Death in the Jungle Gary Smith (mobi reader txt) 📖

here!” I raised Sweet Lips between the two bushes and squinted hard at the river. Before I saw anything, the thundering crack of M-16 fire erupted on my right. A moment later, the black figures of two men in a sampan were just ten feet in front of me. One of them gasped the Vietnamese equivalent of “My God!”

I squeezed the shotgun’s trigger as Funkhouser let loose with the M-60 machine gun. I pumped in rounds and pulled the trigger again and again. Tracer bullets streaked across the river from Funkhouser’s machine gun. Continuous M-16 fire, along with Bucklew’s CAR-15, pounded my eardrums. Three grenades from McCollum’s M-79 exploded out front and to my left. I sent three more loads into the dark.

The wall of sound was deafening as I reloaded Sweet Lips, then I fired three more rounds as part of the foray. Another grenade blasted the night in the midst of the heavy gunfire, and I wondered when Mr. Meston would stop the firing. One thing was perfectly clear to me: whoever and whatever was in front of us could no longer exist.

After another fifteen long seconds of ear-shattering and brain-jarring noise, I yelled at the top of my lungs for the men to cease fire. After all, enough was enough. There was no need to use up two tons of ammunition on one little sampan. Since it was time for a cease-fire and Mr. Meston hadn’t called for one, and I couldn’t see him to check on his condition, then it was my job as assistant squad leader to stop the firing and save a couple bullets for the trip out of there.

The shooting stopped for a few seconds, then one of the M-16 riflemen opened up on full automatic. I shouted again for a cease-fire. I didn’t have to whisper since noise discipline had been blown all the way down the river.

The gun stopped firing, and Mr. Meston called out, “Don’t worry, Smitty, it’s me.” A few seconds later, a concussion grenade blew up in the river. “Just me again,” Mr. Meston said. “I wanna get any swimmers.” I saw spots before my eyes; all else was black. Silence returned with a wallop and cranked up the volume on the high-pitched ringing in my ears. My hands were shaking and my nervous system was in some kind of shock.

Through the ringing, I made out Mr. Meston on the radio calling in the boys on the Boston Whaler. Then he called to me and said to forget about trying to retrieve anything from the fast-moving water. That was good news to me. I would have just as soon vamoosed.

I heard more talking. This time it was Vietnamese, and it was coming from across the river. Maybe an enemy unit was moving in. I asked Funky if he heard the voices, and he said he did.

Half a minute later, Mr. Meston was again talking on the radio. I heard him say something about holding the Boston Whaler, and then something about Navy Seawolves. Putting it all together from there was easy: he was calling in the helo gunships.

After Mr. Meston ended his radio communication, he passed word for the man on each flank to put a blue-colored lens on his battery-powered strobe light. I found the strobe in my pack and prepared it as ordered, knowing the helo pilots needed the light to identify our position.

We reestablished noise discipline for the next ten minutes. During that time, I didn’t hear us, and I didn’t hear the VC. It was dead still. Then I heard the Seawolves coming.

Knowing what was about to happen, I didn’t lose a second in prostrating myself in the watery mud of the riverbank. From there I flashed my blue strobe light at the black sky.

I heard Mr. Meston say, “You identify. Over.”

The reply via the radio was, “Blue light. Over.”

Mr. Meston said, “Roger that.” Five seconds later, silence got blown apart. A Seawolf swooped in on our location from downstream and opened up. M-60 machine guns strafed the opposite bank, just forty meters from my nose. I saw the tracer bullets streaking through the dark.

As the Seawolf flew away, a second helo came in, firing 2.75-inch rockets at the shore. The rockets exploded along the bank as another M-60 barked dozens of bullets. At that point I was sure that whoever was speaking Vietnamese over there earlier was speaking expletives now.

No sooner was the Seawolf gone than the first gunship, following a racetrack pattern, circled and started its second pass down the river. Again, the machine guns wreaked havoc. More rockets demolished the jungle. The second helo dove in for more, then the first, circling and hitting again and again, like two sharks in a feeding frenzy.

Finally satiated, and after communicating with Mr. Meston, they flew away. I sat up and listened as they faded into the night, spellbound by the precision of their attack.

Seconds later, my ears reverberated in the quiet. There was a pressure against my eardrums that I not only felt, but I could also hear. The sound of rushing blood. The thud of my heartbeat. The thunder of existence in a sphere where others no longer existed. I was alive. I could hear it.

I also heard Mr. Meston using the radio to call our extraction team with the Boston Whaler. The Whaler was an eighteen-foot, W-bottom, fiberglass boat that had a nine-man capacity, including a crew of two. I expected she would be zipping in with her 105-horsepower Chrysler outboard engine and power prop humming.

While waiting for the boat, I readied myself for another assault. Sweet Lips was fully loaded and pointed at the dark river. After all of the earlier firepower, I doubted I’d be looking eyeball to eyeball with a gook in the next twenty minutes, but I wouldn’t be caught making mud castles, just in case.

I noticed my hands were no longer shaking, and I wondered when they had stopped. I thought they had only shaken for