Into the Treeline

by John F. Mullins

  Saigon traffic was as bad as or worse than he remembered. Thousands of Lambrettas, cyclos, mopeds, bicycles, all mixed with military vehicles of all types, swirling and crowding through the narrow streets, jamming the traffic circles. Exhaust fumes clogged the throat even in the air-conditioned cab. Vietnamese Police, “White Mice,” blew their whistles and gestured frantically, having no noticeable effect on the chaos.

  After much effort and thousands of curses they finally arrived at the Duc Hotel. “This is the Agency hotel, isn’t it?” asked Al.

  “We’ve got rooms already reserved for you,” said Mark, increasing Jim’s suspicions. On one level he was flattered. On another he was irritated. He was being manipulated, and intensely disliked losing control of his freedom of action.

  “Too late to get anything done today,” said Mark. “Why don’t you guys grab a shower and get changed and we’ll meet you in the bar later.”

  “Want us to get out of uniform, do you?” asked Jim drily.

  “You won’t find too many of them around here,” said Feltrie. “You might as well get used to it. The bar’s on the top floor. There’s a pool there too if you want to take a dip.”

  “Ain’t war hell,” said Al. “Come on, Jim. I’ve got about three inches of trip crud to take off, and the bar is waiting.”

  Jim was impressed with the accommodations. The rooms were spacious, clean, and cooled to bone-numbing chill by very large air conditioners. Better than most good commercial hotels I’ve been in, he thought.

  When he got out of the shower he found that a houseboy traveling on soundless feet had unpacked his bags and ironed the wrinkles out of a shirt and slacks. Quiet as he was, he’d be good in a sapper battalion, thought Jim. Probably did that in his spare time. There was a radio on the bedside table. He turned it on, finding that it was already tuned to the Armed Forces Radio Network station. He got dressed to the sound of the Doors wailing about lighting fires. Obviously they had modernized the programming in his brief absence. When he had last listened to the station all that could be heard was Perry Como and Frank Sinatra. And, of course, Lawrence Welk.

  The bar was well patronized, despite the fact that the work day was not officially over. Most of the patrons were fat and fiftyish—a far cry from the James Bonds the public would have expected in the CIA. There were a few younger, leaner, more fit individuals, but Jim’s suspicion, later confirmed, was that these were military personnel seconded to the Agency. There were also a few females, most old and weather-beaten, but a very few young and attractive. Jim’s mind went back to Moira. He thought he would avoid them.

  Mark and Slim Feltrie were at the center of a group of the younger men. Jim walked over to them.

  “This is the guy I was telling you about,” said Mark. “Thinking about joining our select group. We got in just at the right time, Jim. They’re holding a countrywide conference of all PRU advisors. You’ll get to meet just about everyone.” He explained that they did it every quarter, getting together and sharing information. What worked, what new tactics people had thought up, any information that would be helpful. Then they sat around and bitched about how, if the bureaucrats in charge of the war would give them the support they needed, they could win it.

  Jim recognized many of the people to whom Mark introduced him. He had seen them in one place or another over the years: Fort Bragg, Okinawa, Nha Trang. “Looks like a Group reunion,” he said. “Do all the advisors come out of Special Forces?”

  Feltrie nodded. “Except in Four-Corps,” he explained. “Down there we use mostly SEALs. They like all that water.”

  “Yeah,” chimed in another individual. “Fuckin’ Squids got no brains anyhow. All they know how to do is lift heavy things and swim. We’re thinking of replacing them with chimpanzees.”

  “Why, Jack?” demanded a short, powerful man, quite obviously one of the maligned SEALs. “You lookin’ for a job?”

  Jim got a drink from a waitress and talked over old times with some of the men he knew. The drink was followed by several more. Soon he was laughing and enjoying himself. It was easy to do among these men. There was none of the uneasiness or awkwardness he ordinarily felt in a crowd. These were people like himself, soldiers, sure of themselves and what they did. If you were one of them you were accepted. If not you would be made to feel in no uncertain terms that you were not welcome. None of the Agency types approached them.

  It was explained that not many of the old Clandestine Services types served in Vietnam, doing their work in other places. They had been there in the early days of the war, before the war got popular. Before, like the army, it got to be a requirement to serve a tour there if one wished to be promoted. What was left were intel and admin types. Desk officers. People such as the man who’d been working on the Central European desk for ten years, spoke good Czech, knew the politics of the Bulgarian Communist party better than most party officials, sent to Vietnam to run the Rural Development Program. Which he had not the foggiest notion of how to do. The very few who weren’t careerists, who tried to go out and find things out, who tried to stay past one tour, realizing that there was no way you could learn all you need to know and do anything about it in a year, were told very politely but firmly that they were fucking up the program and themselves too. That it was time to move on and let someone else take his turn; after all, the war wasn’t going to go on forever, and everyone had to have a chance. And the work you were doing on the Ukrainian wheat forecasts was much more important anyway. Time to get back to all that. This was all a sideshow, didn’t you realize? Our real enemy was the Soviet Union; didn’t really matter what was going on in the peripheries of the world. Got to keep an eye on Mother Russia, that was where the real action is.

  “Glad you guys paint such a cheerful picture,” said Jim. “How do we get anything done at all?”

  “Mostly in spite of the system, and sometimes outside it. The only bright spot is that since they really don’t know what we’re doing, don’t want to know in case they get called up in front of some congressional subcommittee, they pretty well leave us alone. Plausible deniability, they call it. They give us the money and resources and let us do things our own way.”

  “What about control? Surely somebody maintains oversight. Without that we could do anything we wanted out there. That’s got to frighten someone.”

  “It does,” said Feltrie. “They live in fear that there’s going to be a big fuckup someday. But they don’t know what to do about it. They set the system up, and so far it has run okay, and they don’t know how to go about changing it. So they mostly depend on hiring the right people, people who have proven ability, and who aren’t likely to go off the deep end. No wild-eyed crazies. No homicidal maniacs, no matter what the media think. They vet them pretty thoroughly, reject the ones they’re unsure about, send the others to the field and keep their fingers crossed. It’s worked, so far.”

  “What about the people they don’t vet? Me, for instance. Yet it seems to be a foregone conclusion, the way you and Mark talk, that I’ll be accepted.”

  Feltrie shot a look at Mark, who said nothing. “Yeah, well, there are always exceptions,” he said. “Anyway, all in all I wouldn’t be doing anything else. How many times can a man truly say he’s free to do what he’s been trained to do? I’m sure you’ll join us. Everything I know about you tells me you’ll be perfect for the job.”

  And within a week he was on his way to Hue. Still wondering what had convinced him to go. He knew that he was forever ruining any chance he might have had of a military career. This did not loom large in his calculations. The idea of taking a rifle company in a conventional outfit for six months did not appeal to him. And six months would have been all he was allowed. There were lots of captains who needed command time. In a way it was the same as the Agency system that had been described to him. One had to get one’s ticket punched, so captains were shifted in and out of the command slots regardless of operational needs.

  He also knew that there
was an excellent chance that the mission he would be called upon to perform would, if things went wrong, get him cashiered from the army and possibly jailed. The briefing in Saigon had left no doubt of that. Even though the mission was to capture members of the VC infrastructure, it was inevitable that some of them would die. Successful capture of a hostile was one of the most difficult missions you could undertake. And no doubt was left that the VC had to be neutralized. So if you couldn’t capture them…and assassination, as such, was a crime under army regulations.

  He’d be totally alone, the only American. He’d operated before in small units, but there had always been at least one other round-eye with him. Someone on whom he knew he could depend when the shit hit the fan. In PRU there was only one U.S. type. And the PRUs were, for the most part, Vietnamese. He didn’t trust the Vietnamese, regarded them at best as lazy and undermotivated, at worst, cowardly and unreliable. Possible collaborators, some of them active VC.

  Despite the sometimes overly optimistic briefings he had received in Saigon, he had no illusions that this was the elusive solution to the war. But he was past worrying about solutions; solutions were for those who thought up the grandiose plans, the high-level strategies. He was a cog in the machine, and knew it. But if he was to be a cog he wanted to be an effective one.

  As Feltrie had predicted, what he liked most was the freedom of action. He would be provided with a “Black List” each month from the Province Intelligence Operations Coordinating Center (PIOCC). This list would contain the names of individuals who the PIOCC had determined to be members of the VC infrastructure of the province. The PIOCC was staffed by U.S. and Vietnamese intelligence officers, and supposedly knew what it was doing. Before a person’s name went on the list there had to be at least three verifiable and independent reports certifying that he or she was a member of the Viet Cong. Vague suspicions, malicious slanders, and witchhunt rumors were not supposed to be taken into account.

  In fact he already knew that some of the PIOCCs were less than reliable. The U.S. intelligence officers were second lieutenants fresh out of the intelligence school at Fort Holabird. They had no experience in the field, could not separate false reports from real ones, and in most cases did not even speak Vietnamese. Thus they depended upon their Viet counterparts, who were a mixed lot. Some were smart, hardworking, reasonably honest men who were trying to do the best job they could. Others were miserable, grasping, venal sons of bitches who operated solely in their own interest. If that interest involved taking a bribe to put someone’s business opponent on the list, so be it. Thus the PIOCCs were at one and the same time the most important, most visible, and weakest part of the Phoenix program.

  The informal briefings he had received from the other PRU advisors had been much more useful than the official ones given by Agency case officers. Most advisors set up their own intelligence nets and ran checks on blacklisted individuals before they targeted them. Funds for setting up these nets were easy to come by. The discretionary account provided to each advisor was more than adequate. The efficiency of the net depended solely on the advisor’s ability to set it up and run it. The challenge appealed to him.

  He also liked his province assignment. Thua Thien was supposed to be one of the worst provinces. The PRU detachment was stationed in the provincial capital, Hue. It was a major VC and NVA stronghold. They had been able to move about the province with impunity for a long time. What a challenge!

  He looked forward to seeing Hue. The old imperial capital of Vietnam was supposed to be very beautiful.

  Flying over it he saw that the beauty was gone. Some of the hardest fighting during Tet had taken place here. The enemy had taken over the old Citadel and had to be rooted out of it with massive firepower. He could only imagine how splendid it must once have been. The shattered walls attested to its size and intricacy. Here and there a piece of architecture that had not been destroyed hinted at its former grandeur. The rest of the city had not fared much better. There were great blackened areas where the wooden buildings had once stood. The more permanent concrete structures were riddled with holes. He caught a glimpse of the fortified compound containing the Embassy House and was not impressed. The former PRU advisor had been killed there when it had been overrun. It looked like it would not be hard to overrun again.

  The main detachment of PRUs had fared a little better. They had been in their own compound and had fought off one attack after another, losing many but stacking up their enemy outside the wire in a jumble of limbs, shit, and blood. He had been told that his first mission would be to recruit new members of the PRU to replace the losses, train them, and lead them on an early operation to build up their morale. What had not been said was that he would have to reestablish contact and control over the shattered intelligence net. The former advisor had, at least, left fairly comprehensive files on it. Jim wondered how many of the informants were still alive. He knew that the VC, after taking the city, had conducted a systematic search and had taken away anyone whom they suspected of collaborating with the government. They were later found in mass graves in the sand dunes outside the city. Many had been buried alive.

  There was no one to meet him at the airfield when he landed in the Air America DC-3. He flagged down a Marine jeep, threw his bags in the back, and asked to be taken to the Embassy House. The driver, a lance corporal, eyed him curiously.

  “You a spook?” he asked finally.

  “Naw, man, I’m white,” Jim answered, eliciting a chuckle from the driver, who was not.

  “You don’t look like the rest of them up there,” he said.

  “And what do they look like?”

  “Lost, mostly. Like they woke up in the wrong place and don’t know how the hell to get back. They stay in the compound, get a good suntan, wear their aviator shades, and don’t talk to anybody. Trying to act cool. Say boo to them and they jump out of their skin. You don’t look like you’d do too much jumping. You look like a pro.”

  “Shows you how deceiving looks can be. I’m a supply clerk. Came up here to get inventory straight. You can’t believe how bad the hand receipt records are.”

  “You lying like hell, but that’s okay, I guess. Easy way not to tell me anything. How do you like Hue so far?”

  “What’s not to like? Roads full of rubble, every other building burned down, people moving around like they’re in a daze. Looks like everybody’s favorite bad dream.”

  “Looks good now. You should have seen it a month ago.”

  “You here during the battle?”

  The corporal nodded. “Fought our way into the Citadel,” he said.

  Jim remembered the news photographs of that struggle. He wouldn’t have liked to have been there. It appeared that there had been no good way to take the old imperial fortress. Not much choice but to go in and fight it out room by room. “That must have been nasty,” he said.

  “Lost a lot of brothers,” the man said. “Don’t know what for. Don’t appear to me to have done much good.”

  “Never does,” Jim agreed.

  “You take care of yourself now, supply clerk spook,” the corporal said as he dropped him at the front gate of the Embassy House. “Else the dinks are liable to cancel your hand receipt.”

  “Thanks, brother. You take care of yourself, too. I ever see you around town, I’ll buy you a beer.”

  He was even less impressed with the house up close. The wire around the perimeter had been patched poorly in the places where bangalore torpedoes had torn great gaping holes. The gate guard was lackadaisical, coming to him only after repeated calls, trailing his carbine by the barrel. He took a cursory look at Jim’s ID card, then waved him on through and slowly returned to his post, where he promptly closed his eyes and fell asleep. Jim left his bag in the courtyard and took a walk. No one challenged him as he poked his way around. The bunkers were all in disrepair, and even if they had been in good shape would have been useless. None had adequate fields of fire out to any distance. On most the firing ports ha
d been blocked with cardboard, to keep the mosquitoes out, he supposed. The interconnecting trenches, dug into the soft sand, had not been revetted and had collapsed. The few guards on duty paid no attention to him. Those who were awake, a minority, were playing cards or reading. He could see that the job was going to be even harder than he had thought. He retrieved his bag and made his way into the house.

  Chapter V

  He was stopped at the front door by a young man whose carefully careless coif of blond hair would have been more suited to Malibu. “And who might you be?” the man asked.

  Jim took an instant dislike to him. He looked soft, untested. His skin was pale white, as if he had never been outside the confines of the house. And he spoke without moving his lower jaw, with the upper-class, Harvard-educated, effete rich boy accent Jim found insufferable.

  “Well,” he drawled, “I might be Captain James N.M.I. Carmichael, the new PRU advisor. But then again I might be a goddamned Russian soldier, the way security is around here. Now are you going to get out of my way, or am I going to have to walk over you?”

  “You don’t have to be so angry, you know.” The man blinked, looking alarmed. “I’m just doing my job. I’m the duty officer today. My name is Alfred Fitzwilliam.” He offered his hand.

  The handshake was soft. “If you were trying to do your job,” Jim replied, “you’d be out checking the guards. There’s not a place on this perimeter that’s properly covered. Who’s in charge of the guard force?”

  “At the moment, nobody,” Fitzwilliam replied. “Your predecessor was, but after he got killed they fell apart. Won’t listen to anybody, just do as they please. We’re hoping you can do something with them. Do you want me to show you to your room?”

  The man’s manner had become almost fawning. He was obviously eager to please. For a moment Jim wondered if his own prejudice against the “upper class” was causing him to be too hard on a man he had just met. Probably. Too bad. “Okay,” he said. “Show me the way.”