Under Fire

by Eric Meyer

  “You’ve never met her?”

  He shook his head. “No, and I never wish to. She is death. But find Trinh, and by now, she will have joined him.”

  We thought of this terrible specter, Madame Vo, the Scorpion, and I pictured the Wicked Witch of the East, with writhing, snakelike hair like Medusa, cackling with glee over the ruined bodies of the men she’d killed. And if Minh was right, Trinh was still alive, and they’d be together, a murderous tag team. Eventually, Lieutenant Tam joined us, casting venomous looks at the Kit Carson Scout.

  “I have heard of Madame Vo, and I can confirm what he says is true. If she is with Trinh, together they will be formidable.”

  She looked at Jesse Coles, a questioning glance as if to ask what he thought about pitting his dark skills against this new enemy. As usual, the tunnel rat was staring into space. His war wouldn’t start until he left the daylight behind and descended into the subterranean realm of the Vietcong.

  The news of this formidable new enemy unsettled us. Morgan looked uneasy, Corporal Byrd held the M-60 at the hip as he stared around the jungle, and Danny Goff checked the radio to make sure it was working so we could call for help if the shit hit the fan. Andy Murray had crouched behind a tree stump, with his M-14 resting on the wood, scanning the jungle as if Trinh and Vo were about to leap out and devour us. Tam looked angry, and Minh had acquired that familiar Vietnamese calm. Like he expected he was soon to die. He was probably right. We were all soon to die.

  The Sergeant abruptly got to his feet. “There’s no point in waiting around here. We’ll continue in this direction and try to locate any enemy units that may have escaped the bombing. As for the tunnels,” and he looked at Tam. “If we find any, I intend to call in an artillery strike to finish them. Or maybe request the B-52s come back, they’ve done a pretty good job. I’ll take point with Minh, and Yeager, I want you covering our six with Tam. Just in case he gets any crazy ideas about killing Minh.”

  We pushed aside creepers, treading carefully, and everyone was a potential poisonous snake hanging down from the trees. Every patch of path was a potential VC booby trap. Tam was silent for a while, knowing why Morgan had assigned her to the rear with me to walk alongside her. Eventually, she opened up.

  “There is something else about Madame Vo. Although I’ve never seen her, I’ve heard much about her, and she is no ogre to look at. They say she is tiny and petite, with the face of an angel. No one would dream a girl such as her could be a psychotic murderer, yet that is her reputation. Be very careful, for if you confront her you will not believe what she is capable of. They say she catches men unawares, beguiling them with her beauty, and while they are gazing at her, she sticks in the knife or the poisonous stake.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  We walked on, straight into a shitstorm. Whoever thought the VC were dead and buried in the tunnels was wrong. Or if they were, there were still plenty more who were alive and kicking. At first, we thought we’d found just a little guy in black pajamas climbing out from a hole, and he hadn’t seen or heard us. Morgan flashed a hand signal, and we crouched low and waited. Two more men emerged, and all three adjusted their floppy bush hats and glanced around carelessly, assuming they were safe. No one could have penetrated this area so soon after the bombing, surely not.

  Big mistake, but it wasn’t just them who made the mistake. Corporal Byrd was tracking them with the M-60, and his finger twitched on the trigger. We should have waited to see where they were going and maybe uncovered more tunnel entrances. Until the M-60 spoke and a shattering volley of bullets tore into the enemy.

  He pressed the trigger and kept it pressed down. By the time he released it, he’d let fly around a hundred rounds and turned the three VCs into bullet-riddled corpses. It wasn’t a victory, no way. Shocked by the thunderous roar of the machine gun, we watched more VCs come crawling out the woodwork, or in this case, the jungle. They hit us with everything, automatic rifle fire, machine gun fire, and shortly after a small caliber mortar began to lob missiles toward us. In a nutshell, we were fucked.

  “Run!” Morgan shouted. We ran like madmen, and Morgan was shouting as he ran, “Danny, get on that radio and call in support. Tell them we need artillery or an airstrike fast. They’ve got us outnumbered by Christ knows how many. And we’re gonna need an urgent evac, by the looks of it we’ve stumbled on a major Vietcong unit. Our guys need to pound the fuckers before they kill us all.”

  Goff was shouting into the radio as he ran, not listening to what they were saying the other end. All I heard him say was ‘get the lead out and hit these bastards while we we’re still alive.’ We kept running, but the VCs were fast and nimble. Besides, this was their territory, and I shouted a warning when I saw them coming in on our flank. Soon we’d run into a shitstorm of enemy fire.

  I was slightly ahead of Tam, not caring whether she killed Minh or not. Right then I couldn’t give a damn for any Viet, my thoughts were tuned to a single frequency. Survival. Ahead of me, Morgan was shooting at a group of VCs running into our left flank. They hadn’t noticed what lay in front of us, a hill or more properly a hillock. Maybe fifty meters high, a pimple on the ground. Didn’t military strategy dictate the importance of holding the high ground? It wasn’t that high, but shit, we weren’t in a position to choose.

  “Sarge!” I shouted, “Up ahead, the hill, two hundred meters.”

  He saw it and made up his mind in a split second. He bellowed at them to change direction and make for the hill. We reached the foot of the slope, but not without injury. Danny Goff, the radioman, had taken a bullet to his left arm, not serious. But what was serious was the bullet had passed through the fleshy part of his arm and torn into the radio. We reached the top, pursued by a hailstorm of bullets that licked and spat at our heels, and threw ourselves down on the crest. It was a shallow bowl, maybe a meter deep and ten meters in diameter. Kind of like a mass grave.

  Morgan assigned one man to each quadrant, and he faced the enemy, with me on his left, and Goff behind him trying to fix the radio. Tam flung herself down next to me, her rifle to her shoulder. She started blasting, until I stopped her. I calculated she’d expended around twenty bullets, and in return I’d seen one enemy fall.

  “You need to save ammunition. We could be here for a long time, and until they get us out, we’re in for a hard fight.”

  She nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  We had one consolation, although it wasn’t much of one. Perched on top of that small hill, we were unlikely to be sitting over a VC tunnel entrance, which meant we didn’t have to fear the bastards emerging in the middle of us like evil genies to start shooting at us from behind. Although they were now all around us, and I calculated they were in company strength, around one hundred men, with more arriving every moment.

  Morgan glanced at Goff. “Private, you have to get that radio working or we’re toast.”

  “Sarge, I got out a message before we got hit. They know we’re here, and they know we’re facing a large number of enemy combatants.”

  “Did they happen to say what they had in mind to get us out of this?”

  “You requested artillery or an airstrike, and they said they’d comply.”

  “That’s good. What about coordinates, what did you give them?”

  “I gave them our coordinates, Sarge, and said they could hit anything outside of a two-hundred-meter radius.”

  “Jesus, we’ve moved almost four hundred meters. Do they know that?”

  “Well, uh, I was in the middle of talking to them when the radio died. Sarge, I don’t think I can fix this thing. The bullet drilled a hole through a circuit board, and I don’t have any way to fix it.”

  Goff was bleeding heavily from where the bullet had creased his arm.

  “Okay, forget it, and put a dressing on that wound. When the aircraft come over, we’ll pop smoke.”

  I glanced at him. “What if it’s artillery fire?”

  “Pray it isn’t.”

  W
e had our hands full fighting to keep the VCs back. They were like a black cloud carrying AK-47s, and they made repeated charges up the slope. We kept a steady fire that chipped away at their ranks, and they fell back, only for more to come at us. We were running low on ammo, and I didn’t need to tell Sergeant Morgan, if we didn’t get support real soon, it was thank you and good night. I was down to my last magazine when someone decided to lend us a hand. It wasn’t an airstrike, and there was no use popping smoke. Not when it was our own artillery firing on us.

  The first warning we had was when a high-explosive shell smashed into the ground a few meters from the hill, and fragments of metal tore into a group of VCs who’d just fallen back. After the shell exploded, all that remained was fragments of clothing and body parts. But there were plenty more where they came from, and still more were coming in.

  I revised my estimate upward and put their strength at two companies. In excess of two hundred men, and if something didn’t happen soon, it wasn’t a matter of if we died, but when. The artillery kept pounding, blissfully unaware we were in the center of their target area, and it didn’t come close to our tiny hill. But it slowed the enemy, keeping them from a final mass attack that would sweep over the top of the hill, and we’d be staring into the muzzles of those AKs for the last time.

  We’d stopped firing. There was no point. The enemy realized the folly of staying out in the open, exposed to flying metal and HE. So, they took cover where they could find it, behind trees and in shallow ditches.

  I looked down the hill, and all I saw were bodies. I ran to inspect the eastern side that our artillery was now giving a good pounding. It was empty of the enemy, who’d run from the barrage.

  “Sergeant, take a look to the east. The artillery has shifted their aim, and this side is clear of the enemy.”

  He ran over and looked over the top. “Yeager, the reason the VC on the other side is because the guns are hitting this side.”

  “Right, but sooner or later our artillery will shift their aim again. When they do, we’ll have a clear shot at getting out of this place.”

  “And if they shift their aim in the wrong place, we’ll be walking into our own shells.” He grimaced, “I guess it’s a tossup between going down to enemy bullets or our own artillery.”

  He glanced at each of us sitting in that forlorn place, waiting for the end, and at that moment shells began to fall elsewhere. “Okay, we’ll do it. Go now!”

  We jumped to our feet and raced down the slope. We reached level ground and started to sprint toward the jungle. Much of it was churned up by the exploding HE shells. At every lung-bursting step I expected them to resume hitting this patch of real estate, expected that final explosion. Hot metal ripping into my body followed by the final oblivion. It didn’t happen. They continued to fire to the west. We reached a patch of jungle as yet undamaged by bombs and shells, and we went deep inside the foliage that screened us from the enemy.

  We pushed on for another few hundred meters until we were totally lost; away from any tracks or trails, going deeper and deeper into the green nothingness, with just the insects making their protests at the unwelcome intruders. Morgan called a halt, and we crouched on the ground, astonished by our almost miraculous escape. There was no sign of any pursuit, no rubber sandals pounding through the undergrowth, no shouted orders in the guttural and hated Vietnamese tongue. Even the artillery had stopped firing. We were alone.

  “We’ll give it an hour, and then move on,” Morgan murmured, as if the VC could be close and listening out for us, “If we keep heading east, we have to meet up with some friendlies. There’s even a chance we’ll see a Huey overhead, and we can pop smoke and hope they come down for a look-see.”

  We stayed in the thick undergrowth, and Tam remained close to me. There was something on her mind. “Private Yeager, do you intend to give up the hunt for Trinh?”

  It was a fair point, and one I’d have preferred not to answer. I was beginning to think this insane war would never end. Besides, I had a strong suspicion Trinh’s corpse was almost certainly buried not too far from here. I didn’t want to tell her what I thought, and the last thing I wanted was a stand-up row in the middle of enemy territory. Especially now, when I could hear something cold and very much alive slithering up my pants leg. I whacked it hard to squash it against my own flesh and whacked it again and again. When I exposed my leg, I saw I’d killed a centipede, and I looked at Tam, who knew about those things.

  “Is it poisonous?”

  “No.”

  “I thought the local variety were all poisonous.”

  She grinned. “Yes, they are. But not when they’re dead, Private Yeager.”

  Yeah, very funny.

  “You haven’t answered my question. Have you given up searching for Trinh?”

  I decided to give it to her with both barrels. “I honestly think he’s dead, Tam. There’s no chance he could have survived that bombing.”

  She looked irritated. “I already told you, once he realized we knew the location of his tunnel he’d have escaped. He’s still alive.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  Her face darkened as it filled with rage. “You’re a coward.”

  “Tam, I’m trying to be realistic. The guy’s dead, and that’s an end to it.”

  “Fuck you!” she scowled, “I know he’s…”

  She stopped and put a finger to her lips. Her next words were a low murmur, almost inaudible, “You smell it?”

  “Smell what? Do you mean the jungle? Yeah, it stinks so bad it’s enough to make a man vomit.”

  “It’s him.”

  “Him?”

  “That odor, patchouli. He’s close. Warn Sergeant Morgan and tell him we need to get behind cover. We could be about to come under attack.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I know it’s him. Trinh.”

  Chapter Nine

  MACV After Action Report – Lessons Learned

  The team works its way through the tunnel, probing with bayonets for booby traps and mines and looking for hidden entrances, food and arms cases, water locks, and air vents. As the team moves through the tunnel, compass headings and distances traversed are called to surface. A team member at the surface maps the tunnel as exploitation progress. Captured arms and food items were turned over to the unit employing the team.

  As other entrances are discovered and plotted, they are marked in such a way as to indicate if the Vietcong use them after discovery, but before destruction could be accomplished. In many cases tunnels are too extensive to be exploited and destroyed in the same day, and the Vietcong mine entrances and approaches during the night after the tunnel team departed.

  His head poked out a few inches through the secondary tunnel entrance, and he watched through the waving grasses, his expression cruel and gloating.

  “We have them now, and I see the traitor Nguyen Minh has joined the enemy. He is as good as dead. “He glanced again at the ARVN Lieutenant, certain he looked familiar, but he couldn’t pin down from where. It made no difference. He’d die along with the rest of the Imperialists. Trinh dropped down into the tunnel and looked at his new second-in-command. “Mang, get a squad ready to go out there.”

  The man standing close to him nodded eagerly. When Minh went missing, he’d been selected to take his place, and now he’d have his chance to prove his ability to fight for the cause. In a low voice he ordered the men to be ready, until Madame Vo stopped them with a single word.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “We must wait. They will call in more troops, or perhaps even a helicopter to get them out, and when it arrives, we’ll be ready. Why kill a mere handful of the enemy when if we wait, we can put thirty or forty heads on spikes, and bring down one of their helicopters.”

  Trinh didn’t like it, but he knew he had no choice but to go along with her ‘suggestion.’ Madame Vo, recently returned from the North after a brief visit to Hanoi, was rumored to be close to both Ho Ch
i Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, the Commander of the North Vietnamese forces. He sometimes wondered if she was in a relationship with either, or both of them, and he couldn’t blame them for desiring her. She was truly beautiful, a pocket -sized Vietnamese princess, with clear skin, glossy, black hair, and rich brown eyes like dark chocolate.

  To the newcomer she was innocence personified, and when she smiled, the eyes glowed with what appeared to be warmth. It was only when you looked closer you saw the ice that lay behind them. Madame Vo had been an early victim of the war. Seeing her family ejected from their ancestral lands by a grasping landowner who falsely claimed ownership, they’d been hiking along a narrow track to reach a place of safety with other family members when they chanced upon an ARVN patrol. For reasons best known to themselves, the South Vietnamese soldiers opened fire on the fleeing refugees. When the shooting stopped, she was alone. Except for a burning desire to wreak vengeance on those she blamed for the destruction of her family.

  She was short and lithe, which meant she was able to negotiate the tunnels almost as well as if she was walking along a city street. She wore black pajamas like most of them but hers fitted her perfectly, as if tailor-made. Which was no surprise, because they’d been tailored by an expert in Hanoi, her rubber sandals similarly precision made to fit her tiny feet, and apart from the elegant peasant costume, what singled her out was the weapon she carried in a sheath on her back like a mediaeval sword, a sharpened bamboo stake, the sting in the Scorpion’s tail.

  Trinh was concerned by what he’d seen outside. There was Minh, who may have passed on many of his closest secrets to the enemy, although he had no knowledge of this tunnel, which had been dug recently by another Vietcong unit. There was also that ARVN lieutenant, and once again the face haunted him. As if he was the ghost of a man he’d killed and come back to haunt him. For a few fleeting seconds he wondered if it was possible. Vietnam was a superstitious land, and with good reason. Offend the evil spirits, and they could visit all kinds of revenge on the heads of a man and his family.