A few years ago he would have been able to call Covey, the light plane that maintained communications with the recon teams, and have had him overfly the correct spot. Thus, if you didn’t hear the plane you knew damned well you were in the wrong place.
There would be no Covey plane in this mission. He just had to hope his doubts were nothing more than the slight mist that started to fall, causing him to wipe the lens of the scope again and again, soaking through his fatigues, making him long for a warm room somewhere, preferably in a big bed under a down cover…
Whack! He came suddenly awake again, his forehead burning from the strike against the muzzle of the carbine. “Shit!” he muttered.
From the poncho-wrapped form of Jerry Hauck he heard a low chuckle.
They made first contact just after dawn, when the light was still wavery and insubstantial, what little bit of it managed to filter down through the canopy. Two of them, both armed with AK-47 rifles, dressed in camouflage that had clearly seen better days—there seemed to be more patches than there was original material.
But the brightly colored scarves around their necks were anything but ratty. Jim recognized them as II Corps Mike Force scarves. Kept somewhere safe, he supposed, and only brought out for special occasions.
That did not mean, however, that he could just let them walk right up on the team. Mike Force scarves wouldn’t have been hard to come by in the aftermath of the war and the collapse of South Vietnamese resistance. And the fact that they were quite obviously ’Yards didn’t mean a whole hell of a lot either. Even during the war some Montagnard tribes had actively cooperated with the VC.
“Halt,” he commanded, so quietly only they could have heard it.
The two soldiers stopped instantly, looking around to see whence the command had come. Jim had, at the break of dawn, camouflaged his position, now lay beneath several branches with a scattering of moss on the top. Wouldn’t stand intensive scrutiny for long, he knew, but in this business the matter of life and death was decided in instants.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dickerson move, achingly slowly, into a position where they could put any assault into a crossfire. Jerry would, he knew, now be covering their rear.
Jim scanned the area behind the two soldiers, didn’t see anything out of place, but that didn’t mean a lot. Could be a whole damned platoon of them concealed out there and unless someone screwed up he wouldn’t know it.
“Oklahoma,” he said.
The two ’Yards relaxed visibly. Obviously they had recognized the challenge.
“Sooners,” one of them said, grinning widely enough to show a mouthful of gold teeth with brightly colored enamel inserts.
The challenge and password procedure they had just gone through was for the protection of both sides. After all, the Montagnards could very well have been running up against a North Vietnamese squad, and the Americans could have been being sucked into a trick. It wasn’t foolproof, either side could have given up the key words under duress, so you had to maintain alertness, but at least it was something.
“Come forward,” Jim said, this time in Bahnar. “Sling your weapons.”
The soldiers obeyed his instructions, walking slowly forward until they were almost on top of him before they finally saw the muzzle of his carbine.
“Commandant Sarpa said you were good,” one of them said in only slightly accented English. Jim saw that he was wearing the two rosettes of a lieutenant. “Le commandant would like to see you. Will you accompany us?”
Jim rose from the ground, shedding branches and moss, shouldered his rucksack. “Lead on,” he said.
“And the others?” the lieutenant asked.
“What others?”
“You came alone?” The lieutenant clearly thought this improbable.
“Why would I need more?” Jim wished he felt as confident as he sounded.
The lieutenant shrugged. “We had hoped for at least a team,” he said. “Like in the old days.”
“The old days are over,” Jim replied. “Now, shall we go?”
He followed them as they slipped back into the jungle, down a trail that was little more than an animal track. There was little or no sign of their passing.
Behind him Dickerson and Hauck waited five minutes, then followed.
Chapter 11
“No air?” Finn asked.
“Nothing more than what the Thais themselves can provide,” Gutierrez replied.
Finn shook his head in disgust. They had been discussing the plan to insert Thai recon teams across the border, some as far as the Plain of Jars, to determine the true extent of the North Vietnamese buildup.
The Thais had ranged widely throughout Laos during the war. Some of them had fought as CIA-sponsored “mercenaries” providing artillery support and infantry stiffeners in the seesaw battles that had characterized the annual struggle for the Bolovens plateau. Still others had been trained as recon teams and had been accompanied by the American advisors of 46th Company, covering the areas to the west of the Prairie Fire operational area of the MACV SOG teams operating out of Vietnam. At one time there had even been a serious proposal to have the Thai army invade across the Mekong and meet Americans coming in from just below the Demilitarized Zone, the purpose being to cut the infamous Ho Chi Minh trail, denying the enemy the supplies without which he could not have continued the war. Only the very real threat of the Chinese entering the war to support their fraternal socialist comrades had stopped that gambit.
Thus the government had at its disposal a corps of battle-hardened and competent troops. Much higher quality, in Finn’s opinion, than had been the regular South Vietnamese army.
The problem was that there were just too few of them. A couple of regiments to throw against an army that now numbered in the multiples of divisions. An army, moreover, that was now the best-equipped military force, absent the Chinese (and since the effects of the Cultural Revolution, probably better in many ways than the Red Army) in the entire region. The collapse of the South Vietnamese government had left the spoils of fifteen years of American support—tanks, artillery, helicopters, fighters and transport planes, millions of rounds of ammunition. About the only thing they were short on was fuel, and that only because the U.S. Congress had, in a fit of pique, voted to stop providing its South Vietnamese allies with the wherewithal to fight the war at its most critical juncture.
And now there would be no air support, despite the presence of an aircraft carrier group in the Gulf of Thailand.
Finn often wondered if the people in Washington were active supporters of the Communists, or just plain stupid.
“So if one of the teams gets into trouble, we’re going to have to depend on a few obsolete choppers, maybe a couple of flights of F-5 fighters.” Finn shook his head again.
“And no Americans on the ground,” he continued.
“Absolutely no Americans,” Gutierrez replied. “I’ll restate that in the strongest possible terms, just as it was given to me. Any violation of that direct order will be met with the full choices of punishment under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. Which means, to dumb-asses like you and me, you’d be subject to court-martial and confinement to hard labor in Fort Leavenworth.”
“You know what happened when we stopped sending out Americans with the recon teams from SOG.”
“Obviously,” Sam replied. What had happened was that some of the recon teams had continued to do an outstanding job. Others had been inserted, had hunkered down and sent in reports that were increasingly fabulous. The problem was, you didn’t know which ones to believe.
“But these are good troops,” Sam continued. “They’ve been doing this for years, often without Americans along. Besides, with no air, you don’t need an American voice on the other end of the radio.”
“I don’t like it,” Finn said.
“I don’t recall anyone asking you to like it,” Sam replied, somewhat brusquely. There was a time for arguments and a time to go out and do your
job. It was that time. Finn would go on and achieve results that would often appear impossible. He always had. But he always had to bitch about it.
That was why, when CINCPAC had assigned him the responsibility of doing everything possible to help the Thais, absent actually supporting them, he’d called Finn McCulloden into the planning center and had assigned him the task of monitoring the reconnaissance effort. He was to do so from the old Air Force base at Udorn, familiar to a generation of U.S. pilots.
“And I don’t suppose the powers that be are going to change their minds?”
“The Joint Chiefs are doing everything they can. They’ve suggested an air wing be moved back in, that we mount operations from carriers, even that we deploy a division of Marines. But you need to understand the politics. The president is up for re-election next year and he’s already not looking too good, what with the Nixon pardon and all. He’s afraid that if we go back to war there’ll be massive protests, demonstrations in the street—hell, some people are even talking about civil war.”
“So we’ll let some dickhead demonstrators set national policy. Abandon the only ally we still have in the region. Let them make the Gulf of Thailand a Vietnamese lake. Then what? Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia?”
“There’s no such thing as the domino theory, haven’t you heard?”
That brought a small, although bitter smile to Finn’s lips.
“Yeah,” he said. “So I’ve heard. But did anyone tell the Vietnamese that?”
“They told us we couldn’t cross the border, and we won’t,” Finn told Bucky Epstein in a later planning session. “But they didn’t tell us how close we could get to it. Udorn is too far away. We’ll run the support section out of there. But we’ll use the Border Police base at That Phanom for the FOB.”
“You do realize that if the NVA come, it’s going to be right about there,” Bucky said.
Finn smiled back at the small grin that was starting to play on Bucky’s lips.
“Hadn’t really thought about it,” he lied. “But just in case, I’ve got Billy Craig working on some supplies for us.”
Master Sergeant Craig was another of those NCOs who would probably not have survived outside Special Forces. His grateful SF compatriots called him the greatest scrounger who’d ever worn the Green Beret. The people from whom he’d obtained impossible-to-get items called him a notorious thief, con artist, and other names far less complimentary.
Craig had been a team sergeant in an A camp in the Delta when ambushed by the Viet Cong. He’d taken a burst of machine-gun fire in the stomach and upper legs, had very nearly bled to death before the team medic could get to him, but had still enough spirit to keep fighting long enough for the rest of his patrol to mount a counterattack and drive off the ambushers.
He’d spent well over two years in various hospitals. The doctors had been forced to remove several feet of his intestines, shorten one leg by two inches where the bone had been shot away, and combat the raging infections that were inevitably the result of intestinal contents’ being scattered throughout the abdominal cavity.
He’d gone from a strapping six-foot, two-hundred-pound fighting machine into a rail-thin, limping figure who no one figured would ever be the same again. He’d had to fight the disability discharge they’d wanted to give him all the way up to the highest levels of command, had succeeded in the end only because his Tennessee-born mother had been a high-school girlfriend of the current senator from that state.
But leading men into combat was obviously out of the question. He had the will. He simply didn’t have the endurance, and very well knew it.
He’d decided that if he couldn’t be with the troops, he could damned well support them. He wangled an assignment to the MACV-SOG support activity in Taiwan, and from there had mounted the operations that would make him legendary. A team wanted Chinese Communist RPD machine guns because they were a lot lighter and more reliable than the American-made M-60 (and besides, if you ran out of ammunition you could pick up some more from the people you’d killed), and they’d soon be delivered, still packed in the People’s Army cases. Unable to get the brass in Saigon to give up any of the captured weapons, Craig had gone to Hong Kong, made contact with a People’s Army representative, and bought them.
British Intelligence had learned of the deal, informed Washington about it, and there had been a move afoot to court-martial the NCO for dealing with the enemy. A lawyer at the Pentagon had tactfully pointed out that Craig couldn’t be guilty of dealing with the enemy, as technically we weren’t at war with the Chinese.
From there it went on. What he couldn’t get by barter, buying outright, or applying the appropriate incentives to the supply systems of any and all armed forces U.S. and foreign, he would steal. And if it didn’t exist, he’d finance the effort to build it.
Had he chosen, with the connections he’d developed he could have become a very rich man. Instead he got by on his sergeant’s pay.
“I’ve asked Billy to get us a few things to strengthen the defenses,” Finn continued. “Antitank mines. Antiaircraft guns. Redeye missiles. He thinks he can lay his hands on some TOWs and launchers.”
Bucky gave a low whistle of amazement. The TOW, the acronym standing for Tube-launched, Optically-guided, Wire-controlled missile, was fairly new even to the U.S. Army inventory. No current Soviet tank could stand up to its warhead. And given a good operator the missile would unerringly hit even a fast-moving target out to the maximum extent of its trailing wire, some three thousand meters. Way past the range of the cannons of the T-34s and T-55s with which the Vietnamese would most likely stage an attack.
“Won’t completely stop ’em,” Finn conceded. “But it’ll give ’em fits for a while. Maybe long enough to get some reinforcements.”
“Don’t suppose Billy could come up with a SADM,” Bucky suggested.
SADM, another acronym from an Army queer for them, stood for Small Atomic Demolition Munition, the so-called backpack nuke. About a half-kiloton in yield, it would very effectively blunt an enemy assault.
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Finn replied. “Only problem is, he got ’em, we couldn’t use ’em. We’ll have to stick to the conventional stuff. Hold out long enough, maybe our leaders will come to their senses.”
“You really think that?”
Finn pretended to consider the question for a moment.
“Nah,” he said finally. “Not a chance.”
Chapter 12
Y Buon Sarpa looked not a day older than he’d looked ten years ago. An almost childish, open face, a countenance that had stood him in good stead in conspiracies and plots that dated back at least twenty years. Who could believe that this kid was the brains behind a major element of FULRO?
“Carmichael, my old friend,” he said, coming forward and enveloping Jim in a heartfelt embrace. “What should I call you? You must at least be a colonel by now.”
“Still a captain,” Jim said, a trifle sourly. The message that Jim would be the one coming must have mentioned that. Sarpa was trying to flatter him. It put his hackles up.
“No!” Sarpa said, releasing him to arm’s length and looking him directly in the eyes. “Then the American Army is even more foolish than I thought. You look tired, my old friend. Would you like to rest? You are safe here. At least, as safe as any of the rest of us.”
Jim felt himself relaxing almost in spite of himself. Sarpa had that effect on him. You might think him the lyingest little sonofabich on earth, but at least he was good at it.
It had been a hard little hump over another four kilometers and he was, in truth, damn near reaching the exhaustion point. And he’d noted the layout of the camp as he was coming in, and had approved. It was atop a knoll high enough to make any enemy assault have to come uphill, but not so high that it was obvious dominant terrain. Fields of fire had been cleared out to the maximum effective range of the motley assortment of machine guns he spotted in well-camouflaged bunkers around the perimeter. The defenders had
, wisely in his opinion, given the fact that air superiority now belonged to the other side, not cut down any of the overarching jungle canopy to get these cleared fields of fire. Anyone overflying it would see only unbroken jungle.
They’d been challenged twice on their way in, both times by sentries he hadn’t seen. And the route in had been reasonably complicated, with a couple of right-angle turns and one damn near one-eighty—bespeaking a path through a minefield. Jim would have bet there were also claymores artfully placed to do the most good.
Perhaps he could relax.
But not yet.
“Lieutenant Drot tells me you came alone,” Sarpa said.
“Did he, now?”
“I didn’t think so,” Sarpa said, grinning widely. “You are as careful as always. That is good. One never knows when or where the traitors will strike.”
“I learned from an expert,” Jim replied. “Seems you’ve managed to survive quite well too.”
Sarpa chose to take the comment as a compliment, nodding his head in seeming modesty. “Against all odds,” he said. “But you know all about that.”
“Where are the others?” Jim asked. There were no women, no children, none of the dogs that inevitably hung around the Montagnard villages. This was a fighting position, pure and simple.
“Safely hidden away,” Sarpa said. “Deeper in the jungle, where the Viets never go.”
The word, Viets, was spoken as an expletive. Not too much of a surprise there, since the Han Chinese–descended Vietnamese had been trying to wipe out the Indo-Malayan–descended mountain people for the last fifty years.
Now, of course, there was only one side. Made it simpler, as far as the Montagnards were concerned.
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