We were moving swiftly but cautiously behind the grenadiers. There was no telling what might be in a hut and it was no use everyone getting killed if one hut turned out to be a mortar factory. The files moved forward to spray down their assigned huts, but it was clear a number of the survivors of the grenade attack had left their huts by cutting back exits through the woven walls. These VC were returning fire from all around the camp. Puckins, with his bowlegged gait, and I, trying to run sideways, began to slog down the ditch to the POWs like a pair of Aqueduct mudders on glue-factory day.
From out of nowhere, a moon-faced Viet bowled into me and, before I could take a swipe at him with my rifle butt, he was gone. He lingered in my mind’s eye—rifle without magazine, wearing a blue-checked scarf the VC and Khmer Rouge sometimes wore to transform civilian clothes into a uniform, and padding through the mud like a charging rogue elephant. One other thing stuck in my mind—his haunting gold-flecked grin. It could only have been a grimace, but it struck me that way nevertheless. I turned and proceeded down the ditch.
One POW was shackled to a tree out in the open, and the other was in a tiger cage wrapped in mosquito netting. The shackled one was moving unevenly. His eyes were wild and large with excitement. They were in sharp contrast to his slack, emaciated body. Insect-bite welts covered his blue-green skin like a rash.
“Sergeant Henson…United States…Army…,” he croaked weakly. “Zero four three.…”
The initial digits of his serial number made me catch my breath; they matched mine. Henson and 1 were from the same New England state. Would I look like that someday? Just looking at him made my stomach churn. He looked less than human and I could tell he was fading fast. We had to get him out of here fast.
AK fire flickered the leaves to the left of my head as if to underscore my thoughts.
“The major…in the cage.… Help him.” He gulped, it seemed to help. “He was shackled out here like I was just now…without netting…for a week. Got to help him.…”
Henson began to repeat himself and tilt his head at odd angles. Puckins cut the lock off the tiger cage with bolt cutters, but the major hadn’t moved in all this time.
“Corpsman! Corpsman!”
The corpsman, a young Hawaiian, rushed to us, then the cage. Running his hands along the major’s body, he’d stop at different points. Finally the corpsman sighed, tugged off the major’s dog tags, and handed them to me. Instantly he was off to where he was more needed.
“Pull out! Let’s get the hell out of here. Let’s go!” I yelled, taking a quick count of the platoon. “Wickersham, Serrano is going to need cover fire on rear security.”
Puckins took Henson and lifted him like a tired child over his shoulder.
Henson began to sob. “No, no, I couldn’t stop them.”
The glisten of tears streaked up Henson’s inverted face. He was a good NCO and accepted responsibility out of habit—any responsibility, all responsibility. A hard habit to break.
The withdrawal was no more confused than most. We slipped back to the sampans, keeping a watchful eye upstream. The firefight was increasing in intensity. Muzzle flashes resembled popping flashbulbs. The intermixture of red and green tracer fire lent the camp a festive air. One hut was burning.
Our chief petty officer, a black grenadier with a shaved head and an ebony earring, signaled over the din that we hadn’t lost a man, though there were some wounded. We then began to work the sampans downstream as planned.
Ackert…and regional generals…and whiz kids…be damned. Warm satisfaction was radiating from this op like heat from a wood stove. Henson was going home and we were going to start him on his way.
The reaction force from the main camp could be heard coming downstream after us. They were firing alarm shots and I could hear their sampans bumping into each other in the eagerness of pursuit.
From the rearmost sampan, Puckins and I stretched booby-trap wire across the river just below the water’s surface, the wire was arranged to trigger several claymore mines from the virtually impassable brush on each bank. While we worked, Sergeant Henson lay in the waist of the boat dozing fitfully. Another sampan stayed abreast of us as a lookout. The claymores would provide a little breathing room.
The crack of an AK-47 and a thud in the riverbank next to Puckins announced the arrival of the VC vanguard. We returned fire with a magazine’s worth of 5.56, a couple 40mm, and headed downstream. 1 wondered if we were capable of leaving a rooster tail. Puckins was uncharacteristically intense in his paddling. The roar of the detonation just behind us nearly capsized the sampan. A gust of stinking smoke and a peppering of spent shrapnel emphasized the closeness of the vanguard.
Once more we stretched out prepared booby-trap assemblies. And again a shuddering explosion followed only seconds later.
Sweat was rippling down my back with all the energy this godforsaken river lacked. With my mosquito netting flipped back over my head it seemed every insect in the swamp was seeking refuge in my ears.
As we prepared to rig a final booby trap, Sergeant Henson abruptly sat bolt upright in the sampan. At the same time I heard a rustling to my right. A small party was flanking us along the bank. Puckins sprayed a burst at the sound and there was a return volley. My right leg and shoulder shivered immediately with unexpected pain. I caught a glimpse of several blue-checked scarves, and a glint of gold fleck, I thought.
The world took on a dreamlike quality and I lay back in the sampan to enjoy it. My left hand trailed in the water. Sergeant Henson floated indifferently between the two pinwheeling rear sampans. The aurora borealis ripples of light flashed across the inner lids of my eyes. I seemed to have some question about celestial navigation. But there was no one around to ask.
“Ah, good. Good, Mister Frazer, you’re awake. Home is the hero and all that. Hero business ain’t what it used to be, is it? Well, you’re safe in drydock for now,” she said with annoying energy.
There is little more exasperating than a plain Navy nurse with unbridled enthusiasm. Buoyant and cheery, they insist they can heal all by pure example.
This one was absolutely effervescent. They left men no dignity.
Bandages and casts swathed my entire right side. I felt weak, vulnerable, and hung over. My face felt as if it had been sprayed with a Wesson oil atomizer. From the look of the place, I was in the hospital at Binh Thuy. Questions zipped across my mind like tracers.
“There’s a commander outside to see you.”
That brought back the answers to some of my questions. I remembered seeing Sergeant Henson drift by, clearly dead, in the midst of the running fire fight. Henson dead. The major dead. Two POWs reported dead. It would surely draw some bad press on the IV Corps general and his superiors. Better they had died emaciated, mosquito-bitten, forgotten and lonely, than to impede some ticket puncher’s career.
A tall, lean, sad-eyed commander walked in with measured strides. His jungle boots were spit-shined and his uniform crisply starched. This was to be a formal visit.
“Lieutenant Frazer, I have been assigned as the investigative officer by NAVFORV for the investigation into the SEAL operation, twelfth of August”—he drummed his fingers uncomfortably against his briefcase. By raising my head I could make out an Academy ring—“nineteen fifty-something. Anything you say may be used against you, should this eventually result in a UCMJ proceeding. I—”
Then the peace of the room was shattered by hard, fast footfalls in the passageway as two men in civilian clothes burst into the room carrying AK-47 assault rifles. Behind the weapons, Puckins and Wickersham, as inseparable and menacing as Scylla and Charybdis, hesitated just inside the doorway. The presence of the commander had thrown them off a beat.
I could guess what they had in mind: stash Mister Frazer someplace safe until this whole flap blew over. Someplace like Saigon’s Cholon district, where all the deserters lay doggo. Sorry, sir, we’re not sure just where Mister Frazer is right now. He said something about checking his agent net. May
be if you came back next week…
This maneuver had met some success for others before, but neither Puckins nor Wickersham realized the heat our little operation had generated among the Saigon whiz kids. Someone had to burn—to appease the gods.
I noticed Wickersham glare at the commander and then study his AK thoughtfully. The commander was an unexpected complication. Wickersham’s eyes reflected the wavering balance now between hostility and indecision, and soon righteous anger would tip him out of equilibrium. In another impetuous minute he’d commit himself, waving the muzzle of the captured weapon in the commander’s face. There’d be words to the effect of, “Commander, sir, damn shame some doped-up, half-crazed VC terrorist violated the sanctity of this place of healing, making your wife a widow. Another ticket puncher lost to the world, a damn shame, a damn mud-sucking shame.” As yet the words were unsaid because unconsciously Wickersham knew their futility.
And still the tension in the room continued to build, crackling like a shortening time fuse.
The commander looked sick. But by now I realized that he had looked sick from the moment he had entered the room. He sensed the injustice of his assignment and it didn’t suit him. He didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all.
“RM1 Puckins, GMG2 Wickersham, I think you two had better disengage,” I said, praying my voice wouldn’t crack with emotion, “and get back to the compound before you get into some real trouble, sporting those unauthorized weapons. I appreciate what you want to do, but I called the shots, I’ll take the fall. Thanks, fellas. Now disengage, and that’s final.”
I felt sorry for the commander. He had drawn a dirty job and only a larger sense of duty made him accept it. He wasn’t a ticket puncher; they have a talent for avoiding the unpleasant and inglorious. They’d never draw a dirty job like this one. They never do.
CHAPTER 8
People jammed Keiko’s bar. Laughter jarred my senses from two or three parts of the room, bringing me back to the present. Waitresses bustled quickly between the kitchen and their tables.
I was determined that sleazy excuse for an officer would not rile me into a slip. “Ackert, here’s a little advice. Watch your drinking, you’re starting to annoy people. Drink your drink, then get out. You fellows on the way up have to be careful about things like that. That—and you ought to be careful where you’re seen drinking and with whom. Why, I’ll bet you’ve already done your future irreparable harm. Here, let me see you to the door before any damage is done, and you might get out with your reputation intact.”
Wearily, I plodded up the stairs. If this mission were compromised, I and everyone who put his faith in me—who went with me—would spend the remainder of our lives chopping frozen wood or digging icy ore in Ivan’s desolate cold storage. That is, if we survived to be taken prisoner.
Rage and frustration broke in alternating waves over me. The Ackerts of the world drew spiteful pleasure from a ruthless and unilateral game of king-of-the-mountain with unsuspecting strangers. Any stranger could be a competing ticket puncher no matter what his professed goals, and never give a sucker an even break. The Ackerts were the new gamesman breed of officer. The gamesman, the military manager, the organization man, the careerist, call him what you may; he was a rapid mover in the brass-heavy bureaucracy and a free trader on the moral marketplace.
A woodcut print dropped to eye level; I had reached the top landing. I slipped off my shoes.
Keiko sensed my anguish. She tugged at my hand and led me into the bedroom. Then, quietly and tenderly, we made bittersweet love.
Non-gamesmen could play at Ackert’s game. I would start a variant of the game with my own rules, call it…king-of-the-abyss.
PART II
CHAPTER 9
Two weeks later, a wintry December rainstorm blew Kiyoshi Sato through the doorway and created a lake the size of Siberia’s Baikal on the inner landing.
“It’s the Dzhugdzhur Range on the western shore of the Sea of Okhotsk,” he said breathlessly. “Haven’t got the coordinates or the camp description yet. They’re going to be hard to come by, most of the prisoners aren’t sure themselves where they are. Other than Siberia, that is.” He shivered. “We’re losing precious time. At best, Vyshinsky can’t last past April.”
I motioned him upstairs and sent for some green tea.
His news foretold worse than I had guessed. The Sea of Okhotsk. Grim, gray waves sprinkled with massive chunks of ice. Moreover, its waters would test every dimension of our Korean-supplied submarine skipper’s skill. He must deposit and later snatch our commandos from between the cocked jaws of a bear trap. Two major Soviet naval centers lay ready on either side of its entrance, Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk. As if to improve the probability of disaster, strung across the throat of the Okhotsk like a noose of pearls, sparkled the tiny Kuril Islands, Ivan’s electronic eavesdropping posts on the Pacific. As much of the credit for the success or failure of the rescue would rest in the submarine skipper’s hands as mine.
Sato, looking less soggy and regaining his usual dignity, estimated the information was over two weeks old. A reliable source, an old prison comrade of Kurganov’s, had obtained it, and the series of human relays that had brought it had a long history of trustworthiness. It composed part of the zek pipeline. Zek in labor-camp slang meant inmate.
“I still need a precise location for the camp, and the composition of its garrison. Do you think the zek pipeline can come up with that sort of information?”
Sato shrugged. “Who knows? Might as well ask for the camp’s spring menu, in case you like Siberia and decide to stay.”
Charts and nautical publications dealing with the western rim of the Okhotsk proved sketchy or out of date. I needed a reference library.
Swearing Keiko to secrecy and yet betraying very little of my plan, I asked her to find me someone who knew the Sea of Okhotsk. This was not as tall an order as it appeared, since her family had many contacts in the Japanese fishing community.
Several days later she gave me a name and address, that of Hiizu Matsuma, on the northernmost island of Hokkaido.
“He is skillful old fisherman, ne? His mother was Ainu,” she added. “He does not like Americans very much; they hurt the whaling industry and his sons work on a whale factory ship. Roshiajins,” she said, using the Japanese word, “he hates. It is almost a sickness with him. An understandable sickness.”
She went on to relate that prior to World War II, Hiizu Matsuma had been a fisherman living on one of the center Kuril Islands. At that time the Kurils belonged to Japan. Occasionally storms swept him onto the Soviet coast—sometimes at Kamchatka, other times north of Vladivostok. The local Evenki, Siberian relatives of the North American Eskimo, gave him food and shelter until he could make the necessary repairs and return to sea. Of course, the official Soviet thinking would have frowned on that, but the Evenki at that time lived a life unaffected by political upheaval in general and the dictates of the Kremlin in particular. Siberia remained as untouched by European civilization as it had under the tsars, until after World War II. There were only some minor infections. Corrective Labor Camps, marred its chilly purity.
When World War II finally reached its fiery bloom, he took a contract to provide fish for a local Japanese army garrison. At thirteen he was too young to serve, and as the war progressed, too important to the garrison’s commandant’s palate to allow to enlist. Often, as Matsuma went out to fish, he saw Russian cargo ships bringing supplies to trade on the Japanese main islands. Despite Russia’s war with Germany it did not declare war with Japan. In fact, Russia carried on an extremely active trade with Japan, high-handedly ignoring the fact that Japan was inflicting heavy losses on Russia’s Atlantic allies, Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States, in the Pacific. Russia finally mustered the nerve to make war on Japan a few days after the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. Russia courageously seized the Kuril Islands and threw virtually everyone with any military connection into a Corrective Labor Camp.
Matsuma was imprisoned with the famed Colonel Kondo, one of the few guests of the Soviet penal system to give nearly as good as he got. Though Russia had never exchanged more than a teapot full of lead with Japan in the war, it seemed to have harbored some bitter personal grudge against the individual Japanese soldier. It did its worst—it treated them as it did its own citizens and gave them infinite sentences for no reason at all. Few were ever repatriated.
Matsuma bided his time and gradually learned Russian. Few Europeans successfully escaped the camps. But Europeans’ physical characteristics contrasted sharply with those of the majority of the thinly scattered local peoples.
One very cold winter day—cold even by Siberian standards—Matsuma, as part of a woodcutting party, saw his opportunity. The guards and their dogs had become preoccupied with their small fire and little else as a frigid wind blew snow uncharacteristically from the west. Ducking into the storm, he kept the wind at his back and stumbled eastward for three days.
“Cold, much cold,” Keiko said, hugging herself. “Makes Hokkaido in January like Okinawa in August.”
Matsuma’s tongue was raw and swollen from eating snow when the Evenki found him. Frostbite had cost him toes on each foot, and the scar tissue on his face is still sensitive to cold, Keiko added, now over forty years later.
Though the Evenki were nomadic and land oriented, Matsuma managed to pick their brains of every bit of information concerning local tides, currents, and weather. Their reindeer drives showed him much of the Okhotsk’s western rim. At each encampment he gained experience sailing a homemade punt.
He stayed with the Evenki until midsummer, by which time he had perfected his skill with the sailing punt. Twice he was turned back—once by the sight of a patrol boat, the second time by a storm. The third time he set off with a wild look in his eye and didn’t stop until he staggered ashore at Hokkaido.
Several days later I flew up to Hokkaido to interview Hiizu in Japanese. His pole-frame house, with its corrugated-steel roof symbolized the mismatch of industrial Japan and the traditional Ainu. Confirming my expectations, he wore the look of a hardened old fisherman. His features were Japanese—high cheekbones, round face—but his heavy beard and longer earlobes indicated Ainu ancestry. His short, though long-trunked, frame, together with an uneasy alertness and fluidity of movement, made you think of a sea otter.
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