Combat Swimmer (11 page)

I eased myself up to Bump. “Move back up on the bank and take a look around,” I whispered. Meanwhile, I slowly crab-walked toward the mouth of the canal. I wanted to peek around the corner and be in a position to cover Charlie. The rest of the patrol hunkered down and waited.

I reached a spot from where I could see about fifty feet of the bank on the other side of the canal. I couldn't see farther because it was so dark, but I didn't see the telltale shape of a sampan that would have contained the sentry. I looked up to my left, where Bump had crawled along the top of the bank. Lying on his stomach, he peered left, up the canal. After a few seconds he held up his right arm and motioned back and forth. “All clear.”

I turned around and gave Fred the same signal; he repeated it. The rest of the guys slowly approached my position. Charlie stayed where he was as we moved up the canal just under him. As we came abreast, Jess climbed up the bank, and Bump slid down just in front of me. Jess covered us as we started up the canal, then he fell in behind.

We slogged through the mud about fifty meters before Bump stopped and turned to me. Into my ear he whispered, “This about right?”

I nodded. We'd gone over the procedure in our mission brief, and everyone knew what I had planned.

I motioned toward the nipa palm above us, watching as each man turned and made his way up the bank. Our patrol order was also our ambush order. I crawled up behind.

At the top we turned and sat, our backs against the thick foliage. As I hunkered into position, I thought this might be fairly comfortable. The relatively soft mud provided a good cushion, and the nipa palm served as a backrest. Sort of like sitting down in front of your TV in your favorite recliner, waiting for your favorite program to come on. My favorite program that night would involve about six sampans loaded with troops moving slowly into our kill zone.

We traveled light, but with a lot of firepower. Now that we'd settled into position, I took a mental inventory. Bump, to my left, had his M-16 rifle, which launched about 900 5.56mm rounds per minute on full automatic fire. I carried an M-16. Doc McCarty, to my right, had an M-16 and the radio. Pierre, just to his right, had a Stoner Model 63 light machine gun that fired more than a thousand rounds of 5.56mm ammo per minute. He had a thousand rounds of ammo with him. Firing in short bursts, he was a killing machine. Doyle had an M-16 with a 40mm grenade launcher attached. The grenade launcher had a canister round chambered, making it a heavy-duty shotgun. Jess Tolison, on the right flank of the ambush, carried the same load as Doyle. Each man with an M-16 carried 230 rounds of ammo. Our “bullet launchers” could put out a lot of rounds in a few seconds, and that's all it would take. Each of us also carried concussion and fragmentation grenades. Satch, in the river with our mini-battleship, could move to the mouth of the canal and make anyone giving us a hard time wish he hadn't been there that night. The .50-caliber machine guns on the boat could cut a man in half with two rounds and would easily penetrate the nipa palm. The M-60 machine guns could clean up the rest. The recoilless rifles and naval mortars could lay down a dense cover fire that only a deranged person would attempt to move through. And if all that wasn't enough, Satch would call for PBRs on patrol in the river to add their .50-caliber and 7.62mm M-60 machine guns to the fray. Satch could also scramble the Seawolf light helo fire team on call back in Binh Thuy and they'd come running with their 7.62mm miniguns and 3.2 rockets blazing. You get the idea. I wasn't afraid to take on a battalion of VC with all that firepower on hand. We'd start it, and my friends would finish it.

We'd reached the ambush site at 2130. I planned to stay there until just before first light, unless we got a hit first. Ambushing was like rolling dice: you picked a spot and hoped your numbers came up. As ambush sites went, we were in a fairly good one. The area was under VC control, and they moved along the canal system at night with impunity. The primary purpose of our routine ambushes, apart from killing as many of the enemy as we could, was to remove some of that “impunity.” We wanted not only to take the night away from the VC, but to make them afraid to move their men and supplies. We were few in number—only two SEAL platoons operating in the lower Mekong Delta, a vast area that covered a large part of South Vietnam. (The three SEAL platoons at Nha Be weren't considered part of our force because they had to stay close to the shipping channels going to Saigon.) But already we thought we were making our presence felt. The word seemed to be getting out among the VC; it seemed that some canals upriver near Binh Thuy, where we'd been honing our skills, were no longer used as much as they had been. To get hits, we had to travel farther and farther away from Binh Thuy. Tonight we were about forty miles downriver from our base.

Ambushing takes patience: you have to remain motionless for long periods of time. That night my patience was tested. As I sat in the mud, waiting for action, I began to feel movements in my crotch. We wore camouflage uniforms and jungle boots. Instead of “blousing” our trousers in our boots in standard military style, we left the bottoms outside to allow water to drain. Of course, while water ran out, critters could crawl in. What kind of visitor did I have? I hadn't felt anything climb up, so it probably wasn't a roach. Now that the tide had started coming back in, our feet were almost in the water, but sea snakes normally weren't a problem. Up the river toward Binh Thuy we had a problem with leeches, but not down here, where salt water predominated. Looking slowly down, taking care not to bump my rifle against anything, I saw a slight bulge in the earth just below my thighs. An anthill!

“Shit,” I thought, “fire ants.” Fire ants lived in nipa palms as well as in the ground. On an earlier patrol through an area covered with that damn plant, some fire ants had dropped out of the leaves and down my neck. It took me ten minutes to get rid of them. I'd had to strip completely, rub them off my body, shake out my cammies, and cover myself with insect repellent. I couldn't do all that now.

They must have infiltrated between the buttons of my fly. Sneaky little bastards. I felt a sharp pain on one of my testicles. It's impossible to adequately describe a fire ant bite; the closest I can come is to say it's like being stung by a wasp. There's a big difference, though: normally a wasp stings just once. Fire ants are never found alone, and they chew until they're full. I slowly reached into the left chest pocket of my cammy jacket and felt for the plastic bottle of repellent. We usually didn't use mosquito repellent in ambush, because the VC could smell it. Instead we used unscented camouflage “face paint,” which supposedly repelled mosquitoes, and wore aviator gloves to cover our hands. Also, as long as you were moving, mosquitoes weren't a big problem. Once we'd reached our ambush site we pulled mosquito nets over our cammy hats and gutted it out. But fire ants were a different story. If I didn't act fast, I'd embarrass myself in front of my men. There was no such thing as gutting out fire ant bites.

As more critters started feasting, I opened the bottle, unbuttoned my fly, and squirted repellent into my groin. It had an instant effect: the fire ants hauled ass. Then the secondary effect took over. The repellent was giving me first-degree burns, much the same as gasoline might cause. It was a small price to pay, and the heat felt good.

As I went through these subtle gyrations, Bump on my left and Doc on my right looked on. “Fire ants,” I whispered. They nodded and grinned. No pity. I gave each of them my sternest look, and then I found myself grinning, too.

All this took only about five minutes, but it seemed longer. Above the background noise I now heard something else—a low roar, much like a strong wind. I looked down at my feet and found that they were now immersed. The tide was coming in—and fast. The Mekong Delta has a greater tide range than most places at its latitude. The reasons for this are complex, but mostly have to do with the shallow depth of the South China Sea off the Vietnamese coast. Also, when the tide came back in, it had to fight the natural flow of the Bassac. The two forces meeting made noise: the low roar I was hearing. The full moon tonight heightened the effect, because full moons create higher and lower tides.

As the tide roared in, I began to think maybe we weren't in the best place. When the water reached my waist, I looked around. The men were squirming. It was now around 2300, and we hadn't heard any enemy activity. But the VC liked to wait until after midnight to move. Also, the rising tide would help them float larger loads.

By now the moon was up, and I could see across the canal almost as clearly as if it had been high noon. In the shadows we were nearly invisible. Anyone moving on the canal would be in the spotlight. But the incoming tide created another problem.

I squeezed Bump and Doc McCarty and motioned upward, then started slowly to get up. Pressing against the nipa palm, I got my feet under me and pushed. We'd been in position for nearly two hours, so I was stiff and my legs had gone to sleep. They tingled in protest. All of us had taped the metal buckles on our gear to keep them from rattling, and as we rose to full standing positions, we made no more noise than ghosts.

Still the water rose. By midnight it had reached my chest, and I was struggling to keep my M-16 dry. A plastic muzzle cap kept mud and dirt out of the barrel, but it wouldn't keep out the rising water. Even though the weapons worked fine after immersion, we kept them dry as much as possible.

Our position was becoming untenable: with the water at our chests, we'd be shooting up at any sampan we saw, and even for us SEALs “the high ground” was the byword.

I turned to Bump. “We're getting out of here.”

“I was wondering when you were going to say that.”

I moved down the line of men to Jess. “Wasn't it higher back by the river?”

“I think so,” he replied.

“We're going to move back there.”

I turned and motioned. The rest of the men started walking, Jess taking the point as we made our way back to the mouth of the canal. In the chest-high water, moving around was easier.

When the patrol had passed me, I fell in behind Doc McCarty. We all used the nipa palm stalks for stability. The bank was steep and the mud beneath the water very slippery. We'd almost reached the river when Fred lost his footing and started down. Grabbing the PRC-25 on his back as he slipped beneath the water, I jerked him up and turned him around, to see a grin on his face. I almost laughed. Behind me, Bump chuckled. We all learned long ago that when things got tough, you can lose just about anything except your sense of humor and get by.

Fred took hold of a nipa palm and started forward again. I released my stalk to follow him—and promptly disappeared underwater. I had on my life jacket, as we all did, but I tried to kick my way back to the surface. No dice. Sinking, I thought fast. If I pulled the toggle to inflate the life jacket everyone would laugh at me when I popped back up. Not an option. Finally, I figured if I held my M-16 straight up, the tip of the barrel would be above the surface. Someone would grab it and pull me up. When my feet hit the bottom of the canal, I poked up my rifle. Nothing happened.

I waited for what seemed like several minutes. I was just about to swallow my pride and pull the toggle when there was a tug on my M-16 and I started up. Good thing—I was nearly out of oxygen.

I broke the surface, looking right into Jess's eyes. He'd come back to ask me something just as I went under. I grinned at him. “Took you long enough.”

“Next time, pull your life jacket,” he replied with a big smile on his face.

Looking around, I saw the moon reflecting off five sets of teeth. They all loved it when they got one up on their officer.

“Looks like we have some high ground at the river,” Jess said more seriously.

“Good. You and Doyle set up facing the river. The rest of us'll face the canal.”

As we settled in again, I looked around. A light wind blew on the river, and I was getting a little chilled in my wet clothes. The rest of the troops were probably cold, too. We needed some action to warm us up. I could see a long way under the full moon. If anything came along, we once again had the high ground and would wreak havoc.

Around 0200 I heard the chugging of an outboard engine—the “onelunger” the Vietnamese used—somewhere up the canal. All of us came to full alert, like hounds who'd caught the scent. The engine RPM went up, and so did my adrenaline. I listened as the sound got closer. Seemed to me it was about a hundred meters back up the canal when the engine idled briefly and then shut off.

I heard muffled
snick
s as each man eased his weapon selector switch off “safe.” I didn't have to give any orders. They all knew what to do. None of them would open fire until I gave the signal. Normally, I would fire a handheld illumination flare in the air over the target, and then the troops would cut down. Tonight we didn't need a flare.

I stared back up the canal. Bump squeezed my arm and pointed.

Looking across the canal, I saw a sampan come into view, hugging the other canal bank. The canal was about twenty meters wide at the river mouth. The sampan was still more than fifty meters away, and I strained my eyes to see the occupants. Finally, I saw one man in the rear, paddling quietly. The other man stood in the bow holding a rifle. Definitely not fishermen getting an early start.

The sampan neared the river mouth. When the bow edged out past the other bank, the critical moment had come. If they turned back, I'd let them go, figuring they were scouts for a larger force about to cross the river. I wanted them to give the all-clear so we could get the main group.

The paddler held the sampan in position as the other man looked up and down the river. I held my breath, my M-16 aimed toward the boat. My heart slowed and the world seemed to grow quiet. All the night sounds were blocked from my brain as I concentrated on the scene before me. I didn't have to look around to know the men were equally focused. I felt no fear, just anticipation, as I waited for them to make their decision—a matter of life or death for them.