Soldier's Medal (Vietnam Ground Zero Military Thrillers Book 5) Read online

  SOLDIER’S MEDAL

  Vietnam: Ground Zero Series

  Book Five

  Eric Helm

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  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

  ALSO BY ERIC HELM

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GLOSSARY

  GERBER OPENED THE STARS AND STRIPES

  As he looked at an inside page, he felt his stomach turn over. Smiling out at him was a picture of Sean Cavanaugh, looking as if he had just escaped from high school. Gerber stared at the youthful face, short hair and the white shirt and dark tie. He thought of the young man who had evaded the draft by volunteering for active duty in the Army and found himself in Vietnam before anyone in the World knew where in hell it was.

  Below the photo of Cavanaugh was another of two people. The captain had thought of Cavanaugh’s parents as elderly, but this couple didn’t look old. They looked miserable. The woman was holding a handkerchief to her face as the man, his face contorted in anguish, accepted the Congressional Medal of Honor from the President.

  A scrap of powder-blue cloth sprinkled with white stars, and a chunk of iron formed into a wreath with a star in the center and the word Valor engraved on it.

  Certainly not worth a son.

  PROLOGUE

  U.S. ARMY SPECIAL FORCES CAMP A-555 NEAR THE CAMBODIAN BORDER IN THE THREE CORPS TACTICAL OPERATIONAL AREA, RVN 1966

  Army Special Forces Sergeant Sean Cavanaugh fell against the rear of his foxhole in Listening Post One and stared at all the fucking dead men lying in the short elephant grass and in the rice paddies near him. From the direction of the camp three hundred meters away, he could hear the rattle of small arms fire, the crash of mortars and the bang of grenades. Above the camp he could see the flares hanging beneath their parachutes as they drifted toward the ground, a line of smoke describing their path through the sky. With his right hand he grabbed the heavy PRC-10 to request support from the camp’s mortars, but the radio had been so shot full of holes that it was useless, and the field phone had disappeared in a grenade blast that had wounded Sergeant Luong and killed Corporal Lim.

  The last of their ammo had been used during the attack when the fighting had degenerated into a hand-to-hand conflict, and Cavanaugh and his tiny command of armed strikers had been forced to use their worthless rifles as clubs.

  Now Luong was struggling to pull the equipment away from a dead VC. Grunting with the effort, the wounded sergeant tried to free the pouch that contained extra magazines for the AK-47 that he had already taken. He dropped the used clip from the weapon and slammed a new one home as the enemy reappeared in the flickering light of the distant flares and ran toward him across the open ground.

  When Cavanaugh saw them coming, he picked up his carbine, but it was empty, and he had no spare ammo for it. Clawing at his holster, he drew his .45 and fired rapidly one-handed, the weapon jumping with the recoil.

  It was as if the enemy had suddenly sprung from the ground. At first there was no sound, but then a noise began, a low growl that built slowly until it was a roar. The VC began shooting, firing their weapons as they ran, trying to cut down the defenders of the listening post.

  As one of the enemy reached the edge of the foxhole, Cavanaugh fired a last time, his pistol only inches from the VC’s stomach. The man dropped as if he had been poleaxed, but another materialized right behind him, leaping across the body and colliding with Cavanaugh. They fell together, rolling over in the confined space of the hole. Cavanaugh kicked with his right leg, twisted his body and found himself facing the enemy. He swung with the empty pistol and felt it connect, shattering the bones of the VC’s face. Cavanaugh scrambled closer, grabbed the man around the neck and squeezed as he hit the enemy again with the pistol. He heard a sharp crack as the skull caved in, and the man slumped lifeless to the ground.

  To his left he saw Sergeant Luong struggling with a VC. The enemy kicked out, knocked Luong to the ground and drove his spike bayonet through the young Vietnamese’s side. Luong suddenly sat up and grabbed his attacker around the throat, pulling him forward, squeezing as he hit him in the face with his fist. The two fell back to the ground.

  Cavanaugh tossed away the useless pistol and picked up his carbine, swinging it like a baseball bat. He knocked one man off his feet and smacked a second in the head with such force that the wooden stock splintered. As a third man leaped at him, Cavanaugh dropped the rifle and grabbed his entrenching tool, chopping with it as if he was clearing vines from a jungle trail.

  Unaware that a growl was bubbling in his throat, that all the RFs with him were dead and that the VC were trying to escape, he kept swinging the tool. He smashed the blade into the side of a VC, knocking him to the ground. Then, screaming, he hammered the fallen enemy. The sergeant leaped to his right, balanced on the balls of his feet, his knees flexed, his head swiveling right and left, looking for more of the enemy. But they were suddenly gone, as if the ground that had given them birth had swallowed them again.

  For a moment Cavanaugh stood there, his eyes shifting from one body to the next, watching them, waiting for them, as a light mist seemed to drift out of nowhere, hiding some of the dead. Cavanaugh fell back against the side of the foxhole, his breath rasping in his throat, the sweat trickling down his face to stain the collar of his torn and dirty fatigues. He listened, but the night was suddenly quiet as even the sounds of the firing from the camp died away.

  Then out of the darkness he heard a moan, a single low cry of pain. When he looked up, he saw one of the enemy soldiers standing there, a gaping wound in the side of his head glistening wet and red in the moonlight and the flares. The man seemed stunned but stumbled toward Cavanaugh, who felt fear knot his stomach.

  Around him more of the enemy were coming to life. Men missing hands or feet or legs. Men with uniforms ripped by bayonets and knives, with wounds in their stomachs and chests and entrails hanging from their bellies. Men who had been dead moments before now with new life breathed into them, coming at Cavanaugh, who stood helpless, holding the entrenching tool in one hand and the broken carbine in the other.

  “No,” he shouted. “You’re dead.” He tried to take a step back, but there was nowhere for him to go. Under his breath he mumbled, “No, not again.”

  Suddenly he was awake, sitting on his bunk, his back pressing against the wall of his hootch. His OD T-shirt was soaked with sweat. Cavanaugh could feel it crawling down his back and dripping from under his arms. He lifted a trembling hand to his neck and rubbed the back of it, surprised at how wet it was. His mind flashed to the walking dead men, the corpses from the battlefield that haunted his sleep, and suddenly he had to stand up, to move somewhere, as if the very act of moving would take his mind off the horrors that were there.

  He stopped in front of his metal locker, opened the top drawer and felt under his clean uniforms for the bottle he had stashed there. Army regulations prohibited enlisted men from having alcoholic beverages in their quarters, but Captain Gerber winked at such things. The Special Forces rarely followed all the Army’s regulations.

  Cavanaugh pulled the cap from the whiskey bottle and drank deeply, feeling the liquor course down his throat
and pool in his stomach, spreading liquid fire. He exhaled through his mouth and took a second deeper drink. This time he rocked back on his heels and looked at the hootch’s rafters, at the screen there and the light filtering through it. To his right the gentle rise and fall of the chest of the form on the cot told him that Sully Smith, another of the team’s NCOs, was still asleep. Cavanaugh grinned to himself. Since Sully was asleep, it meant that Cavanaugh hadn’t cried out as he sometimes did. He took a third pull and felt his hands steady and the sweat begin to evaporate.

  Glancing again at the sleeping Smith, Cavanaugh capped the bottle and tucked it away. The sergeant stood and moved back to his cot, then sat down. He rubbed a hand through his close-cropped hair and sighed. He was getting better. Now the dream only came two or three times a week. Immediately after the battle to defend the listening post, he had had the dream every night, sometimes twice a night, and it had been so frightening that he had tried to stay awake twenty-four hours a day. Now with the booze it was something that could be controlled. He didn’t lie awake for hours shaking but only until he could get to the bottle. He wasn’t sure whether the booze stopped the anxiety or if it was the act of getting it. Drinking water or tomato juice or smoking a cigarette might have done it. Anything that took a little time and gave him an immediate goal. Something to do.

  Cavanaugh lay back with his hands under his head and stared up at the silk from a parachute flare that was draped over the rafters of the hootch. Dirty white silk that hid the tin of the roof and was a standard interior decorating item in South Vietnam. Hanging through the middle of it was a ceiling fan that spun slowly, stirring the fabric and the air.

  Cavanaugh concentrated on remembering everything he could about flying saucers, a subject that had interested him since he was a kid. He could barely wait for morning, for the opportunity to get up and out and do something else. He didn’t want to tour the defenses or check on the status of the strikers in the bunkers and on guard because the captain would notice that and wonder why he was out every other night doing it. It wasn’t normal, and Cavanaugh knew that the last thing he wanted was to appear abnormal.

  CHAPTER 1

  U.S. ARMY SPECIAL FORCES CAMP A-555

  NEAR THE CAMBODIAN BORDER

  After a long hot night spent sweating under the mosquito netting of an Army cot and listening to the quiet squeak of the ceiling fan as it slowly spun, Sergeant Sean Cavanaugh was ready for the patrol to begin. One hour before sunup he had gotten out of bed and searched through the metal wall locker where he stored his uniforms, gear, civilian clothes and, against Army regulations, his space ammo. He had done it by touch, feeling the coarse fabric of his jungle fatigues, the rough hardness of the web gear and the cool smoothness of his M-14.

  Like a man with arthritis, he moved slowly, trying to dress noiselessly and wondering if he should wear the thick OD socks the Army issued. During long patrols the socks tended to slip and rub against the foot and ankle, causing blisters. He sat on his bed, staring at the dark shape of his naked foot outlined against the light plywood floor, and thought about it. Finally he tossed the socks back into the locker and pulled on his newly issued jungle boots with their green nylon panel along the ankle.

  When he finished dressing, he grabbed his web gear, pistol belt and spare canteens from his locker, shouldered his weapon and carefully latched the metal doors. As he stepped toward the entrance of the hootch, he glanced back at Sully Smith, who slept on, a dark, almost invisible shape concealed by the wispy green mosquito netting. Cavanaugh flipped him a salute and walked out into the muggy heat of the Vietnamese morning.

  The sergeant stepped down into the red dust of the compound and hesitated. When he had first returned to the camp, he had told Fetterman that it looked completely different. Then he learned that it was different. Almost the entire camp had been burned to the ground and then rebuilt. Next to his hootch were two more like it. They were frame structures, the bottom half covered with unpainted, overlapping one-by-sixes that looked like clapboards; the top half of each hootch was screened with wire mesh to allow any breezes to pass through. The roofs were covered with shiny corrugated tin that was supposed to reflect the sun’s heat. But the tin rusted quickly in the wet Vietnamese environment so that the roofs took on a golden glow in the daylight.

  Across the compound were more hootches for the officers and the team sergeant. The team house, a long building used as a mess hall, rec room and briefing room, also squatted there. Next to it was the commo bunker, obvious because of the antennae sprouting from it like the whiskers of a cat, then the dispensary, a heavy sandbagged structure, one of the ammo bunkers, a weapons locker and the supply room. All this was crammed into the redoubt, an earthen breastwork that was five feet high and topped with barbed wire. Outside was the rest of the camp: the mortar pits, the hootches for the strikers and their families, the fire control tower and a line of bunkers that surrounded the camp, giving it a star-shaped look from the air. The runway and main helipad were outside the six strands of concertina wire, rows of claymores and booby traps. There was a secondary emergency-use helipad that was inside the compound but outside the redoubt.

  Cavanaugh settled his boonie hat on his head, slipped into his web gear — the giant Randall combat knife was taped upside down to the left shoulder strap — and headed for the team house. The knife was a replacement for the one he had lost during the defense of the listening post, paid for by the members of the team as a ‘welcome home’ present. They had mail-ordered it from Ironmonger Jim of Anoka, Minnesota. Cavanaugh had accepted it quietly and then spent the better part of two days sharpening it until it could slice easily through the toughest material or the softest flesh. He had blackened the blade so that it wouldn’t flash in the sunlight or glint in the moonlight.

  He entered the team house and saw Captain MacKenzie K. Gerber sitting at one of the six square tables that were already set for breakfast. The tables occupied the front two-thirds of the hootch. A bar separated the back third from the area where the tables were. Behind the bar was a stove, an oven and a storage area for canned foods. A single Vietnamese woman worked back there, preparing the morning milk by mixing cool water with powdered milk. To the left of the entrance as one came in were the remains of the old refrigerator — the plug had melted in the fire when the old team house burned — and a new refrigerator that seemed to have taken on the personality of the old one. It rarely worked and, when it did, froze everything solid.

  Gerber was reading an overseas edition of Time, turning the pages as if the whole issue disgusted him. He glanced up at Cavanaugh and greeted him. “Morning, Sean. You’re up early.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cavanaugh replied, slipping into a chair near Gerber. “Got a patrol this morning.”

  Gerber flipped the magazine closed and set one hand on the back cover. “It’s still early. And you don’t have to bring all your equipment with you.”

  “I know, sir, but Sully was asleep and I didn’t want to wake him.” Cavanaugh unbuckled his pistol belt and grinned sheepishly. “Besides, this is my first patrol since I returned, and I guess I’m a little nervous about it.”

  “No reason to be nervous, you’ve done it all before.” Gerber got up and moved to the coffeepot for another cup.

  Cavanaugh stood and slipped out of his gear, piling it on the floor next to his chair. He walked to the bar, grabbed one of the individual boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and a pitcher of milk, the sides of which were beaded with sweat. Ice cubes in the pitcher clinked against the metallic sides as Cavanaugh returned to the table.

  As he sat down, Sergeant First Class Justin Tyme, the light weapons specialist, entered. Tyme was a tall, slender, sandy-haired young man who was normally quiet and seemed to be overly serious at times. Unlike Cavanaugh, he wasn’t wearing his full field pack. He was dressed in jungle fatigues that were clean but not starched, and he hadn’t bothered to tie the laces of his boots. He nodded at Gerber, who had returned to his chair, then waved at Cav
anaugh. Tyme collapsed into the chair nearest the door, rubbed his face with both hands and said, “I’m not ready for this. Let’s take the patrol out about noon, or better yet, about five.”

  Cavanaugh set his cereal and milk on the table and sat down. He pushed the perforations on the front of the small box, spread open the flaps and dumped the contents into his bowl. He splashed milk on the cereal, sprinkled it with lumpy sugar and began to eat.

  Tyme watched Cavanaugh, then glanced at Gerber. “Any orange juice this morning, Captain?”

  “I think we have some Tang.”

  “Christ, that’s not orange juice, that’s colored water.”

  “Then no,” said Gerber, “we don’t have any orange juice. We have some lousy coffee and some powdered milk and about half a case of warm beer.”

  Tyme rubbed his eyes with his hand and then, without looking, gestured at Gerber. “I’ll take one of the beers.”

  “Before the patrol?” asked Gerber.

  “Yes, sir. Unless you object?”

  “No, Boom-Boom,” said Gerber, “I don’t object to a single beer, although I’m not convinced it’s the best eye-opener.”

  “It’s better than Tang.”

  Gerber got one of the beers out of the refrigerator and set it in front of Tyme. “I’ll give you that.” He turned his attention to Cavanaugh, who was hunched over his bowl. “I’ll see you two at the gate before you leave.”

  As Gerber left the team house, taking his coffee with him, Tyme picked up his beer and moved to the table where Cavanaugh sat. He took a deep drink and made a face at it. “I wish we could get some real orange juice in here.”

  “Yeah,” said Cavanaugh, “it’s a little early in the day for beer.”

  “Sometimes that’s all there is to drink. Powdered milk and powdered orange juice and powdered eggs — none of it tastes real. And shit, in Saigon they’re probably dining on real eggs and real steaks and telling the press that war is hell.”