Chapter 1
ONE
Southeast Asia, January 31st, 1968.
It was a dark day in Saigon, illuminated by a display of fireworks. In South Vietnam, coloring the sky with sparklers was a time-honored tradition to celebrate New Years and put aside petty differences. Citizens smiled at the overhead pyrotechnics, as the bang-bang sounds reverberated throughout the city. The ground quaked beneath their feet by a faint implosion, freezing the people into suspended animation. Their muscles twitched to the mighty palpitations in their hearts, as they huddled together for protection.
Their adversaries—the PAVN Army, North Vietnamese Army, and Viet Cong—bombarded their country by means of a violent procession. Commandos and guerillas incinerated hundreds of towns, outposts and federal buildings within the fifty-mile radius. This conflagration engulfed the entire city, reducing most of its structures to rubble and sparing no lives in the process.
A horde of civilians──men, women and children──escaped helter-skelter amid the wreckage of their bamboo properties. Some avoided the brunt of destruction, some wallowed in the flames, and others even kept a low profile on the outskirts of the city.
This attack pushed these innocent inhabitants to the brink of extinction, as it persisted from dusk until dawn. South Vietnam exercised its military prowess via the ARVN Army, mobilizing their troops by the hundreds. The United States in turn mobilized their military infrastructure—the Army, the Marine Corps, the Navy and the Air Force—and they worked in tandem with their South Vietnamese allies. Some soldiers sat atop bulletproof tanks in the middle of the battlefield, some operated helicopters, and others steered patrol boats along the eddies of the Mekong Delta. Napalm catapulted from the boats and left the village in an inferno of jellied gasoline.
Fear trumped reason. Senseless violence shattered all hopes of diplomacy like a rock through a glass window.
Standing in the middle of this catastrophe was Private Second Class Malcolm Cohen of the 5th Platoon, Alpha Bravo Company. He sported a cotton camouflage outfit and metal helmet, and toted a semi automatic M-16 rifle. His suede leather combat boots kicked through the wreckage as he sprinted from the staccato gunfire. He attached to his forty soldiers like an overcharged magnet. Hundreds more soldiers dispersed, within their vicinity and in the center of the battlefield. Shielding himself inside a nearby trench with his army, he pressed the trigger on his rifle at a monosyllabic rate of sixty rounds per minute. A mist of propellant gasses emanated from the hole of the front muzzle. The release of incendiary devices intensified the aroma of the gasses and the decomposing corpses.
Directly adjoining him to the farthest left was Private First Class Trevor Brown, who kept a keen eye around the perimeter and a tight grip on his M-16A1 rifle. Cohen’s other combatants huddled to his right, their knees overlapping each other and their teeth on edge. The discordant sounds of gunshots and explosions submerged Cohen’s heart into his stomach, laboring his breath to an asthmatic squeak. Deflecting the fusillade of bullets and bombs dragged on to the point of exhaustion, as they wailed to an earsplitting crescendo throughout the city. Abundant reinforcements and ammunition failed to expel the fear that corroded his brain to a crimson red. He wore a mask of sorrow that not even a simple prayer to God above could remove from his face.
As he averted his eyes from the insistent rays of sunlight, he rummaged through a pocket in his equipment belt around his waist. Pulling out the magazine of his firearm, he squinted at a glint of light reflecting off his helmet and encompassing his face. Perspiration cascaded down his face and drenched his uniform, the moisture coalescing with the soil. Heat and dehydration in his throat drove his blood pressure to a higher octave than the trigger-happy symphony of the battlefield. His energy withered away to nothing, while his heart rate hummed at a manic-depressive pitch. The strap of his empty gun weighed down his lethargic knees into the dirt and his body dropped the magazine to the dirt. His helmet slipped off his head and bounced off his boots.
A flying mortar shell landed in his periphery and discharged glass fragments far and wide. Some shards sliced his skin with precision. The cacophony of the blast oppressed his eardrums and awakened him from his stupor, his brain ringing to a deafening siren. Goosebumps sprouted beneath the fabric of his uniform, and his arms trembled in sync with the vibrations in his head.
“Jesus Christ,” said Cohen. “These fucks outnumber us a hundred to one. And we’re running out of ammo!”
Brown hollered. “Just keep reloading and shooting with whatever is left! We’ve got multiple Charlies heading inbound.”
Before he could counter Brown’s command, Cohen picked up his weapon off the ground and reinserted the magazine, then mounted his helmet back on his head. Spotting five incoming enemies, he squatted his knees inside the trench and slanted his gun at an angle of forty-five degrees. He fired ten shots in rapid succession. Their bodies collapsed, the force of the impact echoing through the earth.
He peeked his head outward from the trench when his chest constricted and caved into his ribs. His hands uncurled and his limbs gave a spasmodic jerk as he levitated. His face planted on the ground at a strong velocity, the straps on his chin clicked, and his helmet plopped in front of his nose. Stretching for his helmet, an unseen figure tugged at the back of his shirt and flipped him onto his rear. A Viet Cong soldier, of immense build and elevated height, towered over him in the same barbaric demeanor as King Kong enacting his reign of terror on the Empire State Building. Flickering his eyes and fidgeting to stand up, the figure forced his M-16 off his neck and bashed in his skull with the end plate. Blood splattered on Cohen’s head as he held a tenuous grip against his opponent, seizing him to reclaim his firearm. An up-close and personal experience of combat!
“Holy shit,” Corporal Sam Moreno shouted. “Brown, Cohen’s in trouble. I need more ammo now!”
Brown assisted Moreno in aiming his M-60 machine gun. Together they fired a bullet that landed in the enemy’s lower back. His vertebrae spurted out blood like a faucet. Gaining the upper hand, Cohen toppled onto him with his knee crushing his esophagus. He unveiled a machete and jammed the blade deep into his throat. The fallen renegade coughed blood out of his mouth, while more spilled out from under him. He hiccuped his last breath and planted his arm onto the ground with dramatic finality.
Cohen propped himself upward, teetering with vertigo and covering the gash on his forehead. He readjusted the strap of his weapon and marched with the rest of his infantry, traveling behind his military commander and subordinates.
Cohen’s commander, Lieutenant Patrick Reilly, led his troops twenty kilometers northeast from their location. They stopped at the sight of a mid-sized concrete military bunker, stockpiled with rows and columns of gray sandbags. As they walked closer to this stronghold, they inched backwards at the sight of two North Vietnamese commandos. One wielded an AK-47 submachine gun and the other a Type-56 carbine, while both used every other weapon in between. The scenario was altogether a recipe for catastrophe; being noticed meant certain death!
Reilly ushered his crew behind a wall and whispered, “We’ll be better protected over there once we set up an outpost. But first, we need to take out the guards!”
