Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [144]
The Cobras were now in sight.
“Thunderbird Two-six, this is Two-niner Uniform,” Lowe was talking to the flight leader. “Make your first pass from southeast to northwest– azimuth two-seventy degrees, along the road a hundred meters from the pagoda in the center of town… ” Lowe noticed a GI rising too high and barked at him to get down or he'd put him down himself, then returned to the radio. “Break. I continue, red panel marks friendly troops from the line of trees just short of the pagoda to the road junction at the southeast edge of town. Request confirmation of azimuth and one observation run. Enemy mortar and fifty-caliber machine gun position at an azimuth of one-ninety degrees at a range of seventy-five meters from marker panel. Over.”
The gunships identified the red-orange marker on their first recognition pass, but when they banked around and came in for their first gun run, they had to veer away in the face of tracers the size of golfballs.
Lieutenant Mize dropped into the ditch occupied by the command group. He had been ordered to come forward with his squad, and Lowe, anticipating he could attack after the gun runs, spoke quickly to him, “Harvey, stay here and be prepared to move your element up to the pagoda. Stay low when you move. Wait for my command.” Mize was green, so Lowe also turned to Bayer, “John, take charge of that mob over there and get them spread out. Stay down. That bastard knows where you are and wants your ass!”
The Cobras rolled in for their second gun run, this time coming from the left, across the front of the platoon instead of parallel to the right flank of the platoon, as they had been instructed. They punched off four rockets. Wood looked up from the ditch. Three rockets from the salvo shrieked toward a perfect impact with the antiaircraft crew on the mound to the right, but the fourth 2.75-inch rocket had malfunctioned and was falling short right toward them. Wood saw it coming. He threw himself down just as another NVA mortar round also arced in for a direct hit on the road. Oh Jesus, here it comes!
The trail suddenly convulsed with explosions.
Stunned silence. Then frantic yelling.
The whole world had seemed to come apart suddenly around Lieutenant Bayer as he had curled in the ditch near Lowe, clutching his helmet down, shrapnel and dirt clods blowing over him. Fragments of madein-the-USA steel nicked his legs and bounced off his steel pot. Then in his pummeled brain, Bayer found himself thinking of how the grunts used to rib him because he wouldn't wear a bush hat. He used to laugh back that since he was artillery he could be a pussy and wear a helmet. It seemed now that the helmet had saved his life. Beside him, Lowe was screaming into the radio, telling the gunships to get that fucking mortar!
Walker sprang from the ditch on the other side of the road. His bush hat had been blown off. Dust still hung in the air. Weed was slumped in the ditch, the back of his head a bloody mess from the shrapnel. Macomber was unconscious, a hole in his back. Wood was shaking his head, coming out of it, shrapnel lodged in his elbow and right side. Robinson, from Alvarez's squad, was badly wounded in the legs, and Voeller, who'd just shipped in from the Big Red One, was also yelling for help. One cheek of Voeller's buttocks was almost ripped off by a spray of shrapnel, but Walker moved on past him with, “Buddy, you're gonna have to crawl 'cause we have to get these other guys!”
Walker stood on the trail, screaming for the pinned-down squad to pull out now that the gunships had suppressed most of the enemy fire. “Look, they're not shooting at me! C'mon!”
But the squad had already melted with fear.
Walker looked down at Sergeant Alvarez, who was still at the prone and not responding. Alvarez stared back up at Walker as if he were looking at a crazy man. Walker yelled at him to get up and help, but Alvarez, a new man, just kept staring at him until Walker finally turned his M16 on him. Walker always felt bad about doing that,