The Fall of Camp A-555: The Vietnamese Army are one step closer to victory... (Vietnam Ground Zero Military Thrillers Book 4)

by Eric Helm

  Dung moved across the compound past the fire control tower and the helipad to the communications bunker, reaching it in time to nearly collide with Sergeant Duc, one of the LLDB communications specialists, who was coming up the steps of the bunker in a great hurry, a scrap of paper in his hand.

  “Slow down, Sergeant. What’s the big rush?” Dung asked, mildly curious.

  “I was coming to find you, sir,” said Duc. “We have just received a message from the patrol, relayed via B-Detachment Headquarters. Captain Gerber reports finding evidence of a battalion-sized force of VC in the area, possibly heading in our direction. The message is for Trung Uy Novak, but I thought you would want to be informed, as well.”

  “Indeed I do. How very interesting. A battalion, you say. Is that all?”

  “That is the report,” said Duc, puzzled. His lieutenant seemed almost disappointed that there were not more VC.

  “Very good, Sergeant,” said Dung smoothly. “Give me the message and I will give it to the American lieutenant and you can get back to your duties.”

  Duc dutifully handed over the scrap of paper and turned to re-enter the bunker. He had taken two steps when Dung clapped his hand over the man’s mouth and drove his bayonet into Duc’s right kidney. Duc died without making a sound.

  Dung lowered the ARVN Special Forces soldier’s body quietly onto the steps below the top of the sandbagged entrance where it would be out of sight. A stroke of the bayonet across the throat ensured that the job was done. Placidly he wiped the bayonet’s blade on the dead man’s uniform and replaced the weapon in its sheath. Then he walked casually down the steps into the dimly lighted bunker.

  The Tai radioman was bent forward over his tiny desk. He had one hand pressed against the left side of his head holding one of the large earphones in place while he scribbled another message on a small notepad. He was listening so intently that he did not hear Dung approach.

  Lieutenant Dung moved to a position directly behind the radioman’s chair and took something out of his pocket, which he held behind his back. He waited patiently until the Tai lowered his left hand, then quickly he brought the wooden-handled piano-wire garrote out from behind his back and snapped it down over the man’s head, pulling it tight. The Tai kicked with his feet and tried to push his chair backward into Dung, but Dung held on tightly and stepped back with the man’s thrust. The garrote bit in deep from bottom to top, nearly severing the radioman’s head.

  Moving purposefully, Dung tilted each of the radios forward until he could reach the power cables in back. Taking a pair of insulated wire cutters from one of the breast pockets of his jungle fatigues, he carefully cut through each of the cables and the antennae leads.

  Dung checked his watch. It had taken fifteen seconds less than they had planned, a good omen.

  He picked up the notepad, tore off the top sheet and read it. It was a second message from B-Detachment Headquarters, instructing Gerber to contact Lieutenant Colonel Bates immediately upon his arrival. Dung took the first message from his pocket and placed it with the second. He carefully tore the two messages into eight strips, then took out his Zippo lighter and burned them, letting the ashes fall to the floor of the communications bunker where he ground them into dust beneath his boot heel.

  He checked his watch again. It was time.

  Climbing the steps of the commo bunker, being careful to step over Duc’s body so that he would not get any blood on his boots or uniform, Dung crossed the compound toward the command post, nodding almost imperceptibly to a few of the men as he passed. They in turn nodded to other men, who one by one detached themselves from whatever they were doing and began to take up positions about the camp.

  At the base of the fire control tower, Dung hesitated briefly. He glanced around, checking the position of his men. Satisfied that most, if not all, were in their positions and armed and ready, he started leisurely up the ladder, taking care to grasp each rung, place each foot. He did nothing that might cause him to slip and fall. They had come too close, risked too much, to fail now because of some slip-up during the final minutes. He would leave nothing to chance by rushing at the last minute.

  At the top of the ladder, both Sergeant Duong, the LLDB heavy weapons specialist, and the PF striker on duty with him noticed Dung, but he merely nodded at them. They returned the nod and resumed glassing the surrounding terrain through their binoculars.

  Dung clambered over the sandbags and onto the platform of the FCT. Nonchalantly he reached into his pocket and took out a package of cigarettes. He shook one out and placed it between his lips, cupping his hand over the end and turning away, as if to shield it from the wind while he lighted it. When he turned back, he had the silenced Tokarev pistol that he had been given in his hand. With utmost care he shot both men twice.

  The gun was quiet but by no means silent. It made four small, sharp sounds, like hand claps. It was possible that someone directly below the fire control tower might have noticed the noise, but the only men below at that moment were expecting the noise, and they showed no outward signs of alarm.

  Dung moved forward and checked that both men were dead, feeling for the carotid pulse at the side of each man’s neck. Satisfied that neither would offer any resistance, he moved to the side of the tower and took a small metal mirror from one of his pockets. Sighting on a particular spot of the distant tree line, Dung gave the signal.

  Lieutenant Novak sat up suddenly in his bunk. Heart pounding, sweat rolling down his bare upper torso, he strained his ears, trying to detect once again whatever sound it was that had awakened him. For a moment he could hear nothing. Then a series of shattering blasts rocked the camp and men began screaming.

  Mortars.

  Novak swung his legs over the side of the bunk, zipping up the trousers he still wore and buckling his belt. He paused long enough to pick each boot up by the toe and bang it a couple of times on the floor, out of respect for any scorpions, spiders or centipedes that might have decided to take up residence there while he was asleep, then jammed his feet into the boots. He didn’t take time to lace them all the way, just wrapped the bootlaces around his ankles a couple of times and tied them.

  Novak took time to slip into his jungle jacket, since he knew it could offer some protection against flash burns, but didn’t wait to button it. He threw his web gear over one shoulder, picked up his helmet and reached for his rifle. Then he heard it. A low growl that built steadily into a high-pitched wail. It took him a moment to place it, but when he finally did, his worst fear was starkly realized.

  Ground attack siren.

  He jacked a round into the chamber of his rifle and ran out the door.

  Outside, it was pandemonium. The air was filled with smoke and the crack, rattle and pop of small arms fire. Beyond the redoubt and across the runway, where the Vietnamese quarters were located, men were busy shooting each other.

  Oh, my God, thought Novak. Oh, sweet mother’s delight. They’re inside the camp already. The motherfucking VC are inside the camp.

  Novak glanced to the south, toward the Tai quarters. Two of the buildings were burning, and as he watched, another barrage of mortar bombs fell among the rest, sending forth great burning showers of embers that trailed dense clouds of thick white smoke behind them.

  Willy Pete.

  There seemed to be some kind of ground action going on over there, too. There was a lot of firing all along the section of the camp wall defended by the Tai. Most of it seemed to be directed inward, toward the Vietnamese positions across the runway and along the west wall. He could hear both the rapid chatter of .30-caliber Brownings and the slow, heavy booming of the fifties.

  It was then that Novak realized the enemy mortars were falling only on the Tai quarters. No place else in camp was being shelled. A few of the Vietnamese hootches were burning, but if that had been done by mortars, the VC gunners manning the tubes outside the camp had lost interest in them as a target. Novak suddenly realized something else, too. The majority of the
smoke wasn’t coming from the burning structures or even from the white phosphorus mortar rounds the VC were dropping on the Tai. Most of it was billowing from HC smoke grenades that had been popped around the camp.

  Then, from the west, beyond the walls of the camp and toward the tree line that marked the edge of the western perimeter, he heard a sound that made his body suddenly grow cold and clammy from the sweat covering it. The sound of bugles. Lots of bugles. Maybe half a dozen. As he watched the macabre spectacle in fascinated horror, all along the west and north walls of the camp, the gun emplacements there began firing. Into the center of the camp.

  In a split second Novak made his decision. Crossing the open ground to the communications bunker would have been suicidal. Instead, he sprinted for Gerber’s hootch. He shoved the captain’s bunk out of the way and threw back the woven bamboo mat that covered the entrance to the tunnel that connected the hootch to the central command bunker. If he could get to Sully Smith’s switch panels, he might be able to blow the bunkers on the west and north walls and get word out on the backup radio that the camp was being overrun.

  He squeezed his massive frame through the tiny opening and dropped to the packed dirt floor below. He had no real plan except to blow the bunkers and get a message out. Then, if there was time, he would fall back and blow the tunnel to the command post and try to hold out for as long as he could in one of the machine gun bunkers inside the redoubt. If he could last until darkness, he might be able to slip through the perimeter, exfiltrate along one of the safe routes through the eastern minefield and E and E to Moc Hoa. It was a terrible plan, and he knew it, but it was all he could think of.

  As he pushed along the narrow confines of the covered trench, feeling his way in the darkness, he thought of the reporter, Morrow, somewhere overhead. But there was nothing he could do for her now. His first responsibility was to the camp and to the men being slaughtered by the turncoat gunners along the west and north walls. He had to blow those bunkers and get word out on the radio. Afterward he might be able to find Morrow, if she had stayed inside the redoubt. A journalist, even a friendly female journalist, was too unimportant to worry about just now.

  Novak reached the end of the tunnel and tore back the bamboo matting. He threw his massive weight against the single layer of sandbags that camouflaged the entrance on the other side. The walls collapsed, and he tumbled into the dimly lighted command post amid a shower of rubberized sandbags and sprawled on the floor. He looked up into the smiling face of Lieutenant Dung, who had his .45-caliber pistol trained directly on Novak’s head. There were three other men with him, each of them covering Novak with a carbine. All four men wore a bright red strip of cloth tied about their left arms.

  “Lieutenant Novak, no get up please,” said Dung pleasantly. “Otherwise, I shoot. Permit please I introduce self. I no longer Lieutenant Dung. I now Major Dung of National Liberation Front. You my prisoner.”

  Robin Morrow stuck her head out of the team house to see what all the noise was about and nearly had it shot off. As one bullet thunked into a sandbag in front of her face and a second whizzed past her ear, she ducked back inside. She’d seen enough.

  At first she thought it must be some kind of crazy race riot and the Vietnamese were killing the Tai. Acting with journalistic instinct, she grabbed one of her cameras with a telephoto lens and crawled back out the door and up the short stairway. She couldn’t see beyond the wall of the redoubt, but the American compound was filled with men wearing the tiger-striped camouflage fatigues of the strikers and the black pajamas of the Viet Cong. Some of the strikers seemed to be helping the VC kill the other strikers. She got five photos before another burst of gunfire forced her back inside.

  Morrow stood panting with her back pressed against the sandbagged entryway and tried to sort it all out. She wished her hangover would go away. Her temples throbbed maddeningly. Damn it! The camp was being overrun, and there were apparently VC infiltrators in the strike force that were helping from inside the camp. What a story it would make! If she could stay alive to write it.

  Quickly she rewound the film and popped it out of the camera’s back. If worse came to worst, at least she’d have a few shots of it. She wrapped the roll in her handkerchief and stuffed it into the bottom of one of the side pockets of her fatigue shorts. She scrambled crabwise across the floor for her camera bag, got a fresh roll and reloaded the camera, clicking the shutter and advancing the film until it was ready to shoot.

  “Okay. Camera ready,” she panted. “Fine. Now think. What next?”

  Her gun. Where the hell had she put it?

  Furiously she dug through the contents of her voluminous canvas suitcase until she found the pistol Bromhead had given her.

  Bromhead, the former executive officer of Camp A-555, had insisted on giving her the weapon as a present, saying that no respectable young lady should be wandering about the jungle without one. Morrow had protested at the time that war correspondents, traditionally, were never armed. Bromhead had countered with the statement that it wasn’t a traditional war. The Viet Cong, he’d said, was an equal opportunity employer. And killer.

  Morrow had taken the gun primarily because she didn’t want to offend Bromhead. He was a nice young man, although perhaps a bit too serious at times.

  Now Morrow studied the heavy black steel object in her hand, trying to remember how it worked. She opened the box of cartridges, shook out a handful and with some difficulty succeeded in loading the weapon. She poured the rest of the cartridges into a pocket of her shorts.

  Keeping low to avoid any stray rounds that might happen to make it through the screened upper part of the wall of the team house, Morrow gathered her gear.

  “Let’s see now. Pistol belt with canteen, compass, first-aid kit and bowie knife. There’s supposed to be a holster for this damned gun somewhere. Ah, here it is. My hat, wallet, sunglasses. Mosquito repellent. Definitely mosquito repellent.”

  She tied her poncho and blanket liner onto her rucksack and went over to the cupboards, filling the pack with canned goods and a couple of beers from the miserable refrigerator, then tightened it. She tested the pack.

  It was heavy.

  She eyed her collection of cameras and lenses, realized with disappointment that she’d have to leave most of them behind, along with her typewriter. It couldn’t be helped. She picked up one, the Canon with the 28-80mm lens, wrapped it in a kitchen towel and stuffed it into the top of the rucksack. She hoped it wouldn’t get too beat up in there.

  “Okay, fine. Ready to go. Now all I’ve got to do is find a way to get out of here without getting myself killed before somebody comes looking for me.”

  But it was too late. Two men, one in black pajamas, both of them armed with carbines, charged down the steps and burst into the room. Morrow spun to face them. She didn’t hesitate.

  Holding the pistol in both hands to steady it, thumbing back the hammer as Bromhead had showed her how to do, she fired steadily until the gun clicked empty. In the confined space of the team house, the roar was deafening.

  Both men lay on the floor, each in his own little pool of slowly spreading blood. One of the men moved slightly, then was still.

  “Ohhh shit!” moaned Morrow as she struggled to reload the weapon. Her hands were shaking, and she kept fumbling the cartridges and dropping them on the floor. “Robin, what have you done? You’ve really got yourself into a mess now,” she muttered.

  She slipped the straps of the rucksack over her shoulders, hung the camera with the big telephoto lens about her neck and started out the door.

  A single pistol shot drove her back inside.

  “Miss Morrow,” called a voice from outside. “Please to throw out your weapon and surrender.”

  Morrow figured silence might be the best answer.

  After a little while the voice spoke again.

  “Miss Morrow, please. If you no throw out your weapon and surrender, I am forced to have my men use the hand grenades. I no wish that y
ou must die, but I waste beaucoup time already now. Also you have make to die twos of my men. If you surrender now, I promise you will no be put to die. If you no surrender now, I am forced to order the hand grenades be used. Does this be clear to you?”

  Then Morrow heard another voice.

  “Robin? Miss Morrow? It’s Lieutenant Novak, ma’am. I think you’d better do as he says. He means it. If you don’t throw out your weapon and come out, he’s got men ready to throw grenades in there. You won’t have a chance if they do.”

  “Oh, hell, hell, hell,” said Morrow, slowly banging her forehead against a sandbag. She had no intention of allowing herself to fall into enemy hands. Not after Hong Kong. She looked at the pistol in her hand and considered suicide. Where to put it? The mouth, the chest or the side of the head? Which would be quicker? Which the least painful?

  She cocked the hammer and slowly raised the muzzle. Her hand shook only a little.

  “Miss Morrow, you please to come out now. Otherwise, the grenades.”

  “Mau!”

  “Robin, for God’s sake, he means it!”

  Morrow looked down the barrel. She could see the nose of the little bullet inside. Quiet, smooth, impassive, it waited for her to make up her mind.