Phantom Leader Part 24

He knelt, cut Greta loose, then rapidcrawled into the main room next to Rizzo, whose cartridge belt was just running out. Wolf picked up a fresh belt he had laid out and helped feed it into the machine.

Something lobbed down the path and rolled to within ten feet of the door.

"Grenade," Rizzo yelled. Both men rolled behind the wall as a thunderous explosion blew dirt and debris through the open door and window. Bullets spattered the outside of the house and zinged through the door into the kitchen and the far wall. Greta screamed from the kitchen.

"Keep her down," Wolf yelled to Polter.

"Right," Polter yelled back.

Wolf rolled away from the door to the window, lay on his back, and held the M 16 over his head upside down and fired at knee level down the path. He pulled the gun down to his stomach and inched back to Rizzo's side. Rizzo was firing madly down the path, spraying both sides. Wolf slapped his shoulder. "Go easy, you don't have all the sixty ammo you carry on a chopper. Don't fire until you see something. And when they're close, use this." He pushed the Claymore detonator to his side.

The path disappeared into heavy leaves and bushes as it turned past the tennis court. The Claymore was hidden at the turn.

He crawled back into the kitchen. Greta was huddled in a corner, the whites of her eyes showing. Wolf grabbed the RPG and the canvas sling of projectiles and crawled back to Rizzo. As he settled down, he saw figures up the path. No time to fit a round into the big RPG. He squeezed the plunger on the Claymore detonator.

A great light blossomed and flared and a tremendous roar sounded. Leaves and pieces of trees and men flew down the path, propelled by hurricane force. After a shocked silence, screams and moans echoed down the path.

"Gawd," Rizzo said in awe. "I've never been down on the ground before when one of them things went off."

Wolf fitted a rocket to the RPG. "Get away from the door," he yelled to Greta in the kitchen. He rested the big tube on his shoulder and fired straight down the path at an old palm tree. Greta shrieked as the backblast whooshed into the kitchen. Wolf hoped the explosive head would spew splinters at the men crouched around its base. The older, hard-core NVA would be hiding in the bamboo, for they knew the tough, stringy bamboo absorbed explosions and metal fragments without shattering or splintering. The palm exploded with a roar, shooting shards of wood scything into the surrounding bushes. The tree shrieked and toppled across the high fence surrounding the tennis court and the firing stopped.

Wolf crawled back into the kitchen. "In about two minutes," he told Polter, "they're gonna get smart and get up on the roof of the villa and lob grenades at us. Get out there and use your M16 low on the path and high on the roof. Make them keep their heads down. Squeeze 'em off, we don't have much ammo." Polter crawled out. Wolf looked at Greta Sturm.

"You still want to walk down the road with a white flag?"

She made a sour face and looked away. When he picked up the radio handset, it came off in his hand. The radio had been shattered by one of the many bullets that had been fired through the door.

He pawed through the parachute bag and pulled out the RT-10 Air Force survival radio Rennagel had included. He turned it on and transmitted on the 243.0 megacycles, the UHF Guard.channel monitored by all aircraft for emergency transmissions. He hoped Tay Loc control tower was on the air.

"Tay Loc Tower, this is Wolf on Guard channel. How do you read?" He called twice more with no response. Then he made another call. The range of the tiny survival radio was limited. A receiving aircraft had to be directly overhead or within a few miles to adequately communicate.

"Any aircraft reading Wolf on Guard, give me a call, please,"

A faint voice answered. "Wolf, this is an American MAC Flight. If you do not have an emergency, get off Guard channel."

"Yeah, we got an emergency. I need you to pa.s.s a message through whatever radar has you under control to Green House at Nha Trang. You copy?" Wolf figured he could get Nha Trang to relay to the Black Panthers what was happening, and to give them covering fire so they could get over the back wall. The firing still had not picked up outside toward the villa. He knew that respite wouldn't last.

"Ah, Wolf ... cannot . . ." The voice faded and was lost.

Wolf tried a general call again and received nothing, The girl stirred.

"I knew I should have gone out to them.

Now what's going to happen to us? You are a shameful man." The anger on her face had a tinge of fear.

Wolf gave her an exasperated look and took advantage of the lull in the firing to stand on the table and inspect the entryway to the rafters. By now bullets had punctured the tin in so many places that daylight came through like tiny stars into the dark crawl s.p.a.ce. When the firefight started again, the rafters would not be a healthy place.

"Oh my G.o.d," somebody cried from the front room.

"Wolf, come look at this. Jesus."

Wolf leaped down and crawled to join the others.

Crouched by the window, Polter pointed at the upper story of the villa.

His face was a mask of outrage and horror. The bile rose in Wolf's throat when he saw what was dangling from the villa roof.

Suspended from the roof on ropes tied around their necks were the naked bodies of the two helicopter pilots and the CIA man. Their arms and legs and genitals had been cut off.

Their bodies left red smears where they had sc.r.a.ped the villa wall as they had been released to swing down as ghastly pendulums. Their ears had been cut off, and their eyes had been gouged out. Something b.l.o.o.d.y and bunched protruded from their mouths.

Wolf groaned and made the sign of the cross, thankful that Lopez was not hanging there. Maybe he was still alive.

Behind him he heard the girl gasp and choke as she crawled up and saw the shocking sight. The splatter and stench of her vomit overpowered the smell of gunpowder. Tears started down her face, which was twisted in horror and revulsion.

Wolf gave her his bandanna to wipe herself.

A stream of fire commenced from the roof of the villa. The bullets spanged and ricocheted from the walls and the porch floor and punched holes in the tin roof of the servants'

quarters.

Inside, Wolf looked around. He lay near one side of the door with his M16. At his feet was tfie RPG. Rizzo lay on the other side of the door with his big M60, Polter crouched at the window with his M 16.

"Okay," Wolf yelled, "this is it. s.p.a.ce your shots, shoot only when you have a target." He distributed the grenades and magazines equally between himself and Polter. Rizzo had over a hundred rounds remaining.

The loud, nasal chukka-chukka of the M60 alternated with the crisp Namblams of Polter's M16. The air filled with billows of gunsmoke, and the sharp coppery smell of gunpowder filled their nostrils. Wolf readied the RPG.

"Please to tell me," Greta Sturm asked from the corner t7' She behind Wolf, "please, what did you mean 'this is i frowned with concern.

"Look out for the backbiast," Wolf said, ignoring her question. He sighted the weapon at the section of the retaming wall on the roof where dots of heads and streams of smoke from the snouts of weapons protruded.

With a terrific whoosh-whoom, the projectile launched and a split second later blew a great gouge of concrete from unjer the NVA firing position.

The bodies of the three mutilated Americans fell to the ground and the shooting stopped.

I.h.e.l.luva shot, Wolf," Polter said in the sudden lull.

Greta Sturm tugged at his pant leg. "Please," she said, "what will happen here?"

Wolf didn't answer as he fixed the wiring into the last Claymore and poked it through the door to rest against the outside wall facing the path. He placed the detonator next to his elbow.

"Please," Greta Sturm said again. Wolf began fitting another round to the RPG. "What will happen here?"

Wolf slammed the projectile home. "What will happen here," he said, "is that they will keep shooting at us and finally make a rush on our position."

"A rush?"

"They will charge."

"Why cannot we go out the roof and over the wall?"

"We would be in plain sight of them. We'd be cut in two."

"They will come in here?"

"Not if we keep shooting at them."

She looked at the remaining half-dozen magazines and grenades. She saw the three remaining sh.e.l.ls for the RPG.

"We do not have many bullets, do we?"

"No."

"What will happen when they make a rush?"

"We have knives."

"Knives. Mein Gott. " She put her hand to her throat.

Wolf took a good look at her. She looked vulnerable and exhausted. He resisted the temptation to tell her to go take a hike up the path, carrying a white flag.

"Will they come soon?" she asked. She seemed nervous and wanted to talk. Wolf could see the effort she made to keep her eyes away from the door, "As soon as they get some reinforcements they'll come, but we have a good defensive position. They can't flank us or attack from the rear.

They have to take us head-on. Or use something like this." He patted the RPG.

"I'm sorry for what I said to you. I . . . I see them differently now. I did not believe they did such things. I do not want to go out there. They are barbarians, what they did to those men."

"Those men were lucky," Wolf said.

"Lucky. How could they be lucky?" She drew her head back.

"They were dead when they were cut up." He remembered an Air Force FAC pilot who had parachuted from his burning aircraft into VC hands. They had cut him into five pieces and used his survival radio in an attempt to lure in a rescue helicopter. Many times VC had disemboweled live GIs, then pulled their entrails out and laid them on a path to be walked on by unsuspecting American patrols. Americans had been found with their genitals crudely sewn into their mouths.

She looked at Wolf for the first time with compa.s.sion in her eyes. She made a visible effort to calm herself. "You have seen much of this, haven't you?" she asked in a quiet voice.

"Too much." He didn't like questions like these, but this girl seemed genuinely interested, and furthermore, it was a way to keep her mind off what was about to come.

"Do you not become afraid?"

"Yes," Wolf said. "I become afraid."

"Do you believe in G.o.d?"

"Yes."

"Do you pray to G.o.d when you are afraid?"

"No."

"What do you do when you are afraid?"

"Charge."

She smiled. "Like rush. You make a rush?"

Wolf's voice was soft. "Yes, that's it. I rush."

"When do you pray to G.o.d?"

"Afterwards.

"What do you say?"

Immediately Wolf's face lit up. "I thank Him. I thank Him for allowing me to survive . . . and to win."

She thought for a moment. "Do you like to kill?"

Wolf looked away. "No. I do not like to kill."

She saw Wolf's eyes flicker, and touched his arm. "I am sorry. I should not have asked that question." She was silent for a moment. "You said your last name was Lochert. It is very German. I don't know your name, your first name."

"Wolfgang."

"That is even more German."

"I'm German, all right. Minnesota German. South Minneapolis Powderhorn Park German."

"Are you married?"

"No."

"Do you have a Freundin, a girlfriend?"

Wolf thought of the worn picture in his wallet of the green-eyed Charmaine, the Hollywood dancer with long legs and lush mahogany hair.

Justfor you, Wolf Justfor you, she had inscribed. They had met at Bien Hoa, where she had visited her ex-husband, Court Bannister. Charmaine was the only girl Wolf had ever truly become interested in. His Catholic background and years in the Maryknoll Seminary had prepared him for a life of celibacy and prayer. Now he devoted himself to the Special Forces and warfare with the same intensity. He had left the seminary not because he did not choose to remain celibate, but because he could not remain impa.s.sive to the vicissitudes of life. He was driven by an inner compulsion to always step in and make the situation conform to his idea of right or wrong. Unless his athletic coaches, military commanders, peers, or subordinates were doing what Wolfgang Xavier Lochert thought was right and correct, they heard from the Wolf, promptly and loudly. He had found nothing wrong with Charmaine. As a result, he had been, he was sure, a simpering fool around her. He just knew women like Charmaine had no time for simpering fools.

He looked at the girl and tried to smile. She looked afraid again.

"No," he said, "I don't have a girlfriend." He reached over and patted her arm in a fatherly way. "Moechtest Du night meine Freundin sein?"

Will you be my girlfriend?

She tried to smile, and failed. Her eyes filled. "Ichfuerchte which. "

I'm so afraid. "It is not like I thought it would be.

they are so brutal." He patted her arm again, not quite sure of what to do. She reached and took his hand in both of hers, then pulled herself against him. She crossed her arms over her bosom and huddled against his chest like a little girl against her father. Wolf stroked her hair and shoulders, and rocked back and forth. "There, there," he said. She settled down.