by Eric Helm
Tyme put a hand to his head and said, “Oh, Christ! Not again!”
Gerber ignored the mock distress and said, “This time it’s with all the legitimate documents signed and orders issued. Normal patrol, maybe a week, to observe the action on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Just observation. We’re supposed to avoid contact.”
“Airlift?”
“No, Tony. I think it’ll be better if we walk it. You start flying aircraft all over the place and it becomes everyone’s business. The farmers know where the airplanes go, the VC know and the NVA know. You might as well take out a billboard. If we walk, using the jungle for cover, we can avoid all that. Make it harder for the VC to find us and figure out what we’re doing and where we’re going.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Derek, your intel boys have anything new of interest for us?”
Kepler, who was wearing an OD T-shirt that was black with sweat, jungle pants stained around the waistband and brush-shined boots, rubbed his chin. He needed a shave, and his hair hung down as if he’d been caught in the shower. He ran a hand through it and said, “I’ve been getting reports of a lot of activity in the border areas. VC sweeping through the villes asking for rice, meat and water. No recruiting trips, just requests, hell, demands for additional supplies. Lot of movement, mostly at night with attempts to avoid contact.”
“Anything else?”
“Got one weird one, sir.” He smiled and shook his head. “Convoy of trucks crossed the border north of the Angel’s Wing, drove east to Nui Ba Den and disappeared. I figure Charlie drove into the caves that riddle the place.”
“You reported it to Nha Trang?”
“Yes, sir. Told them that it was from a single source but that they might be interested. We’ve got a couple of camps in that area.”
“So all you’ve really seen is an increase in the activity, meaning more people running around here?”
“In a nutshell, sir. Too early to pick up any real trends. Just more people wandering around.”
“We the target?”
“I doubt that. Most of the problem is way north of us. If they were interested in us again, they’d be staging the buildup west of here, in Cambodia, not north. Keeps them away from the air force that way.”
“Then if we’re going to see anything of importance, we need to operate north of our normal AO.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, thanks, Derek. Tony, you see the general drift of this?”
Fetterman got to his feet and looked at the map spread out on Gerber’s desk. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Airlift into Tay Ninh. Maybe one of the fire support bases west of there would save us a lot of time and shoe leather. So much going on out there that an extra flight landing shouldn’t raise any eyebrows.”
Gerber nodded. “Right. Without Derek’s info, we’d have walked due west and maybe not seen anything. Justin, when we break up here, I’ll want you to talk with Galvin. Have him start trying to arrange airlift.”
“I can’t see any real difficulties, sir,” said Tyme. “How big a force are we taking?”
“Given the nature of the mission and what I was told in Saigon, I’d say half the team and an equal number of Tais. Fourteen in all, fifteen with our scout.”
“Scout?” said Kepler.
“Yes, Derek. Scout. We’ve been provided with a Kit Carson for this mission.”
Kepler shook his head. “I don’t want to be negative about this, but I don’t like it. We’re going into enemy-held territory with a fairly small force, no real possibility of air or artillery cover, and we’re being led by someone who was a traitor once. Just because he was VC and now wants to help us is no reason—”
“She,” said Gerber.
“What?” asked Tyme.
“She. The Vietnamese woman who came back with me is supposed to be our scout.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, sir,” said Kepler.
“She’s going. Orders,” said Gerber.
Fetterman said, “So fifteen people to monitor the Trail. Wouldn’t four or five be enough?”
“They’ve had some trouble with their teams in there. That’s why we’ve been given the task, with orders to take a large enough force that we’ll be relatively safe. I figure on leaving most of the new men here with our new XO in charge. Tony, I’ll want you with me. Derek, you’re in because we’ll need someone who can determine the importance of anything we see on the Trail. Justin, you’re in, of course. I’ll talk to Washington because we’ll want a medic, Anderson for demo and Bocker for commo.”
“Which Tais?” asked Fetterman.
“Contact Sergeant Krung and have him pick a team of six. That means Krung goes, too.”
“When do we leave?” asked Tyme.
“If Galvin can arrange for the airlift tomorrow, I’d say about 0700 hours. Derek, you and I’ll go over the map to pick a route. Justin, make a detailed weapons check. Only the best. Select the squad weapons that you think will be the most helpful.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gerber consulted his watch. “All right. Full briefing tonight after evening chow. Everyone who is going except the Tai strikers. Krung, yes.”
“Our Kit Carson?” asked Kepler.
“Whoa,” said Gerber. And then, “Yeah, I think we’ll need her, but then we’ve got to keep her isolated from the other Vietnamese. Don’t want her to have a chance to pass any information to them if she’s so inclined. Someone will have to stay with her the whole time, and we’ll have to watch her hootch tonight to make sure that she doesn’t sneak out for any reason.” He looked around the room. “Anything else?”
“No, sir,” said Fetterman, speaking for the group.
“Then let’s meet in the commo bunker after chow. It’ll be cooler, and it’ll provide us with a little better security.”
An hour after he dropped Gerber and the Kit Carson off at the terminal at Hotel Three, Jerry Maxwell was back in Brigadier General Billy Joe Crinshaw’s building. He entered the outer office where an old master sergeant, a graying, thin man who did nothing but watch the clock, sat behind a large desk. He was obviously waiting for the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of his tour. When Maxwell entered, the sergeant flipped closed a copy of Stars and Stripes and asked, “Can I help you?”
“I’m supposed to brief General Crinshaw.”
The sergeant turned to a large appointment book sitting on the corner of his desk, opened it to the right page and ran a finger down it. “You’re Maxwell?”
“Yes.”
“Please have a seat, and I’ll see if the general is free.”
Maxwell chose not to sit. Instead, he seemed to find the outer office interesting. The walls were paneled in dark wood, with light blue carpeting on the floor. He took in the potted and hanging plants that seemed to camouflage one corner, and the four plush high-backed chairs. There was a short square table in front of the chairs that held copies of Time, Newsweek, Life, and strangely, Analog Science Fiction magazine.
The sergeant picked up the receiver on a field phone, spun the crank and talked quietly into it. As he hung up, he said, “You may go in.”
Maxwell opened the door leading into the inner sanctum of Brigadier General Billy Joe Crinshaw. It was like stepping into another world, a world where it was always cold and dark. The general had rearranged and replaced almost everything since Maxwell had last been there.
Crinshaw, a big, stocky man who had played tackle on the Georgia Tech football team, sat behind his opulent desk of polished mahogany, writing on a yellow legal pad. He wore a starched and pressed field jacket with embroidered stars on the epaulets. The walls around him were paneled in rich, dark woods. Venetian blinds, which were closed, covered the windows, almost completely hidden behind OD green curtains. In one corner were twin air conditioners, blowing cold air with the force of a Midwest blizzard.
Maxwell stood between the two leather wing chairs that faced the desk. To his left were floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with volumes,
some of which were actually army manuals, he noted. Opposite the books was a wall full of captured weapons, each with a plaque detailing the date, weapon type and circumstances. Crinshaw had had nothing to do with the capture of any of the weapons. He had collected them from combat soldiers by threatening their careers. The carpeting was thick and dark.
Crinshaw continued and then, without looking up, waved at one of the chairs. “Siddown, for Christ’s sake. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Maxwell collapsed into one of the chairs, fastened the top button on his shirt and slipped his tie up in an attempt to keep from freezing. Crinshaw took a file folder from the middle drawer, placed his pad in it and then locked everything away. He jammed his pen into the holder on the front of the desk, folded his hands and waited.
“I’ve just left Captain Gerber after his briefing,” said Maxwell.
“And?”
“And he’s preparing for the mission, just as he was ordered to do.”
“No complaints from him?” asked Crinshaw. “I thought the boy would be up in arms about it.”
“I had to give him the written orders…”
“I’ll fucking bet you did.” Crinshaw rocked back and clasped his hands together behind his head. “I’ll just bet you did. That dumb ass. Goes charging into Cambodia on a whim and then makes us give him written orders to do the same thing. I’ll just never understand that boy.”
“No, sir,” said Maxwell. “Anyway, he’s been briefed on the mission.”
“Good. Now I’ll want you boys to keep in touch with him so we know what’s going on out there.”
“That’s no problem. And since he has a fairly large force going in with him, it’ll give us a clue about how important the VC think their secrecy is. I believe,” said Maxwell, tenting his fingers under his chin, “that this will tell us if the buildup is leading to something big or if it’s just an attempt to place more people in the area, for whatever reason.”
“Now we have to be very careful,” said Crinshaw. “We don’t want to tip our hand. We can’t have the NVA and the Viet Cong realizing that we know they’re planning something. We don’t want them to back off.”
“I understand that, General.”
“What I’m saying is we have to rethink this airlift if Gerber should get into trouble. Right now Charlie doesn’t have a clue about what we know or how much. He’s just out there, sneaking through the fucking jungle, thinking the Americans are a bunch of candy asses who don’t know shit from Shinola.”
“I understand all that,” said Maxwell, not sure that he did at all.
“Boy, you got to see the big picture. That’s something Gerber and his kind fail to do. See the big picture. We go pullin’ a big rescue, if Gerber and his boys get into trouble, and Charlie’s gonna know that we know.”
Maxwell leaned forward, his hands on the arm of his chair. “Excuse me, General, but you’re not suggesting that we—”
“Mr. Maxwell, I’m saying that Captain Gerber is going to have to get out of anything that he gets himself into. We have to play this very close to the vest.”
“You can’t be serious,” Maxwell said. “You’re not suggesting that if Gerber gets out there, gets the information we want, and then gets into trouble, we leave him there with his ass blowing in the breeze?”
Crinshaw reached out and pulled the pen from its holder. He twirled it in both hands. “The military sometimes finds it necessary to sacrifice men. Travis and the boys at the Alamo so that Sam Houston could build an army. The rearguard that dies to ensure the majority of the army escapes. It’s a fact of life and a fact of war.”
“But not when you can get them out.”
Crinshaw waved a hand. “Maxwell, we’re arguing something that might not even happen. If Gerber does his job properly, Charlie won’t even know he’s there.”
“General, those LRRPs were very good at their jobs, and we only managed to get one of them out. And that was with airlift and close air support.”
“Doesn’t matter, boy. Mission requirements dictate that we provide no army airlift to extract them. There’d be too much publicity if any aviation assets were lost on the wrong side of the border. I’m already catching hell over the LRRP mess. The moment Gerber crosses into Cambodia, he’s on his own. We won’t send him help because of the international ramifications and the possibility of accidentally telling the enemy what we know.”
Maxwell sat there for a moment, staring at Crinshaw, trying to force the general to lower his eyes first as if that would somehow make him rescind his order, but Crinshaw won the skirmish. Maxwell looked away and then said, “None of this is right.”
“Doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong, it’s an order.”
CHAPTER 5
THE HO CHI MINH TRAIL,
PARROT’S BEAK REGION, CAMBODIA
The airplanes came in the afternoon. They crisscrossed the sky above Corporal Tran Minh Ngo’s platoon, as if searching for them. Ngo and his comrades crouched among the bushes and trees and refused to move. Ngo clutched his rifle with all his might, his knuckles turning white. He kept his eyes on the sky, as if by looking at the American airplanes he would somehow protect himself from them. He felt fear knot his stomach and a cold, clammy sweat slide down his back.
The terrors of the Cambodian jungle hadn’t really fazed him. He had pulled leeches from his body and chopped the head from a cobra before it could strike. He had heard the screams of the tigers as they prowled in the night and had listened to the trumpeting of elephants in the distance. He had suffered the heat of midday, the cold rains that came at four in the morning and the chilling predawn breezes. He had eaten the soggy rice and the stolen meat. And he had believed, almost, when the political officer had told them of the great glory that awaited them in the South.
But now he hid, paralyzed with fear, as the American jets circled overhead like vultures waiting for something to die. He realized that he was mumbling under his breath, a prayer of deliverance, and then knew that it wasn’t. He was quietly calling for his mother.
One of the jets dived toward the ground, and as it pulled up suddenly, something tumbled from its wings. A second later, the top of a nearby hill burst into orange flame and black smoke. Ngo could imagine the flames engulfing him, roasting him, killing him. There was nothing more horrible in the world, he was certain, no more horrible way to die.
For thirty minutes the jets pounded the ground with their napalm and machine guns. They were far enough from Ngo’s platoon that the men were never in danger from the jets, but they were close enough for them to see everything the airplanes did. The jungle erupted in flames under the bombardment of napalm, vegetation shredding under the relentless stream of machine gun bullets.
Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the jets vanished. Except for the quiet whimpering of one of the men, everything was silent. Ngo looked to his left and saw the man, his arms wrapped around the tree, crying. He had dropped his rifle in the mud of the jungle floor, thrown his pack into the bush and had tried to rip off his uniform. His eyes were tightly closed, and he had wet himself.
Ngo looked away. He didn’t feel like laughing at the man. Ngo understood completely the terror the man felt, understood the despair. Even after the inspiring story told by the Chinese officer, Ngo couldn’t believe that he and his comrades could do anything against the might of the Americans. They were too strong and had too much. How could a man with a rifle fight an airplane that swooped from the sky to kill and destroy.
The lieutenant walked to the man hugging the tree. Ngo expected him to receive a tongue-lashing about cowardice in front of his comrades, but that didn’t happen. The officer knelt and talked to the soldier quietly, explaining that everyone had been frightened, but now it was over. The airplanes were gone, and none of the platoon had been harmed. It was time to forget about that, forget about the Americans, and get busy with the job they had come to do.
Within minutes they were moving again, but their attitude was sole
mn. The laughing and joking were gone, replaced by the fear of the Americans and their war machines. Ngo kept his eyes on the ground in front of him. It was as if he believed the American planes would return if he looked at the sky. He now ignored the heat and humidity, thinking only of orange balls of flame that would melt the flesh from his face and cook his lungs as he tried to breathe.
Gerber sat on the map table, which was pushed against one of the sandbagged walls of the commo bunker, and watched as his men filed in. When Emilie came down the stairs, he was tempted to pull the chart from the wall that had the suspected locations of enemy units and the coordinates of American bases marked on it, but he realized that the VC already knew where their men were, and the American bases were out there for all to see.
Most of the men sat on the floor, ignoring the light coating of red dust on it. One or two jumped up to sit on the plywood counter that separated the rear of the bunker from the rest of it. Behind the counter, Bocker stood, the radios on, but the microphones unplugged. He leaned between Tyme and Washington.
When Anderson saw Emilie, he leaped to his feet, brushed the seat of his fatigue pants and opened one of the metal folding chairs leaning against the sandbagged wall. He held out a hand and said, “Please.”
Emilie smiled at the big, blond man. Standing next to him, she looked like a tiny doll. She was still wearing her black skirt and white blouse that now had perspiration stains on it. She brushed at her hair, pushing it off her forehead, which was beaded with sweat. She looked up at Anderson and said, “Thank you.”
A moment later Krung came down and stood at parade rest next to the entrance. Gerber looked at him, the Americans, saw that both Kepler and Fetterman were there, too, and hopped off the table. “Sergeant Fetterman,” he said, “is Sully standing by outside?”
“Yes, sir. He won’t let anyone get close to the door. We’re as secure here as we could be anywhere on the base.”
