Men in Green Faces (25 page)

Before they moved out, Jim tapped the top of his head, initiating a head count. When the signal reached Doc, he moved up to Cruz, in front of him, and whispered, “One.” Cruz moved close to Alex, whispered, “Two.” Moments later, after Alex’s “Three” and Gene’s “Four,” Roland whispered, “Five,” to Jim. Jim, able to see Brian at point, knew he had seven men, no one missing, no extras, and moved them out again.

Two hours later, Brian raised his fist, halting them at the edge of a small clearing. The squad set security while Jim and Brian conferred, waiting to see whether their decision would be to cross the clearing or skirt it, just inside the tree line.

When the word came back to move out, Gene wasn’t surprised they’d decided to patrol around the edge of the clearing and not take the chance of being seen.

He began to count his steps to maintain the correct compass bearing, after changing direction. Turning left, he went ninety-seven paces north. After the squad had moved east across the width of the clearing, he counted ninety-seven more going south. At that point, they turned east and were back on course, just as though they’d cut straight across the open area. Though walking in direct lines took longer, it was much safer. The last thing they needed, he thought, squinting as vines brushed across his face and over one shoulder, was to get lost.

The squad slogged on, Jim calling breaks every five hundred to eight hundred meters. Down on one knee, resting, Gene estimated their hard targets—the tax collectors and guards—to be within a thousand meters. Not much farther, but still several hours would pass before they’d be in position to hit the objective. The patrol, to this point, had been a rough one. Hours long, and over difficult terrain. His lower back and legs ached, his shirt was wet with sweat, and his jeans were caked with mud. It occurred to him that being sick had taken its toll. Normally he wouldn’t be this weary, this soon, even with the load he carried.

He rose again, with the rest of the men, at Jim’s signal. Three hundred meters later, he heard voices to the squad’s right flank. So had the rest. As one, and on line, they took up hiding positions in the thick brush.

Absolutely still, controlling his breathing, the 60 ready, Gene narrowed his eyes to slits—eyes reflected light and so were easily seen—and peered in the direction from which the voices were coming. The talking got louder as the enemy closed on their location. A patrol of six NVA regulars stopped within a few feet of him. Talking and laughing, two squatted down next to each other. One lit a cigarette. They were so close, he and Cruz could have reached out and grabbed them.

Gene’s heart pounded so hard, he feared they might hear it. Go away, he thought. Go…get up…go. The squad had to hit their target before sunrise or they’d miss the objective, and all they’d been through would be for nothing. Suddenly one of the NVA stood, turned toward the brush he and Cruz were hiding in, unzipped his fly, and urinated.

Gene, listening to—and seeing—the stream just to the right of his shoulder, and just to the left of Cruz’s, never moved. And he knew Cruz wouldn’t either. Better to get pissed on than give their positions away. Dumb ass…could reach up and zip his fly for him…yell, Boo! He’d jump ten feet, probably shit his pants. Funny…He clamped down on the thought before the urge to laugh, or the more powerful urge to kill, took deadly hold.

There was silence, then the metallic noise of the zipper came again, loud and unnatural. Another reason why SEALs wore Levi’s 501s. They buttoned. He didn’t dare look at Cruz.

Minutes passed. The sound of rain came. The sound always came first, as drops hit the treetops high above. Then the rain would start coming downward, from one level to the next. Before it hit ground level, the six-man NVA patrol moved out. From their gestures, talk, and the way they looked upward, it was obvious they didn’t like the rain much.

Gene smiled with grim satisfaction. Rain was welcome. It would cover their tracks and any sound they might make en route to the target. Too bad it had already been too dark to make out any markings on the NVA uniforms. Any insignia seen would have been used to determine exactly which enemy force the six men were with, later, back at NILO.

After ten minutes, Jim again tapped the top of his head with his left hand, asking for a head count. Moments later he had it. By then the rain was a downpour. They headed for the target with great speed, but with all senses on full alert, responding to every sound. Each and every noise had to be analyzed, distinguished from natural sound. They’d run into one patrol already. The fear of running into another worked on everybody’s nerves.

Jim’s fist went up to stop the patrol about an hour before dawn. He moved it in the circular motion that indicated the location would be a rally point. If any enemy contact were made from then on, or if they had to split up for any reason, they would rally back to this location to reunite.

Gene waited as Jim motioned each man to him, and silently pointed them into a location, to form a security perimeter. That done, Jim and Brian moved out alone. They returned a good ten minutes later. One by one, Jim went to each man. When he reached Gene, he told him the squad had reached their objective, the enemy camp.

“When I give the move-out sign,” Jim whispered, “the patrol will break into two separate groups.”

Gene nodded, listening intently. The first group was composed of Brian, Jim, and Roland. They were the hammer. He, Cruz, Alex, and Doc were the anvil. Nice, thought Gene. Very nice.

Jim waved his arm, and the men headed out to take their positions. Rain covering their movements, Jim, Brian, and Roland crept closer to the front of the camp’s five hootches.

The small structures had a framework constructed of poles. Their walls and peaked roofs were a thatch of reeds, palm fronds, grasses, and mud. Dirt-floored, each hootch measured about eight by ten feet.

Gene, Cruz, Alex, and Doc began moving to the east, skirting around the small clearing surrounding the hootches, to come up behind them. They had five minutes to get to the rear without being detected, and to locate a safe position from the frontal attack Jim’s group would initiate.

Jim, Brian, and Roland would be firing straight into Gene’s group’s position. Their rounds would sizzle through the hootch walls like they weren’t even there. The NVA, splitting out the back and heading toward the brush as soon as the first few shots were fired, would never know they were running directly into Gene’s group, and the sure death he ached to give them.

It seemed like it took a long time to reach the east side. Once there, Gene used the last few minutes—before Jim, Brian, and Roland brought the hammer down in a frontal attack—to place Alex, Cruz, and Doc into position. He then signaled them to get down low. Their lives depended on Jim’s group keeping their fire above the three-foot level.

Blood rushing, heart pounding, Gene waited, his finger on the 60’s trigger. The quiet and the dark, within the steady rain, seemed to grow even quieter and darker. He faced the dead space—the open area about twenty meters from the back side of the hootches to where they hid inside the jungle’s edge. Cruz, Alex, and Doc were hunched, black shapes within the shadowy foliage near him. They looked like long-forgotten statues from an ancient, rotting temple.

Suddenly the night blew apart. Weapons on fully automatic poured hundreds of rounds into and through the hootches, and into their position just above their heads. The rounds cracked going overhead. Small branches, twigs, leaves, showered down. Gene sucked in his breath. Not only had Jim and his group opened up, they were screaming at the top of their lungs, “Kill them! Alpha squad! Flank right! Bravo! Left!”

Involuntarily he shivered, but held the 60 steady. Screaming and firing, Jim’s group sounded like thirty to forty men. Not three. And sure enough, here came their targets. Running as fast as they could to reach the safety of the jungle, men boiled out from inside the hootches, splashing through the mud and puddles in the clearing, coming right at them.

Silently Gene counted. Eighteen meters…fifteen meters…ten meters…Two pop flares lit the night sky up like high noon. The rain fell in glittering lines. Five meters, and coming fast. Jim’s group ceased firing, and Gene knew they’d hit the deck. With only seconds to spare before the fleeing NVA overran their position, Gene, Cruz, Alex, and Doc rose as if from the depths of hell, and cut loose with a devastating barrage of fire.

With the 60 quaking in his hands, Gene saw the horror on their targets’ faces, even through the sheets of rain, but felt nothing. Coming at a dead run toward their position, the enemy tried to change direction, but couldn’t get away from the deadly fire of the SEALs’ weapons. The 60 became red-hot. Bodies dropped, jumped, shook like puppets.

The pop flares started to die out, the darkness to return. It didn’t matter. None stood, now, in the clearing. Gene yelled.

“Stop firing!”

In the sudden stillness, smoke rose from glowing red barrels. Gene listened, watched. Jim, Brian, and Roland would be running a very quick search through the hootches. As the Mark 13 flares died, the hootches burst into flame, set afire after the search. Through it all, Gene kept an eye on the fifteen to twenty bodies in the rain-soaked clearing.

And one moved. A dark figure against the ground, an NVA was slowly crawling to the north, trying to get away. Gene spotted his movement just before the NVA soldier, probably thinking he was home free, stood and started to run across the open fifty-yard stretch to the jungle’s edge.

“Cruz!” he yelled.

Bolting from his position, Cruz took off. The NVA had a good head start, with only a few feet more to reach the trees and freedom. Cruz went down on one knee, took aim with his XM-203, and fired one round of explosives.

At jungle’s edge, the 40 Mike-Mike hit the runner, center mass, in the back. Exploding on impact, half the body blew away from the waist up. Gene heard the remains hit the ground with dull thumps. Cruz headed back. Jim, Brian, and Roland, silhouettes against the flaming, smoking hootches to their rear, walked toward them. Gene, Doc, and Alex reloaded, mostly by touch, watching to make sure nobody else came or went.

Jim circled the squad, then said, “Gene, make sure they’re dead.”

Gene waved, and Cruz, Doc, and Alex joined him. Together, they moved a few steps closer to the bodies and opened up. While the other three made selected shots, Gene, with cold, clinical detachment, raked the entire area. Bodies jerked with the impact as the stream of rounds swept across and back.

Gene never let up on the trigger, seeing not the bodies on the ground, but Willie, the little girls, Tong’s wife.

After the fourth sweep, there was only the pattering sound of the rain.

The 60 weighed solid in his hands. “Reload.”

In the sudden silence, they obeyed.

“You think he’s gone off the deep end?” Cruz whispered.

Doc shook his head. “He’s responding. No errors.”

Jim gave the order. “Move out.”

Under the steady murmur of rain, the SEALs shifted into file formation and stepped back into the jungle. Behind them five hootches burned. Twenty-three NVA lay dead.

Gene lifted the cover off his watch and glanced at the time. They’d spent eleven minutes at the objective. Successful mission…enemy eliminated. And Jim had the tax collectors’ money.

They moved quickly, knowing they had to put some distance between themselves and the hootches and bodies. Having had the small patrol pass earlier, they all knew that after hearing the gunfire, enemy forces would be coming in. And, Gene thought, if one patrol was in the area, so were others.

Jim stopped them after they’d gone about one hundred meters into the jungle. “Guys,” he said, just loud enough to be heard, “remember the R&R Center? Well, stay ready. Keep all noise down. No more voice commands. Brian, get us out of here.”

Brian moved out fast, ducking and weaving, the squad right behind him. They’d covered nearly five hundred meters before they heard weapons firing.

It was just like it had been at the R&R Center. Gene listened. The NVA were reconning by firing, hoping that if they came close, the squad would return fire, and they’d get a fix on the SEALs’ location. He jumped a root, almost tripped, slipped through the narrow space between heavy brush and a tree trunk. His eyes stung with rain-mixed sweat. The enemy would come fast, hard, and in large numbers.

Even under the triple canopy, rain poured down hard. The jungle, dark and wet, stank to high heaven. With each step, he felt like he was being sucked down into centuries of decaying rot.

Mouth open, drawing in gulps of air, he kept up the pace Brian set. The damned mud. Couldn’t capture them, but sure slowed them down. Picking up each foot, with pounds of it caked on, made his leg muscles ache. It felt as though he had fifteen-pound weights strapped to each ankle.

“Ambush, front!” Brian yelled as he opened up, fully automatic. Jim, beside Brian before the words were out of his mouth, opened up as well.

“We’ll flank right,” Gene yelled. “Try to hold them down until we can come on line.” He heard five or six weapons, saw an occasional muzzle flash through the dense brush. “Peel off on three!” he called, and heard them relay his command. Once enemy contact was made, no need for silence. Better, in fact, for everyone to give direction, distance, relay commands. It confused the enemy, left them unsure of what size force they faced.

Even as he moved, Gene evaluated the situation. Brian and Jim had to hold the enemy down. Within a few seconds, the two would be heading back past the squad. With the squad unable, because of the dense brush, to move on line to gain fire superiority, Brian fired fully automatic. Jim was set on semi-auto, single fire, allowing rounds to be continuous even as Brian changed belts in his Stoner. By the time Brian opened back up, fully auto, Jim would reload so that there would never be a lull in return fire.

“One, two, three!” Jim yelled.

On three, Brian poured every round from his Stoner into the enemy position. No one returned fire. “Go!” he shouted, wheeling left to give Jim, himself opened up then to fully auto, a clear shot.