Collateral Damage A Matt Royal Mystery - By H. Terrell Griffin Page 0,11
a small radio with limited range, but I could talk to Jimbo if I needed to.
I heard the occasional snap of rifle fire in the forest, but much of it was muffled by the thick vegetation. An hour passed and the air came alive with the sound of gunfire. A machine gun chattered in the distance, then the whoop of mortar rounds.
Jimbo came up on the radio. “L.T., Charlie has moved in behind us in force. I don’t think we can get through. I’m going to have to go forward, get through these woods, and find another landing zone so the chopper can extract us. Can you move?”
“Go for it, Jimbo,” I said. “We’re on our way back to the original LZ. It’s too hot here to bring in a chopper.”
“Can you walk, sir?”
“I can, Jimbo. You take care of the men. Doc’s with me. I’m fine.”
“Will do, sir.”
I put the radio down, looked at the soldier sitting beside me. “Get out of here, Doc. It’s going to get hot as soon as Charlie starts coming out of those trees.”
“Yes, sir. We got to go.”
“You go. I can’t walk.”
“I ain’t leaving you, L.T. You remember what they did to Ronnie Easton.”
Easton was one of us. He’d gotten separated from the team the week before and disappeared. Late that night, we’d snuck up on an encampment in the bush that was full of black pajama clad Viet Cong, fifty or more of them. We heard Easton start to scream. He screamed for a long time, longer than any of us wanted to contemplate. The men begged for permission to go after him, but Jimbo and I kept them hidden. We wouldn’t help Easton by getting ourselves killed.
Finally, the screaming stopped. We waited out the night and moved in at first light. The VC had left, and all we found was Ronnie Easton hanging by his feet from a tree, his body badly mutilated. He’d suffered greatly and died in a trackless jungle about as far from his South Carolina home as he could get. He’d died terribly, and we’d all heard it. We cut him down and brought his body out, back to what served as civilization, our putrid base camp at the edge of the mountains.
“I remember. I’ve got a loaded rifle, and I know exactly how many rounds are in the mag. I’ll save the last one for myself. Go. Lieutenants get to give orders. That’s one right there.”
“I’m going, sir.”
He squatted beside me. “Now, listen up. You ever hear of the fire-man’s carry?”
“Won’t work, Doc. Too far to go.”
“I’m going to put you on my shoulders and we’re going to move. It ain’t going to be comfortable, but I’ll hold onto your right leg so you can move the left one a bit when the pain hits.”
He lifted me onto his shoulders. I was wrapped around him like a stole, my right arm around his chest, my left over his shoulder, my left leg sticking straight out from his left shoulder. He held onto my left arm and right leg and we set off. He’d slung both his and my M-16s around his neck and they banged against his chest as he walked. It was going to be a rough afternoon.
It was slow going. We’d walk for fifteen minutes and take a five-minute break, sip from our canteens, and rest in the knee-high grass. Doc checked my calf and on the third stop redressed the wound. We were five minutes into the fourth leg of the trek when he came to a stop and set me down. “We got Charlies coming out of that tree line,” he said.
I looked back out over the plain. “I see them. They’re pretty far back, but coming fast. You’ve got to get out of here.”
“There’s a dry creek bed about five minutes in front of us. It’s got some big rocks that’ll give us some cover. Let’s go.”
“Five minutes with me on your back is going to slow you enough to give Charlie a chance to catch up.”
“Then we’ll attack.”
I laughed. “There’s got to be a hundred of those guys coming our way.”
“That’ll make it a fair fight. Ain’t a one of those pissants got a green beanie.”
He picked me up and started toward the creek bed. We’d make it, but we had two rifles and a lot of ammo against a hundred rifles and a lot more ammo. Not very good odds.