Matterhorn_ A Novel of the Vietnam War Part 2

'I'm going to need a place to work on him that's cleaner than the LZ, Skipper,' Sh.e.l.ler said. 'I can't do it in the mud.' He looked pale and was breathing shallowly. 'Also, I'll need lots of light, so it'll have to be pretty lightproof.'

'Use my hooch. Snik and I can rig something else if he has to stay the night,' Fitch said, referring to Relsnik, the battalion radio operator.

'Oh, Jesus no, Skipper.' It was Fisher, who had been listening to them all along. 'They got to get me out.'

'Don't worry,' Fitch said. 'If we have to operate we'll take a picture of it before we start. That way you'll have some proof to back up your stories.' Fisher managed to grin. Mellas was fidgeting, moving his weight from foot to foot.

Fitch turned to Mellas. 'It'll be dark pretty soon. We'd better have our actuals meeting in about zero five so we can at least see to write.'

'OK, Skipper,' Mellas said, again feeling unsure whether he should stay with Fisher or go with Fitch. He took another look at Fisher. 'You take it easy, Fisher,' he said. Fisher nodded. Mellas followed Fitch.

They slid sideways on their boots, skiing in the mud down the steep hill, and arrived in front of the company command post. The CP was a hooch like all the others, two ponchos draped over communication wire. This one, however, was distinguished from the rest by dirt piled up against its lower edges to stop wind and light leaks, and by a large two-niner-two radio antenna waving slightly in the monsoon air.

Fitch was combing his hair before a steel shaving mirror wedged in a crack in a blasted tree stump. Rain started to fall with more intensity. Fitch put the comb in his back pocket and crawled into the entrance of the hooch, followed immediately by Hawke. Mellas hesitated, unsure if he was invited.

'Jesus Christ, Mellas,' Hawke shouted. 'Ain't you got enough sense to come out of the f.u.c.king rain?'

Mellas squeezed into the small shelter. Two radio operators were also inside, one manning the battalion radio net, the other the company net. A single candle cast flickering shadows on the sagging poncho roof. Three rubber air mattresses covered with camouflage poncho liners lay side by side. The edges of the hooch were filled with rifles, canteens, ammunition, and packs. A Seventeen Seventeen magazine, a month-old magazine, a month-old Time, Time, and a Louis L'Amour western lay scattered near the radios. Mellas didn't know where to put his muddy boots. He eventually sat back against a pack with his feet sticking out of the hooch's opening. and a Louis L'Amour western lay scattered near the radios. Mellas didn't know where to put his muddy boots. He eventually sat back against a pack with his feet sticking out of the hooch's opening.

Fitch introduced the two radiomen to Mellas, who immediately forgot their names, and asked one of them to call the platoon commanders for the actuals meeting. The subsequent radio exchange between the company headquarters and the three platoons, from Fitch's request to its completion, took less than twenty seconds. Mellas, who had been feeling that the company radio operators needed more discipline, was impressed.

Hawke turned to Fitch. 'Conman just slipped me the word that China's stirring up the brothers again and just now I had a little one-on-one with him up at the LZ.' He looked at Mellas. 'Along with some help.' Mellas looked down at the mud.

'Ahh, f.u.c.k,' Fitch said. 'What now?'

'Right now, R & R quotas. It's all bulls.h.i.+t.' Hawke turned to Mellas. 'Hey, Mellas, did Top Seavers say anything to you about Top Angell over at Charlie Company swapping two Taipeis for a Bangkok for Parker?'

Mellas's stomach gave a lurch. He vaguely remembered Seavers asking him to pa.s.s along something about R & R quotas to Hawke, but at the time it had been meaningless and he didn't want to look foolish by asking to clear it up. 'No, I don't recall him saying anything about it,' he lied coolly. He also didn't want to look foolish again in front of Hawke.

'Huh. Well, maybe we can get through to him on Big John Relay tonight.'

'Have you had racial problems here in the company?' Mellas asked, switching the subject.

'Naw, not really,' Hawke answered. 'Oh, a couple of n.u.m.b.n.u.t.s b.i.t.c.h a lot and keep things stirred up. Out here the splibs can't b.i.t.c.h any more than the chucks. We're all f.u.c.king n.i.g.g.e.rs as far as I can tell.'

'Who's this China?'

'He's our local H. Rap Brown, our very own black radical,' Fitch said, smiling, 'otherwise known as Lance Corporal Roland Speed. But he doesn't like anyone to call him that. Ca.s.sidy hates him, but he's a good machine gunner and he hasn't caused any real trouble yet. We got our white bigots, too.' Fitch was looking at his two radio operators.

The operator who talked to the battalion, Relsnik, looked at Fitch. 'I can't help it, sir. You didn't grow up next to them like me and Pallack did back in Chicago. If you did, you'd hate 'em too. I mean most of the black guys out here are decent. I even like some of them. But they're individuals. As a race, I hate 'em.'

Fitch shrugged his shoulders and looked at Mellas. 'You can't beat the position for logic.'

The two radiomen went back to their magazines.

Down at the lines, Private First Cla.s.s Tyrell Broyer, who had come in on the same chopper as Mellas and Goodwin, threw his small folding shovel into his fighting hole and gave it the finger. His hands and fingers, still not hardened to the bush, were cut from stringing barbed wire, blistered from hacking with the machete, and crisscrossed with infected cuts made by sharp jungle gra.s.ses. He'd returned from stringing wire down below the line of fighting holes to find his own hole half filled with a small mudslide.

He looked up at the darkening sky, readjusting his heavy plastic gla.s.ses on the bridge of his nose. Fear that he would be caught without protection in the dark quickly moved him back into the hole. He immediately felt ashamed of his fear. He could be lying up on the LZ like that poor guy from Second Squad. He resumed shoveling, trying to ignore the pain from a ripped fingernail, until he sensed that someone was squatting on the ground above his hole. He turned to find a pair of bleached-out jungle boots. His eyes moved upward to a dark-skinned knee showing through a small hole in faded utilities. His gaze stopped on the face of a stocky black Marine with a drooping Ho Chi Minh mustache. The visitor clenched his right fist and greeted him, and they went through the handshake dance that was the common greeting between all black Marines, an elaborate rhythmic touching of fists, both knuckles and tops and bottoms, that lasted several seconds.

'Where you from, brother?' the visitor asked when they had finished.

'Baltimore.' Broyer looked down at his very small hole, feeling pressure to get it dug before the light faded and he would be left exposed. His plastic gla.s.ses slipped down his nose again and he quickly pushed them back up.

'Don't worry about the f.u.c.kin' hole, man. You dig enough of those motherf.u.c.kers in the next thirteen months to fill a lifetime. Got a cigarette?'

'Yeah.' Broyer reached into his pocket and pulled out a small C-ration cigarette package. He offered it to the stranger, who was smiling at him as if enjoying some sort of joke. He noticed that the stranger was afflicted with vitiligo, which left pigmentless white patches on his face and arms.

'M' name's China,' the stranger said. 'Just thought I'd get around seein' some a the new brothers.' China lit the cigarette and took in a slow breath. 'What's you name, brother?'

'Broyer.'

's.h.i.+t, man. You real name, not you slave name.'

'Tyrell,' Broyer said, wondering if that was a slave name, too. He was relieved when China said nothing. 'You in First Platoon?' Broyer asked.

'Naw. Second Herd. Gun Squad. I get around a lot, though. Sort of the welcome wagon, you know?' China laughed a wheezy giggle. 'What you think of those two chuck lieutenants come in with you the other day?'

'Don't know them. They came into VCB on the chopper after we already got there on the convoy.'

'Figures,' China said offhandedly. He waited for Broyer to go on.

'They didn't seem too bad. The one's sort of a country dude, talking about hunting and stuff. The other one seems decent. Sort of has a stick up his rear though. Joe College dude.'

'Uh-huh.' China looked out at the jungle, barely ten meters downhill from where they were talking. Broyer followed China's gaze to the wall of foliage. It was being laboriously pushed back with K-bars and entrenching tools by other members of Broyer's platoon. A few stood guard in their holes, rifles and magazines carefully laid out in front of them, scanning the dark tree line.

'You think we'll get hit here?' Broyer asked.

's.h.i.+t, man. You think the gooks crazy 'nough to want this motherf.u.c.kin' place? They got better things to do with they time. s.h.i.+t, man.' China smiled at him.

Broyer laughed softly, looking down at his entrenching tool.

'Look brother,' China said. 'Don'chew worry. I got one more new brother to see 'fore the actuals meeting is over and I gotta get back to my poz, but I see you later, OK? You settle down soon. We all scared, but you get used to bein' scared. You need to talk with a brother, you come on over.' They went through the handshake dance. Broyer was glad he'd asked a friend at boot camp to teach it to him one night when they were both on fire watch and everyone else was asleep.

The actuals a.s.sembled in the twilight outside First Lieutenant Fitch's hooch. A light mist obscured the distinction between their shadowy silhouettes, further intensifying Mellas's discomfort in not being able to remember their names.

Mellas had barely spoken to the Third Platoon commander, Second Lieutenant Kendall, recently of the Fifteenth Motor Transportation Battalion. This was not by any choice of his own: there simply had been no time to talk. Kendall had sandy curly hair and wore yellow-tinted wraparound gla.s.ses that he kept touching as he talked. Mellas noted that he wore a simple gold wedding band.

Second Lieutenant Goodwin, who had been with Mellas at the Basic School and had come in with him on the chopper, was jostling up against his platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant Ridlow, m.u.f.fling a guffaw about something. Goodwin was wearing a bush cover on his head. Mellas felt a small pang of envy. The first day Mellas and Goodwin had drawn their gear in Quang Tri, Goodwin had exchanged his stateside billed cap for the floppy camouflage bush cover and looked as if he'd worn it all his life. Mellas had put one on, too, stared at himself in the mirror, and, feeling he looked foolish, stuffed it in a seabag to take home as a souvenir if he made it back. Several days later, just moments after they had arrived at Matterhorn, Mellas again confronted his envy of Goodwin. It happened when the skipper, Lieutenant Fitch, crisply announced that Mellas would go with Sergeant Ba.s.s. Fitch added that Ba.s.s had done a h.e.l.l of a job running the platoon in the interim between Hawke's moving up to executive officer and Mellas's arrival. Fitch then a.s.signed Goodwin to Second Platoon with Staff Sergeant Ridlow, whom he described as competent but a little lax. Mellas knew instantly that Fitch thought Goodwin was the better officer because he'd given Goodwin the tougher a.s.signment. Fitch hadn't even asked about their Basic School records, where they went to college, or anything else. It seemed unfair.

Mellas was brought back to the present when he noticed a pale ash-colored German shepherd with odd reddish ears that was lying in the mud panting, head up, and staring at him. The dog's handler, a lean Marine with a large drooping mustache like that of an ancient Celtic warrior, was asleep next to the dog, a camouflage bush cover pulled over his eyes. Others in the CP group-the enlisted forward air controller, always called FAC-man; the senior squid, Sh.e.l.ler; and the enlisted artillery forward observer, Daniels-were sitting in a small group, eating C-rations, just close enough to hear what was going on in the actuals meeting but far enough away to not be part of it.

'All right, let's get going,' Hawke said. 'The weather forecast is more of the same s.h.i.+t.' Hawke paused. 'Again.' People laughed. 'We still don't know what the f.u.c.k Alpha and Charlie companies are doing in the bush, or when Delta and us are supposed to flip-flop with them. You've all probably got the word that Alpha did take four Coors.' Coors was radio code for dead. 'Don't know any names yet. Word is they got hit strung out in a river.' Hawke hurried on, paging through a pocket-size hard-covered green notebook. 'No word on R & R quotas yet. Who's got palace guard tomorrow? I nearly got drowned in the trash when the wind picked up this afternoon.'

Kendall raised his hand.

'OK, Kendall. Police it up. We'll have rats if we don't.' Hawke looked up at the sky, squinting against the drizzle. 'Correction. More rats. It's already Rat Alley up here.' He looked down at his notebook, sheltering it close against his damp sweats.h.i.+rt. 'I hear battalion wants to set up here once we get the cannon c.o.c.kers in, so get everyone shaved and looking decent before they show up and start screaming.'

Goodwin's platoon sergeant, Ridlow, exploded. 'If they'd fly in some f.u.c.king water maybe we'd be more likely to clean up.' His gravelly voice faded off into a mutter about how f.u.c.ked up it was to always be short of water in a f.u.c.king monsoon, and how f.u.c.king f.u.c.ked up the f.u.c.king country was. He spat at the ground and wiped a week's growth of beard with the back of one large hand. His other hand rested on his hip next to his Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum revolver. The first thing Goodwin had done when they'd been introduced was ask to see it; they'd hit it off immediately.

Hawke was looking at the sky, letting Ridlow get it out of his system. 'Well,' he said, 'since there's no pertinent pertinent comments, I guess that's about all I've got. Oh, yeah, get your needs lists in to Gunny Ca.s.sidy so when the birds do start bringing in the arty battery we can get some supplies. Gunny Ca.s.sidy?' comments, I guess that's about all I've got. Oh, yeah, get your needs lists in to Gunny Ca.s.sidy so when the birds do start bringing in the arty battery we can get some supplies. Gunny Ca.s.sidy?'

'Nothing, sir,' Ca.s.sidy said. 'Just you people give me your head count before you leave.'

'Senior Squid?' Hawke asked.

'Uh, no, sir. Just make sure the platoon corpsmen get their medical supply needs down on your lists so I can get the battalion aid station to put them on the chopper.'

Ba.s.s snorted. 'They do that automatically.'

Sh.e.l.ler looked at Ba.s.s and pressed his lips together tightly. In the moment of hesitation Hawke cut in. 'OK, any b.i.t.c.hes, gripes, grievances, needs, or solicitations before the skipper goes?'

'Mallory wants to request mast again,' Ba.s.s said. 'Says he's got a headache that won't go away and the squids are f.u.c.king with him by keeping him in the bush.'

'If the puke didn't play that G.o.dd.a.m.ned jungle music so loud he wouldn't have a sore head,' Ca.s.sidy muttered.

'That's Jackson with the music,' Ba.s.s said. 'From my herd. He's a good Marine.' Ca.s.sidy looked steadily at Ba.s.s, and Ba.s.s looked steadily back at Ca.s.sidy. Ca.s.sidy said nothing more but gave an almost imperceptible nod that said, If you say it's so, Sergeant Ba.s.s, then it's so. Mellas, his antennae up, knew instantly that these two men were cut from the same green cloth.

'Maybe we ought to just do Mallory a favor and break his head all the way for him,' Ridlow muttered. He looked quickly at his platoon commander, Goodwin, and then broke into a cackle. The other sergeants and Goodwin did as well. Mellas smiled, although he didn't like the overtones.

Fitch sighed, realizing he'd have to deal with it. 'I'll talk to Mallory,' he said. 'But you warn him, Mellas, that he'd better have a good story.'

'Mallory's already up for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction with his last story,' Hawke said. Hawke looked around. 'Anything else?' No one said anything. He turned to Goodwin. 'Try and keep your machine gunner, China, busy. OK? The less visiting time he has the better.'

Ca.s.sidy snorted. 'They want to see black power? Tell them to look down the black barrel of my f.u.c.king Smith & Wesson Model 29.' Ridlow cackled again.

Hawke looked wearily at Ca.s.sidy and Ridlow. 'China may be a dumb kid, but I'd take him seriously.' Ridlow glanced sideways at Goodwin, then over to Ca.s.sidy. No one said anything. 'It's all yours, Skipper,' Hawke said.

'Right.' Fitch's head came up. He'd been sitting on a log, dangling his feet. His small, handsome face looked tired. 'Big John Six went bugf.u.c.k over the radio again about the gook machine gun.' Big John Six was Lieutenant Colonel Simpson, the battalion commander and Fitch's boss. He'd promised his own boss, Colonel Mulvaney, the regimental commander, that Mulvaney could move a howitzer battery to a secure zone. Losing the supply chopper after he said the zone was safe was embarra.s.sing enough, but he'd then promised he'd fix the problem p.r.o.nto and it was now two full days after the promised date and the zone was still not secure.

'What's he going to do?' Ridlow boomed out. 'Cut your hair off and send you to Vietnam?'

Fitch laughed politely at the standard retort, looking down at his swinging feet. 'I suppose he could banish me to Okinawa.' Okinawa was universally known as the worst possible place to get for R & R. Relations with the j.a.panese had gotten so tense that the bra.s.s had forbidden nearly every activity for which anyone went on R & R. When the laughter died down, Fitch pointed into the fog that swirled over the trees to the southwest and said, referring to the enemy, 'I think Nagoolian is going to head over to that ridgeline tomorrow. He used it on the first day, and he's never used the northwest one, so he probably figures we'll be looking on the northwest one for him. Ba.s.s, you were down there. What's that southwest finger look like?'

'It's like the rest of the f.u.c.king place. Took us three hours to make eight hundred meters. Had to use machetes to get through. Pretty G.o.dd.a.m.n hard to sneak up on someone like that.'

'That's why he'll be there. Mellas, send a baseball team over the top of the ridge and look around. If you don't find them, at least it'll move them out away from the main approach path.'

'Aye, aye, Skipper.' Mellas was jotting down notes in his own green notebook and mentally reviewing the current company radio code, which was often used for direct conversation. A baseball team was a squad of twelve men, a basketball team was a fire team of four men, a football team a platoon of forty-three men. 'Can I get some maps for my squad leaders?'

Everyone burst into laughter. Mellas reddened.

'Mellas,' Hawke said, 'it'd be easier for you to date Brigitte Bardot than to get any more maps than we've got. You don't want to know what I had to trade for the one you've got, and I don't want to have to say it in front of the skipper.'

'It's true,' Fitch added. 'Maps are in short supply. Sorry. Just another inch of the green d.i.l.d.o.' He quickly went on. 'Goodwin?'

'Yeah, Jack?' Mellas winced at Goodwin's casualness in addressing the company commander as Jack, especially since that wasn't his name. If Fitch noticed, he didn't let on.

'I want one of your baseball teams out on the south finger, then work up the draw between there and the east ridge. I want you to check out the crashed bird on Helicopter Hill on the way back. See if Nagoolian's been nosing around. You other two platoon commanders send your red dogs out wherever you want,' he said, using the radio brevity code for any squad-size patrol.

Fredrickson broke in on the circle, breathing hard. 'He's starting to scream. Lindsey's got a s.h.i.+rt stuffed in his mouth. It'll be too loud to keep down in a few minutes. We're going to have to cut.'

Mellas looked at Fitch and then over at Sh.e.l.ler, whose throat was working underneath his double chin. Sh.e.l.ler rubbed his hands together as if to warm them. Fitch was looking at him, hard, his lower lip over his upper.

'It's got to be done, Jim,' Hawke said quietly.

Fitch nodded, still looking at the senior squid. 'How do you feel, Sh.e.l.ler?' Mellas was surprised to hear the senior squid called by his name.

'I don't have a catheter, Skipper, and trying to ram something up the urethra to clean out the leech would just make a mess of it. The only thing I can think to do is cut into the p.e.n.i.s from the bottom side. Two cuts. You can see where his urethra's swollen right up to the leech. Cut one is just up from there on the bladder side to relieve the pressure. I'd try to keep it small. Stick in a piece of IV tubing to keep the cut open and keep him drained until we get him out of here.' Sh.e.l.ler fished into his pockets and brought out a freshly cut piece of tubing. 'I'll need to sterilize it and have some floor s.p.a.ce to work on, sir. I can grease it with bacitracin to help it slide into the cut.'

'That's only one cut,' Fitch said.

'Yeah. OK.' Sh.e.l.ler swallowed. 'Cut two. I'd cut into the leech to bleed it and kill it. We don't want it moving upstream.' He looked at the silent group, realizing it was all on him. 'I'll use Fredrickson. It'll make Fisher feel better if it's a squid he's used to.'

Hawke looked grimly satisfied. Ba.s.s kept looking at Sh.e.l.ler and then back to the skipper with no emotion on his face.

'OK, Squid. Go ahead on it.' Fitch spoke crisply with no hint of doubt. He turned to Hawke. 'Ted, go up and tell those guys to move Fisher down here.'

Sh.e.l.ler moved off and crawled into the CP hooch without saying anything. He started to clear it out. The others, except Mellas, Hawke, Fitch, and Ca.s.sidy, returned to their positions.

The entire hill was quiet, on the 100 percent alert that happened every dusk and dawn. Mellas watched Fredrickson and Lindsey talking to Fisher as they began to move him off the landing zone on a stretcher made by wrapping a poncho between two tree limbs. Fisher suddenly cried out and Lindsey cursed quietly. Hawke, who was walking alongside the stretcher, quickly stifled Fisher's cry by placing his hand over his mouth. Mellas walked beside them, figuring it was better to say nothing.

When they reached the CP they pulled Fisher inside the small hooch. Sh.e.l.ler was laying out his kit and lighting candles. Fredrickson removed Fisher's filthy trousers and folded them carefully. Outside the hooch the two radio operators huddled next to their equipment while Fitch tried to make the entrance lightproof. Hawke and Ca.s.sidy sat on the ground, quietly talking.

Inside, Doc Fredrickson looked at Sh.e.l.ler, whose chin was trembling slightly underneath the fat. Fisher was writhing in pain and trying not to scream. Fredrickson crawled behind Fisher, putting his knees on each side of Fisher's head. He then leaned over and put his hands and full weight on Fisher's shoulders. The candles flickered in the draft, casting shadows across the draped ponchos.

'It's going to be OK, Fisher,' Fredrickson whispered, bending close to Fisher's face. 'It's going to be OK.'

'Oh, f.u.c.k, Doc, stop it. Stop it from hurting.'

'It's going to be OK.'

Fredrickson was looking intensely at Sh.e.l.ler, willing him to do it. The senior squid finished lubricating the IV tube, switched it to his left hand, and looked back at Fredrickson across Fisher's body. He picked up a small knife in his right hand and, using his elbows, he spread Fisher's legs and crawled between them. He looked up at Fredrickson again. With anguish on his face he silently mouthed, 'I don't know if I'm right.'

Fredrickson nodded his head in encouragement. 'Do it,' he mouthed silently. 'Do it.'

Fisher started moaning again, arching his back, trying to get his bladder and kidneys off the floor. The senior squid put the knife in the candle flame. Then he poured alcohol on it. There was a slight hiss and the alcohol smell filled the hooch. He lifted Fisher's p.e.n.i.s back, pus.h.i.+ng it firmly against his stomach. Even that pressure made Fisher scream.

Fredrickson leaned his whole body over Fisher's face, muzzling him, pressing down on his shoulders and upper arms.

Sh.e.l.ler pushed the blade into Fisher's p.e.n.i.s. Fisher screamed and Fredrickson put all of his weight on him to keep him from rolling. Blood and urine streamed over the knife blade, the initial burst spraying Sh.e.l.ler's hands and chest. Then Sh.e.l.ler pushed the makes.h.i.+ft catheter up the smooth side of the knife into the incision and quickly slipped the blade out. Urine coursed out of the catheter, flowing over Fisher's hips and crotch, filling the tent with its hot smell, running onto the mud, soaking the nylon poncho liners under Fisher's body.

'G.o.dd.a.m.n. G.o.dd.a.m.n. Oh, G.o.dd.a.m.n,' Fisher cried, but each 'G.o.dd.a.m.n' lessened in intensity with the lessening force of the coursing urine, until all that could be heard was Fisher's ragged panting and the deep breathing of Fredrickson and Sh.e.l.ler.

Fisher broke the silence. 'What would I say if this was a movie?'

Fredrickson shook his head back and forth and snorted a laugh. 's.h.i.+t, Fisher,' he said. Sh.e.l.ler, still breathing hard, merely nodded at Fisher.

Fisher winced and took in a shaky breath. He held it, then let it out all at once and turned his head to the side, looking at the floor of the hooch. 'Kind of a mess.'