Matterhorn_ A Novel of the Vietnam War Part 23

They crawled backward, hearts pounding, panting with adrenaline. Mellas b.u.mped into Daniels, who was pushing out to his a.s.signed sector. He felt other boots touch his legs as Fredrickson and Gambaccini reached the circle. Mellas quickly whispered names. Everyone checked in OK.

The radio was frantically keying the check-in signal. Daniels keyed back the OK signal. The radio stopped.

'I only saw one, Vancouver,' Mellas whispered.

'That's all I saw.'

'Let's get the f.u.c.k out of here,' Gambaccini whispered.

'Got to check the body for doc.u.ments,' Mellas whispered grimly.

'Oh, f.u.c.k, man.'

They heard a moan.

'Oh, s.h.i.t, he's alive,' Fredrickson whispered.

'Now what do we do?' Gambaccini asked.

'Pump some more rounds into him,' Daniels said.

'It'll give away our position,' Mellas whispered quickly. 'Throw a Mike Twenty-Six.'

'There can't be just one of the f.u.c.kers out there,' Vancouver said. 'He's got to have friends behind him.'

'I want the f.u.c.king doc.u.ments. We need them for intelligence.'

'Oh, s.h.i.t, Lieutenant, f.u.c.k the f.u.c.king doc.u.ments.'

'Shut up, Gambaccini.'

Mellas thought furiously. 'Vancouver, go ahead and grease him with a grenade.' That way the enemy would not be able to locate them. 'When I give the word, we all move toward the blue line.' He waited a moment. 'Ready?'

'Yeah.'

'Go.'

Vancouver rose to one knee and threw the grenade. An arc of brilliant fire erupted down the trail as they scrambled for the river.

Again, they waited.

'Did you get him?' Mellas whispered.

'I don't know.'

They waited.

Fitch came up on the radio, asking them to break radio silence. Mellas told him the situation in terse, barely audible whispers. They continued to wait.

'There's got to be more of the f.u.c.kers. Let's get out of here, Lieutenant.'

'G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Gambaccini, I want the doc.u.ments.'

Mellas, too, wanted to run, but he knew that bringing in solid information would make him look good. 'I don't think there's any more of them,' Mellas whispered. No one answered, since no one had been addressed. It was clearly Mellas's problem. The others would do as they were told. 'Let's go check him out,' Mellas finally said.

They crawled forward through the rotting sticks and fungus of the jungle floor. When they reached the body, Vancouver quickly pulled at the AK-47 that was attached to it with a shoulder sling. The man moaned.

'f.u.c.k,' Daniels whispered. 'He's still alive.'

Mellas sent Vancouver and Gambaccini to guard the approaches up and down the trail and went through the wounded soldier's pockets. He scanned the contents of the man's wallets with his red flashlight, trying to ignore the soldier's eyes, which were rolling with fear, pinkish brown in the red light. He was no older than Daniels or Gambaccini.

Fredrickson cut the kid's uniform open, revealing three bullet holes in his abdomen. There were gaping exit wounds in his lower back. Shrapnel from the grenade had smashed through his left leg and shattered his shinbone. Fredrickson looked up at Mellas. 'He won't last but an hour or two. Less if we try to move him. Those are his guts coming out of the exit holes and I think that's part of his pancreas. The charts never look the way it really is, so it's hard to say.'

Mellas wet his lips nervously. If only he could locate the soldier's unit. They could bring the sky down on it.

'We're going to pull back and wait for him to move,' he said.

'What?'

'We'll pretend we're leaving. I want to see which way he crawls for help.'

Mellas stuffed the wallet into his pocket and cut off the kid's shoulder patches with his K-bar. The kid's eyes darted left and right with fear as Mellas worked around him with the large knife. Mellas thought about cutting off the belt buckle but hesitated, wanting to appear more professional. 'OK. Let's go,' he whispered. He switched off the red light. It was like heat being taken away.

'You forgot the belt buckle, Lieutenant,' Daniels said. 'Ten cases of c.o.ke in Da Nang, minimum.' Daniels groped for the buckle in the dark and quickly cut it loose.

They moved off about fifty meters and Mellas formed them into a tight circle. After ten minutes of silence they heard a moan and then a very ordinary sound.

's.h.i.t,' Vancouver whispered, almost in disbelief. 'He's f.u.c.king crying.'

Mellas shut his eyes.

The crying didn't stop and was soon mixed with pleading foreign words. The sound cut through Mellas like a shaft of steel. The sobbing rose and fell in intensity. The pleading continued, a child crying for help, afraid to die.

'Jesus Christ, shut the f.u.c.k up,' Mellas whispered aloud. The others were silent, waiting for Mellas's lead. 's.h.i.t,' Mellas finally said. 'Let's go find him.'

The youth had managed to crawl nearly thirty meters from where they'd left him. Mellas turned on his flashlight, shielding it with his hand. The soldier had ground dirt into his mouth, and it had mixed with blood-flecked saliva in his teeth. He watched the Marines, eyes wide, lips pleading silently.

'Well, sir, it looks like his friends are east of here,' Fredrickson said.

'Yeah,' Mellas whispered.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

'Do you think he'll live?' Mellas asked.

'Won't make much difference anyway.'

'How come?'

'Tigers. It's a pretty easy piece of meat.'

'He'd die before then, wouldn't he?'

'f.u.c.ked if I know. I'm just an HM-three.'

Suddenly the kid broke down and an anguished cry escaped his lips, followed by more frightened choking sobbing.

Fredrickson switched the safety off of his M-16. 'It won't be the first time, sir,' he said.

'No, don't.' Mellas switched off his own safety. He pointed the barrel directly at the kid's head. The kid looked up at him, crying loudly, mucus running from his nose. Mellas switched the safety back on. 'We can't,' he whispered.

'Lieutenant, do him a favor. He's going to die.'

'We don't know that.'

'I f.u.c.king know it.'

'Maybe we could get him back.'

Fredrickson sighed. 'We'd trail his guts all over the place. Even if he did live, we'd just have to turn him over to the ARVNs and they'd kill him slower than the tigers.'

'We don't know that for certain.' Mellas toed the kid gently.

Fredrickson placed the barrel of his rifle against the kid's head.

'Don't shoot him,' Mellas said coldly. 'That's an order, Fredrickson.' He backed away from the boy. 'He might make it. Maybe his buddies are real close.'

'If they are,' Gambaccini said, 'let's get the f.u.c.k out of here.'

'You going to leave him, Lieutenant?' Fredrickson asked.

'He might live,' Mellas said. 'There's a chance one of his guys could pick him up. They must have heard the firing.' He struggled for more reasons. 'It'd be murder.'

n.o.body said anything. The jungle had gone silent. Mellas no longer had any illusions about their vulnerability. They were alone, just as this single crying stranger at their feet was alone, their reason for being here probably not much different from his.

'East, sir?' Vancouver asked. 'The way he was heading?'

Mellas didn't say anything. The others shifted nervously.

'Let's get the f.u.c.k out of here,' Gambaccini finally whispered. 'I'm cold.'

There was a tense silence. Mellas could hear them all breathing, smell the sweat rising off them in the darkness. He felt Daniels next to him with the large PRC-25 on his back, scratchy whispers coming from the handset. Mellas rubbed his face, feeling the slight growth of his beard.

He knew it was no use pretending anymore. He was simply too frightened to push farther ahead into the darkness. 'Daniels, tell Bravo we're coming in.'

'All right, right,' Gambaccini whispered.

'I ain't complaining,' whispered Daniels, 'but how come?'

Again there was silence as Mellas struggled for an answer. Finally he said, 'Because I don't want to be out here any more.'

All that night, Mellas didn't say a word beyond confirming Daniels's map reading. When morning came, Mellas expected the others to avoid looking him in the eye. Surprisingly, everyone kept offering him reasons he could give Fitch for coming in early. He could say that someone was ill or had turned an ankle. As they began to feel safer, climbing back up Sky Cap, the excuses for coming in grew wilder and more outrageously funny and the imaginary profits from the AK-47 and the belt buckle soared.

Mellas was unable to join the general levity. He couldn't look at Fredrickson. He knew Fredrickson thought he should have killed the wounded boy but didn't have the guts. He wondered if Fredrickson was right, just as he kept wondering if he was going to lie to Fitch about the mission.

When he arrived at the CP he found Fitch and Hawke sitting cross-legged eating C-rations. He pulled the Vietnamese kid's wallet out of his pocket, weighing it in his hand. 'Sorry for aborting the mission, Jim. I don't know what to say for myself.'

'Say you got scared,' Fitch said. 's.h.i.t, confession's good for the soul. I told battalion you went out on a kill team, bagged a gook, and didn't have anyone hurt. A complete success.'

'Great.' Mellas kept looking at the wallet in his hand.

'Besides, it's good you came in early,' Fitch said. 'We're skying out to VCB tomorrow. Just got word.'

Mellas continued to look at the wallet, saying nothing. Hawke, who had been watching Mellas through the steam that rose from his pear-can coffee mug, handed Mellas the cup. Mellas gave a brief smile and took a drink. His hand was shaking. Hawke said in a calm voice, 'Something happened. You want to talk about it?'

Mellas didn't answer right away. Then he said, 'I think I know where the gooks are.' He pulled out his map and pointed to the spot, his hand still trembling.

'How do you know that, Mel?' Hawke asked.

'From the direction he crawled after he was shot.' Mellas tossed the wallet down at Fitch. Then he dug into his pocket and pulled out the soldier's unit and rank patches. He looked at them, then at Fitch and Hawke, who were no longer eating. 'I let him crawl toward home with his guts hanging out.' He started sobbing. 'I just left him there.' Snot was streaming from his nose. 'I'm so sorry. I'm so f.u.c.king sorry.' His hands were now shaking with his body as he clenched the two pieces of cloth to his eyes.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

The chopper's deck vibrated beneath them as they leaned back against the thin metal that separated them from several thousand feet of empty s.p.a.ce. The trip from Sky Cap to Vandegrift Combat Base was like magic. Jungle-covered mountains that would have taken weeks to cross flashed beneath them in minutes.

Vancouver wondered if his gook sword or his s.p.a.ce blanket had come in yet. Skosh was dreaming about R & R in Sydney and wondering what it was really like to have intercourse with a girl. Hawke was wondering if this might be his last time out in the bush, if maybe he could w.a.n.gle a job in the rear. Fitch kept going over the events of the long march, preparing his case, worried sick about the disgrace of being relieved of command. He also wanted to get out of his filthy clothing and take a shower. China was counting the number of people ahead of him to pull KP duty and wondering what he could do to jump the line before the company skyed out on another operation. He needed time in the rear for organizing. Pollini was kneeling at a shot-out porthole watching the landscape slide beneath them. He wondered if any of his brothers or sisters were thinking about him. Ca.s.sidy wanted to sleep-to sleep and sleep and forget the shame of one of his own men wanting to kill him. Goodwin wanted to get drunk. So did Ridlow, Ba.s.s, Sh.e.l.ler, Rider, Tilghman, Pallack, Gambaccini, Jermain, and a lot of others. Jackson wanted to get stoned, as did Mole, Cortell, Broyer, Mallory, Jacobs, Fredrickson, Robertson, and Relsnik. Jancowitz fingered the now filthy red silk scarf he'd stuffed in his pocket, not wanting to look at it but not wanting to throw it away. It still smelled faintly of Susi's perfume. He didn't care how he did it, he just wanted to forget where he was.

Mellas, left behind with a squad to guide Kilo Company into the lines, kept seeing the twisted face, running with snot, of the young Vietnamese soldier. He wondered why the kid had been out there alone in the first place and whether there was a chance he'd lived.

While the chundering workhorse helicopters flew back and forth between VCB and Sky Cap, sending out the freshly outfitted troops of Kilo Company and picking up the ragged troops from Bravo Company, Colonel Mulvaney was returning from a briefing at Dong Ha.

The stupid cordon operation was over, and Mulvaney was anxious to be snooping and p.o.o.ping, as he called it: interdicting the flow of NVA supplies into the Au Shau Valley and toward Da Nang, screening the NVA from the fertile plains to the east of them, and keeping open Route 9, the only road running from the coast through the mountains to Khe Sanh and Laos. If the NVA ever got their armor down that road on a cloudy day, it would be Katie bar the gate.

'Is that Bravo coming in from Sky Cap, Corporal Odegaard?' Mulvaney asked his driver.

Odegaard slowed the jeep as they pa.s.sed the groups of two or three trudging wearily alongside the muddy road. When they pa.s.sed a Marine with an Australian-style bush cover, brim turned up on the right side, and a sawed-off machine gun, Odegaard said, 'That's them, sir. There's Vancouver, the guy who f.u.c.ked up the ambush for them.'

'Pull over when you get past those crates over there.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Odegaard swung the jeep off the road and came to a stop. Mulvaney watched two kids without trousers go by, waddling to avoid irritating the ringworm that covered them from waist to ankle. His experienced eye noted the rot on hands and faces, the state of disrepair of the mortars, and the way the kids' rotting uniforms hung off their thin bodies.

'You want me to turn the engine off, sir?'