Night Work: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 2) Read online

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  Night Work

  A Novel of Vietnam

  The Jim Hollister Trilogy

  Dennis Foley

  This book is dedicated to

  Staff Sergeant Pellum Bryant, Jr.,

  a soldier’s soldier.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Glossary

  Preview: Take Back the Night

  About the Author

  “They all hold swords, being expert in war: every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night.”

  Song of Solomon 3:8

  Foreword

  THE FACT THAT LIEUTENANT James Hollister already had one combat tour in Vietnam behind him was of no consequence when it came to his reassignment. He was as available to return to Vietnam as if he had never been there. But he had been there, and he had survived an impressive yet difficult year—the first half of it as a rifle platoon leader in a separate Airborne brigade, the second half as a platoon leader in the brigade’s long-range patrol detachment.

  While his military record was solid and showed the kind of experience that the army wanted in its junior leaders, it failed to show the hairline cracks that were left. And Hollister was the last one to admit that he had been hurt more deeply by his experiences than the wounds that had laid him up in a field hospital.

  Hollister would soldier on, swallow the pain, and lead by example. That’s the way the army had trained him and the way his family had raised him.

  We all knew Jim Hollister, admired him, and wished that we could be like him. But we never envied him his burden nor desired his trials. Still, there is a little bit of Jim Hollister in all of us. Most of us wish there were much more.

  Chapter 1

  THE AIR CHURNED UP by the chopper blades began to evaporate the sweat on Hollister’s face as he leaned back against the fire wall in the cramped compartment of the helicopter, trying to grab for air to fill his burning lungs.

  He’d done what he could do. They were all in, he had given the copilot the signal to go. His six-man patrol kept their eyes fixed on the black ribbon of trees that surrounded the landing zone as the pilot sucked in some collective and pushed the cyclic forward to start the chopper up and out of the tiny clearing.

  Though focused on the outside of the ship, each man was conscious of the chopper’s progress and, to the man, each was still amazed that choppers could even fly. Still, the aging Huey rolled forward and started to reach up, coming off its skids, lifting its tail, straining for the transition from forward to upward motion with a pair of unexplained bumps on the hardened rice paddy.

  As the chopper reached the end of the clearing, it had gained just enough altitude to kiss the tops of the nipa palms with the chin bubble. Hollister didn’t need to look around to know they were in trouble. The chopper seemed to strain more than it usually did to struggle for airspeed and altitude.

  At just under a hundred and fifty feet off the ground, and nearly forty knots, the instrument panel lit up with flashing MASTER CAUTION and RPM LIMIT lights. Instantly, every man in the chopper knew they were in very big trouble.

  “We’re hit! We’re going in! No power! No hydraulics!” the pilot yelled to warn the already alerted crew and passengers.

  Hollister looked around to see if his five charges were braced for the worst. He then looked out for the ground to gauge how long, how far, and how fast it was all going to happen.

  The chopper was yawing over to the right side and heading toward the ground, nose low, at a very high rate of speed. Hollister unconsciously searched the floor of the chopper for something to hold on to as the ground came up at them—faster and faster and faster until, suddenly …

  He sat straight up, sweat-soaked and naked in his own bed, and screamed as his own death approached.

  “Honey? What? What is it?” Susan asked as she awoke, finding him shielding his eyes with his crossed arms. She knew the answer. He was there again. In his nightmares he was back there—back in Vietnam.

  The heat and humidity that filled the night were stifling. His uniform, stuck to his six-foot frame, was still wet from the rain that fell just before dark, and though he was still sweating from the heat, Hollister knew he would be wet all night. He considered taking off his boots, one at a time, to massage his waterlogged feet, but knew that it would set a bad example.

  He’d learned all too well on his first tour in Vietnam that taking off boots was a luxury that field troops couldn’t enjoy until they were back in their base camps. And the last thing he needed that night was to have all the men on the patrol with their boots off when things got tight. Security had to be foremost in everyone’s mind. Anything else was foolhardy.

  A hand reached out of the blackness and tapped Hollister on the elbow. Without unnecessary movement Hollister looked over at the soldier lying next to him and tried to make out his signal. In the black-on-black he was able to distinguish the vague outline of the soldier’s raised hand motioning off to their right.

  Following the soldier’s pointed finger, Hollister was able to pick out some movement on the narrow trail just below their concealed ambush position. The images were hard to separate from the dark vegetation behind them.

  Falling back on a technique he had learned in Ranger School, Hollister moved his gaze to the margins of the images, where they blended into the background, rather than look directly at the indistinct mass. It worked. He could make out the figures. He looked at them long enough to decide that he was seeing an enemy patrol moving in single file carrying weapons and some light cargo in packs. Though they moved quietly, an occasional muted clunk, clack, or thunk sounded as they slipped through the night.

  It was a perfect ambush setup—above and parallel to the trail, able to place the maximum amount of firepower down on to and across it. On the far side of the trail an embankment rose at least thirty feet at the lowest point. If the ambush was executed at the right moment, the enemy force would be caught in low-angle plugging fire and be unable to escape it by running away from Hollister’s position.

  He continued to watch as the patrol moved closer and closer to the leading edge of the killing zone of the ambush. If they waited till the right moment, the entire patrol would get into the killing zone, allowing the maximum amount of fire to be placed on them. Waiting too long or triggering the ambush too early would give the enemy patrol the opportunity to evade the most effective fire. And if the leader of the enemy patrol had the balls, he could maneuver his men around and roll up the flank of the ambushers. Timing was as critical as setup.

  The soldiers with Hollister didn’t have the experience, and it was his job
to train them. It was time. He got up into a crouch and looked around at the others. Were they awake? Alert? Ready to execute the ambush? If they weren’t, there would be hell to pay.

  The enemy patrol moved even closer to the killing zone, marked on their end by a large gash in the nearby hillside.

  Cramping up, Hollister gently moved to a more comfortable position that afforded him a better view of the enemy patrol. He settled and diverted his attention back to his own troops. There were a few muffled sounds of anxious hands adjusting equipment, weapons. There were also breathy grunts as comfortable body positions were exchanged for better firing positions. So far, so good, Hollister thought.

  He looked back at the killing zone. The enemy patrol numbered seven men, and all but two were well inside of it. He glanced over to his left and watched the soldier next to him pick up the claymore mine detonator and flip the safety clip to the off position.

  To his right he heard one of the other soldiers whispering an almost inaudible mantra of caution to the others. “Hold it… steady, hold it… hold it.” With each word the voice got progressively tighter and higher in pitch.

  The last two enemy soldiers entered the killing zone, and the voice of the cautioning soldier leaped in amplitude and force as he yelled, “Now!” punctuating it with a burst of rifle fire on full automatic.

  The night wash immediately changed from shades of purple to two colors—absolute black and muzzle flashes.

  Hollister’s ears popped at the cacophony of gunfire, explosions, and soldiers yelling instructions and support to one another. Much of the yelling was a form of feedback that allowed the soldier to convince himself he was doing the right thing and doing it well.

  In the killing zone the enemy soldiers let loose with only a few rounds, which were easy to see by their muzzle flashes, but soon all seven men were lying on the trail within steps of where they had been stopped by the fire raining down onto them.

  “Cease fire … cease fire!” yelled the soldier next to Hollister. The others picked up the command and passed it on.

  Hollister watched as the soldier—the patrol leader—scrambled from man to man to check on each one, ascertain his ammo status, and give instructions for some to go forward to the killing zone to check out their kill.

  But before the small party got up and started forward, Hollister stood and raised his voice. “Stop! Hold it right there! Patrol leader?”

  “Yessir,” the patrol leader replied as the others froze in their tracks.

  “Hold what you’ve got. I want to talk to you all. Lock and clear your weapons and gather round me—all of you,” Hollister said forcefully. He then turned toward the killing zone and cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered to the bodies on the trail.

  “Aggressors! Hey, down on the trail! Very good job! You can recover, and you are released for the night. Who is your patrol leader?”

  The dead men got up, clapped their hands, whistled, shouted, and congratulated themselves—proud of their acting. A voice answered from the trail, “Sergeant Ruis, sir. I’m in charge, sir.”

  “What unit you with?” Hollister yelled down to him.

  “C Company, sir, first of the twenty-ninth,” Ruis said proudly.

  “Well, good show, Ruis. Thank you. You can head back now.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Ruis said as he assembled his soldiers and began to check to see if each one had cleared any remaining blank ammunition out of the chamber of his weapon.

  No one had died. No one would even bleed that night. Training was the most important function of the night. And it was up to Hollister to make it effective and memorable—even if he had to be to critical to make his point.

  “Where’s the goddamn patrol leader?” Hollister asked of the friendlies assembled in the mottled darkness around him.

  “Here, sir,” a silhouette to his right front replied.

  “I have very few negative comments about your performance, but where in the hell was the early warning? Huh?”

  Not giving the Ranger student patrol leader a chance to reply, Hollister stabbed his finger in the direction of the departed enemy patrol. “When did you know that patrol was approaching your killing zone?”

  The patrol leader hesitated and then started to waffle about the notification. “I’m not sure if I was notified. I looked up and saw the lead element of the enemy patrol moving toward the killing zone, sir.”

  “What in the fuck made you think that there was only a seven-man patrol and not a whole goddamn VC battalion behind that lead element? Huh?” Hollister yelled at the rattled soldier.

  As he badgered the patrol leader, his mind volunteered images of a night when he had unwisely executed an ambush with too small a patrol against too large a Viet Cong unit. He got away with it that night, but Hollister was sure that his good luck would never extend to the young Ranger student obediently acknowledging each pause in his lecture with clipped “yessirs.”

  Finally, Hollister paused long enough for the student to feel that he had to justify his actions. “Well, sir, I thought that I—”

  “You thought shit, Ranger!”

  Hollister yanked his army-issue flashlight off his harness and switched it on, letting the red-filtered light play across the faces of the ten Ranger students standing in front of him in a tight semicircle. “Where’s the right-side security?”

  A second uncomfortable Ranger student stepped forward. “That’s me, sir. I guess I screwed up.”

  “You guess? You fucking guess that you screwed up, Ranger?” Hollister yelled sarcastically.

  “I did screw up, sir,” the young soldier said contritely.

  “You screwed up royally, Ranger. You were sleeping out there, weren’t you? There is no way you could’ve been awake and miss that patrol. You let your patrol leader down. You jeopardized your fellow patrol members, and you could have caused this entire patrol to end up in metal boxes,” Hollister screamed—genuinely angry

  “I’m sorry, sir. I just …”

  “You’re goddamn right you’re sorry, Ranger! Get down on your face and start knocking out push-ups till I get tired or until you reach two hundred. Hit it!”

  The Ranger student dropped to the front leaning rest position and placed his M14 rifle across his knuckles to keep it out of the dirt as he started to do the punishment push-ups.

  Hollister turned his light back from the soldier onto the patrol leader. “I ought to flunk you on this patrol. You know that, don’t you, Ranger?”

  The student patrol leader paled at the thought of failing another patrol. Failing too many meant washing out of Ranger School. “Yessir. I realize that.”

  “The only reason that I am not flunking you, Ranger, is that you did everything else by the numbers. But don’t count on Charlie cutting you any slack—ever.”

  Disgusted, Hollister switched off the light and continued to talk to him in the dark. “Knowing what you are firing on is more goddamn important than executing the ambush at all. You want to get dead in Vietnam, just keep that shit up, Ranger. Now that I think about it—you piss me off, anyway. Get on down on your face and catch up with your dickhead security man.”

  It was late the next afternoon before Hollister was relieved by another Ranger instructor. They exchanged information on the status of the student patrol. The new instructor made sure that he had a head count and the name of every student he would be responsible for in the coming thirty-six hours.

  There were two cardinal sins in the instructor business at Fort Benning, Georgia. The first was losing a student and not knowing it; the second was not recognizing a heat casualty early and preventing it.

  As Hollister drove back to Main Post from the Ranger Department area in Harmony Church, he watched soldiers and civilians coming out of offices, barracks, and training areas, their day ended.

  He looked at his watch. It was four-thirty-five. One thing about troops, he thought. They came to work on time, and they left on time. Most of them would be heading for the mess
halls or off post to their families. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to go home just yet. He was still wide-awake, even after two days without sleep. He knew that if he went directly home he would have difficulty getting to sleep and might be just too wired for Susan, his wife of a little over a year.

  As he considered his options, he turned off the range road leading to the housing area and headed for the Officers Club and the infamous Infantry Bar.

  The Infantry Bar was a tradition for infantrymen at Fort Benning. It had gone through several moves and remodeling drills—still it was the IB, the Infantry Bar. The only stag bar on post, it was located in the basement of the main club and thus was windowless. It was a perfect watering hole, where officers could gather at the end of the day, drink, swear, and tell war stories. And given enough time in the IB, an officer could be part of, or at least witness, a good fistfight.

  Another major feature of the IB was that it was one of the few places at Fort Benning where officers could go in fatigues. All these features made it the most popular after-work bar on post.

  Careful to remove his patrolling cap before stepping off the top landing, Hollister descended the steep stairs to the bar. Custom was that anyone who entered the bar with his headgear on, or placed his headgear on the bar, was immediately obligated to buy the house a round. Lucky young lieutenants learned the expensive custom at someone else’s expense. Unlucky ones paid as much as a month’s salary to wet down up to sixty thirsty bar patrons. At $222.30, before taxes, a new lieutenant only made the headgear mistake once in a career.

  “Hey, Hollister … you worthless bipod for an M16!” a voice yelled from the far end of the L-shaped bar.

  Hollister looked over the heads of those seated at the bar, and several others who were standing behind the seated ones and saw a GMT-Master Rolex and a hand waving him over.

  As he threaded himself through the others, he finally saw the face behind the mock insult. It was Captain Mike Taylor, an infantry aviator who had flown gunships in support of Hollister’s long-range patrol detachment in Vietnam. Taylor’s was a friendly face. He and Hollister had seen plenty of shooting together and were fond of teasing each other about their respective jobs. But underneath all the kidding, they were solid friends, each of them confident of the other’s reliability and happy to have him as a friend.