Even before the roar of the chopper receded Nate heard the sound of fighting up ahead. Exhausted infantrymen lay on both shoulders of the road. Their rifles were raised onto their huge field packs and at the ready. The dozen Green Berets spread out to avoid crowding their charge and making him a target. Clark and Reed strode down the road toward the boom and crackle of the guns.
‘How’re ya doin’?’ Nate called out to heads raised in surprise. Men woke from their slumber and stared at the strange sight. ‘Good morning!’ Nate said to men who scrambled to get to their feet. He never gave an order. He never said a word other than the polite — but loud — greetings. But all down the road in both directions, soldiers who had previously been resting began to rise and shoulder their loads.
A delegation of astonished officers soon approached from the direction of the fighting. They all waved perfunctory salutes and gathered around Nate on the road. Clark shook a lieutenant colonel’s hand. ‘What seems to be the problem?’ Nate asked.
The battalion commander was obviously taken aback by Nate’s unexpected arrival. He looked back over his shoulder and said, ‘Well, sir, the road’s not clear. There’s a platoon of tanks up there working them over. We’re waiting on the call to get moving. Meanwhile, we’ve begun to draw heavy fire from the knob of this hill right on top of us.’ He pointed for Nate’s benefit
Nate tried to keep his temper under control. In a low voice meant not to be heard by the nearby troops he said, ‘We’ve got a war to win, colonel. If there’s some obstacle up ahead, I’d suggest you march your men up there and destroy it.’
The man stiffened. ‘Yes, sir!’
‘As for the fire from that hill, I’d send a company up there straight at ’em. If they don’t run, go to ground, grab ’em by the nose, and maneuver against their flanks. Fire and maneuver, colonel. That’s what the taxpayers pay you to do.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the visibly miserable man said. He turned and issued the orders. Nate walked on. The volume of noise rose. The men on the sides of the road now didn’t leave the shelter of their packs to acknowledge the commanding general’s passage. They lay behind their large loads. Their eyes remained near the rear sights of their rifles.
The captain who led the Special Forces ‘A’ Detachment came up to Nate. ‘General Clark,’ was all he said.
‘All right,’ Nate replied. He left the center of the road for the left shoulder. He moved forward in a stoop. Men were firing machine-guns in short bursts from beside the road. As he got closer still, he advanced only in short sprints from cover to cover. M-1A1 tanks further down the road fired their 120-mm guns at extreme elevations. The flame from their tubes and the explosion on the crest of the ridge seemed simultaneous. Their targets were only a few hundred meters away.
Another battalion commander met Clark near the rear fender of a tank. Neither he nor the captains and majors of his staff saluted in such close proximity to the enemy. ‘What’s the hold-up?’ Nate shouted over the roar of battle.
The closest main battle tank fired. Everyone flinched. Dust rose from the road all around its treads. Clark’s ears rang loudly. The stupendous noise drew his nervous system taut like after the slamming of a nearby door.
‘We got clobbered by about a dozen machine-guns dug in on the crest of that ridge straight ahead!’ the colonel finally replied. ‘They held their fire till the tanks rounded that blind curve! Then they opened up at the bend in defilade — firing straight down this stretch of road! I’ve got a whole company pinned down about four hundred meters that way!’ he said, pointing toward the south — toward the Tangyuan Valley.
Nate asked for and then looked through the man’s binoculars. There was a line of evenly spaced dots on the hill ahead. Puffs of smoke came from some, but not all. The rocks around the Chinese fighting holes exploded in puffs both large and small. Down on the road ahead, there were men lying prone. It was impossible to tell the living from the dead. They all lay still and helpless. Dirt spat from the ground around them. Machine-guns raked back and forth across the road.
Nate lowered the binoculars. ‘Well, what the hell are you doing about it?’ he asked with mounting anger. He could understand someone disregarding Clark’s order to advance. Someone unwilling to piss his men’s lives away to hurry down a road not yet cleared. But those were his men that were pinned down. Those were his men in need of relief.
‘We’ve called in an airstrike, but there’s been some kind of screw-up. For some reason everything’s been diverted.’
Clark was boiling mad. He looked around. All of the other officers were majors and captains. Nate turned to see Reed — the new Lieutenant Colonel Reed — looking on. In the instant before opening his mouth to speak Nate considered the possible consequences of his order. What his decision might mean for the son of the man to whom he owed his life. But the steady pounding by the heavy machine-guns convinced him that now he had to call on every resource. Now he had to use the young colonel up. ‘Colonel Reed, you’re now in command of this unit!’ The battalion staff was stunned. ‘Call off that airstrike, get up that hill, and dear this Goddamn road!’
Reed stared back at him unblinking for a moment. In Clark’s head there was a ticking clock. Despite the sadness he felt, he was still seething. His eyes were locked onto Reed’s. If Reed had cast even a sidelong glance at the others, Clark swore to himself he would’ve found another commander. If he’d hesitated even a moment longer Clark would’ve fired him and picked one of the slack-jawed majors. Not to punish Reed. Not to find a better commander from among the other officers. But to make the point to every soldier in the column — advance means advance.
‘Yes, sir!’ the new battalion commander shouted. His words were pure boot-camp zeal. But his eyes were dreary and lifeless.
By the time Clark’s helicopter picked him up twenty minutes later, the road was clear and the column was moving. Reed had personally led a company of 110 men up the hill. They’d cleared the machine-gun nests with bullets and hand grenades. Clark’s last glimpse of the young colonel had come from the Blackhawk’s window. Reed stood silently among thirteen of the newly-dead Americans.
Clark watched the fighter-attack aircraft make their runs over Tangyuan Valley from the same window. He had a perfect view of the Marine F/A-18s. They dropped from the hazy sky one at a time, leveling out fifty feet above the trees. The jets’ twin engines smudged the air over the forests. Their burning exhausts left a shimmering wake.
They disappeared one after another into the valley. They followed the road which wound its way to the south. Above the surrounding ridges drifted the haze of ground combat. To that was added billowing towers of black smoke. The mushroom clouds from thousand-pounders lost their shapes as they cooled above the rocky crests.
Nate grabbed the extra crewman’s headset. It was alive with the co-pilot’s tense warnings.
‘… gun radar. Sounds like a ZSU-24. Probably up on a hill to the south.’
‘Call it in,’ the pilot instructed. ‘Get a mission on it.’
‘This is General Clark,’ Nate interrupted. ‘Can we put down somewhere in that valley?’
There was an information-laden moment of silence. ‘Well… uh, it’s pretty tight in there, sir. The Chinese are bringin’ SAMs and triple-A right up to the front lines. Plus the small arms fire is thick as molasses.’
‘But flights are going in, right?’
‘Yessir. Medevacs are, yes, sir.’