by Eric Meyer
But as Nolan watched, the first missile sped out of the tube, followed by another. Simultaneously, the rotor blades of the Bell 429 started to turn, and four men who’d been hiding out of sight ran out and climbed aboard; Rivera, Bremmer and two others. He held out his hand.
“Give me the gun, now!”
Carol gave him the pistol.
“Is it cocked?”
“Yeah, just pull the trigger.”
He smashed the window by tapping it with the butt. The guard watching the door was alerted by the sound of breaking glass. Nolan fired once; a safe shot to the stomach, and watched him crumple to the base of the roof. He handed the gun back to Carol.
“Cover me, I’m going out to finish them.”
“Kyle!”
He turned and looked at her.
“Don’t die. Please, be careful.”
He nodded and ran off, threw open the door, and rushed out onto the roof. The guard was groaning in agony, dying from the pistol shot to his abdomen, and his rifle lay on the ground nearby. Roscoe Bremmer had seen the man go down and was running to head off Nolan. They reached the weapon at the same time, but Roscoe was uninjured. While Nolan reached for the M-16, he shouldered him on his wounded arm. Kyle staggered as agonizing pain scorched through his body. Roscoe picked up the M-16 and stood facing him. He raised the barrel and smiled.
“You always were the fucking boy scout, Chief. You could have thrown in with us and had a good life. Get your hands over your head, and don’t try anything funny.”
“Living in the sewers isn’t a good life, Bremmer. You’re scum, just like your drug dealing friends.”
Nolan put his hands over his head while he worked out the angles. The black man had positioned himself so that he was out of the line of fire from Carol’s pistol. And then he remembered, as he felt something stiff and hard inside his collar.
Roscoe drew his lips back in a snarl. “Fuck you, asshole.”
“No, fuck you, asshole!”
He snatched out the blade and using every ounce of his strength, threw it directly at Roscoe’s face. The thin steel penetrated the edge of his right eye and the precision surgical steel went all the way through soft tissue to embed into the brain. The black man fell slowly to the ground, lifeless. But the sound of the Bell’s turboshaft engines was loud on the roof as the pilot brought the throttles to take off power.
As he looked up, Rivera appeared in the open door. He smiled at Nolan and pointed an assault rifle at him. Nolan rolled desperately to one side, and a trio of bullets chipped up the concrete where he’d been standing. But Rivera was bringing the rifle around to bear on him. He knew he couldn’t avoid a burst of automatic fire, and his mind froze. He was a dead man. It was the end of the line. Rivera’s eyes squinted, and he took on a serious expression as he raised the rifle to his shoulder to make certain of his aim. When he was satisfied, Nolan even saw his trigger finger move slightly as he took up first pressure. His smile broadened, but only for a fraction of a second. He seemed to freeze. His eyes flew open wide, and the smile was replaced with a look of astonishment. Then he slowly toppled forward, out of the cabin, and onto the concrete roof.
“Bravo Five, you need to keep that fool head of yours down. Next time, Chief, I may not be around to watch your back.”
He felt the cold wash of relief rush over him. Vince Merano, covering the assault from a high position in a tree overlooking the compound, had seen it all happen.
“Thanks, Vince. I owe you one.”
“And then some, buddy. What about the helo?”
“Can you see the pilot?”
“Is the Pope a Catholic?”
“Kill him.”
The pilot’s body bucked as Vince’s double tap took him. There was no armor on the Bell 429, and the heavy, high velocity rounds penetrated the thin body and Perspex, taking the pilot in the chest and head. The machine tilted over, and the rotor blades screeched as they touched concrete, showering sparks over the roof. The massive kinetic power of the twin turboshafts kept the helo moving, causing it to turn like a children’s toy, closer and closer to the edge of the roof. Finally, with a rending crash of tortured metal it went over. As it hit the ground, the tanks exploded when the sparks ignited the spilled high-octane fuel. The Bell disappeared in a roaring storm of smoke and flames. But it wasn’t over.
“You motherfuckers! Think you can stitch us up with a couple of cheap commie missiles. We’ll fry your asses!”
The shout came through his earpiece, and he looked up at the familiar voice of Hammer One. The Spooky had avoided the ‘cheap commie missiles’ and was returning to finish the job. The Gecko SA-8 was a radar-controlled launcher, and the operator had taken his eyes off the screen to watch the fight on the rooftop. The AC-130 had taken the opportunity when the threat receiver reported they were no longer a target and swooped in for the kill. For the aircrew, it was payback for a very nasty moment. The Gatling gun threatened to overheat as it poured enough metal into the missile position to destroy it utterly. When the gun barrel stopped turning, all that was left of the pride of Soviet technology was a pile of twisted broken parts, intermingled with the blood, bone and tissue of the operators.
Nolan sensed movement behind him and whirled. It was Carol.
“Is it over?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess it is. That’s all of them.”
“Until the next drug gang takes over the Salazar empire.”
“There’s always that. But they’ll go down the same way.”
“A lot of good people suffered badly, Kyle. They didn’t go down easily.”
“No. But we can’t choose the way they behave. We can only fight them when they threaten our way of life.”
She smiled. “Is that Chief Nolan’s philosophy?”
“It’s the Seals’ philosophy. When they threaten the security of the United States, they come up against us.”
She pulled a face. “It’s macho bullshit, Kyle. But I’ll tell you this. I’m damned glad your outfit is there. Damned glad. Enough of that, can we go home now?”
He looked around at the smoking remains of the missile launcher, at the flames that leapt up from the burning helo, and at the corpses that lay on the roof, Rivera, Bremmer, and their Colombian henchmen. All dead. All gone.
“Yeah, I reckon we can. We’re done here.”
“So we can relax, the kids are safe?”
She’s right. ‘We’ is right. We’re a team, Carol and me. How could I ever have been so stupid? I could never have done any of it without her.
He nodded. “We can relax. It’s time to put all this behind us.”
“Us?”
She was waiting for him to say it, clearly and without equivocation. He grinned at her.
“Yeah, that’s right, ‘Us’. You, me, the kids. We’re all going home.”
DEVIL'S GUARD VIETNAM
by Eric Meyer
PUBLISHED BY:
Swordworks Books
Devil's Guard Vietnam
Copyright © 2011 by Eric Meyer
Foreword
Vietnam – a name that conjures up so many things to so many people. To the Americans, it was a horrific war that saw a great many of their people dead and wounded, brave soldiers whose lives sometimes seemed to be callously thrown away for little or no gain, their incredible courage sacrificed in the name of political expediency. To the world at large it was perhaps the first war of truly modern technology, from the weapons used to fight it, the complex fighter and bomber aircraft used to wage war on the communists to the broadcast media that brought it to our television screens as it happened. And to the Vietnamese people, a war of liberation or a war of enslavement, depending on your fate after the last bullet had been fired in 1975.
Yet this is not a story of nations, it is a story about one man, a personal story of a man who hacked his way through the slaughter of the Eastern Front during World War II, through the jungles of Indochina during the first French Indochina war, only to be suck
ed into the killing machine again when he thought his fighting days were over. As in my previous book Devil’s Guard – The Real Story, some might ask the question ‘did this really happen?’ The answer would have to be yes and no, unfortunately. The main characters certainly existed, although some of the names have been changed to protect their identities. I have told Hoffman’s story as it was given to me, with certain alterations and a few literary enhancements to make it read more fluently.
Yet essentially most of the events in the story did happen, as they are described. After the end of the French Indochina war many civilians and combatants stayed on in the Republic of South Vietnam. Some did get caught up in the American war, having so much local knowledge to offer of both North and South Vietnam. And the American approach to war is just as depicted, the bravery of the soldiers on the ground often merely a tool to be used in the name of Realpolitik and government expediency, whether for the benefit of the US, the Republic of South Vietnam, The People’s Republic of North Vietnam, the Soviet Union or China.
That the French government welcomed former SS veterans of the Eastern Front to the ranks of the Foreign Legion is a matter of public record, at least until 1947. So is the nickname ‘Devil’s Guard’, as it was applied to the Foreign Legion Units that some of these men fought in, although contrary to popular belief, there never were Foreign Legion units comprised only of former SS and German soldiers. All foreign legion units were a mix of nationalities, without exception, led by French officers. The records of French nationals who stayed on in Vietnam are fragmented at best. Hoffman was one of those who did stay behind and make his home there and common sense dictates that anyone who had fought and survived the bitter savagery of the Eastern Front and the endless jungle warfare in Indochina would quickly find their fighting knowledge of the communist enemy becoming highly valued by the new arrivals, the Americans.
How much of this story is true and how much exaggerated will never be known. What is known is that it all happened, almost every bomb, every bullet, every death, and every deceit. What is also known is the indisputable bravery of those soldiers of all sides who fought in the Vietnam War. The world will never be the same again after their sacrifice.
Eric Meyer
* * * * *
Introduction
It was a long journey from the hell of the Russian Front during World War II, through the jungles of Indochina fighting for the Foreign Legion to the modern reality of the Vietnam War. Yet it was a journey that Jurgen Hoffman had survived. With his beautiful wife Helene and his partner, former SS-Totenkopf Sturmbannfuhrer Paul Schuster, they set up a ramshackle civilian airline to serve the fledgling Republic of South Vietnam.
The arrival of the Americans and the inevitable escalation of the war as the communists infiltrated more and more fighters into the South meant that they would not be left in peace. The services of the two men, experienced, skilful and brutal fighters in every theatre of warfare are increasingly called upon by the American military. Once more their SS training and toughness is needed to survive the risky charter contracts they are forced to accept by the American military and their shadowy counterparts, the CIA.
An innocent charter to carry two Americans to Hue develops into a full blown clandestine rescue mission into the North. A combination of bureaucratic stupidity and CIA treachery results in a debacle that can only be unravelled by once more unleashing the vicious, cold killing skills of the SS. Even in peace, the Devil’s Guard are once more at war. This is their story.
* * * * *
Chapter One
‘The confidence of the Kennedy team prevailed through the early months of 1963, even after South Vietnamese Army units, supported by US helicopters, had failed to destroy a far smaller Viet Cong force in the ARVN's first pitched battle, at Ap Bac.’
CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers
We were in serious trouble even before our wheels left the runway. Heavily loaded with a mixed cargo of military equipment and various boxes and crates we were transporting for a civilian contractor, we had only just begun our take-off roll when the starboard engine started to misfire. Normally I would just abort the take-off and taxi back to the terminal so that we could take the time to remedy the problem. Paul had already reached forward to cut power, anticipating my command, when the first mortar shell hit the tarmac yards away, showering us with debris and shell fragments. We both looked out of the windows but there was nothing else to see, no sign of any attacking force.
“Do we abort or go?” Paul asked.
Calm as ever, it was as if he was asking me the time of day. Schuster was a veteran of the French Indochina War and before that the Eastern Front during World War Two, an officer in the Waffen-SS. A survivor.
It was my decision as pilot in charge, and a tricky one at that. We could abort and become sitting targets for another mortar strike, or we could continue and find ourselves having to crash land the aircraft with a faulty engine. We were approaching take off speed and I had only seconds to decide. In the event, the decision was taken from us, two more mortar shells hit the runway one hundred yards ahead of us and we had to swerve away to avoid our wheels falling into the shell holes or the tyres being shredded by debris.
“Reduce power to both engines,” I ordered as I wrestled to hold the aircraft straight, bumping as we hit the first of the debris from the two explosions. “We’ll go around again, I want to get out of here, this could be the start of a major attack.”
I threaded the C-47 carefully around the fragments and shell holes and cut across the grass to the taxiway, heading back for our take off point. Another explosion hit the runway and then two more shells fell directly on a fuel dump, causing a vast pillar of smoke and flame to jet up into the sky. Behind the roiling black smoke I could see armed men rushing through a gap in the perimeter wire, Viet Cong, brightly illuminated by the burning fuel. We both worked calmly to keep the aircraft headed towards the end of the runway, we’d both been under fire enough times to ignore any threat that wasn’t immediate and concentrate on getting out of trouble. We were taxiing at high speed, a hazardous activity on the bumpy taxiway, but the alternative was even more hazardous. Eventually we arrived back at our start point and I put on the brakes. Paul got out his binoculars and scanned the runway ahead of us.
“There’s debris scattered halfway along the tarmac, it covers the whole width of the runway, we can’t avoid it. We’ll shred our tyres if we try and go over it.”
“Could you clear it by hand?” I asked him.
As I said it, another mortar shell struck the grass strip, hurling up earth mixed in with a hail of metal fragments.
He looked thoughtful. “It’ll only take a few minutes, but I’ll be out there without any cover.”
“It’s the only way, Paul. I’ll taxi up there and try to take the Viets’ minds off you while you’re doing it.”
He nodded and I opened the throttles, released the brakes and began taxiing towards the debris. Then I swung the aircraft off the tarmac onto the grass strip, if any mortar shells landed the soft earth would absorb the worst of the blast and resultant shrapnel. I slowed to let him jump down to the tarmac, and then I opened the throttles and headed towards the Viet Cong, who by now were moving steadily across the airfield, putting the aircraft between them and Paul.
They’d lost interest in us for a few moments but when they heard and then saw the aircraft taxiing towards them at speed they transferred their fire towards us. I felt the impact of bullets striking the fuselage, ducked as a round went straight through the windscreen leaving it shattered, a gaping hole in the front of the cockpit. Then I swung the aircraft right around and began heading back, there was no percentage in being killed by charging them head on with an unarmed plane. Paul had finished clearing the debris and I slowed to let him jump aboard, then throttled up to once again head back to our start position at the end of the tarmac. He came into the cockpit and sat down.
“Verdammt, Jurgen, I thought you were doing the C
harge of the Light Brigade there,” he laughed.
“That’s a thought,” I grunted as I swung off the grass and onto the runway, then turned a full circle to get ready to take off. We looked at each other. Paul grinned. “Let’s go for it, Jurgen. We need to get out of here fast.”
I throttled up both engines to full, let off the brakes and we surged forward. A volley of machine gun fire ripped over the roof of the cabin, I stared ahead and could make out the shape of a medium machine gun manned by two men, set up on the side of the runway. Their intention was obvious, to destroy our aircraft. I turned to Schuster. “The M2s in the locker on the bulkhead, they’re loaded and ready to fire. They’ve thoughtfully provided us with a firing port, perhaps now would be a good time to use one of them.”
“Good idea, at least I can try to spoil their aim.”
I hoped he’d do more than that. Paul Schuster was a veteran of the Russian Front and the French Indochina War here in Vietnam. Even now he was as muscular, tough and hard as I could ever remember him, almost six feet tall with cropped blonde hair and piercing clear blue eyes that were as sharp as the day his unit crossed the border into Poland.
He’d survived innumerable firefights and one of the skills that had helped him survive was the ability to shoot accurately, especially when under enemy fire. He got up, took down the rifle and expertly checked the clip. He quickly grabbed three spare clips that were in a bag hanging next to the gun, and then pushed it through the cockpit window. We were getting near the Viet machine gun position and a burst of fire hit us, this time going low, I guessed they were aiming for the tyres but instead they hit the belly of the aircraft. God only knew what damage they were doing but if we survived this there’d be plenty of time to repair it.
We were still seconds away from reaching take off speed, Paul still hadn’t fired and I could clearly see the faces of the machine gunners. Again the starboard engine faltered, I leaned forward to work the throttle to try and encourage the engine to run smoothly again and steered to port to correct the swing as the port engine tried to push us off the tarmac, at the same time another burst of fire hit the aircraft. This time their aim was slightly better, a burst hit the cockpit, putting holes in the metal skin and punching through into the cabin behind. Their aim was getting better as we got nearer, I didn’t think we’d survive another one. Then the starboard engine picked up and I corrected our course once again. Paul still hadn’t fired and I called out to him, “What’s going on out there?”
