by Bill Yancey
Jaskolski caught the punch and spun Wolfe to the floor, twisting Wolfe’s arm behind him. “Try to relax, Doc. Peter has a weird sense of humor. His point was you don’t have to pay for a lawyer if you play along and answer some questions.”
Over his shoulder and in considerable pain, Wolfe stared at the two men. “Okay. Let me go. But one more remark about my wife and you’ll wish you hadn’t made it.”
Jaskolski slowly released Wolfe’s arm and helped him stand and then sit again. He held both open hands out toward Wolfe. “Stay calm, Doc,” he said, sitting again on the bed next to Narang.
Wolfe glared defiantly. Words came slowly, tersely, “What do you want to know?” he said, rubbing his shoulder.
“Okay then,” Narang said, as if nothing had happened. “What is your interest in James T. Byrnes, III?”
“I already answered that question for Agent Jaskolski,” Wolfe said. “Didn’t he report my answer to you?”
“Let’s pretend he didn’t.”
“Jimmy and I were in the navy together. We were good friends. I just found out he died,” Wolfe said.
“So why go talk with his mother and sisters?” Narang asked.
“Like I told Agent Jaskolski, I went to express my condolences. And to tell them what a great guy and good friend Jimmy had been to me. Even though I was almost fifty years late.”
“And why go see Colonel Rhodes? You didn’t know him in the service,” Narang said.
“Jimmy’s sister said Rhodes was a POW with Jimmy. I wanted to hear the story myself,” Wolfe said.
“Did you learn anything new?”
Wolfe stared at the men for a minute. “I think I did,” he finally said.
Narang’s left eyebrow elevated slightly. He frowned. “What was that?” he asked.
“Jimmy’s what nowadays we call a survivor. Colonel Rhodes thought he died in a bombing raid. I’m not so sure. Somehow, he managed to survive a beating and being thrown overboard. It wouldn’t surprise me if he lived through the airstrike, too,” Wolfe said.
“I talked with Colonel Rhodes myself,” Narang said. “I would be astonished if your friend survived.”
“Then what am I here for? Why are you interfering with my attempts to find out what happened?”
“You applied to renew your passport recently,” Narang said.
“Yeah. So what?” Wolfe said.
“Why?”
Wolfe looked at Narang carefully, trying to keep his anger under control. “My wife wanted me to go to Costa Rica with her. Bird watching.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I have orthopedic problems: knees, back, shoulders. I decided I didn’t want to hike around Costa Rica looking for birds,” Wolfe said. “My son went in my place.”
Narang held his hand out. Jaskolski pulled a passport from his inside coat pocket and laid it on Narang’s hand. Narang handed the passport to Wolfe, who opened it and saw his own picture. As he shook his head at this government intrusion into his privacy and life, Wolfe heard Narang say, “Then you won’t mind that we have removed SE Asia from the places you may visit using your passport. An attempt to go there will result in your arrest.”
“On what charges?” Wolfe asked. “And that’s breaking and entering, in addition to kidnapping.”
“We’ll think of something,” Jaskolski said.
“Why? Is Jimmy still alive? In Vietnam? Or Laos? Or Cambodia? What the fuck is going on, if I should be so forward as to ask in polite French?”
Narang let out a slow sigh. His smile returned. He said, “I don’t imagine your friend is still among the living, Dr. Wolfe. Most MIAs died instantaneously, their bodies blown into so many fragments that they couldn’t be found. We know some were captured, tortured, and killed, or died of wounds or disease in captivity. It’s been forty-six years since anyone saw Byrnes alive. Actuarially, he’d be an outlier, seventy years-old in a hostile, if not deadly, environment. Don’t you agree?”
Wolfe bowed his head. He understood the logic. He didn’t like it, but he appreciated it. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “What’s the harm in finding out? He’s not the only MIA. I think Jaskolski told me there are still 1600, or more, from Vietnam alone.”
Relaxing, Narang allowed his shoulders to droop. He intertwined his fingers around his knee. “You’ve heard of Bowe Bergdahl?”
Wolfe nodded. “The confused kid who left his post in Afghanistan, believing he could somehow reach a peace settlement with the Taliban?”
“Right,” Narang said. “There were a number of servicemen in Vietnam who deserted, for whatever reason. A few may have thought they could affect the course of the war. Some may have been psychotic or drugged – there were a lot of illicit drugs used among the army’s enlisted. Some may have thought they fought on the wrong side. We had reports of Americans siding with the NVA.”
“Jimmy wouldn’t do that,” Wolfe said.
“You understand the Stockholm Syndrome, Doctor?”
“A hostage learning to like his captors? Yeah, I get that,” Wolfe said. “It’s one of the reasons I am trying to figure out exactly what kind of guy Jimmy was before he joined the navy. So far, I don’t see him capitulating like that.”
“Well, Washington doesn’t want the MIAs found. If found, they don’t want them repatriated. In addition, we have new wars going on now. There are missing soldiers all over the world, Doctor. The war on terrorism is world wide. It’s World War III, in case you didn’t notice. And it hasn’t been without casualties or MIAs. If a few are alive and brought home, they might prove to be a huge embarrassment to the government. Like Bergdahl. Or they might be double agents. As for the Vietnam-era MIAs, what should we do with a traitor who comes home fifty years after the war has ended, Doctor? Hang him?”
“We didn’t even hang all the convicted Japanese war criminals after World War II,” Wolfe said. “Why would we hang our own people?”
“I can’t say,” Narang said. “If you want to continue investigating James T. Byrnes, III, I can’t stop you. If you publicize what you find, I promise you, you’ll end up in jail. If you attempt to visit SE Asia, the same is true. Understand?”
“Are we finished?” Wolfe asked.
“No,” Jaskolski said. “We’re not one hundred percent certain that Chief Fulton was responsible for the wounding of the court reporter. We’re examining his contention that someone killed all his friends who participated in throwing Byrnes off the Oriskany. If you pursue your investigation, you may be putting your life at risk. We aren’t going to protect you. You’re on your own. Understand?”
Wolfe stood. He thought about throwing another punch at Narang or Jaskolski, but the pain in his shoulder precluded that. “Now, are we finished?” he said.
“Yes, sir.” Narang said. He stood and offered his right hand to Wolfe. The doctor stared at it for several seconds, and then turned away without shaking it. “Jaskolski, do me a favor and drive the good doctor to his car.”
CHAPTER 32
Byrnes and three other prisoner-porters sweated in the humid, hot dense jungle near the Mekong River delta. They had followed a North Vietnamese Army soldier along a barely visible trail to the position held by five battalions of NVA. Although he knew hundreds, if not thousands, of men surrounded him, Byrnes had great difficulty spotting them. Camouflaged, from foxholes, from trenches, and from tunnels men called to one another. “First company ready. Third squad ready. Pass the ammunition boxes.”
A hand gripped Byrnes’s ankle, almost pulling his foot out of his sandal made from the tread of a used tire. Startled, Byrnes looked down. The hand elongated into an arm. An NVA soldier stood in the shadows of a cave carved into the side of a deep trench. “Pass the ammunition boxes,” he said again.
Byrnes knelt and lowered his box to the soldier. The other porters handed their boxes to Byrnes, who passed them on to the soldier, who passed them to invisible men, hidden deeper inside the dark cave. “Is that all of it?” the soldier asked.
&
nbsp; Byrnes looked behind him. The three prisoners nodded. “That’s all there is,” Byrnes said.
“Okay. Go back north and get some more, in case this battle lasts longer than we think it will.” The man laughed at his own joke and then spoke to the prisoners’ guard. “We will be attacking the enemy’s position shortly. I suggest you get as far away from here as possible, or drop into that shallow trench behind you until the assault is finished. The enemy has mortars and artillery. We know they are running short of ammunition, but you don’t want to be in the open if they use them.”
Silently, the private in charge of the porter detail motioned them with his AK-47. Holding the rifle horizontally he herded the men into the smaller slit trench. When standing, the top of the trench came to the porters’ waists. The men sat with backs to the muddy wall, heads below ground level. The NVA private sat on a log a short distance from the trench. He pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket. Lighting the cigarette, he inhaled. The scream of a mortar shell falling to earth interrupted his smoke break. “Phao kich! Incoming!” many men yelled at the same time. Followed by, “Enemy soldiers!”
A whistling sound grew louder, seemingly sucking in air. The guard stood, intent on jumping into the trench. The whistling ended with a loud crack, as if lightning had struck nearby. The first mortar shell exploded at the guard’s feet. The man disappeared. A twisted rifle barrel fell into the trench, followed by a whiff of tobacco smoke and a spray of blood. “Into the cave,” Byrnes told the three others, although he was not entirely certain they understood Vietnamese. Hoping the law of averages and the overhead jungle canopy would keep another mortar round from landing in the same spot, Byrnes scrambled out of the shallow trench. He slid on his abdomen across the slimy trail, and fell into the deep trench where the soldier who had taken the ammunition had been. The three other porters followed him.
After a minute, Byrnes’s pupils adjusted to the darkness. The cave was a portal to an underground network of tunnels. As far as Byrnes could see in the darkness, the first tunnel was empty. He heard voices ahead and slowly crept forward until he came to a lashed bamboo ladder. Above him a gun crew manned a heavy machinegun. Unaware of his presence, they talked to one another. The hammering of the machinegun drowned most of their conversation. “Here they come.” “Hundreds of them.” “Thousands.” “On the left.” “Grenade!” Then, Whomp! Smoke wafted into the tunnel. Byrnes smelled cordite. The concussion of an exploding grenade digging into the mud and spraying shrapnel into the gun crew knocked Byrnes to the mud floor. He heard the men above him: “I’m hit!” “Can’t reload.” “My leg!”
After a short while Byrnes heard only silence from the machinegun position. He crept forward again. Hearing nothing, he slowly climbed the ladder and found himself within a fortified gun position. The NVA had surrounded the gun pit with logs and mud packed between tree stumps. One gunner had lost a leg and apparently bled to death. A second had shrapnel wounds in his chest and head. He no longer breathed either.
The third gunner struggled to load the machinegun with only his left arm, the other ended at the elbow. Obviously weak from blood loss, he kept trying to pull the bolt handle and re-feed the metal belt of bullets into the weapon. Byrnes could tell the barrel of the weapon no longer functioned. He grabbed the soldier by his belt and dragged him to the ladder. Slinging the man’s right arm stump over his shoulders, Byrnes carried him into the tunnel.
Once underground, the porters hauled the gunner deeper into the tunnel, away from the gun pit. Byrnes ripped off the soldier’s shirt, tore it in long pieces, and used strips of the cloth to tourniquet the shattered arm. The tourniquet covered a tattoo on the soldier’s inner arm. Byrnes had seen the same sentiment written on many of the younger NVA soldiers. It was one of the few Vietnamese phrases he could read: Born in the North to Die in the South. “We can’t quit now,” the soldier said. “The enemy is…is overrunning our position. Go! Fire the machinegun. Go quickly.”
“The gun is broken,” Byrnes said. “It can’t be fixed.”
“Then get our rifles. In the back. In our quarters,” the soldier said, pointing to the dark tunnel. “Hurry.” None of the prisoners moved. “I have let my men down,” the soldier spoke softly, voice fading with his strength. “I have shamed my ancestors and my village. So close to victory. After seven years of combat. So close. You see my uncle? He’s standing there.”
The men all turned their heads and looked where the soldier pointed. There may have been someone in the tunnel. It was too dark to tell. Byrnes assumed the man hallucinated. “It’s all right,” he said, placing his hand on the man’s forehead. “We’ll get you some medical attention. Hang on.” At the same time, the soldier’s eyes stopped moving. His vision seemed to focus on the ceiling, pupils dilating. He sighed once and stopped breathing.
“Dau hang! Surrender!” a voice shouted at the cave entrance. “Dau hang!” another voice screamed from the gun pit.
“Don’t shoot!” one of the prisoners yelled in Vietnamese. “We are hostages of the North Vietnamese, forced to deliver ammunition. We are not armed.”
“Come out slowly. Hands where I can see them,” the voice said. “How many of you are there?”
The prisoner continued the conversation. “Three dead NVA gunners. Four prisoners.” Slowly, the men made their way toward the voices with their hands elevated, palms outward in front of them. As soon as they entered the trench, a squad of ARVN troops pulled them to the ground level one at a time.
“Anyone alive in there?” a sergeant with an M-16 in his right hand and an AK-47 in his left asked the prisoners. The camouflaged cloth name strip on his fatigue read Doan.
“We were only as far into the tunnels as the gun position,” the first prisoner said. “The tunnels go on after that but I don’t know how far. They may connect with other positions.”
“Corporal Ha,” the sergeant said, “take some C-4 and collapse that tunnel as far back as you are comfortable going.” The corporal pulled off his backpack and extracted a handful of C-4, along with what Byrnes assumed were a timer and wires to connect the two together. He disappeared into the tunnel. “And who are you four?”
Using excellent Vietnamese, the Korean spoke first. “Lieutenant Roh So-dong, South Korea, 9th Division, 29th Regiment. Captured during Operation Hong Kil Dong near Tuy Hoa. Home Base Ninh Hoa.”
“Welcome back, Lieutenant,” the sergeant said. He tossed the Korean the AK-47 he held in his left hand. “You may need this. You’ll find ammunition on some of the bodies we left behind.”
“Thank you,” the lieutenant said.
“And who are you men?” the sergeant asked.
“Hai Quang,” the second man said. “Textile merchant from Saigon. I was kidnapped – ”
“Can you use a rifle or an assault weapon?” the sergeant interrupted.
“No.” Hai said.
“Next?”
The third porter said, “Thao Linh. Air force mechanic. Corporal. Kidnapped while on leave. I have used an M-16 in the past.”
The sergeant tossed his M-16 at Thao. He said, “Don’t lose it. I want it back when we return to Saigon.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“And you?” the sergeant pointed to Byrnes, as the corporal backed from the cave and climbed out of the deep trench.
“Four minutes,” Corporal Ha said.
“Never mind,” the sergeant told Byrnes. “I’ll give you a chance to answer when we get back to our lines. Corporal, lead these men to our trenches. Pick up weapons you need and ammunition you see on the way. I’ll find Captain Vinh. I expect the NVA will be making a counterattack shortly. Don’t waste time.”
CHAPTER 33
Wolfe sat at a desk in the showroom of Aikens Ford, surrounded by dividers, half wood, half glass, that separated him from other cubicles and ten or twelve beautiful new Ford automobiles. Through large plate glass windows in the front of the building he could see acres of similar vehicles, some new, some used. Colorful banners
flapped in the warm Orlando breeze. A salesman walked by with a young couple, “The new Mustangs are outrageously beautiful,” he said. Wolfe watched as the trio opened the driver’s door to a red convertible version of the pony car.
“Dr. Wolfe?” a voice said.
Wolfe turned in the chair and found a muscular man about his age with gray hair and matching mustache. The man extended his right hand toward Wolfe. Rising, Wolfe shook it. “Mr. Aikens?”
“You can call me Pete. Peter Cottontail was my childhood nickname,” Aikens said. “Come on back to my office. Care for some coffee?”
“No thanks. Barely finished this cup. Had one of your donuts, too. Can you make money giving away food?”
Aikens chuckled. “Have to match or beat our competition,” he said. “It’s part of the cost of doing business, like advertising.” Limping slightly, he led Wolfe down a long hallway to a plush office. After they entered he pointed at a leather chair for Wolfe. Aikens circled his desk and fell into a taller leather seat, spinning it so he faced Wolfe.
“Nice office,” Wolfe said, scanning the plush carpet, solid wood paneling, and autographed pictures of celebrities in front of their automobiles.
“It’s incredible being close enough to Daytona that I can meet a lot of personalities at the race track,” Aikens said. He pointed an index finger directly over his head to an autographed picture of him shaking hands with Donald Trump, in front of a yellow Mustang wearing asymmetrical wide black racing stripes. “Sold him that Shelby for his daughter.”
“Beautiful car,” Wolfe said.
“Yeah, but you didn’t come here to talk about cars,” Aikens said. “I know you drove at least two hours to get here, and in a Prius, too. Sure I can’t sell you a more comfortable vehicle while you are in Orlando?” Aikens laughed good-naturedly.
“Can’t afford it,” Wolfe said. “The M.D. after my name does not stand for mucho dinero, if you know what I mean.”
“Okay. That’s settled. I have some time before we have a sales meeting. What can I tell you about J.T. Byrnes?”
