K9LTW – a fiction by MKHurder
Chapter 11: Firefight at the Wire
Bearcat Attacked
The night pressed down like a hand over the jungle, dense and humid, tasting of smoke. Firebase Bearcat glowed in ragged pulses—bursts of orange where mortars walked along the interior, white flares snapping overhead, tracer rounds stitching thin, molten lines through the dark. The first wave of the attack had found gaps and soft places, tearing canvas and sandbags and nerve. Now the cadence settled into a brutal rhythm: thump-thump, impacts, shouts, return fire, thump-thump again.
McCready moved along the sandbags with the calm economy that came from years of getting men through the worst five minutes of their lives. He flowed from crate to crater, checking sectors, counting heads, eyes always coming back to two anchors: Donnie and Bodie at the western corner of the perimeter, Reyes and Rook covering the southern approach. The dogs had already been secured, on leash, temporary grips on harness handles tightened, they pressed close, taut as bowstrings, the kind of stillness that meant pure focus. No barking. No panic. Just that intent, shell-tight posture of a working dog locking the world down to what matters.
“Hold your lane, cover your sector, watch your overlap.” McCready said, voice low and flat, as if he were calling a cadence only his squad could hear. “Sight your fire. Short bursts on the M-60s. Don’t waste ammo. Riflemen, don’t switch to rock&Roll unless they’re on top of you. Well aimed single shots will serve us much better boys. Keep track of your ammo.”
Donnie nodded once, jaw set, helmet pulled low, so the brim caught the red light of a distant blast. He eased up to a corner, Bodie tucked against his thigh, nose angling toward the wire. The shepherd’s ears flicked, muzzle lifting, then dropping, a quick, precise calibration. Donnie felt it through the harness, that subtle tension like a wire humming. He rested his left hand on Bodie’s shoulder, part contact, part reassured ritual. The right-hand steady on the M16, selector on fire, the rifle’s steel as familiar as his own bones.
Reyes shifted behind a stack of sandbags, blood dried in a dark arc on his sleeve from something earlier, not bad enough to distract him. Rook leaned into his calf, eyes forward, disciplined. Reyes breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, the way he’d learned to reset without moving. He glanced at the vet tech crouched two positions down, their faces lit briefly by a flare. The tech gave a small nod, settling the butt of his rifle into the notch of his shoulder. They were a three-man magnet, fixed around two dogs, and McCready liked the shape of it—balanced, reactive, anchored by animal certainty.
As the last light left the evening sky an RPG round screamed in low and detonated in the dirt, sending a fan of grit across the compound. Men shouted. Someone yelled for a corpsman. Another RPG hit a generator. It stuttered, dying into silence that felt louder than the blast. McCready scanned, counted the pause, then lifted his hand, palm extended toward Donnie, a signal for patience. He never yelled unless yelling won something. Most of the time, only clarity did.
Regrouping
The jungle awoke again, a ripple of AK fire starting in one place and then echoing in two more, trying to sow fear. Tracers arced from beyond the wire, their paths telling its own tale. Incoming from the west, probing from the south, covering fire from on high, and from the northeast they were taking sporadic AK fire, maybe a distraction. McCready ran the geometry in his head without knowing he was doing it, mapping range and intention in the sector he was responsible for. He placed the enemy with an intuition that was one part experience and one part, determination to survive the war.
“Reyes,” he said. “Two-man team, fifty meters beyond that dead bamboo. They’re trying to push shooters into your lane. See it?”
Reyes rolled his shoulder once, calming the twitch that was trying to climb into his fingers. With a nudge Rook’s weight shifted. Reyes’ gaze pinning a shape where some broken bamboo sagged like broken ribs. Reyes drew in a breath, let a little out, let his sights settle, the front post a black tooth pointing to his target. He fired two rounds, controlled, measured. The return fire stuttered, then sharpened in panic as one shape dropped.
“Good,” McCready said. No smile, no theatrics. Just the word, heavy enough to land.
Donnie caught a flicker to the left of the wire; near the old crate they hadn’t had time to move. Bodie’s head turned, quick and surgical. The dog’s chest vibrated in a barely audible hum, the closest thing to a warning he’d ever give on patrol. Donnie didn’t ask; his body moved into the angle, rifle following. He exhaled through his teeth and sent two rounds, then two more, then one. The shape fell, half-shrouded in smoke. Donnie reached down without looking, fingers sliding over Bodie’s harness until they found the handle and squeeze, as much gratitude as command.
Inside the wire, men passed ammo down the line. A crew at the mortar pit slammed rounds into the tube and adjusted their arcs, aiming to walk fire beyond the berm to break up the mass that was forming there. The rhythm was an ugly, but efficient dance of life and death. Bearcat had been hit hard enough to bleed, but it hadn’t lost its bones.
Setting the Team
“Doc,” McCready said, tapping the vet tech’s shoulder. “You’re with Reyes. If he moves, you move. If he drops, you drag him back to cover. You prioritize handlers and dogs if they hit our sector.”
The vet tech – the K9 world’s version of a medic – Steve, looked at Rook, then at Bodie across the corner. He nodded, a small, fierce agreement. “Understood.” Everyone called him “Doc.”
Rook’s ears flicked again, the angle sharp, eyes sliding to the edge of the southern path. Reyes felt it like an electric signal through his wrist. He didn’t need to see it to believe it, the dog knew, and that was enough. He checked his mag with a glance and lifted his voice just enough for the two positions nearest him to hear. “Contact south, twenty meters. I’m going to take him under fire. Keep your lanes.”
No response was needed.
McCready drifted one pace forward, enough to stand inside the stretch of space between the two teams, the place a leader occupies when he will take the first hit that sneaks through. He lifted his rifle, pressed it to his shoulder, and waited to join the fight.
A flare hissed overhead, floating like a cruel star and dripping white light over the interior of Bearcat. It turned men into ghosts and shadows. For a few seconds every face was a study in vulnerability and grit, every posture publicly visible, stripped of the comfort of the darkness. Then the flare went out, and the night swallowed them again, quieter for a moment, as if it too were taking a breath.
Counterfire
The enemy tried to take advantage of the lull. Three shapes crawled low toward the western wire, their bodies long and thin like the ground itself had decided to crawl. Donnie spotted the movement because Bodie spotted it first. He fired in controlled shots, walked the tracer rounds to where the earth was breathing. Beside him, another rifle joined, the vet tech’s, timed to sound like an echo. The three shapes stilled and melted backwards out of the light. Neither man knew if they’d hit anyone. Neither cared.
Rook’s muzzle tilted, gaze locking onto one point Reyes wouldn’t have noticed if the dog had been anything but the creature he was. There was no sound, no leaf, nothing. It was a scent alert, skin oil, metal, adrenaline, whatever, came threading through the jungle to the K9s olfactory alert center. Rook tensed; Reyes read the breeze, found his target. He was angry. People he knew were being shredded on the line below. He placed the front post on target coldly as if he was writing a letter and fired twice. A cry cut through the foliage; then the AK fire emptied into the air, angry without aim.
McCready let the corner of his mouth pull a few millimeters toward something that might have been pride in another life. He kept his voice level. “Hold it. They’ll try to bracket us or hammer one side while probing the other. Don’t chase ghosts. Make them come to you.”
He slipped backward one pace, leaned into the sandbags, and scanned the interior. He saw the platoon leader two positions up, face hard, radio handset clenched as if he could wring a signal from the plastic. He saw the mortar crew adjusting by feel, low voices counting off adjustments. He saw a medic sprinting in a crouch, hands sticky with other men’s lives. He saw all of it, then let his eyes return to the last thing Bearcat could afford to lose on this kind of night: the dogs and the men who could turn their focus into survival if they did have to abandon Bearcat.
The position they held was at the western end of the compound away from the expected point of attack. It had easy access to the air strip and their best escape route through the jungle south and west.
The Teams Fight & the Sniper
The jungle threw more at them, another RPG, wider, skimming and detonating past the wire; clusters of AK fire building a wall of sound thick enough to make men hesitate; and a single, precise sniper shot that snapped past McCready’s ear and buried itself in the sandbag inches from Donnie’s knee. Donnie dove back. McCready didn’t flinch. He lo-crawled to the opposite end of the sandbag barricade and got comfortable safe in the knowledge he was invisible in the shadows, using a sandbag as support.
He raised his rifle, an M-14 the old veteran wouldn’t give up because of its round’s punch – the M-16 fired a bee-bee in comparison. This one was scoped. He had one of the grunts nearby raise his helmet above the barricade to draw out the sniper so McCready could pinpoint him. He had a good idea where he was. He called out: “Make it interesting Diaz, move it back and forth a few times before you lift it high enough to be really attractive. Capiche?”
Before they were ready, the sniper took out a man in the fighting position to the team’s right, leaving a gap in their sector’s coverage. They couldn’t see directly to the front of their position without exposing themselves. Diaz nodded and began the ruse. A few seconds after Diaz began the helmet dance There was one shot that missed by hairs. The sniper’s second shot followed quickly and connected. McCready’s return shot ended the sniper. He found the ghost’s flash just beyond the far tree and placed a round precisely on target. The return fire stopped. Donnie didn’t look away from the place it had been until he felt Bodie’s posture loosen, just a fraction. Then he let his breath go.
When the world shrinks to a piece of ground and the seconds are numbered by muzzle flashes, minutes passed like hours. Still, Bearcat held. Places in the wire were torn open and were quickly repaired in a lull. Men fell and were carried to the aid stations located across the compound. Ammo was counted, redistributed and replenished. Water was passed around. Injuries often were acknowledged and ignored in the same motion.
Somewhere in the chaos, Donnie realized he was talking under his breath, some nonsense he’d used as a kid when he needed to focus, half-prayer, half-rhythm, nothing anyone else would hear. Bodie’s ear twitched toward his voice and then back to the wire. Reyes was quiet, utterly silent, his concentration intense. Rook pressed close, so Reyes was ready to move in the same instant and direction if the dog gave the cue.
McCready couldn’t see directly ahead without exposing himself to direct fire. That lane had been covered by the sandbag fighting position to his right, which was now unmanned. “Donnie,” McCready said, softly. “We’re going to advance three paces to your right, straight forward from the corner on my count. Don’t fucking shoot us anyone. We have to fill the gap” he ordered acknowledging the fallen soldier. “You keep Bodie in close and cover us. Doc, you’re with me. Ready.”
Donnie made no sound but the shift of fabric. Bodie moved half a step like he had read the orders on air. McCready lifted his hand, three fingers, and curled them down one at a time, then pushed forward with Doc in tow. McCready kept up a steady rate of fire downrange adding to Donnie’s covering fire. Reyes held down the other flank of their position.
They moved like a hinge swinging open, McCready pivoting closest to the enemy and at least partially shielding the vet Tech who swung wide to end up on the far side of the Sandbag position they were headed for. McCready would come up on the near side, resetting their field of fire to cover the gap left uncovered by the casualty. A spray of AK rounds came from low on the ground at the two moved; Donnie answered with controlled fire. McCready sent effective fire downrange too. Once in place, the vet tech’s rifle stitched the bottom third of the lane, deterring anything that wanted to crawl. The spray fell off, then went silent.
McCready’s head’s up orders caught the advancing enemy out in the open trying to take advantage of the blind spot left by the downed American. The old soldier took a knee and laid into the surprised enemy infantry struggling to find cover where there was none. Their advance was stalled and then decimated by crossing fire from an M-60 position further down the line. McCready held that position long enough to be sure there were no leakers or enemy playing possum, then drew in backward behind the sandbags, resetting the corner. He didn’t ask for acknowledgment. The acknowledgment was the fact that they were still there.
Repositioning
“Doc, great work. You saved our asses there, buddy. I didn’t see them until you stitched them good.” Steve nodded, eyed saucer-like and dead calm.
“Reyes,” McCready said, “shift fire two degrees left. I want you to watch the edge of the path where it meets the berm. They’ll try it again with a different rhythm. We got you backstopped and there’s a 60 just above you and to your 8 o’clock. Donnie, you pick up the slack between the two of you. Capiche?”
Both acknowledged and adjusted without moving their feet. Rook’s head turned that same two degrees, as if they shared a single neck. Bodie was watching everywhere all the time. The AK fire from the south went from machine rhythm to an irritated stutter. It reminded Reyes of an engine misfiring and then revving too high. He waited with a patience that he wasn’t born with.
He had earned it over weeks of listening to a jungle that could kill him for being impatient. He let the tracer pattern show him the spot and he put a round in it, then another. The stutter broke. He didn’t smile. He did allow himself the microsecond of normalcy where he acknowledged Rook with a hand on the dog’s neck, the contact exactly where the dog liked it, not too hard, not too soft.
The night pivoted. It wasn’t dramatic—no sudden quiet—but something in the tempo shifted. The enemy’s aggression faltered. They tried a new tactic. They mounted a feint at the northeastern corner completely opposite the K9 teams, followed by heavy pressure against the western wire Right beside them. McCready adjusted them like he was turning a dial. He called two men to cross over and reinforce Donnie’s lane. He had Reyes angle just enough to cover their movement while not exposing their flank. He moved himself into a position where he could either take command of the entire western sector if his boss went down or fill the hole if Donnie went down. He didn’t think Donnie would. He planned for it anyway. They were thin. Too damn thin. But it was what it was.
“Bodie,” he whispered. Bodie’s ear flicked, and the dog leaned an inch more into Donnie’s leg, both of them tight as a bow string, weight loaded and ready.
The attack’s heartbeat slowed, then accelerated, the enemy probing the wire around the perimeter. Inside Bearcat, the soldiers met wave after wave. The mortar crew adjusted again and again, dropping rounds accurately beyond the western berm, the explosions thudding in tight clumps. The medics moved like they had been built from rubber and steel, bending, hauling, never breaking. The platoon leader got a clear channel and requested illumination and a quick reaction force; the answer came back in static and two words that felt like both a promise and a warning: “Stand by.”
Respite
McCready took a breath that tasted like cordite and clay and lifting heat. He looked at his two teams, and Doc, and he grounded himself in the simple numbers of what they had left: magazines, water, minutes before the next flare. He did what he always did at that point in a fight. He told them what was not permitted to happen.
“We do not break,” he said. The words were soft but they carried weight, a rule being written into the part of a man that enforces rules when the body wants to run. “We hold the wire. We do not let anything through our lanes. We do not waste a shot. We do not lose the dogs. We do not lose each other.”
He didn’t say they would win. He never promised outcomes. He promised standards.
A flare went up and the world whitened. Figures appeared beyond the wire, small and frantic in the glare. Donnie and Reyes were disciplined enough not to fire until the figures became threats and not just shapes. The first two did. They fell. The third ran. He made it back into the foliage with a stumble that suggested the ground had decided not to let him have all his momentum. The flare burned down and went dark.
Bodie shifted, then stilled, then alerted. Donnie felt the tension shift and followed his partner’s nose. The third guy was moving again. God only knew how Bodie saw it, but Donnie wouldn’t ignore a gift. He pivoted half a yard, aimed, and put two rounds where instinct told him to, then two more to the left and two more to the right. Something out there answered by ceasing to be a problem. Donnie’s mouth went dry. He licked his lips and tasted dust.
Rook’s nose lifted, a fraction, then dropped. Reyes’s finger went soft on the trigger, easing pressure, waiting. He kept his eye hovering over the front post, not quite touching one place. There. He saw the suggestion of motion in the brush ahead. He fired once. Discipline kept him from making his own position known with a follow up shot. Whatever had moved would move no more. He shifted right a few feet keeping the same lane.
The attack did something McCready had seen before and hated every time: it slowed, then became erratic, then tried to find panic through silence. It didn’t work. The silence inside Bearcat was not absence or fear. It was presence. Men rearmed. Men counted. Men and Dogs listened. The jungle flexed and then let go. Somewhere, a whistle sounded its eerie call. A sound dreaded by GIs everywhere. It meant one thing. A mass attack.
“Sergeant,” the platoon leader called down the line, voice barely audible over distance and damage. “You holding?”
McCready lifted his head slightly for a peek and answered without looking away from the wire. “Yes, sir. We’re holding.”
Take a Breath
He gave the team one minute to acknowledge that they were not dead. He assured them that they would continue living as they had provided they stayed smart, disciplined, quiet, and became savage only when necessary. Then he did something they did not expect in the middle of a fight. He let them rest their minds for a breath.
“Donnie,” he said, voice soft. “Breathe.” He paused. “Reyes. Breathe. Doc, you too. Maintain your calm. Remember to blink, breath, and reload. Capiche?”
They acknowledged, and did as they were told, controlled and deliberate, the kind of breath that resets the system. Bodie remained vigilant and an instant from ready to rock. Rook chose not to blink for a second longer than normal. The men took those tiny cues the way a sailor pursues the wind.
From the interior, a single scream tore up and then went quiet. The medic’s voice followed, steady and practical, telling the man his own story in words he could hold: “You’re okay. We’ve got you. You’re going to make it. You’re okay.” McCready held his position, nothing in his posture changing.
The Second Push
When the next push on the team’s position came, it wasn’t smart. It was angry. The jungle coughed up six men, three at the west, three at the south, their movement jagged and uncoordinated. They fired into the compound wildly. The M-60 dropped two, the vet tech took one, McCready took two. Reyes took the one. The last man tried to climb the wire with his rifle slung like a tool. He made it half a meter up When Reyes round met him, then slid backward and became part of the carpet of leaves in a way that was not poetic.
The line held. The push failed. The jungle went quieter.
They waited, still and alert. Bodie’s mouth stayed closed, waffle-breathing through his nose, sorting, categorizing, assessing threats. Rook’s tail was a line, strict and purposeful.
McCready did a final, fast count of ammo. He looked at Donnie and at Reyes and made two decisions at once: he would move Donnie in five minutes to a new angle if the attack continued; he would keep Reyes exactly where he was unless the southern path showed something new. He let himself feel the new respect he had for them, then tucked it back into the place where leaders store feelings that cannot be presented yet because the night has not finished asking its questions.
“Stay tight,” he said. “You’re doing it right, boys. Stay tight.”
Another minute passed, then two. The mortars outside stopped. The tracer fire thinned, then became individual, grudging shots. The jungle’s pulse receded. Bearcat’s interior changed tone. There was less frantic movement, and more controlled maintenance, a rhythm of repair, resupply, and triage. McCready kept the team in place; Charles would return if you let your guard slip at the wrong time.
Reyes blinked and found a single tear at the edge of his eye from smoke, wiped it with the back of his hand without thinking. Donnie adjusted his helmet a quarter inch lower to keep the glare of a new flare out of his vision. The vet tech flexed his fingers once, then rechecked his gear even though just had a minute before. McCready did nothing outwardly. Inwardly, he thanked a version of himself that had insisted they rehearse this posture in daylight when no one wanted to pretend to be attacked.
Then the radios crackled with words that mattered. “Illumination out. Mike Force in bound. Hold positions.”
“Rounds out” the radioman announced.
McCready breathed once, allowed the smallest recalibration in his chest, a recognition of time turning from before into after. The in-between always seemed to stop time for him. He glanced at the dogs, Rook’s eyes warmed half a degree, then returned to search mode. Bodie held his posture like he had been carved from the concept of vigilance.
“Stand by,” McCready said. “We’re going to see light. Use it. Don’t let it blind you. We hold the wire.”
The Mike Force
The first illumination popped overhead, turning treetops silver-black and the ground a stark, ugly white. The Mike Force’s slicks were still distant, ghost-sounds. McCready set his shoulder behind the rifle and helped the light become advantage instead of exposure. Donnie did the same, Bodie’s head flicking but posture grounded. Reyes set his sights and then fired. Another threat erased.
They were still under attack, but the shape of it had changed. It was thinner, less certain, more interested in leaving than staying. That meant the danger carried a new bite. Before leaving the field of battle the enemy wanted to get in a last score. McCready knew that kind of psychology from a hundred fights. An adversary that had to accept defeat but wanted to feel taller in the loss, would make one last desperate plea to the war gods. He let that knowledge sit in his gut but not his hands. His hands kept doing the work.
When the rotor thump finally threaded the night, men along the wire lifted their heads just enough to let hope register and then be put back away. McCready didn’t turn. He held the line and spoke the final necessary sentence of the night’s final act.
“Hold.”
A minute later, shapes moved inside the compound—reinforcements, medics, men with stretchers, men with extra ammo, men with eyes that had seen this before and would see it again. The night’s story shifted. It would still be written in rounds expended and body counts, weighing the decisions and all the thousand small choices that separate a living man from a name on a plaque, and then forgotten. But it would be written with a better outcome now, and that made even the ugliest parts of the report more bearable.
Bearcat held.
McCready made one last scan of his team before the next stage of the fight folded over the top of this one. Recovery would be the first tastes of horrific, unimaginable death and destruction for many on base. His K9 teams included. Donnie’s shoulders were square; his breathing was the same as his shooting, measured, ethical. Bodie was a coiled promise besides his partner. Reyes’s face had the calm of someone sure of the outcome. Rook’s posture reflected his man’s. The vet tech’s eyes had not lost their fear or their clarity.
When he was sure they were in the clear McCready called out through a hoarse throat, “On me.” They gathered round him. Then he went quiet again and offered every ounce of his presence to the dogs, to the men before he spoke. He used the moment to reinforce the idea that hard nights are survived by attention to details, keeping your head, and obeying orders. “This is how we go home again, boys. This is how we live. Remember this. You guys operated like a fine-tuned engine. I’m proud to fight with you.”
The jungle breathed out. The base breathed in. The fight would continue, but something had already been decided: Bearcat would not fail without great sacrifice.
And under the weight of illumination, in the ghost-light, the K9 teams waited for whatever the next chapter required of them, waiting the way only disciplined hearts and animals built for loyalty can wait. The wire held. Bearcat held. They held. McCready kept them in position, anchored in a posture that would carry them through the rest of the battle and God willing, beyond.
Deep in his chest, Donnie hurt. Many had died this night. Many more were wounded. Some he knew. He had also killed. Not one, but many. He refused to let his brain count them. What he didn’t know for sure was ‘why‘. What he didn’t feel any longer was righteousness. He looked to Doc, to Reyes, to the hounds and McCready. He thought, that’s who I fight for. The thought seemed to put him back on track and laser-focused on the task at hand. He scratched a furball between the ears and felt a welcoming push back.
The teams lead on.
(to be continued: Chapter#12 – The Trail and the Trap)
To start from the beginning: K9LTW-ch#1
to read another of my fictions in progress: DohReyMe&theKitties3-Ch1 or the Prequel – Doh – Rey – Me
Related Links:
- Four-legged-fighters
- Vietnam Dog Handlers Association
- Military Working Dog Heritage Museum
- Top Dog – Lucca
Bonus Fiction Feature:
If you read any of the fiction I create here to the end, you will be able to download a free copy when It’s complete. If I get a referral from you, I’ll throw in the fiction – Burtt the Blade.
From Popi’s Tales & The Book of Wonders
More from Popi’s Collection of Facts & Fiction
- Burtt the Blade – fiction
- Doh – Rey – Me – fiction – book – written here
- Mystery of Willow Woods – fiction – short Story – written here
- The Last Signal – part one – fiction – book – written here
- Rift Guardians – chapter#1 – fiction – book – written here
- DohReyMe&theKitties3-ch1 – fiction – book – written here – in progress
- Shorty’s Path – non-fiction auto biography book
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