Why had it been so easy? Why was the man so weak?
The answer was obvious: the soldier was about fourteen. He"d never shaved in his life. In death, his face was dirty, but essentially undisturbed. His eyes were open and bright but blank. His teeth were white. He had acne.
Bob looked at the b.l.o.o.d.y package that had been a boy. A feeling of revulsion came over him. He bent, retched up a few gobs of undigested C-rat, gathered his breath, wiped the blood off his hands, and turned back to the path that lay ahead of him, which led to the column.
I am am war, he thought; this is what I do. war, he thought; this is what I do.
Huu Co"s political officer Phuc Bo was adamant. A stocky little man who"d been to Russian staff school, Phuc Bo had the blunt force of a party apparatchik, a man who lived and breathed the party and was a master of dialectics.
"Brother Colonel, you must move, despite the cost. To waste more time is to lose our precious advantage. How many can a single man kill? Can he kill more than forty, possibly fifty? That is well under a twenty percent casualty rate; that is entirely acceptable to the Party. Sometimes, the fighters" lives must be spent to accomplish the mission."
Huu Co nodded solemnly. Up ahead, sporadic fire broke out, but the column had bogged down again. There was no word from the flanking patrol and no word from the sappers who"d been recalled. Still, the American a.s.sailed them with well-aimed shots, cadre his particular specialty.
How did he know? Cadre wore no rank pins, carried few symbols of the ego of leadership such as riding crops, swords or funny hats. Leaders were indistinguishable from fighters, both in party theory and in actual practice. Yet this American had some instinct for command, and when he fired, he brought down leaders, not always but in high enough percentage to be disruptive.
"He is. .h.i.tting our cadre, brother Political Officer. And what if we push on, and he robs us over the kilometers of our leadership? And we get to the objective and no leaders come forth and our attacks fail? What will the party say then? Whose ears will ring the most loudly with criticism?"
"Our fighters can produce leaders from amongst themselves. That is our strength. That is our power."
"But our leaders must be trained, and to squander them for nothing but the ego of a political officer who seeks the glory of seeing his column destroy an American fort late in an already victorious war may itself be a decision that is commented upon."
"I wonder, dear brother Colonel, if indeed there are not vestiges of Western humanitarianism, the sick decadence of a doomed society, still within your soul? You worry too much about such things as the petty lives of individuals when it is the movement of the ma.s.ses and the forces of history and our objective that should be your concern."
"I am humble before my brother"s excellent and perceptive critique," said the colonel. "I still believe in patience over the long journey, and that in patience lies virtue."
"Dearest Colonel," said the man, his face lighting with fire, "I have sworn to the commissar that the American fort shall fall. I therefore demand that you give the order to move forward without regard to-"
Phuc Bo stopped talking. It was difficult to continue without a lower jaw and a tongue. He stepped backward, the blood foaming brightly across his chest and gurgling from the hole that had been his mouth. Odd arguments came from him, so arcane and densely constructed they could not be followed. His eyes turned the color of an old two-franc coin and he died on his feet, falling backward into the high gra.s.s amid a splash of muddy water that flew up when he hit the wet ground.
Around the senior colonel, men dived for cover, but the senior colonel knew the American would not fire. He realized that he would be spared. In his way, the American was like a psychiatrist as much as a sniper, and he operated on the body of the people to remove the self-important, the vain, the overbearing. Political Officer Phuc Bo was an angry man and had been addressing his senior colonel aggressively, with brisk and dramatic hand movements and a loud voice, in the gestural vocabulary of superiority. Examining them, the American had a.s.sumed that it was he who was in command, it was he who was dressing down a naughty inferior. Thus the senior colonel"s total lack of ego and presence had rendered him effectively invisible in the sniper"s scope.
There was another shot; down the column, a sergeant fell, screaming.
The senior colonel turned, one man standing among many cowering men, and said conversationally to his XO, "Send out another platoon; I fear our antagonist has evaded the first. And keep the men low in the gra.s.s. We need not die for party vanity or some American"s hunt for glory."
The order was sent.
The senior colonel turned back to the hills, where the American still hunted them.
You, sir, he thought in the language of his youth, forgotten all these years, you, sir, are tres formidable tres formidable.
Then he went back to considering how to kill the man.
Puller cursed the clouds. They were low, wet, dense, thicker than the blood on the floor of the triage tent, and they rewarded his anger with a burst of rain, which fell like gunfire slopping through the mud.
No air.
Not today, not with these low motherf.u.c.kers choking the earth. He looked back to his shabby empire of mud and slatternly bunkers and smashed squad hootches and blown latrines. A ragged curl of smoke still rose from where the dump had been blown yesterday. Tribesmen and cadre huddled behind parapets or ran from place to place, risking rifle fire. The mud smelled of buffalo s.h.i.t and blood and the acrid tang of burned powder.
A mortar sh.e.l.l detonated nearby, and he dropped behind his own parapet, as a scream went up, "Medic! G.o.ddammit, medic!" But there was no medic; Jack Deems, who"d been with him since sixty-five and was cross-trained both as a medic and a demolitions expert, a very good professional soldier indeed, was. .h.i.t yesterday. Shot in the chest. Bled out screaming the names of his children.
Puller shivered.
Another mortar sh.e.l.l hit. Thank G.o.d the VC units only had 60-mms, which lofted a grenade-sized bit of explosive into Arizona, and could take out a man only if they scored a lucky, direct hit or they got him in the open and took him down with shrapnel. But when Senior Colonel Huu Co and his bad boys showed up, they"d have a weapons platoon with Chicom Type 53s in 82-mm, and those suckers were bad news. If they chose not to go for the direct kill, they could batter Arizona to pieces with that much throw-load, then move in and shoot the wounded. That would be it; then they"d fade into the hills. The whole front would go: it was exquisitely planned, just as American strength was ebbing but ARVN confidence not high enough, the temptation too huge to deny and therefore getting them out of their normal defensive posture for the first time since sixty-eight.
Puller looked again down the valley, which was shrouded in mist, and felt the bone-chilling rain on the back of his neck. He stared, as if he could penetrate that drifting, seething but altogether blank nothingness. But he could not.
Now and then a shot or two sounded, the heavy smack of the Marine"s .308; it was always answered with a fusillade. That Marine was still at it.
Man, you are a tiger, he thought. Don"t know you, brother, but you are one f.u.c.king tiger. You are the only thing between us and a complete s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g of the pooch.
"They no get him," said Y Dok.
"No," said Puller, wishing he could break a team out to bring in the sniper, but knowing he couldn"t, and that it would be evil waste to try. "No, but they will, G.o.dd.a.m.n them."
Now they had him.
They were going to get him, but it was a question of when: early or late?
Where had these guys come from?
Then he knew.
They had to be the sapper unit out on flank security, brought back fast from out there. Probably Huu Co"s best troops, real pros.
Bob lay on his belly on the crest of a small knoll, still as death, breathing in unmeasurable increments. Underneath him he was wedded to the Remington sniper rifle, whose bolt now gouged him cruelly in the stomach. He could see through the wavering scope and watched as they came for him.
Somehow, they knew this was his hill: it was some hunter"s very good instinct. Then he realized: they found the dead soldier in the gully and tracked me they found the dead soldier in the gully and tracked me. As he had moved through the wet elephant gra.s.s, he"d probably left a pattern of disturbance, where the gra.s.s was wiped clean, where the turf was trampled. Good men could follow much less.
Now they had him on this G.o.dd.a.m.ned hill; it would be over in a few minutes. Oh, these guys were good.
They had spread out, and were moving up very methodically, two three-men elements of movement, two of cover. No more than three men, too widely s.p.a.ced for three shots, were visible at any one moment, and then only for seconds. They were willing to give up one of the three to find him and take him out. Soldiers.
He knew he had to get to his grease gun; if they got close, and he was stuck with the Remington with one cartridge in the spout and a bolt-throw away from another shot, he was done.
Now it was his turn to move, ever so slowly, ever so noiselessly.
Learn from them, he instructed himself. Learn their lessons: patience, caution, calmness, freedom from fear, but above all the discipline of the slow move. He had a complicated thing before him: without making a sound, he had to reach back under his rain cape, release the sling of the M3, draw it forward around his body, ease open the ejection port cover and fingerhole the bolt back. Then and only then would he have a chance, but that destination was long minutes away.
The rain fell in torrents now, disguising his noise just a bit. But these were sharp, trained men: their ears would hear the sound of canvas rubbing on leather or metal sliding across flesh; or they would smell his fear, acrid and penetrating; or they would see his movement irregular against the steadier rhythms of nature.
Ever so slowly, he eased over to his side from his belly, an inch at a time, shifting his hand back over the crest of his body. Now he could hear them calling to each other: they spoke the language of birds.
"Coo! Coo!" came the call of a dove in a part of the south where there were no doves.
"Coo!" came the response, from the right.
"Coo!" came another one, clearly from behind. Now they knew knew he was here, for the trail had led up the hill but had not led down it; they had not cut across it. He was thoroughly cooked. he was here, for the trail had led up the hill but had not led down it; they had not cut across it. He was thoroughly cooked.
His fingers touched metal. They crawled up the grip of the grease gun, pawed, climbed up to the tubular receiver and found the sling threaded through its latch. His fingers struggled against the snap on the sling.
Oh, come on, he prayed.
These little f.u.c.kers could be tough; they could rust shut or simply be tightly fitted and need too much leverage to free up.
Why didn"t you check it?
Agh!
a.s.shole!
He ordered himself to check the sling snap a thousand times if he ever got out of this fix, so that he would never, ever again forget.
Come on, baby. Please, come on.
With his fingers pulling, his thumb pushing, he battled the thing. It was so small, so absurd: twelve men were twenty-five yards away hunting him, and he was hung up on the cold, wet ground trying to get a f.u.c.king little- Ah!
It popped, with a metallic click that he believed could be heard all the way to China.
But n.o.body cooed and he wasn"t jumped and gutted on the spot.
The gun slid free and down his back, but he captured it quickly with his hand, and now withdrew it, very slowly, bringing it around, drawing it close to him, like a woman to treasure for the rest of his life. He smelled its oily magnificence, felt its tinny greatness. A reliable, ugly piece of World War II improvisation, it probably cost a buck fifty to manufacture from hubcaps and sleds and bikes picked up in sc.r.a.p-metal drives in the forties. That"s why it had such a cheap, toylike, rattly feel to it. With his fingers he deftly sprung the latch on the ejection port, then inserted a finger into the bolt hole that he had just revealed. With the finger he pushed back, felt the bolt lock, then let it come forward. He dropped down and drew the gun up to him.
"Coo! Coo!"
CHAPTER F FIFTEEN.
The message came by radio to the hasty command post dug into the side of a hill. It was from the sapper patrol on the right flank.
"Brother Colonel," gasped Sergeant Van Trang, "we have the American trapped on a hill half a kilometer to the west. We are closing on him even now. He will be eliminated within the quarter hour."
Huu Co nodded. Van Trang was a banty little north countryman with the heart of a lion. If he said such a thing was about to happen, then indeed it would happen.
"Excellent," said the colonel. "Out."
"There are no shots," his XO told him. "Not since the unfortunate Phuc Bo was martyred."
Huu Co nodded, considering.
Yes, now was the time. Even if he couldn"t get the whole battalion through the pa.s.s, he could get enough men through to overwhelm Arizona. But he had every confidence in Van Trang and his sappers. They were the most dedicated, the best trained, the most experienced. If they had the American trapped, the incident was over.
"All right," he said. "Send runners to One, Two and Three companies. Let"s get the men out of the gra.s.s, get them going. Fast, fast, fast. Now is the time for speed. We have wasted enough time and energy on this American."
The XO rapidly gave the orders.
Huu Co went outside. All around him, men rose from the gra.s.s, shook the acc.u.mulated moisture from their uniforms and formed up into loose company units. A whistle sounded from in front of the column. Behind Huu Co, with amazing swiftness, members of the combat support platoon broke down the hasty command post so that nothing remained, then they too went to their positions.
"Let"s go," said Huu Co, and with a gaggle of support personnel around him, he too began to move at the half-trot, ahead through the mist and the rain, to the end of the valley where the Americans were under siege.
The long train of men moved quickly, bending back the gra.s.s. Overhead, the blessed clouds still hung, low and dense, to the surface of the earth. No airplanes would come. He would make Arizona by nightfall, give the men a few hours" rest, then move them into position and, sometime after midnight, strike with everything he had, from three directions. It would be over.
From the right it came, at last: the sudden flurry of fire, the sound of grenade detonations, a few more shots and then silence.
"They got him," the XO said to him.
"Excellent," said Huu Co. "At last. We have triumphed. Frankly, between you and I, the American provided a great service."
"The political officer, Brother Co? I agree, of course. He loved the party too much and the fighters not enough."
"Such men are necessary," said Huu Co. "Sometimes."
"That American," said the XO. "He was some kind of fighter himself. If they were all like that, our struggle would be nowhere near its conclusion. I wonder what motivates a man like that?"
Huu Co had known Americans in Paris in the early fifties and then in Saigon in the early sixties. They had seemed innocent, almost childish, full of wonder, incapable of deep thought.
"They are not a serious people," he said. "But I suppose by the odds, every now and then you get one who is."
"I suppose," said the XO. "I"m glad we killed this one. I prefer the good ones dead."
He lay very composed, trying not to listen to his heart or to his mind, or to any part of his body, which yearned to survive. Instead he listened to nothing and tried to plan.
They are tracking you. They will come right to you. If you let them carry the fight, you will die. You must shoot first, shoot to kill, attack decisively. If you are aggressive you may stun them. They will expect fear and terror. Aggression is the last thing they expect.
He tried to lay it all out, under the knowledge that any plan, even a bad plan, is better than no plan.
Shoot the visible ones; spray till the mag empties; throw grenades; fall away to the left; fall back into better cover in the trees. But most of all: get off this hill.
They were very close, cooing softly to one another, having converged. They were patient, calm, very steady. Oh, these were the best. They were so professional. No problems. Getting the job done.
One suddenly stood before him. The man was about thirty, very tough looking, his face a blank. He held an American carbine. He seemed to have some trouble believing what lay before him on the ground.
Bob fired a five-round burst into his body, sending him down. He pivoted, rising, and in the same second saw others turning toward him. He swept the grease gun across them, a long, thudding burst, watching the bullets chop through the gra.s.s in a blizzard of spray, ensnare his opponents and take them down. Spent sh.e.l.ls poured spastically from the breech of the junky little piece as it rattled itself dry. In the silence that followed, he heard the ping of grenade pins being pulled and frantically threw himself backward, rolling through the gra.s.s, feeling it lash and whip at him as he went, so glad he"d left the pack behind. The first grenade detonated about ten yards away and he felt the pain as several pieces of shrapnel tore at his arm and the side of his body that was exposed. But still he rolled and another grenade detonated, this one still farther away.
He came to a stop, could hear some hustling around, and pulled a grenade from his belt, pried the pin out and lofted it in the general direction of his enemies. As it exploded-was that a scream he heard?-he got a new magazine into the submachine gun, and though he had no targets, lost himself in the madness of firing. He emptied the magazine stupidly in a sustained blast, the gun thudding, the bullets fanning out to splash through the gra.s.s, atomizing stalks they struck, ripping sheets of mud spray from the earth.
Then he rolled backward and continued to propel himself down the hill. In one moment of repose, he got another magazine into the gun, but before he could see targets he heard the soft crush of something heavy landing nearby, and he went flat as a grenade detonated, sending a spout of earth high into the sky and numbing his eardrums. Now he heard nothing: his hearing was momentarily gone and his vision blurred. The left arm hardly worked; it had numbed out and he saw that it was bleeding badly.
Oh, s.h.i.t.
Fire came at him from three points, short, professional bursts from AK47s. They probed, sending the rounds skirmishing after him in three vectors. He a.s.sumed that a few more were working around behind him.
That"s it, he thought.