Play the Red Queen

by Juris Jurjevics

  “Yes, sir.”

  I trusted Moehlenkamp and Francis. Crouch was a lazy no-account but Rider was a no-nonsense warrant officer, reliable and steady. He outranked Crouch and could keep him in line. I hoped the six of us would be enough to take on the Red Queen’s Unit Eight.

  “For God’s sake,” Deckle admonished. “Don’t fuck this up, Miser. She’s a better shot with a handgun than all of you put together. Make your peace with that right now. You’ve got the advantage with rifles. Use it. Take her down first, and then you can get into a pissing contest with her comrades.” Deckle looked us each in the eye. “Between her Tay Ninh ambushes and Saigon, she has sixteen kills to her name. I don’t want any of you added to that score. Understood?”

  I told Moehlenkamp and Francis to change to fatigues, grab their carbines and two T-11 radios, and meet us out front. We unlashed our jeep and set off through traffic slow as lava. Robeson loaded our carbines as I drove. At Gia Long Palace, we passed through the outer perimeter. Red Berets in battle dress stood guard along the building’s iron fencing, which was fronted by coils of barbed wire seven feet high. More Red Berets patrolled the grounds behind them.

  At either end of the palace garden we found the concrete blockhouses that hid the outdoor entrances to the tunnels from the palace grounds. We casually followed the westernmost tunnel’s underground route, tracing it along the surface until we reached the approximate point of the secret extension, and from there tracked it into Parc Maurice Long.

  Robeson was the first to spot the shed near the bridle path, though we drove right past like he hadn’t and parked at the Cercle Sportif. Sergeants Moehlenkamp and Francis stayed with the jeep while Robeson and I casually walked toward the windowless brick structure standing amongst a few shrubs and a sparse stand of tamarind trees heavy with pods. Young American girls trotted by on the bridle path aboard small horses, their polished riding boots gleaming. Chattering like starlings, they broke into a canter under the alleyway of tall trees.

  A heavy wooden bench faced the door of the shed, framed by a burst of purple bougainvillea. Between us and the shed, rubber trees were flanked by two mounds of earth, each almost eight feet high, probably built from the excess soil snuck out of the excavation and quickly landscaped with short palms and multicolored lantana to blend into the park. The two hillocks formed a small saddleback. That would be our observation post.

  Real nonchalant, we paced off the distance from the saddleback to the shed: a hundred and twenty steps; about a hundred yards. Maybe fifteen yards less to the bench. We sat down and made like we were admiring its thick mahogany, making sure nobody was paying us any mind before we walked to the shed and stepped inside. The space was very tight. A trapdoor occupied a quarter of the floor. Gun out, Robeson lifted the lid. I shone my flashlight onto steps leading down into the dark well and the tunnel extension. Nothing moved.

  We spent a while just strolling in the park, trying to spot any cadre doing reconnaissance like us, but all we saw were children walking across the parkland to and from the Cerc.

  Satisfied there weren’t VC nearby, we retrieved Moehlenkamp and Francis and escorted them to the hillocks to set up between the overgrown humps. We left the guys there to caretake until Robeson and I returned at 7 p.m. for the first twelve-on twelve-off shift.

  “The ambassador’s pushed back his departure for Washington again,” Mrs. Lacey lamented, tucking away strands of hair that had gotten loose. “The White House is getting antsy. They keep cabling.”

  Embassy personnel in ties and shirtsleeves kept popping in to pose pressing questions and get Lodge’s signature on documents before he left for the States. The plane sent to fetch him was still idling on the tarmac, manned and fueled. Lodge was stalling. Like everyone else in Saigon, he didn’t want to miss the showdown.

  A deputy exited Lodge’s office and Mrs. Lacey got us in to see him. The ambassador seemed distracted, almost irritated to hear that we had a good line on the Red Queen’s next move. He had no time to listen to details. When he said, “Good work, Sergeants,” he certainly didn’t sound like he meant it. We were out of there in under a minute. Fuck you, I thought.

  Robeson complained: “We’re busting ass to protect his ass and Diem’s, and he blows us off?”

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, from here on we’re looking to protect Diem’s ass. Lodge’s ass is on its own.”

  We stopped by CIA, ostensibly to thank Donald for sharing his asset with us. I figured that if I let slip I was now as pissed at Lodge as he was, I could hit him up for some Agency weapons. “Sure thing,” he said, and led us to their arms room, stocked with three long racks of Czech, French, Swedish, Russian, and Swiss rifles. All sanitized: no markings, no stamps. We each took three Swedish Ks with collapsible wire-hanger stocks, far superior to the Uzis they resembled, and far better military rifles than the carbines we carried. Straight blowback, not much recoil, they wouldn’t dance off the target and were even easy to control on full automatic, which we’d need if we were going to impede the Red Queen’s accuracy.

  I tried balancing the rifle by the pistol grip and tall magazine column. No good. I unfolded the stock and braced it against my shoulder. Much better.

  “What’s the rate of fire?” I asked Donald.

  “Twelve rounds a second. Effective range is about three hundred yards. Her pistol isn’t going to be much use beyond a tenth of that distance. Accuracy falls off fast after twenty feet. Thirty feet’ll be her outside limit.”

  “Then we’ll certainly discourage her from gettin’ any closer,” Robeson said drily.

  We took eighteen long coffin-box magazines apiece, loaded with thirty-six 9-millimeter rounds. Heavy mothers, especially once we added the full mags. We slipped the long magazines into their leather pouches and shouldered the slings. Robeson went back and appropriated more magazines, tossing them into his duffel, and passed me extras as well.

  “In case she brings all three teams of Kamaraden,” he said.

  The whole city felt desolate. Anticipating a coup that kept not happening was making everyone listless. We parked on the grass a quarter of a mile away, shackled the steering wheel, and humped the seriously loaded duffels toward the blind. Luckily there weren’t any cops or troops around to see us cross the bridle path and disappear into the foliage.

  Moehlenkamp and Francis lay hidden in the ferns under enormous leaves of young palms about as tall as we were. We crowded into the position, the giant fronds looming over us.

  “This is way overpopulated in here,” Robeson complained.

  “Keep it down,” I whispered. I handed the guys their Swedish Ks, which they were happy to get.

  The hillocks afforded cover and some protection. But when the shit hit the fan, the parkland’s open terrain wouldn’t be much help, I thought. Distance was our only real advantage, besides the Swedish K’s rate of fire and power. If we did our job right she’d be using a water pistol against a fire hose. Once she was down, I was pretty confident we could handle the rest of her team.

  “If we have to engage, we tap her first,” I whispered. “If she walks into the kill zone, we drop her. I’m hoping her comrades will scatter when they see her fall and realize the firepower they’re facing. Got it?”

  Francis and Moehlenkamp nodded.

  Above us, the sky was losing light. A yellow insect landed on Robeson’s arm, another one on Francis. My knee throbbed. It started to rain lightly, but the palm leaves kept us pretty dry. I peered beneath the fronds to study the silhouette of the brick shed. I was parched, my throat scratchy. My canteen was sitting at Flippi’s. Robeson passed me his and softly sang one of his favorites, a song he’d learned from his gran.

  “There’s a girl in the heart of Maryland / With a heart that belongs to me. And Mary-land was fairy-land / When she said that mine she’d be . . .”

  “Sergeant Miser,” Moehlenkamp whispered, “you thin
k somebody’s gonna wonder why these bushes are singing in American?”

  “Okay, listen up. Moehlenkamp, you and Sergeant Francis crash in my room at the Majestic tonight. Put Rider and Crouch in Robeson’s. Tell them to relieve us at oh seven hundred tomorrow. All of you sleep in shifts. Keep the T-11 transceiver on. We’ll report every three hours to the CID office and you guys. So stay alert. If the Red Queen’s team shows up, we’ll need everybody to come quick. Drive all the way in, use the jeep for cover.”

  “Keep your boots on,” Robeson said. They left in the dark. The mosquitoes found us immediately, the nasty little vampires drilling through my civilian socks and feasting on my ears. It was going to be that kind of night: scratching and watching, half asleep.

  Other than the bugs, no one showed the slightest bit of interest in us or the shed for the twelve hours we cooped in the blind. But neither of us slept. The bugs kept Robeson occupied. Thinking about Nadja kept me awake. Seven o’clock the next morning Rider and Crouch took over. “Which room are we gonna sleep in?” Robeson asked. “Yours or mine?”

  “I’m going to rack out in my own bed by my own self.”

  Maybe not the safest choice, but I needed privacy. It was the first of the month. Me and Flippi had our rendezvous with the bagman that afternoon. I figured the snatch would go pretty quick. We weren’t due back to the blind until nightfall—assuming she didn’t show earlier. Spreading Stars and Stripes on the bed, I quickly oiled my toss-away piece and wiped down the magazine of the 9 millimeter before reinserting it.

  Despite my fatigue, sleep didn’t come easily. I was dozing fitfully as the noon siren went off. When I roused myself a second time, it felt like five minutes had passed, but it was after three. Just over an hour to the linkup with Flippi. Liberating the VC money was going to be sweet but it would’ve been a lot sweeter to spend it with Nadja.

  I showered quick, dressed in fatigues with no rank stripes or name strip and pulled on my boots. The phone rang. I answered, expecting Robeson checking in or Flippi checking up, but it was Mrs. Lacey. She said the ambassador had seen President Diem that morning with our supreme leader in the Pacific, Admiral Felt. Afterward, Lodge had escorted Felt to the airport and seen him aboard a military jet for the nineteen-hour flight to Honolulu. Then he’d gone back to his residence. He wished to see me, she said. Oh, and would I do Mrs. Lodge a favor and pick up some fruit on the way over. “Durian,” she said, and rang off.

  The plotters had committed. The coup was on.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “Fuck,” I muttered when the line went dead as I tried to reach Flippi. I threw on my harness, grabbed the ammo pouches and Swedish K, and banged on Robeson’s door.

  “What ’n the hell,” he yelled. “I’m sleeping.”

  “The coup-de-fucking-la is on. Meet me on the roof with your guns and gear.”

  I didn’t wait for the elevator. The rebels might cut the power any second. By the time I reached the roof, I was panting and swearing never to smoke again. Low-hanging rain clouds hovered over the terrace and the city. No vehicles or pedestrian traffic moved in the streets. Columns of marching rebel troops stretched out along the empty boulevards, trudging single file along barren sidewalks. Robeson joined me at the railing and pointed out they were all wearing red neckerchiefs.

  “They got on their away colors so they can tell who’s on their side.”

  Firing broke out somewhere: a crackling exchange of small arms followed by a lull. We stood still, listening. The tok-tok of machine guns turned into another ripple of gunfire.

  “What’s going on?” said Seftas, coming up to the rail.

  I pointed to the lines of troops snaking through the city. “Change of command.”

  Red and white tracers crisscrossed a few blocks away as loyal and rebel soldiers fired at each other.

  “Oughta be blue tracers too,” Seftas commented. “That would be appropriate for an American production, don’t you think? I mean, shit, we’ve armed all sides in this clusterfuck.”

  A bleary-eyed Australian appeared, naked to the waist. He said he was hearing army rebels had taken the naval headquarters on the river while truckloads of pro-Diem soldiers reinforced Gia Long Palace, firing along the empty boulevards as they pulled into the palace grounds. I tried using the bar phone to call our captain but that line was out of commission too.

  “Damn,” Seftas said. “The guys at the Rex must have a front seat on the action. Their roof looks right over Gia Long.” The Aussie asked Seftas if he wanted to go over there. “Hell, yeah,” Seftas said, excited as a kid offered seats behind home plate. The two took off.

  A T-38 buzzed the palace. Another banked to fire rockets and cannon at the presidential guards’ barracks half a mile on. Anti-aircraft guns fired back from the palace roof. One Vietnamese gunboat loyally shot at the rebel planes from the river just below us.

  The electricity went out. It was a quarter to four. I told Robeson that Lodge wanted us at the ambassador’s residence and we hauled our T-11, Swedish Ks and ammunition downstairs to the jeep. Robeson jumped behind the wheel. Lines of rebel troops marched past us going north and slightly west toward the palace. We drove toward the ambassador’s villa, passing red-kerchiefed troops aboard trucks and sitting atop armored personnel carriers. The town was locked down, the sidewalks bare.

  I checked in with Captain Deckle on the T-11 as Robeson drove. The captain said the barracks of Colonel Tung’s Special Forces were under attack. At that moment every navy gun on the river cut loose with cannon and anti-aircraft guns.

  “What the hell are they firing at?” Deckle roared.

  At nothing as far as I could tell, I said. A meaningless show of support for whichever side was ahead.

  The captain rattled off what he knew. All over the city Americans were stranded at their jobs and trapped in their residences. Big Minh was at the civilian radio station, announcing the “removal of the autocrats Diệm and Nhu” who had caused American economic aid to be cut off, without which the Communists would win the war. Robeson and I looked at each other slack-jawed. Of all of Diem’s offenses, Big Minh cared most about Diem’s killing the golden goose.

  The pops and cracks of small arms increased as we drove. Moehlenkamp got on the horn and reported he and Francis were stuck at the CID office, waiting for rebel troops to finish moving past in force. Looked like it was going to be a long wait.

  Machine guns clattered, letting off ten-round bursts. A mortar thumped coming out of its tube and exploded seconds later with a crump. The familiar sounds excited me.

  We arrived at the ambassador’s villa to find a dozen embassy Marines in civvies, heavily armed with riot guns and tear-gas grenades. Leathernecks were deployed all over the house and garden, guarding the Lodges against the latest rumored threats: an assassination attempt on him, a kidnapping of them both.

  Inside, Mike Dunn and some of the other staff were busy on the phones and civilian sideband radios. A Marine communicated over a field radio while Lodge was on a regular landline telephone, talking to the American liaising with the plotters—Lulu. I was impressed the residence had working phones at all. Courtesy of the plotting generals, no doubt.

  Mike Dunn hung up and filled us in. The ARVN generals and colonels, he said, had met for their regular Friday lunch at the officers’ club near the Joint Chiefs’ headquarters. Police carrying submachine guns had detained the officers inside. General Big Minh announced the coup d’état and gave them a simple choice: stand to join the rebellion or remain seated. The few who stayed in their seats were promptly arrested. Those who stood had to sign their names to a declaration of rebellion.

  Lodge took another call and turned to face the shuttered windows, receiver clamped to his ear. He wedged open the slats of the blinds at eye level to look out as he listened. Over his shoulder I could see black smoke rising from the general direction of Gia Long. Tank and artillery salvos b
oomed. Reports streamed in: the rebels had seized Tan Son Nhut airport and the Ministry of National Defense. City phone lines were inoperative. The post office was taken: the coup plotters controlled all cable traffic. The arms cache at the National Police headquarters was theirs too. They’d declared a 7 p.m. curfew.

  I looked up at the wall clock. Four-thirty. Shit! Half of eighty grand was slipping through my fingers. I consoled myself thinking chances were the handoff had been canceled on account of raining bullets.

  A handsome child dashed through the room, pursued by an amah. Mike Dunn’s Chilean wife and twin boys had been invited to lunch by the Lodges and were now houseguests for the duration. The boys had been out on the tennis court collecting geckos in tennis-ball cans, their dad said, when to their delight an ARVN M24 tank rolled by and fired its 75-millimeter gun, the compound’s first confirmation that the rebellion was in motion. The available flak vests and helmets were way too big, but the Marines strapped them on the boys anyway—on Emily and Fran Dunn, too.

  The Marine radio operator reported sixteen tanks converging on Gia Long, but not yet firing. Another gyrene rushed up to Lodge and said, “Sir, President Diem’s on the phone for you.”

  Robeson and I followed the ambassador and Mike Dunn to the dining room, which was a shambles: paper strewn everywhere, radio squelch blaring. In one corner a Marine on a sideband kept repeating the same call: “Wizard Six, this is Whiskey Tango One. Come in please . . . Wizard Six, come back . . . Wizard Six, are you receiving?”

  Mike Dunn picked up the extension in the hall to record the ambassador’s conversation with President Diem. Somebody turned down the Vietnamese radio station that had defiantly been playing forbidden rock. Diem spoke so loudly that Lodge had to hold the receiver away from his ear.

  “Some units have made a rebellion,” Diem was saying. A Marine jotted it down. “I want to know, what is the attitude of the US?”