Matterhorn (56 page)

“Fuck it,” he said to Skosh. “If they attack now we’ll fight ’em down there.”

He rose from his hole just as three NVA shells erupted in a quick series. Shrapnel and dirt tore through the fog. “Everyone
up! Everyone up! We’re not done yet. We got work to do, Marines. Get up!”

Frightened kids peered at him from their holes. He was waving his short-timer’s stick. “Get up! We’re going to get the bodies.
Get up!” He ran down the slope. They all rose from their holes, even Skosh with his broken rib.

It looked like an assault in reverse. Through the exploding shells they called to each other, some with rebel yells, some
shouting, “Fuck it! Fuck it all!” They ran for their dead. Some fell to the flying shrapnel. They were picked up, having barely
touched the earth, and dragged back up the hill with the dead bodies. In one minute the slopes were cleared.

Then, as if God had pulled a curtain, the fog lifted completely. The Marines on Helicopter Hill saw Matterhorn standing naked
before them. Little figures in camouflage green scurried here and there, dragging other little figures in camouflage green
behind them or walking with others hanging on to their shoulders.

“Get those fucking birds, Snik,” Fitch shouted gleefully.

Mellas could see Bass clearly, on the top of Matterhorn, pointing his short-timer’s stick at something, shouting at someone.

With the fog gone, however, NVA on the ridge north of Matterhorn began laying automatic weapons fire in with the mortar explosions.
All movement on the LZ was stopped.

Fitch and Mellas looked at each other hopelessly. The birds couldn’t come in unless the weather was clear. But if it was clear,
the NVA had the Marines pinned down with automatic weapons.

Then a cry went up from those on Helicopter Hill. “Tubing! Tubing!” The Marines had been digging a second perimeter inside
the first—they no longer had enough men to defend the outer one—but they stopped and began burying themselves in the dirt.
They waited for the time it took between the sounds of the tubing, which went in a direct line to their ears, and the time
it took the rounds to complete their high arcs. The mortar rounds crashed harmlessly, far down the hillside. Then the Marines
were up again, digging furiously to complete the new perimeter.

Mellas felt a sickening dismay. The sounds of the tube pops had come from a different direction from the first ones.

Mellas ran down to the lines, diving into Goodwin’s hole, from which he hoped to hear the second set of tubings and help Daniels
with a cross bearing.

“You’ve got to hand it to them little fuckers,” Goodwin said to Mellas, waiting for the next volley of mortars. “They’re fucking
pros. Too bad they ain’t on our side.”

“Just wait a while,” Mellas said. “They were on our side twenty-five years ago.”

“No shit. Who switched sides, us or them?”

“I think it was us. We used to be against colonialism. Now we’re against communism.”

“I’ll be goddamned,” Goodwin said matter-of-factly. “Whatever we’re against, Jack, they’re fucking pros.”

Mellas held up his hand, listening intently for the next sounds of tubing. As soon as they came, he took a bearing and radioed
it back to Daniels on Goodwin’s radio. Then he waited for the mortar shells to complete their slow, high trajectory. He watched
the top of the cloud bank that swirled beneath the two hilltops and obscured the valleys below them. Matterhorn seemed unattached
to the earth, an ugly bulb rising out of silvery gray. Then the shells hit—all over and inside the perimeter. The Marines
curled down, hands over their ears, and tried to squeeze inside their helmets.

The shelling continued for fifteen minutes. Just fifteen minutes. Then it stopped.

Mellas waited two minutes. He peered over the edge of the crater and then got up to check the damage. He found the senior
squid already out patching someone up. Goodwin reported two more killed: they’d both been in the same hole. Otherwise, there
were only minor shrapnel wounds.

Mellas walked back to Fitch’s hole. Relsnik looked up, his face working. Pallack was looking away.

“What is it?”

Fitch broke the silence. “Bass is dead,” he said quickly. As if he were trying to atone for this terse announcement, he added,
“We don’t have enough effectives to cover both hills. As soon as we get the wounded off of Matterhorn, I’m pulling One and
Three back here.”

It took Mellas a moment to register both pieces of information. Even then his next question was automatic. It was all he could
say to fill the emptiness.

“How?” he asked numbly.

“Shrapnel. He bled to death.”

Mellas turned around and walked back to the edge of the lines facing Matterhorn. It was quiet. Matterhorn floated serenely
above the fog. He saw Bass on Matterhorn just weeks earlier, teaching him, joking with him, bitching to him. Bass wrapping
him in a blanket one day after a patrol when he was so cold he couldn’t stop shivering. Fixing a cup of coffee. Talking about
home. The Corps. Bass. Dead. On this fucking wasted piece of earth.

Goodwin came up behind Mellas and put a hand on his helmet and rocked it back and forth. He didn’t say anything.

“Thanks, Scar,” Mellas finally said.

Mellas’s throat ached. Tears crowded close behind his eyelids. But the ache was never released and the tears never broke through.
Emptiness filled his soul.

“Hey!” someone shouted on the south side of the perimeter. “Here come the birds.”

Out of the fog to the south, a single CH-46 climbed upward toward the zone on Matterhorn. Someone on Matterhorn popped a red
smoke grenade. The smoke spread slowly through the air, like blood in water.

Lazy puffs of darker smoke curled around the chopper as it came in—more mortar rounds.

Leaving the radios, Mellas picked up Fitch’s field glasses and perched on a small mound. He watched Jackson standing all alone
in the middle of the zone, directing the chopper with hand signals, the radio on his back, while mortar shells burst around
him. With Fracasso and Bass both gone, Jackson took charge. There had been no orders and no questions.

Mellas watched the chopper settle in. Crewmen piled out while the Marines from Bravo Company ran up, carrying the wounded
in any way they could manage, and throwing them into the tailgate. While crew members pulled the bodies forward, the Marines
continued to run into and out of the bird with more dead and wounded. Then the chopper lifted, beating the air, as Marines
ran from it and scattered for shelter. A figure appeared at the closing tailgate, hesitated a moment, then jumped out into
space and tumbled to the ground. It looked like Jacobs. The wry thought entered Mellas’s head that Jacobs had probably stuttered
too badly to get the pilot to stay on the ground, but then he felt bad for having such a thought. He watched as Jacobs lay
there for a second; then someone darted out into the exploding mortar rounds and tugged on him. Then they both were up and
running for cover.

“Fucking Jake, man,” Mellas muttered out loud. “He actually jumped back into this shit.”

He watched Jackson calmly direct another chopper in. Then the clouds closed out the zone and he could see no more.

A third chopper came straining up the south side of Helicopter Hill. Everyone listened to its progress. Pallack was talking
to the pilot on the radio, and the senior squid was preparing the previous day’s wounded for evacuation. Two of the five original
emergency cases were still alive. One of them was Merritt, still saying he wasn’t ever going to forget this. Sheller said
he wouldn’t either. Sheller and the corpsmen from Second
Platoon put Merritt’s foul-smelling body on a poncho strung between two sticks and carried him down to a torn piece of flat
earth on the east side of the hill, away from the automatic weapons fire, to wait for the chopper.

Mellas watched the chopper emerge from the fog. Pallack popped a yellow smoke and the mortar shells once again started falling
on Helicopter Hill.

The pilot was talking to Pallack in a calm, steady voice. “OK, son. Where are they shooting
from
? I know where they’re shooting
at
. Over.”

“The finger just to our north, sir. Also tubes to d’ northwest and due west just about on d’ border. Over.”

“OK, son. I’ll bring her in from the southeast. You’re sure that fucking hole is big enough to get me in? Over.”

“Yes, sir. I walked right across it. It’s a nice big flat space. Over.”

“Nice big flat ain’t helping me much. How about some numbers? Over.”

“One nice big flat spot, sir,” Pallack said. “Over.”

“I ain’t in the fucking mood for kidding around. Over.”

Pallack didn’t want to tell the pilot how small the zone was; he was afraid the pilot would turn around and not try it.

“Goddamn it, son, now I know you think I’m going to fly away if it’s too small, but so help me, if you don’t tell how big
a spot you’ve got there, I am turning this fucking machine around. Right now. Over.”

Pallack hesitated. “Ten meters, sir. But d’ere’s no fucking wind. Over.”

“Shit.” The word was muttered, not intended to go over the air. Nevertheless the chopper kept coming in. Mellas could see
the pilot, a large overweight man, probably a field-grade officer, hands moving deftly at the controls, large sweating face
packed into the narrow plastic helmet. Mellas couldn’t help thinking of Santa Claus.

By now small arms fire from the finger to the north could be heard crackling through the air above the landing zone; the chopper
was flying straight into it. A second volley of tubing sounded through the fog, and everyone who was waiting for the chopper
flattened out against the mud. More shells exploded on the hill.

Sheller was sitting next to his wounded men, rubbing his face. Ridlow, still chalky white and with clammy sweat on his face,
was bantering about whether or not to leave his .44 Magnum with Goodwin, but he and Goodwin were both worried. Ridlow had
passed out twice from loss of blood.

The pilot started talking as if to keep his own mind off the danger. “Normally I wouldn’t do this, son, but I was held up
by some wild-ass redneck staff sergeant right outside Delta Med who told me to drop off a huss for you guys when I went in
or he’d shoot me out of the fucking sky.” The pilot laughed. “You know that character? Over.”

“Yeah. It’s d’ gunny,” Pallack said. “He would, too, sir,” he added. “You’re much better off with us. Over.”

“That’s what I figured, son.” The radio lapsed into static.

The fire intensified, but the bird kept coming in a slow, straight, exposed approach. More mortar rounds hit the hill behind
the backs of the evacuation party. The bird loomed up on them out of the fog, its blades whapping and pounding, its turbines
screaming. Suddenly there was chaos as the bird shuddered, hovering above the tiny level space on the side of the hill, its
blades barely missing the earth on the uphill side. Mellas saw that bullets had perforated the clear canopy around the pilot.
The copilot was slumped over, held up only by his seat belt, his plastic helmet shattered and broken.

The chopper hit the deck and the crew chief started throwing out bags as Sheller and Fredrickson, with the help of others,
shoved the critically wounded into the belly of the bird. In seconds the chopper was moving and the kids on the ground were
diving for holes, not caring what was in the bags. The next salvo came just as the chopper started curving away, gaining speed
rapidly as it moved with gravity, sliding southward toward the valley. A hand poked out of one of the chopper’s broken portholes.
It held a Smith & Wesson .44 that barked out six heavy shots at the north finger.

Mellas lifted his head from the earth. He darted down to the satchels, hollering for help, and began dragging them up the
hill to the bunkers. Inside the bags were several cases of IV fluid, several cases of machine-gun ammunition, fifteen gallons
of water, a case of hand
grenades, and, in a Marine seabag stuffed with melting ice, two cases of Coca-Cola.

“D’ fucking gunny, man,” Pallack said.

First and Third Platoons filed back onto Helicopter Hill three hours later, having had to walk at the pace of the wounded
for whom there hadn’t been room on the medevac birds. Connolly had Vancouver’s sword. He walked up to the CP and handed it
to Mellas.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with it, Conman?” Mellas asked, feeling its weight.

“I don’t know.” Connolly looked out into the fog. “All I know is if it went back with Vancouver, someone who didn’t deserve
it would take it. At least you could trade it for something.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Mellas said. “Maybe we ought to send it home to his father,” he added lamely.

“What father?” Connolly said. “He wouldn’t want that, sir. What you think a fucking Canadian is doing in an American war if
he had a home and a father he wanted to go back to?”

Connolly sat down in the mud and stared past Mellas, across at Matterhorn. “He was my fucking brother, sir.” He started crying.
Mellas looked at the sword, unable to speak. Tears were running over Connolly’s mouth and chin. He kept wiping them away with
his filthy hand, smearing his face. He looked up at Mellas. “He was my fucking brother.”

Mellas put the sword in the CP bunker. Then he walked down to First Platoon’s position and took over the platoon without even
asking Fitch.

There were now fifteen bodies stacked on top of Helicopter Hill, stiff with rigor mortis, several of them mutilated by a mortar
shell that had exploded in their midst. Goodwin’s platoon had lost fifteen: eight killed and seven medevaced. The other wounded
of his platoon stayed behind and were still capable of fighting. Kendall had lost fourteen: six
killed and eight medevaced, with ten others left behind functioning with minor wounds. First Platoon had twenty left out of
forty-two—the addition of Mellas made it twenty-one. Of those, half had minor wounds but were still able to fight. With the
CP group and the mortarmen, that left ninety-seven effectives in the company. Fifteen gallons of water divided by ninety-seven
was roughly a pint and a quarter for each Marine. Everyone also got half a can of Coke.