For All Their Lives (20 page)

Mac gritted his teeth and dropped to the floor to do his morning calisthentics. He was victorious when he completed his last jumping jack. He took an additional four minutes to dress and lace his boots. His map case was ready, along with his field gear. Jesus, he could hardly wait to write Benny and tell him he was taking a platoon out on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Something skittered around in the depths of his stomach: fear. A desk jockey turned company commander, on the trail, responsible for lives, was not something to take lightly, and he wasn't taking it lightly. He was piss-assed scared; just like Pender, but that was good, he thought, as he mopped at the perspiration dripping down his face. Fear was healthy. Fear could save lives, his men's and his own.

Mac walked out to the still-dark compound. He ground to a halt immediately when he ran into a swarm of gnats and flies. They were in his eyebrows, his ears. His first thought was he was being attacked by a squadron of leeches. He knew if he breathed through his nose, he would ingest them. “Son of a bitch,” he swore.

“Close your eyes, Captain,” Phil Pender ordered. A moment later Mac felt the sting of insect repellent. “Now breathe,” the lieutenant ordered.

“Thanks, Pender. How's it going?”

“I'm okay, Captain.”

“You're sure?” Mac said.

“Yes sir,” Pender said smartly.

“This is it,” Mac said quietly.

“Yep,” Pender said just as quietly.

“We're all going to be just fine, Pender. That's a promise.”

“I'm gonna hold you to that, Captain,” Pender grinned.

“And I'm gonna make your mama proud of you. Get aboard, Lieutenant,” Mac said, motioning to the waiting Huey.

Mac was the last to board. He didn't look back.

Arlen Morley watched Carlin's men as they boarded the Huey.

So far, Carlin was above par. His men liked him, his NCO gave him a glowing recommendation. Carlin cared about his men, you could see it in his eyes. His NCO said he'd worked well with the ranger and airborne-qualified volunteers who conducted long-range raids on enemy depots and other sites along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Carlin's leadership qualities are above the norm, Sergeant Laker had said.

Arlen's eyes narrowed. In his opinion West Point turned out tin soldiers and every real soldier knew it. It didn't matter that at one time he would have given his back molars to be accepted, but his congressman didn't have enough clout to have him appointed. He'd been turned down, shamed in front of his family. It was guys like Carlin, who had fathers with pull, who got into the Academy. Never guys like him. He'd showed them though, he'd climbed up the ladder. He'd keep climbing too. On all the Carlins' backs, to the top.

Morley watched as Mac Carlin boarded the Huey. He expected him to look back, but he didn't. He felt disappointed for some reason. The guy was out to prove something, not to him, not to the army, but to himself. He'd probably damn well succeed. That was okay too. If Carlin looked good, he looked even better.

Never one to fool himself, Morley decided the U.S. Army, Vietnam Provisional Reconnaissance Detachment that he commanded was damn lucky to have Carlin.

Morley yawned elaborately. Now if he could just find a foolproof way to give every single shit detail to the captain, he could stay right where he was, snug as a bug. From now to the end of this fucking war, Carlin would be on the trail. He was personally going to see to it. If any new orders, new paperwork, or strings pulled crossed his desk, well, hell, this was the jungle. Shit like that got lost all the time. Carlin was in the bush and that was the end of it.

 

T
WO HOURS INTO
the bush left Mac feeling he was in his own worst nightmare. He called a halt. He itched and he smelled. He worried he would drown in his own sweat. He popped a salt tablet and ordered his men to do the same. He motioned to his squad leaders to form a perimeter. “Listen up, men . . .” Overhead a sleek squadron of Phantoms thundered in the hot, blue sky.

“It's got to be a hundred degrees,” someone mumbled. Mac grimaced. The temperature felt more like 140, though it probably wasn't more than 95 degrees. “I assume you've all put your Halazone tablets in your canteens,” he said.

The men nodded.

“That's good. We don't have time to wait around while you crap in the bushes. Tie those strings tight, soldier,” Mac said to a corporal. “You want leeches crawling up your leg? Don't piss me off. I might be new to this command, but I'm no fool. Next break we're going to check our M-16's. I kick ass real good, and take names later—bear that in mind. The first man's rifle that malfunctions because he didn't clean it will wish he had. Any questions? Okay, move out.”

This time Mac sprayed his face himself with the insect repellent, for all the good it did. The minute he started to sweat, he wiped it off. He grinned when he heard one of the men say just loud enough for him to hear, “I thought you said this guy was an Academy turd and didn't know his ass from his elbow.” They were looking a little more confident, Mac thought. Christ, he had no idea the men thought so little of West Point. Like everything else, he thought philosophically, you have to prove yourself. He felt himself tingle with anticipation, a feeling of exhilaration he'd never experienced before. He'd made contact with his men.

Twenty minutes later two of the men at his side started to gag. Mac wrinkled his nose and found himself retching. This was a new smell, one he hadn't experienced before. He knew without a doubt that he was smelling his first corpse. One of them, a corporal from Maine, pointed to the right, his binoculars at his eyes. He held up three fingers, meaning there were three corpses, Viet Cong. They kept on walking.

It was midday when Mac called a halt. They were within fifteen klicks of their objective, a man-made bridge, and what they thought was one of the truck depots. The heat was hotter than an oven. He knew the blisters on his feet had blisters of their own. If he took off his jungle boots, he'd never get them back on. He'd never wanted a cigarette so bad in his life.

“The men want to know if they can smoke, sir?” Pender said, coming up behind Mac.

Mac's face registered disgust. “No!”

Mac hacked himself a space large enough to spread out his maps and gear. He closed his eyes for a full five minutes the moment he finished scanning the maps in front of him. When he was satisfied he would remember every detail, he mentally positioned his squads and tried to calculate the outcome. He was momentarily sidetracked when he tried to identify the sound that was popping his eardrums. The sounds of war. Real war. M-60's.

A noise resembling a rusty foghorn burst from the sky. Mac raised his eyebrows as he sought to identify the sound. An AC-47, a Spooky, or Puff the Magic Dragon. It carried miniguns and a whole planeload of ammo and it was capable of covering an entire football field in eight to ten seconds. The sparks and tracers he was seeing were tracers from the miniguns.

“It's a Spooky, sir. Ivan Mojesky, sir, demolitions,” he said lazily.

“I kind of like Puff the Magic Dragon. The kid in me I guess,” Mac said, just as lazily. “You any good, Mojesky?”

Mojesky thought about the question for a minute. “They don't come any better than me, Captain. When I set a charge, even if it's with spit and chewing gum, it goes off.”

“I'll remember that, Mojesky.”

“Captain, has anyone warned you about the bamboo vipers?”

“No, Sergeant, no one has, but I'd appreciate your enlightening me,” Mac said uneasily.

“Snakes, sir. They call them ‘two steps.' You get bit, you take two steps and you're dead.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Yeah, he's the only one who can help,” the sergeant drawled. “It's not my place to question you, sir, but are you sure you want the men humping through this jungle after dark? Personally, I like to do my work in the daylight. Darkness, as the men can tell you, is just as much our enemy as the Viet Cong. I got the eyes of a cat. My mama made me eat my carrots.” He chuckled. “I been on this trail seven times in the past eighteen months. Daytime, nighttime, makes no difference. What does make a difference is the odds are a little more favorable for our side in the daylight. The Cong favors night.”

“Okay, Sergeant, thanks for the tip.”

The sergeant was probably right, he thought. Wasn't it better to see your enemy, to know what you were up against? Morley hadn't ordered him to lead his men under cover of darkness. It had been a suggestion. One he decided he was probably going to ignore. He'd give the darkness one shot, tonight, and make his final decision tomorrow.

“Move out!” Mac said.

They hiked, they struggled, they humped mile after mile with no break, until sundown, that gray time when a soldier could spook himself every time a leaf moved, every time a twig crackled. Overhead the birds were silent. “An omen of some kind,” Pender muttered to his men.

The moment the perimeter was set up, Mac hunkered down; the men did likewise. “This is not the dinner hour, men. We're within ten, maybe fifteen klicks of the village we know is a storage depot for the Viet Cong. Now listen up . . .”

When he was on his feet again, ready to move out, he looked closely at Pender and wondered if the fear he saw in the lieutenant's eyes was reflected in his own. He thought of the seventeen and a half miles of corridors in the Pentagon that he'd more or less walked every day for the past ten years without once becoming winded. He clenched his teeth. This wasn't the Pentagon. This was goddamn fucking Southeast Asia. “And this, Mac Carlin, is your life,” he muttered under his breath. He offered up a prayer then that he wouldn't fail, that he wouldn't let his men down. He asked for the strength to be brave; not fearless, just brave.

It was completely dark now. The temperature dropped a little, possibly five degrees. He was still sweating, the perspiration dropping past his lashes into his eyes. The salty sweat made his eyes burn, but he couldn't wipe at his face with his sleeve for fear of getting gnats and other minute insects into them. He tortured himself for a few seconds while he thought of standing under a cool shower in his gray-tiled bathroom back home. He could see the thick, thirsty, gray-on-gray towel hanging on the towel bar. He was working on a dive into his sparkling clean pool when he became aware that something was different in his surroundings. His point man bore out his awareness a minute later.

“It's too quiet, Captain. There's a nest of them at the end of the village. They're smoking and drinking. Dope, sir. They're smoking dope.”

“How many?” Mac asked with a catch in his throat.

“I saw nine. There could be more. Too dark to see how many, if any, are in the trees. If this really is a depot, then they're all over.”

Mac closed his eyes to visualize the map he'd looked at earlier. The village was carved into the side of a mountain, with one or two huts out in the open, where it was thought the villagers conducted their daily routines.

“That funny noise you hear is fish splashing around in the river, sir.” Mac gaped at the point man. “Sure enough, sir, that's what it is. I seen it with my own eyes when I humped my way back.”

“It's not on the goddamn map, Corporal,” Mac snarled.

“Sir, we been smelling it all day, we just didn't know what it was. This is the junction where they either truck out their supplies or take them down on sampans. This could be a double kill, sir. I seen three bicycles with heavy wire baskets on the back. The women fill the baskets with frags and ride them to the next drop-off spot. Kids ride the bikes too, sir.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Just your ordinary Viet Cong village, sir,” the corporal muttered as he made his way back to his squad.

“Mojesky!” Mac hissed.

“Yes, sir.”

“We've come across a river we didn't know was here. It's not on the map,” Mac said. “I want you to take two men and string claymore mines all along the water's edge.”

“The coordinates, sir?”

Mac gave them to him. A moment later he was part of the blackness surrounding the perimeter. A goddamn river. Shit! How in the hell could a recon plane miss a river?

 

F
IFTEEN MINUTES LATER,
when Mac was satisfied that each move was synchronized, he and his men moved out. “By the manual, Carlin, this is goddamn by the manual,” he muttered to himself. But he told himself as he moved on that the manual meant diddly-squat. There were no rules as long as the other side didn't have the same book.

He called a halt at the edge of what could pass for a clearing. It appeared to be about thirty-five meters across and as round as a grapefruit. A path was cut through the center, veering off to the left into the dense jungle, and it seemed to reappear on the other side. A trick of light, Mac thought uneasily. He looked closer, saw another path, and then another, all crisscrossing like the latticework on a cherry pie. He knew rice paddies lay beyond each, stretching all the way up the mountains. Which path to take? He dropped to one knee and studied the packed-down path. He hoped to find some telltale sign, but there wasn't one. It was a crap shoot, and he knew it. He closed his eyes, visualized the map and pointed.

He didn't have to tell the men to be quiet. Still, their boots crunched on the knee-high saw grass. A brass band would have had the same effect, he thought sourly. Then they settled in, three to four feet from each other, and hunkered down to wait, their eyes never leaving the maze of paths.

Sweat poured into Mac's eyes and down his face. He was dripping wet; even his socks were soaking inside his boots. He knew he had leeches on his legs, but he'd have to wait till later. to burn the suckers off. He thought about the pool in his backyard and imagined he could smell the chlorine.