by Eric Meyer
A crewman flung open the door from the cockpit, opened his mouth to shout something to the passengers, and it stayed open in shock and astonishment. Blake glanced behind him, and a huge hole had appeared at the rear of the aircraft. Where the ramp had once been there was just open sky.
Trevelyan followed his gaze and gasped. “Jesus, we must have been hit by a missile.”
He was dubious. “Maybe. Heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles usually target the engines, the hottest part of the aircraft. That’s unusual, hitting the rear of the fuselage.”
“It wasn’t a missile, what could it have been?”
“A bomb.”
He blanched. “A bomb? But who…”
Blake grimaced. “Who do you think? Who wanted to stop us mounting this investigation?”
Before he could reply, the aircraft lurched again, and something fell off. Trevelyan glanced out the window and shouted, “Better strap in, Major. We just lost an engine and part of a wing.”
The Major had ignored the instruction, and he quickly looked at the straps either side of his seat. The aircraft was going down fast, and with half the tail missing it was spiraling downward. Nose down into the bleak wasteland of south of the DMZ, and he left the straps where they were. “I’ll give it a miss this time.”
The G forces were building, and Trevelyan was battling to fasten his own straps. Blake leaned over and shouted over the noise of the slipstream rushing through the hold, engines roaring in their pointless battle to keep the big aircraft in the air, and somewhere someone was screaming. Whether it was orders or in panic he’d no idea, and neither did he care. “If I were you I wouldn’t bother.”
“Major, the aircraft is about to crash. If we don’t strap in we won’t stand a chance.”
He put his hand on the Captain’s arm. “Only one thing left to do now is to pray. Strapping in won’t make a spit of difference.”
“You mean…”
“I mean we’re fucked. I’d estimate in less than two minutes we’ll hit the ground around three hundred miles an hour, and I wouldn’t waste any time. Make your peace with the Lord and thank him for all the good things he’s given you in this life.”
Blake left him to attend to his final arrangements, closed his eyes, bent his head forward, and began reciting the Lord’s Prayer. He prayed for his wife back home in Atlanta, Georgia, and for the two fine sons he would leave behind. One just graduated university and about to embark on new career, the other a sophomore. They were a credit to him, and he was still working out how his wife would manage to support the younger son on her Army pension when the aircraft smashed into the jungle.
It was spinning on a diagonal axis, and it hit the jungle as it was almost level, bouncing over and over, disintegrating into small chunks of aluminum and hot engines, scattering men and their possessions as it continued to plow a path through the trees. Eventually, it came to a stop, with the cockpit several hundred meters from the wreckage of the fuselage, and parts of the tail assembly strewn behind. Bodies and body parts lay everywhere in the jungle, and scarcely had they begun to call when the insects crawled out to begin feasting.
The Army CID investigation had just come to an end. When the news reached Saigon, a senior Police General locked his office door, opened his wine cooler, and took out a bottle of vintage champagne he’d kept for the occasion. He poured the liquid into a cut glass flute and sipped it slowly. Their plans had just taken a giant leap forward, and now nobody could stop them.
Chapter One
Quyet Thang, it sounded like an item on the menu at an Asian restaurant, but it wasn’t something you could eat. An operation to clean house after the devastation of the Tet Offensive attacks to pacify the area around Saigon, and they wrapped it up at the end of the first week in April 1968. The brass claimed success, with around three thousand Communists killed and captured, but then again they always called every operation a success.
I was still at Tan Son Nhut when the new orders arrived. An unexplained air crash south of the DMZ, and they wanted me up there to take a look. My boss in Vietnam, Colonel Nathaniel Bader, newly arrived in country, was determined to make an impression. Bader had gained promotion as a desk warrior rather than a field investigator, and if he was to gain his general’s star, he needed something to impress the Joint Chiefs. Most of whom had chests full of medals and carried the scars to prove their military credentials. On the plus side, Colonel Bader had a reputation as a straight arrow, a man who went by the book. Solid and incorruptible, so they said.
I hadn’t met him until now, and he was standing behind his desk, looking like what he was, a fussy bureaucrat. The beginnings of a paunch, shoulders hunched, and his skin pale, the result of too much time indoors sitting beneath fluorescent lights. He was also short, very short, around five feet four inches. I’m a whisker over six feet, and I'd lost some weight, so I looked like a poor man’s Clint Eastwood, or maybe a fighting soldier, which wouldn’t have been lost on him. Blue eyes and wavy, dark hair my wife Gracie used to enjoy running her fingers through when we were making love.
I threw him a casual salute. He frowned, returned the salute, seated himself, and nodded to a chair.
“Help yourself, Mr. Yeager. Something’s come up. We have a problem.”
“The North Vietnamese on the war path again, Colonel? There’s a surprise.”
Maybe I’d sounded flippant, although I hadn’t meant to. Not too much.
“Would that amuse you, the Communists staging another attack?”
I fought down an angry retort. “Not after Khe Sanh, no. And it’s not just the North Vietnamese that bothers me. Sometimes it can be closer to home.”
He frowned. “That may be. I want you to fly up to the DMZ. One of our aircraft has gone down.”
“An accident? That’s not our scene, Colonel. The Air Force AIB takes care of stuff like that.”
“Normally you’re right, but we’re not sure it was an accident. A patrol discovered the wreckage, and they believe it could have been sabotage. We want you to look into it.”
“Any survivors?”
“None.”
I was puzzled. This wasn’t my area of expertise. “Why me, Sir? That sounds like a specialist job. I’ve never investigated an aircraft crash.”
His brow darkened. “Because I say so. There’s an aircraft taking off for Da Nang in one hour, and you’ll be on it. A helicopter will take you to the crash site along with the AIB guys, and I want you to look around, try to form an impression of how it happened. That’s all, Yeager.” He paused, as if he’d had an afterthought, “First thing this morning I met with General Phan Trong Kim of the National Police Field Force, and he’s sending one of his officers up there on the same aircraft. His opinion is there was no sabotage, and it was almost certainly brought down by a North Vietnamese missile.”
Sometimes I can smell something wrong, like rotting fish, and a strong taint was coming to my nostrils. “Colonel, I still don’t understand what you want me to do. There’s no one left alive to speak to, and the accident investigators will look into it and report their findings. This police general said it was an enemy missile, so what do you want from me?”
“I said that’s all, Mister. You’re dismissed.”
“You haven’t answered my question. Colonel.”
His lips twisted in a sneer. “I know about you, Yeager. I know about you running around Khe Sanh like a loose cannon, endangering people’s lives…”
“I think it was the People’s Army of Vietnam who were the bigger threat.”
“Including an American reporter. Getting in people’s way, interfering with the prosecution of the battle.”
“It’s called a murder investigation, Colonel.”
“Yeager, I’ve just arrived in Vietnam, and the last thing I want is a guy like you getting in the way. I want you on that flight to Da Nang, get up to the DMZ, and find the evidence it was shot down by a missile.”
“And then?”
“After t
hat I don’t give a shit. Just stay out of my hair for the time being, until I decide where I want you. I’ll talk to Washington, with a view to you being reassigned back to the States. With any luck, they’ll agree. That’s all, dismissed.”
“Yes, Sir,” I almost shouted, “Whatever you say Sir. And if I do find evidence of sabotage, am I allowed to investigate wherever it takes?”
He grunted a reply. “As long as it’s nowhere near this office.”
“Yes, Colonel. One more thing, what was this aircraft carrying?”
“Fourteen officers of Army CID, on the way to Da Nang.” He gave me an oily smirk, “Your colleagues, Yeager. Now get out of here.”
I opened the door and stepped out. Before I closed it I said, “Fuck you, Colonel.” The door slammed shut, and I walked away thinking hard about Colonel Bader. He didn’t like me, which was no sweat. Most guys didn’t like me. But what made me think was the way he’d assigned an inexperienced man to investigate a downed aircraft, an investigation that would require a great deal of skill and expertise. I packed a small bag and walked out to the stand.
The aircraft was in process of being refueled, a de Havilland C7 Caribou. A twin-engine workhorse, designed to carry around thirty passengers. With a reputation as a rugged, go-anywhere kind of aircraft, I felt optimistic we might make it to Da Nang, the first leg of the journey. I paced up and down the tarmac, watching fighter-bombers, big transport aircraft, and commercial flights from the States taking off and landing. As usual, Tan Son Nhut was a cacophony of noise, the last place any sane man would want to be.
I walked around the aircraft, like a pilot making his final checks, when accidentally I collided with a cop. I knew it was a cop because of the green police uniform, complete with black beret and pants cuffs tapped into back jump boots. A leather belt carried magazine pouches for the standard issue automatic pistol, and the cop carried an assault rifle, an AR-15. Nothing unusual about that, but what was unusual was the fact this cop was a young woman.
I mumbled an apology and stepped to one side, but she didn’t move out of the way. “Warrant Officer Carl Yeager?”
“Uh, yeah, that’s me.”
She held out her hand. “I am Sub-Inspector Van Le. I understand we will be traveling together.”
She’d taken me by surprise. “Traveling where?”
“Why, to Da Nang, and after that to the crash site.” She saw my confusion and went on to explain, “I work for General Phan Trong Kim of the National Police Field Force. General Phan has instructed me to travel north to investigate the crash of the C-130.”
“I guess you must be something of an expert.”
Her brow furrowed, and it was a pretty brow on a pretty girl. Like most Vietnamese females, she was short, less than five feet tall, very slim and petite. A heart-shaped face, dark, sloe eyes, and lustrous black hair tied beneath her beret, she was definitely in the wrong job. As a fashion model she’d make her fortune on the catwalk.
“I’ve never investigated an air crash. What about you?”
“No.”
This was beginning to sound familiar, and that stink of rotting fish became even stronger, although this mission would have at least one consolation, an attractive companion. A crewman exited the Caribou and gestured for us to get aboard. We climbed inside, and the seats were not the usual canvas folding type, but more comfortable airline style seats. I let her go ahead, and she found a single seat at the rear of the aircraft. I sat adjacent to her, reasoning we’d have a lot to talk about. Besides, I’d sooner look at her than the tired-looking men climbing into the cabin.
We had to wait while another aircraft taxied out to the runway preparing to take off, a C-47, a cargo aircraft in the livery of Air America. I’d seen the aircraft all over Vietnam during my first tour, and now my second tour. The rumor was CIA operated them, and if they’d intended to keep it secret, it was a crappy secret. It’s hard to see heavily armed mercenaries with the Montagnard tribesmen clambering in and out of the variety of aircraft they operated, flying to mysterious destinations upcountry without getting a sense of what they were up to. And who was involved. Who else but the CIA would operate under the guise of a civilian airline?
The C-47 took off, and our aircraft began its takeoff roll. Seconds later we were climbing into the air. The Caribou had been chosen for its short takeoff and landing capability, and we were on our way to Da Nang. The trolley service was non-existent, which was no surprise. For several minutes she looked sideways at me, as if she was trying to figure me out. Trying to figure out why our bosses had sent two investigators with no experience to examine a suspicious plane wreck. Despite her pretty face, she was a cop, no question.
“What has your experience been in Vietnam? Where have you served?”
“I did a spell in Cu Chi, the Iron Triangle.”
“The tunnels?”
I felt a cold feeling grit my guts as I answered; the tunnels, once seen, never forgotten, a descent into the pit of hell, with the devil’s disciples, the Vietcong waiting in ambush. With every torment known to man in those terrible places, poisonous insects, booby traps, punji stakes, and there was always the stench. Once experienced, never forgotten.
“Something like that.”
She gave me a reassuring smile, which was one way to take my mind off the tunnels. “At least you survived. I’m surprised you were a tunnel rat. I thought they were always shorter.”
She wasn’t surprised as I was, but I hadn’t been a tunnel rat. It was a circumstance that made me go down into those places, and pure gold in luck that allowed me to get out almost unscathed. “A lot of men didn’t make it.”
“No. But still, you don’t look any the worse for your experience.”
It was true. So far I was unscarred by the war, and by the tunnels. At six feet one inch in my socks, and having lost weight during the fighting, I looked even more rangy, more like an outdoorsman. Especially one who lost his way and been wandering in the boonies for several months eating insects and leaves. She was staring into my blue eyes with a look of amusement, and I automatically brushed back my dark, wavy hair, a movement that reminded me of my wife. That was then, and Gracie was dead. This was now, and this pretty Vietnamese cop wasn’t Gracie. How could she be, Gracie had been the girl of my dreams from the day I met her until the day she died. I lowered my hands.
“Tell me, Sub-Inspector Van, why did they choose you for this assignment? If you know nothing about aircraft crashes, why send you?”
She returned a rueful grin. “You want the truth? I was giving my boss a hard time. I’d discovered there’s a lot of corruption inside the National Police Field Force, and I wanted to investigate further, but General Phan said I was needed in the north to look at this air crash.”
“Maybe he wanted you out of the way?”
Her grin became a smile. “You could be right. General Phan took possession of all my files before I left, and he promised he’d see the investigation through to the end, no matter where it went.”
I didn’t get a chance to reply. We were still at low altitude, and suddenly the nose pitched down hard, and we banked to starboard. Simultaneously, a voice shouted over the cabin speaker system, “Please stay in your seats, and do not unfasten your seat belts.”
I hadn’t fastened my safety belt, so I assumed it was now too late and it didn’t matter, but what did matter was we were taking evasive action like we were in an air battle. Yet we were flying in a twin turboprop Caribou, not an F-15 Tomcat. The aircraft plunged toward the jungle floor, and it was coming toward us at a fearsome speed when suddenly the pilot jerked the nose backup, and banked the wings over in the opposite direction. I was looking at the window, wondering about which part of Vietnam would become my graveyard, when I saw the missile. It missed us by around two hundred meters, and I mentally praised the skill of the pilot. We flew on at treetop level for several minutes, the wings canted over at a ridiculous angle, until evidently he decided it was safe to go back to altitude.
>
We breathed a sigh of relief. Me, Le, and the half-dozen soldiers sprawled around the cabin. The lips of one man were moving as he muttered a prayer, and he repeatedly crossed himself. I didn’t blame him. Although given a choice I’d have taken a parachute over the prayers, more practical, less likely to be ignored by the big guy upstairs. The loudspeaker clicked on.
“Apologies for that, gentlemen. Charlie decided to launch a missile to bring us down.”
No shit.
Le glanced at me. “They said that’s what happened to the C-130 that went down south of the DMZ. Perhaps they were right.”
It was the first I’d known about the type of aircraft we were investigating. “You sure you don’t know anything about it?”
She shook her head. “Nothing more than the type of aircraft and the suggestion it was hit by a missile. What is strange is the matter of the victims who died, they were all investigators from your Army CID and our National Police.”
“As if someone had it in for them.”
She grimaced. “There was one other thing. One of the senior Vietnamese police officers who died was the nephew of the President.”
“That could make a difference.”
“Yes.”
“But why us? We know damn all about air accident investigation.”
A shrug. “They say a North Vietnamese missile downed the aircraft, and they want us to sign off on it. End of investigation. Demonstrate to the world they’ve left no stone unturned to uncover the truth.”
“You believe it’s the truth? A missile launched by the North Vietnamese?”
“It’s the most likely explanation.”
I wasn’t convinced, but it was possible. We chatted all the way to Da Nang, stuff about Saigon, about her decision to join the police force, which related to the unsolved murder of her brother. She was easy to talk to, with fluent English, and we got on well. So well I could have dated her, but I didn’t go there. I had my own agenda, and I suspected she was married, or at least engaged to some prosperous Saigon businessman. If I’d been a prosperous Saigon businessman, I’d have liked to be engaged to a girl like this. Somehow, she managed to combine the serious, balanced viewpoint of an experienced cop without losing any of her femininity.
