The Summer Garden by Paullina Simons
“How about the M-60 with a hundred-round bandolier?” Alexander said lightly, straightening Anthony back to a sitting position.
“Perfect.” Anthony almost smiled.
Ha Si returned, kicking the dead guard out of the way. Elkins and Mercer were behind him. “Oh my God, Ant!” Elkins cried out and turned away. “Look what those motherfuckers did to you.”
Tojo came back. The U.S. prisoners were out, already heading up the trail. Alexander asked Ha Si for help with the leg irons. Ha Si right away found the key on the ring and unlocked Anthony. “Elkins, turn around and face me. You are so fucked up,” Anthony said, trying to stand. “What the hell are you doing here, man? Mercer Mayer, is that you?”
That was the familiarity! Mercer Mayer was the children’s book author. Anthony was right, Mercer did share some of the same physical characteristics with the Little Critter character—short, squat, dogged.
Mercer could not look up at Anthony. “It’s me, Captain,” he said, his tears falling on the straw.
Anthony stood with help, propped up against the wall and flanked by Alexander and Ha Si. Alexander saw that Elkins and Mercer were so distraught by the sight of the grievously wounded Anthony, they were having trouble doing what needed to be done. “Soldiers, come on,” he said. “Chin up. We found him.”
“Right,” said Anthony. “Cheer the fuck up. And somebody, give me a pair of their BDUs, so I don’t have to wear these devil-spawn pajamas.”
Alexander had extra fatigues in his ruck. Tojo had an extra combat vest in his, and immediately started to take off his own boots, while Alexander pulled off Anthony’s NVA prison bottoms. Before the tunic went on, Ha Si properly wrapped a new clean dressing around Anthony’s mangled stump, tightly supporting it across the diagonal shoulder.
Anthony stood naked against the wall, slowly blinking, coming around.
“Tojo, man,” he said, “thanks for the boots, but what are you going to wear? Dad—oh my God, Dad—what happened to your leg?” Anthony own legs buckled from under him. “You’re—”
“Don’t worry about that right now,” Alexander told him, pulling the tunic over him. “I’ll be fine.” He held up his son while Mercer and Elkins struggled to put the fatigues and the boots over Anthony’s swollen uncooperative legs and feet. Anthony was groaning; he kept sliding down. Ha Si was holding him, Alexander was holding him, five grown men lifting up their son, their commander.
“Does it hurt, man?” Elkins whispered.
“I feel nothing,” Anthony replied in a hollow voice. He stood up straight—but not on his own. Ha Si said he wished he had a shot of Dexedrine. They gave him bread instead, they gave him a drink, ripped open a ration, gave him some peanut butter, a cracker. He chewed list-lessly, drank egregiously, swayed.
“What? What? What do you need, son?” Alexander kept saying.
Anthony’s only arm was around his father’s shoulder. “A fucking cigarette.”
“God, you and me both. Let’s get out of here so we can have one.”
Ha Si’s calm voice kept telling them that they desperately needed to hurry. But before they left, Anthony ordered Elkins and Mercer to set up two closely staggered Claymores in the main corridor leading to the sleeping quarters; when they went off one on top of another, Anthony said, the cave dwelling would be rent in half, as if earth itself were opening its jaws. They set up the Claymores, ran tripwires in all directions. Anthony ordered two CS smoke grenades (“to suffocate them”) to be set up in front of the Claymores, and when he was satisfied, he said let’s go, but couldn’t walk.
“Have you not stood up during all this time?” Alexander asked.
“Oh, I’ve stood up,” said Anthony with unveiled hatred. “They tie me up once a day and jack me up on a hoist while she comes and cleans me and... tends to me. Nurses me back to health.” Black irony was in his voice. “Did you... see her?”
Alexander exchanged a glance with Ha Si. He didn’t want to lie to his son, but he also knew they didn’t have time for this discussion. “Oh, we’ve seen her, Ant.”
Anthony was disoriented. What’s the date today, he asked, and then became even more disoriented when they told him, trying to wrap his brain around how many months he’d been in captivity. My tour was over in August, he muttered. That was going to be it for me. I was coming back stateside. With her. There was something else he was having trouble getting out. He was having trouble. “It can’t be early December.” He paused, tried to find the words. “Her... baby is supposed to be born in early December—”
“Come on, Ant,” said Alexander, prodding him forward, holding on to him. “No time to chitchat. Let’s go.”
“What month is it, really?”
“Let’s just get to the hook. Later for talking.”
Tojo carried Anthony to the ladder, but how were they going to pull Anthony up by only one arm? He was going to have to help himself somehow. Tojo was behind him, supporting him, but it was Anthony who had to grab on to the rungs. He didn’t, couldn’t. His hold slipped, he fell backward, was stopped only by Tojo.
Alexander went in front of his son, steadied him on his feet, took his head into his hands and looking straight into his face, said, “Anthony, your mother at fourteen climbed out of a fucking bear trap with no ladder and with a broken arm. And no Tojo propping her from behind. So fucking pull yourself up by your one arm. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Alexander kissed Anthony’s forehead and pushed him forward.
Before climbing, Anthony ordered Ha Si to set up two more grenades in the straw below the ladder and to place another CS smoke bomb next to it. “To choke them to death,” said Anthony, “as they are being fragged apart.”
It had been fifty-five minutes since Moon Lai left her hut. Alexander was tense like heavy crystal falling over and over on the marble tiles. At last they were all above ground. Anthony held on just tight enough for Tojo to propel him upward, rung by excruciating rung, and then Elkins pulled him up the rest of the way.
And there was Moon Lai—lying under Tojo’s trench.
The five men quickly blocked Anthony’s view of her, ushering him to the door, but the stench of decaying blood in the humid heat was overpowering, and there was no mistaking the shape of a small body, even under a trench. Anthony glared at his men blocking him and said, “I may not be able to tell my father what to do, but you are a different story. Move the fuck out of my way, and I’m not asking you.” Reluctantly they moved out of his way. Pulling up the trench, Anthony stood over her. His legs shook.
He turned to his father, his black-and-blue face an impenetrable mask. Only his lips trembled. He looked at Alexander, looked at Alexander’s red-soaked leg, collected his voice, swallowed, and said as calmly as he could, “She was a demon-whore. She twisted all truth, all the things I believe in, all the things I told her into fucking evil contortions. Think no more about her.” Her pregnancy went unspoken. There was nothing anyone could say. Anthony turned to Ha Si. “Well, point man,” he said coolly, “don’t just stand there and gawk at me with your silent eyes. Tell me, is it safe to go?”
Ha Si stuck his head outside. “All clear, Captain,” he said.
Anthony asked for Alexander’s Colt.
Alexander gave Anthony the Colt. “Ha Si, let Tojo go first. Tojo, your only mission is uphill, one klick, and get Ant on the freedom bird home. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tojo, you’re a giant among men,” said Anthony.
“Captain Barrington, I actually am a giant among men,” said Tojo.
Alexander called Richter, told him they had Anthony, were moving out and to call for the hook.
One two three. They counted time to order it.
Ha Si took one step outside, with Anthony, Tojo and Alexander following behind.
Alexander instantly saw two women about thirty meters away walking toward the hooch. The women saw them and started to scream and run toward the passed-out sentries. They must have been co
Ha Si raised his weapon, but before he could fire, Anthony from behind him fired unhesitatingly with the Colt. The noise was shattering. The women fell and stopped screaming. But they had been loud, and the two shots were louder. There was a tick of silent time passing and then a wailing siren pierced the camp, sounding just like a bombing siren during the siege of Leningrad. Perhaps they were reusing the same sirens, Alexander thought. It really did sound uncannily like the sirens from Leningrad.
What was good about Tojo was that in the five seconds transpiring between the opening of the hut door and the sound of the siren, he was already ten meters up the hill with six-foot-two Anthony slung over his back. And he was right to do it. They didn’t have an extra second. “Watch the tripwire!” Alexander yelled behind him. He, Elkins, Mercer, Ha Si were behind Tojo running up their narrow trail, their heads mostly hidden by the elephant grass. Ha Si was now at tail, a role Alexander didn’t think he was well suited for. They were running as fast as they could, but it was six hundred feet up through barely cleared grass, over rocks and uneven terrain, and Tojo could only move so fast, carrying a two-hundred-pound injured weight, and so the rest of the column had to keep Tojo’s pace, with Alexander saying, come on, faster, Tojo, faster, even as the blood dripped from his own leg. But he knew the ironclad rule of warfare—anything standing gets hit. And when you’re running uphill with the enemy behind you, you get hit in the back. He heard the pop pop crackle of the rifles going off and yelled, “Right to the hook, Tojo. It’s an order. Don’t stop for anything.”
“Yes, sir.” Tojo was panting.
When they were halfway up the hill, three hundred feet up, Ha Si looked back. Alexander heard him say with uncharacteristic emotion, “Oh fuck.”
Those were his last words. A round hit him in the back and he fell. Mercer grabbed him, slung him over his shoulder, and it was a good thing he did, because another round hit Ha Si.
Alexander turned around. And with characteristic emotion, he said, “Oh, fuck.” Though his view was impeded by elephant grass, he saw at least a hundred NVA soldiers still in their oxymoronic sleepwear, with Kalashnikovs in hand, pouring out of the village hooches and from manholes in the ground, running, flying to the hill, ignoring the razor-sharp grass and the single-line-formation rule. An unruly wave of men cut right through the grass even as it was cutting through them. Without helmets or boots they ran, rifled up and fired up.
Alexander sent everyone in his team up ahead, remaining at tail; he counted, one, two, three—and there it went. One barefoot NVA soldier finally tripped a Claymore wire. There was a loud spread-out popping burst and widespread screaming. Someone tripped another Claymore. And another. More popping, more screaming. That slowed the bastards down a bit. Alexander caught up with Mercer, who was struggling up the hill with Ha Si on his back. Alexander ordered Mercer to stop running; from his M-16-mounted grenade launcher, he blooped three arching rockets right into the confused, mined-up, fragged-up midst below, and the grenades slowed them and upset them. He took Ha Si from Mercer, slung him onto his own back and resumed running.
The bloopers slowed the NVA—but didn’t stop them. Neither did the Claymores. Alexander kept glancing back. Shouting to each other, the NVA ran another ten meters uphill. Alexander, carrying Ha Si, heard the second tier of Claymores detonate. A few men broke through, running up parallel to Alexander on the decoy trail—running up right into Harry’s hidden punji sticks. The men screamed, stopped running. Harry would have been proud. Alexander opened fire straight from the hip, shooting through the man-high grass with Ha Si on his back.
He himself was now three-quarters to the top. Tojo was almost at the top. Mercer, now at tail, would run, stop, turn, fire in short bursts, then turn and run again. Elkins, out in front, was emptying his cartridges, reloading, and running. Tojo cleared the hill, thank God, but instead of moving into the jungle, as he had been ordered, he set Anthony down.
From fifty feet below, Alexander yelled, “Go! What the fuck did I tell you? Go!” But Tojo didn’t go. Instead he ripped the rifle from his back and opened sustained fire.
Alexander turned around to look and saw why Tojo decided to disobey a direct order. A small tick of panic crawled inside Alexander, got lodged in, and stayed. It was the Sappers. They were running, falling, crawling through the grass, on their bellies, still in waves. On their bellies, they tripped the Claymores and got greased, but the rest, though injured and moaning, continued to run up, to creep up. And there were more and more of them, tens, dozens, hundreds crawling out of the ground like small twisting asps, slithering out, creeping and running up the hill.
Dropping Ha Si to the ground, Alexander swung around, stood in a straight line with Elkins, Mercer, and Tojo and they opened up at the dark forms below. Richter and the six Yards remained just off to the side, in a great position on very high ground. They had been inflicting enormous damage with their propelled grenades and the M-60—less a machine gun than a fire-breathing dragon.
Yet despite this, some of the NVA were a quarter-way up the hill. Alexander could see their black helmetless heads flashing through the yellow grass. He ordered his men to find cover, found himself a rock and some nice vegetation to hide behind, set his rifle on semi and began shooting the Sappers in short bursts, picking them off one by one, not wasting his fire. They were so dark and moved so slow through the light-colored grass, thinking they were hidden, thinking Alexander couldn’t see them, and then they tried running, thinking he couldn’t hit a moving target.
They were very wrong on both counts.
Forty seconds to aim and fire twenty rounds, reload in three—and again. He did that five times. Did he get a hundred heads for his trouble? Tojo, Mercer and Elkins were as desperately as Alexander trying to ward off the advancing Sappers. Mercer too was picking them off one by one, while Elkins was auto-unloading at the dispersing men, and Tojo was blooping rockets down below straight into the village huts. No quiet escape and evasion here, no subtle extraction. Kum Kau was burning in a black, acrid battle for the order of the universe. Did they get a hundred heads each for their trouble?
Richter and his six Yards were spreading out. At Richter’s entrenchment, two Yards were splitting the ascending Sappers with grenades and the other three were pulverizing them with M–16 rounds. One Yard was the M-60, which Alexander knew any second was going to run out of twelve hundred rounds of armor-piercing ammo. Did they get twelve hundred unarmored North Vietnamese for their trouble?
Alexander hoped so, because the M-60 ran out of ammo, and the rapid fire went quiet. In a moment the selective M-16 fire resumed.
The Sappers were not selective. They had their AK47s set on automatic and were just hosing down the elephant grass as they continued to run uphill.
“Where’s Ant?” Alexander yelled without looking behind him at the woods. “Tojo—could someone take him to fucking extraction!” No one heard him.
Richter called Alexander on the radio. “Hook’s waiting. Abandon your position and retreat. Move out to the hook now.” The radio went dead.
Here was the trouble—Alexander couldn’t move out to the hook now. He and his men couldn’t run five feet through the jungle, much less a whole klick, because as soon as they ceased fire, the Sappers quickened their pace and jacked up their fire, shooting Alexander’s men in the back. The fucking NVA were not retreating; they were stampeding up that hill, and though they were falling to rockets, to mines, to the grease gun, more and more kept coming. As if in a nightmare, they were pouring out from the underground like nothing Alexander had ever seen. They were like the fucking Hydra, he thought, loading a high-explosive shell into the breech of his missile launcher and pressing the trigger. You kill them, and they just grow new heads.
Alexander’s men couldn’t move out, but they couldn’t stay where they were either
Alexander lobbed a CS smoke grenade for more black confusion below, more thick teary havoc, and backed away from his enclosure, running into the woods, where he found Anthony with Ha Si by his feet.
“How is he?” he breathed out.
“Not good,” was Anthony’s reply.
Alexander flipped on his radio to call for one of Richter’s Yards, but Anthony stopped him. “Throw him on my back, Dad,” he said, slowly standing up and putting the Colt in his leg pocket. “I’m not good for anything else. Let me help. You need the Yards for other things. Throw him on my back and push me in the direction of the trail. How far in?”
“One klick, but please fucking hurry,” said Alexander, lifting Ha Si onto Anthony, who started to walk like a rambling drunk man, holding on to Ha Si’s slumped head with his one hand.
Back at the edge of the hill, the situation had gotten only more desperate. The Sappers had so thoroughly dispersed up the sides of the mountain that Alexander realized they were trying to flank his men. And sooner rather than later, the A-team was going to run out of ammo and still be a klick away from the chopper. Someone said, yelled maybe, we’re done for, retreat, retreat.
Richter called Alexander on the radio. “Fuck it all to hell,” he said. “I called in the snakes and the Bright Light team. The critical SITREP: we are not getting out of this by ourselves. Just assess the fucking situation. This is prairie fire.” There were three kinds of emergencies: team, tactical, and prairie fire—where you were engaged by a numerically superior force, surrounded and about to be annihilated.