“If they’ve seen so much activity, how come we re going out by ourselves?” I asked Brunner.
“We’re not supposed to engage any large units,” Brunner said. “Stewart said we should try to get some prisoners.”
“How long he got to go over here?” Peewee asked.
“I don’t know,” Brunner said. “Maybe a month at the most. They just turned down his extension.”
“Then we making the last big push for his promotion,” Johnson said.
The choppers did the same thing to my stomach. Just the sound of them coming in put me in a panic. My arms and legs felt heavy. My palms were sweating. I didn’t want to go out anymore. I had had enough.
“Let’s go!”
I went. Again. Don’t think, react.
The landing zone spooked me. It was supposed to be near an ARVN ranger outpost, but I didn’t see any of the South Vietnamese elite troops around.
It took us an hour of cautious walking before we spotted the stream. We stopped a distance from it, maybe the distance from home plate to the left field fence in a regular stadium. On a good day I could have hit a ball that far. How long had it been since I had hit a baseball? I figured it was only sixteen months. It seemed a different lifetime.
We spread out and started looking around. Nothing. I turned and looked back toward the skies. The choppers were already distant silhouettes against the darkening skies.
“Move out!” There was something about Brunner’s voice I didn’t like. He was trying to make it sound like he had more confidence than he did.
There was a ridge off to our left about three hundred meters. It was bad news. It looked down on the stream and made good cover for anybody who might be up there.
We didn’t want to go along the stream with the ridge on our flank. Nobody wanted to go up on the ridge, either. Brunner sent Lobel and Walowick to check out the ridge while the rest of us covered them.
Covered them. Big joke. If there were any Congs there they would get wasted, and all we would be able to do is to chase the Congs off while we picked up the bodies. If we were lucky.
Walowick and Lobel waded across the stream.
The waist-deep water was moving slowly, and flecks of white foam caught the last rays of sunset. I was glad to see them climb out on the other side. They started up the ridge. It was rough going, and even slower than I thought it would be. We watched as they climbed slowly toward the top. I prayed that it would be clear. I asked God to let it be clear, just this once.
Walowick looked, then stood, then signaled. It was clear. I hoped I hadn’t used up a prayer I didn’t have to.
Walowick and Lobel came back and we started sweeping the stream. There was a saddle, a low section in the ridge a hundred meters downstream that was about as scary as anything I had seen. If Walowick and Lobel had missed the Cong on the ridge, the saddle would be the perfect spot for an ambush. I wondered how many prayers I had left. I wondered if Buddha was answering prayers on the other side.
We didn’t see anything for the first kilometer out.
“Let’s get back,” Johnson said. “It’s going to start raining.”
“We got another kilometer to go,” Brunner said.
Lobel was the first. He turned and looked at Johnson. What was Johnson going to do? Nobody had said anything about Johnson, but we all knew he was taking over the squad. The hell with Brunner’s stripes, Johnson was taking over.
Johnson shrugged, shouldered the sixty, and kept on. Brunner was visibly relieved.
Monaco was on point. I was rear man. We went out a quarter of a mile more, until we could just about see Route 586, when Monaco halted us and pointed toward the ridge line. I looked up, checked my safety to make sure it was off, and waited.
“I don’t see nothing!” Brunner called out.
Monaco leaned forward, and pointed again.
Brunner had glasses and he checked out the ridge line. I saw that Monaco was edging back toward us. He was motioning to one side of the stream and we started moving toward it. He had seen something, but it wasn’t necessarily on the ridge. We backed toward what we hoped was enough cover for a firefight.
“I don’t see anything up there!” Brunner shouted. He looked nervous.
Monaco spun back toward the direction he had been going in and opened up, shooting into the water. We froze as we saw the rounds kicking up the water. There was nothing there. I thought Monaco was wrong. Then there was a splash and a figure. It looked, in the dim light of evening, as if he were standing in the water, masturbating. Then I saw that it was a Cong, trying to get his wet weapon to work.
Johnson opened up and blew him away.
“Reeds!” Monaco shouted. “They’re in the water!”
We got to the sides of the stream and opened up on the reeds. Suddenly the reeds became people, trying to get out of the water, returning our fire. There was fire from the sides of the stream as well. We moved back fifty meters and set up. Walowick had the grenade launcher and was sending them into the bushes at the side of the stream.
“Watch the ridge! Watch the ridge!” Lobel called out.
We were all watching it already. It could have been a trap. We fired and fired until there was no return. I wanted to move out, so did the rest of the guys, but Brunner gave the order to move forward.
The water the reeds floated in was stained dark with blood. There were four bodies on the side of the stream, one we could see just under the water. Lobel put a shot into it and it jerked up. The guy was still alive! He tried to run, and Lobel hit him with a short burst that sent him whirling, his arms over his head as if he were dancing.
“I killed him!” Lobel turned toward us. His eyes were wild. He looked back at the body that now floated faceup in the water, that now slid below the surface into the darkness.
“I killed him!”
Lobel was shaking. He had killed his first man up close. He had seen him die. It was personal. The shit was real. He was a killer.
Brunner called our position in and requested that our present position be our pickup zone. It was denied. We started back.
Problem. It was nearly dark. The sides of the stream were clear for twenty to forty meters on both sides. On the side of the stream that we were on, away from the ridge, there was a rice paddy that we had to cross. We had passed it coming, but going back was another thing. They knew we were there now, knew we were headed back. If we got Congs on the ridge when we were passing the paddies, it would be hard going.
Monaco led the way. It rained for a few minutes, a cold, driving rain that chilled you in ways you wouldn’t forget very soon. Then it stopped. A slight wind picked up and made the trees that grew in sullen clusters along the ridge sway menacingly. The moon came up. We were almost back to the LZ.
I wanted to get back quickly. Lobel was just about holding it together. We had to get him back, give him some peace. Let him get the knots out of his nerves again.
We got almost back to the cutoff point where we would move to the LZ. We had to pass the saddle again.
“Peewee, you and Perry check the ridge,” Brunner said.
“Keep your asses down,” Johnson said.
Me and Peewee started across the stream. It was fairly deep. I remembered I couldn’t swim.
“Peewee,” I whispered, hoarsely. “You swim?”
“No.”
Damn. It took us forever to get across the stream. We got across just as the moon went behind the clouds. I looked back over the stream, but I couldn’t see a damn thing. My testicles shriveled up in a hard knot and turned to ice. I was low, I was moving forward.