“You hit, Sir?” a lieutenant asked.
Hale shook his head.
The lieutenant handed him the handset. Hale pushed it away.
So the lieutenant took over. Charlie was all right but half of Alpha had been cut off.
Another lieutenant and a sergeant appeared. They talked together in a little group, all of them glancing at Hale from time to time.
“Major, two platoons of Alpha are cut off,” a lieutenant explained to Hale. “What do we do? What are your orders.”
“Goddammit tell ’em anything you want. Why do I have to hold the hands of my fucking junior officers?” Hale said.
“They’re dying! Do something!” the lieutenant shouted.
Hale sighed, “There’s nothing I can do.”
“Do you want me to take command of the battalion?” the lieutenant asked.
“Fuck no! This is my fucking battalion!” Hale shouted. Then he continued in a calmer voice, “I’ll command a brigade before I’m through. This battalion’s going to the Holiday Inn.”
Hale got up and after taking a compass bearing walked off into the jungle. They all followed.
“This time it ain’t a couple of squads or a platoon. There’s at least a fucking company of those dinks on this mountain,” Labouf said. “Where’s fucking Light?”
Jackson had been thinking the same thing. Light would not have to kill anyone. He would just have to show up and the NVA would scatter.
You bastard, you better keep my ass covered, Jackson thought.
The lieutenant continued to talk on the radio to the two platoons. Finally he told them that no one was coming to help them, that they would have to fight their way out of the trap on their own.
“Shoot that bastard, Hale!” the voice came out of the handset. “Call in choppers. Get us out of here!”
Then they heard the RTO trying to make contact with a Forward Air Control plane. Suddenly the radio went dead.
“Those platoons didn’t react properly,” Hale said. “We move when the enemy ambushes us. Let themselves get pinned down.”
Jackson wondered if the lieutenant was going to shoot Hale, but instead the man got up and walked off.
“Let us put Short-timer on those dinks,” Raymond said.
Short-timer chattered and turned flips, the bones on his legs almost faded away.
Reynolds held his M-16 like a guitar and pulling the trigger down fired off a whole magazine into the air, dancing and twitching in rhythm to the sound.
“Goddamn, get those fucking crazies out of here,” Hale said. “I want both of you out ahead scouting. I want to know about the next ambush before it happens.”
They were able to break off contact with the NVA, but they all could hear the fire from the two trapped platoons as they walked through the jungle. Now the battalion was under no one’s particular command. The lieutenants asked Hale for orders, but all he would do was give them the compass bearing for the Holiday Inn.
“Fucking idiot. Throwing those men away,” Jackson heard a lieutenant say to a sergeant.
They came to one of the many streams that cut the steep mountainside. It was not deep but flowing fast. Reynolds & Raymond were waiting for them at the bank. They had not crossed. The sounds of Alpha’s firefight, although faint, still reached them.
“Cross over,” Hale said to Reynolds & Raymond.
“Good place for an ambush,” Raymond said.
Hale said, “Get over there, Labouf.”
“Let the crazies go,” Labouf said.
“You, now,” Hale said.
“Well, fuck it,” Labouf said and waded into the stream, his legs spread wide apart to brace himself against the current.
“Easy,” Labouf said turning back to talk to them. “Dinks are still fucking with Alpha.”
Then there was a heavy sound like a car going past on the highway. Labouf was suddenly lifted into the air. He dangled just above the surface of the stream, the heavy clay ball studded with punji stakes sticking into his ruck.
“Jesus, help me!” Labouf shouted.
Labouf had tripped a wire set in the stream, and the ball, which was attached to a rope, had been released.
“Get me down you dickheads!” Labouf screamed.
Everyone laughed, even Hale.
Reynolds & Raymond waded into the steam and helped Labouf out of his ruck. The force of the studded ball had been absorbed by the ruck, and Labouf was unhurt.
They helped him out of the stream, and Jackson checked Labouf’s back. One punji stake had barely broken the skin. A trickle of blood ran down his back, but Labouf was all right. A medic dusted the wound with sulphur powder.
“Hey, leave that ruck alone,” Labouf said to Reynolds & Raymond who were pulling the ruck off the punji stakes.
Labouf started back out into the stream but stopped when Reynolds & Raymond managed to pull the ruck free.
Hale decided he wanted to talk with one of the platoons. But Jackson had trouble making contact, the signal fading.
“Put in a new battery, Jackson,” Hale said.
“Used the last one yesterday,” Jackson said.
“Get one from Labouf,” Hale said.
Labouf was in the stream, struggling with Reynolds & Raymond over the ruck.
“Get those batteries over here,” Hale said.
Labouf fell down in the stream, and Raymond brought the ruck to the bank.
Raymond stuck his hand through one of the holes the punji stakes had torn in the green nylon fabric and pulled out a plastic-wrapped stack of bills. Labouf scrambled out of the stream and, jerking the bills out of Raymond’s hand, stuffed them back into the ruck.
“Look at that fucking money,” a lieutenant said.
Everyone except Hale and Jackson crowded around the ruck.
“Leave it the fuck alone,” Labouf kept saying. “It’s mine, goddammit. It’s mine.”
They pulled all the money out of the ruck.
“Shit, there must be a hundred thousand dollars here,” the medic said.
“Labouf, where are those fucking batteries?” Hale said.
Everyone got quiet.
Labouf said nothing.
“Get Alpha on Labouf’s radio,” Hale said to Jackson. And to Labouf, “You fucking idiot! What’d you do with the batteries?”
Labouf looked up into the treetops.
“Threw ’em away. You goddamn bastard! You’ll go to jail for this,” Hale said.
Hale pointed his carbine at Labouf and said, “I should shoot you myself.”
“You better save your ammo for the dinks,” Labouf said and grinned.
Jackson could not make Labouf s radio work.
Hale said, “Get the battery out of it. Put it in yours.”
Firing started up not far away. An element of Charlie had made contact with the enemy.
“Quick!” Hale said.
Jackson opened the radio. Instead of a battery there were bundles of money. Labouf had even removed the radio itself and filled the aluminum case with money.
“You go find me some batteries,” Hale shouted at Labouf. “Move!”
Labouf ran off into the jungle.
Hale picked up the ruck and threw it into the stream. Money scattered everywhere. They all scrambled for it while Jackson and Hale watched. Everyone got some, but Reynolds & Raymond retrieved the ruck and got most of it.
“Got the money man’s stash. Gonna buy me a Cadillac back in the world,” Raymond said.
“There are many here among us/Who feel that life is but a joke/Said the joker to the thief,” Reynolds sang.