“Coo! Coo!”
CHAPTER 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 pass, 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 grass, 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 grass, shook the accumulated 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 grass. 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 alclass="underline" 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 grass in a blizzard of spray, ensnare his opponents and take them down. Spent shells 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 grass, 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 grass, 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, shit.
Fire came at him from three points, short, professional bursts from AK47s. They probed, sending the rounds skirmishing after him in three vectors. He assumed that a few more were working around behind him.
That’s it, he thought.
I buy it.
This is it.
Oh, fuck, I tried so hard. Don’t let me chicken out here at the end. Oh, please, let me be brave.
But he wasn’t brave. His anger melted. A profound sense of regret washed over him. So much he hadn’t done, so much he hadn’t seen. He felt the powerful pain of his own father’s death upon him, and how, now that he was gone, no one would be left alive to mourn and miss Earl Swagger.
God help me, Daddy, I tried so goddamned hard. I just didn’t make it.