Black Market (28 page)

Warner paused for only a second and looked up in the sky. They had broken out of the jungle and were in a growth of tall elephant
grass that was well over their heads. He had to slow down his pace repeatedly for the walking wounded and to listen for any
sign of the NVA. Twice he had to stop and check to see if they were still following him. No one had to be told that any noise
would give them away.

Artillery explosions echoed over the plateau as the escaping recon men eased through the tall grass. The big 175mm guns were
firing out of Vandergrift, sending shells all over the wide grass-covered plains. The accuracy of the big guns was too erratic
for them to have been used to protect the trapped team, but the brigade commander was using their fires to try to prevent
any NVA relief forces from linking up with the unit surrounding his trapped recon teams. Any aircraft flying over the area
was immediately under fire from large-caliber antiaircraft guns located in Laos and in the northern corner of the plateau.
The brigade commander realized that a very big battle was building up, and his concern shifted to his whole combat force and
the battalions that he had already deployed around Lang Vei.

The escape column had been gone for over three hours when Arnason heard movement in the jungle surrounding their small rock
fort. He slowly eased around in his fighting position until he could face the direction the threat was coming from.

Woods had heard the soft noise also and had reached for one of the M-26 hand grenades he had lined up in front of him. He
strained his ears to listen to the night sounds of the jungle. The insects were making noise all around the perimeter except
near the river. He heard the sound again and it came from the water. Woods’s first thought was that the NVA were sneaking
across the river and were planning on attacking from that direction. He low-crawled over to the edge of the cliff and pulled
the pin on the grenade, rolling over on his back so that he could toss the fragmentation device up and out over his head.

“Fuck!” The single whispered word rolled up over the edge of the cliff and was answered by another voice telling the first
to be quiet.

Arnason crawled on his stomach over to the edge of the sharp drop-off and peered over. He could just barely make out five
dark spots floating on small bundles of jungle vegetation below him. “
Pssst
! Americans!” Arnason whispered loud enough to be heard by the shadows. The reaction was immediate.

The closest dark bundle touched the shore. “Who are you?” The voice was very suspicious.

“Arnason.”

“We’re Marines … recon force.”

The other bundles of vegetation beached themselves in the shallow water at the base of the cliff. Arnason and Woods could
see by the shape of their shadows that they still had their backpacks. The Marines climbed the cliff with ease and rolled
over the lip up to where Arnason waited.

“Are there any more of you?” He whispered so low that it was hard to hear him.

“No, we were the northernmost team and haven’t seen anyone else until now.” The team leader kept searching the jungle as he
spoke. “What’s going on here?” His team members moved out around the dark rock fort and took up prone fighting positions.

“I’ve got two seriously wounded with me and another NCO.” Arnason nodded at Woods’s shadow. “We’ve been fighting the NVA all
day.”

“We haven’t fired a shot. We heard all the ruckus and decided to try and float out using the river.”

“It would have worked until you hit the shallows about a click downriver. The NVA have that stretch very well guarded.”

The wounded Marine stirred. Arnason slipped his hand over the moaning man’s mouth. The Marine team leader looked down at the
long shadow on the ground. “Can they be moved?”

“No.”

“Hmmm … then it looks like we’ll have to stay here with you-all.”

“That’s not necessary. We’re expecting a relief force in the morning.”

“That’s good. We’ll stay with you and go out with them too.” The Marine flashed a brief smile in the dim light. He made a
soft clicking sound and his men gathered around him and listened for a couple of seconds before dropping their packs and disappearing
in a fan-shaped formation in the jungle surrounding the small LZ.

An artillery shell exploded on the reverse side of the hill from the escaping column. All the men dropped instinctively and
tried melting into the sod. Shrapnel whistled overhead. Youngbloode low-crawled up to where Warner and Koski were.

“Close!” Youngbloode whispered.

Koski nodded back.

“Do you know where we’re at?”

Warner nodded and pointed. “A couple clicks from Lang Vei.” He slowly got back up on his feet and started walking again through
the elephant grass. Warner had noticed an hour earlier that the grass was getting lower. He used the barrel of his rifle and
his free hand to part the tall, slender blades in front of him, and he could see down in the shallow valley spread out below.
Lang Vei loomed in the moonlight.

Warner signaled with his hand for the captain to come forward and join him. He pointed.

Youngbloode took a deep breath. He had seriously thought that the NVA would have been waiting for them to break out of the
cordon. Actually, it had been a fairly easy walk. He reached into his side pocket and removed his URC-10. He knew that he
was close enough to risk making a call.

“Sack Jacket … Mud Puppy 01 … Over.”

The operator answered almost immediately.

“This is Puppy 01 … We’re just outside of Green Whiskey’s location and would like clearance to enter … Over.”

The brigade commander’s voice came on the line. “Puppy 01! Don’t move! Stay right where you are until I can clear a path for
you!” The colonel was nearly in shock. Youngbloode had to be somewhere near one of the infantry companies if he could see
Lang Vei, or if he was close enough to the camp to ask permission to enter. He looked at his watch and saw that it was almost
four in the morning.

Youngbloode turned the volume way down on his radio, held it up to his ear, and listened to the colonel make a half-dozen
calls to alert the units in the area that a friendly unit wanted to make a night passage. The escape column waited a little
less than an hour for the units to get the word out to their troops, and then the colonel gave him permission to move toward
the main gate to the Special Forces camp. The very first early morning rays of light made it easier to walk, and Warner veered
a little to his right so that he could approach the main gate at a better angle. The escape column hadn’t moved two hundred
meters when they ran into the perimeter of an infantry company that was dug in. They had been very close, and everyone in
the escape column knew that the line would have opened fire if they had run into them during the night. Luck had been very
much on their side, but in war, luck always made the difference between the winner and the loser.

The NVA commander had tried twice during the night to move a squad to probe the American position near the river, and both
times 4.2 rounds had driven them back. The regimental commander decided that he wasn’t going to waste any more of his men
in the attempt and that he would continue using the Americans as live bait for relief helicopters and infantry.

Morning brought a fury of activity around the Lang Vei Special Forces camp. The First Corps commander had committed all of
the air assets he had at his disposal to the developing fight on the Khe Sanh Plateau and had planned four B-52 Arc Light
diversions for first light in support of the infantry already on the ground. CH-47s lifted off the Vandergrift pads in a swarm
and flew out to Lang Vei, carrying 105mm howitzers underneath and crews with basic loads of ammo inside. Two batteries of
105s were being airlifted simultaneously, and very soon there would be twelve additional artillery tubes that could support
the developing battle.

Arnason looked down and saw his hand shaking uncontrollably. He knew that it was caused by the large number of amphetamines
he had been taking since the patrol had started. Woods was checking the wounded, who were still alive but in a very bad way.
They wouldn’t make it through another day.

The Arc Lights hit without warning. The B-52s had been flying so high that they couldn’t be heard, and the formation had assembled
above the South China Sea, putting their target areas into their computers. The far bank of the river shook, and huge pieces
of trees and dirt bounced over the water. The ground to the north of the cliffs shuddered and the sound was deafening. Arnason
grabbed for his ears and curled up in a tight ball on the ground. Two-thousand-pound bombs were landing as close as three
hundred meters away but sounded as if they were landing right on top of them. Shock waves pressed against their bodies, and
Woods was sure they were going to die.

The five Marines stumbled out of the edge of the jungle in shock from the Arc Light bombings taking place to their north,
south, and west. After a short delay a string of bombs went off to their east, three thousand meters in front of the advancing
American infantry.

Two Huey slicks and four gunships circled the small LZ minutes after the bombs had fallen. The first ship landed and Youngbloode
hopped out of one side as Koski leapt from the other. The two wounded Marines were put on stretchers by Army medics, the chopper
had lifted out, and the second one had landed before Arnason or Woods realized what had happened. All of them were suffering
from mild shell shock, and none of the five Marines, nor Arnason and Woods, could hear; they were temporarily deaf from the
concussion bombs that had been mixed in with the two thousand pounders.

Youngbloode and Koski helped them on the slick and slid in backward as the chopper banked over the river and gained altitude.
Woods watched the small battlefield disappear and licked his upper lip. He tasted blood and realized for the first time that
he was bleeding from his nose. He looked over at Arnason and saw that he was too, along with the Marines.

Youngbloode patted Woods’s shoulder and smiled. They were safe now.

Arnason leaned over and looked down at the ground flashing underneath the low-flying chopper. His hand was still shaking.
He had no way of knowing that the great battle for the Khe Sanh Plateau was just starting and it would last for years.

The Navy corpsmen hurried to remove the wounded men from the helicopter. The pilot had wisely decided to fly directly to the
large surgical hospital in Da Nang, rather than stop at one of the fire support bases and risk having to move the wounded
to another aircraft.

The crew chief walked around the olive drab aircraft and tried counting the bullet holes in the airframe. He gave up halfway
around the Huey and stopped walking. The pilot joined him and the two of them just stood there with their hands in their pockets,
staring in amazement over how many hits the chopper had taken while they remained airborne.

Sergeant Welburg was lifted out of the helicopter and placed on a stretcher, where a team of corpsmen started cutting his
uniform off his body, using heavy-duty scissors that looked like pruning shears. Welburg groaned and fluttered his eyes. He
had been riding underneath a couple of the seriously wounded Marines, and his hair and body were caked with blood. The cold
ground water coming from the hose the corpsman used to wash him off made Welburg shiver involuntarily.

“I can’t find any wounds on this one.” The corpsman tried rolling him over using his free hand, and then called for help from
a nearby doctor. The corpsman washed down Welburg’s backside and still couldn’t find any wounds.

The doctor opened Welburg’s eyelid and shined a bright beam from his penlight directly into the sergeant’s cornea. The eye
dilated instantly.

“How you feeling, soldier?” The doctor had seen cases like this one before and didn’t want to waste any of his time.

Welburg didn’t answer.

The doctor leaned over and whispered in Welburg’s ear. “You should be taken out and shot for faking being wounded!” The doctor
turned to leave the stretcher Welburg was on and looked back over his shoulder. “And I’m a liberal!”

Welburg struggled to sit up on the blood-stained canvas stretcher. “Ugh! What’s going on? … Where am I?”

The doctor ignored him and left to attend a bleeding Marine.

Captain Youngbloode paused on the step leading up to the side door of his orderly room and stared at the neatly printed sign.
He didn’t feel very much like a black tiger. He felt drained of everything. The brigade commander had declared his company
nonoperational because of the huge number of casualties the unit had taken in the now-famous river fight. The NVA had lost
over seven hundred men to the recon units’ accurate control of the air strikes and artillery. Youngbloode had proven his theory
that recon teams could hide in the jungle and call in devastating firepower on enemy units. The senior staff officers would
have to make some major modifications in the deployment procedures for the recon teams, but all in all, the concept worked.