13th Valley (84 page)

“We couldn't have one now,” Cherry said. “Too many people would stand up and object.”

“Exactly,” El Paso stated firmly. “Free criticism is good. It keeps government honest and stable.”

The conversation turned away from racial problems and back to war. El Paso delivered a lecture on the legality of the war. “There are very sound arguments holding this war to be unconstitutional,” El Paso said. “Like when Nixon decided to send troops into Cambodia. That was not legal. He reigns over our lives, he reigns over the country. He makes decisions by himself without regard to anyone else pulling on the policy dot, almost as if he were a dictator. It simply cannot be legal. Not under these circumstances. The president can order invasions if our country is threatened. The Constitution says that that is okay. And there are legal precedents for similar action. FDR sent Americans into North Africa and then into Europe without congressional approval but the power to declare war does not rest with the president. That power is in the hands of Congress. Congress must declare war and the president must approve.

“There are many precedents in our history which extend the president's original war powers. President Polk attacked Mexico in 1845 without congressional approval. Only after the fact did Congress declare war. President Wilson, he had the navy bombard Vera Cruz and he sent American troops into Mexico after Pancho Villa. But no earlier president ever stretched his powers like Johnson in 1965. He completely usurped all the war-declaring power from Congress.”

“Hey, what about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?” Brooks asked.

“That only authorized the president to retaliate to that one attack. It can't be used to justify half a million men and full-scale war. Besides, under the Constitution, Congress cannot give its powers away.”

“What about the SEATO treaty?” Cherry asked.

“That treaty states that all countries involved must act in accordance with their constitutional processes. A treaty cannot supercede the constitution.”

“Then why are you here?” Brooks asked.

“L-T, if I did not come, I'd be in jail,” El Paso said.

During the discussion Brooks had been watching first El Paso, then Egan, then Cherry, then Doc. His mind jumped back to earlier statements. “Do we each have within us,” Brooks asked, “a dot which we pull in many directions, a dot which determines our personal policy and course?”

There was contact to the south. A single burst of fire, a silent second, then answering fire and mingling fire. Then all was quiet. At Campobasso Brooks and El Paso waited for the report while the others prepared themselves. The report seemed a long time coming. Then Rover Team Danielle, four boonierats from 1st Plt, 2d Sqd led by Moneski, radioed its report. They had made Alpha's first direct contact since the river crossing. It had been short, small, sweet. Danielle ambushed a two-man NVA trail watcher unit. The Americans had set up moments before in an NVA position off one trail. The NVA had come from behind, unsuspecting, ready to move into their own position. One enemy soldier had been killed instantly. The other was hit and had fled. Rover Team Danielle pursued, caught the wounded man, took and returned fire, blowing the NVA soldier to pieces. The team sustained no casualties.

The nightly CP meeting on the 21st took place before dusk. Rain had fallen all day, the monotonous pattering drops being sporadically disrupted by cloudbursts. The sky had again settled back, it seemed in response to Brooks' meeting, to the dark gray of steady rain. The meeting was brief. Eighteen platoon members attended, all the platoon sergeants and leaders and the platoon CP RTOs and all of the squad leaders or a stand-in for those on patrol. The soldiers sat close together, almost in each other's laps, to hear Brooks give the operational orders for the next two days.

The NVA were not accustomed to American units working at night, moving at night and setting up during the day. They were not accustomed to it because so few American units did it. Brooks had been consulting his advisers individually since resupply and he was now convinced Alpha was in position and could pull it off. “We're going to pick them apart from right here,” Brooks said. “Hide and hit. Melt into the mud and ambush them. If this is as important a supply area as S-2 says it is, they've got to be moving. It'll be no different than our usual nightly ambushes except that we're going to have twelve ambush teams out at once. This time, you're not ambush teams. You'll be Rover Teams. And you'll be out for two days.” Brooks detailed the operation. Half of every squad would go; half would stay in or near Campobasso. The company and platoon CPs would provide men for three teams and radios for four. Brooks assigned each Rover Team a specific Area of Operation. He suggested ambush locations in each area. He rose and climbed among his men, pointing out to each leader, on the individual's map, the spots he thought looked promising, the trails in each area he had marked on his map from the first circuit they had made about the knoll. “Hide and hit,” Brooks said coldly. “Hit and run. Evade detection. Don't engage more than you can kill immediately. Ambush.”

“Ambush,” Moneski repeated. “Just like earlier today. It's a dream.”

“Snipe,” Brooks said. “We've got three Starlight scopes. Use them.”

“Snipe,” Snell nodded. “And call in arty.”

“Let arty get some.” Brooks smiled. The group was psyching up. Cold blood lust, contempt for the enemy, spewed from one then another. “Use your MAs,” Brooks said.

“Blow em away,” Catt cooed.

“Kill the fuckers,” Cherry giggled venomously.

“Kill the fuckers,” Mohnsen cried, wept bitter tears.

Brooks let them seethe then purposefully settled them back down with a few cautions and a few questions. “Field ingenuity,” he whispered. “Every boonierat must think for himself, adjust himself to the situation he finds himself in. You guys have to be more versatile, more flexible than the dinks. And you have to be smarter. Think about what you are going to do before you do it. Plan. Out-fox them. Don't go out of your own AOs without clearance. Don't ambush each other. No chatter on the nets. Rovers!”

“Aye, L-T,” they whispered.

“Kill em, kill em, kill em,” Mohnsen beat his rifle butt against the ground.

“Teams Cindy, Joan, Ellen and Laurie,” Brooks whispered, “you leave at 1900 hours. Teams Claudia, Beth, Irene and Mary, you leave at 1915 hours. Teams Danielle, Suzie, Jill and Stephanie—1930.”

Before the first boonierat could rise an ear-splitting concussion rocked Alpha. The MA on the road below the north escarpment had detonated.

As Rover Team Stephanie—now Egan, Cherry and Bo Denhardt—rucked up, Brooks collared Egan. “I want to ask you some questions before you sky, Danny,” Brooks said. He was a man now completely different from the one who had led the briefing, rally, only minutes before. He spoke in his graduate student voice, concerned, contemplative, the exact opposite of the previous passion. And he seemed unaware of the change. Indeed Egan noted what seemed to him to be a complete repression or denial of the commander role. It made Egan uncomfortable.

“Danny,” Brooks said meekly, “what causes conflict?”

Egan dropped his ruck and sat atop it. “I'll tell ya what I know,” he said. “I been thinkin about this for ya. You'll have ta check it out for yourself but here's some shit I remember from school. And some shit I just think.”

Brooks smiled softly in the rain, silently begging Egan's indulgence as he uncovered his notebook and covered it and himself with his poncho.

“I had an engineering prof, guy named Tom Wheeler, who did his thesis on the effects of technological advances on population demographics. Something like that. Basically what he said was every major advance in technology is followed by a period of prosperity, then a population explosion. Works like this. A technological advance alleviates the pressure of population but then the pressure builds up again except now to a higher level. Follow me?”

“Kinda,” Brooks whispered, writing.

“Look,” Egan said. “Go way back. Hunter/ gatherer mankind learns how to herd animals. He stabilizes his life following pastures. For a while everyone has food and prospers. Then there's a population explosion followed by overcrowding, disease and famine.”

“And war?”

“Yeah, I guess. Anyway, now nomadic mankind learns how to cultivate crops. He settles down on fertile lands and he becomes more stabilized but at a more complex level. For a while everyone prospers, has food, the whole thing. Then there's a population explosion followed by overcrowding, disease, famine and probably war and migration. Mankind then learns how to store food against famine, how to irrigate against drought. For a while everyone prospers, again at a more complex level. With no pressure man seems to be more fertile. The population explodes and puts the pressure back on and the same problems occur.”

“Are you saying,” Brooks asked softly, “that war is a means of limiting population?”

“Wait a minute,” Egan said. “I don't know if I got there yet.”

“Excuse me,” Brooks apologized.

Egan's concentration on his thoughts deepened. “Each advance brings greater stability yet with a higher, more complex structure supporting it. Each period of stability brings a population explosion. That can be documented. If you plot the growth of human population before every major increase you'll find a major technological advance. After each major increase you find population pressure and war. Pressure is conflict, L-T. Want to stop the pressure? After the next advance, stop people from fuckin each other.”

“Sew up all the cunts of the Third World, huh?” Brooks joked, laughed, trying to lessen Egan's intensity, and also trying to reduce Egan's last statement to the absurd because to Brooks it smacked of racism.

“The whole world,” Egan said sharply, defensively. “Fuck it, Man. You listenin? There aint no chance about this. There aint no such thing as chance. Only ignorance of natural laws.”

“I didn't mean to put your theory down,” Brooks said. “I've been writing what you've been saying. How does it fit though, in a world where some nations are rich and some poor? Some advanced, some not?”

“Advances in technology don't just happen, L-T,” Egan said calmer. “Technology grows. It has prerequisites.” Brooks shifted beneath his poncho. Egan slid lower on his ruck, then slid off the ruck and onto the ground next to the lieutenant. “Look, in what are today's industrial nations, before they were industrial, certain conditions existed. The advanced societies today were the early machine societies. And those societies changed to accept new styles of living. And they gave up a lot to do it.”

“What did they …”

“Wait a minute. In places like England there was a belief in rational thought, in natural sciences and in mathematics. They prized analytical thinking. They had to give up more comfortable religions for ones that would accommodate their science. Maybe they gave up their souls. But see, L-T,” Egan was concentrating hard again, burning his words out quietly, “those things led to a high degree of technology built on a substructure of technology. The less complex fed the more complex. Technology, with only minor lapses, stayed ahead of their population pressures. If the pressure ever catches up and undermines the substructure all developed countries have a long way to fall.”

“Well, why can't Vietnam use the technology too?” Brooks asked. “If they could use it to stay ahead of their population pressures there'd be no war.”

“No base. Development is not a matter of the industrialized nations giving equipment and advice to the Third World. That just doesn't do it.” Egan was trying to pull old thoughts from areas of his mind that he had not used in a long time. “It just hasn't worked that way,” Egan said. “These people can blame America or western Europe for conspiring to keep them down, for keeping the price of their raw materials low while selling high-priced finished goods to them but the fact is there's no conspiracy. The conspiracy is in the minds of communists who want to control these people. It's really a matter of no base structure.”

“Then what you're saying,” Brooks whispered, “is that Third World societies just haven't accepted the pain of giving up their old cultures and building the base for new westernized forms.”

“Well, yeah. There it is, L-T. These people got something we lost. To gain economic prosperity you got to want to work, you got to want that wealth bad enough to work at boring dehumanized work, highly technical work. You got to love machines like papa-san loves his water-bo. Cause that's what technological advances are.”

“We think ourselves into what we are and our thought patterns are determined by the culture of our upbringing,” Brooks repeated a statement of his own theory which he wanted to tie to Egan's.

“Oh. Okay,” Egan said. “Now I read you lumpy chicken. That's what you meant when you said we think ourselves into war.”

“Yeah,” Brooks said. “That's what I meant. So, industrialism is based on a people whose culture identifies with strong causative forces, with logical cause and effect patterns of thought. And western culture is based on logical thought patterns. And to get that we gave up something.”

“Yep,” Egan agreed. “Or at least we accepted something along with it that isn't positive.”

“War,” Brooks said.

“It's inevitable,” Egan said.

“We think ourselves into it and our minds don't have an alternative. We're a war-or-peace culture.” Brooks wrote that down.

The two of them sat silently in the rain, in the gray darkness, feeling close again. For some moments neither spoke. The valley seemed quiet. Artillery rounds were bursting far away. The noise of the rain had become so normal they did not notice it. Campobasso held only twenty-five soldiers and in the thicket none could be seen.