“There,” Hale said jabbing his finger down on the map. “I think they’re building bunkers somewhere up in these grid squares. Find them. We’ll call in a B-52 strike.”
“No problem, Major,” Savitch, now a corporal, said.
Soon after Savitch rappelled down out of a helicopter into the jungle one night, the daylight attacks on the fence stopped. But the enemy still blew up sections of the fence in the early morning hours.
“See, he’s reconning and killing at the same time,” Jackson overheard Hale tell the first sergeant. “He’s got the enemy on the run. He’s already done more for us than that goddamn Light ever did.”
Hale had Jackson try to contact Savitch on his walkie-talkie but with no success. Jackson decided that Savitch was either dead or had thrown the walkie-talkie away. The major insisted that Jackson log in ten attempts every day to contact his scout.
Another week passed and still the NVA left the fence alone during daylight. Jackson was asleep in the TOC one morning when he heard Hale calling his name. He opened his eyes and saw Hale standing over him.
“Get your radio and rifle,” Hale said. “We’re going to the fence.”
As Jackson tied his boot laces, he watched the major putting on his steel pot and flak jacket. He guessed that the enemy had decided to make a daylight assault on the fence, and it had gotten so bad Hale had been forced to direct the defense personally. But nothing was coming over the big radio, the bored operator sitting by the machine drinking a cup of coffee.
Down at the fence Jackson got out of the chopper breathing hard. Gunships were circling overhead to provide security for the major. They followed the lieutenant in command of the platoon across the cleared ground which had grown up in scrub. A group of men were standing by the fence.
“Still haven’t got it figured out, Major,” a staff sergeant said.
Jackson saw there were men posted out in the scrub, their eyes fixed on the jungle. They followed the sergeant along the fence, and then Jackson saw the thing up on the fence post. Jackson gasped for breath, the hot, humid air feeling like water entering his lungs.
“They got it booby-trapped,” the sergeant continued. “We found one of the trip wires. My EOD man thinks they meant us to find it.”
It was Savitch’s head.
They all watched the emergency ordnance demolition man looking at the wire below the head.
Hale said, “I want that thing down.”
“Yes, sir, he’s the best,” the sergeant said, nodding toward the EOD man. “He’ll figure it out.”
The EOD man backed carefully away from the wire and walked over to the sergeant. He and the sergeant talked to each other in low tones.
“Major, he thinks they’ve booby-trapped the head,” the sergeant said.
Jackson wished that the sergeant had not called it a head.
“I want it off the pole,” Hale said.
Jackson could tell that Hale was getting mad, and the sergeant and the EOD man knew it too.
The sergeant and the EOD man walked off a little distance from the major and had another conference.
“Sir, he thinks the best thing to do is drop a frag on it,” the sergeant said.
“Go ahead,” Hale said.
Everyone took cover and the EOD man threw a frag out beside the post. The frag went off followed by an even louder explosion. Dirt fell down on top of Jackson who lay with his face pressed to the red clay. When the smoke and dust cleared, no head was on top of the pole.
“Jesus, they packed that thing full of TNT,” the EOD man said.
Hale had the men search the scrub for remains but all that turned up were a few pieces of skin and a bit of skull with the hair still attached to it. No one at the fence had much to say. Jackson knew everyone was thinking of what their head would look like up on the pole.
As the chopper lifted off to take them back to the firebase, Jackson found he could breathe easy again. As it climbed over the Cunt, Jackson looked past the door gunner toward the gorge, thinking Light was somewhere in that sea of green and that the enemy would never put Light’s head up on a pole.
CHAPTER
8
Jackson watched Major Hale work at the map tripod beneath the bunker’s single naked bulb. The TOC was the only bunker in camp with electricity. Sometimes the bulb burned very bright, but most of the time it was dim, illuminating only the center of the TOC and leaving the rest of the square room, especially the corners, in shadow. Hale was bent over the map on the table with a pencil in his hand. Occasionally he made a mark on the map with the pencil and then stared off into one of the dark corners. Jackson hoped Hale was not planning an attack on Holiday Inn base camp.
A conversation had just come over the radio between a company commander at Dak To and the medevac at Pleiku air base. The captain pleaded for a dust off, saying that many of his men, wounded in an attack which had just been beaten off, were going to die if they did not send a chopper. Jackson listened to the professionally calm voice from Pleiku tell the captain that they had none to send, and he would have to wait.
“These men are going to die!” the captain said. “Jesus, send me something!”
Then the transmission was broken off abruptly, but the captain must have held down the transmission bar for a second because Jackson heard the sound of small-arms fire and men yelling. Hale, still lost in thought, had paid no attention to the conversation.
The radio was silent, and the operator dialed another frequency out of Dak To. As the operator twisted the dial, Jackson noticed a strange smell in the bunker. Hale smelled it too, for he looked up from his maps, both men at the same time seeing the figure standing in the semidarkness at the doorway of the bunker, which was even darker than the corners because it was at the end of a narrow hallway. It was that rotting leaf smell but with something added that Jackson could not identify.
Tom Light stepped out of the darkness, crossing the room to Hale. Jackson wondered why Light had not called him on the radio again to tell him he was coming in.
“I told you not to come back without confirmation,” Hale said.
“I know,” Light said.
Hale said, “How in hell did you get back in here? The front gate has orders not to let you inside the wire.”
Hale rang up front gate on the field telephone.
“I didn’t come in the gate,” Light said.
Hale stood there looking at Light with the phone in his hand.
“No chopper has landed. How?” Hale asked.
“I’m here,” Light said. “It don’t matter how.”
Hale put the phone down.
“Does anyone know you’re here?” Hale asked.
“No,” the sniper said, reaching into his pocket and taking out something wrapped in fresh leaves.
The leaves, Jackson thought, must have been the reason for the unusual smell. Light was unwrapping the leaves, and Jackson moved closer. Then Light had it in his hand and Hale, recoiling, stepped back, the stench filling the bunker. Light dropped it on the map, the severed cock landing with a splat, the black clotted blood dribbling a trail across the white paper. Jackson thought of the black rubber snakes he bought when he was a boy and hid under the sheets of his sister’s bed. If left on a window sill, the snakes would turn soft and melt in the sun, losing their round shape, flattening out. That was what it looked like.
The cutting had been done with a razor sharp knife, no rough edges left where it had been lopped off. Jackson, gasping for air, did not want to look at it, wished that the generator would suddenly fail, plunging the bunker into darkness, and when the bulb glowed again Light and the thing on the map table would be gone. Although trying hard to stay cool, Hale had taken another step back from the table.