by Eric Meyer
“Wouldn’t it have been better to keep him conscious, so we don’t have to drag him all the way?”
“And have him shout a warning to his Commie buddies?”
“Perhaps not, but it’ll be a long, hard crawl dragging a body.”
I didn’t reply. It was too late for second guesses. We were on the way back to the entrance when we came across a tunnel we’d missed, and we’d been lucky. Men were coming toward us, and I estimated they were close, no more than twenty meters away. We increased speed, pushing and pulling at the unconscious man, and we almost made it when they emerged into the main tunnel. They hadn’t seen us, not yet, but they were coming toward us. No doubt heading for the same exit shaft. We were running out of time, but suddenly she stopped. We’d reached the shaft.
She scrambled up. I got underneath the body to push it up to her, and I was too late. A shout of discovery, and they were scurrying toward me. I dragged out my Colt, aimed into the darkness, and squeezed the trigger until I’d emptied the magazine. With shaking hands, I ejected the spent magazine, inserted a fresh one, and emptied that into the men who were still coming closer. I’d heard several shouts and screams, which meant I’d hit something, but they were still coming. I’d invaded their stinking underworld lair, and like wild beasts awakened from hibernation, they were coming after me with death in their hearts.
I ejected the magazine and inserted my third and last. Fired again, and I heard more shouts, more screams, more yelps of agony, but still they kept coming, and all I had left was my knife. I dragged it out and crouched behind the body of the prisoner, thinking he wouldn’t live for much longer. A barrage of shots hacked toward me, and I ducked down low. If his pals wanted to shoot our prisoner, that was their choice. But it wouldn’t make any difference, I knew I was finished, getting out of the tunnel was not part of the script. All I could hope was Tam got away.
I felt something wet on my head, and drops of rain fell into the shaft, and the drops became a deluge. A Vietnamese monsoon, and one moment the climate had been dry and incredibly humid, which was normal. The next, the rains came. I later found out later that was also normal. What really took me by surprise was the massive torrent of water that descended from the sky. Like a waterfall pouring slowly filling tunnel below, and the rain was beating on my head so hard I had to cover it with my arms to protect it. A stupid gesture, I was about to die anyway, but who wants to die with a sore head. The rain came down even harder, and it was like a mini Niagara, pouring down from all sides of the shaft, filling the tunnel below. Growing into a stream, and in a matter of minutes the level of water began to rise.
They built the tunnels with a series of trapdoors to keep out American attempts to pump in gas, and at this moment they were about to suffer the consequences. Of course, they’d built a hatch over the shaft, which we’d uncovered and left open when we got entry. They say the best-laid plans can go wrong, and this one had gone wrong as it could go. I could hear them down in the tunnel, and the shouts had changed. No longer the bloodthirsty screeches of men chasing down the Imperialist enemy, they were scared. Scared because this was their territory, and they knew a thing or two about tropical monsoons. Knew a thing or two about the dangers of tunnels filling up with water, and this one was filling up fast.
The enemy had stopped coming, and I pushed the body up to Tam on the surface. I pushed some more, and we got him out. I was already knee deep in water, and the tunnel roof was almost full of the inrushing water. The screams died away, I heard a few gurgles, and then nothing. I pulled myself out of the shaft and lay panting on the ground, not caring if every poisonous insect and snake in South Vietnam crawled over me. I was alive, I had a prisoner, and those bastards were drowned. Eventually, I got to my feet and went to look at the prisoner. He was starting to come around, groaning, and I quickly relieved him of the pistol on his belt.
“The pistol means he’s more senior, perhaps a commissar,” Tam said, water dripping down her face, her tiger stripe camos saturated. The outfit clung to her curves, and if there’d ever been any discussion about her gender, the discussion was over.
“All we need now is to get him back. He may be able to tell us about Trinh.”
“It’s possible. But how do we get him back?”
“Why don’t you call for a ride?”
Our heads whipped around. The voice had come out of the darkness, through the sheets of heavy rain, and I’d never been so glad to see someone as when Sergeant LeBlanc emerged from behind a curtain of vines. The other three Rangers were with him, and their eyes almost popped out of their heads when they saw the Vietcong prisoner lying on the ground.
“Tam reckons he could be a senior cadre, so we need to get him back.”
“Damn right. What happened down there?”
I explained about the flood that had ended the pursuit, and his lips parted in a grin. “That’ll give ‘em something to think about.”
“It’ll take care of some of the stink as well.”
He nodded. “You did okay, Yeager, and now we need to get out of this place. We can’t make any progress in the storm, so we’ll wait for the rains to end and call in that ride.”
We spent the rest of the night in soaking wet misery. We couldn’t do anything except huddle beneath the partial protection of a clump of trees. The one bonus was when the prisoner regained consciousness and we discovered he understood English. At least, he understood after LeBlanc casually told one of his men to put the muzzle of his rifle up his ass and pull the trigger.
“No, please, no! I speak English. I will do anything.”
“I want your name and rank.”
His face was a mass of boils and spots, and I guessed living in the tunnels was the cause, the pits, literally. “My name is Nguyen Minh, and I am assistant to Commissar Trinh Tac.”
Bingo.
I looked at Tam, but she was staring at the prisoner with a look of horror in her eyes. I saw her hand creeping toward the Walther she carried in her belt, and I put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“What is it?”
“Him.”
“What about him?”
“He was one of the men who…”
I knew what she meant. One of the men who’d raped her. Trinh’s men, and she shook off my hand and made a grab for the gun. I put my arms around her to stop her, and LeBlanc and his men were staring at us in surprise. The Viet prisoner looked relieved he was still alive.
“What’s the problem?”
“This guy was one of the men who raped her in the tunnels.”
They knew she was a girl, so there was no need to keep the secret of her gender, not anymore. Even so, confirmation Tam was a girl was still an eye opener.
LeBlanc spoke to her, and his voice was harsh. “Lieutenant Tam, you can’t kill him. Despite what he did, this guy has valuable information, and we have to get him back to Cu Chi Base Camp and hand him over.”
She was panting, taking short breaths, overcome with shock and emotion, and she walked away a few paces, standing out in the open in the sheeting rain. Maybe it was a kind of cleansing. Or maybe she didn’t trust herself to keep the gun in the holster. I joined her and tried to persuade her to come back beneath the rudimentary cover, but she refused.
“I cannot be close to that man, even for a few moments.”
That was understandable, and there was a simple solution to her problem. We fastened Minh’s wrists and ankles and dragged him out into the worst of the rainstorm, where he lay like a drowning rat. Literally. He was a rat, and he was drowning. The guy deserved it for what he’d done to her. But not until our intel people had pumped him dry. And led us to Comrade Trinh. Tam decided it was okay to come back under cover, and she crouched there, staring at the prisoner. Probably hoping he would drown.
At dawn the monsoon was still hammering down, and it wasn’t until mid-morning when LeBlanc was able to pop smoke for one of the Hueys flying overhead, ferrying troops into the Triangle. We waited in a clearing and he cam
e in low. We could see the face of the door gunner staring down at us, deciding whether we were friend or foe. I stood up and waved, and they recognized their own troops, for the UH-1C suddenly dropped in for a landing in the center of the clearing. First the crew chief jumped out, and then the pilot, who was a familiar face.
Jamie Erskine grinned. “Private Yeager, I had a feeling I might bump into you before long. I guess you know they’re going ape back at Cu Chi Base Camp. If I was a bounty hunter, I could have collected big time. You sure about going back?”
“I’m sure.”
He nodded a greeting to LeBlanc and his men. “I gather you’re looking for a ride home.”
“Appreciate it.”
We climbed into the Huey and began the short ride back to the Camp. Nguyen looked uneasy, and I didn’t blame him. At worst, he could be expecting to hit the ground the hard way, pushed out the door at five thousand feet. At best, he was facing a hard time when they started to interrogate him. It wouldn’t be easy, and maybe the long drop would be more comfortable. Unless he told them everything they want to know and spilled everything. The threat of a rifle muzzle in the ass is a mighty powerful argument.
Jamie Erskine had called ahead, and they were waiting for us when the skids touched down. A squad of MPs led by an intelligence officer took charge of the prisoner, and another squad took charge of the other prisoner. Me. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for Mark Butcher, watching everything with a gloating smile on his face. As if to say, ‘Gotcha.’
He was taking photos, plenty of them, especially the close-up when they snapped the cuffs on my wrists and marched me away to the makeshift guardroom, a wooden hut with bars on the windows. They shoved me inside without a word, bundled me into a tiny cell, and the barred door slammed shut.
“Yeager.” I looked through the tiny barred window that overlooked the Camp, and it was Butcher, trying and failing to give me a warm smile. He resembled a crocodile inspecting his lunch, “I can help you. If you think you’ve been unjustly accused of anything, I can tell your story in my newspaper. What do you have to say?”
“Fuck off.”
He had a skin as thick as buffalo hide, and he chuckled. “Come on, you don’t mean that. Just give me a quote, something I can tell the folks back home. Tell them you’re innocent.”
I lost it then. “Butcher, the reason I’m in here is because of that bullshit statement you made about me killing a man trying to surrender. It was a heap of crap, and you know it. So, if you want to help me, do what I’m asking you to do, and fuck off.”
A camera appeared pointing between the bars, and he took another picture, stepped back and fired off two more. I guess he wanted to include the barred window in the picture. For the folks back home. Finally, he left, and I was on my own. Stuck in a tiny cell with thick timber walls, and bars at the window and door. The only furnishings were a bucket on the floor, and I guessed the reason they’d provided it. There was also a stained mattress, so I assumed this could have been the honeymoon suite. I lay on it, hoping it wasn’t too full of insects, and tried to think about my circumstances.
I was in trouble. I knew that. Serious trouble. I was facing a charge of what amounted to a war crime, thanks to Butcher. In their eyes I’d tried to run, which made everything worse. Sure, I’d come back with a prisoner who could provide valuable intelligence, and maybe that would mitigate the charges, but somehow, I doubted it. The Army had a way of doing things, and they also had a reputation to protect, a reputation that would soon be in tatters if Butcher wrote his story. An American soldier running loose in South Vietnam, shooting prisoners, it wouldn’t surprise me if Butcher was already negotiating for the movie rights. The best I could hope for was a Vietcong sniper would put a bullet in his head. At least the thought made me smile.
I lay there until late afternoon, with one interruption when they brought in a mess tin filled with a congealed mush, and a canteen of water. I ate and drank, the first since the previous day, and the guard re-entered the cell when I’d finished to take away the empties. It was cold, freezing cold, and my clothes were clammy on my skin, unlikely to dry in the excessive humidity, made even worse by the sudden monsoon. The rain started again during the afternoon, and once again it hammered into the dust, turning the ground into cloying mud, and I watched men walking past and cursing as they tripped, pulling their boots out of the sucking, wet surface.
I must have been dozing, because I hadn’t heard the guards approach until suddenly the lock rattled, the door opened, and an MP shouted, “Prisoner, tenhut.”
I got to my feet and waited while they snapped the cuffs back on my wrists, tighter than before so it cut off the circulation in my wrists, and my hands were going numb. They marched me out of the guardroom into the rain, and we walked across to another hut. We entered an office, and Lieutenant Colonel Edgar Harris was standing behind a desk, arms folded, and a look of thunder on his face.
“Yeager, you stupid bastard.” He looked at the MPs, “Remove his cuffs. I’ll take it from here.”
They unsnapped the bracelets, and I flexed my wrists, feeling the blood start to flow again.
“Thanks.”
“Are you completely stupid?”
“Well, uh, I may not have handled things too well.”
His eyebrows rose. “Didn’t handle them too well? You’re about to become a public relations disaster for the United States Army, and if that happens, it’ll be a gift to the Communists and undermine our efforts in Vietnam.”
“I’m sorry, Colonel.”
“Sorry! You leave the camp and go off on some quixotic notion of revenge for the deaths of the men in your former platoon. And all you have to say is, ‘I’m sorry.’”
“Those men deserve justice.”
“Yes, they do, but the way you’re going about it won’t get them Jack Shit.”
“The prisoner we brought back may have knowledge of Trinh’s whereabouts.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, Commissar Trinh, that is something. He has left some of the rookies running scared.”
“Right.”
“Yeager, there’s been developments, and I guess you need to know more. Have you heard of the Kit Carson Scouts?”
I shook my head. “News to me, Sir. Something to do with the Indian wars back in the last century?”
“That’s where the name comes from. Some of the Vietcong have come over to our side. These guys surrendered when they’d had enough of the Communist bullshit, and we’ve recruited some to work for us. I’m talking especially about men with knowledge of the tunnels. It’s a scheme the Marine Corps began last year, and we’re extending it to the Army. Hold on.”
He stopped, listened, and I was listening. The worst of the rain had stopped, but what I was hearing in the distance was thunder. I looked at him. “It looks like a storm over the Triangle.”
He grinned. “It’s sweet music. Private Yeager, this is a result of information we got from Nguyen Minh who opened up to us the moment he arrived. We contacted the Air Force, and they happened to have a squadron of B-52s heading north. We gave them the new target and they rerouted them. They’re going in now, unloading a few hundred tons of bombs on Charlie’s head. You never know, Trinh may be past history.”
He was wrong. Somehow, the wily bastard always managed to stay out of trouble; he had that kind of an instinct, a kind of sixth sense. Maybe he’d made a deal with the devil, or maybe he was just lucky. Or he was the devil. “He’s still alive.”
“Maybe. What do you know about a…” He picked a piece of paper off his desk, “Someone by the name of Madame Vo.”
“Nothing.”
He shrugged. “She’s some kind of a bogeyman, so they say. Worse than Trinh.”
“I doubt that’s possible, Sir.”
“Hmm. If it is, I’d like to nail both of their asses to a barn door.”
We listened to the thunder of the bombing, and at times we felt the vibration beneath our feet. One thing was fo
r sure, Trinh may be alive, but cowering in a tunnel he’d be shit scared, and that gave me some small satisfaction. Finally, the bombing ended, and everything was silent inside the Camp. They’d all been listening, awed by the massive bombardment, and even the birds had stopped singing and the insects stopped buzzing.
“I was talking about Nguyen Minh. He’s come over to our side, and he’s agreed to become a Kit Carson Scout. One of the first for the Army, and it could make a difference to this war. A man with his extensive knowledge of Vietcong operations inside the Triangle could help us kick Commie butts out of South Vietnam and all the way back to Hanoi.”
“That’s good to know, Colonel. What’s this about Madame Vo?”
“The name came up, but when I asked him for details he clammed up, like he’d seen a ghost.”
“Maybe that’s what she is. A ghost.”
He grinned, and I was beginning to relax. So far, he hadn’t threatened to put me in front of a firing squad, or send me back to some deep, dark stockade in the States where I’d spend the rest of my life. I reasoned that bringing back a prisoner had put the 25th Infantry on the scoreboard, and that at least might persuade him to go easy on me.
“There is one issue that came up with Minh.”
“And what would that be, Sir?”
“The Vietcong prisoner you brought back said you saved his life. Apparently, Lieutenant Tam was about to kill him, but you stopped it.”
“Well, yeah. He was a prisoner, and I suspected he could give us important intelligence.” A sudden thought occurred to me.
I saved the life of one prisoner, are they going to offset that against the phony charge of killing the VC who Butcher claimed was trying to surrender?
“He’s grateful for what you did. He believed our men would kill out of hand any Vietcong taken prisoner. He was convinced he was a goner, and you saved his life.”
“It seemed the right thing to do, Colonel.”
“That it was. Like I said, he’s grateful, really grateful.”
