Matterhorn Page 40

  They heard roaring bursts of fire and yelling to their left, but Mellas barely registered this. It was Goodwin’s platoon, just released by Fitch.

  In the midst of the roaring they caught glimpses of Jancowitz’s head above the bushes. He was running directly along the contour of the hill, taking the NVA machine gun from the side. He fired a burst from his M-16. A man next to the machine gunner turned his AK-47 on Jancowitz, but Janc kept running forward.

  Jackson saw the gunner turn the machine gun toward Jancowitz. He scrambled to his feet and charged up the hill screaming, “Janc, you stupid motherfucker. You crazy stupid motherfucker.”

  Jancowitz released the spoon of his grenade as the gunner got the machine gun turned around and opened up on him. Janc seemed to throw the grenade and go down simultaneously, bullets bursting out of the back side of his flak jacket. Then his grenade went off—like a sudden hand clap in an empty room.

  Cortell went running after Jackson, firing quick bursts at the gun pit. Then, as if jerked by an unseen hand, Cortell’s neck snapped backward and his helmet went spinning into the air behind him. He sank to his knees, staring stupidly at his rifle, which he was holding horizontally in front of him. Then he collapsed forward, ending up with his bare head on the ground like a Muslim at prayer.

  Jackson kept running forward, trying to reach Jancowitz. Mellas reached Cortell and rolled him over on his side. Cortell’s knees were still folded up against his stomach in a fetal position. Blood was running off his forehead and his hair was matted with it. He was gritting his teeth in pain. “Janc got him, sir,” Cortell wheezed. “Janc got him. Oh, Janc. Oh, Lord Jesus.” Mellas grabbed Cortell’s gauze bandage package from his belt, ripped open the paper, and slapped it on what looked like a furrow starting at his forehead and going back over the top of his ear. He put Cortell’s hand on the bandage, pressing it down hard. “Don’t fucking move it,” he said.

  He turned back uphill. He passed Jancowitz’s body. Blood was still oozing from beneath the back of his flak jacket. A dark black patch was slowly spreading into both trouser legs. Three facts registered simultaneously: the machine gun was silent, Jancowitz was dead, and the opening had to be exploited. Mellas turned to his left and saw Goodwin already moving toward him with an entire squad. Goodwin, his natural fighting instincts functioning faster than Mellas was thinking, was already rushing into the gap where the machine-gun fire used to be. Within seconds he and five other Marines were behind the line of holes and bunkers. China, scrambling up the steep slope with the heavy machine gun against his chest, slammed into the earth at the edge of the former NVA machine gun’s position. He began laying fire over the NVA fighting holes to Goodwin’s right. Mellas immediately saw what China was doing. He kept running. He shouted at Goodwin, who didn’t seem to hear him. He ran. He made hand signals at the Marines behind him, redirecting them behind China, taking advantage of the fact that the enemy could no longer stand up long enough to take aim and fire because of the stream of China’s bullets. He caught Goodwin’s eye, pointed at him, and then pointed left. He pointed at his own chest and then pointed right. Chaos slipped momentarily into order.

  With Second Platoon now pouring through the gap and coming at the NVA from behind them, it seemed as if a heavy weight had been removed. “They’re on the top! I see Scar on the top!” The cry passed all around the hillside. Fracasso and the Marines of First Platoon surged forward. Mellas was exhilarated. All his fear had left him. He ran straight up to the hill’s crest, Marines appearing all along the line in small groups and surging through the line of holes. Those NVA soldiers who hadn’t been trapped in position were moving in rapid but disciplined flight down a finger to the northwest. What just seconds before had been mad scrambling now turned into methodical and cautious destruction. Grenades were rolled into holes and tossed into the openings of the crude log bunkers. As each NVA position fell, the one next to it became vulnerable. Any NVA soldier trying to break for the jungle was immediately killed by fire from several directions.

  Mellas met Goodwin at a short trench leading to the dark opening of a bunker. Both had their grenades out. They looked each other in the eye briefly, then Goodwin nodded and they both swung in front of the opening, threw their grenades, and dived to the side as the blast came ripping out of the entrance. They crawled in together, firing short bursts on automatic. Mellas was flat on the deck and Goodwin was just behind him in a crouch so that they could fire their rifles at the same time.

  There was no one inside.

  Mellas started to laugh and rolled over on his back, looking up at the roof of the gloomy bunker.

  “You two guys having fun, ay?” Vancouver was peering through the entrance at them, smiling. His face was streaked with sweat; his machine gun was steaming. His sword was sheathed. “Nagoolian went thataway.” He pointed toward Matterhorn.

  Mellas crawled out and sat on top of the bunker, his legs quivering so that he was unable to stand. The battle was over. There were pitifully few dead enemy soldiers to show for it.

  Goodwin moved off to set in his platoon. Ridlow, wounded in the leg, lay on the hillside, pallid with shock, and waited to be helped up to the LZ. Mellas, still shaking, trotted down the hill to guide in the Marines of Third Platoon, who were racing forward to set up for a possible counterattack.

  Mellas passed Pollini. His eyes were frozen open. He remembered Pollini’s voice as he cried out, “I’m hit.” How could he cry out if he’d been shot in the head? A guilty sickening thought wrenched Mellas’s stomach. Pollini’s head had been pointing downhill. Could he have shot Pollini when he was firing wildly upward, trying to keep the machine gunners’ heads down?

  Mellas stared at Pollini’s blank eyes. He sat down beside him, wanting to ask, wanting to explain what he’d done: that he really had wanted to save him, not just add a medal to his list of accomplishments. He had pulled Pollini off KP because he wanted to do right by him. He hadn’t meant for him to end up dead. But he could say none of it. Pollini was dead.

  Mellas tried to put down the thought that he could have killed Pollini. It must have been the gook machine gun. He wanted to leave the doubt behind, buried with the bullet in Pollini’s brain, but he knew he never could. If he made it out alive he’d carry this doubt with him forever.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Victory in combat is like sex with a prostitute. For a moment you forget everything in the sudden physical rush, but then you have to pay your money to the woman showing you the door. You see the dirt on the walls and your sorry image in the mirror.

  Thick fog made twilight of midmorning. It hid the Marines on Helicopter Hill from the sniper fire now coming from the bunkers that Bravo Company had built on Matterhorn. But the fog also kept the helicopters from evacuating the wounded. The Marines dragged their dead friends to a shallow pit near the top of the hill. Mellas and Fitch sat in the dark interior of the bunker Goodwin and Mellas had taken. The fog hung silver-gray in the entrance hole.

  Fitch started crying in small silent sobs, the tears running down his dirty cheeks and dripping on the map that lay between him and Mellas. Relsnik was transmitting medevac numbers, identifying the dead and wounded. “Zulu Five Niner Niner One. Over.”

  A bored voice came back over the radio. “I copy Zulu Five Niner Niner One. Over.”

  “That’s affirm. Bravo Niner One Four Niner. Over.”

  “Hey, is that a Coors too? Over.”

  “That’s a rog. These are all Coors. Did you copy that last? Over.”

  “Roger, I copy Bravo Niner One Four Niner. Give me the next one. Over.”

  And Relsnik did, reading them off one by one. The numbers would eventually lead a somber man, sickened by the job he had to do, to some woman’s door, to let her know that her husband or son would be coming home wrapped in rubber. The body would arrive in the early morning hours so that the people at the airport wouldn’t be disturbed.

  As he listened to Relsnik’s voice—Pollini, Poppa Seven One Four Eight; Jancowitz, Juliet Six Four Six Niner—Mellas retreated inside h
imself. How could it be possible? He analyzed his own moves from the moment he had started helping Pollini with the M-16. He’d warned him. But Pollini had gone up. He’d heard Pollini cry, “I’m hit.” Can a man with a head wound do that? But where else was Pollini wounded? What difference did that make? But Pollini had been lying with his head downhill. How did he get that way? An M-16 would surely have exploded his head, wouldn’t it? But what did a 7.62-millimeter NVA bullet do?

  Mellas kept part of his mind focused on the physical. Was it his bullet or not? That was a yes-or-no question, and he had to decide on the answer. The question that was not yes-or-no was why he had been there with Pollini in the first place. He could have stayed with the CP group. But he’d wanted to help. He’d also wanted to see what the experience was like. He’d found it unbelievably exciting. He’d wanted glory. He could have left Pollini there. Maybe Pollini would still be alive if he had. But he’d wanted to help. He’d wanted a medal. He was the one who had gotten soft and let Pollini off KP. If he’d stuck to his guns, Pollini would be alive at VCB. But Pollini had wanted to be with the company and do his share. Mellas could also have let Fredrickson, or someone else, crawl after Pollini, or waited until the fighting was over. But he’d wanted to do his share. He’d also wanted a medal.

  Mellas tried to imagine Goodwin in the same situation. There would have been no conflict. Scar would have wanted to help and he’d have wanted a medal. Helping and a medal were both good things. The fact that Pollini was dead didn’t make the desire for a medal wrong, did it? What’s fucking wrong with wanting a medal? Why did Mellas think it was bad? Why was he so confused? How did he get this way? From where did he dredge up all these doubts? Why?

  He sighed. He simply wasn’t Goodwin. He was himself—and filled with self-doubt.

  Mellas’s reverie was broken by the faint sound of voices crying, “Tubing.” Fitch and Mellas looked at each other, waiting silently for the explosions.

  “Wait one, we got incoming,” Relsnik said to the battalion radio operator. He put the handset down beside him. Pallack curled up a little. There was no sound. Then they felt the vibrations through the earth. Then, no sound again.

  “Sounds like they hit down the south side,” Mellas said, wanting to break the silence.

  “The gooners can’t adjust in the fog,” Fitch said. “Just keeping us honest, I guess.”

  They waited a minute longer. Silence. Fog. Relsnik picked up the handset and continued reading the list of medevac numbers. First and Second platoons had each lost six. Five kids were in serious need of a medevac and another twelve, though not in danger of dying, were fairly useless. Then there were fourteen who had received slight flesh wounds or nicks from shrapnel. They included Mellas, whose right hand had taken some of the blast from Jancowitz’s grenade. It looked as if he’d fallen on gravel.

  Normally, small wounds wouldn’t be reported, but Fitch had had enough of normality. He told the senior squid, Sheller, to report every nick and scratch on the hill so the medical bureaucracy could grind out Purple Hearts for as many Marines as possible. “Two Hearts and they’re out of the bush. Three and they go to Okinawa to sort socks. I’ll be goddamned if I’ll stand in their way quibbling over how wounded they got to be to qualify. Every fucking scratch, you understand?”

  Sheller undertook the task with grim pleasure.

  “Wait one,” Relsnik said. He turned to Fitch. “Battalion wants a confirmation on that body count.”

  Fitch sighed. “We haven’t killed any more. Tell them it still stands at ten confirmed and six probable.”

  “Roger that.” Relsnik keyed the handset. “Big John, this is Big John Bravo. That’s affirmative. Ten confirmed and six probables. Over.”

  There was a pause, followed by a new voice. “Wait one. I’ll put him on.” Relsnik sighed and handed the handset to Fitch. “It’s the Three.”

  “This is Bravo Six. Over,” Fitch said.

  He held the handset close to his ear, making it difficult for the others to hear, but his answers indicated that apparently the body count was too low. “That’s affirmative. We did send people out beyond the holes to count. Sir, we were attacking fortified bunkers. Over.”

  The handset blurted static, and the Three’s voice came over. “Look, Bravo Six, they had to be hurting to leave those two open-belt seven-point-six-twos behind.” Relsnik had radioed in about the two captured machine guns. One had been taken by Vancouver. The other was the one that Jancowitz had died taking. “I think you easily have twice the probables you’ve reported. Over.”

  “Tell him you killed d’ whole fucking Three Hundred Twelfth steel division, Skipper,” Pallack said. Fitch held a hand up, annoyed, trying to listen to the Three.

  “Yes, Big John Three, you’re right on that. Over.”

  “OK, Bravo Six. We’ll see what we can do here. How’s everything up there? Over.”

  “We only got enough ammo for one heavy counterattack, and we need water. How we looking on those medevac birds? Over.”

  “We’ve got them standing by, Bravo Six. Over.”

  “I’ve got five emergencies up here. If they’re not out before dark they’re going to be dead. You tell the fucking zoomies that. Over.”

  Blakely’s voice was curt, controlled. “Bravo Six, I suggest you leave the air evacuations to the forward air controller. I understand you’ve had a tough day, but you know as well as I do that flying in this kind of weather is idiotic. Over.”

  Mellas burst out, “What the fuck is sending a company of Marines out in this kind of weather?”

  Fitch waited for Mellas to finish before he keyed the handset. “I understand. Anything else? Over.”

  “We’re preparing a frag order for you ASAP. Big John Three out.”

  At the top of the hill wraithlike figures moved slowly toward the trench where the dead lay in rows, their weather-bleached boots sticking out from beneath dark ponchos made slick by the fog. Cortell waited for them there. His head was bandaged. When he felt that all who were coming had gathered, he pulled out a small pocket Bible and read some verses aloud. Jackson was silently mouthing, “Janc, why did you do it?” Fracasso stood uneasily behind Cortell. At the Naval Academy, no one had ever talked about what to do afterward.

  Fracasso had asked Jackson to take over the squad. Jackson refused. Puzzled, Fracasso talked things over with Bass, who told him the probable cause. So Fracasso switched Jackson and Hamilton, giving Hamilton the squad. Jackson hoisted the heavy radio over his flak jacket. He’d made his deal; he’d stick with it.

  The daylong twilight faded. The medevac birds weren’t coming. Kids who’d been drinking their water in anticipation of a resupply were sorry they hadn’t been more sparing. Down in the bunker where they had pulled the serious cases, Sheller watched helplessly as the dwindling IV fluid drained into the wounded. When the other corpsmen left the bunker to dig in for the night, he quietly slipped the IV tubes from two unconscious kids and poured the fluid into the bottles hanging above the others.

  Merritt, a rifleman from Goodwin’s platoon, was watching him. He was one of three wounded who were still conscious. “What are you doing, Doc?” he whispered. His torn clothes were plastered to his body by drying blood. Dirt was in everything, and there was no way to clean it out. The squids just poured antiseptic in with the dirt. A candle flickered, disturbed by the damp air as Sheller sat down. “Just changing your oil and water,” he said, smiling.

  “You took it from Meaker.”

  Sheller nodded.

  Merritt stared up at the slightly rotting logs that formed the roof of the bunker just four feet above his head. He smelled blood and abandoned fermented fish sauce and rice. “Is it wrong to want to go home so badly?” he asked.

  Sheller, smiling gently, shook his head. Merritt took a labored breath. The pain in his intestines, where he’d been hit by two bullets, one shattering his pelvis, nearly drove him into blissful unconsciousness. But he fought off entering that dark realm, afraid he would never want to come back.

  “Does it mean Meaker will die?”

  Sheller looked over at t
he two kids he’d picked for death. He didn’t want to answer Merritt’s question. He wanted to lie, even to himself. “I think you’ll all make it,” he said.

  “Don’t fucking lie to me, Squid. I don’t have time for it.” Again Merritt took a quivering breath, biting back the scream that wanted to erupt whenever he filled his lungs. “If I’m going to live because of Meaker, I want to know it. And I want to live.”

  Sheller put his hand on Merritt’s uniform. “The thing is, we might be wasting plasma on Meaker. He keeps bleeding inside and I can’t stop it. You’re not bleeding as fast as he is.”

  Merritt looked at Sheller. “I’ll never forget it, Squid. I fucking promise.” Then he turned his head toward Meaker’s unconscious body. “Meaker, you dumb son of a bitch,” he whispered. “I ain’t never going to forget it.”

  Meaker died three hours later. Sheller and Fredrickson dragged him out of the bunker and stacked him on the foggy landing zone with the rest of the bodies.

  In the battalion operations center Simpson and Blakely debated whether or not to press the attack against Matterhorn the next day. The kill ratio looked bad—thirteen Marine KIA against only ten confirmed NVA bodies. If they could continue the action, there was a chance that they could get the ratio up to something more reportable. But how many of the enemy were on Matterhorn? Was it a full force or just a rear guard—or an advance guard? Fitch could report only that he saw movement in the bunkers, but there was no way of telling how many NVA were inside them. And now it was pitch black up there. At this moment, the NVA could be reinforcing or withdrawing.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Simpson said grimly. “We’ve got to attack. At first light.”

  Blakely knew Simpson was right. If the NVA reinforced during the night, an assault by Bravo Company would surely go badly, but those were the breaks. They were there to kill gooks. If they ran into a buzz saw, Mulvaney would get the whole fucking regiment involved and finally kick some ass up there. If the gooks had taken off for the border and it was only a rear guard, then Bravo could handle it and Simpson would look foolish not to have pressed the attack, even if it was just to get more information. That was the right move. No one could second-guess them. If they kept Bravo sitting on the hill, that could be perceived up at division as a lack of initiative.