by Eric Meyer
“Sure, we’re good.”
“Lieutenant Tam, are you okay?”
“Yes, thanks to Private Yeager.”
He nodded. “Yeah, he does seem to have taken your well-being to heart. I wonder why.”
He knew. At least, he knew part of it.
Does he think Tam and I have struck up some kind of an intimate relationship?
“Sarge, it’s not what you think.”
“I know. Don’t worry. It’s none of my business. I don’t know what the ARVN will say when they find out.”
“Maybe they won’t find out.”
“Maybe. We need someone that knows about tunnels to go down and investigate.”
He was looking at me, and right then I wanted to be anywhere but there. “I’m not an expert, Sarge. They got it all wrong. I’m definitely not a tunnel rat.”
“You’re all we have, Yeager. I’d like to call in an engineer unit with a tunnel team, but by the time we organize it they could be long gone. All we could do is destroy a tunnel or two with explosives, perhaps use gas to force them to come out, but it won’t be worth spit because they’ll be several klicks away, hiding in another tunnel.”
“I really don’t want to do this.”
“We have to know. What do you need?”
I thought back to Jesse Coles and found myself saying, “A handgun, a flashlight, a combat knife, and a length of string. But I’m not going in there. The last time I went down with Jesse Coles, and he’s an expert. Even then we almost didn’t make it back.”
“This time it’ll be different, you’ll be fine. Hey, guys, anyone have a length of string for this soldier?”
In short order they located a coil of thin communications wire, a flashlight, a razor-sharp combat knife, and three spare magazines for my Colt. I loaded a fresh magazine with shaking hands, and LeBlanc pushed the coil of communications wire into the pocket of my jacket. “The flashlight has fresh batteries, so it should last for a couple of hours.”
“I’m not going down there. I just can’t do it.”
My guts churned with terror at the thought of that terrible place, where there were more enemies than the Vietcong. Roof falls, poisonous insects, and the stench, which was more than any man should be forced to endure.
He attached the knife to my belt. “If you need to use it, you’ll find it’s good and sharp.”
“Sarge, I…”
“I’ll tell you what you are. You’re in shit. Didn’t they tell you to stick around the Base Camp until this thing with Butcher was resolved?”
“There’s nothing to resolve. I killed an enemy combatant, and it was a righteous shoot.”
He sighed. “They still have to investigate, Carl.” It was the first time he’d used my first name. I should have known it was part of the softening up process, “What I’m saying is you were out of order leaving camp, and they’re likely to throw the book at you when you get back. Unless you can show them it was worth it.”
“If I go into that tunnel, I won’t make it back.”
“Sure, you will.” His voice had become soothing and gentle. If he’d been a life insurance salesman, he’d have made a fortune. I’d know I’d have bought a policy. Then again, right now I definitely needed one. Where I was going, the chances of premature death were off the scale, “What I’m saying is if you go back with a big discovery of a VC tunnel complex, perhaps even useful documents like Intelligence is always crying out for, they can’t touch you. You’ll be a hero.”
“A dead hero.”
“You can do this, Carl.”
“I’ll be with you.”
I glanced at Tam, and she had one thing in her favor, her tiny frame would fit well into the tunnels. The VC dug them low and narrow, perfectly sized for the narrow Vietnamese physique. I wasn’t Vietnamese, never wanted to be Vietnamese, and I had a feeling getting trapped in a narrow tunnel was another danger I hadn’t added to the list of all the others.
“You don’t need to do anything. I’m not going.”
“In that case I’ll go alone. He could be down there.”
“Or he may not be there.” She meant Trinh, but I didn’t feel good about it, “We can’t search every tunnel in the Triangle for one man.”
“But we can search this one.”
She looked at me. LeBlanc looked at me, and the rest of his squad was looking at me. I knew I was beaten. “Okay, I’ll do it. But Lieutenant Tam, I don’t need you along.”
“Yes, you do.” She put down her M1 and walked over to the bodies of the VCs we’d just killed. She searched the bodies and came back with a pistol, something of a surprise in a country where America, Russia, and China supplied most of the weaponry. A German-built Walther P38 9mm automatic, firing 9mm rounds from a magazine that held eight bullets.
LeBlanc said, “We’ve come across a few of those. The Soviets captured them during World War Two and put them in store. When the Commies took their shopping list to Moscow, they dragged them out and supplied them to their pals in North Vietnam. It’s a good gun.”
She slid out the magazine, nodded, and slid it back. “It’s full, eight rounds.”
“You didn’t find a spare magazine?”
“Private Yeager, if eight bullets aren’t enough, more won’t make a difference.”
I digested what she was saying, and she had a point. We weren’t going down there to fight a pitched battle. If it came to a fight, we had to lose. Our only hope of survival was stealth and surprise. It was true, surprise had gone out the window, and so stealth was all we had left. Going down there equipped with an M-60 wasn’t likely to make shitload of difference.
LeBlanc gestured for me to step a few paces away. “You ever killed a man with a knife?”
“No.”
“It’s easy, so don’t sweat it. When the moment comes and you see an enemy in front of you, stick him. Go for the heart, or a slash across the throat. And remember, plenty of VCs are women.” He paused, “Even some ARVN officers.”
I glanced at him, and he shrugged. “We know.”
“You do?”
“It’s difficult to conceal. When she moves around, those cool tiger stripe camos tend to mold over her shape. Don’t worry about it. She has her reasons, and not one of us gives a shit.”
“You’ll keep it quiet?”
“As long as she doesn’t strip naked in front of us and start doing a lap dance, our lips are sealed.”
I nodded my thanks. “She has her reasons, Sarge.” I decided there was nothing to hide now it was out in the open, “They murdered her brother and kidnapped her, tortured and raped her. The guy behind it is Commissar Trinh Tac. The same man responsible for the mutilation and murder of my old platoon.”
“I get it, and I don’t blame either one of you. You really believe he could be in that tunnel?”
“Tam believes it.”
“So, all you need do is get down there and start looking. If you run into Charlie, you know what to do.”
“I think I could be making the worst mistake of my life.”
In fact, I knew I was making the worst mistake of my life.
“You’ll do it. Otherwise, your girlfriend will go it alone.”
“She’s not my girlfriend, and that’s the God’s honest truth. I’m married, I have a wonderful wife back in the States, and there’s no way I’d two-time her.”
“Not for some pretty little Suzy Wong? I’ll bet Tam looks like a million dollars decked out in an embroidered silk ao dai with a slit all the way up her legs.”
“She could be the most beautiful girl in the world, and it wouldn’t make a difference.”
He pursed his lips. “She looks at you like she’s mighty interested.”
“I don’t think so.”
He gave me a knowing glance. “We’ll see. How about this tunnel, before Charlie notices we’re still around here and takes a hike?”
Charlie taking a hike would suit me perfectly, but somehow, I knew the VC was still around. I felt a da
rkness creeping over me, and I recognized it for what it was. Sheer terror. But I was boxed in, and if Trinh was down there, I owed those guys he’d butchered. Besides, LeBlanc was right. I needed something to take back to Base Camp, other than my ass on a platter.
“Okay, I’ll do it.”
I insisted on going first, no matter much Tam knew about this kind of set up. Armed with my gun, string, flashlight, and knife, I pulled aside the wooden cover, dropped feet first into the hole, and reached the bottom. The tunnel was low, no more than a meter high, and I started to crawl inside, with Tam behind me. It was less of a crawl, more of a mind-numbing grope through the darkness, feeling my way inch by inch. Searching for booby traps, praying there were no poisonous insects waiting in ambush, and no VC. I ran into trouble almost immediately with another of their specialties. A punji trap, and I almost stepped onto it. The tunnel roof rose, and I was able to walk normally instead of crawling, although bent double. I had a bad moment when something brushed my shoulder, but it was a slender tree root.
The sound came from behind me. “Wait. Don’t move.”
I froze, and she came up behind me. “You almost stepped on a punji trap. Take a step back and light it up with your flashlight.”
I did as she said, and there it was. All that made it visible was the different color earth over the trap, and I asked her how she knew.
“We’re almost at the end of this tunnel, and it’s standard practice to dig a trap before an intruder makes the turn. There’s also the indicator you brushed past, to warn their people.”
“Indicator?”
“You brushed past a tree root. That’s how they mark them.”
“Thanks. Anything else I need to know?”
“I’ll know when I see it.”
I stepped gingerly over the punji trap and reached the bend. I peered around into darkness. The black echo, no sound, no people, no nothing. The tunnel branched, going to the left and the right, and I instinctively took the right. Until Tam’s voice hissed out behind me.
“Not there, take the other one. The tunnel to the right is probably false, and it’ll lead to a booby trap. A grenade on a tripwire, most likely.”
I shuffled back to the other tunnel, and I was lost, trying to work out where we were. They’d need a good-sized access shaft for the parts of the howitzer, and it shouldn’t have been too hard to find. Except I’d lost all sense of direction, and to make things worse, I could feel an insect crawling up the leg of my pants. I swatted it through the cloth and hoped it was dead. I felt terrible, a dark claustrophobia creeping over me, and I wouldn’t have objected to be as dead as the insect I’d just swatted.
She spoke in a low murmur. “We need to get close to that tree. That’s where they were trying to conceal the gun.”
“Understood.”
I crawled on, and once more the roof was low, so I had to crawl on hands and knees. Touching every bit of ground ahead, feeling the walls, the roof, the floor, searching for booby traps, and I almost fell into another shaft. The reason I almost fell into it was because a trapdoor suddenly opened in the floor, and a Vietnamese head popped out. Looking in the other direction, so he didn’t see us, he climbed out and started crawling in the opposite direction. He was so close I could have touched him, and I had my knife ready to plunge into his heart if he so much as turned to look our way. Or the throat, that’s what LeBlanc had said, heart or throat. Thankfully, he didn’t look our way. Instead, he crawled away and disappeared around another bend.
We crawled on and passed an even narrower access tunnel. The tunnel stench was bad, the rotting corpse smell of rice that’d gone bad. Mixed in with urine, feces, body odor, enough to knock out a battalion of VC if they stayed down here long enough. Yet somehow, they seemed to survive, or at least, most of them. MACV had reported a fatality rate of up to fifty percent from poisonous insects, illness, and worst of all, malaria. I’d have taken the malaria any time over the stench. But this stink was somehow different, and I couldn’t work it out. Tam knew, she’d been a prisoner in these tunnels, and it was no surprise.
“It’s a kitchen.”
“What’re they cooking, new poisons for the punji stakes?”
“No, it’s how they eat down here. The kitchens are called Dien Bien Phu kitchens, after the battle when they finally defeated the French. They vent the smoke to the outside through different chimneys that emerge in unseen in clumps of bushes. I would assume they’re preparing the rice for next day.”
If I were a Vietcong guerrilla, I’d have deserted for the nearest McDonald’s drive-thru.
“It stinks.”
“Yes, it stinks. “
“Don’t they have anything else to eat?”
I saw the faint flash of her white teeth as she smiled. “They have rice on odd days of the week.”
“And the even days?”
“Rice.”
“Figures. Remind me not to volunteer for the VC.”
“If you tried to volunteer, they’d execute you as a spy.”
“That’s another reason to keep away, as well as the rice.”
Except we hadn’t kept away. We were inside the tunnel system, looking for the main tunnel that would accommodate the pieces of a 105mm howitzer. And looking for a man we both wanted to kill. We crawled on, and another hatch opened. This time in the roof of the tunnel, an access hatch from the surface, and a pair of legs in black pajamas filled my view.
I had my knife in my hand, which I’d been using as a probe to test the route for booby traps, so I was ready to stick it into him. There was no question of whether he was an enemy, and all that remained was for me to push the blade between his ribs, up into his heart, clamp a hand over his mouth to stop the screams, and wait for him to die.
I hesitated. It’s one thing squeezing the trigger to kill from a distance. It’s another to do it face to face, when you can hear his breathing, smell the rancid scent of his unwashed body, and almost taste the odor of what he’d eaten for his evening meal. Rice.
He sensed me below him, and in some way, he sensed I was an enemy. Suddenly, he dropped all the way, falling almost on top of Tam, his hands reaching out to kill. I lunged forward, stabbing with the blade, and it pierced his belly, tearing into his guts. Just in time I clamped a hand over his mouth to stifle the screams. But the single stab wasn’t enough, the wound wasn’t mortal, and he was writhing like a wounded rattlesnake.
His body was damp and slippery with sweat in the suffocating humidity, and I couldn’t hold him. I jerked out the knife and plunged it higher into the chest. In desperation I wrenched it out again, and this time remembered what LeBlanc had told me. To slash across the soft tissue below his chin, and I pushed the blade in hard, almost to the bones at the top of his spine.
Air hissed out of what remained of his ruined throat, and slowly the writhing body stopped jerking. I lowered him to the floor of the tunnel, breathing heavily, and wiped the salty sweat out of my eyes.
“Are you okay?”
I had to gulp in lungfuls of the stale, foul air before I could still my heaving chest enough to reply. “Better than the other guy.”
“We need to dispose of the body. He came down from the surface, so we should pull him back up and toss him into deep jungle. Then we can continue searching the tunnel system.”
It took us two precious hours to dispose of the body, and I was sorely tempted not to go back down. I wouldn’t have gone back, were it not for Tam looking at me with her dark, liquid, sloe eyes. I didn’t want to look any more scared in front of her. Besides, I wanted Trinh, badly. As for the tunnel, I hated it, my worst nightmare, and I’d have given anything to call in a team to collapse it and make sure they never used it again. I had an urgent desire to turn it into a grave for a brutal mass murderer. But that meant going back down to make sure he was there. Confronting my worst fears. Conquering them. I’d sooner keep my fears. They meant I was still alive.
I led the way back down the shaft, and we resumed our slow pro
gress, touching every part of the roof, walls, and floor. Heart thumping, sweat soaking into my ODs, I made a vow. This would be the last time. I couldn’t do it, not anymore. I’d have to search for Trinh another way. The bastard had to come to the surface sometime. When he did, I’d be there. Waiting. But for now, we were in the tunnel system, the haunt of demons of the dark, and I inched forward. The route took several turns, precautions against exploding grenades, and still there was no sign of any artillery piece, or parts of an artillery piece.
I turned to Tam, who was right behind me. “We may have taken a wrong turn.”
“Yes, I think so, too. We missed the previous tunnel in the darkness, so we should go back. First we must find a wider space to turn around.”
I crawled on until the tunnel widened. With room to turn around I started to move and stopped. There was a slight noise in the gloom, hard to pinpoint. The faintest rustle of clothing, maybe a man’s breathing, or maybe I hadn’t heard anything at all. Perhaps it was a faint, odor overlaying the miasmic stench we were crawling through. I touched Tam on the shoulder, and she froze. We saw it then. The noise had been a hatch opening in the floor, and while we watched a head appeared. He didn’t look round, didn’t seem too concerned about the presence of the enemy. We both had our weapons aimed at him, and in his place, I’d have been a tad concerned.
We waited in the darkness, still as a jungle predator about to pounce on its prey. He passed us, heading toward the tunnel we’d just crawled through, and it was almost an automatic reflex. I hit him on his bare head, a hard tap, and it was enough for him to slump to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
She looked aghast. “What do we do with him? They’ll sound the alarm if he doesn’t arrive.”
“Tam, if we get him out, we can interrogate him about the whereabouts of Trinh. It’ll be a lot easier than crawling through these tunnels.”
“He may not cooperate.”
“We’ll see about that.”
I’d put my hand down his throat and rip out his heart if it means I don’t have to stay down in this place.
