down with hepatitis from a dirty needle. He was the youngest person on the farm. He was good. He played scared and innocent. He knew jails. The other inmates named him Phony.

At seventeen he was on the street again. Incorrigible. Heavy. Whatever it means. He had a probation officer. The man was worried about Phony's future. Phony had never had a job. He had a civilian record, the officer shuddered, that would make a Juvie judge break down and cry.

The probation officer decided that the only way to balance out Phony's record, to give him a fresh start, was for him to go into the service and come out with a clean record. A good discharge would give him a clean slate. He might even learn a marketable skill.

Phony had raised his eyebrows at that. Yeah. Like I could be a hit man or something.

The probation officer wrote letters. He emphasized that Phony had made a good adjustment since his latest release, and seemed desirous of making a contribution to society. He emphasized that Phony had come from a deprived background, and had not had a chance to become a responsible citizen. He made certain to point out that Phony's offenses were Juvenile, and should not be held against him.

The Marine Corps took him. The probation officer was elated.

And Phony did all right. He knew jails.

13

April.
Already
…

Back in the villes again. Somebody said it was an operation with a name, but it had its own name: Dangling the Bait. Drifting from village to village, every other night digging deep new fighting holes, every day patrolling through other villes, along raw ridges. Inviting an enemy attack much as a worm seeks to attract a fish: mindlessly, at someone else's urging, for someone else's reasons.

THEY waded an opaque, muddy stream, fretfully picking leeches off their arms and legs on the other bank, then moved slowly, single file, Indian-style. The village sat like a dark green knot in the middle of a wide, dirt-brown paddy. Hodges scanned the fields. There were no conehatted babysans lazing on the backs of water bulls. When water bulls disappeared from the fields, it was always the first sign that the enemy was near, very near, in large numbers. It reminded Hodges of the TV Westerns, when the town cleared the streets before a gunfight.

At the edges of the village, all along the outer rim of a paddy dike that surrounded it, large, loose piles of shit glistened in the morning sun. The sun beat down on the dozens of droppings and the air filled with their stench as the platoon filed cautiously through the first trees that shrouded the trail. Hodges noted the human dung and halted his platoon, listening carefully before moving any further. There was too much shit for such a small village, and the people had eaten too well. That could only mean enemy soldiers had sneaked down from the mountains to that isolated village and feasted the night before, unless they had taken over the village for a few days, as the Marines often did, and were on some sort of operation against the Marines. Either way, it meant trouble, and Hodges cautiously congratulated himself for noticing it.

The village had been almost unpopulated two weeks before, when he had made a similar patrol through it. Now there was evidence of occupation: thatch in many of the roofs, and a dozen freshly dug family bunkers. And yet no people. The town was truly cleared for a gunfight. The platoon walked slowly along a narrow dust trail, their vision choked by weeds and brush. They passed a hootch every twenty yards. Cook fires still burned underneath the thatch. Empty red mackerel cans littered the porches. Rice balls sat half-eaten on chipped and broken china plates. The plates, apparent in every ville, always amazed Hodges: fine china from some other time or place incongruously scattered through the primitivity of the Phu Phans. He did not know that once, only a few years before, a railroad had brought such luxuries twice a week.

There would have been dogs. Or roosters. Hodges registered another reason for caution. If it were villagers remarkably reversing the momentum of flight and returning to resettle an empty ville, they would have brought animals. But the village was dead. No domestic animals, and the others had long ago fled the valley to the mountains that ringed it: the playful monkeys, the richly colored birds, all disappeared, driven away by constant artillery. A few rats skittered through the brush near some of the hootches. Only the rats remained.

Mounds of family bunkers reached high through the dry weeds, and craters from a hundred bombs dipped low. The trail detoured around a huge crater left by a five-hundred-pound bomb. The earth itself was swollen and distended from the daily beatings it was taking.

Suddenly (finally, breathed Hodges, after having added up his clues) there were screams from the point of the patrol, then random shots. Hodges ran forward and saw that the wide, dike-rippled paddy at the far edge of the village had filled with fleeing figures, sprinting for a bald, red ridge two hundred meters on the other side. There were dozens of them. Some were dressed in blue, some in green, some in white. Some wore conical hats and some were bareheaded. Most carried long cloth bundles.

The men moved with a quick certainty that always amazed him. They formed a line behind a wide, thick dike, and began firing furiously at the images that danced before them in the brown grass. Hodges remembered to place one fire team of three men to the rear, toward the village, lest they get ambushed from behind. He congratulated himself again. Very shrewd, Hodges. Two months and you're thinking like a gook.

The figures continued to run away. It angered him. He urged the machine-gun team on. Compos, the gunner, fired determinedly, his black eyes wide and his arms dripping streams of sweat on the stock of the gun. Cronin, the assistant gunner, shivered with recent malaria as he clipped ammunition belts into place and pointed out targets. Wolf Man broke out clean ammo from the boxes he carried, his garish tattoos gleaming in the sun. They worked with intimacy, stopping and calling to each other, four parts of the same machine. The gun ate the belt of bullets with an insatiable greed. Cronin poured LSA oil to cool the steaming barrel. Bodies dropped in the high weeds of the paddy.

But it was not enough. Still they ran. Hodges walked the line, urging his platoon to kill, screaming at the fleeing figures.

“Fight us, you bastards!! Come on! Fight us!”

Most of them disappeared over the ridge. It was unfair, mused Hodges, that they should flee after he had pursued them so skillfully, had read their clues so well. They never fought back until they were ready, but he had to pursue and attempt to engage every slightest vision. Not fair, and they were doing it again. Once on the other side of the ridge it would be their game, not his.

There were still a dozen running in the field. Hodges noted Goodrich lying forward on his elbows, his weapon impotent before him in the dirt.

“Put out rounds, Goodrich! They're skying out!”

Goodrich glanced at Hodges, then out into the paddy at the fleeing figures. “Those are kids, Lieutenant. Kids and mamasans. I saw the ponytails.”

“If those are kids, I'll kiss your ass. Now open up.”

Goodrich shrugged and decided not to pursue it, feeling that any additional comment would be pushing it. In the weeks since the Bridge had been overrun, he had continually flirted with trouble over similar incidents. He fired his weapon perfunctorily in the general direction of the fleeing mob. What the hell. He can court-martial me for not shooting, but he can't court-martial me for being a lousy shot.

Hodges knew what would follow. It was the worst part. He had been able to anticipate them, but now he knew they would read him. No patrol like this was finished until the bodies were found and tabulated. Very important, he mused, tempted to fake it. Sheeit. If they're dead, they're dead. I had 'em but they wouldn't fight. It's their game, now.

The company commander called him and ordered him to count the meat and he studied his map for a quick moment, hiding behind a bush for fear of snipers who looked for such things in order to kill platoon commanders. He had to take the ridge, or they would waste his whole platoon in the paddy. Where is the ridge? Let's see. Phu Nhuan (8) over there. Phu Nhuan (3) right here. There it is. The ridge has no name. All right. He grinned. Appropriate. The battle for No-Name Ridge.

He didn't want to do it. He thought again about bagging it. But if he did it to the Skipper, some of his men would do it to him. Shirking danger was an infection that spread more quickly than the plague. He left half of his platoon in the village as a covering force, and moved with the other half into the paddy, on a wide, cautious line, sweeping toward No-Name Ridge. He walked behind them on a low, blackened dike that had been charred by a napalm drop in someone else's war a week ago, feeling that he was offering his body as a sacrifice in the name of not bagging a superior's order. Blind obedience. Here I am, God of Dumb. Take me quick.

He was so certain of what was to follow that he removed a LAAW rocket from its strap along his back and extended it, pulling the safeties out. He had figured them in the village but they had him now.

Then the roof fell in. The rounds erupted with their mocking pops, and before he could make a conscious decision he was hugging a charred portion of the field, mashing his face hard into the black ash. The rounds kicked up little ash spots all around him and he rolled onto one side and casually fired off his LAAW. Am I cool, or what?

Flaky screamed behind him. The radioman was shot. Hodges turned his head, keeping his body flat as dust and ash kicked up around himself and Flaky. Flaky peered back, terrified. One hand was a bloody pulp. Well, thank God it's him, Hodges thought absently. If anybody ever deserved it…

He had to move. The rounds were getting closer. He crept back to Flaky to check his hand. Behind Flaky, at the edge of the village, the other half of the platoon put out a steady rate of fire at the ridgeline. Hodges had brought a 60-millimeter mortar section with him and the men were free-tubing an inaccurate mortar barrage along the ridge, the gunner grasping the hot tube with a towel. Goodrich was now firing madly at the ridge. Hodges caught his eye and winked to him. Not bad for babysans, eh, Senator?

Doc Rabbit crawled heavily over, helmet on backwards because he claimed he saw better that way, strapped with double bandoleers that held battle dressings instead of ammunition. His corroded M-16 dropped to Flaky's feet, useless, unfirable even if Rabbit cared to fire, even if he ever thought to bring ammunition in the bandoleers instead of battle dressings. The rifle and bandoleers were camouflages that misled snipers in their hunts for corpsmen. Or so Rabbit consoled himself.

And for all his camouflage, Rabbit now sat exposed against the dike, impervious to the incoming rounds, wrapping Flaky's hand. He looked over to Hodges, who was flat against the dike to protect himself. “They shot the radio right out of Flaky's hand, Lieutenant. Some shot, huh?”

Radio. Supporting arms. Hodges grabbed the handset, still huddled against the paddy dike, and pressed his map into the dirt where the dike met the field, hoping the enemy would not see it. As if they didn't know by now, he fretted sardonically. “Delta Six, Delta Three! Contact mission, Grid eight-niner-five, five-zero-three, direction five-one-hundred, distance two hundred. Gooks on a ridge.”

The firing stopped before the guns were up for the mission. Hodges called the artillery anyway, unsure of why they had stopped shooting and aware that at least fifty of them had fled over the ridgeline. They know I have to go into that paddy to check bodies, he reasoned, searching along the ridge as the artillery rounds impacted with their haunting crumps. They could just be waiting.

He kept the gun up as he again moved half of the platoon toward the ridge. Behind him, the now-ecstatic Flaky was writhing animatedly against the dike as someone took a picture of him for posterity. A few minutes before, Flaky had called in his own medevac and then announced that the wound, which was a ricochet, had paralyzed his hand until the date of his discharge.

They took No-Name Ridge and set up along it as security. The other half of the platoon, led by Staff Sergeant Gilliland, who had replaced Austin, swept along the fields where the enemy had fled. Hodges sat on the ridge, feeling irritated at the inconclusiveness of their efforts, and smoked his fifteenth cigarette of the patrol. On the far side of the ridge was yet another paddy, and another stand of opaque trees. Swarms of figures flashed and faded in the treeline.

Damn gooks are everywhere today, he fretted. He called another artillery mission on the trees, thinking ironically that if he used too many rounds the artillery people would demand he take his platoon over into the next treeline to check for more kills, and then he would have to call an artillery mission on the next treeline for his own safety, and have to check it out, and … well. It could go on forever. Fuck 'em, he decided. Just fuck 'em. Fuck everybody who doesn't come out here and do this. Let them go check that treeline. What do they know?

Sergeant Gilliland called up from the paddy. He was standing just below Hodges. He and a few members from Snake's squad held several rifles, and had captured a soldier. Or at least it appeared to be a soldier, if one used his imagination.

“Peep out Mamasan!” Gilliland was lifting a cone hat off the man's head, then dropping it back on. Gilliland would lift it, and reveal the closely shaved head of a North Vietnamese soldier. Then he would drop it, and the hat would cover the man's face, and a ponytail would hang down his back. “And did you see her ditty bag? Poor Mamasan. We drove her out of her home.” Gilliland held up a long cloth bundle. He shook it and an AK-47 rifle dropped out onto the ground.

The men on the ridge began screaming and cheering. Down the ridge one man moved off the wide dust trail, stepped down a paddy dike, and began to call to someone who stood near Gilliland. The claydirt belched loudly, a screaming roar, and the man slammed to the dirt, legless. He appeared asleep. Twenty feet away someone else now crawled on stumps of fingers, yelling for Doc Rabbit. He peered down at his hands and held them in front of his face, examining them as he squealed in terror. Marines ran immediately to help the two men, stepping cautiously toward them both to avoid possible trip wires from other booby traps.

Hodges sat down, burying his head between his knees. He was defeated. The very regularity of the actions, the fact that everyone knew exactly what to do, what words to say, and where not to step, was an indictment. The strained emotion that he kept just beneath his nonchalance was creeping through again. He wanted to cry. They would watch him and then wonder what kind of an officer he was, how he could give orders to them when he couldn't take it. He couldn't cry.

Rabbit walked past him. “How's Boomer, Doc?” “He ain't got any legs. But I got him tied off.” Flaky had already called the medevac. A month before, Hodges would have insisted on doing it himself, but it didn't matter. They all knew how. The skipper would call it good training, but to him it was another indictment. The only real test of success anymore was how many came back whole from each patrol, and now he was again a failure. They got us again. They got us.

He hated it and he hated himself. He walked over and tried to talk to Boomer but Boomer was out of it. He started to walk toward the man who had lost his fingers, it was a new dude whose name he didn't remember, and Doc waved him away. They had bandaged both hands heavily so the man wouldn't have to look at his pieces of fingers and they were talking rapidly to him about the World, holding his attention until the morphine hooked him. Below him, in the field, the prisoner had done something, said something wrong, and two men were hitting him. It didn't bother Hodges. The prisoner was the only tangible enemy to focus their frustrations on. Boomer was a good man, and now he didn't have any legs, just because he tried to get a better look at the phony mamasan. Somehow a chopper made it to the ridge. Someone popped a smoke grenade and red powder curled acridly around Hodges. Then the helicopter gobbled them up and fluttered off and he crawled underneath a bush and fought back his sobs and beat the ground, all the time wondering if he wouldn't set off a booby trap each time he pounded the dust, but that was how paranoid he had become, and he thought of all the others who had become raw meat at his direction after only two months, and he hated it and himself more deeply and he pounded the dust some more, making a vow of rage. He would not allow their blood to have soaked into that unproductive dust for some mad amorphous folly.