James Crumley - One to Count Cadence

By the second van from the end, I pulled the pin, released the handle, then lofted the grenade toward the mortar pit and machine gun. The second I held longer, and the third burst in the air over the compound like a fourth of July nightmare. I couldn't smell the flesh burning, nor the screams of the burned, but the M-60 died with a rattling coughing burst.

A head popped over the protective wall up by the first van, stayed long enough to see me, then disappeared. I crawled forward, then ran in a crouch, and when he rolled over the wall into the trench, I was behind him, thrusting back the slide of the.45. He heard, turned, I fired twice, once wide, the second round into the action of his rifle. His hand jerked away from the butt, but he flipped the rifle and ran at me, screaming, mouth a black cavern in his head, his weapon raised above his head like a sword. I fired again. His left leg flew behind him as if attached to a rope, but even as he fell, he kept crawling. I shot him in the hip and shoulder, and he stopped. I thought that enough (noise, not compassion), so I tried to run past him, but his good hand grabbed my ankle with a grip like a bear trap. I jerked, fired twice at his head, missed, then twice into his back. He grunted, but held. I kicked, tripped, sat heavily on his back. He grunted, but held again. The muzzle blast of my last round, fired directly against his flesh, kicked the.45 out of my hand, but he held what he had, and he had the most frightened man in the world. I sunk the bayonet into the back of his neck. He released my ankle, but the damned bayonet wouldn't come out of his neck. Idiot-like, I jerked at the handle, ran away, came back, jerked again, then ran again as two more heads peeped over the wall. A grenade exploded in the trench one curve behind me, but the concussion only gave me speed, and in less than a moment, I stood in the CP, shouting, "Shit, yes. Fuck yes. Damn right!" at Saunders and Tetrick. They merely nodded, then told me to get as many men in the communication trench as I could find.

The VC commander had about sixty men inside the perimeter, pinched off once more by the militia. He couldn't go back, and probably never thought of retreating, but if he could take the inner triangle, he wouldn't have to. He moved his men out of our wire and behind the vans on the right and the generators and repair shack on the left. The flare ship and the air strike had arrived, and the fire from the trees had nearly stopped, so the M-60s at the north- and south-east points could cover the outside trenches, which meant that the VC had to come right up the middle without even the covering fire of the captured M-60. We had tried to set up another M-60 in the center of the com trench, but three suicide grenadiers had put it out of action. We would either hold with the thirty or so men in the trench who would stand and fire, or we wouldn't hold at all. We had the firepower, but they had the guts.

I went for Novotny and his detail, but found them huddled against the wall, four dead, six wounded, and Novotny hung over the wall, a gutter wound laced black up the side of his head. The sergeant who had stepped on my hand said, "Dead. Direct hit." His left ear was gone and that side of his head covered with blood, but he seemed intact. I herded the mobile members of Novotny's detail into the trench thinking of nothing but staying alive. I didn't even care.

I set up to the right of the CP, the Armalite and the shotgun ready. The VC had fair cover now, Chinese grenades – more bark than bite – coming from behind the nearer generators, some men firing from behind the sandbags on top of the further vans. But we had grenades going out too, the 81mm mortars were beginning to walk in from the outer perimeter west gate. They had to come now.

Twenty or so men spilled out into the open from either side, some crawling, some charging, some kneeling for covering fire. Black pajamas and Jesus-boots flapping, the little men came like hounds of hell, like a forest fire, a crown fire leaping from tree to tree in a mad race of destruction. Those of us who were going to fight were up now, saying at least that we weren't going to die in our holes. At least ten VC fell in the first burst from the trench, but others kept coming.

As they swept past the third van on the right, half a dozen grenades went off among them. They faltered and in that hesitation another ten fell, though not all hit, for they kept firing from their bellies, or tried to crawl to the shelter of the vans. Those left charging were cut down quickly.

I hit a bunch of three on the left at about fifteen yards with the shotgun; they washed into five more, and the mass was ripped apart. Then another one on the right at five yards as he killed the man next to me, then another out of the air as he leapt over the trench. That was the last of the charge. I traded the shotgun for the Armalite, then went down the right after those who had fled to the spare safety of the vans. One in the foot as he knelt, another in a shower of sparks as he poked head and rifle around a van, and a third in the back as he climbed into a van.

Then Joe Morning stepped out of the door of the third van, shot a kneeling man in the back of the head. Then he ran into the midst of them, firing from the hip like a hero, but he hit at least three more before he folded at the waist like a waiter giving a surly bow, folded, fell, lay still.

After Joe Morning, we mopped up. The VC were beat, but not a single one surrendered. It was over. Oh, the planes chased the VC through the jungle, and the troops stayed on full alert, but it was over.

We collected our wounded, leaving the dead to sleep until daylight. Casualties were high; the 721st ceased to be operational. So many dead, so many ways to die. The mortars had done the worst damage. Dottlinger was the only one I saw without a shrapnel wound of some sort. (I don't mean to imply that he stayed in the CP; he was up firing during the charge, after the charge, after it was over.) Haddad had a black hole in the very center of his bald head, but not another mark on him, the round disappearing as surely as if it had been fired into the sky, and it is buried with him. A nickel-sized piece of shrapnel had torn through Quinn's cheek – in one side and out the other with about fifteen teeth, but not his bad one – and when he was hit, he fell on a tent peg and lost an eye. Peterson had his heel shot or blown off, but other than that he was all right. Cagle, Novotny, Morning, Haddad, Franklin, dead. (Though you know, as I do, that I was mistaken. Cagle wasn't dead, but was on the back side of the aid station, and I didn't see him. He lost two ribs and his right arm, but they saved his lung after it had collapsed. Novotny wasn't dead either, but deaf now.) All the new members of the Trick were still in the vans, dead in the vans where they had stayed. It was over.

I was supposed to be checking the dead VC, but I wandered past Morning's body being dragged away (I knew he was dead), and into the van he had come out of. Eight jumbled positions, four bodies present and accounted for, three new guys whose names I didn't want to know, but the fourth was a VC, a small terribly old man sitting in the corner. He looked like the one with the dynamite grenades that I had missed, but I couldn't tell.

Suddenly I had to pee so badly that tears welled in my eyes. Holding my crotch, I ran out the side door, slipping in blood or coffee at the door, but not falling, then rushed to the still smoldering latrine. All the canvas had burned away and the wooden seat still smoked. I couldn't imagine why I had come to the open latrine to pee, and then I couldn't stop giggling. A paperback collection of Huxley essays and a flashlight also smoked on the seat. I peed on them. Goddamned Joe Morning caught in the can reading by flashlight while the VC shot the hell out of the place. Shit. But he'd fallen too… I finished, then wandered back to the van, feeling his loss, feeling the guilt creep in on tiny but sharp-clawed feet.