Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War Page 38

  The sustained heavy slapping of an AK-47 on full automatic sent the three of them flat on their stomachs, their beer cans thrown aside. People came piling out of the tents around them, running for the bunkers, some hopping as they struggled into trousers. The AK opened up again and a ricochet spun over the three lieutenants’ heads with an almost lazy hum. Hawke was clutching the case of beer, protecting it from possible damage from the bullets.

  Shouts arose from the battalion area.

  “What do you think?” Mellas asked, his head spinning. Hawke shrugged and popped open three more cans of beer. “If it’s fucking sappers, they’re after the fucking helicopters. And I ain’t a fucking helicopter. But I don’t ever remember sappers doing one-man attacks.”

  The three of them sat up, watching the confusion. Blakely went sprinting across to the COC bunker, head bent close to the ground, shouting directions to people. He disappeared into the bunker.

  “Hey, Jayhawk,” Goodwin said.

  “Uh?”

  “What kind of medal you think the Six and Three will get for this one?”

  “Navy Cross,” Hawke said, “or possibly higher.” Hawke raised his hand to his lips and gave a jeering raspberry of a bugle call.

  A small figure came creeping up behind the BOQ tent. They all froze, realizing they were without rifles; the bravado of the beer was gone. The man, his back to them, was creeping up on the tent.

  Goodwin moved very slowly, motioning to Hawke and Mellas, indicating that they should roll in his direction. He pointed into some high grass behind him.

  The figure continued to creep along the back of the tent. “Hey, Lieutenant Hawke,” the figure whispered to the tent. “Hey Lieutenant Jayhawk, it’s Pollini, sir.”

  “Shit, Jack,” Goodwin moaned.

  “Shortround, you fucking numby,” Hawke hissed. “Get over here.”

  Pollini turned around. “What are you guys doing in the bushes?” he asked loudly. He groped his way toward them. He was carrying the AK- 47 Vancouver had brought back from Mellas’s aborted reconnaissance.

  “Over here, Pollini,” Mellas whispered fiercely. “Where the hell do you think you are, Central fucking Park? Get your ass down before someone sees you.”

  “Oh, Lieutenant Mellas, sir,” he said aloud. He walked over and sat down. Hawke grabbed the AK-47 from Pollini, who smelled like a grape factory on strike in a heat wave. His eyes were clouded over and a little drool was forming at the side of his mouth.

  Mellas was furious with him. “This stunt could land you in the brig for months. What do you think you’re doing?”

  Pollini scratched his head and then said brightly. “Just shooting up the place.”

  “Why, Pollini?” Hawke asked.

  “Wasn’t that right?” he answered. “Isn’t that what a shit bird does?” He stood up, weaving badly. “Oh, here, sirs.” He dug into his pockets. Out came a loaded magazine. “Here’s what makes the little fucker go bang.” He started laughing.

  Goodwin pulled him to the ground.

  Pollini suddenly broke into sobs, the start of a crying jag. He curled up in a ball, sobbing, “I don’t want to be a shit bird. I wanted to be a good Marine. I want my father to be proud of me.”

  “Who said you were a shit bird?” Mellas asked, feeling suddenly awkward about all the times he’d poked fun at Pollini. “Hey, you can’t cry like that,” he said softly. “Hey, Pollini, don’t cry.”

  Through the sobs came the story.

  Mellas had a hand on Pollini’s back. He didn’t know what to do. He turned to Hawke. “But why would he get so upset? To go after a guy with a fucking soup ladle?”

  “His father was killed in Korea.”

  Mellas moaned. “Isn’t the shit of this war enough? We still have to deal with shit from Korea?” He shook his head slowly. Did it have to go on and on and on?

  Pollini eventually fell into a stupefied sleep. The three lieutenants finished the case of beer, watching the battalion area return to normal. Long after it was quiet, Goodwin threw Pollini over his shoulder, Mellas took the rifle, and together they walked toward the landing zone and put Pollini to bed.

  The next day Mellas took him off KP.

  The same day, the Bald Eagle was launched into combat. But not without complications.

  The battalion surgeon, Lieutenant Maurice Witherspoon Selby, USN, was sick and tired of the mud, the lack of ice, the unsanitary conditions, and the monotonous round of malaria, dysentery, ringworm, infected leech bites, jungle rot, crotch rot, sore backs, sore legs, and sore heads. He was particularly tired of PFC Mallory’s sore head. Mallory had just returned from an examination by the lone psychiatrist at Fifth Med in Quang Tri with a note saying he had a passive-aggressive personality and he’d have to learn to live with his headaches. He also had a note from the Fifth Med dentist, who had put on temporary caps and said that Mallory was fit for duty but should see about getting a bridge when he got back to the States.

  “Look, I’m busy,” Selby said to Hospitalman First Class Foster. “Just give him some more Darvon and get him out of the sick bay.”

  “He seems pretty riled up, sir.”

  “Goddamn it, I’ve looked at his ugly head until I’m blue in the face. I was training to be a surgeon, not a psychiatrist.” Selby reached for a bottle of aspirin and slugged down four, not bothering to take any water. “Now you tell him that sick bay goes at oh nine hundred, and let me do some work. You got that, Foster?”

  “Yes, sir.” Foster paused as Selby sat down behind the crude desk, his hands over his face. “Sir?”

  “What, Foster?”

  “Will you see him at oh nine hundred? I don’t think he’s going to take one of us squids giving him more Darvon. He’s eating the stuff like candy anyway.”

  “What do you want me to do, hold his fucking hand? I’ve got a bunch of people out there that I can cure, and I’m sick of seeing him. No. I won’t see him.”

  “Yes sir.” Foster walked to the entrance of the tent. Mallory was sitting on a bench, his forehead in his hands, gear strewn beneath his feet. His flak jacket and .45 lay across his pack.

  “PFC Mallory,” Foster said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I talked with Lieutenant Selby and he said there wasn’t really anything he could do for you.”

  “That’s what they all say. What’s going down around here, huh?” Foster sighed. “Mallory, I don’t know what else to tell you. If there’s nothing they can do in Quang Tri, there’s sure not anything we can do here.”

  “My fucking head hurts.”

  “I know that, Mallory. All I can do for you is give you—”

  “Fucking pills.” Mallory stood up, screaming, “I don’t need fucking pills. I need help. And that motherfucking doctor is fucking me over and I’m tired of it. I’m tired, you hear me?” He began to whimper. “I’m so fucking tired.”

  Selby walked through the partition. “You get out of this sick bay right now, Marine,” he said, “and if your ass isn’t out that door in five seconds, I’ll have it for disobeying a direct order.”

  Mallory, visibly in pain, screamed and reached for the .45 at his feet. He pulled back the action. “My fucking head hurts and I want it fixed.” The pistol was pointed at Selby’s stomach.

  Selby backed slowly away. “You’re going to be in a heap of trouble over this, Marine,” he said nervously.

  “My head hurts.”

  Foster started easing toward the door. Mallory turned the pistol on him. “Where you going?”

  “Let me go find the colonel or someone. Maybe they can do something about it. What do you think, Lieutenant Selby?”

  “Oh, yes,” Selby said. “Maybe we could send you to Da Nang. Maybe Japan. I had no idea you—”

  “You shut up,” Mallory said. “You had no idea. That right. You had no idea until I stand up here with a gun barrel poked at you fat face. You sure as shit have no fucking idea.”

  “Look, I’ll write up an order right now, sending you to Da Nang.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Sure I can. Foster here can get it all typed up, can’t you, Foster?”

  “Y
es, sir. That’s right.”

  “All right. You start typing,” Selby said to Foster. It was clear that Mallory’s anger was cooling. Selby could also see that Mallory was no longer sure about what to do with the pistol or how to get out of the situation.

  Foster put three forms with carbon paper between them into a typewriter and started pounding away. Selby stood stiffly next to Foster’s table, trying to summon up enough courage to glare at Mallory. He ended up pretending to read what Foster was typing.

  Hospitalman Third Class Milbank, returning from breakfast, came whistling up the small path to the aid station. He stopped short when Foster shouted, “Sick call doesn’t go until oh nine hundred, Marine.”

  “What?” Milbank said. He could see Foster through the open doorway, with Selby standing nervously by him.

  “You know the rules, Marine. Oh nine hundred. We’re under a lot of pressure here. Now clear out.”

  “Sure.” Milbank walked off the path, puzzled. He walked quietly to the side of the tent. It was absolutely silent inside. Then he heard a hostile voice. “Where you going?”

  “I have to look up the right coding on the order.” Foster’s voice answered, a little too slowly and clearly. “It’s in that book over there.”

  Milbank carefully peeked beneath the wall of the tent. It ended about half an inch above the ground. He could make out the bleached boots of a bush Marine and a helmet among some gear with the medevac number M-0941 on it. A medevac number consisted of the first letter of the man’s surname and the last four of his serial number. Then he saw the .45 held in a black hand. M—Mallory. It was that morose fucking machine gunner with the headaches, from Bravo Company.

  Milbank ran to the mess tent and found Staff Sergeant Cassidy scraping the remains of his breakfast into a garbage can. “Mallory’s got a .45 pulled on Doc Selby and Foster,” he said. “Over at the battalion aid station.”

  “You get Lieutenant Fitch right now,” Cassidy said. He ran for the aid station.

  Milbank didn’t know which way to go. He spotted Connolly and shouted at him. “Mallory’s pulled a fucking gun on Doc Selby. Get your skipper up here right away.” Everyone in the place stopped eating. Connolly looked at his cup of coffee and closed his eyes, then ran for the airstrip.

  Cassidy reached the battalion aid station with Milbank close behind him. “You can see him through the crack under the tent,” Milbank whispered. Cassidy merely grunted. He went to the ground and peered up through the narrow open space between the tent wall and the ground. He saw Mallory’s jungle camouflage trousers and then the underside of the .45.

  He walked calmly around the tent and through the door. Mallory, surprised, took a step backward.

  “Give it to me, Mallory,” Cassidy said.

  “I tell you, my head hurts. I’m getting outa here.”

  “Give me the fucking pistol or so help me I’ll jam it down your scrawny fucking throat.”

  Mallory shook his head, then seemed to collapse into a whimpering child. “It hurts me.”

  Cassidy walked over, took the .45 away, and tossed it at Selby, who put his hands in front of his face rather than catch it. The pistol clattered to the floor. “They don’t work without magazines in them, Lieutenant Selby, sir,” Cassidy said. He looked at Mallory, his hands on his hips. “And you, you fucking excuse for a man, I ought to tear your head right off.” Cassidy suddenly lashed out with his fist, sinking it into Mallory’s stomach. Mallory doubled over. Cassidy, cooling down, picked up Mallory’s .45, went to Mallory’s pack, and found a magazine, which he inserted into the butt. He pointed it at Mallory. “This one’s loaded, fuckhead. Now get up.”

  “I got my rights,” Mallory muttered.

  “That’s all that’s saving you, puke,” Cassidy said. “Now move.”

  Cassidy walked Mallory past a crowd of Marines to an empty steel conex box and roughly kicked him inside. He had just rammed the steel pin into the hasp of the heavy door when Fitch and Pallack came roaring up in the jeep. Major Blakely came running over from COC.

  “What the fuck happened?” Fitch asked.

  “It’s that puke Mallory.”

  “What’s going on here, Sergeant Cassidy?” Blakely asked, panting after his run.

  “Like I was telling the skipper here, sir, it’s PFC Mallory. He pulled his .45 on Lieutenant Selby over in the sick bay. I locked his ass in this cargo box.”

  “I guess he won’t cause too much trouble in there,” Blakely said, smiling.

  Fitch smiled hesitantly, took his cap off, and stroked his hair. “Anyone hurt?” he asked.

  “No sir,” Cassidy answered.

  “Well, we can’t just leave him in the cargo box,” Fitch said, half questioningly.

  “Leave him there for now,” Blakely answered quickly. “Do some good to see someone locked up for a crime around here. Besides, we got another situation developing I want you to sit in on.”

  Fitch carefully put his cap back on. “We’ll talk about it later, Sergeant Cassidy,” he said. He and Blakely walked away.

  Cassidy tossed the .45 to a Marine from H & S who was in the crowd. “Schaffran, shoot anyone that tries to let this fuckhead out. Just make sure he doesn’t roll over and die in there. He doesn’t come out until I say so.” Cassidy walked off.

  “Not even to piss, Sergeant Cassidy?” Schaffran called after him.

  “Till I say so, numbnuts.”

  Schaffran looked at the pistol, sighed, and sat down in front of the box.

  Twenty minutes later Mellas received word to put the Bald Eagle on alert. It was another reconnaissance team, call sign Sweet Alice. They were fighting a running battle with a company-size unit just south of Matterhorn. Sweet Alice had six Marines.

  Mellas radioed the news to the work party over at Task Force Oscar. Something deep within him stirred as he watched the Marines run down the hill from where they’d been filling sandbags. Entrenching tools and shirts in their hands, they streamed across the damp airstrip, running for their gear, running possibly to their deaths.

  “Semper Fi, brothers,” Mellas whispered to himself, understanding for the first time what the word “always” required if you meant what you said. He remembered a discussion at his eating club with his friends and their dates one night after a dance. They were talking about the stupidity of warriors and their silly codes of honor. He’d joined in, laughing with the rest of them, hiding the fact that he’d joined the Marines several years before, not wanting to be thought of as whatever bad thing they thought a warrior was. Protected by their class and sex, they would never have to know otherwise. Now, seeing the Marines run across the landing zone, Mellas knew he could never join that cynical laughter again. Something had changed. People he loved were going to die to give meaning and life to what he’d always thought of as meaningless words in a dead language.

  Mellas’s knees were quivering. His hands shook as he buckled down the straps on his pack and tested the springs in his ammunition magazines. “Make sure everyone’s canteens are full,” he said to each platoon commander. “You never know when we’ll be getting water next.”

  Fracasso was walking back and forth like a caged animal. In his hands were several plastic-covered cards on which he had written the directions for calling in artillery fire and air strikes.

  “Don’t worry about it, Fracasso,” Mellas said. “When you need artillery, you’ll get it called in. Just remember they need to know three things: where you are, where the gooks are, and then you just tell them if they’re long or short.” Fracasso laughed, looking at his carefully prepared cards. “Put them in your pocket if it makes you feel better,” Mellas said, sounding more combat-wise then he felt.

  He and Fracasso both turned at the sound of someone running up to them. It was China. “They got Mallory in a fuckin’ cage like some kind a animal,” he screamed at Mellas. “They ain’t gettin’ away with shit like that.”

  Mellas put his arms up, palms toward China. That gesture cooled China down a bit. “He pulled a fucking pistol on a goddamned Navy doctor,” Mellas said evenly. “What do you want me to do about it, change the f
ucking rules for you?”

  “They don’t lock him in no cage like no fuckin’ animal. That’s the fuckin’ rules.”

  “China, we don’t have time for this bullshit. We got somebody in the bush in a shit sandwich. Mallory can fucking wait.”

  “But the pistol didn’t have no magazine in it.”

  This was news to Mellas. “What? You sure?”

  “Yes sir. One of the squids told me, and it makes sense. I know Mallory. Mallory wouldn’t shoot nobody.”