Death in the Jungle Page 9

  Kats, still right behind me, farted rapidly three times.

  “Need some more gas?” he blurted in a barely audible voice. I could tell he was dying, like I was dying. But death under those circumstances didn’t deserve the least consideration. The only thing that mattered was pride and manhood and pouring your stinking guts out to the bitter end. And the end was less than five minutes away.

  Bucklew was puffing fast and hard to my right. I heard someone else puffing, and I realized it was me. I couldn’t hear Kats, but I couldn’t afford to lose my concentration with a look back. I just assumed he was there, even though his feet striking the road couldn’t be heard. We were moving so fast that any sounds to my rear couldn’t catch my ears.

  Suddenly Bucklew let out a short hoo-yah! and sped up. I couldn’t believe it, but I went with him. Still, he was a step in front of me. Beads of sweat sailed off his flailing left arm and struck me on the chest. Then, to my amazement, Kats moved up on my left. They were both making their big move with three-quarters of a mile to go.

  In the five seconds I was in limbo, deciding what to do, Bucklew and Kats ended up running side by side, four meters in front of me. I dug deep into my bag of intestinal fortitude and closed the gap to two. Placing myself behind Kats, I used the draft to my advantage, hoping I could hang on.

  A minute later, the village of Nha Be was in sight, a quarter of a mile away. Through the sweat, I focused my eyes on the nearest hootch, believing if I made it to the hootch I’d somehow be rewarded with a last surge of energy for the four-hundred-meter-sprint to the base gate.

  Bucklew and Kats weren’t wavering a bit in front of me. They were neck-and-neck and showed no signs of weakening. Here I was, though, feeling like I was running in an oven. It was getting hotter every second. Even my feet seemed to be on fire. My head screamed for me to stop, but my body was somehow stuck on automatic pilot. I was a robot, a machine revved to the max. I could barely think. I just was.

  As we reached the hootch, my mind suddenly caught up with my body. I snapped out of my bewildered state and thought clearly again. I knew I was okay because I noticed that Bucklew’s butt wasn’t as cute as Kats had said. And it was a butt I intended to beat.

  One hundred meters into the village, I experienced the flood of adrenaline I needed. With every ounce of power left in me, I surged to Kats’s left side. He glanced at me with a look of desperation, then focused his gaze on the gate, 250 meters ahead. Bucklew was at Kats’s right; we were dead even.

  Nga, the laundry mamma-san, was slowly walking across the road just fifty meters away. As she noticed us bearing down on her, her body stiffened in alarm.

  Bucklew panted, “Look out!”

  Nga scurried for the edge of the road on my side. I took a chance and didn’t break stride, hoping she’d get out of the way. As I rushed by her, my left arm brushed her back. Kats took advantage of the distraction and went full throttle. This was it. He threw everything he had into a final sprint. Bucklew and I were a split second behind in going with him, but instantly we gave it our all. Two hundred meters, full out. Nothing got held back. Absolutely nothing. Three bodies with engines burning, all in overdrive.

  I strained for all I was worth, but Kats stayed half a step ahead; Bucklew, however, dropped a shade behind me. Then, with one hundred meters to go, Bucklew fell a step back.

  Okay, I told myself, it was me and Kats. Go!

  I ran into what felt like a time warp. I sped up while everything around me seemed to slow down. All that mattered was just Kats and me, me and Kats. Straining, grunting, striving, driving, grasping, heaving. Gunning for the gate.

  With forty meters left, I drew even. At ten meters, Kats gained a mutinous inch or two that I couldn’t see, but I felt it. At the finish, I could feel it still. So did Kats. He flew through the gate with his right fist in the air. He had won, barely.

  As I slowed to a walk, I looked at my watch, which I had stopped when I had passed through the gate; it read 31:42 for the six-mile run. I bent over at the waist and almost heaved my guts, but I didn’t. I stared at my feet for a few seconds, watching a multitude of sweat drops fall from my face onto my shoes.

  Standing up again, I was dizzy, but I began jogging to help my body to cool down gradually. Kats and Bucklew were doing the same twenty meters ahead of me. As I followed them, I made a quick calculation and realized we’d run the last mile in an incredible 4:57. Flynn was right, I told myself, we were idiots. It was too hot to run that fast.

  “Hey, idiot!” Kats shouted at me. “I gotcha!”

  With perspiration still streaming into my eyes, I looked at Kats and shook my head. “If I hadn’t bumped into Nga, I would’ve won by ten yards!” I fibbed.

  Kats spun around and started to backpedal. “Bumped?” he said with a laugh. “Is that all you did to her? I thought you had a full-blown affair!”

  I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. “Even if you discard the bump,” I argued, “there’s still the cockroach issue.”

  “What do you mean?” Kats asked as I caught up to him, and he turned around to jog with me. His breathing was still fast and heavy, like mine.

  I grinned at my friend. “If it hadn’t been for that cockroach,” I said, “the winner here today would’ve been a horse of a different color.”

  Kats gave me a playful shove, then laid back his head and whinnied. “Excuses, excuses,” he muttered, “but I won the race. Bucklew is my witness.”

  I looked at Bucklew, who was jogging to our right.

  “What about it, Buck?”

  Bucklew smiled at me. “Kats and I already struck up a deal while you were back there tossing your cookies.”

  “And?” I wondered.

  “He promised me a couple beers if I tell the others who won.”

  “And?” I persisted.

  Bucklew chuckled. “You lost.”

  I moved over and slapped at his head, but he blocked my assault.

  “You lousy Communist!” I said.

  As the other runners began showing up, Kats, Bucklew, and I jogged to the gate and waited to cheer for my roommate and Schrader, who I knew would be the last two. “What kinda pace do they run?” Kats asked me.

  “Eight minutes a mile at best,” I reported.

  Kats looked at his watch. “Well, it’s been forty-nine minutes already, so where are they?”

  Bucklew grunted. “Probably at the pagoda prayin’ for a gook to shoot ’em so they won’t have to run back!”

  Lieutenant Meston, who ran the course in forty-one minutes, walked toward us.

  “Who’s left?” he asked.

  “Funky and Schrader,” I answered. “Any minute now.”

  Bucklew pointed down the road. “There they are entering the village.”

  I watched the two men jogging side by side. Even at a distance, they still looked like sick cows.

  When they were two hundred meters from the gate, we all started hollering.

  “Come on, Funky!” I yelled. “Shake the lead out!”

  “Run, girls!” shouted Pearson, the point man for 2nd Squad. He began clapping and howling like a coyote.

  We were quickly joined by the other SEALs, all of whom wanted to get in on the action.

  “I’ll bet five bucks on Schrader,” I heard Flynn offer from behind me.

  I turned and looked at him. “You’re on, Flynn.”

  As Funkhouser and Schrader picked up their pace, I joined in the cheering. Then the two men really started running. It was obvious that neither wanted to be last.

  “The loser buys a round of beer!” McCollum cried out.

  “Hoo-yah!” someone shouted.

  Funkhouser and Schrader drew much closer. Their faces were beet-red from their effort. They were wet with sweat, neck-and-neck, and I thought of how Kats and I must’ve looked driving for the gate.

  Then, fifteen meters from the gate, Funkhouser stumbled and started to fall. With arms flailing and body contorting and twisting, he somehow regained his bal
ance. No, I thought, that was not how Kats or I had looked.

  Funkhouser lost most of his speed in the near collision with the road, and he lost all of the race. I lost five bucks.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mission Six

  “The impulse to mar and to destroy is as ancient and almost as nearly universal as the impulse to create. The one is an easier way than the other of demonstrating power.”

  Joseph Wood Krutch, The Best of Two Worlds

  DATE: 12, 13, 14 September 1967

  TIME: 120600H to 140130H

  COORDINATES: YS073779

  UNITS INVOLVED: Foxtrot 1, Alpha 1, MST-3, Navy Seawolves

  TASK: Recon patrol and 4-hr. river ambush

  METHOD OF INSERTION: Navy Seawolves

  METHOD OF EXTRACTION: LCPL

  TERRAIN: Mangrove, nipa palm, thick undergrowth

  MOON: ¾

  WEATHER: Clear with occasional clouds

  SEAL TEAM PERSONNEL:

  Lt. Meston, Patrol Leader/Rifleman, M-16

  Lt. DeFloria, Ass’t PL/Rifleman, M-16

  QM2 Bohannon, Automatic Weapons, M-60

  RM2 Smith, Point/Rifleman, Shotgun

  MM2 Funkhouser, AW, M-60

  BT2 McCollum, Grenadier, M-79

  HM2 Mahner, Corpsman/Rifleman, M-16

  BM2 Williams, Radioman/Rifleman, M-16

  ADJ3 Bucklew, Radioman/Rifleman, M-16

  Ty, Ass’t Point/Rifleman, M-2 carbine

  AZIMUTHS: 260 degrees-550m, 180 degrees-100m, 260 degrees-300m

  ESCAPE: 225 degrees

  CODE WORDS: Challenge and Reply-Two numbers total 10

  The T-10 area of the Rung Sat Zone, located a few kilometers south of Saigon, was a dangerous place for good guys. It was an area where one hundred percent contact with the enemy occurred. There were big NVA units in the T-10, and we were going in. Ten men from Foxtrot and Alpha Platoons. It was like sending a mouse after a lion, but the lion was drowsy and unsuspecting while the mouse was sneaky and packing a bazooka.

  At first light on September 12, 1967, five of us from first squad boarded a Seawolf slick. Five others from Alpha Platoon climbed aboard another Seawolf slick, and together the helos flew us toward our insertion point for my sixth mission as a SEAL in Vietnam.

  It was a twenty-minute flight, just above the treetops at a hundred miles per hour to our drop-off, and as we went, I ran the mission through my mind. The plan was to insert in defoliated swampland, about 250 meters north of Rach Vuna Gam, a tributary of the Quan Nhon Trach, then patrol eight hundred meters southwest to our forty-eight-hour ambush site on the stream. The two squads would split twelve-hour shifts on the riverbank with the resting squad maintaining rear security several meters back in the bush.

  I looked at the men seated on the deck next to me, and it was obvious they were ready for war. Funkhouser caressed his M-60 machine gun. He was loaded down with five hundred rounds of 7.62mm linked ammunition belted around his upper torso.

  McCollum carried the M-79 grenade launcher with seventy rounds of 40mm HE and ten specialized 40mm canister rounds loaded with 00 buck. Attached to his web belt and ammo pouches were two M-26 fragmentation grenades, two M-3A2 concussion grenades, and two hand-fired pop parachute flares.

  Besides carrying the PRC-25 radio, Bucklew was packing an M-16 with 350 rounds of ammo. He was also heavy with grenades: two frags, one concussion, one red and one green smoke grenade, and two red and two white pop para flares.

  Mr. Meston boasted an M-16 with three hundred rounds, a frag and concussion grenade, one red and one green smoke grenade, two pop para flares, and a Starlight Scope. Adding to our destructive capabilities, Mr. Meston also carried one thermite incendiary grenade and one white phosphorus (“Willy Peter”) grenade.

  I, of course, squeezed Sweet Lips in my hands and toted sixty-six rounds of 00 and an extra fifteen rounds of flechettes.

  Each flechette round contained several miniature aluminum arrows packed into its 12-gauge shell. Attached to my ammo pouches were three fragmentation grenades, two concussion grenades, a green smoke grenade, and one M-18 antipersonnel claymore mine. I also carried in my backpack a prisoner-handling kit with gag, blindfold, and line.

  In addition, each man packed a strobe light, a pencil flare kit, K-bar knife, an MK-13 day/night flare, bright orange aircraft panel, and a lensatic compass, along with C rats, water, and a first aid kit. On top of all that, the designated swimmer had the fins, coral booties, and stream-crossing line. Guess who?

  The five men on the other slick were just as well prepared and ready for bear, and anybody in his right mind would not have wanted to mess with the ten of us. Nor anybody in his left mind, for that matter.

  Bucklew handed me a roll of olive-drab ordnance tape for sealing the bottom of my pants. I wrapped the tape snugly around the tops of my jungle boots, making sure not to leave any opening where leeches and small crabs would be sure to crawl. It was bad enough having malaria-infected mosquitos creeping into my ear canals and nostrils without having bloodsuckers and pincers up my crotch.

  After fifteen minutes of flying, the pilot made a fake insertion, and then another a few miles later, to confuse the Viet Cong. Mr. Meston hollered that the next insertion was real and we should prepare to insert.

  I slid over to the starboard door and hung my feet out above the strut. Bucklew eased beside me. Funkhouser and McCollum dangled out the portside door as the helo flared and started to descend. Looking down, I wondered where the pilot was going to attempt to drop us. There was nothing but thick, stinking, double-canopy jungle below us.

  As we sank lower, I looked out at the propeller rotating above the fast-closing treetops. A few more feet and the blade would be carving out chopsticks. Still, the pilot risked another yard.

  The helo ended up hovering a good fifteen feet above the brush and muck when the pilot told Meston, “Go!” My God, I thought, that was a long way down, especially when we were all so heavy with equipment.

  Mr. Meston yelled, “Go!” Without hesitation, I jumped. Two seconds later, after sending a Shockwave of pain through my knees, I was sitting on my butt in the mud.

  Bucklew jumped next, ending up on his rear end right beside me. Mud splattered onto my left arm and cheek, but I didn’t mind; it went with the territory.

  When McCollum landed behind me, he managed to stay on his feet, but Funkhouser followed with a total collapse. He ended up spread-eagled and face down, four inches deep in the mud. I climbed to my feet as Mr. Meston leapt from the helicopter and finished on his knees at Funkhouser’s side, and together we hoisted Funky out of the wallow he’d created. Funky spit mud through his teeth as I wiped a glob from his left eye.

  “Geronimo,” he said without emotion, spitting some more.

  I felt like laughing, but one look at the menacing jungle around us stifled the urge. Nothing but thick vegetation—mangrove roots, nipa palm trees, bushes, elephant grass, and Mekong muck. Somehow we had to patrol eight hundred meters through that tangled maze of tropical wait-a-minute to our ambush site.

  As the helicopters flew away, I advanced a few meters into a thicket crisscrossed so heavily with branches and vines it resembled a network of huge spider webs. Working my way forward, I felt like the most uncoordinated person on the planet as I pulled one foot out of six inches of mud, lifted it high over a cluster of branches while I shoved others away from my face, then found a place to step down without snapping twigs, as my other foot jerked out of the mud behind me. Every step was a struggle, and the mosquitos made it even tougher.

  As I continued my plodding, making more noise than I liked, the nine men trailing me sounded like sundry three-legged crocodiles doing the cha-cha. It was so noisy that any NVA unit within three hundred meters easily would have mistaken us for Dumbo the elephant and his mother. The good news was there probably weren’t any NVA units within three hundred meters, or three thousand meters. After all, who would R&R in this wretched hellhole of a place? Only SEALs, for whom R&R stood
for “raid ’em and rattle ’em.” Right then, however, all the racket was rattling me.

  Mr. Meston, breaking too many branches, followed directly behind me, keeping an eye on his watch compass and our direction. Bucklew, carrying the radio behind Mr. Meston, was keeping the pace count, meaning he was counting every step as we went. In thick jungle, where one could see only a few feet through the foliage, compass use and pace count were essential to not getting lost. The T-10 area was not a place in which red, white, and blue lovers could afford to lose their way.

  After an hour, the pace count was three hundred. It had taken sixty minutes to travel approximately two hundred meters. I looked back at Mr. Meston and he signaled for me to stop. Everyone halted and we listened awhile.

  I heard something in the brush to my left. As I slowly turned my body toward the sound, Sweet Lips pivoted with me at hip-level. I spotted a movement low to the ground, and when it moved again I identified a brown hare. It was a little fellow, perhaps ten inches long. He didn’t appear to notice me, and after a few carefree hops, he was gone.

  Mr. Meston waited a couple minutes more, then motioned to me to move.

  Two hours later, we’d covered a total of six hundred meters from the point of insertion. We were still two hundred meters from our ambush site, and my attitude was poor. The platoon as a whole was making far too much noise, which increased our danger, and I could hardly stand it anymore. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze, and in the dead quiet outside our perimeter, every snapping stick must have resounded like a rifle shot.

  The air temperature was at least ninety, and perspiration seeped out of every sweat gland in my body. I rubbed countless sweat beads off my forehead with my hand and with them came some of the camouflage paint I’d applied several hours before. I was too late with the wipe as sweat ran into my eyes, forcing them shut with a burning sensation. I squeezed my eyelids, wrinkling up my face, then popped open my eyes just in time to see a twig snap in two against my right shoulder. More of our noise discipline down the toilet. But I didn’t halfway care anymore. Let the gooks hear us and come after us. Then we could get the confrontation and the mission over with.