13th Valley (32 page)

“You're crazy,” she had screamed at him. “Get on out of here.” He'd shown up for a third day even though she'd dismissed him after the second night. It was in her apartment and she'd been listening to Isaac Hayes' “One Woman.”

“Hello, Darling,” he had said forcing his way in. She had been mean the night before. After 17 months in the jungle there is only one thing a soldier wants to do. Softly, violently, any way. And she had been an extreme bitch. She had tormented him. She had a lovely body and long slender legs. She had been fine in bed. Egan grinned inwardly but it went sour in his mind. Good to love but lousy to sleep with, he thought. Too restless. Stomach cramps or some shit. Everything had been a tease. She was soft passionate kisses on the ferry across the harbor to Bondi Beach; warm hugs in the hallway of the Illowra Lodge then nasty in bed. And the worst of it, Egan thought, she was totally ignorant about the world and the war. She's got a mind for bed, for love, for money, my money, and not much more. When his money began running out she had cramps. She had a talent for making men fall in love with her. Egan was disgusted with himself for having fallen. She was a poor substitute and he hated himself for having accepted her. Now she became one more thing to chase from his mind.

Egan looked again at the ridges then over at the slow progress the unit was making moving into the jungle. He got to his knees, struggled, rolled his ruck over and removed from it the letter he had begun to Stephanie. He skipped a few lines then wrote:

It's still the same day. I'm getting short. My time is almost up. I'll be back in the World in twenty five days and out of the army in a month. I'd like to see you again. Memories of you keep floating up in my brain. Like the time in that funky Martinson Hotel when I told you you deserved better than that. I'm really feeling disconnected right now. Must be because of the start of this new operation. I should be thinking about this thing but you keep floating up before me. I don't know why but I've got this image of you and me in the Martinson right now. There was an old chair in the room and I'm lying in the bed. The lights are off but there's light coming in the window from the bar signs and street lights across the street. You're in front of the window looking out and you're naked. You are saying that I hurt you. Why did you say I hurt you?

Egan stopped writing. It did not sound right to him. He returned the letter to his ruck. The eastern ascent of 848 rose from the jungle abruptly, crested in a false peak of bomb shattered rock, merged with the debris surrounding the landing zone, rose and fell then rose to the peak. Egan was in the cover of the debris on the second rise. Again the view east hypnotized him. On the first ridge every tree, every leaf, was crisp in his vision. The second was less clear and by the fifth the vegetation was splotches of lighter and darker green. On the ridges beyond the green seemed to lose its color and become gray shaded gradations blurring and collapsing hazily into the foothills and finally piedmont. Egan counted the ridges, eleven of them. He could hear the old sergeant at the briefing hall, hear him saying, “You will be on the 12th and highest ridge with”—Egan slipped his arms into the rucksack shoulder straps, turned to the west, and rose—“with,” the sergeant's voice came, “your back to the 13th valley.”

C
HAPTER
13

At the step-off point where Whiteboy entered the jungle the vegetation showed scars from the morning bombardment, but only ten meters down the wilderness appeared untouched. It began with walls of green to his sides. At fifteen meters he turned left, ducked beneath several branches and found a trail west. Branches draped with vines crossed overhead. With each step the canopy thickened, the jungle became darker, the trail descended. The trail appeared to Whiteboy to have been unused in three months, perhaps even six. Palm fronds crossed the path at shoulder and waist height. Bamboo thickets, clusters of stalks clumped like pillars, rose in the midst of his downward movement. He stepped quietly, slowly, cautiously around, over and between, always looking, listening, smelling before each step. He did not smell the mortars.

When Brooks had dismissed the men from the CP conference earlier Egan had immediately searched for and found Whiteboy and had told him his squad would be point. Egan had explained to him the direction and objective of movement and then left. Lieutenant Thomaston had followed Egan to Whiteboy's position amongst the leafy brush down a trail off the northeast corner of 848. Thomaston confirmed the move and set up the diversionary step-off location and then he too had left.

“They stickin it to us ah-gain,” Whiteboy had muttered to himself, his thick lips trembling imperceptibly, his great mass hunched in dread. Before him was his M-60 machine gun. He had not lowered the bi-pod legs which could be used to support the barrel but had simply rested the barrel in the crotch of a bush and generally aimed the weapon down the trail. Whiteboy had stroked the metallic side of the machine gun and had muttered to it, “They stickin it to us ah-gain, Lit'le Boy. They au a-time stickin it to us.” He had rolled over, gotten to his knees, hefted the gun and begun organizing his squad.

There was nothing fancy about Whiteboy's organization. He had decided to walk point himself. He always walked point for his squad. Whiteboy hated it but he could not allow another boonierat in his squad to walk point. It was partially that Whiteboy believed his responsibility as squad leader carried with it a need to protect his men but it was more a matter of pride—the pride of a boonierat, of a squad leader, an M-60 gunner, a point man, a big man. That is the way he described it to himself. He could not bear that another boonierat should do his work.

With his walking point came the advantage of immediate obedience by his squad to whatever he ordered. Justin Hill, the assistant gunner and ammo bearer, would walk Whiteboy's slack. Behind Hill Whiteboy set Cookie, Bill Frye, a rifleman, then Andrews, the squad's RTO, then Harley with the M-79 grenade launcher and finally Kirtley and Mullen, both rifleman. After securing their equipment they all had risen from their positions and carried their rucks to the step-off point, where they sat and waited for Thomaston to tell them to move out.

“We're goina work west down that finger,” Thomaston had repeated to Whiteboy for lack of anything else to say. “If we don't find anything we're goina sweep up to that peak then maybe move southwest.”

Whiteboy had not really listened. He had sat above the step-off smoking and checking his ruck again for anything that might make a sound when he moved. A knot had grabbed his stomach, tightened, forced acidic fluid to the back of his throat. He had patted the gun, rubbed his immense hands, his thick fingers over the oily bolt carrier and feed tray. As he squeezed, the weapon seemed to push back, as he caressed, the weapon seemed to sigh and caress his hand in return.

Whiteboy had spent most of the preceding ten months in the bush, much of the time without close human contact. He had learned to speak to his weapon and to listen to it. He had learned to listen and to smell and to feel the jungle. Before entering the army Whiteboy had been a mechanic. He had always worked with his hands, always with tangible things. Whiteboy was now a mechanic with his M-60 and he was in touch with the physical world of the jungle about him. His primal instincts were accentuated in the jungle. He was in physical touch with a physical universe that required no verbal explanation or justification. Whiteboy, feeling, communicating with the physical world through his hands, was primally touching reality at a level the intellectualizing Brooks or Silvers could not feel for they cloaked reality in words as if the words were the reality and the real did not exist, could not exist, without description. Whiteboy communicated with his men in a way Brooks could never communicate, could never understand, could never feel.

“Okay,” Thomaston had said. Whiteboy had risen, his giant body buried beneath an enormous rucksack. A sling ran from the M-60's front sight over Whiteboy's right shoulder then to the butt of the stock, the gun slung horizontal at Whiteboy's hip, the barrel straight forward. A belt of one hundred cartridges came from the feed tray, hung toward the ground then looped back up over the gun barrel and hung down again. Diagonally across his chest Whiteboy had two additional belts of ammo and about his waist was snapped a third. Whiteboy had glanced back at Hill to make sure he was ready then had stepped forward, down, into the first layer of jungle. Hill followed at three meters then Frye, Andrews, Harley, Kirtley and Mullen. As the descent began the helicopter with the correspondent arrived, deposited its load and departed. When it left Thomaston sent word forward to wait zero two then move out again. Whiteboy stepped quietly down.

At the step-off point Egan entered the jungle behind 3d Sqd. He was followed by Cherry and Doc McCarthy, 1st Plt's medic. Thomaston stayed at the step-off metering out soldiers at equal intervals. 1st Sqd followed the platoon CP and then 2d Sqd. Thomaston turned his post over to Lt. De Barti of the 2d Plt who metered out his men behind 1st Plt descending into the jungle.

Whiteboy set the pace for the entire column. Very slowly he moved. One pace every five or six seconds, ten paces a minute, less than 300 meters in an hour. Whiteboy picked his way downward, generally westward, turning up here, down there, as obstacles in the trail dictated. He stayed below the ridge keeping the crest always uphill to his left. He did not cut trail. He did not use a machete to straighten the path. He simply moved toward his objective along the path of least resistance as imperceptibly as possible.

Justin Hill maintained visual contact with Whiteboy. As slackman Hill paid close attention to the pointman's every motion. Hill followed Whiteboy without a sound, stepping over each root cluster, hunching beneath each low branch. Behind Hill Cookie Frye moved in slow spurts. He walked to within a meter of Hill then stopped and faced off the trail to the uphill. Frye waited there searching the jungle to the side until Andrew's moved up and took his position. Then Frye moved again forward to within a meter of Hill, now stopping, looking downhill searching waiting for Andrews. Andrews moved forward when Harley assumed his position. Behind the point and slack, the squad moved forward like an inchworm on a stem, the front not moving until the rear had caught up and taken its place. Behind Mullen, the last man in 3d Sqd, Egan kept the chair unbroken and behind Egan Cherry copied the movement.

As the trail descended it became steeper and the canopy higher and thicker. Beneath the canopy the air was thick, moist, clinging. The vegetation went from dry and dusty above to wet and thick below. Light barely penetrated to the earth. The trail became muddy. As more and more men passed over the trail the mud squished and became slippery. The squishing noise was dampened by the thick air and absorbed by the jungle.

Cherry became disoriented 100 meters into the jungle. He could not hear Egan to his front. He had come up to Egan, assumed Egan's position as Egan had moved down through a hole in the green leafy wall. Dave McCarthy, the medic, moved in behind Cherry and Cherry went to move forward toward Egan but he had lost the trail. Cherry paused. He listened. He could neither hear nor see Egan. He stepped forward and was met by palm fronds and vines. He could not even find the path. He paused and listened again and he searched for the way to go. He glanced behind him. McCarthy was two paces back, mostly obliterated from view by the vegetation. Behind McCarthy was Numbnuts of the 1st Sqd. Cherry could not see Numbnuts at all.

“Sergeant Egan,” Cherry called in a very low voice. “Sergeant Egan,” he called a little louder, a bit panicky. Cherry shuffled his feet. “Sergeant Egan,” he raised his voice.

McCarthy touched Cherry's shoulder. Cherry turned. Without warning, totally unexpected, a hand smacked him across the mouth. It was Egan.

“You cocksucker,” Egan snarled, the sound of his voice very low yet harsh and strong. “You mothafuckin cocksuck shit fuck. What the fuck you doin?”

“I … ah …” Cherry was shocked, fearful.

Egan's eyes bulged. “Mothafucker, I'm tellin you once en only once. If I ever hear a sound from you, if I ever hear your feet touch the ground or your ruck hit a bush, I'm goina kick yer ass forever. You start concentratin, Mister. You stupid shit fuck. We got the whole fuckin column halted.” Egan had hold of Cherry's fatigue shirt collar and was shaking Cherry back and forth with terrifying, rapid jerks. Then Egan disappeared through a hole in the green wall less than a foot from Cherry. Cherry stared after him as if Egan had been a spirit. Cherry did not even see the brush move.

Generally in the field boonierats established a buddy system, pairing off either by friendship or by necessity and at times by both. Whiteboy and Hill were a team. So were Pop and Garbageman, Jax and Silvers, Doc and Minh, and now Egan and Cherry.

In the CP Brooks paired off with El Paso. Those two were very close. As commander Brooks was the brain of the company and as senior RTO, El Paso was the ears and mouth. El Paso carried a PRC-25 set on the internal frequency of the company for communicating between the CP and the platoons and/or squads. Bill Brown also carried a PRC-25, his radio being set on the command network to communicate with battalion HQs which was now established with a forward TOC on Firebase Barnett. Tim Cahalan carried the Monster, a PRC-77. This radio was similar to the 25 except it was also a kryptographer, automatically scrambling or descrambling voice transmissions. The Monster was used to communicate with the rear on vital or intelligence matters such as calling in a unit's location to insure friendly artillery did not accidentally drop unfriendly explosives on them. All three radios were kept open to receive transmissions at all times. At all times the radios had to be monitored. Brown and Cahalan, along with FO, buddied-up.