Matterhorn Page 27

  Without being told, Vancouver wrapped the rope around his waist, walked out backward over the edge, and disappeared. Mellas crawled on his stomach, trying to watch Vancouver’s descent in the dark. The rope slackened. Vancouver’s voice floated up. “It ain’t bad, Lieutenant. We even got some rock up out of the water.”

  Three others went over the edge to set up security, two upstream and two down. Then they lowered Parker and Challand to the water. Soon only a very frightened Broyer and Tilghman were left above to provide security where the rope was tied.

  Fredrickson and Cortell undressed Parker except for his boots, leaving only his head out of the water. Challand, his fever having suddenly abated, sat by the river’s edge, shivering uncontrollably. One of the squad mates took off his flak jacket and wrapped his arms around Challand, trying to warm him.

  Mellas sent Vancouver and another kid upstream, and Jackson and another downstream. Jackson returned first. He’d found the wide spot.

  They lifted Parker to the litter and carried him downstream, whistling for Broyer and Tilghman to come down the rope. Mellas told them to pull it down and wait there for Vancouver.

  Mellas slipped and fell in the water three times before they finally reached the wide place. They laid Parker on his back on the rocks. He was fully conscious, the river flowing around him, cooling his body. Cortell knelt beside him.

  “I been scared before,” Parker said, “but I didn’t think it’d be like this.”

  “You be OK. We get a bird in for you. Jesus be with you, brother.”

  Parker looked up at the darkness above him. His eyes closed. Then he reached out, grabbing for anything. Cortell took his hand, squeezing it hard.

  “I don’t want to die here, Cortell. I don’t want to die here.” He started moaning softly.

  Mellas and Fredrickson looked on, the water running across the tops of their boots. Mellas’s throat ached. He screwed up his eyes, forcing the tears back. He’d never watched anyone die.

  “It’ll be OK, Parker,” said Cortell. “Brother, we just baptize you right here on the spot. Jesus wash all you sins away.”

  “I was going to kill the gunny.”

  “That’s OK, Parker, so was I. You didn’t.”

  “I rigged his grenade, but he must have found it. It was only luck I didn’t kill him.”

  “That’s OK.” Cortell was slowly pouring water from his hands onto Parker’s forehead. “We call that grace.”

  “I know I should never done it. That’s why I got this fever.” Parker rolled to his side, his elbow slipping on a loose rock beneath the water. He lunged for Cortell, who helped turn him on his back, cradling his head in the stream. He lay there and began sobbing. “How can I go to hell, Cortell? Forever. How can I? How can it be so fucking bad? Not like this. How can I go to hell?”

  “You ain’t goin’ to hell. That where you been. You just ask Jesus to forgive you.” Cortell gently poured another handful of water onto Parker’s head.

  “I can’t.”

  “Then I will.” Cortell let a third handful of water drain onto Parker’s head. He placed his helmet on Parker’s stomach. Then he bent over the helmet, hands folded, and closed his eyes. “Lord Jesus. Sweet Lord Jesus. You know this man Duane Parker who is about to come to thee. He has been a good man. He has seen some bad times. Now he asks you with all of his heart for you to forgive him so he might come to thee and thy glory. Lord Jesus, I know you hear me, even here in this river. Amen.”

  Cortell took his helmet off Parker’s stomach and placed it on his own head again. He put one hand on Parker’s chest and moved it in a slow rhythm.

  “You know my sister,” Parker said, “she’s a cheerleader—of her high school. She live with our great-aunt now.” Parker was breathing rapidly. “You tell her—you tell her I never much said anything nice to her—but I love her, huh. You tell her, Cortell.”

  “Sure. Don’t worry. She know that.” Cortell started singing a hymn.

  It was one that neither Fredrickson nor Mellas had heard: “Deep river, Lord . . . I want to cross over into campground . . . where all is peace.”

  Mellas filled a hand with water for a drink. But he just looked at it and let the water drain from between his fingers. Then he covered his eyes with his palm, his wet fingers against his forehead, to hide his tears.

  They waited there, looking east for the first light, listening for the sound of a chopper. Just before dawn, Parker went into convulsions and died as the three of them tried to keep him from drowning. Challand was still alive when the medevac bird came up the narrow gorge, fighting the erratic wind currents, the rotar wash spraying water behind it like a hydroplane. It took out two bodies not yet on the planet twenty years, one living and one dead.

  Word came back on the radio later that afternoon that the disease was called cerebral malaria. It was carried by an isolated species of mosquito found only in the mountains, and the usual pills didn’t help against it. The odds were high that others in the company had been bitten as well. Mellas felt shadowed by disease and madness.

  The company made only three and a half kilometers that day. The gentle blue line on the map was a torrent on the ground. It ran between steep cliffs and through narrow gorges, and had sudden waterfalls that required the use of ropes. It was the only path to the horseshoe of mountains that cradled its source, one of which a general or a staff officer had named Sky Cap.

  Fitch felt it would be best to climb out of the canyon to set in for the night. Blakely and Simpson disagreed. They had just sat through the fifth regimental staff meeting in a row during which they had to explain why Bravo Company wasn’t where Mulvaney had been told it would be. The order was relayed by an air observer: “There will be no deviations from the line of march for any reason.”

  To leave the canyon and lie about their position would be suicidal. The artillery might assume the company was someplace else and drop rounds on it. Since the company was strung out in the canyon with no way of circling into a defensive position or digging into the rock, Fitch felt he had no choice but to keep moving. At one in the morning, a kid in Kendall’s platoon slipped on a steeply pitched wet slab. There was a thud, a splash, and a suppressed moan. He had fractured his left tibia, and the broken bone was sticking through the skin. Fitch told Relsnik to lose communications, even if the battalion sent an air observer to act as a relay. They would wait for morning.

  The company’s position was so precarious that neither Hawke nor Mellas could sleep. All night, they sat huddled on a boulder, shivering in their damp clothes. Hamilton, however, lay sleeping on the rocks below them, his boots in the water.

  “Imagine,” Hawke said. “The first use of the column in the defense. We’ll all get jobs at the Naval War College. We’ll go down in military history.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Mellas said. “Going down.”

  The cliff rose behind them. The moon occasionally broke through the cloud layer, and a cold wind blew on their backs. The conversation came and went. Girls they knew. What they would do after they got out. Building a fortress on Matterhorn and then abandoning it. Whether the Rolling Stones were better than the Beatles. Anything but cerebral malaria.

  “Did you hear that Parker tried to kill Cassidy?” Mellas asked.

  “Yeah. Conman told me. It’s all over the fucking company. Cassidy denies it. Says it’s all black power bullshit, that Parker just wanted to show off.”

  “You believe Cassidy?”

  “I believe Parker.”

  “Is there going to be trouble?” Mellas asked.

  “Don’t know. Depends a lot on whether Parker did it on his own.”

  “You mean China?”

  “I mean China if Parker didn’t do it on his own. But I don’t know.”

  They listened to the water rushing past them. Hawke, looking sad, repeatedly traced a small pentangle on the rock beside him.

  “You feel bad about not getting the company?” Mellas asked.

  “I don’t know. Sure. Sure, I wanted the company. But now I just want out of the fucking bush.”

  “Ha
ve you tried? Like getting a job at the operations center, like Stevens?”

  “Do I look like a fucking Dictaphone? What the fuck you trying to do, Mellas, get rid of me?”

  Mellas felt himself color slightly. He said nothing.

  “Don’t worry, Mellas,” Hawke said, “you’re so fucking boot, you’ll still be here when I’m sucking down cool ones at O’Day’s Bar. You’ll have plenty of time to get a fucking company. For starters, you’ll probably be Bravo Five if I ever do get my freckled ass out of here. Kendall’s leaving in a few weeks. And Goodwin.” Hawke chuckled softly. “Shit, Jack,” he mimicked. “Scar. His lines are a mess, his paperwork’s all fucked up, his radio procedure’s a disaster, but the troops will follow him anyplace. Anyplace.” Hawke blew some air through his lips. “That’s the problem with him. He’s a fighter.”

  “That’s a problem?” Mellas felt envious of Goodwin again, but his envy fought against the warmth evoked by the image of Goodwin tugging on an earlobe and cackling about a third Purple Heart.

  “In this war it is,” Hawke said. “That’s probably why it’s so fucked up. What you need in war is warriors, fighting, not little boys dressed up in soldier suits, administrating.”

  “Then why don’t you make Scar the fucking Five?” Mellas asked, a little more hotly than he’d intended.

  “Because Goodwin would be eaten alive in three minutes. And not by the fucking NVA. You wouldn’t, and you know it. In fact, I think you’d thrive on the fucking politics.”

  They lapsed into silence.

  After a while Hawke asked, “You know why we’re really strung out in this fucking death canyon?”

  Mellas didn’t know, so he just grunted.

  “Because Fitch doesn’t know how to play the fucking game. That’s why. He’s a good combat leader. I’d literally follow him to my death. But he’s not a good company commander in this kind of war. He got on Simpson’s bad side because he got his picture in the paper too often and never gave Simpson credit, which by the way he doesn’t deserve, but that’s the point. The smart guy gives the guy with the power the credit, whether he deserves it or not. That way the smart guy is dangling something the boss wants. So the smart guy now has power over the boss.”

  Mellas kept his mouth shut.

  “It used to be if you were out in the bush operating independently like we are, no one would second-guess the skipper. They didn’t have the radio power back then. Now they do, and the fucking brass think they’re out on patrol. And now the smallest units are run by the colonels and generals, hell, right up to the president. Colonel and above used to be the level where people dealt with all the political shit like congressmen on junkets, television, reporters, you name it. But now those guys are running the show right down to this fucking river canyon and we’re in the politics too. And the better the radios, the worse it’s going to get. The politics is going to come right down to the company level, and people like Fitch and Scar are going to be culled out and people like you will take over.”

  “What do you mean ‘like me’?” Mellas asked quietly.

  Hawke sighed. “Shit, Mellas. I mean a fucking politician.”

  Mellas stiffened. “Is that what you think of me?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I think.”

  Mellas said nothing.

  “Shit, Mellas, don’t get your feelings hurt. I didn’t say I didn’t like you, for Christ’s sake, or you’re some sort of bad person. Although I will grant you the company you’ll keep is going to be sleazier than average. Just accept that you’re a fucking politician. So was Abraham Lincoln, and Winston Churchill. So was Dwight Eisenhower.” He paused. “It ain’t like they’re bad people. And they all ran a pretty good war.”

  Mellas smiled ruefully. “You really think it’s all about politics?”

  Hawke blew air upward. Mellas could see his breath. “No,” he said. “You better believe it ain’t all about politics.” He tossed a pebble into the stream and then looked directly at Mellas. “Simpson’s right. All these arms caches we’re uncovering can only be a tiny percentage of the total. That means there’s a lot of gooks around here. A lot. How the fuck do you think all that shit gets carried in without trucks except by a lot of fucking backs?” He checked to see if he had Mellas’s attention. “The caches we’ve found are stashed in a line pointing east from Laos to the flats. To pull off that political op at Cam Lo we had to pull back from Laos and the DMZ. Matterhorn controls the west end of Mutter’s Ridge. Whoever controls Mutter’s Ridge controls Route 9. If the NVA control Route 9 they can cut off Khe Sanh and VCB from the coast. They cut off Khe Sanh and VCB and they can take Camp Carroll. Then the gooks come down Route 9 with tanks and you can kiss fucking Quang Tri, Dong Ha, and Hue good-bye. That ain’t politics.”

  The company started moving at dawn. It would be the eighth day without food. The kid with the broken leg was carried fireman style by friends who took turns. The senior squid gave the kid all the pills he felt his system could stand, to keep him from screaming. As the company moved forward, everyone passed a message scratched into the rocks: FIRST THEY SHAVED HIM. THEN THEY HUMPED HIM TO DEATH.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The canyon ended. The company stared upward at a wall of jungle-covered cliffs and terraces that rose out of sight in the fog. The top of the wall was Hill 1609. Their job was to turn it into Firebase Sky Cap.

  Mellas’s helmet fell from his head when he leaned backward and tried to see the top. He let it lie behind him and stared, stupefied, having no idea how they were going to climb the wall by nightfall. Fitch’s voice came over the radio. Still deep in jungle, he could see nothing of what Mellas saw. “Come on, Bravo One,” he said impatiently. “Let’s move it up there.”

  Mellas waved a hand at Jackson, pointed firmly upward with one index finger, and put his helmet back on. Jackson, at the base of the cliff, nodded to Cortell and Broyer. Cortell gave him the finger. Broyer shoved his black plastic glasses back on his nose and took a deep breath, looking up the cliff a long time before he exhaled. Jackson slipped the squad’s coil of nylon Goldline rope off his pack and passed it up to them. The two of them roped up, and Broyer started moving, his face against the cliff, pulling the rope up after him as Cortell paid it out. There seemed no place to go. Then Broyer found a root and tugged on it. It held—but vegetable holds were dangerous, and he knew it. He hauled himself shakily up to a narrow sloping ledge and tried to get secure with his butt up against the cliff and his boots on a nubbin of rock. He passed the rope around his waist in a hasty belay and then whispered as loud as he dared, “OK, I’m ready.”

  Cortell followed, pulled up by Broyer. Squeezing together on the ledge, leaning back on the cliff, they tied-in to exposed roots and put a friction loop over a barely adequate bump of rock. They then dropped the rope end down again and belayed Jackson, who was followed by Mellas, then Hamilton, then Mallory’s machine gun, then Mallory, then the boxes of ammunition that Mallory and Barber, his A gunner, had been carrying, and so on until the next squad arrived with its own rope. Then Jackson’s squad moved ever higher, repeating the process, but with different people leading. Soon the platoon was strung out in stages all along the cliff face. Fitch kept the rest of the company hidden in the jungle just in case there were NVA on top. Mellas knew it was the right thing to do, but he now regretted that his map skills had put First Platoon at the lead so often. His face and nose were pressed against the wet cliff, and he inhaled the smells of moss and dirt. A single NVA squad on the top could kill half the platoon before the kids could scramble down to safety. A single NVA machine gun across from the canyon could probably get them all. They were fucked.

  Five hours later they were still climbing, surrounded by fog. Robertson and Jermain from Second Squad were now on point, with Jacobs close behind them, stuttering encouragement. Jermain had the squat M-79 loaded with fléchettes so he could at least spray anyone looking down at them and fire the weapon one-handed without having to aim. Robertson, who as a fire team leader could have ordered someone else to take point, hadn’t had the heart to give the job to anyone but himself. He was no
w separated from his team by Jacobs, who himself had moved closer to the point position from his normally safer one behind the first fire team. Robertson was wondering whether to keep the safety of his M-16 off or on. If it was on and he fucked up, he’d be very likely to kill Jermain, who would certainly fall off the cliff, and, being roped into Robertson, take Robertson with him. On the other hand, if the enemy peered over the edge and Robertson didn’t fire instantly on full automatic, because again he’d be one-handed, he might as well not even be carrying the damned weapon. He resolved the dilemma by nervously switching the safety on and off every minute or two.

  Moving up the steep face of the cliff made silence impossible. If the NVA were waiting, Robertson thought, the two of them for certain—and probably the entire squad, including the lieutenant and Hamilton—would have to be written off in order to get the company out. Compared, however, with the constant draining pull against gravity and hunger, and the obstinate rock face the jungle now presented to them, death didn’t seem so bad.

  He saw that Lieutenant Mellas had reached a flat spot below him and was looking up. Robertson heaved himself and his heavy pack over a large rock formation. He stopped, breathing hard, perched precariously next to Jermain, who was sitting with his back against the cliff, looking upward, holding his M-79 above his head. Clearly, the small space was safe for only one of them. There seemed no place he could move. His face was flushed and felt hot and full. He knew that he was crying, because he had to keep wiping tears away to look for his next handhold.

  The lieutenant pointed a thumb upward, nodding encouragingly. God knows how the guys behind us with the machine guns and mortars are doing, Robertson thought. Or the poor fucker with the broken leg and the ones carrying him. He turned to look upward into the fog. The cliff stood above him, unmovable, impossibly steep, its unseen top seemingly beyond reach. Slowly, with each breath, his anger grew: at the cliff, the bullshit, the hunger, the war—everything. He erupted in a frenzy of activity. He pumped his legs madly against the side of the cliff, scrambling for all he was worth on friction alone, moaning as he half-suppressed an angry scream. When he took off, he nearly shoved Jermain off the cliff, and Jermain actually raised the M-79 to club him but must have realized that he had Robertson on belay and didn’t. Jermain paid out rope so that Robertson wouldn’t be jerked short and fall. Robertson reached safety, just a few meters above Jermain, and apologized. Both of them were crying openly, like small children who needed to be fed and tucked into bed.