“Men,” he shouted over the sound of the approaching rotors, “I am your mama and your papa. Let’s go kill us some gooks.”
If he expected the gung-ho cheers of a football team, he was disappointed, but the men happily waded through the flying red dust and prepared to be lifted far in-country. A long, cold ride later, they set down in one of the most inhospitable valleys Allen had ever laid eyes on, wide and exposed and bordered by heavily forested hills; the whole place reeked of VC. His squad hit the ground running, to meet up in the tree line. Brenda strolled away from his chopper like a conquering hero, and Allen wondered if he was the only one watching who fantasized a nice, tidy sniper bullet out of the green.
But in Vietnam there was no God, and Brenda made the trees unscathed.
The valley was reported to be sheltering men and supplies for an assault. No one seemed to know just where this information came from, and certainly the first couple of villes showed no sign of it. The planes came down and laid a strip of fire on the far side of a ville, the inhabitants came running out, and after the grunts sat them down and went off to check for VC and weapons, Brenda and the translator worked their way through the old men and women. Brenda had some of the villagers lifted out for further interrogation, but the only thing to indicate VC presence was a pair of rusty grenades and a rifle older than any man there.
At the second ville, a kid of around eight tried to ingratiate himself with the GIs; it was Chris, to Allen’s amazement, who turned his gun on the kid and ordered him to didi mau. The child turned obediently and sprinted back in the direction he had come; only when the boy had joined the cluster of villagers did Chris put up his gun. He glanced at Allen, gave a shrug, and went on with overturning the ville.
That night their new lieutenant went through and corrected the digging of foxholes. Delta Squad was occupying two holes laid perpendicular to the perimeter, and Brenda didn’t like it. However, rather than ordering the sergeant to have it changed, or telling the squad leader, Penroy, Brennan’s eyes sought out Allen.
“I want these holes turned ninety degrees. Only one man in them would have a clean line of fire. I want them set parallel to our perimeter.”
“Sir,” said Allen, “if we lay them parallel to the perimeter, we’re vulnerable to snipers from that ridge over there.” Indeed, a single machine gunner would be able to take out the whole squad just by lining up with Brennan’s holes and holding in the trigger.
“That’s what mortar’s for, soldier. Redig those holes.”
Allen nearly retorted that it was reassuring to know that mortar would avenge the deaths of Delta Squad after they had been mowed down, but he bit his tongue and pulled out his entrenching tool. The lieutenant waited until they had started digging to his specifications, then left them.
“We not gonna sit in these here holes, now are we, Carmichael?” Mouse was stabbing petulantly at the ground. However, in Brennan’s absence, Penroy reclaimed authority.
“Brenda’s right,” he said. “We join up the ends, that way we’ll keep both options open.”
The ground was rocky, and Allen didn’t believe that the resulting L-shaped holes were what the lieutenant had in mind, but by dusk Brenda had other things to worry about than making the squad fill in the offending leg.
The night was hard. It was as if the countryside was a living thing, rallying its defenses against a thorn in its side, isolating the foreign body and bringing in blood to fight the infection. If you looked at the platoon from the air, Allen decided, you’d see a growing red welt all around it, puffy and ugly. And growing uglier with every passing hour.
The medevac helicopter had a hot LZ in the morning; the platoon moved off as soon as the wounded were away.
And halfway through the morning, they came to the elephant grass.
Elephant grass was hateful, terrifying stuff, a sea of head-high blades edged with flexible razors, tall enough to cut a man off from his companions as effectively as a bag over his head. Worst of all, Victor Charlie knew every square inch of it. While the grunt flailed around, blind and isolated and trying to keep from being flayed raw, entire companies—regiments—of VC could be hiding in the holes that flanked the trails and the trenches that threaded off in all directions. Charlie heard you coming, he knew just where to lay an ambush, and you had absolutely nothing to shoot back at unless you happened to fall off the trail into his lap. Elephant grass was the substance of nightmares, alive and malignant; it was the reason Agent Orange and napalm were invented, and Lieutenant Brennan marched them straight into the heart of the biggest, thickest, tallest patch of grass any of them had ever seen—acres of the stuff, like an expanse of mutant rice paddy.
Lacking heavy earth-moving equipment, it was all but impossible to push through the wet, high grass. The platoon was forced to use the faint trails used by the locals—the same locals who knew they were coming. Allen was point man for the squad when a battle broke out somewhere ahead, and all they could do was hunker down on the trail and hope the bullets passed over their heads. Mouse squatted onto his heels, lit up a cigarette, and stared morosely at the wall of green pressing in on them. Chris sat on his pack and played with his M16’s safety. Penroy took out a tin of tobacco and rolled himself a smoke, but did not light it. Allen listened to the dueling M16s and AK47s up ahead, punctuated by grenades and shouts, and tried not to feel like the grass was about to wash over his head and drown him. He’d never had much of a problem with claustrophobia; however, the thick growth overhead, moving to and fro in the slight breeze, began to resemble the tentacles of a huge sea anemone, wafting with the tides and waiting to curl in on their prey. He took his eyes off the grass and looked at his neighbor, and saw the little new guy sweating, his dark eyes wide and staring at the narrow strip of blue sky between all that green—Jesus, Allen thought; if they didn’t move soon, the guy was going to freak out completely.
“Hey, uh, deRosa,” Allen said. “You ever have to mow the lawn when you were a kid?”
The guy tore his gaze from the far-off sky. “What?”
“The lawn. Your folks make you mow the lawn when you were a kid?”
“Yeah. I used to do that.”
“And maybe take the old mower down the street to the neighbors?”
“What the fuck you talking about, Carmichael?”
“Did you?” Allen insisted.
“Sure, sometimes. The old fart in the next block had this huge yard, couldn’t do it himself ’cause he had the emphysema or something. What’s that got to do with shit?”
“You ever think at the time all those lawns might be planning their revenge? Like, ‘We got this big brother named Elephant Grass, one day when you get in his neighborhood, he’s gonna pound you stupid.’ ”
Allen had hoped he might laugh, but deRosa just stared at him as if he’d sprouted a second head.
“Jesus, you’re nuts, you know that, Carmichael?”
Mouse spoke up. “Why d’you think we call him ‘Crazy’?”
The shooting from in front had slowed to a sporadic crack now and then, all from M16s. Mouse dropped his cigarette butt to the ground; the squad shouldered their packs and continued on into the field.
They came out of the grass in the afternoon, walked up a finger of ground, and, half an hour later, prepared to enter another field. Allen trotted forward to talk to Sergeant Keys, out of the lieutenant’s hearing.
“Sarge, we’re not going to spend the night in that stuff, are we?”
“Looks like.”
“Oh sweet Jesus, won’t someone tell him what that means?”
“Lieutenant Brennan’s big on not giving way to the enemy,” Keys replied, but Allen could hear the apprehension in his voice. This was the Sarge’s third tour here; like Allen, he knew exactly what they could expect.
“Are you having a problem, Carmichael?” It was Brennan, his face striped beneath the black glasses where the grass had whipped him, his uniform crumpled, but his back still straight, the generous mouth still
quirked in private amusement.
“If we dig in out there, sir,” Allen told him, “a lot of us are going to die.”
“This is war, soldier. Men die.”
Allen tried to control his voice. “Not uselessly, sir.”
“You think what we’re doing is useless?” Brennan didn’t even sound threatening, merely interested.
Of course it’s useless, you stupid piece of shit, Allen wanted to scream. You should know, you’ve already lost one platoon—this whole fucking war is useless. “If we give ourselves to the enemy in that grass, then yes, those deaths will be useless.”
“Soldier—” the sergeant tried to cut in, but Allen overrode him.
“Sir, there’s no way we can guard a perimeter in there. They’ll pick us off one by one.”
“Losing your nerve, Carmichael?” Brennan asked lightly.
“I’m concerned with losing men. Sir.”
Both corners of Brenda’s mouth curled up. “You have something to say to me, soldier?”
“No, sir. Just that there’s no point in risking men’s lives for no reason.”
“Are you refusing this order, soldier?” The glasses really were impenetrable; all Allen saw was himself, his distorted face motionless.
Allen shook his head and turned away, muttering to himself through clenched teeth, “Man, you go a long way in explaining the high death rate of new officers in the field.”
That, finally, got through to Brenda. He barked out, “Carmichael!” Allen turned back, to see the man’s slim hand come up to yank the glasses away from those ethereal eyes. “Was that a threat I heard, Carmichael?” He sounded almost happy at the thought.
“A threat?” Allen repeated, startled. “No, sir. All I meant was . . . Oh, never mind.”
He turned and walked away, feeling the touch of his officer’s pale gaze on his back, aware that he’d probably just made matters worse.
Chapter 11
When it came right down to the reality of night in the grass, however, either Brenda’s nerves gave way or his platoon’s feet grew wings, because they hacked, shoved, and sweated their way through the field in record time, emerging well before dusk at the coordinates of the next ville.
Most of them emerged, at least. Ten minutes up the trail, a guy from one of the other squads trotted up.
“Anyone here seen Dixon?” he panted.
“Don’t know him,” Allen told him.
“Little guy from Jersey?” Mouse asked. “Mole on his face, really shitty poker player?”
“That’s him.”
“Ain’t seen him since we stopped for lunch.”
“He’s missing?” Allen felt the stupidity of his question as soon as he’d asked it. Why else would the guy be searching the platoon for him?
“Nobody remembers him coming out of the last field.”
The elephant grass could swallow a man with ease. Hell, it could swallow a damn army.
“Aw fuck,” Mouse said with feeling. “Sucker owes me ten bucks.”
“I am not going back in there,” deRosa declared flatly.
“The Loot’s sending Dixon’s squad.”
“Thank you, God,” said Chris.
“They lost him, they can find him,” deRosa said.
But Dixon’s squad-mates, though they pushed nearly halfway through the vast field before they turned back, found no trace of him.
In the meantime, the rest of the platoon dealt with the next ville. The artillery did its stuff on the far side of the hooches, the villagers washed out toward them, Brenda and the translator turned their attentions on the more likely suspects. A Huey landed to throw out food, mail, and the squad’s other FNG, a complete virgin who looked scared to death. Penroy, who spoke some Vietnamese, was assisting with the interrogation, and told Allen to deal with their new guy, a skinny black kid with a Georgia accent that flowed like honey. Since everyone was pushing hard to finish checking out the ville before they found themselves digging in for the night in the pitch black, Allen just told the kid to stick with Mouse and not touch a thing.
It wasn’t twenty minutes later that Allen heard Mouse’s raised voice, climbing higher in a frantic tumble of words, and Allen knew in a flash what the sound meant. FNGs were so absolutely clueless, he should’ve made the kid sit on a log, he should’ve kept the guy with him and watched him every instant, he should’ve tied the poor bastard to a—then came the whomp! Penroy abandoned the prisoners to come running, and men began popping out of the hooches to see who’d got it.
“Mouse!” Allen was bellowing before the air cleared enough to see where the hooch had stood. “Mouse, oh God damn it—Medic!”
He skidded to a halt before the smoking pile of sticks and dust. Somewhere in there was at least one body. Although, judging by the extent of the damage, there would be no nice neat corpse to retrieve. There would be pieces of new guy, and assuming the stupid kid had followed the other half of his orders and been sticking close to his more experienced squad-mate, somewhere under there would be Mouse. “Medic!”
And then, like a spirit rising from its grave—an enraged spirit bellowing obscenities—a portion of the hooch floor shook itself upright.
“Ah, fucking hell,” the dark spirit shouted furiously. “You stupid shit, ain’t got the sense of my retard cousin, ‘What’s this?’ the lil’ fucker says. Ah, Crazy, you ever give me a new fucker to baby-sit again, I’m a gonna shoot you dead, swear to Jesus.”
Mouse stood bent over, hands working to clear the dirt from his eyes. Allen tried to help, pulling the wounded man’s hands away so he could pour water across his face, but Mouse only struck out in anger, nearly knocking Allen’s canteen to the ground.
“Stop it,” Allen ordered, but when the curses continued unabated, he pressed his canteen into Mouse’s hands and let the man pour the water himself. Eventually the eyes were clean and red, and, Allen was glad to see, whole. In fact, other than a bloody gash on his arm and a scattering of punctures on the back of his legs, Mouse had come through the booby-trapped hooch unscathed. “You okay then, man?” Allen asked, lightheaded with relief. Mouse continued to grumble and curse, so he repeated his question, then finally he grabbed Mouse’s shoulder to get his attention. “Are you okay?”
Mouse shook his head, sending a drift of dirt and straw down his flak jacket. “Can’t hear a fuckin’ thing, Carmichael,” he said loudly. “Stone deaf—I’m gonna have to join the fuckin’ artillery.” Allen and Penroy looked at each other, and the leader went back to his interrogation. Allen walked over to see what else the booby trap had done.
Charred hunks of flesh were scattered over a twenty-foot radius. The new guy’s helmet was still strapped under its chin, but one of the shoulders had no arm, and the torso lay in two pieces, separated at the waist. He must have bent over to pick up some provocative object, the trapdoor of a hidden bunker or a gun sticking out from under the family’s bed, the sort of thing anyone with an ounce of experience would treat with great respect. Thank God he hadn’t taken Mouse with him.
“Anyone know the new guy’s name?” Allen asked, although he really didn’t want to know. Nobody spoke up, so he turned to Mouse, who had come over to scowl at the damage. He shouted in Mouse’s ear, “He tell you his name?”
“What?”
“Name?” Allen said, shaping the word with his mouth and nodding at the remains. He really didn’t want to dig through that to find the dog tags.
Mouse got the question, but shook his head to express both ignorance and disgust. “And that,” he said loudly, “that is why they’re called ‘new meat.’ ”
Watching the big man spit on the ground and walk away, Allen felt a familiar rising sensation inside. A few months earlier, the result would have been nausea, and he would have bolted for the shrubs to vomit out the brutal joke. Now, what rose up was a laugh, black as the blood-soaked earth of the hooch and every bit as corrosive on the throat. He laughed until the tears came, then mentally slapped himself, and went to help bag the
chunks of new meat, so that what was left of a boy named Paul Michael Stevens might be returned to a family on the other side of the world.
He was glad, in the end, that he’d come across the kid’s name—if Stevens had died without anyone there knowing who he was, it would feel as if he’d never existed.
The next day they left the burned-out ville and turned north. The platoon medic had picked out the bits of shrapnel from Mouse’s legs and buttocks, dousing them with iodine and slapping some bandages on the larger holes. Mouse’s hearing improved slowly as the day went on, but the others resorted to rudimentary sign language or scribbled messages to communicate with him. No one wanted to shout in a VC jungle.
Their goal was a large ville two hills over, a ville that Intel had decided was too close to a branch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail for comfort. The entire area had been declared a free-fire zone; their orders were to clear the ville of its innocent inhabitants.
At first it went according to plan. Artillery barrage on the far side, gathering up the fleeing residents, initial interrogation getting them not much, then accompanying the villagers back to their hooches to gather their possessions for relocation. Some hooches had food stores larger than the family would require, so they had a rice bonfire to send the residents on their way. Hooches were torched, livestock slaughtered, same old thing. They came across a few printed papers and some sketches that might be maps, three rifles so old they might have been the first generation after the flintlock, some cartons of American C-rations, and a handmade mortar that looked more likely to take off the head of the man firing it than to actually reach a target. Everything pointed to VC, but nothing to be too worried about.
Then they pulled out of the smoldering ville, and the hills came alive at their backs. In thirty seconds they went from a nearly full-strength platoon marching away from a job well done to a collection of thirty-two targets trying desperately to burrow into the earth. Furious gunfire, far too close in for artillery response, grenade launchers and small rockets slammed down among them. Men cried out for their mothers and their medics, squad leaders yelled to restore order, no one paid any attention to Brenda, and the radio operator screamed for assistance, as unable as Mouse was to hear any answer down the line. When the gunships responded, laying down a hail of bullets and tracers in the trees surrounding the smoke canisters, the attack ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Second Platoon picked itself up, counted heads, radioed for a medevac, and returned to the ville.