Fields of Fire (17 page)

Austin cursed to himself as Hodges approached, seeming almost to revel in his bleeding. “Goddamn, Lieutenant. I never heard a fucking thing. Oh, Jesus.” Austin's tight mouth experimented with its own versions of wonderment and disbelief. He managed a small smile, and stroked a slippery wet undershirt. “Sorry, Lieutenant. Looks like you're gonna have to get yourself a new Papa Sierra. I won't be back.”

Hodges dragged Austin by the belt toward Phony's bunker. Austin screamed in painful protest to the tugs. “Hold on, Sarge. I'll get you a doc, man. And you know we're all gonna miss you.”

SICKENING crunches behind them, walking toward them, unstoppable, like a flash flood. TwirlBoom TwirlBoom TwirlBoom. Eighty-one-millimeter mortars, walking toward the treeline. TwirlBoom just behind them TwirlBoom just in front of them TwirlBoom inside the trees.

Speedy grabbed the radio handset and whispered urgently. “Cease fire! Cease fire, goddamn it!” Pause. “The mortars. Three Charlie. Charlie! You're blowing us away with your mortars! We're too close!” Pause. “I don't give a fuck about the gun, man! Start giving a fuck about us!”

Another pause. Speedy turned wryly to Ottenburger. “It's Kersey. Cabron. He says it's for our own good.” Burgie grimaced tightly. “Lucky us.”

A wounded sapper dangled in the wire, wrapped up in the concertina where the NVA had first broken into the compound. He was clearly visible under the illumination flares, thirty meters out, dressed in shorts and banded with strings of ropes on his arms and legs that isolated his blood in eight-inch instant tourniquets.

Snake studied him. His left leg was off above the knee and his midsection had been pierced. Snake wondered absently what had hit him. They were inside the compound before anybody had a chance, he mused. Stupid shit prob'ly got in the way of his own bangalore torpedo.

The sapper appeared comfortable, not attempting to disengage himself from the jags of metal, occasionally wiggling an arm to ponder its movement, now and again lifting his head to examine the bunkers full of Marines who peered back at him.

And every now and then he implored the shadows, almost comically, “Chieu hoi,” uttering those magic words of surrender as if he had ventured all the way to that barbed stopping point in order to defect. As if he had been wrongly demolished while crossing the wired threshold over to the Other Side.

“Chieu hoi!”

Snake shook his head, laughing at Chieu Hoi on the wire. On the far side of the perimeter Chieu Hoi's comrades fought fiercely, still controlling several artillery bunkers. There were booms, scattered bursts of weapons in the tent section; 106s and artillery boomed at clumps outside the wire; the 12.7 tore angry, ragged holes in the air.

“Chieu-u-u-u-u hoi. Chieu-u-u-u-u-u hoi.” Illumination flares dangled over him and he hung delicately from his bed of wire, the banded stump of leg quivering. Chieu Hoi managed a smile. To his right another fierce eruption as a reaction squad attempted to root his comrades from their bunkers.

“Chieu hoi,” he said, with urgent logic.

Finally Snake could endure it no longer. He screamed over to Cat Man's bunker. “Cannonball, shut that fucker up.” Thunk boom. Blooper. The explosion sprinkled the sapper with new holes. He rocked slightly on his bed of concertina.

He moaned now. It was worse. He began a mumbling argument with himself, perhaps cursing the lying pamphleteer who taught him the magic phrase that did not work. He decided to try again. He looked toward the bunkers, smiling hopefully, and instructed them once again. “Chieu hoi.” Then, very quickly: “Chieuhoi.”

“Shut u-u-u-u-p!” It was unclear who yelled it. Someone shot Chieu Hoi. Another rifle joined. Another. Finally they stopped. Down the perimeter the reaction squad still fought fiercely.

“MOVE?” Speedy was incredulous. “Where the fuck are we supposed to move to?” He listened for another moment. “Wait a minute.” Pause. “Fuck the Colonel, wait a minute.” He turned to the team. “Kersey says we gotta move. Says they're calling in eight-inchers from An Hoa to knock the twelve-seven out, and we're on gun-target line.”

Smitty glowered in the dark. He had been in Vietnam a week. “I say stay, man. I ain't moving.”

Ottenburger shook his head. “Ever seen an eight-incher land? We gotta move.” He appeared drained, beaten. “We are truly fucked, man.”

The gun opened up again, ragged rounds above their heads, as if to rankle them. Goodrich looked over to Speedy, trying to remain cool but visibly trembling. “Where?”

“I don't know. Two hundred meters left or right, he says. Two hundred fucking meters.” Speedy lay flat, hugging his poncho liner in his misery. “Got any ideas?”

Ottenburger glanced over the narrow dip of streambed. He shuddered. “It ain't gonna work.”

Speedy pondered it darkly, his wide face pushed into his poncho liner. Finally, he decided. “We'll crawl down the streambed. Stay low, find a good spot, lay chilly.”

He grabbed the handset and keyed it. “This is Three Charlie. We're going to the left, down the streambed.” Pause. “I don't know where it goes.” He eyed Burgie ironically. “Probly to the gook CP.” Pause. “Well, give us fifteen minutes. We're gonna be crawling.”

Speedy tucked the handset into his helmet band and turned to Goodrich. “Get going, Senator. Stay low.”

Goodrich did not want to leave. He began to fold his poncho liner. Maybe it'll be over by the time I fold it, he mused, comfortable with his irrationality.

Speedy crawled up and pushed him. “C'mon, stupid. Get going.”

Smitty was still defiant. “Screw it. I still say stay, man.”

Speedy was becoming excited. “Cool it, boot! We gotta go!”

The gun opened up again. Smitty lay flat. “I'm staying.”

“Good-bye.” Speedy nodded urgently to Goodrich. “Get going.”

Goodrich began to crawl, staying very low, pushing the grass flat with one hand and dragging his rifle with the other. Every five or ten feet he stopped, listening to the front. Behind him Smitty rushed to catch up with the team. “Goddamn it, wait up!”

The gun opened up again, blasting the perimeter. Goodrich listened. It sounded far away, no longer threatening. He sensed that the team had at last evaded it, and came to his hands and knees, crawling faster. He wanted to reach the new position and stop moving.

Pop. An illumination flare burst above the team. Pop. Another. Pop. Another. Speedy called angrily in a hoarse whisper, “Get down, man! Freeze!”

They all lay flat. The flares burned brightly, swinging lazily on their parachutes, day-brightening the field. Speedy talked excitedly into the handset. “Tell 'em to cut the illum, man! We're sitting ducks out here! Charlie!

Three Charlie!” Finally the last flare went dead. Goodrich lay flat for another moment, listening for movement. Speedy urged him again. “Get moving, Senator! Hurry up!” Goodrich moved to his knees and crawled quickly down the streambed.

ON the point bunker of the compound a man sat beside a large, ominous weapon, staring determinedly into an L-shaped site, carefully cranking two wheels. He caught the movement, saw the shadows when the flare popped. He sighted in under the illumination, then waited for it to burn out so the backs would raise above the ditch again. His assistant gunner had been shot by the twelve-seven two hours before. Now comes payback, he thought grimly.

“Fire the one-oh-six!” There was a terrific boom, a white-hot flash of back blast. He grinned meanly. Take that, you gook motherfuckers.

And then a figure running along the ditch that connected the bunkers, hands in the air, screaming to the gunner:

“Don't fire! Oh, no no no! Didn't you get the word? That's the LP!”

White flash distant, heavy rush just after him, like a mini-second of violent hailstorm. Then an angry, rolling boom. Gunner was one inch of handcrank off. The fleshette round erupted just up the hill, its centerpoint in back of Smitty. Nine thousand dart-shaped nails saturated that portion of the field, filled the ditch, and drove Smitty and Speedy lifeless against the streambank.

Goodrich turned when the boom rolled down and gasped. They were both caught in the middle of a crawl, reaching down the streambed for the haven from the eight-inchers. He stared, feeling isolated and abandoned, and then remarked absently to himself, through stark terror, about the surrealism of it. They aren't even bloodied, he noted. It's as if a referee stepped in and blew a whistle, removing them from a game. Tweeeet. You're dead. You, too. You moved when a flare was up and you got it. Now in a real war …

But they were really dead. The darts had saturated them so quickly that they did not bleed, as if they both died in the middle of a heartbeat that never finished, never pushed the blood out of the myriad of holes.

Goodrich was in a frozen panic. That was our own gun. They're all trying to kill us. They want us dead. Everybody wants us dead. Speedy hated me and now he's dead. I'm not going to make it but Speedy's dead.

“Senator.” Ottenburger spoke calmly, almost sleepily. “Hey, Senator. Give me a hand, huh?”

Burgie. Oh, God. How could I forget about Burgie?

Ottenburger lay, half-hidden by sawgrass, only three feet behind Goodrich. Goodrich turned slowly in the streambed, careful not to raise his body off the ground, and crawled the inches to Burgie's face. Burgie smiled winsomely under the thin moustache, his eyes pleading with Goodrich.

Say it isn't so, Senator.

“I can't feel either leg.” Ottenburger continued to smile, the eyes begging Goodrich to perform some miracle. “It's all cold, man. Everything's just cold.”

Goodrich stared back uncertainly, wishing for some word that would make the past two minutes go away. Burgie's arms and face were unscratched. Maybe, thought Goodrich … He parted the sawgrass where the blast had spun Burgie's lower parts. The grass was wet. Burgie was a dripping ooze from the middle of his waist to his ankles.

Goodrich inhaled the heavy rich blood odor, felt his fingers slide along the oil-slick fabric over Burgie's legs, and gagged. He caught himself, and lifted Burgie's shirt to try to examine the middle parts. Then he could not hold back. He vomited into the grass, inches from Ottenburger's blood pool.

Burgie eyed him, still smiling, still hoping. “Pretty bad, huh, Senator?”

Goodrich kept his head in the grass. He retched again. I can't look at him, he thought to himself. There's nothing I can do. Can't tie him off. Can't patch him up. Can't get him out of here. Behind him, the gun opened up on the compound again.

Maybe I can call.

He inched down to Speedy's carcass and took the handset from under him. The radio was dead. He had known it would be. At least I won't have to look at Burgie if I play with it, he reasoned. He turned the knobs, banged it gently and absently keyed the handset, still petrified of the gun team in the treeline. No effect. The radio was shot to hell.

There were a lot of soldiers in the treeline. He could hear them whispering and he thought he could smell them. He thought they were laughing, celebrating, but he didn't know Vietnamese so it was just silly gook talk, up and down the music scale. He thought they stank but it could have been a waterbull pen in the ville. He thought he was bleeding all over, dripping off his crotch and chest, but it could have been sweat, or Burgie's blood, or his own vomit. His eyes burned and his arms hurt where they had scraped against the coarse sawgrass blades. He thought his arms bled, too, from the grassblades. But it could have been sweat. Or Burgie.

“Senator.” The same soft, pleading voice. “Hey. Help me, man. Help me, Senator.”

Goodrich turned and crawled back toward Ottenburger, pulling cautiously on the grass and pushing with his toes. Ottenburger eyed him sleepily, then burped up a stream of blood. Oh, my God, thought Goodrich. His stomach, too.

“It's all cold, Senator. Can you patch me up?” Burgie still grinned, sleepily.

The first eight-incher hit the treeline, with a terrifying, huge explosion that rent the earth, sending tree roots and huge clods dancing in the air. Goodrich and Ottenburger were covered with a veil of fresh-erupted earth.

“Help me, Senator.” Then, with numb finality, “I'm gonna die, aren't I? You're just waiting for me to die.” Burgie burped again. “Oh, God. Can't you patch me up?”

Goodrich peered into the ice-blue eyes, but could not hold them. “You're O.K., Burgie. You just need a doc, that's all.” There was a moment of silence as all near firing abated. Goodrich felt certain that nearby enemy soldiers would hear them. “Now, hold it down, O.K., Burgie? No noise, man.”

Burgie did not answer. He continued to stare at Goodrich through calm, heavy-lidded eyes. Goodrich was becoming unnerved, feeling damned by the dying Burgie.

“Patch me up, O.K., Senator? Help me, man.”

“You need a doc.”

Another earth eruption, an explosion so loud and close that it seemed to come from inside, to be a living part. Burgie still stared, oblivious to the dirt shower. His voice took on a fading, pleading tone, yet he still smiled hopefully.

“Can't you stop it?”

I'm in hell, thought Goodrich, over and over. I'm in hell. He crawled to Burgie's face because he was too afraid to whisper from three feet away. His own face was contorted in its fear and anguish. “I can't.”

“I'm gonna die. Oh, Buddhist Priest. I'm only nineteen. It's cold, Senator.”

“You'll be all right.”

“Don't leave me, Senator. Oh, God. Don't leave me, man.”

“I won't, Burgie. I won't leave you. Now, hold it down. O.K.?”

FIRST light. The rubble of the chapel smoked lazily, little curls of gray still reaching from the heap of blackened sandbags. There was an occasional, isolated burst of rifle fire as the last of the sappers were rooted out of bunkers and tents. The mess-hall Gunny opened up his supply tent and found an NVA soldier nonchalantly chewing on a load of bread, like a stuporous rat. The Gunny cut him down, sending bullets through the rations. The soldier lay dead in a pool of sugared water from canned fruit.

Along the perimeter's edge, the wire held dozens of charred treasures, blown to bits, scorched, decapitated. A mechanical mule drove along the dirt road, loading bodies to be buried later in a mass entombment outside the compound.