13th Valley (51 page)

“No,” Cherry answered. He did not know when the firing from across the valley had stopped.

“They got one dead, eleven wounded. Got thirty-four dinks piled up and lots more-blood trails.”

There was little time between first light and dawn and the heat buildup. Whatever Cherokee had alerted on, the boonierats of Alpha had not found. Two squads from 3d Plt had swept the peak and reconned the flanks. They had returned to the column and the move continued. It became warmer with each step. The clouds vanished. As Cherry crossed the first peak he could see the valley. The fog had already receded from the walls and now sat thin above the floor and over the river.

Alpha moved quickly in the gray light, increasing their intervals. As the sun ascended they slowed and began the cautious inchworm movement. They moved west along the ridge of the south escarpment of the Khe Ta Laou. They descended 50 meters then climbed 100 to the next peak. Every fifteen minutes they paused and sat for one or two. They lit cigarettes and inhaled deeply feeling the wonderful exhilaration and relief of the day's first nicotine. The wetness evaporated from their fatigues, the chill of their bodies warmed, the stiffness stretched and loosened.

Alpha continued west. They came down a 330-meter vertical descent while moving only 600 meters horizontal. The slope down from the second peak was steep and rocky and it was nearly impossible to keep from stumbling. Alpha moved and paused and moved and paused. The fatigues that had dried from the early heat were wet with sweat. At pauses the boonierats removed fatigue shirts. They popped salt tablets and drank their water and then moved and sweated. Their bodily fluids soaked their armpits and crotches and their skin burned. Cherry guzzled a full quart of water. The sun seemed to have leaped from the eastern horizon to the center of heaven and then to have stopped. It burned straight down. The jungle leaves trapped and reflected the radiant heat and baked the soldiers as they marched. The heat and the slope and the heavy vegetation began to take a toll. To Whiteboy and to Egan and to many of the others there was satisfaction in the pain, pain properly borne. Arms and legs, hands and feet tingled from the exertion. The stiffness of the night which had been relaxed by the early warmth now returned as joints swelled from the heat and early stages of dehydration.

“Quiet Rover Four, this is Red Rover,” the GreenMan radioed Brooks from his now high circling C & C bird. “What are you doing? Goddamnit! Move! I want you in that low feature. Check out that sighting then get down there. Get down there and hurt those little people.”

Alpha moved. At the bottom of the descent there was a stream. 3d Plt fanned out above and below a ford then quickly sent one squad across to establish a stream bankhead. 1st Lt. Larry Caldwell led. “Boy Asshole on the charge,” Ridgefield mocked. 3d set security on both sides and 1st moved through. Cherry stopped to refill a canteen. He had again been down to one quart. He bent over and splashed cool water on his face and drank from his hands. The water was sweet and clear and had neither the chlorine odor of REMF water nor the musky stale taste of the gorge water. Others bent and drank and filled canteens. Moneski and Roberts sought Cherry out. They found him replacing his canteen, his M-16 in his left hand, a cigarette in his mouth. They quietly exchanged greetings and friendly slaps.

1st Plt moved out at point, 3d Sqd, 2d 1st. The company CP followed. 2d Plt washed and drank in the stream then fell in behind the CP. 3d Plt withdrew security and came at drag. The recharge from the stream lasted only moments. They now were climbing, sweating, baking in the muggy jungle oven. They struggled up vertical banks, over vine choked boulders, under resisting bamboo clusters. Thorns tore at their arms, grasses slashed their faces. Up, slowly up the side of Hill 636. Exhaustion overtook many. Fatigue in quadraceps caused legs to buckle and they fell forward, uphill to their knees. In the dips hamstring muscles gave out and they fell back onto their rucks and onto their asses. Each time they attempted to fall quietly. Muscles twitched as they climbed, crawled, scratched their way up. At one point the trail became so steep the point squad had to cut vines and jerryrig ropes for the boonierats to pull themselves up. The point squad set security at the top of the earthen bank and had each succeeding soldier hand up his weapon. Then the man grabbed the vines and clawed at the dirt and dragged himself up only to have to continue. As each man passed the bank became barer and more slippery. Each succeeding soldier took longer, often falling back to the bottom and having to drag himself back to try again.

“Aw, fuck. I can't do it,” Numbnuts whined after falling twice.

“Come on, Man. You can do it,” Silvers encouraged him.

“How far we gotta go?”

“I don't know. Come on, now.”

Numbnuts tried again. Bo Denhardt pushed him from below, allowed him to step on his shoulders. Numbnuts pulled feebly at the vine, his hands stiff and weak from the heat. He held on, worked his knees up, pushed his body forward, gave up and collapsed crashing down onto Denhardt.

“You motherfucker. Get the goddamn fuck up there.”

“I can't.”

“Goddamnit, you slimy sonofabitch. Go.”

“I can't. Leave me here.”

“Go.”

“I gotta stop. I can't make it.”

“What the fuck's goin on here?” Egan came back down.

“That slimy prick's skatin on us,” Denhardt spit.

“I can't do it,” Numbnuts began crying. He was breathing shallow quick breaths. Doc Johnson came forward from the CP.

“I'm dyin, Doc,” Numbnuts cried pathetically, miserably. “I can't go any farther. I gotta drop out. I got heat frustration.”

“Prostration,” Doc corrected, pursing his thick lips. He looked closely at Numbnuts. The man was covered with sweat like all of them. Doc shook his head knowing Numbnuts was physically okay. Doc stepped to Numbnuts, squatted, felt his forehead. It was wet and dirty and warm. “You're okay,” Doc said officially to Numbnuts and to Egan. Egan grabbed Numbnuts' ruck and scampered up the bank without a word. Numbnuts tried again. Disgust saturated the air about him. He was a slacker and Alpha Company did not condone slackers. Denhardt pushed and cussed. Silvers pulled from the top. They were not gentle. They got him up. Alpha never left a man behind.

The climb continued. They humped hard, force marched. The sun bore down as if it were a weight. They stopped for five then climbed. They stopped again. “Get that raggedyass outfit movin,” the GreenMan screamed. “Move. Get them little people.” And they moved. The peak of Hill 636 was 900 map meters west of the stream, 380 meters elevation gain. The jungle closed in tighter and tighter, vines and palms and tree branches crossed the trail at every step.

The column meandered north south east west around over under obstacles. Alpha did not cut trail, not if they could avoid cutting. The sound of a single machete slashing at the jungle could be heard for hundreds of meters. It gave away position and invited enemy ambush or an enemy mortar barrage, and Alpha was on the side of the hill where aircraft from the 2d of the 17th had spotted one hundred and fifty enemy only twenty-four hours earlier. Even in their exhaustion they were aware of danger.

The 900 meters stretched to over 2000. Most of the boonierats were young men with strong bodies. Many had been athletes in high school or college or street athletes on the block. The L-T had played basketball and Egan football. Cherry had been a swimmer and had run moto-cross. Doc had played streetball every warm day. There is a pleasure that physical men derive from using their bodies, a pleasure in achievement and a pleasure from simple hard use. By noon, halfway to the summit of 636, even the physical were exhausted.

When Numbnuts had originally been assigned to Alpha he had been an assistant gunner but he had decided it was safer to carry an M-79 because as a thumperman he would always be far behind the point, behind the front of a firefight. Thumpermen pump grenades up and over the M-60s and 16s. With a 79 one could not walk point. One could not walk slack. But M-79 rounds are heavy and Numbnuts was now carrying 58 HE and three buckshot rounds, twenty-seven pounds of ammunition. “This is kickin my ass,” he whispered to himself. “I'll die here. I'm goina die of heat frustration.” At each stop after the incident at the steep bank, Numbnuts discarded rounds of ammunition. He hid them. Two in a small crevice, three beneath a rock, six in a cathole beneath his defecation. He bailed out anything he could, discarded over half his ammunition, and he justified it telling himself, “It's not like I'm droppin my claymore. There aint no way I'd turn over my claymore.”

Alpha continued climbing. The sun, the hot mugginess, the tremendous exertion now produced serious casualties. Larsen Catt, Catman, squad leader 3d Sqd, 2d Plt, collapsed hot, dry and twitching. Bowerman in 3d Plt, dizzy and disoriented, vomited uncontrollably. Even Egan, hardass Egan, found he was barely sweating. His burnt lips and skin were dry and cracking and bleeding. Cahalan, in the CP, retched. Still they moved. Six men collapsed. No one, not even the strongest, was immune.

Doc Johnson grabbed the L-T. He had treated three of the heat victims and he had consulted with the platoon medics via radio about the others. “We stoppin, Mista. That is it. You tell that mothafucka in that Charlie-Charlie bird fuck hisself. Let him come down here an hump. I says we stop.” And they stopped. With the point less than 50 vertical meters from the summit of 636, they stopped and hid from the sun.

During the hump that took Alpha to the side of 636 Bravo, Charlie and Recon all made contact with elements of the North Vietnamese force. At 0715 Bravo, while following blood trails left from their night-long battle, sighted, engaged and killed eight North Vietnamese soldiers. They had been working west parallel to Alpha, toward the valley. At 1030 hours Recon, moving toward Hill 848 from the north, was ambushed. Their Vietnamese scout was wounded. At 1100 hours one platoon of Charlie Company was extracted from the south escarpment ridge and was re-inserted on the valley floor 1800 meters due west of the knoll with the high tree. The insertion LZ was hot. Two GIs were wounded and medevacked. One NVA soldier was killed and one wounded and captured. The NVA evidently did not plan to evacuate the Khe Ta Laou without a fight.

When Alpha stopped the column was stretched out over 250 meters. Slowly the L-T and the platoon leaders and platoon sergeants and the boonierats themselves reorganized the sprawling ranks. The less weary soldiers were sent off to the sides as LPs and OPs. The exhausted were allowed to collapse and rest and eat. All drank heavily, replenishing their bodily fluids. Stragglers from the front platoons who had fallen back stumbled forward, back to their proper order. Silvers had given Jackson responsibility for Numbnuts and long after the column was settled Jackson was still struggling to get Numbnuts back to their squad.

“Cocksuckin cocksuck fuck chuck dude,” Jax complained after depositing his limp charge. “I's had it. I's had it with Mista Rude. Tell Jew-boy tell Mista Jewd, Jackson's fuckin up that dude. Sucka's crude.” Jax hunted up Doc Johnson. “Over heah, Black,” Jax whispered to the medic.

“What's happenin, Bro?” Doc greeted Jax with an abbreviated field dap.

“It is oh-vah. It is oh-vah. I am no babysit-tar. I am callin this done. Throw down yo gun.” Jax spoke frantically accentuating the rhyme, punctuating the beats with flailing hands and swinging M-16.

“Whatsamatta?” Doc asked in one word.

“We have suffered. Our people suffer. Vietnam is jest a buffer. It keep minds off revolution. But bet yo ass, Jax got the solution. They killin Brothas one two three, they gowin kill yo, they gowin kill me. Whut fo Mista Black, fo a whiteman's money sack.”

Doc was taken aback. He had been a million miles from Jax' thoughts. When Jax found him, Doc was checking his big black bag, counting his camouflaged field dressings and syringes of morphine, checking his supply of anti-malaria pills and checking all the other paraphernalia he had carefully packed, packed as always in the identical location in the aid bag. Doc counted his supplies by feel. If he needed the bag in the dark he was prepared. “Slow down,” Doc said sizing Jax up. “Now, whatsamatta?”

“Does yo realize,” Jax' eyes were sizzling mad, “does yo realize whut we dowin. We sup-portin a regime. We sup-portin a gov'ment that murders. We dowin the murderin heah fo whitey so he ken do the murderin of our people there.”

“Jax, you aint makin no sense.”

“It is time fo the revolution. It is at hand. Join me, my brotha, join my stand.”

“Gainst who?” Doc whispered harshly.

“Gainst the fucka runnin this machine.”

“Gainst the L-T? He a Brotha.”

“No fuckin way. Doan feed me no shit. He a puppetman. He part a it. Dat man a Oreo. Yo got whut I mean. He killin Black men, that we all seen.”

“Man,” Doc said scrutinizing Jax, “has your brain got fried. Come here.” Doc grabbed Jax and felt his skin. It was dry. Doc broke out his own canteen and splashed Jax in the face then ordered, “Drink.”

“Yo doan understand,” Jax said suspiciously. “Yo becomin one a them. They killin my Pap. They gowin kill me. I am droppin out. Doan yo see? It oh-vah. Why should I waste my time fuckin with a dink? This jest stink.” Jax huffed, pulled out his hair pick and rammed it into his scalp, then added, “It's time ta git oh-vah on the machine. I's down Doc, I's real low. Tell em I's crazy. Send me in, Bro.”

“You know,” Doc said very slowly, rubbing his chin, “a long time ago I met a man stopped me from hustlin. Convinced me ta get off the street. Taught me stuff. Told me ta get my shit inta a tight little ball. I been down. I been all the way down. Aint nothin there. A man taught me how ta get up. Thas where I at. Man taught me ya can't get oh-vah on nothin.”

“What man teach yo that?”

“Bad man, Bro. Baaaad. Man named Mista Jungle.”