“Was it ever this bad in sixty-five, sir?”
Puller looked at Taney, who was about twenty-five, a good young Spec Forces captain with a tour behind him. But in sixty-five he’d been a high school hotshot; what could you tell him? Who could even remember?
“It was never this bad, because we always had air and there were plenty of firebases around. I’ve never felt so fucking on my own. That’s what trying to be the last man out gets you, Captain. Let it be a lesson. Get out, get your people out. Copy?”
“I copy, sir.”
“Okay, get the platoon leaders and the machine gun team leaders to my command post in fifteen and—”
They both heard it.
“What was that?”
“It sounded like a—”
Then another one came. A solitary rifle shot, heavy, obviously .308, echoing back and forth across the valley.
“Who the fuck is that?” Taney said.
“That’s a sniper,” said Puller.
They waited. It was silent. Then the third shot and Puller could read the signature of the weapon.
“He’s not firing fast enough for an M14. He’s shooting a bolt gun, and that means he’s a Marine.”
“A Marine? Way the hell out here in Indian Territory?”
“I don’t know who this guy is, but he sounds like he’s doing some good.”
Then came a wild barrage of full automatic fire, the lighter, crisper sound of the Chicom 7.62×39mm the AKs fired.
Then the gunfire fell silent.
“Shit,” said Taney. “Sounds like they got him.”
The sniper fired again.
“Let’s run the PRC-77 and see if we can pick up enemy radio intelligence,” Puller said. “They must be buzzing about this like crazy.”
Puller and his XO and Sergeant Blas and Y Dok, the ’Yard chieftain, all went down into the bunker.
“Cameron,” Puller said to his commo NCO, “you think you’ve got any juice left in the PRC-77?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s do a quick scan. See if you can get me enemy freaks. They ought to be close enough to pick up.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, if air comes and we need to talk ’em in—”
“Air isn’t coming today, Cameron. Not today. But maybe someone else has.”
Cameron fiddled with the radio mast on the PRC-77, snapping a cord so that it flew free above the wood and dirt of the roof, then clicked it on, and began to diddle with the frequency dials.
“They like to operate in the twelve hundreds,” he said. He pulled through the nets, not bringing anything up except static, the fucking United States Navy bellowing about beating the Air Force Academy in a basketball game and—
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” said Puller, leaning forward. “Can’t you get us in a little tighter?”
“It’s them, isn’t it, sir?” asked Taney.
“Oh, yes, yessy, yessy, yessy,” said the head man Y Dok, who wore the uniform of a major in the ARVN, except for the red tribal scarf around his neck, “yep, is dem, yep, is dem!” He was a merry little man with blackened teeth and an inexhaustible lust for war, afraid, literally, of nothing.
“Dok, can you follow?” asked Puller, whose Vietnamese was good but not great. He was getting odd words—attack, dead, halt—and he couldn’t follow the verb tenses; they seemed to be describing a world he couldn’t imagine.
“Oh, he say they under assault on right by platoon strength of marksmen. Snipers. The snipers come for them. Ma my, ’merican ghosts. He says most officers dead, and most machine gun team leaders also—oh! Oh, now he dead too. Y Dok hear bullet hit him as he talk. Good shit, I tell you, Major Puller, got good deaths going, oh, so very many good deaths.”
“A platoon?” said Taney. “The nearest Marine firebase is nearly forty klicks away, if it hasn’t rotated out. How could they get a platoon over here? And why would they send a platoon?”
“It’s not a platoon,” said Puller. “They couldn’t—no, not overland, across that terrain, not without being bounced. But a team.”
“A team?”
“Marine sniper teams are two-men shows. They can move like hell if they have to. Jesus, Taney, listen to this and be aware of the privilege you’ve been accorded. What you are hearing is one man with a rifle taking on a battalion-strength unit of about three hundred men.”
“Dey say dey got him,” said Y Dok.
“Shit,” said Taney.
“God bless him,” said Puller. “He put up a hell of a fight.”
“Dey say, ’merican is dead and head man say, You fellas get going, you got to push on to the end of the valley and de officer say, Yes, yes, he going to—oh. Oh ho ho ho!” He laughed, showing his blackened little teeth.
“No. No, no, no, no. He got dem! Oh, yes, he just killed man on radio. I hear scream. Oh, he is a man who knows the warrior’s walk, dot I know. He got the good deaths, very many, going on.”
“You can say that again,” said Puller.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When the trigger broke, the North Vietnamese captain lieutenant turned as if to look at Bob just once before he died. All the details were frozen for a second: he was a small man, even by NVA standards, with binoculars and a pistol. An instant ago, he had been full of life and zeal. When the bullet struck him, it sucked everything from him and he stood with grave solemnity, colorless, as all the hopes and dreams departed him. If he had a soul, this would be where it fled to whatever version of heaven sustained him. Then it was over: with the almost stiff dignity of formal ceremony, he toppled forward.
Bob threw his bolt fast, tossing out the spent shell, but never breaking his eye relief with the scope, a good trick it only took a lifetime to master. In the perfect circle of nine magnifications, he saw the men who were his targets looking at one another in utter confusion. There was no inscrutability in their expression: they were dumbfounded, because this was not supposed to happen, not in the rain, in the fog, in the perfect freedom of their attack, not after their long night march, their good discipline, their toughness, their belief. They had no immediate theory to explain it. No, this was not possible.
Bob pivoted the rifle just a bit, found a new target, and felt the jolt as the rifle fired. Two hundred yards out and two tenths of a second later, the 173-grain bullet arrived at 2,300 odd feet per second. The tables say that at that range and velocity, it will pack close to two thousand foot-pounds of energy, and it hit this man, a machine gun team leader standing near his now dead commanding officer, low in his stomach, literally turning him inside out. That was what such a big bullet did: it operated on him, opening his intimate biological secrets to those around him, not a killing shot, but one that would bleed him out in minutes.
Quickly Bob found another and within the time it takes to blink an eyelash, fired for the third time and set that one down, too.
The North Vietnamese did not panic, though they could not hope to pick out Bob in the fog, and the muzzle blast was diffused; they only knew he was on the right somewhere. Someone calmly issued orders; the men dropped and began to look for a target. A squad formed to flank off to the right and come around. It was standard operating procedure for a unit with much experience and professionalism.
But Bob slithered away quickly, and when he felt the fog overwhelm him, he stood and ran ahead, knowing he had but a few seconds to relocate. Would they take the casualties and continue to march? Would they send out flanking parties; would they take the time to set up mortars? What will they do? he wondered.
He ran one hundred yards fast, slipping three new cartridges into the breech as he jounced along, because he didn’t want to waste time loading when he had targets. That was shooting time, precious. He slipped down off the incline onto the valley floor and crouched as he moved through the elephant grass, an odd nowhere place sealed off by vapors. He came at last to the center of the track, and got a good visual without the grass: he was now three hundred yards away and saw only the dimmest of sha
pes in the fog. Sinking to a quick, rice-paddy squat, he put the glass to them, put the crosshairs on one, quartering them high to account for a little drop at that distance, and squeezed the trigger. Maybe he was shooting at a stump. But the blob fell, and when he quartered another, it fell too. He did that twice more, and then the blobs disappeared; they’d dropped into the grass or had withdrawn, he couldn’t tell.
Now what?
Now back.
The flankers will come, but slowly, thinking possibly they’re up against a larger force.
Not even bothering to crouch, he ran again, full force through the mist. Suddenly the NVA opened up and he dropped. But the sleet of firepower did not come his way and seemed more of a probing effort, a theoretical thing meant to hit him where, by calculation, he should be. He watched as tracers hunted him a good hundred yards back, liquid splashes of neon through the fog, so quick and gossamer they seemed like optical illusions. When they struck the earth, they ripped it up, a blizzard of splashy commotion. Then the firing stopped.
He dropped, squirmed ahead and came to a crook in a tree. Quickly he slipped four more rounds into the M40’s breech, throwing the last one home and locking the bolt downward with the sensation of a vault door closing.
The rifle came up to him, and he seemed to have lucked into a thinner spot in the veil of fog, where suddenly they were quite visible. An officer was talking on the radio phone as around him men fanned out. Bob killed the officer, killed two of the men. Then he got a good shot at a man with four RPGs on his back squirming for cover, put the crosshairs onto a warhead and fired once. Force multiplier: the quadruple detonation ripped a huge gout in the earth, possibly driving others back, possibly killing some of them.
He didn’t wait to count casualties, or even take a quick look at his results. He crawled again through the high elephant grass, the sweat pouring off him. He crawled for what seemed like the longest time. Tracer rounds floated aimlessly overhead, clipping the grass, making the odd whup sound a bullet fighting wind will make. Once, when the firing stopped, he thought he sensed men around him and froze, but nothing happened. When at last he found some trees so that he could go back to work, he discovered he was much farther back in the column. Before him, as the vapors drifted and seethed, were some men who seemed less soldiers than beasts of burden, so laden were they with their equipment. This was simple murder; he took no pleasure in it, but neither did he consider it deeply. Targets? Take them down, eliminate them, take them out. Numbly he did the necessary.
Huu Co, senior colonel, had a problem. It wasn’t the firepower; there wasn’t much firepower. It was the accuracy.
“When he shoots, brother Colonel,” his officer told him, “he hits us. He is like a phantom. The men are losing their spirit.”
Huu Co fumed silently, but he understood. In a frontal attack his men would stand and fight or charge into guns: that was battle. This was something else: the terrible fog, the mysterious bullets singing out of it with unerring accuracy, seeking officers and leaders, killing them, then … silence.
“Maybe there are more than one,” someone said.
“I believe there are at least ten,” someone else said.
“No,” said Huu Co. “There is only one and he has only one rifle. It is a bolt-action rifle, so therefore he is an American Marine, because their army no longer uses bolt actions. One can tell from the time between the rounds, the lack of double shots or bursts. You must be calm. He preys on your fear. That is how he works.”
“He can see through the fog.”
“No, he cannot see through the fog. He is in the hills to the right, clearly, and as he moves, he encounters disparities in the density of the mist. When it is thin, he can see to shoot. Get the men down into the grass; if they stand they will be killed.”
“Brother Colonel, should we continue to march? How many can he kill? Our duty lies at the end of the valley, not here.”
It was a legitimate point, raised by Commissar Tien Phuc Bo, the political officer. Indeed, under certain circumstances, duty demanded that officers and men simply accept a high rate of casualty in payment for the importance of the mission. Rule No. 1: Defend the Fatherland; fight and sacrifice myself for the People’s Revolution.
“But this is different,” said Huu Co. “The fog makes it different, and his accuracy. Indiscriminate fire may be sustained as fair battle loss. The sniper presents a different proposition, both philosophically and tactically. If the individual soldier feels himself being targeted, that has disproportionate meaning to him and erodes his confidence. In the West they call it ‘paranoia,’ a very useful term, meaning overimaginative fear for the self. He will give himself up to a cause or a mission, in the abstract, but he will not give himself up to a man. It’s too personal, too intimate.”
“Huu Co is right,” argued his executive officer, Nhoung. “We may not simply accept losses as we travel, for the weight becomes immense and when we reach our goal, the men are too dispirited. What then have we accomplished?”
“As you decide,” said Phuc Bo. “But you may be criticized later and it will sting for many, many years.”
Huu Co accepted the rebuke; he had been criticized in a reeducation camp in 1963 for nine long months, and to be criticized, in the Vietnamese meaning of the term, was excruciating.
Bravely, he thrust ahead.
“A man like this can inflict a surprisingly high number of casualties, particularly upon officers and noncommissioned officers, the heart of the Army. Without leadership, the men are lost. He can attrit our officer staff if we do not deal with him now and immediately. I want Second Platoon on the right, supported by a machine gun team on each end for suppressive fire. They are to maneuver on a sweeping movement, while the rest of the unit holds up in the high grass. I want radio contact with Company Number Two sappers, and recall them and assign them in the blocking role. They must move quickly. Latest reports say the weather will not break. We have some time and I prefer by far to maintain unit integrity than to push on at this time. We will take him in good time. Patience in all things; that is our way. Communicate with your leaders and the fighters. Now is not the time for rash action; this is a test of discipline and spirit.”
“That is understood, sir.”
“Then let’s do our duties, brothers. I anticipate success within the hour and I know you will not let me down.”
Donny lay in the high grass, working the spotting scope. But the range was too far, a good four hundred meters, and in the valley he just saw the drifting mist, and heard the gunfire.
He took his right eye away from the scope and looked out with both of them. Again, nothing. The shooting rose and fell, rose and fell, punctuated now and then by two or three heavy rifle cracks, Bob’s shots. At one point some kind of multiple blast came. Had Bob fired a Claymore? He didn’t know but he didn’t think the sniper would have time, as he’d been moving this way and that through the hills.
He was well situated, half buried in a clump of vegetation, halfway up a hill, a little above the fog. He could see far to the right and far to the left, but he didn’t think anybody could get the drop on him. He had a good compass heading to the Special Forces camp at Kham Duc and knew if he had to he could make it in two or three hard hours. He drank a little water from his one remaining canteen. He was all right. All he had to do was sit there, wait for air, direct the air, then get the hell out of there. If no air came, then he was to move under cover of nightfall. He was not to go into the valley.
He thought of a familiar remark scrawled in Magic Marker on Marine helmets and flak jackets: “Yea, though I walk in the Valley of Death, I shall fear no harm, because I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley!” Bravado, sheer, thumping bravado, chanted like an incantation, to keep the Reaper away.
I’m not going into the Valley of Death, he thought. Those aren’t my orders. I followed my orders, I did everything I was told, I was specifically ordered not to go into the Valley of Death.
He accepted th
at as both a moral and a tactical proposition as ordered by a senior staff NCO. No man could challenge that, nor would one want to or try to.
I am fine, he told himself. I am short, I am fine, I am three and days till DEROS. I have my whole goddamned life in front of me and no man can say I shirked or ducked or dodged. No one can ever wonder if my beliefs were founded on moral logic or my own cowardice. I have to prove nothing.
Then why do I feel so shitty?
It was true. He felt truly sick, angry at himself, almost to the point of revulsion. Down there Swagger was probably giving away his life and Donny had somehow missed the show. Everybody cared about him. Trig, too, had cared about him. What was so special about him that he had to survive? He had no writer’s gift, he was not conversational or charismatic—no one could listen to him, he could be no witness.
Why me?
What’s so special about my ass?
He heard them before he saw them. It was the thup-thup-thup of men running, coming at the oblique. He didn’t jerk or move quickly and in an instant was glad he hadn’t, for sudden moves like that get you spotted.
They passed about twenty-five meters ahead of him, in single file, fastmovers, stripped of helmets and packs and canteens, racing toward duty and combat. It was the twelve-man flanking patrol, recalled by radio to move on the sniper from behind.
He could see how it would work. They’d form a line and flankers would drive Bob into them, or they’d come upon him from the rear. In either event, Bob was finished.
If Donny’d had the grease gun he might have gotten all twelve in a single burst. But probably not; that was very tricky shooting. If he had a Claymore set up, he might have gotten them too. But he didn’t. He had nothing but his M14.
He watched them go and they pounded along with grace, economy and authority. They disappeared into the fog.
I have my orders, he thought.
My job is the air, he thought.