Men in Green Faces (5 page)

At point, Brian held a long, pliant twig before him, checking out anything that bent it. Things like wires to booby traps. The rest of the squad had better catch anything he might miss. Gene moved with extreme caution, covered with mud, stinking with mud, the smell of his insect repellent and sweat masked by mud. Only the 60 was halfway clean.

It took the next hour to travel three hundred yards. Finally they got past the deepest mire to easier footing and were able to set a faster pace. When they heard the sound of running water, the squad stopped to locate the tiny stream. Gene rinsed caked mud from the bandoliered ammo for his 60. The water ran cool over his hands. They moved on.

Two and a half hours before dawn, they reached their objective—the NVA R&R Center.

Gene crept forward, moving in on his hard target, the lone NVA soldier manning the compound’s machine-gun emplacement. Backed up to the jungle, the gunner could take the entire R&R Center under fire.

Invisible on his left, but close behind, were Alex and Roland. On his right, Cruz and Doc set security. Somewhere in the dark, near the officers’ quarters, Brian and Jim counted the minutes allotted for him to eliminate the machine gunner. The final moments in the two roving NVA guards’ lives were being measured out at the guards’ own pace, each step they took bringing them nearer to the two waiting SEALs.

Gene inched forward, barely disturbing the foliage concealing him. He was a moving shadow among the flickering shadows set in motion by the small campfire in the clearing’s center. The gunner was a stupid bastard, looking at firelight. His night vision was destroyed. He sat dreaming, not hearing. The fire crackled.

In the dark before dawn, Gene crept forward, moving closer and closer to the gunner, who was now stretching his arms and yawning. Just a little time left until the Hush Puppies would cough and the roving sentries would be corpses. Jim and Brian knew that if, in taking out the sentries, they didn’t draw fire, he had been successful in taking out his own hard target.

One ever-so-careful step at a time, he moved forward, barely disturbing the stems and stalks that concealed him. He was going through mud, weeds, reeds. Stiff stalks brushed against his body. He came in low, ghosting through them, breathing their green, dank, thick smell. Smooth, silent, easy. The target stank of sweat.

The bowie, with its long, dark, razor-sharp blade, was out. The hilt was familiar, comforting, solid, in his palm. Closer…closer. Flex the body. Smooth movement. Think black. Think invisible. Think earth. Silent. Breathe quiet, slow. Don’t look at target’s head…he’ll feel your eyes…just the shoulders leaning against the earthen barricade. Closer. Another inch…another. Could touch him now. Closer…close enough to hug. Silent…don’t breathe. Blade a silhouette against the firelight…

Go!

Adrenaline shooting—a purple haze. Left hand clamped hard over the mouth. Violent motion pulling head back…hard. Quick, fierce slice across the throat, forearm across the severed carotid artery…silence the gurgling, bubbling air from the windpipe. Body spasming. Hold. Blood pouring. Hold. Quiet, heavy. Lift the body over the side, set it down in the inky, jungle blackness. No time to hide it. Slide over and into the emplacement. Breathe. Wipe knife on pants, sheathe it. Breathe…swallow.
Stop, look, listen.

Nobody woke.

Nobody heard.

Satisfied, Gene extended his arms, swept them forward, signaling to the four behind him: Come up on line. He pulled on the 60’s sling, brought it around from his back to its firing position at his side, and scanned the compound, the 60 tracking with his eyes. He checked the NVA’s heavy machine gun, making sure it was off safe, locked and loaded, like the 60. Cruz, Doc, Alex, and Roland were moving up to flank him. He couldn’t see or hear them, but he knew.

He glanced left and right. Good. There they were now, two on each side of him, about fifteen feet apart.

He studied the rectangular building housing the ninety sleeping officers. Entrances were on both ends. Brian and Jim were up there, each going toward a doorway, Jim to go in, bring the nearest officer out. Top ranks always got beds next to the doors.

He shivered. Hard to swallow. One unnatural noise, and all hell could break loose. His hands and arms were sticky with blood. Hard to hold the NVA gun easy. Breathe slow. Slow. His breath shuddered in his throat, almost a sob. He sucked in air that smelled of blood, urine, excrement from the dead gunner, who lay like debris, a shadowy heap. Still.
Look, listen.
A soft sound. He stiffened. So dark, so hard to be sure, even with the light from the dying campfire. Nothing. Another sound, a scrape. The NVA guards dying? He froze. A quick, deep intake of air…let it out, soft. Hold it…

He glanced left. Roland, his head tipped toward the silent radio on his shoulder and his M-16 in firing position, was probably thinking, Everything’s all fucked up, even though it wasn’t. Not yet anyway. Alex, his 40 Mike-Mike aimed straight ahead, flicked a look toward him, then away, and Gene knew what the look meant. Resentment over not getting to make the knife kill. The squad’s security elements seldom made close-quarter kills, and Alex was security element.

Slight sound again. Natural sound. Branches moving in the trees. Gene stared ahead, saw Brian and Jim carefully set the sentries’ bodies under the corners of the officers* hootch, then bend to attach the twenty pounds of C-4 on the underside of the stilted building, placing five pounds under each of its corners, about two feet in. Jim disappeared inside.

Gene tensed, finger on the trigger, cast a quick look to his right, where Cruz and Doc, weapons ready, now leaned slightly forward, then concentrated on the entrance Jim had used. The seconds went by at a glacial pace before he reappeared with a chloroformed hostage slung over his shoulder. The prisoner wore only briefs. His bare skin gleamed pale in the light from the campfire.

Jim set him down on the ground next to the dead sentry. He straightened, brought his fists together, then apart, signaling
pull
to Brian. At opposite ends of the hootch, in unison, they pulled first the rear, then the front delay fuses on the C-4. They now had five minutes to get back. Gene, muscles rock-hard with tension, watched Jim hoist the prisoner to his shoulder and start across the compound toward their position. Brian was right behind, covering their rear.

As soon as they came on line, Cruz took charge of the POW, and the LAAWS rockets were distributed. Moments later, Gene jumped as the C-4 went off, high-order, and clamped down on the trigger of the machine gun. The night exploded into a fiery hell as the LAAWS—two into the center of the officers’ hootch, one each for the doctors’ hootch and the security hootch—along with Gene’s NVA machine gun and the squad’s firepower, combined with the C-4 detonations. The wooden hootches disintegrated, blown to splinters, bodies to bloody fragments, pieces flying everywhere. The jungle trembled, shaken with sound and concussion.

Gene grabbed his 60 and leapt out of the gun emplacement as Cruz threw the POW over his shoulder and the squad, automatically dropping into file formation, outright booked, running for their lives toward the Dam Doi and their extraction point. He could hear NVA troop movement coming in from the jungle around the R&R Center. A deaf man could hear them. And he knew what they’d find—the area leveled, on fire, smoldering, pieces of bodies all over the place, and the dead machine gunner. That’s where they’d pick up the squad’s tracks, start coming, start reconning by fire to get them to shoot back and give their location away.

They slowed, still moving fast, just short of running, Brian up front, leading the way. Cruz applied more chloroform to the POW slung over his shoulder. Had to keep him out. Bullets snicked through the air, thunked into jungle trees. The enemy was closing in faster than they had expected.

They paused just long enough for Alex and Doc to place claymores with fifteen-second delay fuses, then rushed on in the waning night. Sweat poured down Gene’s face, stung his eyes. Branches, vines, bushes, grabbed at his body, at the 60. Mud sucked at his boots, unseen roots tried to entangle his feet. Behind him, claymores detonated with a brilliant flash, followed by yells and screams. The sounds of fear, horror, pain, agony, and mass confusion covered the sound of the SEALs’ movement, and his own gasps for breath.

The thirty-second delay claymore went down and they moved out again. Get ‘em down and move, get ‘em down and move. Have to break contact with the enemy coming in. Go, go, go. As if in answer to his silent plea, they ran. Too close, the enemy was too close. Another explosion, another flash of a claymore going.

Screams, yelling behind them. A little more distant now, but still too close, way too fucking close. They had to have support to get out, had to get to the Dam Doi to use that help coming. Please God, no enemy in front between them, the river, and extraction.

NVA and Viet Cong were everywhere, all around them, coming in on them fast. Coming to kill them. Brian dodged, ducked, found them a path, a way through, kept moving. He was lit up for a split second by a claymore going off; all of them were caught in frantic motion by the strobe-like flash. They had to get to the river to get out, but might never have time to cross it.

Gene gulped air, his throat burning, hearing the yells behind them. The enemy was still coming—God, how many of them? 750 to 1,000 reported—but they hesitated with each explosion. Men hurt, screaming, dead, slowed them down for precious moments. Eight hundred pellets from each exploding, devastating claymore, and just as their pursuers got past one, another would go off.

Wordless, he ran on. The explosions were farther and farther behind them. Then Alex had set his last claymore.

And Gene realized they’d reached the Dam Doi.

Automatically the squad’s security element went SOP. Cruz, hostage over his shoulder, swung with Gene, Doc, and Alex to face the enemy’s approach, whether from flank or rear. Behind them, Brian went into the river and, midway, swam, then waded out on the east bank. He disappeared into the jungle’s edge, ran a quick check, and reappeared to wave them across before moving back into the trees to set security for their crossing.

When Jim got about five feet into the river, Roland went in. After him went Doc, who, upon reaching the east bank, immediately set security on their left flank. Cruz followed, taking the longest to cross, the limp body of the POW over his shoulder. When he had to swim, he turned almost on his back with the hostage face up, across his chest, having reached over the officer’s right shoulder and under his left arm to clamp the unconscious body to his own. Side-stroking with his left arm, he crossed the river, his Stoner hanging by its sling underwater. Alex waded in behind him.

On the west bank, his back to the river, for those last few moments, Gene and his 60 stood rear security alone, facing the jungle. Sure death if he didn’t cross damn quick. He could hear Alex in the water behind him, heard the normal jungle sounds being disturbed somewhere in front, heard his own breathing.

He held his ground for the last few endless seconds until the splashing behind him stopped and he knew Alex had made it to shore. He spun then and hit the water, wading in as fast as the current would allow, then swimming with the 60 slung on his back.

The smell of the muddy river filled his nostrils. As his powerful strokes brought him closer and closer to the east bank, he was thankful he’d used so much of the 60’s ammo, or its weight would have pulled him down and he would have had to walk across underwater.

Wading out of the river, he tipped the 60 up, then down, to drain water out of its bore and chamber.

Gene reached shore, and the squad broke into the jungle just as the enemy hit the west bank and started firing. The SEALs returned fire, gaining fire superiority just long enough to keep the enemy from crossing the river, and long enough to run deeper into the jungle. Back in file formation, they moved south as fast as they could, leaving the enemy firing at where they’d just been.

In front of him, Roland called in on the radio. “Scramble everything! Wolves! Wolves! Emergency extraction! Get those boats up here! Scramble everything! Boats! Wolves!”

Bullets smacked trees. The enemy paralleled them. Some were beginning to cross the river, others were moving south without knowing where the SEALs were but guessing they’d head downriver. Jim and Roland were like Siamese twins in front of him, Jim feeding Roland information in short bursts, Roland calling it in.

Charlie was coming, but so were the SEALs’ gunboats and the Sea Wolf gunships. Gene could hear the boats’ diesel engines under the sound of the choppers. He saw them now, in breaking dawn, the boats coming in on step, fast, with the Wolves full bore behind them.

Running in front of Gene, Roland called in, “Charlie on the west bank, attempting to take us under fire,” and relayed the boat’s reply to Jim. “We’ve taken rocket hits, we have casualties, coming in.” Jim yelling to Roland, “Tell the boats and choppers to take the west bank under fire and rocket attack. Our location is east bank. All direct firepower into the west bank.” They ran.

Above, the Wolves fired. The MSSCs turned and pulled into the bank at the squad’s location. Gene went into the first gunboat and added his 60’s firepower to theirs. The 60 jerked in his hands, laying down the deafening, rock-steady rhythm so familiar, so comforting to him now.

The jungle was a nightmare Fourth of July gone mad, with Gene’s 60, the Stoners, the grenade launcher, both boats’ 60s and .50-calibers, and the Wolves’ rockets. They threw everything they had at their attackers, to gain fire superiority long enough to escape. The boats wheeled, headed down the river on step, with the SEALs firing, screaming now, finally released from the enforced silence of patrol. They screamed and yelled themselves hoarse at the people shooting at them, until they made it far enough down the Dam Doi that enemy contact was broken.

“We have a kill zone about five hundred meters ahead,” the boat personnel relayed. “That’s where we got hit.”

“All reload,” Jim ordered. “We’re going back through the B-40 kill zone that got the boats on the way up.”