Matterhorn Read online

  “You forgot the belt buckle, Lieutenant,” Daniels said. “Ten cases of Coke in Da Nang, minimum.” Daniels groped for the buckle in the dark and quickly cut it loose.

  They moved off about fifty meters and Mellas formed them into a tight circle. After ten minutes of silence they heard a moan and then a very ordinary sound.

  “Shit,” Vancouver whispered, almost in disbelief. “He’s fucking crying.”

  Mellas shut his eyes.

  The crying didn’t stop and was soon mixed with pleading foreign words. The sound cut through Mellas like a shaft of steel. The sobbing rose and fell in intensity. The pleading continued, a child crying for help, afraid to die.

  “Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up,” Mellas whispered aloud. The others were silent, waiting for Mellas’s lead. “Shit,” Mellas finally said. “Let’s go find him.”

  The youth had managed to crawl nearly thirty meters from where they’d left him. Mellas turned on his flashlight, shielding it with his hand. The soldier had ground dirt into his mouth, and it had mixed with blood-flecked saliva in his teeth. He watched the Marines, eyes wide, lips pleading silently.

  “Well, sir, it looks like his friends are east of here,” Fredrickson said.

  “Yeah,” Mellas whispered.

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Do you think he’ll live?” Mellas asked.

  “Won’t make much difference anyway.”

  “How come?”

  “Tigers. It’s a pretty easy piece of meat.”

  “He’d die before then, wouldn’t he?”

  “Fucked if I know. I’m just an HM-three.”

  Suddenly the kid broke down and an anguished cry escaped his lips, followed by more frightened choking sobbing.

  Fredrickson switched the safety off of his M-16. “It won’t be the first time, sir,” he said.

  “No, don’t.” Mellas switched off his own safety. He pointed the barrel directly at the kid’s head. The kid looked up at him, crying loudly, mucus running from his nose. Mellas switched the safety back on. “We can’t,” he whispered.

  “Lieutenant, do him a favor. He’s going to die.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “I fucking know it.”

  “Maybe we could get him back.”

  Fredrickson sighed. “We’d trail his guts all over the place. Even if he did live, we’d just have to turn him over to the ARVNs and they’d kill him slower than the tigers.”

  “We don’t know that for certain.” Mellas toed the kid gently.

  Fredrickson placed the barrel of his rifle against the kid’s head.

  “Don’t shoot him,” Mellas said coldly. “That’s an order, Fredrickson.” He backed away from the boy. “He might make it. Maybe his buddies are real close.”

  “If they are,” Gambaccini said, “let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “You going to leave him, Lieutenant?” Fredrickson asked.

  “He might live,” Mellas said. “There’s a chance one of his guys could pick him up. They must have heard the firing.” He struggled for more reasons. “It’d be murder.”

  Nobody said anything. The jungle had gone silent. Mellas no longer had any illusions about their vulnerability. They were alone, just as this single crying stranger at their feet was alone, their reason for being here probably not much different from his.

  “East, sir?” Vancouver asked. “The way he was heading?”

  Mellas didn’t say anything. The others shifted nervously.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Gambaccini finally whispered. “I’m cold.”

  There was a tense silence. Mellas could hear them all breathing, smell the sweat rising off them in the darkness. He felt Daniels next to him with the large PRC-25 on his back, scratchy whispers coming from the handset. Mellas rubbed his face, feeling the slight growth of his beard.

  He knew it was no use pretending anymore. He was simply too frightened to push farther ahead into the darkness. “Daniels, tell Bravo we’re coming in.”

  “All right,” Gambaccini whispered.

  “I ain’t complaining,” whispered Daniels, “but how come?”

  Again there was silence as Mellas struggled for an answer. Finally he said, “Because I don’t want to be out here any more.”

  All that night, Mellas didn’t say a word beyond confirming Daniels’s map reading. When morning came, Mellas expected the others to avoid looking him in the eye. Surprisingly, everyone kept offering him reasons he could give Fitch for coming in early. He could say that someone was ill or had turned an ankle. As they began to feel safer, climbing back up Sky Cap, the excuses for coming in grew wilder and more outrageously funny and the imaginary profits from the AK-47 and the belt buckle soared.

  Mellas was unable to join the general levity. He couldn’t look at Fredrickson. He knew Fredrickson thought he should have killed the wounded boy but didn’t have the guts. He wondered if Fredrickson was right, just as he kept wondering if he was going to lie to Fitch about the mission.

  When he arrived at the CP he found Fitch and Hawke sitting cross-legged eating C-rations. He pulled the Vietnamese kid’s wallet out of his pocket, weighing it in his hand. “Sorry for aborting the mission, Jim. I don’t know what to say for myself.”

  “Say you got scared,” Fitch said. “Shit, confession’s good for the soul. I told battalion you went out on a kill team, bagged a gook, and didn’t have anyone hurt. A complete success.”

  “Great.” Mellas kept looking at the wallet in his hand.

  “Besides, it’s good you came in early,” Fitch said. “We’re skying out to VCB tomorrow. Just got word.”

  Mellas continued to look at the wallet, saying nothing. Hawke, who had been watching Mellas through the steam that rose from his pear-can coffee mug, handed Mellas the cup. Mellas gave a brief smile and took a drink. His hand was shaking. Hawke said in a calm voice, “Something happened. You want to talk about it?”

  Mellas didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “I think I know where the gooks are.” He pulled out his map and pointed to the spot, his hand still trembling.

  “How do you know that, Mel?” Hawke asked.

  “From the direction he crawled after he was shot.” Mellas tossed the wallet down at Fitch. Then he dug into his pocket and pulled out the soldier’s unit and rank patches. He looked at them, then at Fitch and Hawke, who were no longer eating. “I let him crawl toward home with his guts hanging out.” He started sobbing. “I just left him there.” Snot was streaming from his nose. “I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” His hands were now shaking with his body as he clenched the two pieces of cloth to his eyes.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The chopper’s deck vibrated beneath them as they leaned back against the thin metal that separated them from several thousand feet of empty space. The trip from Sky Cap to Vandegrift Combat Base was like magic. Jungle-covered mountains that would have taken weeks to cross flashed beneath them in minutes.

  Vancouver wondered if his gook sword or his space blanket had come in yet. Skosh was dreaming about R & R in Sydney and wondering what it was really like to have intercourse with a girl. Hawke was wondering if this might be his last time out in the bush, if maybe he could wangle a job in the rear. Fitch kept going over the events of the long march, preparing his case, worried sick about the disgrace of being relieved of command. He also wanted to get out of his filthy clothing and take a shower. China was counting the number of people ahead of him to pull KP duty and wondering what he could do to jump the line before the company skyed out on another operation. He needed time in the rear for organizing. Pollini was kneeling at a shot-out porthole watching the landscape slide beneath them. He wondered if any of his brothers or sisters were thinking about him. Cassidy wanted to sleep—to sleep and sleep and forget the shame of one of his own men wanting to kill him. Goodwin wanted to get drunk. So did Ridlow, Bass, Sheller, Rider, Tilghman, Pallack, Gambaccini, Jermain, and a lot of others. Jackson wanted to get stoned, as did Mole, Cortell, Broyer, Mallory, Jacobs, Fredrickson, Robertson, and Relsnik. Jancowitz fingered the now filthy red silk scarf he’d st
uffed in his pocket, not wanting to look at it but not wanting to throw it away. It still smelled faintly of Susi’s perfume. He didn’t care how he did it, he just wanted to forget where he was.

  Mellas, left behind with a squad to guide Kilo Company into the lines, kept seeing the twisted face, running with snot, of the young Vietnamese soldier. He wondered why the kid had been out there alone in the first place and whether there was a chance he’d lived.

  While the chundering workhorse helicopters flew back and forth between VCB and Sky Cap, sending out the freshly outfitted troops of Kilo Company and picking up the ragged troops from Bravo Company, Colonel Mulvaney was returning from a briefing at Dong Ha.

  The stupid cordon operation was over, and Mulvaney was anxious to be snooping and pooping, as he called it: interdicting the flow of NVA supplies into the Au Shau Valley and toward Da Nang, screening the NVA from the fertile plains to the east of them, and keeping open Route 9, the only road running from the coast through the mountains to Khe Sanh and Laos. If the NVA ever got their armor down that road on a cloudy day, it would be Katie bar the gate.

  “Is that Bravo coming in from Sky Cap, Corporal Odegaard?” Mulvaney asked his driver.

  Odegaard slowed the jeep as they passed the groups of two or three trudging wearily alongside the muddy road. When they passed a Marine with an Australian-style bush cover, brim turned up on the right side, and a sawed-off machine gun, Odegaard said, “That’s them, sir. There’s Vancouver, the guy who fucked up the ambush for them.”

  “Pull over when you get past those crates over there.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Odegaard swung the jeep off the road and came to a stop. Mulvaney watched two kids without trousers go by, waddling to avoid irritating the ringworm that covered them from waist to ankle. His experienced eye noted the rot on hands and faces, the state of disrepair of the mortars, and the way the kids’ rotting uniforms hung off their thin bodies.

  “You want me to turn the engine off, sir?”

  “No. Let’s go.”

  Before they came upon Bravo Company, Mulvaney had been telling Odegaard one of his better sea stories. He didn’t finish it and was silent all the way back to regimental headquarters. During the briefing, he said little. Toward the end the subject of who would supply the company for Bald Eagle-Sparrow Hawk duty came up. Bald Eagle was a company held on constant alert, combat loaded, at the edge of the VCB airstrip. It was there to instantly reinforce any unit in trouble or to exploit a tactical advantage. Sparrow Hawk was a platoon within that company for the smaller jobs, like getting recon teams out of trouble. No one liked the duty. The Marines spent their days doing make-work while ridden with anxiety because at any instant the company could be launched into combat.

  “We had it last, sir,” the commander of Third Battalion said.

  “That makes it your turn, Simpson,” Mulvaney said.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Simpson said, writing it in his green pocket notebook, clearly unhappy, as it would leave him with only three companies.

  After the briefing, Mulvaney headed for the door as soon as he saw Simpson and Blakely about to leave. “Why don’t you stop by for a drink, Simpson?” he said.

  Blakely, clearly not invited, nervously stubbed out his cigarette.

  “It’d be my pleasure, sir,” Simpson responded. “When would be convenient?”

  “Right now.” Mulvaney walked away.

  Mulvaney was pouring two shot glasses of Jefferson’s Reserve when Simpson pushed through the flap of his tent. “You use water?” he asked, reaching into his little refrigerator. Simpson said he’d have it straight.

  Mulvaney poured himself some water and dumped the shot of bourbon into it. He raised his glass. “To the Corps,” he said.

  “To the Corps,” Simpson echoed. He tossed down the drink in a single motion and, seeming to realize what he’d done, nervously wiped his mouth with his hand.

  “Sit, sit.” Mulvaney motioned toward a chair. Simpson sat. Mulvaney leaned against the edge of his desk. He took another slow drink, then looked at Simpson. “We are engaged in a shitty war,” he said slowly. “A shitty little war that is tearing apart the thing I love. Do you love the Marine Corps, Simpson?”

  “Yes sir, I do.”

  “I mean do you really love it? Do you go to bed with it at night, wake up with it in the morning, see its sour side, see it when it’s sick and tired, not just when it’s glorious? Do you think about it all the time? Or do you think about where it’s going to get you?”

  “Well, sir, I . . .”

  “Unh-unh. I’ll tell you, Simpson. You think about where it’s going to get you. You use it. Either that or you let someone else use you so it’ll get them somewhere. I don’t know which is worse.”

  “I, uhm . . .”

  “Shut up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And don’t worry. It’s all my nickel. And none of it’s going into your fucking fitness report.”

  Mulvaney walked over to look at a framed photograph on the wall. It showed a Marine platoon in summer uniforms on a cold, rainy day. On it was written “New Zealand, July 1942.” Mulvaney nodded toward it. Without looking at Simpson he said quietly, “Half of those guys are dead.” He paused briefly. “A lot of them my fault.”

  He turned to look at Simpson. “America uses us like whores, Simpson. When it wants a good fuck it pours in the money and we give it a moment of glory. Then when it’s over, it sneaks out the back door and pretends it doesn’t know who we are.” Mulvaney swirled the ice, watching it dissolve. “Yeah, we’re whores,” he continued, almost to himself now. “I admit it. But we’re good ones. We’re good at fucking. We like our work. So the customer gets ashamed afterward. So hypocrisy’s always been part of the profession. We know that.” Mulvaney narrowed his eyes and looked at Simpson. “But this time the customer doesn’t want to fuck. He wants to play horsy and come in through the back door. And he’s riding us around the room with a fucking bridle and whip and spurs.” Mulvaney shook his head. “We ain’t good at that. It turns our stomach. And it’s destroying us.”

  Mulvaney was silent. Simpson looked at the bottle on the desk, then quickly back to his own empty shot glass.

  “Did you look at Bravo Company when they came in today?” Mulvaney asked.

  “I talked with their skipper, Lieutenant Fitch, sir.”

  “Did you see them, Simpson?” Mulvaney’s voice started to rise.

  “No sir.”

  “They looked like shit.”

  “Yes sir. I’ll get right on it, sir. I’ll talk with Lieutenant Fitch. I’ve been thinking of relieving him ever since he was on Matterhorn.”

  “It ain’t Fitch, Simpson.” Mulvaney took a deep breath and another drink. “They’ve been used. Badly. How long they been out in the bush?”

  “By bush do you mean on a fire support base doing routine patrols or actually in the jungle on an operation?”

  “I mean how long without regular food, regular sleep, safety, baths, vitamins . . .” The last word was a dangling question and an accusation. “I don’t care what the fuck you have to do to get it, but I’m going to inspect Bravo Company’s garbage cans tomorrow night, and I want them full of orange peels and apple cores.”

  Simpson pulled out his green notebook and wrote something down.

  “Goddamn it, Simpson, put that away. If you can’t remember this . . .”

  “Yes sir.” Simpson put the notebook back in his pocket.

  Mulvaney turned from Simpson. When he spoke, he again addressed the photograph. “Simpson, I’m tired. I’m tired of being used. Killing for pay and politics is prostitution enough, but doing it this way sickens me. It sickens my soul, what’s left of it.” He slowly turned and pointed a thick forefinger at Simpson. “But you, you and that fucking Three of yours, you’re one of the customers this time. But let me tell you something. I’ll be goddamned if I’ll let my troops play the customer’s fucking game, even if the brass are.”

  Mulvaney was breathing heavily; his face was hot. He leaned over the desk. “The next time you tell me one of your companies is in good shape before I send them
on an operation, by God you better not be lying. Now, get out of here. You’re dismissed.”

  Simpson put his cap on and left, trembling.

  Mulvaney swept the empty glasses from his desk with a cry of frustration. He sat down and watched the ice form puddles on the floor. Then he walked over to the picture on the wall and stood there looking at it for a long time.

  Mellas arrived on the last chopper. With the others on his heli team, he shuffled along silently in a fog of fatigue. A particularly bad patch of his jungle rot was oozing pus. He wiped it on the sides of his trousers, where it mingled with the accumulations of many weeks. The trousers hung loosely from his waist. He’d lost twenty-five pounds. He was a bush Marine. He and his team walked as if they owned the LZ, but they were unaware of it. Mellas felt as though he was getting sick.

  They arrived at the supply tent. Small groups of kids from the other platoons were lying out in the front on the wet clay, drinking beer. Mellas pushed aside the heavy canvas tent flap and walked in. Fitch, Hawke, Cassidy, and Kendall were there, along with a new second lieutenant. The new lieutenant looked up at Mellas and smiled, eager to please. Mellas, tired, ragged, hair touching his collar, did not smile back.

  “Lieutenant,” Cassidy said, “you look like you could use a beer.” He reached underneath the table and pulled out a rusty can of Black Label. “Sorry it’s just Black Mabel, but the good stuff gets picked off in Da Nang.” He punched two triangular holes in the top and handed the beer to Mellas. Mellas took a long pull. The beer was warm, but it had the taste of good memories. He felt the stinging carbonation as it went down his throat. He chugged the entire can and sighed. “Thanks, Gunny.” Cassidy was already opening another can for him.

  Fitch was looking quite dapper again. His hair was cut and parted neatly on the side and he wore clean jungle utilities. Hawke looked clean, but it wasn’t in him to look dapper. Mellas noticed that he was wearing a first lieutenant’s bars.