13th Valley (52 page)

C
HAPTER
21

Whiteboy was alone on OP when he heard digging. He had concealed himself beneath a bush on a small rise, south, above the exhausted column on the trail. He glanced behind him, down, back toward the column. The sound was faint. It stopped. He looked forward. The digging began again. Whiteboy poked his head out. The sound persisted. The usual jungle sounds of helicopters and artillery masked the faint scraping. He was not certain he heard digging noises at all yet he was sure someone was digging very near him. He felt it. He looked to his right. He sat very still. The sound ceased. He looked forward. It began once more. He looked down, between his legs, under his ass. It felt as if someone were digging beneath him. He turned again, he massaged the warm metal of Lit'le Boy's trigger mechanism. The sound stopped. He did not have the faintest idea what he was hearing. He relaxed. The sound became louder, nearer.

“Ssssst.” Whiteboy tried to get somebody's attention. No one responded. “SSSSST,” he hissed loudly aiming his signal toward the column. Still no one responded.

In the column fifteen meters below Whiteboy, Frye and Harley were lounging back intensely studying the exposed curves of a recent Playboy centerfold. “Goddamn,” Frye sighed holding the page lengthwise, “I'd crawl through a klick a claymores pushin my ruck with my nose just ta hear her fart over the Monster net.”

Harley drooled at Frye's shoulder. “Man, Cookie,” he whistled, “I'd go two klicks.”

“SSSSSTTT!” Whiteboy near screamed. He slipped away from his post and came charging down toward the column. “Gawd A'mighty Sweet Jesus,” Whiteboy raged at Frye and Harley, “you aint got enough brains ta plug up an ant's ass. Caint you hear me? Go git Egan.” Whiteboy spun around and charged back up the hill. As he approached his OP he slowed. He moved Lit'le Boy's selector from safe to fire. He walked around the position cautiously, curiously. There was a four-inch diameter hole where he had been sitting.

Egan, El Paso, the L-T, Cherry and Cahalan were sitting clustered together in a shadow cave of palm fans topped by a tall vine-clogged tree. They monitored the radios. “That shouldn'ta happened, Man,” El Paso moaned to Egan. “It shouldn'ta happened. Somebody fucked up.”

“It's always somebody fucked up,” Cahalan said quickly, sadly. There was anger in his voice, slight, but there. He was a man who seldom showed emotion. Those that knew him, El Paso, Egan, the L-T, they could feel it. To Cherry it was undetectable. “You guys always say that. It's not somebody fucked up. It's this place is fucked.”

“It's BULLSHIT!” Egan snapped. He was pissed. “It's bullshit. Them mothafuckin dinks are bullshit. Wastin Escalato. Wastin him like that. We'll get em. Mothafuck. Sure as I'm sittin here, we are goina get them fuckin dinks.”

Brooks was very quiet. He did not want to talk. All the old-timers knew Escalato. El Paso recalled with a sad smile, “Fucker was always smilin.” El Paso shook his head. “Dumb fucker always had a good word for everybody.” Escalato and El Paso had been closest friends outside their companies. Both were chicanos from the southwest. Both had become their company's senior RTO. On operations where Alpha and Bravo had maneuvered together the two RTOs radioed back and forth in Spanish. They loved to do that. If the NVA were monitoring them the likelihood of being interpreted was significantly less. Besides, the colonel didn't understand a word of Spanish and they could speak without fear of reprisal. After a pause El Paso moaned and shook his head again, “Oh Man,” he said. He threw an empty C-rat tin into the brush. “He was too good. That should never a happened.”

Egan picked at the spreading sun sores and jungle rot on his arm. He was filled with indignation and hate and he wanted action. He wanted to be moving.

Cherry was between Egan and the L-T. “What's that matter,” he whispered flatly to Egan. “What's the matter with you? Don't you know, ‘War is good. It's wonderful.'”

Egan looked at him in blank disgust. Egan rolled his tongue and jaw then spat a stream of thick saliva and C-rat juice which hit Cherry in the chin. He stared into Cherry's face waiting for Cherry to move, to swing.

“I'm sorry,” Cherry whispered. “I guess that was a low shot. Ah, ya know, I didn't know Escalato.”

“Aaaah, fuckit. Don't mean nothin.” Egan jerked up quickly and walked off.

“War,” Brooks said after another pause. “War.” He was tapping his fingers on the ground. “It is important to understand how war occurs if mankind is going to avoid it in the future. If we are going to avoid having our Escalatos blown away …”

“Hey! Where's Egan?” Harley interrupted. It had taken him six or seven minutes to find the CP. Brooks motioned with his thumb down the trail. “Whiteboy found somethin, I think,” Harley smiled.

By the time the L-T, Egan and the others reached Whiteboy the opening in the earth had increased to a foot around. Whiteboy was squatting ten feet from the crumbling edge. He held Lit'le Boy in one hand aimed at the hole and a frag in the other. As the group arrived Whiteboy held up the frag hand to slow their approach. Then he pointed to the hole.

“Whatcha got?” Harley whispered.

“What took ya so fucken long?” Whiteboy whispered back. Ignoring the others he turned to the L-T and Egan, shook his head in disbelief and said, “It just keeps a gittin bigger. Ah heard this diggin. Gawd A'mighty. Ah run down en git Harley. Tell him ta git Egan, an it sure does take that man some time.”

They all stared at the hole. The edge continued crumbling. “You frag it yet?” Egan gleamed. Whiteboy shrugged and shook his head. “Get security out,” Egan directed. He grabbed Whiteboy's hand grenade, straightened the pin and clutched his hand about the tiny steel bomb. A smile came to his face. He looked at the L-T. Brooks nodded. Egan knelt and crawled quickly toward the hole. Two feet away he stopped. He could see into the hole only a yard. He lay flat, extended his arm, released the grenade spoon, counted one-two, dropped the grenade into the hole and chuckled, “Catch.” The others backed up several steps and squatted. Egan rolled to his right and stayed down. From very deep there came a muffled explosion. Egan reached into an ammo pouch on his belt, removed another grenade, straightened the pin. Then he rolled to the hole. He stuck his head over the opening then quickly snapped it back. He had not seen anything significant. Gradually he edged back over the opening and peered in. He saw nothing except the dirt insides of the shaft. He could not see the bottom. The shaft was about two feet in diameter and it dropped down, out of sight, at a 30° or 40° angle. Egan dropped the second grenade into the tunnel, this time staying over the opening for several seconds, listening to the bomb fall, before spinning away.

“Hey. We got somethin here,” Egan said getting up after the second explosion. “That fucker's deep. I think we found the opening to a tunnel complex.”

“Well, check it out,” El Paso grinned. He walked over and inspected the hole. “This looks like the one we found by Maureen in July.”

“This one's deep, Man,” Egan assured him. “We gotta get inta this. Nice work, Whiteboy. We gotta open this up.”

Little by little Alpha moved all its attention to what became known amongst them as Whiteboy's Hole. Brooks directed De Barti and 2d Plt to climb up past 1st Plt and spread out in a wide perimeter. He had 1st Plt expand the perimeter south of Whiteboy's Hole and he had 3d move up and seal off the downhill.

“Red Rover, Red Rover,” Brooks called the GreenMan. He had a controllable urge to say ‘Red Rover, Red Rover, let the GreenMan come over.' He chuckled to himself.

“Quiet Rover Four, this is Red Rover, over,” came the sober reply.

Brooks explained in detail what Alpha had found and he requested permission to remain at their present location to dig into the situation. His speculation, along with the others', was running wild.

“Fifteen minutes,” the GreenMan steamed. The battalion commander had his master plan, a plan unseen by the men on the ground, and this hole was not part of it. “The hell with that hole, dammit. There were a hundred and fifty enemy soldiers a quarter klick west of your position less than twenty-four hours ago. Arty blasted the hell out of them. Go find …”

“Red Rover,” Brooks attempted to interrupt by keying the handset.

The GreenMan's stride was unbroken. “… some blood trails. Find some bodies. What in hell do you think you're down there for? Over.”

“Red Rover. They could have come from the earth. Over.”

“Fifteen minutes. Then check out that sighting. Then get moving. Get down there and hurt those people. We're looking for a fight, dammit, not a sandbox. What's happening to you down there? Over. Out.”

“We're going to have to do this quickly,” Brooks told El Paso and Lt. Thomaston. “GreenMan wants us moving in fifteen.”

Egan, Cherry and Whiteboy had already opened up the top of the tunnel with their entrenching tools. They had peered into the hole as deeply as their flashlight beams would penetrate. Still they could not see the bottom. Egan donned a gas mask, borrowed Doc's .45 and descended head first into the tunnel. The fit was tight. Ten feet in his shoulders hit on both sides. Egan slinked downward. He pulled himself downward with his forearms. The tunnel dropped steeply and at thirty feet Egan was hit with a strong foreboding and claustrophobic reaction. Dumb Mick, he yelled at himself. Do it right. Get the fuck outa here and do it right. He edged backwards, upwards pushing with his forearms. It was difficult to climb in reverse in the tunnel and the exertion caused him to breathe very hard into the mask. The eye lenses fogged raising his paranoia and increasing his feeling of being trapped. He strained harder. His heart rate jumped. Someone grabbed him from behind. He attempted to swing around, to aim the .45 at …

“See anything down there?” Cherry said smiling. He had hold of Egan's ankles and was pulling him up and out the last few feet.

Egan ripped off the mask. He inhaled one large breath. “It's too fucken steep. We need a rope.”

“How deep could you see, Danny?” Brooks asked. “This thing's gotta be fifty feet deep at least,” Egan said. His breathing had normalized, the claustrophobic reaction receded. He became excited again. “Ya can't tell how deep it is cause ya can't judge the distance in there. But, Man, we gotta check this out. We can't leave this. They got somethin down there. Nobody digs a tunnel fifty feet deep for nothin. We gotta get into it. We need a rope. Ya can't get back out without a rope.”

All around the hole people were talking, peering in, then returning to their conversations. Guard teams alternated watch giving every man a few minutes to inspect the find. Escalato was forgotten. Brooks called the GreenMan again and requested time enough to ascertain the parameters of the tunnel. He explained the depth to which his tunnel rat had descended and he described and perhaps embellished the view Egan had seen. He also requested a kick-out of two hundred feet of rope. The Green-Man asked a dozen questions then told Brooks he would call him back. Could the tunnel fit into his plan?

Brooks waited. Alpha rested. The reprieve from the climb was welcomed yet stopping caused a queasiness amongst the old-timers. “Gawd dang dinks goan climb right up on us,” Pop Randalph complained to Lt. De Barti. “Hell, we're foolin with their air vent. They know where it's at, dang it, and they know Alpha of the Oh-deuce is fuckin with it.”

“How they going to know that, Pop,” De Barti mocked the old boonierat.

“Well, hell, Sir. They dug it. They goan drop some mortar rounds right atop o' us.”

Still Alpha waited. They ate, smoked, fidgeted. They talked about the tunnel. Everyone had heard a tunnel story. They repeated them. They speculated. They imagined a vast complex. The sun had shifted imperceptibly from east to west. It continued to burn down. Every other boonierat tried to sleep. Each platoon sent out one squad in lights, weapons and ammo sans rucks, to recon the hillside about their perimeter and to search for other possible outlets for the complex.

After fifty minutes the GreenMan called. He told Brooks to expect a kick-out of rope, demolition supplies, a mity-mite blower, smudge pots and CS canisters. “You're due romeo sierra in twenty,” GreenMan radioed. “Blow a lema zulu on the high feature.” The battalion commander reasoned that Alpha, due to resupply the next morning, could send an element up to the peak of 636 to cut a landing zone and still have a contingent of troops delving into the tunnel. In that way they would do tomorrow's work today plus excavate the hole, and by tomorrow afternoon he would have them in the valley. Before the GreenMan finished delivering his order, Bravo Company broke in and reported being pinned down by .51 caliber machine gun fire.

They requested immediate aerial and artillery support and their third medevac in twelve hours. Within two minutes the rumbling of artillery from across the valley echoed over Alpha. Five minutes later a Huey was hovering ten feet above Alpha's now partially cleared attraction. The crew chief threw down the rope first, then crates of C-4 explosive, smudge pots and CS tear gas canisters, two five-gallon jerry cans of gasoline, and finally, shoving with his boot, a heavy wooden crate containing a motorized blower.