sure that days or even hours from then, the idea of not eating would torment her. She chose to be full only in order to have the issue of hunger not interfere.
When Helen made her request to accompany one of the relief companies, the PIO flatly denied her. “This is critical stuff. Way too dangerous to allow a woman.”
“I’ve covered these companies before-”
“Don’t bother. I can’t spare a man to escort you.”
“I’ve been covering combat for two years-”
He made a long, sour face. “Regulations.”
“Not for me. I covered this area in-”
“Regulations, understand?”
“-in ’sixty-six, before you even knew where Vietnam was.”
“We don’t need a dead woman.”
From behind her, she heard a loud voice and felt a heavy hand clap down on her shoulder. “Helen Adams.”
She turned and came face-to-face with Captain Olsen. Unchanged from two and a half years before, as if that dreary day in the Mekong were only yesterday.
“You must have made a deal with the devil,” she said. “You look younger than when I last saw you.”
“Just a little malaria and desk work.”
“I went out with your replacement, Horner.”
“That was a cursed mission. A damned shame.”
Helen didn’t mention Samuels, but he didn’t need mentioning. She could see the responsibility for it in Captain Olsen’s eyes. No Dorian Gray after all.
“This man here”-Helen pointed at the PIO-“is denying me clearance. My company is already moving out.”
“Lowen, you giving this girl a hard time?”
“He said I’d be demoralizing dead.”
“A real lady’s man, huh? This is the girl who made me a hero. The eight-hundred-pound gorilla of picture takers. Let her have what she wants.”
The PIO made a face. “Go. Get a.45.”
“I won’t carry a weapon,” Helen said.
The PIO paused, his face scrunched up. “If she’s your friend, I’d brief her.”
Captain Olsen took Helen’s arm and moved off toward the mess. Helen motioned Linh over. “I want to cover this,” she said.
Olsen nodded and shook Linh’s hand. “Lowen’s an ass, but he’s right on this one. Things are bad up there. Take the gun.”
Helen shook her head.
“Serious. No one is going to help you up there.”
“I’ll carry it,” Linh said.
When they came back, the PIO was smoking a cigarette.
“Smoking’s bad for you,” Helen said.
“If we’re carrying weapons,” Linh said, “I want an M16 and the.45.”
The PIO turned red. “Shit, I don’t believe this.” He glared at Olsen, who ignored him. “You ever shot one of these?”
Linh didn’t hesitate. “Many times.”
Hours later, climbing from dense jungle to hardwood forest then back to jungle, they reached the base of the mountain at dusk. They squatted in place along the path, Helen resting her back against a tree. Usually, they’d set camp for the night, but time was essential; in the morning there might not be anyone left. Artillery barrages and air strikes on the surrounding hills deafened them; ground shook as they climbed over fallen trees blocking the narrow, steep dirt path.
As they approached the crest where the company was pinned down, parachute flares illuminated the landscape in an eerie light. As far as the eye could see, trees splintered and burned, a whole forest of devastation. Heavy smoke forming a fog. The flare died into a deeper, more eerie darkness.
As the company marched the final distance of several hundred yards in the dark they passed fallen logs, singly, then in clusters, then in mounds, discovering to their horror in the illumination of another flare the shapes were not logs but bodies. Stripped of uniforms, boots, weapons, resembling splayed and disfigured trees.
In the middle of the night, the relief company stumbled the last few feet to reach the Americans occupying a small circle of abandoned enemy bunkers. Out of a force of more than a hundred, only a dozen men remained. They had been without food for a day, strung out along the shallow forward observation bunkers.
After they briefed the new troops, the men devoured rations, then fell asleep on the bunker floor. One of the men, grimy faced, still held a spoon as he slept. Helen attached a flash and took his picture. Another picture of the sign made from the top of an ammo crate at the bunker entrance: WELCOME TO HELL.
A black soldier, PFC Simmons, stood next to Helen. “Looks like we’re none too early.”
“They hung them out, sending them up here alone,” she said.
“Then what about us, lady?” he asked.
Nothing for Helen and Linh to do until daylight but sit and wait, the air rotten with the smell of bodies in the woods around them, smoke from the fires dotting the surrounding hills. Her eyes stung. She tried to wash them out with water, but it was no use, so she closed them and tried to rest, pressing against the damp dirt wall of the bunker. She dozed through the night, grabbing fistfuls of minutes, only to be startled awake by the slamming of rockets, the hiss of metal shards driven into what ever they came into contact with, the overhead dirt roof slowly trickling down on them.
After several hours, she slid down until her head was in Linh’s lap, and he placed his hand over her ear to muffle the sound so that although she still could hear the barrages, the noise was distanced by the thickness of one hand. His cupped palm gave her the buzz of blood, the pulse of the ocean, the childish certainty that nothing could happen to her while she was protected in this way.
At four in the morning the frequency of the mortars increased, and a sergeant ordered Helen and Linh to move to the deeper back bunkers. Unfamiliar with the area aboveground, they asked to take their chances and stay put, but the sergeant wouldn’t argue the point.
They crouched and scuttled across the broken, debris-strewn ground. The opening was supposed to be only ten feet from the observation bunker, but they traveled at least thirty feet until they ran into the tree line. They retraced their way back and veered to the left, finding a larger entrance than the sergeant described, but the shriek of incoming made the decision for them. Helen threw herself onto the ground inside, Linh at her back, the fall of several feet knocking the wind out of her while a mortar exploded twenty yards away. Underneath, in the darkness, she felt something smooth and clammy and realized she was sinking into human flesh.
Helen jumped, taking her chances outside rather than trapped in the ground. She doused herself with her remaining water, took her soiled shirt off over her T-shirt. She huddled against a low wall of sandbags. Mortars rang in her ears, strangling sound, and she could make out Linh’s words only when he came close.
“Go back.” He pointed to the observation bunker.
Nervous tears ran down her face. She couldn’t stop them although she didn’t feel afraid, didn’t feel anything at all. The constant bottoming fear of being hurt or worse gone. But the biggest danger was after the fear left. She yelled at Linh, “Go ahead. I’m better out here.”
He sat down next to her, and she shook her head, pushing at him to go away, but he stayed at her side. Later, when she calmed down, they crawled to another empty bunker for the rest of the night. The shelling continued until dawn. At first light they made their way back the observation bunker. The sergeant took a look at Helen and handed her his cup of lukewarm coffee made with a packet of instant and a heat tab.
