Fields of Fire (30 page)

Waterbull leaned against the back wall of his fighting hole. Behind him, Bagger and Little Mac slept fitfully under a low poncho hootch. He wore the third poncho. It would be rotated with the watch. The poncho hood was over his ears, underneath his helmet. He did not hear the night. He heard himself when his body rustled. He heard the rain's explosions when he stood still.

Well, they won't mortar us, he reasoned. And if they do we'll hear those bloopy short rounds, 'cause the increments will get wet and won't ignite, and we'll hear 'em blow up their own people. Listen to 'em scream like that night out in the La Thaps. He chuckled, in spite of his discomfort. Happens like that when it rains. People don't think gooks screw up, people think they're Supermen and all, should have heard 'em that night.

He peered in front of him. There was a wall of steamy grass, four feet high, well over his head as he stood inside the fighting hole. He and Bagger and Little Mac had matted down a few feet of the grass, primarily in order to dig cat holes to defecate in. But I can't see a damn thing, Waterbull lamented again. May as well not be standing here. Don't do no good. Besides, no gook in his right mind would go out in this stuff. Old Luke the Gook ain't dumb. He knows when to come in outa the rain. How the hell they gonna find us out in the middle of all this damn grass, anyway? I know where we are, and I couldn't find us if I went out past that cat hole right there. Like Cannonball says: they ain't no wa-a-a-a-ay, man.

His mind wandered. He began to think of his Bangkok whore. The freckles danced in the dark. His fat face grinned hugely, mindless of the splashing rain that beat against it. That little gal sure—well, there just ain't any other word for it. That gal could just plain fuck. He remembered the delicate body, the breasts that filled both his massive hands, springy, soft as velvet. The responsive nipples that rose when touched. The way she would moan comfortably when he rolled the nipples with his tongue. The firm, tight hips that danced crazily, seeking him. The warmth, the tightness of her liquid insides.

He was hard. He fondled himself underneath his poncho, remembering the first time with her. He set his rifle down inside the fighting hole and reached for his wallet. Maybe I can see that picture if I hold it close enough. He grinned, stroking himself. Hell. Everybody does it. Like they say: it ain't much, but it's better than a wet dream.

He pulled the wallet out, unwrapping it from its protective plastic bag, and found the transparent picture holder. He flipped through it until she stared back at him in the dark. Her legs were crossed, the magnificent breasts standing firm and beautiful, aching to be touched. He held the picture inches from his face, still fondling himself. Oh, man. To bite those tits right now.

In front of him, two short strides away, a man shivered in the wet grass, feeling his adrenaline pump explosively. He had been watching Waterbull for several minutes, waiting. The perimeter had not been difficult to locate. There was the trail, then the mattings of sawgrass: recent, ephemeral paths that led to the perimeter. And even though the rain washed the air continuously, there had been the odor from the cat holes: a hundred odorous droppings, ringing the perimeter like a stench-filled moat. The man inhaled deeply, curled his legs like a cat preparing to leap, and charged.

There was an instant of thrashing to Waterbull's front, like a deer breaking cover. Waterbull lowered his wallet from just before his eyes, and for an agonizing, elongated moment stared into the face of an equally terrified, resolved attacker. Each feature of the man luminesced in that instant, as if he glowed from inside in the foggy dark. Waterbull came to know his attacker's face as well as he knew his own. The heavy eyebrows, arched, the taut, tight skin, the narrow bridge of nose that flared down to wide, fat nostrils. The thick lips set firmly, determined, over a long, narrow chin. The whole face, wildly determined.

In the millisecond that seemed an hour to Waterbull, the time it took for his grimacing attacker to take his first revealing stride, he thought to do a dozen things, wondered why his body could not perform each desired act. He managed to drop his wallet. He even attempted to reach his weapon, lying two feet, a million hopeless miles, beyond his grasp. He reached for it and the bolting figure triggered his own weapon, hitting Waterbull in three places with a burst of automatic rifle dealt from perhaps four feet away. One burst. His attacker dashed past him and was inside the perimeter, lost in the high grass.

Bagger had been slumbering fitfully just behind the hole. His sleep had been mere dozings, interrupted by the fear that had turned his eyes gaunt, brought him to the edge of explosion. He had started when the attacker smashed through the grass toward Waterbull, and instinctively rolled from under his poncho hootch into the grass beside it. He lay dumbstruck, groping for his weapon, as Waterbull was shot. Now he hid, still silent, as a dozen other forms rushed past him.

Another automatic blast ripped through the low poncho hootch. Little Mac was shot through both legs. He thought to grab his weapon, to shout a warning to the rest of the perimeter, but observed the shadowed string of soldiers running past him and wisely lay still, pretending death.

The shadows disappeared, deep inside the perimeter. They crawled in the sawgrass, undiscoverable. It was impossible to organize a defense against them. They mixed among the Marines, concealed in the grass. In the middle of the perimeter there was a clearing, but even it was clouded by thickets of bushes, clumps of grass. The attackers hid, tossing grenades at positions from inside the lines, harassing command posts. Each position was isolated in its own grassbed. Wild rifle fire crisscrossed the inside of the perimeter, aimed at shadows, imaginary ghouls.

The perimeter was tightly drawn, its fighting holes very close in the choking sawgrass. Ten meters down from Waterbull, Snake squatted in a fighting hole, next to Cannonball. Cat Man was in another, just next to them. They had heard the cracks of rifle fire and comprehended that Waterbull's team was being overrun, but remained deep inside their own holes. In the killer weeds, any man who moved might be shot.

On the other side of Waterbull, Goodrich knelt in his hole with Cornbread, peering into the black interior of the perimeter. Next to them were Baby Cakes and Ogre, a few feet away.

Goodrich searched for movement, listened for cries from Waterbull's position. He was terrified beyond words. Help me, Senator. Rifle fire burst randomly. Can't you stop it? Grenades from unseen places. You're just waiting for me to die.

He turned to an equally terrified Cornbread. “Do you think we should try to help them?”

Cornbread's eyes were round and luminescent inside his wet black face. He answered in a hoarse whisper. “Ah cain't do it.”

A grenade dropped near them from nowhere, and exploded a few feet in front of them. It boomed loudly, although most of its shrapnel was absorbed by the soft, wet dirt. The two were silent for a moment, watching, their rifles pointed toward the center of the perimeter.

Finally, Ogre leaned over from his hole. “One thing you ain't is dumb, Cornbread.” Boom. Another grenade.

The sappers gave the impression of being ubiquitous. There were explosions, crimson trails of tracers everywhere. Bagger still lay frozen in the grass, too petrified to crawl five feet over to Little Mac, much less to examine Waterbull. Little Mac still pretended death, too frightened to call Bagger. The perimeter was small, and totally overrun: a shout would bring the Boogeyman.

For three hours the sappers terrorized the company. No supporting arms were called: the only option would be to call artillery on their own position, and there were not enough casualties to justify such a desperate measure. Artillery illumination was used, but it merely heightened the shadows, increased the volume of anxious tracers aimed at nothing.

Finally, on their own volition, the sappers left. They gathered, overran a machine-gun position on the far side of the perimeter, took the gun with them, and even dragged two Marines twenty yards into the weeds.

The perimeter quietened slowly, even after the enemy soldiers had left. Grenades went off, tracers flew, aimed at imagined targets, shadows in the weeds. Bagger lay for another half-hour before he dared to speak to Little Mac. His voice was constricted, guilt-ridden at its own terror.

“Mac. Hey. Are you O.K.?”

Little Mac also spoke hesitantly, remembering the string of burdened soldiers that had all but stepped on him a few hours ago. “I need a doc, Bagger. Can you get me a doc? Go get Rabbit.”

Bagger hesitated, shivering in the wet grass, then crawled slowly, reluctantly, toward the command post.

Baby Cakes had found Waterbull. The huge redhead was unconscious, but still alive. Baby Cakes tore the poncho off Waterbull, feeling in the rainy dark for his wounds. He spoke ironically as he worked. “Got your peter out, huh, Bull Man? Can't get enough of that whore. Lucky you're so damn big. Big dude like you would take a year to bleed to death. Wake up, Bull.”

LIEUTENANT Rock Man was among those killed by the sappers. The medevac helicopters would not take the dead out until daylight. Lieutenant Shaw, who was Rock Man's best friend and the commander of the weapons platoon, came out on the morning helicopter, returning from a visit to Da Nang that he had somehow wangled out of Captain Crazy.

Shaw had not known that Rock Man was dead. He trotted off the helicopter and began jogging toward the company command post, fighting the swaying sawgrass, holding onto his helmet as he ran, and he bumped into two Marines carrying Rock Man's corpse onto the waiting chopper.

Rock Man was waxy and stiff. Shaw stared at his dead friend in disbelief as the two men lumbered past him. Then he threw up. The helicopter rotorwash flung his vomit back onto his clothes. And Lieutenant Shaw flung himself back into the helicopter. They would not see him again.

Two days later there would be a message from the company rear that Shaw was now on the regimental staff.

THEY swept the high grass of their own perimeter in the humid morning heat, a half-dozen squad patrols combing the weeds for enemy. They found five sappers, two of them alive. The two prisoners were brought to the company CP. One had been shot in the midsection, a bullet having pierced his stomach lining, leaving a tear where a part of his intestine now bulged, as if he wore a foot-long sausage near his belt. The other had been shot through the hip and through the shoulder. His uniform was soaked, top and bottom, with blood.

They gathered around the prisoners, a continually changing group of perhaps twenty men. They wanted the prisoners to die. If they died there would be two more kills, parity for their own deaths the night before. If the prisoners lived, they would not make the tote board that tallied ratios.

The prisoner with the bulging intestine jabbered deliriously through the morning, his voice high and nasal, a child's. He pleaded with them to mend his innards. He referred to himself as “babysan,” at which they uniformly jeered. Yeah. Babysan, my ass. You seemed like a babysan last night.

Finally just after noon, he died. Dan ceremoniously placed a cigarette between the chilled lips, then withdrew the dead man's penis from his trousers and placed it in his stiffening fingers. The gathered Marines laughed contemptuously at the dead soldier.

The other soldier still clung to life when the resupply helicopter arrived in midafternoon, and was medevacked.

A group from Snake's squad watched the helicopter churn toward Da Nang. Snake grimaced. “They should of shot the fucker when they found him.”

Ogre agreed. “There it is, man. Shoot him before you touch him, he's a kill. Touch him first, you got to wait around for him to die.”

“Well, he just might make it.” Goodrich.

“You better hope not, Senator. That's the game out here. That's what we're here for. To kill gooks.” Baby Cakes grinned whimsically to his charge.

“Funny. I thought there was more to it.”

“There is, Senator. There is. But it all goes together. Kill gooks, and make it home alive. Once they're dead they leave you the hell alone.”

“WELL, Bagger's got a team again.”

“Come on, Ogre. That ain't even funny.” Snake dropped a card onto the poncho liner. Ogre leaned over, bronzed again, shirtless, and picked up the trick. He peered into his hand, selecting another card, and dropped it.

Baby Cakes tossed his card onto the blanket and admonished his friend. “Yeah. That's enough of that kind of talk. Old Bagger's about to go dinky-dau, man. This nickle and dime stuff is driving him there. Don't make it any worse than it already is.”

Fifty feet from them, Bagger slept in the speckled shade of the bullet-ridden poncho hootch. He had sulked for hours, refusing to converse or even eat.

Goodrich felt he understood Bagger. He had watched the stocky Georgian go through the same withdrawal he had experienced after the Bridge incident. Bagger's bitching attitude came the closest to his own of anyone in the squad. Baby Cakes was too gungy. Ogre was a spaced-out ass. Cornbread was a mimic, a master at avoiding unpleasantness. And they don't like me anyway, mused Goodrich. Snake told them. Bagger might understand.

He wanted out of the team. He could live with Bagger's complaints. He could live without Baby Cakes’ boasts and bravado. Goodrich called to Snake and the others from his fighting hole.

“Listen. Why don't you put me in Bagger's team? We have four men. It isn't right to leave him by himself.”

Snake shrugged absently. “We're getting new dudes any day.”

Baby Cakes pondered it. The only question in his mind was whether Bagger could put up with Goodrich and retain his shred of sanity. He was delighted to unload the Senator. He looked at Snake. “Hey. I don't mind, Snake.” Then, under his breath, “I done learned all about Genevas and tiger cages. Let somebody else get smart.”

Snake smirked at Baby Cakes, picking up the deck of cards. “O.K., Senator. Pack your trash and get on over to Bagger's hole.”

CANNONBALL and Cornbread sat facing each other, cleaning their weapons. Cornbread measured Cannonball, then grinned confidentially. “Man, las’ night that big blond Chuck—not Baby Cakes, you know, the fat one, Senator—he was sayin’, ‘Mebbe we should go on over an’ try an’ he'p Bagger an’ Lil Mac’ You know, when all the shit was happenin’? Bagger an’ Lil Mac, they ain't even he'pin’ each other an’ we s'posed to go on over an’ he'p. Ah keep thinkin’ 'bout dyin’ fo’ some Chuck who ain’ even doin’ fo’ hisself—” he chuckled, rubbing a rag along the outer barrel of his M-16—“Ah jis’ say, ‘Ah cain't,’ you know, like Ah'm too dummmmmb. One o’ you smart-ass Chuck dudes show me how to get yo’ ass shot off.”