Matterhorn_ A Novel of the Vietnam War Part 27

'Reason we come to you, Lieutenant Mellas,' China said, 'was because we figured you'd be the only one we could talk to.'

'I appreciate that, China,' Mellas said. 'I'll try to help. Just don't push me.'

'We ain't pus.h.i.+n' n.o.body,' China said. 'We just trying to explain explain the situation is all.' China looked over at Henry, then back at Mellas. 'We on the edge, sir,' he added. the situation is all.' China looked over at Henry, then back at Mellas. 'We on the edge, sir,' he added.

'I'll see what I can do,' Mellas said.

The two of them left. Mellas picked up his book but found it difficult to read. He stared at the cover, his body buzzing with the electricity of the encounter and the talk of trouble. But at the same time he was also slightly pleased. The brothers had come to him.

After chow Mellas wandered over to the sagging tent behind the combat operations center. It was already dark, and a soft drizzle was falling. He felt oddly content. Perhaps it was the beef hash he'd eaten and the steaming coffee he'd chased it down with. He tripped across several blown stumps and a couple of guy ropes before he stumbled into the tent. Hawke was alone, sitting on a cot and s.h.i.+ning his new boots by the light of a candle. Only three of the six cots had mattresses. Hawke's old bleached boots were neatly placed beneath his cot.

'What you polis.h.i.+ng your boots for?' Mellas asked. 'You just got 'em.'

'I'm getting a medal,' Hawke said without looking up.

'Hey, no s.h.i.+t. Fanf.u.c.kingtastic. What you getting?'

'Bronze Star.'

'Outf.u.c.kingstanding, Jayhawk.' Mellas gave the hawk power sign and grinned. The thought of Hawke getting a medal filled him with pride.

'Yeah,' Hawke said, trying to repress a smile, 'I'm sort of proud of it.'

'What'd you do?' Mellas asked.

'Oh, that f.u.c.king thing where I ran around in the open and called some arty in on some gook arty from Co Roc that was beating s.h.i.+t out of us at Lang Vei.'

'I'd heard about that, actually,' Mellas said.

'Really?'

'First day I got a.s.signed to Bravo Company back in Quang Tri. The clerks were talking about it.'

'No s.h.i.+t.' Hawke let himself smile. 'You know, Mel, I used to think a medal was a bunch of bulls.h.i.+t and I'd never really care. I was wrong. You get caught up in the little values of where you're at, I guess. So I'm proud of it. And I'm embarra.s.sed about it. I know a lot of guys have done what I did and gotten nothing. Usually snuffs. Then there's the field grade officer who ran a mediocre supply dump in Da Nang and got the same thing.' He started polis.h.i.+ng a boot furiously.

He finally put the s.h.i.+ned boot down and reached under the cot for his old jungle boots. He put them on, smiling grimly, then put his hands on his knees and looked at Mellas. 'I'm tired of waiting for those two Irish a.s.sholes. I got six six-packs and a bottle of Jack Black. Let's get f.u.c.ked up.'

'OK by me,' Mellas said.

'Mystery tour!' Hawke shouted at the top of his lungs and did the hawk dance. 'Mystery tour!' He pulled the bottle of bourbon from his pack and poured Mellas and himself drinks in two heavy white coffee mugs. He raised his mug to Mellas's and at that moment the flap of the tent parted and the door was filled by the huge bulk of Jack Murphy. Mellas had last seen Murphy in exhausted sleep on the LZ that Bravo had flown to from Matterhorn. Behind him was McCarthy. Mellas tried to push away the image of McCarthy, shaking and asking for a cigarette, his men stumbling to join him with the body swaying between them. Then he saw Williams. Then Parker.

'Hey, hey, hey!' McCarthy pushed ahead of Murphy and he and Hawke started doing a noisy jig.

'You've both met Mellas,' Hawke said, stopping to pour whiskey into two more mugs. McCarthy produced a fifth of vodka. Murphy had a half pint of Scotch and several small cans of sardines packed in olive oil, as well as a box of Ritz crackers.

An hour later they were giggling helplessly as Mellas stabbed at one of the sardine cans with Hawke's K-bar. Finally, in a rage, he started stabbing it randomly, squirting olive oil on his face and forehead.

'f.u.c.k, Mellas, give up,' McCarthy said, laughing.

After some more furious stabbing Mellas grabbed the oily can and smashed it against his forehead. 'Aaahhh,' he sighed as the oil ran off his chin. He sat down on the tent floor, his back against Hawke's rack, and shut his eyes.

'G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Mellas,' Hawke shouted at him, 'you can't go to sleep now, we're just f.u.c.king starting.' He began to slap Mellas lightly on the cheek. Mellas opened his eyes and grinned slowly. Hawke poured beer over Mellas's head. 'We still got thirty-six beers to get through.'

'f.u.c.k you, Hawke. I was just resting my eyes.' He looked up at the three friends. He knew he'd been let into the group.

Wonderfully, mindlessly drunk two hours later, the four lieutenants were sneaking in brief rushes up to the regimental motor pool, suppressing laughter. Hawke was leading them with hand signals learned at the Basic School, doing everything exactly to form. Their target was a half-ton truck.

'Keep your f.u.c.king a.s.s down, Murphy,' Hawke whispered.

Murphy giggled like a child.

'Fire team in the a.s.sault. Ready?' Hawke raised his arm. 'Ho!' He pointed at the truck and the four of them rushed it. Mellas and Murphy piled into the back while Hawke and McCarthy scrambled into the cab and kicked over the engine. They roared off down the road toward the regimental officers' club.

Half an hour later, the movie at the small officers' club was interrupted by a wildly gesturing figure who tried to embrace the woman on the screen. The screen came down with a crash. Trying to make his escape in the dark, Murphy tripped over a power cord and pulled the projector off the table. Hawke shouted, 'Retreat! Retreat! Abandon s.h.i.+p!' The mystery tour bolted for the door they'd staggered through twenty minutes earlier. Murphy panicked, still tangled in the electric cord. In the darkness and confusion he missed the door by two feet and took out approximately twelve square feet of fine wire insect screen.

As the four lieutenants piled into the truck, several officers shouted behind them, equally drunk. One of them pulled a pistol out and fired it into the air. He and two other dark figures jumped into a jeep and took off in pursuit.

The man with the pistol was waving it over his head, laughing and shouting, 'Saboteurs! Saboteurs! Rape and pillage in the village!' He was about to fire two more rounds into the air just as the jeep bounced over a rut and the driver swerved violently to the side. The force of the turn and gravity pulled the heavy .45 down as it went off.

McCarthy, in the bed of the truck with Mellas, groaned and slumped to the floor.

Mellas immediately got sober-and very frightened. He knew they were in big trouble. He kicked in the rear window of the truck's cab and screamed at Hawke, who was driving. 'McCarthy's f.u.c.king hit. We got to get him out of here.'

Hawke turned to look at Mellas. The whites of his eyes were prominent. He then looked back to the road.

'McCarthy's f.u.c.king shot, I tell you.'

Hawke turned the truck off the road, bouncing up a hill through low shrubs. It smashed against a blown stump, sending Murphy forward against the winds.h.i.+eld and slamming Mellas up against the back of the cab. McCarthy came sliding forward, crumpling against Mellas.

They piled out and dragged McCarthy into the bushes, struggling uphill. The jeep roared past them down the road.

'Why you guys carrying me?' McCarthy asked suddenly.

'You ain't f.u.c.king shot?' Hawke asked.

'That f.u.c.ker shot the half pint I was saving for the reentry. I got gla.s.s in my f.u.c.king a.s.s.'

They threw him to the ground, disgusted. McCarthy giggled and pushed himself uncertainly to his feet. The four of them walked through the bushes, eventually coming to a cleared piece of ground. A frightened voice shouted a challenge.

They hit the deck immediately.

'Don't shoot,' Hawk called. 'You'll be doing our country and the Corps a great disservice.'

'I might, motherf.u.c.ker,' the voice shouted back. 'Only I won't do my Corps f.u.c.king nothing. I'm in the Army. Come any closer and I'll blow your a.s.s away.'

'Where in the h.e.l.l are we?' Mellas hollered.

'You think I'd tell you, you gook b.a.s.t.a.r.d?'

'Me, a gook b.a.s.t.a.r.d?' Mellas said to the others quietly. They were all giggling.

'Hey, Mellican sojah,' Hawke called out, 'me educated UCRA. You no shoot flendly countlyman. That numbah ten. You numbah one.'

'You really Americans?'

'What the f.u.c.k do you think, a.s.shole?' Hawke shouted sharply. 'Is the pope Catholic? Do dogs lick their own b.a.l.l.s?'

A pop-up flare shot out, casting eerie flickering green shadows over the landscape. The four lieutenants hugged the ground. Mellas caught a glimpse of the long barrels of an Army 175 battery that obviously ran its own security inside VCB's main defensive lines.

'Prove you're Americans,' the voice called out.

'How the f.u.c.k we do that?' Hawke called back.

'Answer my questions.'

'OK, but don't ask me nothing about f.u.c.king baseball. I hate f.u.c.king baseball.'

'All right, where you guys from?'

McCarthy giggled. 'Let me,' he whispered. 'East Padua,' he cried out. 'You know where that is?'

'East Padua? No.'

Hawke cut in. 'Hey, a.s.shole, you're supposed to be asking the questions.'

There was silence.

'All right, who's the secretary of the army?'

'I don't know,' McCarthy replied.

'OK, then, who's the secretary of defense?'

Murphy answered, 'Who the f.u.c.k cares?'

'I do,' the voice answered.

'I don't know,' McCarthy said.

'Who's the president then?'

'You got me beat,' McCarthy answered. 'I'm a gook.'

'You must be f.u.c.king Marines. No one else could be so f.u.c.king stupid. Get your a.s.ses in here.'

An hour later the mystery tour was at rest. McCarthy and Murphy were pa.s.sed out on the exposed springs of two empty cots. McCarthy was naked from the waist down and his right b.u.t.tock and thigh were swabbed red with Mercurochrome. The bullet had taken out a small piece of flesh from the right cheek. Pieces of gla.s.s lay on the floor. Murphy had performed surgery by pouring vodka on McCarthy's rear and picking the gla.s.s out with his K-bar. Mellas was heating coffee over a piece of C-4; he had thrown up and his face was pallid. The coffee was for Hawke, who needed to sober up enough to stand watch in an hour. Mellas's first mystery tour was over. It felt very good to be in.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Morning started with the barking cough of a motor and the clank of treads as a tank headed for VCB's northern gate to escort the empty supply trucks returning to Quang Tri. Soon the grumble of truck motors vibrated through the ground to the wooden tent platform, rattling Mellas's very sore head. Pallack, who had the last radio watch, lit a ball of C-4 to heat coffee. A white-hot glare filled the tent.

Mellas cursed Pallack and pulled his poncho liner over his head. Fitch rolled onto his back and lay staring at the tent roof. The others, all completely clothed, including boots, moved stiff limbs and rolled from their air mattresses to the dirty wood floor.

'Anything happen on the nets?' Fitch asked.

'Naw,' Pallack replied. 'Same old stuff. Some super-grunts got in a jam up nort' of Sky Cap.'

Fitch glanced quickly at Daniels, who pulled out his map. Rescuing reconnaissance teams was a primary mission of a Bald Eagle-Sparrow Hawk company. 'Is that all you know about them?' Fitch asked. Mellas lay there listening under the poncho liner.

's.h.i.+t Skipper. Dey don't tell me what's happening all over I Corps. Call sign's Peachstate. Dere's a bunch of gooks all around 'em and d'ey can't move wit'out tipping the gooks off where d'ey are. Here's d'coordinates.'

Fitch and Daniels checked the coordinates on the map. 'Right where Mellas guessed,' Fitch said.

'Maybe they'll use arty and yank them out, Skipper,' Daniels said.

'f.u.c.k,' Pallack said. 'Don't tell me dey're expecting us us to get deir a.s.ses unjammed.' to get deir a.s.ses unjammed.'

'What the f.u.c.k you think we're sitting here for?' Fitch said. 'The artys all been pulled back for the Cam Lo op. If they get in trouble, we launch.'

's.h.i.+t. If I'd a known I'd gotten scared last night.'

Mellas moaned, threw back the poncho liner, and disappeared outside the tent.

'What's with him?' Fitch asked.

'He's caught Mallory's problem,' Pallack said.

'Huh?'

'A bad head.'

Fitch went to the COC to keep tabs on Peachstate. Around midmorning the word came down to put the company on standby. Mellas's bad head got worse. Everyone sat there. Waiting. Watching the sky. Listening for the sound of choppers. All the spare radios were tuned to the reconnaissance battalion's frequency so the company could listen to the team's progress. Ca.s.sidy pa.s.sed out the hair clippers to the squad leaders.

At 1300 Peachstate made a break for it. At 1415 they were picked up by a Huey and got out with only one man wounded. By 1500 the Marines from Bravo Company were again filling sandbags at Task Force Oscar, rescuing knights one moment, serfs the next.

Mellas went to see Sergeant Major Knapp at the tent that served as the battalion office. He knocked sharply at the wood-framed opening and heard Knapp say 'Come!' It was more of a command than an invitation.

Mellas entered, taking off his cap. Knapp looked up from a report and quickly rose to his feet. That embarra.s.sed Mellas. The sergeant major was old enough to be his father.

'Yes, sir. Can I help you, sir?' Knapp asked.

'I hope so, Sergeant Major,' Mellas replied. 'Can I sit down?'