He was many other things, but only one of them mattered to Donny. He was the best. Man, he was good! He was so fucking good it made your head spin. If he fired, someone died, an enemy soldier always. He never shot if he didn’t see a weapon. But when he shot, he killed. Nobody told him otherwise, and nobody would fuck with him. He was supercool in action, the ice king, who just let it happen, kept his eyes and ears open and figured it out so fast it made you dizzy. Then he reacted, took out any moving bad guys, and went about his business. It was like being in Vietnam with Mick Jagger, or some other legendary star, because everybody knew who Bob the Nailer was, and if they didn’t love him, by God, they feared him, because he was also Death From Afar, the Marine Corps way. He was more rifle than man, and more man than anybody. Even the NVA knew who he was: it was said a 15,000-piastre bounty had been placed on his head. The sergeant thought this was pretty funny.
But in the end, it would kill him, Donny thought. The war would eat him up in the end. He would try one more brave and desperate thing, eager somehow to keep it going, to press himself even further, and it would, in the end, kill his heroic ass. He’d never hit his DEROS. For boys like this, there was no such thing as DEROS. Vietnam was forever.
He reminded Donny of someone but Donny hadn’t figured it out. There was something about him, however, oddly familiar, oddly resonant. This had struck him before but he could never quite nail it down. Was it a teacher somewhere? Was it a relative, a Marine from his earlier tour or his time at Eighth and I? For a time, he’d thought it was Ray Case, his furious platoon sergeant there, but as he got to know Bob, that connection vaporized. Case was a good, tough, professional Marine, but Bob was a great Marine. They didn’t make many of them like Bob Lee Swagger.
But who was he like? Why did he seem so familiar?
Donny shook the confusion out of his head.
Swagger sat under the poncho, the water dripping off his boonie hat, his eyes almost blank as he listened to the crackly tapestry of radio. He was as equally laden as Donny: the taped bull barrel of his M40 sniper rifle—really just a Remington 700 .308 Varmint with a Redfield 9X scope aboard—poked out from the neck of his poncho as he did what he could to keep the action and the wood, which would swell with moisture, dry. He also carried four M26 grenades, two Claymore bandoleers, an M57 electrical firing device, a .45 automatic, two canteens and a 782-pack full of C-rats (preferred poison: ham and powdered eggs), and seventy-two rounds of M118 Lake City Arsenal Match ammo, the 173-grain load used by Army and Marine high-powered shooters at Camp Perry. But he was a man who traveled well prepared; he had a Randall Survivor knife with a sawtooth blade, a Colt .380 baby hammerless in an aviator’s shoulder holster under his camo utilities and, strapped to his back, an M3 grease gun and five thirty-round magazines.
“There,” he said. “You hear it? Swear to Christ I heard something.”
Donny had heard nothing in the murk of chatter; still, he slowed his diddling and redialed, watching the little numbers on the face crackle through the gap as he shifted them. Finally he lit on something so soft you could miss it entirely, and he only received it because it seemed to be right on the cusp of the megahertz click to another freak; if he took the tension off the knob, the signal disappeared.
But, raspy and distant, they did hear it, and the words seemed to define themselves out of the murk until they became distinct.
“Anyone on this net? Anyone on this net? How you read me? Over? Urgent, goddammit, over!”
There was no answer.
“This is Arizona-Six-Zulu. I have beaucoup bad guys all over the goddamn place. Anyone on this net? Charlie-Charlie-November, you there, over?”
“He’s way out of our range,” Donny said. “And who the hell is Arizona-Six-Zulu?” Donny wondered.
“He’s got to be one of the Special Forces camps to the west. They use states as call signs. They call ’em FOBs, forward operating bases. He’s trying to reach Charlie-Charlie-November, which is SOG Command and Control North at Da Nang.”
But Arizona-Six-Zulu got a callback.
“Arizona-Six-Zulu, this is Lima-Niner-Mike at Outpost Hickory. Is that you, Puller? Can hardly read your signal, over.”
“Lima-Niner-Mike, my big rig took a hit and I’m on the Prick-77. I have big trouble. I have bad guys all over the place hitting me frontally and I hear from scouts a main force unit is moving in to take my base camp out. I need air or arty, over.”
“Arizona-Six-Zulu, neg on the air. We are souped in and everything has been grounded. Let me check on arty, over.”
“I am Team Arizona base camp, grid square Whiskey Delta 5120-1802. I need Hotel Echo in the worst possible way, over.”
“Shit, neg to that, Arizona-Six-Zulu. I have no, repeat no, fire support bases close enough to get shells to your area. They closed down Mary Jane and Suzie Q last week, and the Marines at Dodge are too far, over.”
“Over, Lima-Niner-Mike, I am out here on my lonesome with eleven Americans and four hundred indigs and we are in heavy shit and I am running down on ammo, food, and water. I need support ASAP, over.”
“I have your coordinates, Arizona-Six-Zulu, but I have no artillery fire bases operational within range. I will go to Navy to see if we can get naval gunfire in range and I will call up tac air ASAP when weather clears. You must hang on until weather breaks, Arizona-Six-Zulu, over.”
“Lima-Niner-Mike, if that main force unit gets here before the weather breaks, I am dog food, over.”
“Hang tight, Arizona-Six-Zulu, the weather is supposed to break by noon tomorrow. I will get through to Charlie-Charlie-November and we will get Phantoms airborne fastest then, over.”
“Roger, Lima-Niner-Mike,” said Arizona-Six-Zulu, “and out.”
“God bless and good luck, Arizona-Six-Zulu, out,” said Lima, and the freak crackled into nothingness.
“Man, those guys are going to get roasted,” said Donny. “This weather ain’t lifting for days.”
“You got that map case?” said Swagger. “Let me see that thing. What were those coordinates?”
“Shit, I don’t remember,” said Donny.
“Well, then,” said Bob, “it’s a good thing I do.”
He opened the case that Donny shoved over, went through the plastic-wrapped sheaves of operational territory 1:50,000s, and at last came to the one he wanted. He studied hard, then looked over.
“You know, goddamn, if I ain’t a fool at map reading, I do believe you and I are the closest unit to them Special Forces fellows. They are west of us, at Kham Duc, ten klicks out of Laos. We are in grid square Whiskey Charlie 155–005; they are up in Whiskey Delta 5120-1802. As I make it, that’s about twenty klicks to the west.”
Donny squinted. His sergeant indeed had located the proper square, and the Special Forces camp would therefore have been, yes, about twenty klicks. But—there were foothills, a wide brown snake of river and a mountain range between here and there, all of it Indian Territory.
“I’m figuring,” Bob said, “one man, moving fast, he might just make it before the main force unit. And those boys would have to move up through this here An Loc valley. You got into those hills, you’d have a hell of a lot of targets.”
“Christ,” said Donny.
“You just might slow ’em up enough so that air could make it in when the weather broke.”
A cold drop of rain deposited itself on Donny’s neck and plummeted down his back. A shiver rose from his bones.
“Raise Dodge again, Pork. Tell ’em I’m going on a little trip.”
“I’m going too,” said Donny.
Bob paused. Then he said, “My ass you are. I won’t have no short-timer with me. You hunker here, call in extraction when the weather clears. Don’t you worry none about me. I’ll get into that camp and extract with Arizona.”
“Bob, I—”
“No! You’re too short. You’d be too worried about getting whacked with three and days till DEROS. And if you weren’t, I would be. Plus, I can move
a lot faster on my own. This is a one-man job or it’s no job at all. That’s an order.”
“Sergeant, I—”
“No, goddammit. I told you. This ain’t no goddamned game. I can’t be worrying about you.”
“Goddammit, I’m not sitting here in the fucking rain waiting for extract. You made us a team. You shoot, I spot targets, I handle security. Suppose you have to work at night? Who throws flares? Suppose it’s hot and somebody has to call in air? Who works the map for the coordinates and the radio? Suppose you’re bounced from behind? Who takes out the fast movers? Who rigs the Claymores?”
“You are fixing to git yourself killed, Lance Corporal. And, much worse, you are pissing me off beaucoup.”
“I am not bugging out. I will not bug out!”
Bob’s eyes narrowed. He suspected all heroism and self-sacrifice because his own survival wasn’t based on any sense of them, but rather on shrewd professional combat skills, even shrewder calculation of odds and, shrewdest of all, a sense that to be aggressive in battle was the key to coming out alive on the other side.
“What are you trying to prove, kid? You been a hard-ass to prove something ever since I teamed with you.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything. I want no slack, that’s all. Zero fucking slack. I go all the way, that’s all there is. When I get back to the world, maybe then it’s different. But out here, goddamn it, I go all the way.”
His fierceness softened Swagger, who’d coaxed many a boy through bad times with shit coming in, who’d gotten the grunts moving when the last thing they wanted to do was move, who never lost a spotter to a body bag and lost a hell of a lot fewer young Marines than some could say. But this stubborn boy perplexed him all the way, all the time. Only one of ’em who got up earlier than he did, and who never once made a mistake on the premission equipment checks.
“Donny, ain’t nobody going to ever say you bugged out. I’m trying to cut you some room, boy. No sense dying on this one. This is a Bob show. This is what old Bob was put here to do. It ain’t no college football game.”
“I’m going. Goddamn, we are Sierra-Bravo-Four, and I am going.”
“Man, you sure you were born in the right generation? You belong in the old breed, you salty bastard, with my dead old man. Okay, let’s gear up. Call it in. I’m going to shoot us a goddamn compass reading to that grid square, and when we’re done I’ll buy you a steak and a case of Jack Daniel’s.”
Donny took the moment to peel off his boonie cap and pull out the cellophane-wrapped photo of Julie.
He stared at it as the raindrops collected on the plastic. She looked so dry and far away, and he ached for her. Three and days till DEROS. He would come home. Donny would come marching home again, hurrah, hurrah.
Oh, baby, he said to himself, oh baby, I hope you’re with me on this one. Every step of the way.
“Let’s go, Pork,” sang Bob the Nailer.
CHAPTER TEN
After a time, Donny stopped hurting. He was beyond pain. He was also, ever so briefly, beyond fear. They traveled from landmark to landmark along Swagger’s charted compass readings over the slippery terrain, the rain so harsh some time you could hardly breathe. At one moment he was somewhat stunned to discover himself on the crest of a low hill. When had they climbed it? He had no memory of the ascent. He just had the sense of the man ahead of him pulling him forward, urging him on, oblivious to both of their pains, oblivious also to fear and to mud and to changes in the elevation.
After a while they came to a valley, to discover the classical Vietnam terrain of rice paddies separated by paddy dikes. The dikes were muddy as shit, and in a few minutes, the going on them proved slow and treacherous. Swagger didn’t even bother to tell him, he just lifted his rifle over his head, stepped off the break and started to fight through the water, churning up mud as he went. What difference could it make? They were so wet it didn’t matter, but the water was thick and muddy and at each step the muddy bottom seemed to suck at Donny’s boots. His feet grew heavier. The rain fell faster. He was wetter, colder, more fatigued, more desperate, more lonely.
At any moment, some lucky kid with a carbine and a yen to impress his local cadre could have greased them. But the rain fell so hard it drove even the VC and the main force NVA units to cover. They moved across a landscape devoid of human occupation. The fog coiled and rolled. Once, from afar, the vapors parted and they saw a village a klick away down a hill, and Donny imagined what was going on in the warm little huts: the boiling soup with its floating sheaves of bible tripe and brisket sliced thin and fish heads floating in it, and the thought of hot food almost made him keel over.
This is nothing, he told himself. Think of football. Think of two-a-days in August. No, no, think of games. Think of … Think of … Think of making the catch against Gilman High; think of third and twelve, we’ve never beaten them, but for some odd reason late in this game we’re close but now we’ve stalled. Think of setting up at tight end instead of running back because you have the best hands on the team. Think of Julie, a cheerleader in those days, the concern on her face.
Think of the silliness of it all! It all seemed so important! Beating Gilman! Why was that so important? It was so silly! Then Donny remembered why it was important. Because it was so silly. It meant so little that it meant so much.
Think of going off the set, faking inside, then breaking on a slant for the sidelines as Vercolone, the quarterback, broke from his disintegrating pocket and began to rotate toward him, curling around, his arm cocked then uncocked as he released the ball. Think of the ball in the air. Think of seeing it float toward you, Vercolone had led you too much, the ball was way out of reach, there was no noise, there was no sensation, there was only the ball sliding past. But think of how you went airborne.
That was the strange thing. He did not ever remember leaping. It just happened, one of those instinct things, as the computer in your head took over your body and off you went.
He remembered straining in the air and, with his one hand stretched out to the horizon, the slap of contact as the ball glanced off his longest fingers, popped into the air and seemed to pause forever as he slid through the air by it, now about to miss it, but somehow he actually pivoted in air, got his chest out to snare it as it fell, then clasped his other hand against it, pinning it to him as he thudded to the ground and by the grace of a God who must love jocks, it did not pop out, he had caught it for a first down, and three plays later they scored and won the game, beating an ancient enemy for the first time in living memory.
Oh, that was so very good! That was so very good.
The warmth of that moment came flooding back across him, its meaningless glory warming and giving him just the slightest tingle of energy. Maybe he would make it.
But then he went down, floundering, feeling the water flood into his lungs, and he struggled, coughing out buffalo shit and a million paramecium. A harsh grip pulled him out and he shook like a wet dog. It was Swagger, of course.
“Come on,” Swagger yelled through the din of pounding rain. “We’re almost out of the paddies. Then all we got is another set of hills, a river and a goddamn mountain. Damn, ain’t this fun?”
Water. According to the map, the river was called Ia Trang. It bore no other name and on the paper was a squiggly black line, its secrets unrevealed. As it lay before them in reality, however, it was swollen brown and wide, overspilling its banks, and was a swift, deadly current. The rain smashed against its turbulent surface like machine gun fire.
“Guess what?” said Swagger. “You just got a new job.”
“Huh?”
“You just got a new job. You’re now the lifeguard.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I cain’t swim a lick,” he said, with a broad smile.
“Great,” said Donny. “I can’t either.”
“Oh, this one’s going to be a pisser. Damn, why’d you insist on this trip?”
“I was momentarily deluded into thinking I was
important.”
“That kind of thinkin’ll git you killed every damn time. Now, let’s see if we can find some wood or something.”
They ranged the dangerous bank of the river and in time came to a bombed-out village. The gunships and Phantoms had worked it over pretty well; nothing could have survived the hell of that recent day. No structure stood: only timbers, piles of ash liquified to gunk in the pounding rain, craters everywhere, a long smear of burned vegetation where the napalm splashed through, killing everything it touched. A cooking pot lay on its side, speared by a machine gun bullet, so that it blossomed outward in jagged petals. The stench of the burning still clung to the ground, despite the rain. There were no bodies, but just out of the kill zone a batch of newly dug graves with now-dead Buddhist incense reeds in cheap black jars had been etched into the ground. Two were very, very small.
“I hope they were bad guys,” said Donny, looking at the new cemetery.
“If we run this fucking war right,” Swagger said, “we’d have known they was bad, because we’d have people on the ground, up close. Not this shit. Not just hosing the place down with firepower. Nobody should have to die because he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time and some squid pilot’s got some ordnance left and don’t want to land on no carrier with it.”
Donny looked at him. In five months of extreme togetherness, Bob had never said a thing about the way the war was waged, what it cost, who it killed, why it happened. His, instead, was the practical craft of mission and its close pal survival: how to do this thing, where to hide, how to track, what to shoot, how to kill, how to get the job done and come back alive.