Death in the Jungle (20 page)

“Keep radio communication with
Mighty Moe
,” Mr. Meston directed Mr. Schrader. “Call for extraction when you reach the main river. Have the others pack Smitty’s gear.”

With that, I grabbed Sweet Lips from a resting place against my operating gear, then Mr. Meston, Flynn, and I broke into a run on the edge of the Rach La. Since we were less than three hundred meters from the Long Tau, Katsma couldn’t be far from us. He may have been dead, but maybe not. Maybe he had made it somehow. Dammit, he had to have made it. He was too good of a man not to have made it.

We ran in single file with me in the front, picking a way along the riverbank. After the first one hundred meters, the running became easier as we entered an area
of defoliation. There were still bushes that had been well watered by the high tide, but they weren’t as dense farther back.

All of our eyes darted back and forth from the footing to the water, eager to spot any sign of Kats. If one of us could have but glimpsed his body, I’d have swum through hell and high water to get him ashore. As a matter of fact, I’d have cut off my right arm and traded it for Kats’s life if God had been in the business of making such deals.

With no sign of our teammate, we kept pressing onward, one foot in front of the other. My senses, as always when I was in the jungle, were teeming and feeding info to my brain. My skin, drenched with sweat, told me it was hot and humid. My ears, ever alert, picked up my inhaling and exhaling, and even the throbbing of my pulse. My nose drew in the smell of fish rotting somewhere on the beach. My tongue, after licking my dry lips, drew back inside my mouth with a speck or two of salt. And my eyes, crying loudest, told me that things were looking bad.

As we approached the intersection where the Rach La met the Long Tau, I scanned the main channel for activity.
Mighty Moe
and the Boston Whalers appeared several hundred meters downstream to the east. I pointed them out to Lieutenant Meston as we jogged.

“Let’s go!” Mr. Meston said, waving his hand in the direction of the boats. I angled to the east and ran with urgency. We were on flat, defoliated, grassy terrain, so cranking up the speed was the natural thing to do.

My eyes glanced along the Long Tau, looking for a body, but I realized my searching was in vain. The LCM-6 was far downstream, and drifting away as fast as we were running. Certainly, a man’s body would be pulled by the strong current in like manner.

“Hurry, Smitty!” Mr. Meston called from behind me.
I looked back to see Flynn right behind me and Mr. Meston falling back and struggling. Mr. Meston’s face looked pained and desperate.

I decided to race as hard as I could for the boats, to give it one more chance. After all, Katsma, I knew, would do no less for me were I the one missing.

I went hard. Leaping a small ditch, I forced my legs into high gear. My arms started pumping at a frenzied pace. I stretched out for all I was worth, trying to reel in the LCM-6.

I leapt over another ditch, feeling like I was flying. I sensed that I’d gained a bit on
Mighty Moe
. Could I catch her?

Katsma suddenly appeared in my mind. He was running beside me, going all-out. The base gate at Nha Be was just ahead. We were neck and neck, revved to the maximum. Kats looked over at me with anguish in his eyes. We were both in overdrive, both overheating. We were ready to crash and burn, but the gate and the win were just ahead.

Then something cut us apart. Something separated us. I saw a form, a shape in the way. I thought it was Nga. I blinked my eyes, refocused, and I saw a darkness. I saw Death. Katsma began flailing his arms as he crashed through the gate. There was surging black water on the other side, and I screamed as he plunged in and disappeared into the darkness.

Stop! my brain cried.
Mighty Moe
was still five hundred meters ahead of me, and I couldn’t catch her. I gazed once more at the Long Tau, then bent over, put my hands on my knees for support and sucked in lots of air. Sweat beads ran off my face and fell to the ground between my coral booties. I glanced to my side, half hoping to see Katsma panting and perspiring and smiling as usual after our races, but he was not there. There was only a terrible void, an emptiness.

I looked down and watched my sweat drip to the grass below, but I could barely see. All was fuzzy as my eyes flooded with water. My sweat mixed with tears.

I heard Mr. Meston and Flynn approach, but I didn’t look up.

“Forget it, Smitty,” Flynn said weakly. “Katsma’s gone.”

Forget it. Yeah, sure. Forget Katsma. Forget one of the best men I’ve ever known.

Never. Never.

Mr. Meston, Flynn, and I, totally subdued, made our way back to the Rach La and Long Tau intersection. As we arrived, we saw Mr. Schrader and the five other men walking up the Rach La toward us. Mr. Meston sat down on a large root of a bush and closed his eyes for several seconds. Flynn and I stood nearby and watched the others approach.

“Anything?” Mr. Schrader inquired, even though he easily could see by our demeanor that we’d struck out.

I shook my head. No one said a thing until Mr. Meston looked up at Markel, the radioman.

“Bring the radio,” he ordered. Markel moved to Mr. Meston’s side and Mr. Meston used the radio to report our need for extraction. After the transmission, Mr. Meston directed us to set up in a semicircle perimeter until the boats arrived. McCollum and Flynn took the right and left flank positions, and I sat down on a clump of grass next to Flynn.

“This is a shitty day, and someone’s gonna have to pay,” Flynn muttered in my direction.

I put my head down and stared at my hands. The hands that had tied up Kats.

Why hadn’t he snapped the tape and saved himself? I wondered. He must’ve banged his head when the boat had swamped, or he had gone into the water and had hit his head beneath the boat. That had to have been the answer.
He had been knocked unconscious. So, who was gonna pay for that?

I glanced at Lieutenant Meston in the center of our circle. He was our leader, a part of us, yet somehow he seemed singled out and solitary. He saw me looking and returned my gaze. I stared for another couple of seconds, then I looked away, knowing that it was he the Navy would blame. I believed the lieutenant already had figured that out. And it was a shame. No one was a culprit in this. Katsma’s death was just a sad, unfortunate, heartbreaking accident.

My ears picked up a distant vibration, and I recognized the whirring sound of helicopters. Checking the sky for several seconds, I finally spotted two Seawolves approaching from the west. They were flying along the Long Tau’s southern bank, right over the top of us, no doubt having been called in on the search for Katsma’s body.

As the helos passed by, I saw the gunner in the lead chopper give us a wave of recognition. I waved back once. The gunner in the second helo just looked. I looked at my teammates and saw Markel and McCollum greeting the Wolves’ presence with waves of their hands. As always, we were glad to accept the help of our friends in the air.

A few minutes later, Mr. Meston directed two PBRs to our location. Having intercepted the Dust-off transmission earlier, the thirty-one-foot river patrol boats, each bearing five-man crews, had hurried to assist us. The ten of us split into two groups and boarded the boats for transport to
Mighty Moe
.

While we journied downstream, I studied the river along the southern bank for a minute. Then my eyes focused on the water splashing beside the boat. This is the water that got Kats, I thought to myself. Fifty or sixty feet deep, with a six-knot current, the Long Tau River
had taken my mate. Dammit. Water was supposed to be a SEAL’s friend.

“Smitty.” Mr. Meston’s voice broke my train of thought. I turned my eyes to the lieutenant.

“Smitty, I want you and Mr. Schrader to stay with the PBR and keep looking for Katsma’s body. The rest of us will go back to the base. I’m gonna have to get with Lieutenant Salisbury over this and fill him in on the details.”

I nodded my head. “Aye, aye, sir.”

“I still don’t know what the hell could’ve happened,” Mr. Meston grumbled.

“Me neither,” I declared.

We didn’t wait long to find out. When the PBRs reached
Mighty Moe
, everyone from our platoon but Mr. Schrader and me boarded the big boat. Lieutenant Jackson immediately explained the accident to Lieutenant Meston. Mr. Meston, in turn, sent Moses from
Mighty Moe
to join us on the river patrol boat and our search. Since Moses had been in the Boston Whaler with Katsma when it was swamped, he started telling me the grim details as the PBR moved away from the LCM-6.

“When the Boston Whaler came along the port side of
Mighty Moe
, the coxswain all of a sudden cut the gas, causing the bow to dip. With seven men aboard, plus the .30-caliber machine gun and two sandbags in the bow, this was a bad move. Three of the boat support people stepped on the starboard gunnel, grabbing for
Mighty Moe
. This was the second bad move. That’s when we capsized. There was no need to panic, ’cause the Whalers won’t sink, anyway. I saw Doc try to hold Katsma, but he lost his grip. Kats went underwater and never came back up.” Moses stared at me for a reaction.

“Shit,” was all I gave him.

Moses looked out of the boat at the water and spat.
“I’m sure he smacked his head under
Mighty Moe
,” he said, looking back at me.

“What makes you so sure,” I wanted to know.

“ ’Cause we turned over right into
Mighty Moe
, and the current was sucking us beneath her. I’ll bet he hit his head on the prop guards.”

Moses’s theory made sense. After all, in UDT training back in ’65, all of us had been tied just like I had tied Katsma, then we had been tossed in deep water where we kicked and swam like porpoises in order to pop our heads above water for air. The exercise hadn’t been that difficult.

“He had to be knocked out to keep him from coming up,” Moses finished his supposition.

I nodded my head, then quietly said, “He’ll come up sooner or later, and I want to send him home where he belongs. Keep your eyes peeled.” I sat down on the starboard side of the PBR as we cruised down the Long Tau close to the southern bank. My eyes darted everywhere, as the body could be anywhere. Somewhere in that great river was my teammate, and I was determined to find him.

After twenty minutes, we’d traveled downstream about three miles. The coxswain turned the boat to the port side and crossed five hundred meters of water to the opposite shore, where we headed slowly upstream in our search.

The sun was cranked to the hilt, scorching me. I glanced at its blazing yellow face and the beast blinded me in return. Closing my eyes, I watched dancing spotlights torch my brain.

Opening my eyes again, I blinked rapidly, then squeezed my eyelids together in my fight to defeat the incessant sun spots. After several seconds, they plagued me still. But like all human beings who occasionally have been dumb enough to glare at the sun, I’d been in
this position before, and I knew the little bouncing buggers would soon go back to wherever it was they had come from.

Halfway ignoring the spots, I glanced around inside the boat at the crew. All of the men seemed rather chipper. I hated that for a moment until I realized we had to work at staying lively for the sake of team morale. We couldn’t allow Kats’s death to destroy us.

I’ve got to let this go, I spoke inside myself. Kats’s destiny was in bigger hands than mine now, so I had to let him go. My other teammates would be counting on me to be a hundred percent ready for the next mission, which meant being mentally “up.” With these thoughts in mind, I forced a grin at Mr. Schrader, who was staring at me.

“He was a good man,” I stated loudly. “Let’s win this stinking war and make sure he didn’t die in vain.”

Mr. Schrader gave me a thumbs-up and said, “We’ll kick some ass.”

But for the next eight hours, our asses got kicked by stifling heat, humidity, and the tedium of doing nothing but making runs up and down the big river. Even my eyes were sunburned when we finally gave up and went back to the base.

“His body will surface in a day or two,” I told the coxswain in an attempt to keep things somewhat positive.

“Yeah,” he replied, “if the sharks don’t eat him first.”

I hadn’t forgotten the sharks; I just didn’t want to talk or think about them. And those giant, God-awful, saltwater rats would rip away at a gallant SEAL. Damn them. When Moses and I, sunburned and tired, arrived at our barracks just after dark, Brown informed us of a meeting in the morning at 0830 hours. We were to gather in the TOC (Tactical Operations Center) with
Lieutenant Salisbury, no doubt to hear all sides of the story of Katsma’s death and for a needed pep talk.

I walked to my cubicle and found Funkhouser sitting up in his bed, protected by his mosquito net and writing a letter. He lowered his pen and pad of paper as I reached the foot of my bed.