A Culpable Innocence
Chapter 12: TET—Year of the Monkey (pg. 177)
At the first sound of distant
thuds, Regis rose from his bunk, fully alert. Mortar rounds were exploding,
like car doors slamming close outside one’s bedroom window, but distant, disembodied
of the whistling entry noise they made when landing close by—“Pop . . . pop . .
. pop . . .”—they were falling with regularity everywhere, landing in a
semi-circle encompassing Artillery Hill to the west, Camp Schmidt to the north,
Engineer Hill to the northeast, and the Pleiku
airbase to the east. Regis flew into action, slipping the bandoliers crosswise
over his shoulders, picking up his helmet and M14 in one motion as he ran for
the door. He was past the threshold when the ear-shattering bass roar of an
overhead rocket resonated through the wooden barrack and his very bones. It was
closing in like a fifty-ton freight train. With one hand on the second floor
railing he leaped over it. He landed faced down, spread eagled, in one of the
drainage ditches at the same time as the rocket exploded. The concussion blew
over the ditch with tremendous force, bounced Regis as the earth beneath him
expanded and contracted, and pelted him with falling debris. His ears were
ringing, adrenaline fired his muscles, but his consciousness was outside his
body. He was watching himself as he checked his body for wounds and looked for
his helmet which he had lost in the fall. The sky was alight with the
orange-tinged, flickering glow of illumination flares and crisscrossed with the
fizzling sparkle of tracer fire. The U.S. response had begun. The
“rat-a-tat-tat” of machine guns indicated U.S. installations were already under
ground assault or at least believed they were. The Pleiku
alarm siren finally blared its warning in a belated attempt to alert the U.S.
bases, and all installation lights went dark.
Regis had not been injured by
the fall or shrapnel, although he was covered in dirt from the clods unearthed
by the rocket. It had buried itself about 30 feet away before exploding. A delayed detonator, Regis told himself.
He had been lucky. He clambered out of the ditch, put on his helmet, and
staggered into an awkward run. Halfway to Three Tower he heard the
deep-throated roar of another rocket overhead, higher than the first. He dove
into the ditch that bordered the walkway. As he did so, he heard a crashing
sound and the scatter of metal objects, followed by a partly muffled explosion.
The rocket must have hit something in its path, cleared Tropo
Hill, and exploded on the far hillside or in the valley below. He picked
himself up in order to resume his dash to the perimeter when he heard the more
familiar whistling sounds of incoming mortar rounds. Two landed in quick
succession just at the edge of Tropo Hill on its northeast
side—in the direction he was headed. He hurried with an increased sense of
urgency to get to his defensive position. What immediately occurred to him was
that there were at least two mortar firing positions aimed at his installation
and they were targeting that very patch of the perimeter his squad was assigned
to defend. He ran as fast as he could before he had to dive again for cover.
Two more rounds landed a bit closer and very near
Regis scrambled to locate his
helmet again and ready himself to fire his weapon when he realized he was not
alone in the trench. Expecting one of his squad members, he was shocked to find
a nearly naked Vietnamese man on the other end of the trench. The man was
wearing nothing but sandals and shorts and had a package or something strapped
to his bare back. He was as alarmed and surprised to see Regis as Regis was to
see him, and for the same reasons. They were not only confronting each other in
combat, but for the second time. He was the same man Regis had faced at Tam’s
house. The spell that had locked their eyes onto each other was broken in the
next instant. Regis raised his M14 barrel and his antagonist whipped out a
knife. But Regis had failed to load a magazine in his weapon. The man noticed
Regis’ predicament, but instead of rushing him, he scampered out of the trench
and started running in the direction of the command bunker. As he turned his
back on Regis, the satchel charges he carried became recognizable.
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