For the Sake of All Living Things (32 page)

Nang fidgeted, anxious for the infantry charges. Bok urged patience. The 32d, in place, surged up under a five-point 400-round mortar barrage. Six hundred Communist soldiers assaulted, their weapons blazing as they hit the edge of the airstrip. From the camp’s perimeter hand flares streaked red like Fourth of July skyrockets. Fire from a hundred positions felled a hundred attackers. Mortar-launched flares popped high, hung, hissed, cast their eerie flat light over the hill.

In the chasm where Nang’s heart pounded the light was diffuse, a glint, the shadowed outline of a face. The bark buzzing of automatic weapons was accented with sharp reports from howitzer outgoing and thick crunching explosions of incoming. Above it all, more helicopter noise, then in it, diving unseen in black sky, pulsating birds spewing red-snake streams onto the airstrip, loosing rockets, exploding not loud but whiter-flamed, throatier concussions than howitzer rounds.

Another immense continuous explosion, incoming detonating one of six ammo dumps within the compound. Bok clapped his hands quietly, recognizing the unmistakable chaotic concussive pattern. The fighting continued, the 165th struck from the west. Cannoneers of the U.S 1st of the 92d lowered their barrels and shot beehive rounds, 8,500 flachettes, nail-size arrows, the ultimate grapeshot, point-blank into the advancing wave of NVA bodies crashing against the wire.

Nang rose. It was time. It had to be time. Bok pulled him down. Helicopters swarmed and dove west, east. “Not yet.” “Now?” “No.” “Now?” “Soon.”

The fighting waned, the sounds of rifle reports puttered to a trickle. The mortar barrage ceased. Outgoing fire from Bu Prang slowed. Choppers went off-station, to refuel, rearm. New birds arrived. Evacuation. Sporadic fire linked on thin aluminum skins. Rhythmically, like waves crashing against a jetty, the battle established its own tempo. From east, west, attack, repulse, withdraw, regroup, attack, repulse, withdraw, regroup, attack, penetrate, entangle in the wires, die, kill, repulse, withdraw, regroup.

Heavy crashing footfalls smashed wildly before their concealment. Nang hefted Bok Roh’s pistol. Bok signaled him to hold: Americans don’t pursue at night. Nang understood without a word passing. Heavy frantic panting paused on the trail only feet away. Nang sprung, cat silent, hit the soldier, clamped his hands over nose and mouth, jabbed kidneys with his knees, dropped the soldier, breaking the fall, only dull thumps being made. Nang dragged the wide-eyed troop into their vegetation pocket. The man tried to speak. His back, sides ached; his lungs demanded all breathing effort.

Nang settled beside him. Bok hovered over both. In one hand he held a huge machete. In their three months, Nang had never seen it unsheathed. The cell of the 272d squeezed in. “I...I...” the young soldier tried. Nang rubbed the heel of his hand down the soldier’s back, over the kidneys he’d kneed, pushing the pain away, out. From the corner of his eye, he watched Bok.

“Your unit,” Bok said.

“32d...”

“You’re not wounded?”

“They’re Viet Namese...” the soldier panted. Nang studied him in the dark. He was young, not as young as Nang, in his twenties like most of the NVA troops Nang had seen. Perhaps eighteen. “They’re Viet Namese,” the soldier said again. “They’re not Americans.”

“Who?” Nang asked. He quietly slid the boy’s rifle from him and laid it on his own lap. It felt new. Nang ran his hand up the barrel to the flash suppressor. He forced his smallest finger into the bore. The cool metal felt sticky, packing-grease sticky.

“Who!” the soldier blurted. “Them. On the hill. The ones we...My friends Toai and...he killed. He was killed by a Viet Namese.”

Bok touched Nang’s shoulder. Nang snapped, startled, froze. Bok tapped him to step aside. “He’s new,” Bok said. He’d resheathed the machete. “Brand-new. They don’t tell them at the training centers there are Southern lackeys.”

“Who does he think—?”

“Only Americans. They tell them only Americans are the enemy.”

Nang returned to the soldier. The revelation of incompetence delighted him. What intelligence, he thought. They’re ignorant, he thought. Weak. Nothing. Met Sar will be impressed. We won’t make that mistake.

The soldiers of the 272d were talking quietly to the boy from the 32d. “You haven’t fired your rifle,” Nang interjected.

The others hushed. “I...Toai was hit on our first charge. I tried to carry him...”

“Into battle.” Nang completed the sentence, turning it into accusation.

“He couldn’t fight. I was going to the withdrawal path—”

“Before the signal to regroup?”

Bok tapped Nang. His aide’s questions puzzled him. They were appropriate, should be asked during the
kiem thao
, the criticism session which would follow the battle. Only, Bok thought, how has Khat Doh learned this? How does he know what to ask? “He’s disoriented,” Bok whispered. “Let his cadre ask him.”

Nang again focused on the boy. “I expected,” the soldier was saying to the others, “to live in a barracks outside Saigon or Pleiku. Why are we in caves? We were told everyplace was liberated except the large cities.”

It is time, Nang laughed to himself, time for Met Nang’s return.

At 0430 hours Nang’s unit crept, undetected, to the edge of the concealing vegetation. Before them were two
dac cong
weapons squads equipped with B-40 rockets and thirty feet of four-inch explosive-packed bamboo—a bangalore torpedo—to blow a passage through the wire, plus a dozen captured American LAWs (light antitank weapons). Behind them were three squads, each with the set task of taking out one of the three defending machine gun emplacements in their attack sector. Farther back was an entire company, 160 soldiers ready to charge through the hole to the center of camp. East and west attacks were in full renewed surge.

Nang crouched. Moved forward. Bok reached for the boy, missed, followed him. Nang moved smooth silent, a snake; froze, darted, a spider. Bok grabbed him. They were between the weapons squads. Back, Bok signaled. Forward, Nang motioned. He turned from his mentor, skittered by two RPG carriers. Others moved up, split to six clustered points, three for the machine guns, two between, weapons in a natural gully leading to the wire. Bok crept. Before him he could see defenders abandoning their posts to reinforce east or west, double-teaming attackers, leaving the north sector undermanned. Forward. Nang slipped in with the torpedo squad. He wanted to see how the torpedo was laid. His heart raced. Silhouetted by flare light every hilltop position was visible, running defenders were easy targets. He hefted the assault rifle he’d taken from the soldier of the 32d. Don’t fire, he ordered himself. Don’t fire. Conquer haste. Wait! Wait for the order: Charge! Go! Attack! A signal passed. The torpedo squad eased from concealment, blackened faces, camouflaged backs, burlap-wrapped tube. Nang prone, with the others, inched over defoliated earth, his nose on the heels of the man before him. Bok stretched out, grabbed Nang’s foot. Kick. Loose. Turn. Signal, join me. Bok emerged. His sated enthusiasm for battle growing hungry, stimulated by Nang’s verve, nerve. He crawled to Nang, past.

Nang grits his teeth.

Slow motion bushes, unseen, undetected by defenders, advance to the outer wire. Nang feels for mines, creeps, a pro, a vet. Bok flash-thinks, He learns too fast, knows too much. Who are you?

Red-star cluster to the right. Machine gun attackers detected.

Explosions. Full frontal blast of two claymore mines blow apart faces, bodies of half the squad. “Up! Up! Go!” Screams, orders left and right. More flares. Full charge. Five fire-spewing points focusing on the defenders. “Charge! Attack!” Answering fire. RPGs, LAWs explode at each machine gun emplacement. Two defender guns continue constant red-tracer lead streams. Two attack squads concentrate on bunkers. Between, hilltop riflemen spray rapid bursts, duck, spray, duck, reload. The noise is tremendous, nearness making it louder than five-hundred-pounders at half a klick. Claymore mines, tripwired and command detonated, explode sporadically as 272d troops lunge into the wire. Nang pushes a torpedo section. The
dac cong
are yet undetected, inching forward, hugging gravel clay hillside as riflemen squads attack. Inching faster, inchworming, knees to chest, reach, the tube end is through the first strands, through the rolls and tanglefoot. New helicopters on station. About Nang the squad attaches the second section, then the third. Nang is amazed at the defenders, at their tenacity, at their firepower, at their stupidity backlighting themselves with flare light. Mortar and 105mm rounds seeking attacker columns explode against the hillside. The NVA tighten in east, north, west, hugging the defenders, making it difficult or impossible for big guns or helicopters to identify clear targets in the flare-lit dark.

The fifth section clamps on, the torpedo is jammed forward. False dawn lightens the firmament. The
dac cong
begin their slow withdrawal, checking blasting-cap wire. Nang hesitates. He forces himself into the wire. Barbs scratch bloody furrows into his back. He shoves the tube a foot deeper where it reaches a third set of wire. Then he too withdraws. Firing tapers at each side. Nang shrinks back. In the gully wounded moan. Nang clamps his jaw, tries to shut out the noise. Word passes, a night relief column from Nhon Co, two mechanized companies from the 23d ARVN, has been ambushed, has withdrawn. Nang rolls to his back, gulps air. He is suddenly tired. About him additional hundreds of troops are surging, called up because the command sees a major victory in the making. He rolls back. New enemy howitzer and mortar barrages rain shrapnel on the north slope. “Attack!” Orders are barked. The torpedo is blown. A white flame expands as if parting a sea. Nang lurches. Falls. A mortar round explodes before him. Another to his side. He clings to the hill. His body refusing to obey mental orders to attack. He lurches, falls. Is swept by disgust as others race past. He has killed. He has enjoyed killing. He has escaped being killed. In his inner core he is a yothea of Angkar Leou, a disciple of Met Sar. Yet he has never fought a battle where the opponent is armed and fights back. His scuffles have been short. He is not looking for a fight, only for victory, only for defeated foes. It is one thing to lure, play, torture a weak victim, but with a strong enemy, the kill must be quick to reduce his exposure. Nang the boy, Khat Doh the pet, takes pride in the underdog role. It has never occurred to him that an opponent might be his equal, his superior. Again he lurches, trips over three dead, falls face-to-face with a man with no face. Up again, running forward, crazy, behind an entire company, into the gully, the alleyway through the parted wire. Defenders fire recoilless rifle flachette rounds into the trench. Scores fall. Rise up or are picked up, carried forward, wounded and able all firing. Nang cannot move. He is at the wire on his knees staring into the tempest flash-lit by explosions, flat-lit by flares. Silhouettes sprint, engage, fall. Hand-to-hand fighting. One shadow stands huge. In its hand a huge machete swirls. Defenders rush. The blade flies, decapitates.

Nang stands. His eyes widen. He steps forward as if there were nothing but he and the giant and the machete. “You mothafucka,” a defender screams as he leaps at Bek, swings a shovel. The giant grabs it in midflight with his left hand. The GI freezes. Bok swings his right. The machete tip splits the man’s face an inch deep. He falls, rolls. Bok raises the blade, begins his downward arc. Then Bok is upended. A Stieng tribesman’s bullet shatters his calf. Nang fires. The defender crumples.

Suddenly, behind them, beyond them, the earth shivers, quakes. Nang can feel, cannot hear, the rumbling vibration below the maelstrom swirling in his visual plane. Again he fires. He runs toward Bok Roh. The first of twelve B-52s loaded for a “Menu” target has been diverted in late course. The day is dawning gray under thin clouds. On the yet dark earth surface eleven more long hells of 750-pound bombs fire-blast tangential swaths across the hills, jolting attackers. Then Hill 982 blows, a volcano peak erupting blasting outward, imploding, rubble collapsing tunnel complexes, command nerve center obliterated. Low lingering black haze from the petroleum fires darken the windward. Acrid bomb smoke-clouds coat Bu Prang. Hasty orders.

Disengage! Police up! Withdraw! Disperse!

With Bok Roh wounded, Nang had several alternatives. He had pulled, carried, helped the big man during the first frantic moments of withdrawal—a falling plunge down two hundred meters of mountainside into a small, hidden jungle pocket. Now he could call for the transportation unit porters who were assigned the job of policing the battlefield for wounded before final withdrawal, or he could assist Bok himself. The wounds were serious yet the man, with assistance, was ambulatory. Nang gave his “uncle” his hand, helped him to sit up. Quickly he removed his bayonet and split the side of Bok’s trousers, exposing the shredded calf.

“Loosen the tourniquet,” he whispered. Bok complied. Blood spurted from the descending artery. Immediately Bok tightened the cord at his upper thigh. “No!” Nang ordered. “No. Loosen it. It must bleed more to keep healthy.” Again Bok complied. Again the spurt. Bok wheezed. His left hand was broken, swelling. His mouth hung haggard. The sprint fall through jungle away from Bu Prang, the blood loss, sapped him. His chest felt empty. To him his eyes seemed on the verge of caving in, falling behind his cheekbones. He could barely think. About them the battlefield was deserted except for the last of the dead, porters removing the dead, and rearguard snipers.

From their cover they watched a porter slip an ankle thong over dead shattered feet and drag the body away. The battle smoke had dissipated, the sky lightened further. American and ARVN soldiers were preparing a counterattack. NVA mortars sailed over them and exploded at the edge of Bu Prang.

“Do it later,” Bok moaned. His voice was weak. “We must go. Get me to the porters.”

“Relax,” Nang said. “They know we’re here. You’ll be taken next.”

“They’re taking the dead,” Bok hissed. “I should go first.”

“Lie back,” Nang whispered. “They’re coming.” Nang flicked the blade of his bayonet into Bok’s wound. Bok collapsed, his body jerked. His breath came hard, quick, shallow. Nang stabbed the bone with the bayonet tip.