Bamboo Battleground

by Don Bendell

  Dr. Swenson returned and asked his friend to take pictures of Bobby and him and then Bobby and Pacific and him.

  Bobby shook hands with all and left, leaving the astonished beauty even more perplexed. She asked the two doctors to remain.

  Pacific said, “Bobby and I have been together in here for four weeks, but he has never spoken about any women or about his work. Is he in the business? I mean is he in film or TV? Oh, I know. He’s a famous athlete.”

  Dr. Swenson said, “Ms. Cartier, do you remember when the large commercial airplane crashed in the Rockies in Colorado a few months ago?”

  She said, “You mean with the Muslim terrorists on board who were going to blow it up over the L.A. area?

  He said, “Exactly, and do you remember there was an undercover military policeman and policewoman on board who saved just about all the passengers and crew and helped everybody survive a raging blizzard for some days before they could be rescued?”

  Pacific said, “My God. Is he that soldier?”

  Dr. Swenson said, “Not only that. Do you remember the former Green Beret army major who was captured and held by the al Qaeda in Iraq last year, and he was going to be beheaded on videotape, but he thwarted their plans and fought his way to freedom?”

  Pacific said, “Oh my Lord. Are you telling me that is Bobby?”

  The other psychologist said, “It sure is, Pacific. A true American hero. He got the Distinguished Service Cross for that, the nation’s second-highest award for heroism.”

  Pacific had chills all over.

  Then she remembered going to some antiwar rally her publicist told her to go to, so she might be seen with Susan Sarandon, George Clooney, Martin Sheen, and others. She did not know anything about the War on Terrorism and whether it was right or wrong, but now she felt guilty about going to it.

  What if she ended up with Bobby, as a lover, or even a husband, and she had gone to that stupid rally? she thought. Now she really had to land him. He was so dangerous, but so sensitive, and so damned handsome. Pacific never wanted a man so much in her life. She could not help but think how she might have a shot at landing some roles meant for Angelina Jolie, Reese Witherspoon, or Julia Roberts maybe, if she just had America’s ultimate warrior on her arm, and hopefully in her bed.

  The other neat thing was that here they were at the Betty Ford Center together, and maybe he would help her maintain her sobriety. God knows she had tried, but this was her third time at Betty Ford. She just could not seem to get it right, but did not realize it was actually because so many studios or producers would always bail her out of trouble.

  He certainly seemed to be taking his sobriety very seriously. He was working his twelve steps and did speak in generalities in regard to his life, but was not afraid to open up. She remembered how touched she was when he spoke one time about being married and his pregnant wife being killed by a drunk driver. It was quite obvious he really loved the woman, and he wasn’t afraid to let the tears run when he spoke about her.

  Dammit! Pacific thought, she was letting herself fall in love again. Why did she do that so much?

  Pacific first went into the women’s restroom inside just off the main lobby. She redid her mascara and lipstick, and checked her hair and the rest of her makeup. Looking carefully in the mirror, the superstar made sure everything looked right, and she cupped her breasts with both hands to make sure they were properly seated to present the most attractive presentation for her prey.

  Bobby had a deal with one of the workers in the cafeteria. She would always stop at the local convenience store and buy two French vanilla cappuccinos, one for her and one for Bobby. He would meet her after she came on shift, and he would reimburse her for her own morning cappuccino and his. One day in the cafeteria where she worked, they had gotten into a conversation and found they both loved frosted chai teas and those machine-made French vanilla cappuccinos. Bobby always laughed when he would buy one, because he thought about the USAF’s ability to drop a 2,000-pound smart bomb from a stealth fighter, have it drop thousands of feet and cover several miles, and put it right down through the air-vent shaft on a building’s roof, yet it seemed like every convenience store cappuccino machine he would find had a little handwritten cardboard sign on it, reading: “Stop pushing button when cup is two-thirds full.”

  As just about every SF (Special Forces) operator or every experienced cop in the world does, he found a corner table where he could sit with his back to the wall and face the door. This is not paranoia, but a very common tactic of most cops and combat-oriented military men and women. It is simply a psychological thing about being prepared to meet emergencies head-on and see trouble coming in the door, so to speak.

  Bobby saw Pacific walking into the cafeteria. He could not help but see her. Not seeing her would be like missing spotting a swan flying through a flock of mud hens. He also, with hidden glances, noticed her eyes sweeping the room and focusing on him.

  Cup of tea and glass of water in hand, she was soon at his table, and Bobby rose, holding the chair opposite for her. Pacific made a mental note that that usually only happened to her in romantic dramas she would be in because the script called for it. In real life, she hardly ever saw men rise when a woman sat, much less hold her chair.

  “Bobby,” she said, “I am so glad I found you again. Can you talk for a few minutes?”

  He smiled. “Sure, what’s up?”

  Working on her best feigned victim posture, she said, “I have really been having some issues, and they have been incredibly hard to deal with.”

  Pacific paused for effect, like she had learned in acting classes, then continued, “I had a party at my beach house in Malibu, and there were stars from all over Hollywood.”

  Bobby was unimpressed, but she could not tell as he listened politely.

  Trying to work up tears like some actresses could produce so easily, she went on, “Well, anyway, you know what our drinking is like when we drink alcoholically. I remember being with a couple that you read about in all the gossip magazines, but she is drop-dead gorgeous, and he is considered one of the world’s sexiest men.”

  Pacific paused here to sniffle a little, so Bobby would picture her and the other sexy actress and the hunk all drinking together. Her hope was that Bobby would imagine himself as the hunk.

  “Well,” she continued, “what is eating me up is I remember being a little flirty and joking around with them at the party, but that is all I remember. The bad part is I woke up the day after the party. Well, I have this king-sized poster bed and a deck off my bedroom that looks out over the ocean. I had the door open to let the ocean breezes in.”

  She could not tell if this was making him dream or fantasize.

  Pacific went on with the tale, hoping it would capture his imagination. “So, I looked down at the ocean outside and the curtains blowing, and I looked at myself, and I was totally naked.”

  Pause for effect.

  She continued, with a forced cry, “Then I saw both of them, the two stars, and they were naked, too, and I was lying between them. They were up against my body on both sides, Bobby! The three of us must have made love, and I cannot remember a thing.”

  Bobby remembered back to his old flame, a beautiful and famous national network news reporter named Veronica Caruso. She was sexy, gorgeous, and the most manipulative woman Bobby had ever met. Until now, he thought.

  He handed her a napkin for her tears and said, “Pacific, you are such a good star, I imagine they pay you very well, and you should invest in a really good counselor so you can work these things out. You ought to get yourself a good woman you have confidence in to be your sponsor in AA and share this with her.”

  She was frustrated. This was not working.

  “Bobby,” she pleaded, “I really want you to help me, please?”

  He smiled softly, saying, “I am really sorry, but that would be the blind leading the blind. I have way too much on my plate, Pacific. I cannot help you. I’m sorry, I have to go
.”

  He stood, and she jumped up, touching his arm and saying, “Look, can’t you tell when a woman is hitting on you?”

  Bobby smiled and nodded.

  She said, “So what’s up? Why are you rejecting me? Are you in love with somebody else?”

  Without thinking, Bobby said, “Yes, I am. Very much so. I have to go.”

  Bobby walked away briskly, leaving one of the most beautiful women in the world standing there bewildered and upset. He was in shock. What had he said? He felt guilty. He had loved his wife so much, but now he realized he was in love with another: Bo Devore. He didn’t even know if he could trust himself. He had gotten drunk and fondled Bo’s breast in a restaurant. That was what made him finally hit his bottom, just seeing that hurt in her eyes. He had betrayed a trust. Bo was his subordinate, his friend, his partner. He could not let her know he loved her, but he did know his love for his late wife was tearing him up emotionally and contributing to his own drinking. That would have to be reconciled.

  Easy does it, Bobby thought. One day at a time.

  What seemed to him like oversimplified AA slogans now made perfect sense to him. He would be leaving the Betty Ford Center in a couple of days and would have to deal with the real world. Little did he know, he would be soon facing his toughest challenge ever.

  3

  JUNGLE SECRETS

  The Lacrosse satellite passed overhead, 400 miles overhead, in fact, and looked down through the dense foliage of the jungles along the border of Vietnam and Laos. Y-Ting Tran felt a chill and noticed some of his men did, too. He felt the presence of the enemy. Without giving hand signals of any kind, he dove into the thick jungle undergrowth and so did all his men. Bobby Samuels had explained this to Bo before. Real warriors, such as many American spec ops types, Vietnam’s Montagnard tribesmen, Laotian Hmong, Australia’s aborigines, Native Americans, and similar would “feel” or “sense” the presence of the enemy. Bobby’s feeling was that this is a sixth sense, a sense of “knowing” that is undeveloped in most people, but more pronounced in warriors. When she scoffed at the idea, Bobby asked her if she ever got chills down her spine when someone stared at her back. That made her a believer.

  A Quân Dôi Nhân Dân Viêt Nam, Vietnam People’s Army (VPA), patrol appeared walking along the trail in eastern Laos. There were twenty in the patrol and all carried a variety of small arms, AK-47s, SKSes, RPGs, and a 7.62-millimeter Chicom (Chinese communist)-made machine gun. The combined patrol of Vietnamese Montagnard tribesmen and Laotian Hmong tribesmen listened intently as the patrol stopped.

  The leader of the patrol, a captain that one of the soldiers called Dai-uy Hoe dialed a satellite phone:

  “Chao Ong. Co chuyen gi moi khong?” (Hello, sir. Anything new?)

  There was a pause and then they heard, “Toi manh jioi. Cam on, Ong. Khong co di dau het. Bay lau nay may o dau?” (I’m fine. Thank you, sir. I didn’t go anywhere. Where have you been?)

  Another pause and then the captain spoke again. “Khong, Toi di choi thoi. Lau lam roi toi khong thay may.” (No, I’m just hanging out. I haven’t seen you in a long time).

  There was another pause, and he chuckled, saying, “Do xao ke! Toi di bo chi huy . . . Khong, Hanoi. Toi cung doan vay. Chao, Ong.” (Bullshit! I’m going to the headquarters . . . No, Hanoi. I guess so. Good-bye, sir.)

  He hung up, turned, and stepped forward right into the big blade of Y-Ting’s knife. It entered the man’s stomach, and he looked down and was fascinated by the water buffalo handle held firmly in the Rade Montagnard’s grip. He looked at the two little brass inlays in the back of the blade and the little swirl engravings on what he could see of the side of the blade now sticking into his midsection. He saw the blade twist and turn and in slow motion saw bright red blood spurting out all over the handle and Y-Ting’s hand and forearm. He also now felt the most excruciating pain he had ever felt in his stomach. Dai-uy Hoe saw all his men now being repeatedly stabbed by other Montagnards who just seemed to appear out of the jungle floor. His eyes rolled up, and he saw the leaves above as he fell backward and felt the back of his head hit the ground, and then his sight ended. He heard distinct screams of pain, and realized some of the men he saw were not Montagnards. They were Laotian Hmong warriors. He wondered why they were with Montagnards, and then he thought nothing. He was dead.

  Without a hand signal, the others joined Y-Ting in dragging the bodies deep into the undergrowth. They went through the pockets and packs of each dead soldier first and armed themselves with the new weapons and equipment as well as the food the soldiers carried.

  The satellite overhead was the size of a bus and was now looking at the several truckloads of VPA soldiers just nine kilometers away, and the satellite could see the bodies of the dead VPA hidden in the undergrowth.

  Lacrosse satellites are built around a synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which can see through clouds and send down photographic-quality images. Each satellite has a huge wire-mesh radar antenna and 150-foot solar panels to generate all the kilowatts of electricity required by its powerful radar transmitter.

  Further, each Lacrosse passes over its assigned observation target on the ground twice a day, peering down through bad weather to show military commanders elsewhere on the ground where to strike and what damage was caused by air or artillery strikes. Lacrosse satellites can show objects as small as a foot across at night and in bad weather. Big objects on the ground, like tanks or surface-to-air missiles (SAM), can be seen even if hidden in the woods, or in this case in a tropical rain forest, especially still-warm bodies giving off thermal signatures.

  A specialist at the NRO, or U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, called a number at the Pentagon and relayed the information about the killing of the communist Vietnamese patrol.

  Several spec ops (special operations) intelligence analysts sat around a table wondering how they could warn this patrol to get out of that area quickly. One of those specialists was M. Sgt. Manual Garcia, on loan from the Seventh Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Manny started out as an 11Bravo, an SF weapons sergeant, but he switched to operations and intelligence shortly before he made E7. He attended a number of schools and applied his skills in Colombia, Argentina, and Chile. Most important, he was a Green Beret, so he personally knew how to think outside the box.

  Manny said, “Was anybody listening in when the VPA commander was on the phone?”

  A young woman got up and ran to the phone and made a quick call, returning in two minutes.

  She said, “Manny, the NSA recorded his call.”

  Manny said, “Can they trace the commander’s sat phone number?”

  She went to the phone again and returned with a number written down.

  Manny dialed the phone, and it rang seconds later in the midst of the jungles of Laos along the border of Vietnam. Y-Ting looked at the phone display and saw the 202 area code. A big smile crossed his face, and he answered.

  “Allo,” Y-Ting said.

  Manny said, “Hello. This is Washington. You have a VPA patrol nine clicks southeast of you. Get your men out of there. If you head west or northwest, you won’t run into any more patrols.”

  Y-Ting repeated what he was told in Rade, and his man who spoke Hmong repeated it to the Laotians.

  Y-Ting enthusiastically said into the phone, “Thank you, sir. Thank you. God bless America!”

  Manny said, “You’re welcome, buddy. Get out of there.”

  “Yes, we go now,” Y-Ting said. “Thank you. Good-bye.”

  They headed due west at a fast pace, and three hours later, turned north walking through a jungle stream for forty minutes. They stepped out and Y-Ting Tran was almost bitten by a bright green bamboo viper. American GIs during the war in Vietnam referred to the deadly little snake as a “step and a half,” saying that is how far you will get before you die if one bites you. The neuro-hemo toxic snake has a very deadly bite, but Y-Ting grabbed it after it struck, catching it just below its head, which he lopped o
ff quickly with his Montagnard knife. He then stuck the body in his pack to be cleaned later and eaten for dinner.

  They were headed toward Mukdahan near the Thai border to meet with their American friend, who was referred to by the CIA not as a friend but as an “independent contractor.” This twenty-man squad was a first. Laotian Hmongs and Vietnamese Montagnards, both very similar in appearance and racial and societal characteristics, had joined forces together to fight against not only the communist government in Hanoi but also the new menace, the al Qaeda .

  Contrary to the reports of international news media, government officials, and other major sources, the largest al Qaeda training camps in the world, for several years, have not been in the Mideast, but in the Philippines. A large contingent of al Qaeda moved into the southern part of Thailand, Indonesia, and were now secretly building facilities in Laos and Vietnam.

  The Hmong tribespeople in Laos are very similar to the Montagnard tribespeople in Vietnam, and both groups are horribly discriminated against, especially by the governments in Vientiane and Hanoi. In fact, the situation in Vietnam was really bad.

  There are thirty-one different tribes of Montagnards ( a French word meaning “hill people”) and each has its own language, customs, and tribal mores. Malayo-Polynesian in appearance, the Montagnards live in the mountainous Central Highlands region of Vietnam along the borders of Cambodia and Laos. Many Vietnamese call them moi, which means “savage,” but in English translates to “nigger.” They use the slash-and-burn method of raising mountain rice, wear loincloths, bracelets, necklaces, and little else. They eat rats, monkeys, and other animals from the jungle.

  The Hmong are very similar, living in the mountainous jungles of Laos along the Vietnam border. Although some tribes of Montagnards are Malayo-Polynesian in their ethnic backgrounds and others are Mon-Khmer, the Laotian Hmong are actually Chinese in origin. The Chinese refer to them as mieu.

  Both groups worked extensively and became very close during the Vietnam War and the secret war in Laos with U.S. Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. With this relationship in mind, the CIA sent independent CIA contractors who were retired Special Forces into the area to unite both groups into a cohesive unit that could provide humintel (human intelligence) on VPA forces, Cong-An (the deadly Vietnamese secret police), and most important, the burgeoning al Qaeda involvement in the most mountainous areas of Laos and western Vietnam