Matterhorn_ A Novel of the Vietnam War Part 47

Jesus, a f.u.c.king grunt that could think. A f.u.c.king miracle. 'Good. Put them in a twenty-meter circle. You got it? Ten meters radius, exactly. Otherwise I won't know how far above the f.u.c.king thing I am. Over.'

There was a wait. Then Bravo Six came up again. 'Chatterbox, it'll have to be thirteen and a half meters diameter. The rest of the area is mined and we can't guarantee it.' There was a pause and blip of static as Fitch let up on the key. Then he was back. 'But if you want to risk it, we'll risk making the circle. Over.'

Small switched over to the intercom and spoke to Nickels. 'Mined? Can you believe this f.u.c.king s.h.i.t? They want me to hit the top of a f.u.c.king mountain in the dark, in the f.u.c.king fog, and the G.o.dd.a.m.ned LZ is mined mined? And all this to get some poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d that probably would rather be dead anyway. At least I would. Jesus Christ. Both f.u.c.king legs.'

'Better than both b.a.l.l.s.'

'I ain't so sure. What's he going to do back home? f.u.c.k cantaloupes for the rest of his life?' Small was trying to imagine what thirteen and a half meters would look like compared with twenty, and trying to get that into his head so if he did see it he could guess how high above the LZ he was.

'OK, Bravo. Don't risk the mines, but get the f.u.c.king circle made. I don't have all night. And when I say pop a w.i.l.l.y Pete, I don't care if they mortar the f.u.c.k out of you, you pop a G.o.dd.a.m.ned w.i.l.l.y Pete. You got one? Over.'

Bravo Six said they did.

They collected heat tabs from all over the company and placed their helmets in a circle around Jackson and the two corpsmen. When the pilot gave the word, China and Conman ran from helmet to helmet with cigarette lighters, igniting the heat tabs. A blue circle of light, ghostly in the fog, grew around Jackson, the helmets hiding the flickering blue flame from all directions except directly above.

The huge helicopter rushed in just a few feet above their heads. The rotor wash tipped over two of the helmets, and dark figures rushed to hide the two heat tabs, throwing them back in with bare hands.

Mellas heard the pilot mutter over the radio. 'Jesus Christ, Bravo. I'm right on top of you f.u.c.kers. OK, coming around. Get that man ready. I got your heat tabs. Over.'

'Can you believe this, Nickels?' Small said, switching to the intercom. 'I actually said I got your heat tabs.'' Holy s.h.i.t, he thought to himself, thirteen and a half meters.

'OK, Bravo, coming around,' he radioed. 'You pop that w.i.l.l.y Pete when I tell you. Over.' Small looked over his shoulder into the blackness behind the chopper, but the dim circle was lost in the clouds again. Totally blind, he felt, more than he piloted, the big bird around to come at the LZ again, keeping that faint picture of glowing blue in his mind. He straightened the chopper out slowly and came back down to the same altimeter reading. He changed the pitch and att.i.tude. The helicopter roared alone in the blackness.

Suddenly, like a marsh ghost, a quavering blue oblong appeared, moving fast, too fast, changing to a circle, changing too f.u.c.king fast, too f.u.c.king fast. 'Now, G.o.dd.a.m.n it. Now,' Small yelled.

'Now,' Fitch shouted, and Pallack popped the spoon on the white phosphorous grenade and threw it into the zone. Sudden brilliant white light stabbed at the men's eyes. The huge whirling black ma.s.s crashed into the zone with an anguished screech of buckling metal. The front wheels gave way and the bird lurched sideways, nosing in, pivoting on the buckled wheels, twisted by the torque of its blades. Then it lurched sideways and came to a stop, its tailgate jammed.

The crew chief came crawling out over the barrel of a .50-caliber machine gun, shouting. The litter bearers hoisted Jackson in through the narrow opening, handing the plasma bottle to the side gunner. Fredrickson and Sh.e.l.ler, seeing Jackson safely inside, scrambled back and dropped to the mud as the blades of the chopper gained speed. Fredrickson picked up two b.l.o.o.d.y objects and threw them through the side opening: Jackson's boots, his feet still in them.

Then the mortar sh.e.l.ls started homing in on the burning phosphorous. The helicopter skimmed across the landing zone and disappeared, falling downhill into the darkness. 'Get off the top of the f.u.c.king hill,' Fitch shouted, unnecessarily. Everyone was running for cover. Conman tried to extinguish the burning phosphorous. It broke into smaller pieces and he screamed in pain when one of them burned a tiny hole into his leg. It went through the muscle and didn't stop until it reached the bone.

Mellas spent the rest of the night trying to understand why Jackson had lost both legs while he himself seemed to bounce from near miss to near miss. He felt that somehow he had cheated. Then he laughed softly. What was he supposed to do, stand up and get blown away to make things up to the dead and the maimed?

He thought of the jungle, already regrowing around him to cover the scars they had created. He thought of the tiger, killing to eat. Was that evil? And ants? They killed. No, the jungle wasn't evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil, then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares.

It occurred to Mellas that he could create the possibility of good or evil through caring. He could nullify the indifferent world. But in so doing he opened himself up to the pain of watching it get blown away. His killing that day would not have been evil if the dead soldiers hadn't been loved by mothers, sisters, friends, wives. Mellas understood that in destroying the fabric that linked those people, he had partic.i.p.ated in evil, but this evil had hurt him as well. He also understood that his partic.i.p.ation in evil, was a result of being human. Being human was the best he could do. Without man there would be no evil. But there was also no good, nothing moral built over the world of fact. Humans were responsible for it all. He laughed at the cosmic joke, but he felt heartsick.

The next morning Mellas crawled from his hole to make his round of the perimeter. He went from hole to hole, kidding, trying to lighten everyone up. He poked fun at Conman for trying to handle burning phosphorous with his bare hands. Conman flipped him the bird and looked pleased that Mellas was acknowledging his sacrifice. Some of the kids began to open C-rations with the tiny can openers that hung with their dog tags. Others brewed coffee. Several were digging a hole to s.h.i.t in away from the lines.

All around Mellas the ridges and peaks stood clearly against the lightening sky. The jungle in the valley below him was no different from when he'd first arrived: silent, gray-green, at once ancient and ageless. But it was no longer a mystery. It contained rivers that he'd waded across and fought in. There were also hilltops whose approaches and slightest contours he knew intimately, and bamboo patches, beaten down and forced back, already starting to rise again. And there was a trail, now beginning to grow over, soon to disappear. It was another ordinary day in the world of fact. But it was different because the mystery had been slightly penetrated and Mellas saw things differently.

He stopped at the CP to find out about Jackson. Fitch said he was still alive.

Four Phantoms roared across the top of the hill, shattering the dawn with noise, just as artillery fire erupted in the valley to the northwest. 'That's the prep for Speeding Home Kilo,' Fitch murmured to no one in particular. Soon, four CH-46s circled into the valley to the north. Everyone in the CP group listened in on Kilo's frequency as the lead platoon commander reported a cool zone.

'D'gooks are making f.u.c.king hat,' Pallack announced. Everyone smiled. Mellas guessed, however, that Kilo's job would be to sit astride the escape routes. They'd be busy soon enough.

Hawke joined them and Fitch pa.s.sed his coffee around the circle. They decided to build a new LZ out of sight of the NVA observers, between Matterhorn and Helicopter Hill, to evacuate the walking wounded like Mellas. Mellas gave Conman the platoon and was helped down the hill to the new zone, where he collapsed.

He lay there semiconscious. Anne floated through his mind, and he awoke to feel the hidden sun on his face, or the cool mist-and to an emptiness and a longing for her unlike any he'd ever felt. But he knew it was useless to think of getting back together, and that was months in the future anyway. There were white girls in Sydney. Round-eyes. Maybe he'd go to the outback. A quiet farm with sheep. Maybe he'd fall in love there. Maybe he'd save his eye. Everything seemed to be part of a cycle as he stared into the gray nothingness above him, hearing the wash of distant waves on a warm beach, feeling the sun pulling his body upward like evaporating rain.

Then he remembered Vancouver's sword, still in the CP bunker on Helicopter Hill. He got two of the walking wounded to come with him for security.

Stevens was on watch in the little bunker. A work party was just finishing a larger bunker for the CP group. Mellas could see the colonel and the Three talking with Bainford, looking at something off to the north, their maps out. He nodded to Stevens in the gloom, crawled over to the corner, and pulled out the sword.

'That yours, Mellas?' Stevens asked in amazement.

Mellas eyed him for a long moment. 'I don't know,' he finally said. 'I really don't know.'

'Yeah. OK,' Stevens said. 'You guys did a h.e.l.l of a job yesterday.'

Looking at Stevens with one eye made Mellas aware that he had taken seeing for granted. Now, this way, he saw Stevens differently from before. He couldn't get mad at Stevens for the comment. Stevens was just Stevens, a cog in the machinery, trying to be nice. And Mellas was just Mellas, another cog, deciding not to get angry. He didn't much like being a cog, but there it was. He smiled at his silent conversation. 'Thanks,' Mellas said.

He returned to the new LZ and fell asleep with the sword beside him.

Someone was kicking his boot. Mellas opened his good eye. He was flooded with ugly anger at being disturbed.

It was McCarthy. Alpha Company was winding through the small landing zone. 'Wake up, you silly f.u.c.ker,' McCarthy said. 'It took me forever to find you with that G.o.dd.a.m.ned bandage wrapped around your face.'

Mellas, smiling, reached a hand up to McCarthy. McCarthy's radio operator was smoking impatiently. 'Where the f.u.c.k you going?' Mellas asked.

'West. Two Twenty-Four set up a blocking position right on the Z at the Laos end of the valley. We'll be the hammer. Charlie Company's kicking off to our north right now. They're pulling you guys out this afternoon.' He paused. 'You guys had a rough time, didn't you?'

'Yeah,' Mellas agreed. 'Nothing unusual, though. Light casualties' I believe it's called back in the world. All you have to do is report it as a battalion action and the percentage lost thins to nothing. Who's going to hold Matterhorn?'

'Why should you care? You'll be skating on board the Sanctuary, Sanctuary, dazzling round-eyed nurses. Maybe we'll get in another mystery tour when this f.u.c.king op's over.' dazzling round-eyed nurses. Maybe we'll get in another mystery tour when this f.u.c.king op's over.'

'Who's holding f.u.c.king Matterhorn?' Mellas demanded, rising to his elbows, his good eye beginning to spasm.

McCarthy shrugged. 'No one,' he said.

Mellas sank back to the ground and lay looking at the sky. No one. Finally he spoke. 'Be careful, Mac.'

'Don't worry about me,' McCarthy said.

Mellas looked at him. They both knew McCarthy was going into a fight that afternoon, the same day Mellas was leaving it all. It was another cycle, another wearying, convulsive rhythm, and if it wasn't Mellas it was McCarthy, and if not McCarthy someone like McCarthy, forever and forever, like an image in facing mirrors in a barbershop, deeper and deeper, smaller and smaller, curving with time and distance away into the unknown, but always repeating, always the same. Mellas thought that if he could smash one of those mirrors, then this agony would stop and he'd be left alone to dream. But the mirrors were only thoughts, illusions. Reality was McCarthy, standing above him, a friendly face, his radioman impatient to get going because they'd have to hump extra fast to catch up with the rest of the platoon.

'Good luck,' Mellas said.

McCarthy waved and trudged after his radio operator. He turned and waved again. Mellas kept thinking, Don't get killed, d.a.m.n you, don't let yourself get killed.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

The medevac helicopter flew eastward. It flashed across a white beach and then out over the South China Sea. Eventually a white ship with large red crosses on its superstructure and hull appeared below. The chopper tilted back, its blades pounding the air, and set down on the deck. Corpsmen ran inside and hauled the wounded out on stretchers. A nurse in fatigues was holding a clipboard, looking at medevac tags and wounds. She was rapidly sorting the wounded into groups. The most severely wounded were being shoved to the side as the less wounded were stripped of weapons, boots, and clothes and rushed into the interior of the ship.

The nurse grabbed for Mellas's tag, not really looking at him. 'I'm all right,' he said. 'Those guys over there are a lot worse off than I am.'

'You let me run triage, Marine.' She looked up at his bandages. She had a coa.r.s.e, red face, small eyes that seemed sleep-deprived, and heavy eyebrows. She wore her hair in two short stiff pigtails. 'Most likely to survive go first,' she said. Mellas realized that the idea was to maximize the number of men who could return to combat.

'What's this?' she asked, pointing at Vancouver's sword.

'It's a friend of mine's.'

'All weapons, Marine,' she said, motioning for the sword.

'I'm a lieutenant.'

'Sor-ry,' came the sarcastic reply. 'Look, Lieutenant Lieutenant. I'm busy. All weapons-even stupid souvenirs.'

'The f.u.c.k it's a souvenir.'

'What did you say, Marine? You know you're talking to a lieutenant in the United States Navy, don't you?' That rank was the equivalent of a Marine captain.

'Yes, ma'am.' Mellas gave her a sloppy nonregulation salute, his hand curved over limply. 'How do I know I'll get it back?' he asked, still holding the salute, waiting for her to return it.

The nurse glared at him. Then she shouted over her shoulder, 'Bell, take this man's weapon.'

'I told you-'

'You obey orders, Lieutenant, or I'll have your a.s.s on report.' She moved off to the next man, reading his medevac tag, writing on her clipboard.

Bell, a hospital corpsman, came over and took the sword. He looked at it appraisingly.

'How do I know I'll get it back?' Mellas asked again.

'You pick it up when you get orders back ash.o.r.e, sir.'

'I want a receipt.'

'Sir, you're holding up the process. We got Twenty-Fourth Marines in the s.h.i.t and-'

'I'm in in the Twenty-Fourth Marines. I want a f.u.c.king receipt.' the Twenty-Fourth Marines. I want a f.u.c.king receipt.'

'We don't have any receipt forms for swords, Lieutenant. It'll go with the rifles. It'll be all right.'

'I've had three of my men pay for their G.o.dd.a.m.n rifles because some f.u.c.ker in the Navy sold them to the gooks. I want a receipt and I want it now.'

Bell looked around for help. He spotted the nurse and went over to her. Mellas saw her set her lips tight, then say something to Bell. Bell returned. 'You'll have to wait, sir. The lieutenant says she's busy.'

When the last stretcher disappeared inside the ship, the nurse walked over toward Mellas, holding herself rigid. 'Now what's the problem, Lieutenant?'

'Ma'am, the lieutenant would like a receipt for the lieutenant's weapon, weapon, ma'am.' ma'am.'

'A receipt. I see.' She looked down at her clipboard. 'Mellas, Second Lieutenant, Bravo Company, First Battalion Twenty-Fourth Marine Regiment. Correct?'

'Yes, ma'am,' Mellas replied.

'I'm going to issue you a direct order, Second Lieutenant Mellas, with HM-1 Bell as a witness. If the order isn't obeyed, I'm going to place you under arrest for disobeying a direct order. Is that perfectly clear?'

'Yes, ma'am,' Mellas said tightly.

'Lieutenant Mellas, give your weapon, that sword, to HM-1 Bell and get your a.s.s down to the officers' ward. If you're not moving in ten seconds I'm placing you under arrest. As it is, I'm putting you on report for disrupting triage.'

Mellas knew when the machinery had him. He gave Bell the sword.

In the officers' ward another corpsman collected Mellas's reeking uniform, but Mellas wouldn't let him take the boots. He tied them to the end of the bed and glared at the corpsman. When he felt the boots were safe, he found a basin, filled it with warm water, and with a deep sigh put both feet into it. Sometime later he was brought back to reality by the voice of another corpsman. 'Debriding, Lieutenant,' he said. Mellas reluctantly removed his feet from the basin.

They put him on a gurney and wheeled him deeper inside the ship. There they gave him a local anesthetic and he watched them pick metal, dirt, and cloth from his legs, snip off dead flesh, then clean and rebandage the shrapnel wounds. 'The rest will come out on its own,' the surgeon said, already looking at the next problem on the list, wiping his hands. A corpsman wheeled Mellas back to his bed. He had to wake Mellas up to get him into it.

He jerked awake, his heart pounding, upon hearing his name. He took a gulp of air and searched frantically for danger with his good eye. A nurse with red hair whose name tag read 'Elsked, K. E.' was standing over him. Like the triage nurse, she wore the twin bars of a Navy lieutenant. She was curt. 'You're due in the operating room in five minutes, Lieutenant.' She looked at his bandaged legs. 'Can you walk or do you need help?'

'Whatever's efficient,' Mellas answered. He crawled out of the bed and walked, his legs stiff. She led the way down the pa.s.sage, turning occasionally to see how far behind he was.

Mellas watched her every move, noticing her hips and the outline of her bra strap beneath the crisp white synthetic material of her dress. He longed to catch up to her and touch her, make contact with someone soft, someone who smelled clean and fresh, someone warm. He wanted to talk to someone who knew how he felt, who could talk to the lost, lonely part of him. He wanted a woman.

The nurse directed two corpsmen to arrange Mellas on an operating table. She wouldn't look him in the eye. Mellas regretted being sent to this place, where his sudden flood of longing had no possibility of fulfillment. She thinks all I want to do is stick it in her, he thought bitterly. Of course I do, but there's so much more. He laughed aloud.

'What's so funny?' one of the corpsmen asked, moving a huge machine that hung from a track overhead. He positioned it carefully over Mellas's face.

'Between the emotion and the response, the desire and the spasm, falls the shadow,' Mellas said. He attempted a smile.

The red-haired nurse turned to look at him intently.

They held him down by the shoulders and an older doctor came in. He peered into Mellas's eye and injected a local anesthetic next to it. The nurse washed the eye, cleaning out the dirt and powder that had mixed with the ointment that Fredrickson had shoved into it. A piece of shrapnel had laid open Mellas's eyelid. Another piece had gone into the skin just above the bridge of his nose, stopping against the skull. Mellas was tense with fear of what was coming. He looked up at a large black machine on tracks above him. It had large thick gla.s.s lenses and a stainless steel needle about six inches long that narrowed to a very fine point. The machine started to glow through the lenses, which magnified the doctor's eyes, peering back at him. Then the lenses covered the brilliant light, and the light seemed to penetrate Mellas's brain. The steel needle came out of the haze of light, and the doctor moved dials that moved the needle. The redheaded nurse's hands pressed down on Mellas's forehead and chest. The needle went into Mellas's eye. He held on to the gurney and tried not to scream.

Bit by bit, the chips and flakes of the defective hand grenade were picked from Mellas's eye. Then the surgeon put two st.i.tches in the eyelid.

'You're incredibly lucky, Lieutenant,' the doctor said. He was already pulling off his mask. 'Two of those slivers were just microns from severing the optic nerve. You'd have lost your eye.' He pushed the machine back. 'You won't see normally for a week or so. Keep a patch on it for a while, but you'll be able to return to your unit in about a week.' He turned and began washing his hands. Mellas felt as if he'd just been notified of his own hanging.

He was wheeled back and he slept.

When Mellas awoke he climbed out of the stiff sheets and hobbled to the pa.s.sageway. The cold steel beneath his feet vibrated from the ship's engines. He hailed a pa.s.sing corpsman and asked where the enlisted men were. He was pointed in the right direction and limped off. He found Jackson in a ward with about a dozen other wounded Marines, all hooked up to IV bottles. Jackson was awake, staring at the wall, propped up against the headboard with a blanket over his legs. There were no b.u.mps at the end of the blanket.

Mellas suddenly didn't want Jackson to see him. He wanted to walk away and blot Jackson from his mind.

A corpsman came up to Mellas. 'Can I help you, uh . . .'

'Lieutenant,' Mellas finished for him. 'I'd like to see one of my men.'

'Sir, we're not supposed to have visitors except between fourteen and sixteen hundred hours. These guys are still pretty critical.'

Mellas looked at the corpsman. 'Doc, he was my radioman.'