Black Market (26 page)

Woods heard the small-arms fire to his north and became very nervous as the sound of AK-47s and NVA light machine guns drew
closer. They were still a good fifteen hundred meters to his north, but he didn’t like the feel of it. NVA bodies in the river
had started floating past his team’s position.

Welburg grabbed Woods’s arm. “Let’s get the fuck out of here! Man, there’s too many NVA!”

Woods was about ready to agree with Welburg when he saw movement on the far side of the river. He instinctively lowered himself
down and nodded for Welburg to shut up. Sanchez slipped next to Woods and dropped down in the prone position. He pointed a
little farther downriver at a larger group of NVA. Brush cracked on his side of the water, and Woods shifted the barrel of
his CAR-15 to the north to meet the new threat.

“Don’t fire … unless you have to!” Woods hissed the words at Welburg. The whole idea was to allow for the NVA units to pass
by, and then they’d call in artillery fire on them. The noise was a lot louder, and Woods guessed that there were at least
four or five men breaking through the jungle—or it was a herd of deer that had been scared upriver.

The jungle parted about ten feet in front of Sanchez and a very scared-looking Marine Force Recon man holding an M-60 machine
gun broke out in the very small clearing bordering RT Southern Hellions’ location.

Woods stayed hidden and called out to the Marine. “Over here!”

The man paused for only a second and called back over his shoulder to someone who was following him. “I’ve linked up with
the Army guys!” There was a tone of relief in his voice, as if he had found a secure base.

A dozen more Marines broke out in the clearing carrying three badly wounded men. Woods stepped out from his hiding place and
startled the Marines closest to him. One of them nearly opened fire on him, thinking that he was a camouflaged NVA.

“Hold it!” Woods’s voice calmed the Marines a little.

“Who the fuck are you?” A senior Marine team leader approached Woods but kept looking back over his shoulder.

“The team leader here.” Woods didn’t care if Welburg heard him or not.

“The NVA are right behind us…” The Marine switched the conversation to the urgent topic at hand. “They hit us at about two
this morning. They either wiped out the teams north of us or have cut us in half … but they’re sweeping south and there’s
a lot of them motherfuckers!”

“How far behind?”

“Close! We’d better get moving…”

“How about Lang Vei?” Woods nodded to the east.

“We tried that. They were waiting for us in the elephant grass…”

Woods thought about Arnason to his south and a linkup with him. Arnason would know what to do. “Head south, and link up with
Sergeant Arnason’s team.” Woods looked at Sanchez. He didn’t want to order him to stay behind with him, but someone had to
act as a rear guard to slow the NVA down so that the wounded could escape. “I’m staying back here until the NVA catch up,
to slow them down…”

Sanchez nodded that he was staying too. Both of Welburg’s flunkies joined Woods.

“Fuck this shit!” Welburg started south along the deer trail that bordered the river.

The Marine sergeant smiled. “Thanks. We can’t move very fast with our wounded…”

Two of the Marines joined Woods’s small force. He was glad to see that the man with the M-60 had stayed behind. He could use
the firepower the weapon provided.

Warner pushed the
TALK
switch on his URC-10. “Cloud Cover 22 … this is Mud Puppy 44 … Over.”

There was a long pause before the FAC pilot answered. “Cloud Cover 22 … send your traffic … Over.”

“Mud Puppy 44 … I need some napalm and arty for a blocking fire at…” Woods paused, looked up his coordinates, and gave them
to the pilot. “We are expecting a lot of NVA shortly … can I have everything on call?”

“Roger … four minutes for the fast movers and the artillery should be ready soon … 8-inchers … Over.”

“Excellent … stand by … Out.”

Woods pointed out the positions he wanted the men to take after he had briefed them that the tactics were going to be to withdraw
south until they linked up with Arnason’s team. He held his URC-10 in his left hand and his CAR-15 tucked under his right
arm and waited for the NVA.

The Marine operating the M-60 machine gun was the first to open fire and then all hell broke loose. The NVA had been advancing
in a two-hundred-meter skirmish line with only a couple of squads held in reserve to support the line in spots of major resistance.
So far the tactic had worked and they had overrun each of the small Marine recon teams without much effort. Woods’s small
fire team was not taken by surprise and planned on fighting. The NVA skirmish line disintegrated in front of the heavy volume
of fire from the team. A couple of the NVA on the far side of the river opened fire but were quickly stopped by their NCOs
because they feared that they would hit their own men.

Woods’s team had caught the overconfident NVA off guard. Woods pressed his push-to-talk switch and called for the air and
artillery support. Then he signaled his men to withdraw to the south before the NVA commander could maneuver and squeeze them
against the riverbank and a sure death in a cross fire.

The jungle fifty meters to the north of Woods erupted in a bright fireball and a heat wave reached out between the thick vegetation
and slapped Sanchez’s face.

“Fuck! That’s hot!” He lowered the barrel of his weapon and fired at a movement in the bush. The fighting was constant as
the NVA tried remaining close to the Americans so that they could escape the hellfire.

The small Marine team fought like a trapped congressman in a burning whorehouse. They were getting their revenge on the NVA
and everyone had accepted the fact that they wouldn’t make it out of the fight alive.

Woods yelled: “BACK OFF A HUNDRED METERS!”

The team broke contact and started running and firing away from the NVA. Woods set the pace through the jungle so that he
wouldn’t lose anyone. Sanchez acted as the rear guard along with the Marine carrying the M-60.

Woods guessed the distance and stopped running. “ALL RIGHT! STAND AND FIGHT!”

The team dispersed in a half-circle and waited for the NVA to catch up. Sanchez tossed the Marine machine gunner his .22 caliber
pistol. The M-60 was empty and useless.

“What in the fuck do you want me to do with this?” The Marine’s voice wasn’t as deep as his build suggested.

“Shoot the fucking thing!” Sanchez changed magazines in his M-16.

The young Marine pulled his machete out of its canvas sheath and crouched down, waiting for an NVA to appear. Sanchez noticed
for the first time that the Marine was bleeding from two different locations. The Marine stumbled and dropped down on one
knee before regaining his feet again.

Woods had the artillery adjusted from the FAC flying above the team. The air turned green with tracers and the pilot gained
altitude until he was out of range of the light weapons. He made the fatal mistake of entering the sight envelope of the waiting
.57mm antiaircraft guns. The FAC pilot had called in Woods’s last fire request adjustments seconds before his L-19 burst into
a ball of flames.

Woods heard the explosion but couldn’t see anything because of the dense jungle canopy. “Sounds like some bad shit! Let’s
move … and hope we can make it to Arnason.”

One of Welburg’s flunkies spoke up for the first time. “Do you think he’s still there?”

Woods’s temper flared. “We’re not dealing with
your
team leader! He’ll be there!” Woods knew that Arnason would be waiting for him.

The sound of heavy fighting was drawing closer to Arnason’s position from both directions. He hadn’t wasted any time and had
his men use their machetes to cut a small one-ship LZ out of the jungle. Arnason had plotted some additional defensive fires
around his location and had sent them to Cloud Cover 22, but the FAC wasn’t answering his calls. A command and control aircraft
with a call sign of Sack Jacket 3 had intercepted his calls and took control from the FAC.

The Marines broke through the jungle and almost took Arnason by surprise as he retransmitted his DEFCONs. Arnason saw the
wounded and knew that they would need a MEDEVAC ship if they were going to save two of them. He cut himself off and asked
for the MEDEVAC.

Warner started performing emergency first aid on the wounded while Koski remained on guard. The Marines who had been carrying
the wounded men dropped down on the jungle floor, totally exhausted from the extreme effort. Arnason let them rest, knowing
they were going to need all of their energy in a very short while.

Welburg broke into the clearing and saw Arnason. “Thank God, man!”

“Where’s Woods and Sanchez?”

“They volunteered to pull rear guard for us…”

“Are you wounded?” Arnason’s voice carried his suspicion.

“No, I was helping with the wounded.”

Arnason frowned; it didn’t make sense. The Marines had been carrying their own wounded. “Where’s your weapon?”

Welburg looked down at his hands and realized that he had lost his M-16. The look on his face explained everything to Arnason.

“Find a weapon and get ready to fight for your ass!” Arnason didn’t have time to continue his conversation with Welburg. The
MEDEVAC helicopter could be heard coming in under fire from the east.

Koski popped a can of purple smoke and kicked it until it was at the edge of the cliff and wouldn’t interfere with the landing
of the chopper in the very small LZ.

The pilot saw the smoke and didn’t waste any time confirming the location. He found the hole in the trees and dropped straight
down on the ground.

Captain Youngbloode saw the chopper dropping from the sky and hoped that it was going into Arnason’s location. He urged the
dozen surviving members from the southern teams on. They were carrying five wounded men, and Youngbloode wanted to get them
on the chopper.

Warner was covered in blood up to his elbows, and the front of his camouflaged jacket was stained almost black from the thick,
coagulated body fluid. He looked through the open chopper doors and saw Captain Youngbloode’s group break out of the jungle
into the clearing. Warner pointed and Arnason followed his arm with his eyes.

There was no more room on the chopper floor. Bodies were squeezed tightly together, and there were still two more men who
needed to get aboard. The pilot was signaling that he had to leave.

Youngbloode noticed that the side of the chopper was punched full of holes from their flight out to the site. The whole plateau
was full of NVA soldiers. He looked at the soldier who had come in with the chopper and had loaded the wounded men. It was
the staff officer he had seen back at the brigade headquarters during the briefing. The captain looked and saw that all of
the space had been taken up. Without any hesitation he grabbed one of the wounded soldiers off the ground and strapped him
in his own seat, with the remaining wounded man placed on his lap. The OCS captain ran to the front of the chopper and signaled
for the pilot to take off. The crew chief was squatting in the small space between the seats and saw that the captain was
going to remain behind on the ground. He reached over and untied the emergency weapon they had strapped behind the pilot’s
seat and threw it out of the door along with a bandolier of ammunition. The pilot gave the chopper power, but he was overloaded.
He knew that he couldn’t get enough lift to clear the trees to the east of the LZ, so he dropped his nose, went over the cliff,
and banked to his right to fly over the river. He would find out later that he had made a very wise decision. The NVA had
been waiting for the chopper to fly east, back to Lang Vei, and he would have been shot down easily. His decision to fly over
the river was smart because the NVA on the Laotian side of the watercourse were not prepared to fire on a low-flying aircraft,
and before they could lower their weapons, the chopper was gone.

Youngbloode grabbed Arnason’s shoulder and wasted the time to smile. “Deep shit … Sergeant.”

Arnason nodded his head in agreement. “How many men do you have left, Captain?”

“I brought out twelve, plus five wounded…”

Arnason looked at his open map. “I’ve already circled this spot with DEFCONs, but I’m afraid to call in anything until I’m
sure all the Americans are here.”

“Well we damn sure aren’t going anywhere … Brigade is going to have to come and get us.” Youngbloode pulled his URC-10 out
of his pocket. “Sack Jacket 6 … Mud Puppy 01 … Over.”

The brigade commander answered. “Sack Jacket 6 … Over.”

“Mud Puppy 01 … It looks like we’ve found the enemy … please advise.” The sarcasm in Youngbloode’s voice was lost in transmission.

“Roger … Puppy 6 … We are taking action to relieve your situation … Over.”

Arnason handed Youngbloode a small slip of paper with their location encoded. Youngbloode pushed the talk lever. “Here’s our
position…”

The colonel listened and watched his operations officer plot the location on his battle map. The brigade had set up a forward
operations base in the Lang Vei Special Forces camp, and two battalions of infantry were already in place. He was a very cautious
officer and wouldn’t be forced to make a move until he was ready.

“Puppy 01 … Can you hold your position until morning?” The colonel lowered his handset and stared at the map. Youngbloode
had formed up his unit at the most defendable site on the river.

Youngbloode looked over at Arnason and apologized with his eyes to the sergeant for the colonel’s statement. It was almost
assured in a war, especially a war being fought like the Vietnam War, that higher headquarters rarely ever understood the
situation of troops under fire. The colonel had made the mistake of assuming that because Youngbloode was a
company
commander, he still had a company to command.

“This is Puppy 01 … I’ve taken a
lot
of casualties…” Youngbloode didn’t want to give numbers over the unsecure radio.