Lincoln waved his group down before they could be seen. “We got to knock out that nest,” he said. “Anyone comes up behind Kirwan and them, they’re dead meat.”
Steinberg pointed to a line of huts. “Same as with those other guys,” he said. “If we stay behind those we can get in back of the gun, toss a grenade on it.”
“They’ve got covering fire,” Blair pointed out.
“Chance we have to take,” Lincoln said. “Stay low and move fast.”
They ran at a crouch, Lincoln in the lead, his gaze shifting constantly from the path ahead over to where enemy fire would come from if they were seen. Somehow, they reached a position about thirty feet to the rear of the machine gun pit without drawing any attention. A four-foot-high concrete wall offered some cover. In the east, the sky was beginning to lighten, allowing for greater visibility. Lincoln didn’t mind, except it meant the bad guys would be able to see better, too.
Steinberg palmed a hand grenade. “I played center field in high school. Always had a pretty good arm.”
“Go for it,” Lincoln said.
Steinberg tugged the pin and hurled the grenade. It arced through the air and exploded just as it landed beside the gun.
“Good shot!” Blair said.
But the effort had turned them into targets. Instantly, fire from the VC soldiers turned their way. Steinberg, still standing tall after his dead-on throw, took three rounds to his chest and shoulder. The others ducked in time, rising above the wall only to return fire. Lincoln moved to the corner and peered around to take aim, only to see a VC pointing an RPG launcher directly at the wall.
“Grenade!” he cried, even as he heard it fire. He twisted away from the wall and covered his head with his arms, hoping the others were doing the same. At seemingly the same moment, the grenade hit with a boom, sending jagged shards of concrete slicing into him. Ears ringing, almost deafened, he spun around and opened fire, dropping the guy with the grenade launcher before he could follow up with a second.
Their cover was gone, and the enemy forces were taking advantage of it, sending round after round their way. Steinberg was finished—his wounds had slowed his reaction to the grenade, and the blast had ripped open his throat and chest. Blair and Spearman were dazed and bloody but alive. None of them would be for long, though, if Lincoln couldn’t get them to safety.
He felt a stinging heat on the back of his thigh and looked down to see his fatigue pants torn and bloody. Flesh wound, he thought. But he had to get the others out in a hurry, and himself as well—the longer they stayed, the more likely they would end up like Steinberg.
He reached down with both hands and lifted Spearman, the smaller of the two, onto his left shoulder. Hoisting Blair one-handed was considerably more awkward, but he got a grip on the man. Carrying both, he half-jogged, half-limped from his spot by the collapsed wall. The impact of a round slamming into Spearman almost knocked him off balance, but it had hit only an edge of the man’s boot and hadn’t done any damage.
When he had a small concrete-and-steel structure between himself and the worst of the firefight, he lowered the other men as gently as he could. “You guys will be okay here,” he said. “Stay put.”
Blair tried to say something, but his gaze was unfocused, his words slurred. Spearman was in worse shape. They both needed a medic, but that would have to wait.
9
* * *
Lincoln left them where they were and rushed back to the action, taking a slightly different path so the enemy soldiers wouldn’t see him coming. Most of the other task force soldiers had converged on that area—which made sense, he figured; the enemy’s concentrated effort there probably meant there was something they didn’t want found. The prisoners, most likely.
Lincoln slammed a fresh magazine into his M14 and targeted the man with the RPG launcher. He propped himself against a wall—the two wounds had weakened him more than he wanted to admit, even to himself—and stitched a line of bullets up the soldier’s chest and head. Then he shifted his aim to the right, where another VC was trying to catch the launcher before it fell. As each additional soldier lunged for it, Lincoln picked them off, one by one.
Finally, the last black-pajamaed fighter fell. Lincoln took a quick tally and counted six task force members KIA, including the unfortunate Steinberg. Spearman was still woozy, but Blair was on his feet again, injured but conscious.
The blond CIA agent stepped from the darkness and started toward a concrete bunker behind the fallen Vietnamese. Lincoln was surprised to note that he was carrying an AR-30 but figured it was a souvenir from a soldier he had killed. “Lot of dead commies,” he said. “Does my heart good. But those fucking VC seemed to be trying to keep us away from that,” he said. “Let’s see what’s inside.”
He walked around the bodies, kicking one or two as if checking to ensure that they weren’t faking, until he reached the steel door of the bunker. It opened with a screech that seemed loud enough to wake the dead, but none of those on the ground got up to complain. Inside, he shone a right-angle flashlight for a few moments, then emerged again, a disgusted look on his face.
“What is it?” Kirwan asked.
“It’s not our prisoners. Looks like they were using this shithole of a camp as an opium distribution point.”
“Well, at least we shut that down,” Kirwan said. “That’s something.”
“So’s a case of the clap,” the agent said. “But if it’s not what you went to Saigon for, it doesn’t do you any good. They’re here somewhere, goddamn it. Search every bunker and hooch in this dump.”
The men paired off, Lincoln with the still-shaky Blair, and moved from structure to structure. Finally, someone gave a shout, and the rest of them gathered around what looked like a thatched hut—only the thatching concealed a low-slung concrete structure with a padlocked steel door. Someone on the inside was banging on the door, but from the outside it just sounded like faint, distant thumping.
“Get ’em the fuck out of there,” the agent ordered.
One of the soldiers shot the padlock until it snapped, but it took two of them to muscle open the door. As soon as it was wide enough, a white man crawled out, followed by another. They were both wearing jungle fatigues, but Lincoln could tell right away they weren’t soldiers. The first one tried to gain his feet but couldn’t—he had been in that tiny space for too long, and his legs wouldn’t support him. When a couple of the guys helped him to his feet—and held him there, lest he fall down again—Lincoln realized that he recognized the man’s face.
He couldn’t come up with the name, but he didn’t have to wonder about it for long. Someone else called out, “Hey, that’s Stan Rivers!”
“Stan Rivers, the TV guy?” someone said.
“No shit?” another man added.
When Rivers started to answer, his words came out as a blubbering cry. Lincoln knew it was him, though. Everybody knew Stan Rivers—he was on one of the big nightly news broadcasts from New York, though Lincoln, who’d never watched a lot of TV, couldn’t remember which network.
Everyone knew the man’s name and face, though, and just about everybody who Lincoln knew hated him, too. He liked to call himself “America’s conscience,” and he had a reputation as an insufferable egotist who thought he knew what was best for everybody.
Lincoln remembered the first time he had become aware of the man. An apartment fire in the French Ward had spread to encompass most of a city block, costing dozens of lives. All the network news programs had sent their anchors to the city. While he was there, Rivers had managed to locate a mother who had lost six children and her husband in the blaze. She had clearly not wanted to talk, but he’d pressed her, unwilling to accept her reticence. His cameraman had zoomed in on her face, distraught, tears running down her cheeks and snot bubbling from her nose. Finally, Rivers had put words in her mouth, and she’d acquiesced. “She’s just going along with him to shut him up,” Sammy had said before turning off the TV in disgust. “That
bastard will do anything for a story, no matter who gets hurt.”
That phrase—no matter who gets hurt—seemed especially prescient now, with Steinberg and several other Americans dead in an effort to rescue Rivers from someplace he never should have been.
Finally, his face slick with tears, Rivers found his voice. “Thank you, men,” he managed. “I’ve been in that little coffin for days. I thought for sure I’d die there.” He seemed to recall that he wasn’t alone and added, “This is Jimmy Turnbull, my cinematographer. You know who I am.”
“What the fuck are you doing in Laos, Rivers?” the agent said. “You’re supposed to be embedded with a unit in Hue.”
“I heard there were American troops in Laos—which, as you know, is strictly neutral territory. So we broke away from Hue and hitched a ride into Laos. As delighted as we are to see you guys, your being here pretty much confirms the story, doesn’t it?”
“Of course we’re in Laos, dipshit. We came here to fucking rescue you,” the agent pointed out.
“Just the same—we got footage of other Americans in Laos, before we were captured. This is going to be headline news back home. And now it’ll have a human interest angle, too. I suppose our disappearance has been front-page news?”
“Not a soul in the world knows you’re missing,” the agent informed him. “When you vanished, we hushed it up. You’re just damn lucky we got some intel pointing us here.”
Rivers’s face went through a series of expressions—confusion, disappointment, anger, rage—in a matter of seconds. It was obvious he’d wanted to be talked about in his absence, no doubt to make the story of his triumphant return that much bigger.
“But . . . but we—”
“I guess you’re the only one who thinks you’re a big deal,” the agent said. “Not even your wife gave a shit when you vanished.”
“I’m not married. But—”
The agent cut Rivers off again. “Even better. There are already too many grieving widows in the world. Don’t worry—you’ll make your precious headlines soon.”
He didn’t wait for Rivers to respond. Instead, he raised the AR-30 and unloaded most of magazine into the reporter, continuing even after he fell to the earth and lay still. Then he turned to the cameraman, Turnbull.
“What about you, sweet cheeks?” he asked, his tone almost polite but sinister at the same time. “You gonna be a pain in my ass?”
Sweat streamed down the young man’s face, and in the glow from multiple flashlights, Lincoln saw a dark stain spread from Turnbull’s crotch. “I . . . I didn’t see a thing, s-sir,” he said.
“What about that footage Rivers says you got?”
“Th-the VC smashed my camera and threw the film in a fire. Seriously, man, I got nothing. I won’t say shit.”
The agent seemed to consider this for a moment, then bore his gaze into Turnbull’s eyes. “You just bought yourself a pass, kid. But if you change your mind and decide to start talking, just remember—no matter where you go I will fucking find you. And when I do, I’ll make what happened to Rivers look like a goddamn mercy kill compared to what I do to you.”
Tears streaked down Turnbull’s face, and he nodded.
“Tell me you understand.”
“I understand,” Turnbull said.
“Good.” The agent let his gaze slide across the surprised soldiers around him. “Anybody else got a problem?”
The whole world seemed to have slipped into a stunned silence. When nobody answered, the agent said, “Rivers got some of ours killed, all so he could air a story that would damage and humiliate the United States of America,” he said. “If we have troops in Laos—and I’m not saying we do—it’s because we don’t want the country to fall to the fucking communists. It’s a matter of national security, and that bastard would have sold us out for the sake of a goddamn headline. He’d probably have gotten a raise out of it, too.”
“But . . . ,” Kirwan said, “. . . he’s still an American—a celebrity—and you killed him.”
“No, I didn’t,” the agent replied. He held up the weapon, then dropped it. “He was shot with an AR-30. Clearly killed by the NVA. We’ll take his worthless corpse back to Hue and ‘discover’ it in the bush someplace, not far from where he ran away from the American unit he was supposed to be protected by. Everyone knows the jungle’s a dangerous place.”
Lincoln listened with something between outrage and respect tugging at his spirits. He had no reason to like Rivers—Sammy’s hatred of the man had become his own—but the TV anchor was still an American. On the other hand, as the CIA man had said, Rivers was in Laos hoping to cause trouble for the American military. Lincoln was no politician, but he had to believe that those in Washington and at the Pentagon had reasons for what they were doing. If they felt troops were needed to keep Laos free, who was he to argue? And who was Stan Rivers to try to single-handedly overturn that decision? Nobody had elected him commander in chief.
Mostly, Lincoln was impressed by the cool displayed by the agent. He had gunned down an important American TV star without breaking a sweat, a little half-smile playing about his lips as he did it. He had a rational-sounding explanation for it and a plan to cover up the crime. More than that, he had a set of accomplices—each of whom had lost brothers-in-arms—who would back up his story. The men who’d died had done so because of Rivers; nobody was likely to shed a tear for him or to publicly dispute the story that would be told about his death.
He had to hand it to the CIA man—back in New Bordeaux, he could easily become a mob boss. And to Lincoln Clay, that was high praise indeed.
10
* * *
While the men waited for the Hueys to extract them from Laos, the unit’s medic patched the wounded while the others searched the rest of the valley and found more opium drop sites. Each one was blown up, along with its contents. Streamers of smoke rising into the sky must have made easy landmarks for the chopper pilots.
Lincoln’s wounds had been minimal, so he had gone with the search party. Heading back to the camp from the last drop, Lincoln felt a nudge on his shoulder. He turned to see the CIA agent there, one eyebrow raised in a quizzical expression. “Take a walk with me?” the man said.
“Sure.” Lincoln stepped off the path and let Spearman and Blair go on without him. When the rest of the line had passed—some tossing questioning glances at them—Lincoln and the agent brought up the rear, far enough back that their conversation wouldn’t be overheard.
“Did that get your panties in a twist?” the agent asked. “What I did back there?”
“Hell yeah,” Lincoln said. “When you explained, it kinda made sense. But at the moment, it sure took me by surprise.”
“I figured it would,” the man said. “That was the point. One of them, anyway. I had to do what I did, but if I’d told you guys beforehand what I planned, someone might have objected.”
Lincoln couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he simply nodded.
“Sometimes, sacrifices have to be made for the greater good,” the agent continued. “This was one of those cases. Rivers should have fucking well stayed with the unit he was assigned to and covered the war he came to Vietnam to report on. As soon as he crossed into Laos, he signed his own death warrant.”
“No real loss, the way I see it,” Lincoln said.
The agent chuckled. “Exactly. The guy was a scumbag, through and through. He would have handed Laos to the communists. I’m not naïve enough to think our country never makes mistakes—hell, we made a huge one with your people, and we’re still trying to fix it. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let some rich, pampered TV star playing soldier put real fighting men at risk and endanger American interests in the bargain.”
“You’ll get no argument from me.”
The agent stopped, so Lincoln did, too. “My name’s John Donovan,” the man said. “You’ve probably already figured out who I work for.”
“That’s pretty clear,” Lincoln admitted.
Donovan took a cigarette pack from his breast pocket, tapped out a smoke, and offered one to Lincoln. Lincoln took it, and by the time he had it in his mouth, Donovan had flicked open a lighter. He lit Lincoln’s cigarette, then his own, inhaled, and blew out a long ribbon of smoke.
“I have to say, I’m impressed with the way you handled yourself on this op, Corporal Clay. You know, I asked to have you included on the task force. And goddamn, you’re everything they said, and then some.”
Lincoln was astonished that he had come to this man’s attention, but he tried not to show it. “That so?”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Donovan said. He started walking again. Lincoln took another drag from his smoke, then hurried to catch up.
“I understand Tom Franklin talked to you about Laos,” Donovan continued. “About the kind of men we need here.”
Lincoln tried to remember exactly what Franklin had said. Men who were self-sufficient, he recalled, who didn’t need to be told what to do but could figure out what needed to be done and do it. He wasn’t sure how much of that applied to him, but he was glad Franklin thought it did.
“Yeah.”
“He told me you’re that kind of man. A born warrior. He said you could be counted on. And he said you could follow orders, but you’re better when left to make your own decisions.”
“Guess that’s true,” Lincoln said.
“Listen, Lincoln. You know we’re not supposed to have troops in Laos. But we’re not just letting the country fall to the Pathet Lao and their friends from China and the Soviet Union. That would be a goddamn shit-storm for Vietnam, Southeast Asia, and the rest of the free world. We need to protect Laos’s freedom and stop the NVA from using it as a funnel into South Vietnam.”
“Makes sense,” Lincoln said. Left unspoken was the corollary: as much as politics ever made sense.
“We can’t do it with overwhelming American force,” Donovan said. “Not with the fucking Geneva Accords in place. If it was up to me, I’d just carpet-bomb the north into oblivion, but they don’t let me set war policy. In Vietnam, we’re going to see the burden of the war shifting much more to American shoulders than to South Vietnamese ones. Those ARVN pussies can’t be counted on to defend their own country. But it would be a bigger stretch to do that in Laos, and I don’t see it. Instead, we’re going to have to rely on the locals. You’ve heard of the Montagnards, right? The people who do the real fighting back in ’Nam?”
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