Fields of Fire (12 page)

“Too much shit in there, man.”

Hodges whispered. “It's the right trail, ain't it? We follow it for a click and we're there.”

Cat Man shook his head. Snake looked coolly at Hodges. “Cat Man's right, Lieutenant. We take the trail, we may never make it there. Too many dogs and water bulls, shit like that. They'll start barking and grunting and the gooks'll hear us coming, blow our asses away. Don't take that treeline, sir.”

Hodges nodded, acquiescing. Then, as an afterthought: “You can find the cemetery all right from the paddy?”

Cat Man measured him without emotion. Starting from a known point, his mind was its own map. “Yes, sir.”

The column cut quickly through the trees. Goodrich moved inside them, was enveloped by the black haunt of empty hootches, mushroom trees, thick high sawgrass where every inch a shadowed ghoul lurked, waiting. Will I die tonight? How embarrassing that would be: to die on my first patrol. He softly clicked his weapon off “safe,” then thought of tripping over Ottenburger again and accidentally killing him, and clicked it back.

Finally back into the open paddy again. He felt the welcome scrape of rice along his legs, waited briefly for the monster to attack and kill him from behind, then focused his fear to the front once more. The whole black night was a laughing killer, waiting for its moment.

Goodrich's ears were filled with clonking metal, whispered curses, and his own stomps from stumbles into potholes and low unseen dikes. Finally they reached the low mounds of the cemetery. He viewed its haunting isolation as a haven from the swishing madness.

Hodges placed the machine gun quickly on the mound nearest the trail. Snake began to position his squad behind various graves, making a tight perimeter.

Across the trail, a hundred meters distant, was a clump of trees shot with a dozen scraggly hootches. It was off the trail, an island in more rice, laced to the other villes by another narrow treeline. Nam An (2). Hodges peered intently at the ville. A small mote of light flickered inside the dark shadows of trees and hootches. He remembered that no lights were to be on in villages after sunset. The villagers know that, he mused.

Hodges approached Snake, who was setting in two men behind a mound. “That light mean anything?”

Snake squinted. His hands grasped clumps of grass on the mound. He bolted toward the unpositioned squad members.

“Open fire on that ville!”

The cemetery erupted as tracers reached toward Nam An (2). Rounds poured furiously for a few quick seconds, then there was a moment of silence: in their excitement, all had emptied the first magazine of ammo at the same time.

Hodges caught up with Snake. “What's going on?”

But now the ville responded, answering Hodges’ question. Muzzle flashes by the hootches, high cacophony of AK bullets overhead, flash-booms of B-40 rockets, their large grenades a rash of second booms around the cemetery. A .50-caliber machine gun tore ragged holes in slow, heavy bursts above their heads.

“Fire the LAAW!” Speedy cut loose. There was a belch of fire on his shoulder, then a boom in the ville. “Fire the LAAW!” Another belch, another boom. A hootch in the ville was now in flames. Hodges could see urgent shadows near the flames, creeping to new places. What do you know, he marveled. Gooks.

Snake now had the whole patrol in place, firing steadily at the treeline with a slow, well-aimed pressure. Hodges peered at the ville for another moment, entranced. I never would have known. Then he remembered that he had an on-call target right on top of it.

Radio. He turned for Flaky. Flaky was gone. “Fairchild!” Hodges searched for a moment and found him lying flat behind a mound, calmly oblivious in his cowardice. “Come on. Hurry up.” Flaky came sullenly, like a dog with his tail tucked. Hodges grabbed the handset off the radio.

“Fire Alpha Delta four-oh-seven!”

A mocking hiss, unanswering, on the other end. Finally, “Who is this?”

Hodges swore. “Come on, goddamn it. This is Three Actual. Give me Six. Somebody. Hurry up. Contact mission.” The .50-cal bullets cut lower now, just above the mounds.

The company commander came on the net. “Whatcha got, Three Actual?”

Hodges peered into the village again. Two hootches burned. Figures scampered near the flames. Two more LAAWs boomed in the cemetery. His machine gun poured tracers into the village in a low, steadily sweeping line. Be cool, he told himself. “I don't know.” He thought another moment. “Gooks in a ville. I got an on-call right on top of it. Alpha Delta four-oh-seven.”

The company commander was crisp, professional, removed. “Roger, understand four-zero-seven. Got a direction on that?”

Direction. Damn. “Wait one.” He pulled his compass out and peered carefully over a grave, shooting an azimuth at a flaming hootch. He tried to read the luminous dial under the hootch's burn. South. Something like that. He thought to shoot a more accurate azimuth but a B-40 rocket slammed onto the trail just down from him and he ducked behind the mound again. South is fine. “Thirty-two hundred. Danger close.”

“Roger, understand thirty-two hundred, danger close. How close?”

The .50 cal just above his head. Be cool. “Real close.” Not good enough. “ ’Bout a hundred meters.”

“Roger. Stand by.”

“Could you hurry?”

No answer. The radio was once more a silent hiss.

GOODRICH half-lay, half-crouched behind a grave, reloading magazines. He pulled a clip out from his bandoleer, fit the charger guide into the magazine, then clumsily dropped the ammunition. He searched frantically in the high, brittle grass for the lost bullets, but felt naked stooping away from the sanctum of his mound, and abandoned his search. He pulled out another clip and jammed it down the charger guide, bending the clip in his petrified fury, and ten bullets bounced like pearls from a broken necklace through his lap, lost among the high weeds in the darkened night. He leaned over, trying to catch the last of them; and stared up at two spindly, tattooed arms that hung down from a crouching frame.

Snake grimaced impatiently, shaking his head. “You stupid shit. What the hell you doing? You shoulda loaded those before. Hurry up. Quit bagging it, Senator.”

An AK-47 burst cracked on top of the grave, four digging rounds that threw up puffs of dust. Snake moved off to check the other positions. He took a couple of steps, then turned back to Goodrich. “C'mon, Senator. Put out rounds.”

HISS of the radio was finally broken. “Three, Six. Stand by for shot.”

Hodges keyed the handset, peeping the ville. “Roger, Six.” He screamed to the patrol. “Stand by for shot!”

“Shot out.”

“Shot out!” A metallic double bang floated across the fields from An Hoa. They crouched low in the graves and in one instant a phosphorescent flash erupted just on the other side of the mounds joined by another that smoked whitely twenty meters down the trail. The patrol was frozen behind the mounds now, staring uneasily at Hodges: you trying to kill us?

“Ah—add a hundred. Fire for effect.”

An eternity that was perhaps two minutes. “Stand by for shot.”

“Roger.” Hodges screamed, “Stand by for shot!” The patrol hugged the bottom of the mounds this time, fearful of Hodges’ talents.

The rounds impacted with steady earnest crunches that began just outside the ville and spanned its width. They threw up cloudlets of dust, pieces of flashing hootches. Snake and Phony nudged each other from behind one mound.

Snake nodded toward the ville. Another series of rounds dug into it. “See. I told you.”

Phony popped a wad of gum, nodding judiciously with approval. “Well, whatta you know. Get some, Lieutenant Hodges.”

Three repeats on the ville. Explosions saturated the trees, filling the air with a low layer of dust that had raised from riven fields among the hootches. The firing from the ville ceased. Hodges gloated.

Then there was a heavy burst, a dozen AKs spitting angrily far to their right. Across three hundred meters of reaching rice, another village rose on a low hill thick with trees and squatting bushes. Dai Khuong (4).

Snake tightened the perimeter into two-man positions and ordered them all to hold their fire. Then he crept over to Hodges.

“Hey, Lieutenant. We could really be in the shit. We better lay chilly til we scope 'em out. They could be moving on us. Might really do us if they get the drop on us.”

“Anybody hit?”

“Wild Man. Tee-Tee. He's grooving on it. No sweat.”

Hodges nodded. The AKs started from Dai Khuong again and he remembered he had an on-call on that village, too. Man, I am a thorough son of a bitch, he gloated.

On the radio. Dai Khuong was a repeat of Nam An (2). And, later in the night, Nam An (1), three hundred meters to the north, directly on the other side of the patrol from their first encounter in Nam An (2). The patrol passed the night under high, sporadic bursts from three sides, one man up and one sleeping at each position.

When Nam An (1) opened up Snake crawled casually to Hodges. It was the key he had been waiting for. “No sweat, Lieutenant. They're just screwing with us.” It was three o'clock. “If they were really gonna try and do us they wouldn't be up there. It's too late. They gotta make their hat most ricky-tick.” He allowed Hodges a small grin. “Nice job on the art'y. Sir.”

“You ain't seen nothing yet.”

DEEP blue slivers in the eastern sky, mosquito slaps and grunts, weapons wet with dew. The last round of security checks on the radio. In the near ville an early rooster crowed lonesomely. Dawn. Hodges listened to the rooster, wondering how it had survived the artillery of the night before. Then he smiled a bit perversely to himself: let's see if it makes it through this.

Flaky lay against the bottom of a mound, helmet forward over his eyes, the radio handset stuck inside the helmet. There was a muffled squawk and he reached languidly for the handset and keyed it, speaking sleepily.

“Go, six.” Short pause. “Roger that.” He turned to Hodges, who was watching the ville emerge eerily in front of the bluing sky, as if a great TV picture tube were slowly warming up. “Guns up on the T.O.T., Lieutenant.”

“Tell 'em to go ahead.”

“Yes, sir.” Flaky keyed the handset again, still sprawled against the mound. “Six, three.” Pause. “Let 'er eat.”

Hodges strode to the rear of the cemetery and awakened Snake, who had curled up in the high grass inside his poncho liner. “Saddle 'em up. Let's go.”

Steady thunks from miles away, a rhythm, interminable, of mortars popping out of tubes. Deep blue had surrendered to a mix of gray: the sun lurked just beyond the edge of the world. Nam An (2) became saturated with explosions, mixes of phosphorous and high-explosive shells that rained down like a steady hailstorm, raising jets of dirt like water spurts. Round after round, like the explosions of cylinders in a slowly idling engine.

The thunking tubes in the distance ceased, the last rounds still latent in the air, and the patrol moved out. Snake's squad made a wide line and Hodges and the gun team followed in trace. Snake paced just behind his squad, dispersing the advancing men, controlling the rate, keeping them on line. They advanced toward the ville, twenty meters apart, weapons pointed forward.

The last mortar exploded inside the trees and there was a moment of nerve-shattering silence. The patrol moved cautiously toward the gloomy mist of smoke and dust, watching for movement. In the ville the rooster crowed again, tentatively, as if his earlier effort had beckoned a falling sky. Hodges smiled tightly: how the hell did it make it?

Goodrich watched the phosphorescent fog anxiously, his weapon pointing forward from his waist. The gloom of the village prepared to envelop him. Twenty meters. Behind him, Snake chanted tersely.

“If they hit us it'll be most ricky-tick. If it moves blow it away. If it moves blow it away.”

Something stirred in the brush to his right. Phony laced it with a short, perfunctory burst, not even breaking stride. It was a dog. It moaned like a fading record. OWW-W-w-ww. Phony chuckled softly and grinned. Ten meters from the outer trees.

In front of Goodrich a pajama-clad figure rustled and then crouched, on the porch of a burnt-out hootch. Goodrich saw a black sleeve and inhaled sharply, startled, then fired three quick rounds. The figure ran to the corner of the hootch. Goodrich fired a full magazine, spraying the entire hootch without aiming, and dropped heavily behind a near dike. The whole patrol then opened up on the village. This is it, thought Goodrich. Five feet away they'll kill us all now no using mortars on them no getting out of it we're dead.

The patrol had fired on full automatic, and all firing stopped as the squad changed magazines in unison. The gun team jogged cautiously up to a dike and prepared to fire. The ville was silent. No return fire. Snake called to the patrol. “Hold your fire!” He crawled over to Goodrich. “Whatcha shoot at, Senator?”

“In the hootch. Black pajamas. I dunno.”

The patrol lay flat along the edge of the village, peering into it. Snake called loudly to the hootch. “Lai day! Lai day, you motherfucker!”

No movement. Snake screamed again and fired a round into the hootch. There was a whimpered answer from the hootch's corner. Mumble mumble mumble whimper Khong biet whimper mumble.

Snake called to Hodges. “It's a mamasan, Lieutenant.”

“Move out, then. Be careful, though.”

The patrol picked up, rushing past the first hootches, and set up security. Hodges put the machine gun on top of one family bunker, covering a tree-lined path, and walked into the burnt-out hootch. Goodrich and Snake stood in one corner, peering down at the woman. Speedy and Burgie were busily searching for contraband through random piles of burnt matting, pots, and mackerel cans.

The wounded woman was curled in a corner, weeping, holding one shoulder. Her coarse black hair was pulled into a loose bun and her lips were stained red by betel nut, making her look as if she had begun to paint herself up for a welcoming party. Her teeth were purplish-black after years of chewing the numbing betel nut. She turned pained eyes up from her lined, puffy face and pleaded with the hulking figures that stared down at her. Mumble mumble mumble whimper khong biet mumble honcho mumble bac se.