Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War Read online

  The story that made its way around Marine Air Group 39 and the Fifth Marine Air Wing was that four pilots disobeyed a weather hold to snake their way up a 7,000-foot mountain with only thirty or forty feet between their wheels and the trees in a driving monsoon rain to rescue a Marine company that was surrounded by an NVA regiment.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  FAC-man picked up the radio calls from the two birds long before they could be heard. He was amazed. It didn’t seem possible for a chopper to find them. He had just told Bainford the ceiling height, and Bainford had told him they’d have to wait, that it was too dangerous to fly.

  Mellas ran crouching behind FAC-man up to the LZ, where they both piled into a nearby hole. A single sniper round passed over their heads. “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, sir, but we got two birds down in the valley trying to find us. They say they got reinforcements and ammo. Captain Bainford told me they were all on weather hold.” Just then the radio hissed.

  FAC-man listened. “That’s a neg, sir. Still can’t hear you. Over.”

  He and Mellas sat silently. Mellas motioned for FAC-man’s radio and switched quickly to the company frequency. Pallack answered.

  “This is Five Actual,” Mellas said. “Tell everyone we have a bird trying to find us. I want total silence. Over.” Soon the entire perimeter was quiet, everyone waiting in the fog, not wanting to hope.

  After a few minutes Mellas saw FAC-man tense, look to the south, and pull out his compass. Mellas’s ears were so damaged by the recent combat that he heard nothing except a high-pitched ringing that seemed to have settled permanently inside his head. “Magpie, Magpie, this is Big John Bravo. I have rotor noise bearing one seven niner. I repeat, bearing one seven niner degrees.” FAC-man looked at Mellas, then shook one clenched fist in excitement. He was grinning. Something came over the radio. “That’s affirmative, sir.” There was another pause. “Magpie, this is Big John Bravo FAC. We have about”—he squinted, looking up at the clouds—“forty feet.” Then he hung his head. Mellas realized that by telling the truth, FAC-man might doom the company because the choppers would turn around, but that not telling the truth might doom the choppers. He caught FAC-man’s eye and gave an understanding nod. The FAC-man smiled and looked up at the sky again. “There it is, sir,” he said quietly.

  Then FAC-man tensed again, sighted on his compass, and keyed his handset. “Magpie, I have rotor noise now bearing one eight five. Over.”

  In his mind’s eye, Mellas watched the choppers moving westward past the spot where FAC-man had first heard their rotor noise, then turning north to try to come back. That would probably put them just west of the Laotian border. If they could get up to altitude and stay on their northward course, they’d miss the hills to their south. But they would probably overfly Helicopter Hill and Matterhorn in the clouds. If they stuck close to the ground, they could crash into either hill. Mellas hoped fervently that they were flat-hatting across the top of the jungle.

  “You’re good, Magpie. I still have you bearing one eight five degrees. Stand by for my mark.”

  There was another intense interval, this time filled with the steady drone of rotor blades augmented by the whine of turbine engines. Then, just above them, obscured by fog, two choppers flashed across the sky. FAC-man jumped to his feet and shouted into the handset, “Mark! Mark!”

  He and Mellas watched the choppers disappear. The Marines on the hill were silent. Everyone listened to the whining engines and the clattering of the choppers’ blades clawing at thin mountain air during the sharp turn. FAC-man yelled compass bearings and ran to the center of the LZ at the same time. “I got you at zero three zero.” He’d pause. “Zero three five.” He’d wait. “Zero three five, holding. Yes sir. That’s it, sir, a ridge bearing roughly zero niner zero. It’s just to our Echo about one hundred feet below us.”

  Finally a huge fuselage loomed out of the clouds, belly exposed as the pilot brought it up, rear wheels down, fighting its way, engines firing full-on to hold the steady descent. Then it bounced in and the new replacements were rushing, falling, stumbling, and crawling for the sides of the LZ as the air erupted in automatic weapons and machine-gun fire from both Matterhorn and the finger to the north. Mellas had his compass out and coolly took a bearing on the sound of the machine gun on the north finger. He found the spot on his map. “Got you, you bastard,” he said.

  The first chopper lifted off, and the second one piled in right behind it. Again, dark figures hurtled from the rear ramp, stumbling under immense weight, falling, crawling, and scrambling for safety. Then, to Mellas’s amazement and joy, one of the figures stood up on the landing zone and raised his right arm in the hawk power sign. Mellas also stood up, yelling jubilantly. “Goddamn it, Hawke, over here. Over here.”

  Hawke turned and, weighted down with ammunition and water, ran jerkily toward Mellas. Mellas’s heart sang as Hawke collapsed into the hole. Marines on the hill risked getting killed to run over to Hawke, laughing, shouting, slapping him on the back.

  Then the mortar shells came slamming down again.

  During a lull in the shelling Mellas ran across the LZ and jumped into the hole Hawke was digging for himself. Mellas took out his K-bar and started stabbing at the hard clay, helping Hawke dig, unable to suppress a broad smile.

  “So what the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I got bored,” Hawke said.

  “Ah, I think you got sentimental.”

  “So I’m a bored sentimentalist.” Hawke grunted and tossed another shovelful of clay.

  Again they heard tubing. They went down low in the shallow hole. The shells shook the ground beneath them and black smoke irritated their nostrils. The explosions jolted them, and their eyes ached from the pressure waves.

  “Nice fucking place you’ve got here,” Hawke said. He threw more shovelfuls of dirt, then said, “Fuck it. Deep enough.” He jabbed the shovel into the earth and curled back into the hole.

  “Hey, Hawke,” Mellas said. “You got any water? I’m dying of fucking thirst.”

  Hawke pulled a canteen from its pouch. “Well, I’ll be fucked,” he said. He showed the canteen to Mellas. There was a small shrapnel hole in it.

  “Better than a hole in your fucking ass.”

  “Yeah, but it was the one with the Rootin’ Tootin’ Raspberry.”

  He handed Mellas the half-empty canteen. Mellas took a long drink, gulping it down, wanting to swim in its tart sweetness. He finally stopped, smiling, with a contented sigh. “I always was a Baron von Lemon fan, but Rootin’ Tootin’ Raspberry will certainly do.”

  “Well, Baron von Lemon is very hard to get this year,” Hawke said.

  Another explosion hit, only fifteen feet from their hole, followed by four more. Mellas felt as if he were in a heavy black bag being beaten with unseen clubs. Smoke replaced oxygen. They couldn’t talk. They endured.

  Then the explosions shifted to another part of the hill. Hawke calmly took out his tin-can cup and a small chunk of C-4 and started making coffee. He looked up at Mellas, who was watching him intently. “It’s the ever-flowing source of all that’s good and the cure of all ills,” Hawke said. He lit the ball of C-4 and brought the water to a boil. When the coffee was ready he gave the cup to Mellas.

  Mellas took a sip. Then he closed his eyes and took another. He sighed and handed the steaming coffee back to Hawke. “When’s Delta getting here to relieve us?” Mellas asked.

  “Fucked if I know. Do I look like—”

  “A goddamned fortune-teller?” Mellas said. “No, but you’re supposed to be the Three Zulu, whatever the fuck that is.”

  “It’s nothing. And if I was Delta Company I’d never get my ass up here.”

  “You came,” Mellas said, suddenly serious.

  Hawke’s brief pause acknowledged Mellas’s thanks. “Yeah,” he said quietly, “but I’m crazy. I couldn’t fucking stand it any more.”

  “That bad, huh?” Mellas said.

  “Oh, hell,” Hawke said. “I don’t know. A consummate politician like you might even like it back there.” He tried to smile.
r />   “It’d beat humping,” Mellas said. “I’m out here freezing my nuts off in a jungle and dying of thirst in a monsoon.”

  Hawke looked up at the sky. “The Six and the Three are saying you abandoned your packs. That’s why you’re cold and ran out of water and food. Then you fell asleep on the lines last night.”

  “They can’t be serious,” Mellas said slowly.

  “’Fraid so. Simpson was talking about relieving Fitch again.”

  Mellas stood up and shouted, “What the fuck’s the matter with him? What the fuck’s the matter with everybody? These guys only fought a fucking week with no sleeping gear, no food, no water, and that fucking asshole thinks they were sleeping. We’re the ones who should be insane, not that drunken bastard.” A shell exploded, but Mellas no longer cared if it hit him or not.

  “Sit down before you get fucking blown away,” Hawke said, pulling at him.

  Mellas sat down. He wanted to strike out at someone. “It’s a fucking blatant lie. Our LP took the first hit, just like in the books. No one was asleep. I fucking guarantee.”

  “You took more casualties overall than you got confirmed.”

  “What does he want us to do? Send out another squad or two and have them killed counting dead gooks so it’ll even up his goddamned reports to division?”

  “I don’t know what he wants, Mel. I just know what he says.” Hawke was playing with a stick and he paused to flick some mud with it. “You all right?” he asked. “I mean personally?”

  “Yeah,” Mellas answered. “I got some metal in my ass and hands but you can’t tell it from the jungle rot.”

  “I don’t mean that way. I mean about Bass and Janc and all.”

  “I’ll get over it.” Mellas looked away from Hawke, up into the blank and now nearly dark sky.

  “I doubt it.”

  “How the fuck do you know?”

  “I just know,” he said.

  “How’s Mallory?” Mellas asked, changing the subject.

  “Diddy-bopping around. Waiting for his court-martial. Waiting to go to the fucking dentist. That’ll probably be in six months or so.”

  “How long did he stay in the box?”

  “I got him out about three hours after you left,” Hawke added.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. I just hope you have to be his goddamned character witness, not me.”

  “You have any trouble?”

  “I just told the snuffy on guard I was taking over. Blakely ranted and raved about going behind his back, making him look bad, making Cassidy look bad, the Marine Corps, military justice, you name it. Then he went to the O-club.”

  They both laughed. Then Mellas remembered Hawke, boots shined, notebook out, trying to look good at the battalion briefing. He looked down at the mud. “Hawke, I know what it took. Thank you. He’s nobody you want on your bad side.” Then he grinned. “Especially since you turned into a lifer.”

  “Next time do your own goddamned rescuing, that’s all I ask,” Hawke said, a little sharply.

  “They going to throw the book at him?” Mellas asked. He was trying to figure out why Hawke was angry.

  “He pulled a goddamned pistol on a fucking Navy officer who’s screaming his fucking head off.”

  “It was fucking empty.”

  “It’s still a fucking pistol,” Hawke said. “You’ve already been out here too long. Ordinary people think pistols are dangerous. They don’t stop to look if there’s a magazine in it or not and laugh at the joke. The doctor’s pissed and he wants Mallory’s ass. And he’ll get it. Several years’ worth.”

  “Maybe Mallory was out here too long, too,” Mellas fired back. “The fucking Navy doctors were the ones that kept sending him back.”

  “I don’t want to talk about fucking Mallory,” Hawke said.

  They heard more tubing pops in the distance. “You won’t have to,” Mellas said and pushed himself against the side of the hole, once again waiting for the explosions. These were so close that afterward Mellas’s ears rang and Hawke just stared straight ahead at the opposite wall of the hole, with blood trickling from his nose and his mouth hanging open. They looked at each other, saying nothing. Then Mellas pulled out a notebook and began work on the supply list for the next bird.

  “Mellas, stop for a second, huh?”

  Mellas looked up, straining through the ringing in his ears for whatever Hawke had to say.

  “I resent the shit out of you calling me a lifer.”

  Hawke’s words lodged like a heavy weight in Mellas’s stomach. “I was just kidding,” Mellas said.

  “I resent the shit out of it,” Hawke repeated.

  “I’m sorry,” Mellas said. “I didn’t mean it. My usual sarcasm.” He tried to think of how he could make it up to Hawke, but the words had been said. Mellas could only be forgiven. “Sometimes my mouth runs off faster than my brain,” he added lamely.

  “Than your heart, Mellas,” Hawke said. He was still visibly angry. “What the fuck do you think a lifer is? Do you really think he’s the same guy these kids think he is? It’s fucking easy for your kind. You’ll go back and be the fucking lifer’s superior for the rest of your life. What’s a guy like you even doing here? Slumming? These so-called fucking lifers don’t have any place to go like you do. And neither do the fucking snuffs. For most of them this is it. This is the top of their little hill. And people like you fly over it and shit on it. Goddamn superior fucking assholes.”

  “I didn’t mean to be putting people down,” Mellas mumbled.

  “Just don’t put down the good ones like Murphy and Cassidy. You’re going to go to law school. Where the hell’s Cassidy going to go? Here he counts for something. And you shit on it.”

  Mellas’s own temper was starting to rise. “What am I supposed to do, feel sorry for him? I suppose I should feel sorry for the colonel and the Three, too.”

  “Look. The colonel’s an asshole. The Three’s an asshole. Fine. I agree. All I’m saying, Mellas, is don’t you ever wonder why they’re assholes? Do you think they enjoy spending every minute of their tiny lives worried that someone’s going to shit on them because one of their companies didn’t make a checkpoint on time? I’m not saying to forget that they’re assholes. I’m just saying when you call someone a name, have some compassion. Label the shit out of them, but who they are and who you are is as much about luck as anything else.”

  Mellas and Hawke were both looking at the dirt in front of them, unable to let their eyes meet.

  “I guess I forget my place sometimes,” Mellas finally said, giving Hawke the flicker of a smile.

  Hawke smiled too. “Shit. Turn a good fucking sermon into a joke, Mellas.” He tucked his hands under his flak jacket and looked at Mellas. “Mellas, you’ve got everything I wish I had. It just makes me jealous to see you so fucking give-a-shit about it.”

  “I’ve got everything you wish you had?” Mellas broke into laughter that was half a cry of pain. “Hawke, I’ve got nothing. Jack shit.”

  “You’ve got brains, you know where you’re going, how to get there. You call that nothing?”

  “One minute you’re making me feel like a turd for being insensitive and now you’re telling me I’ve got talent and you’re envious.”

  “I didn’t say you were fucking perfect.”

  Over their laughter they heard the distant sound of mortar tubing. They hunkered down and waited. Mellas was counting seconds to see if the flight time was the same as for the last bunch. It was different. The shells landed near the top of the LZ, causing only a mild thud.

  “Hawke,” Mellas said quietly, “you know we might be dead tomorrow.”

  “Shit,” Hawke said. “Tonight.” Then he smiled. “You ain’t going to get killed, Mellas. You’ve got too far to go.”

  That evening, the siege lifted. But there were no thundering hoofbeats, no flashing swords, and no bugle calls. The air simply reached a certain temperature and humidity and the fog vanished. Matterhorn stood before them, greenish-black in the dying light. The kids rose from their fighting holes and cheered. NVA small arms and mortar fire soon pushed them back into their holes, but everything was chan
ged. The helicopters could fly.

  And they did. They came flying through the automatic weapons fire and the exploding mortar shells. Ashen-faced replacements ran for the nearest holes, staggering under their loads of extra ammunition, IV fluid, water, and food. Corpsmen and friends of the wounded ran in the opposite direction, ducking into and out of the trembling fuselages, stacking live bodies, running for cover from the one NVA machine gun that had revealed itself on the northeast finger and was systematically stitching bullets into the landing zone. Then the pilots pushed throttles forward and the choppers took off, curving out of sight, taking the happy wounded with them, including a triumphant, grinning Kendall.