Red Flags

by Juris Jurjevics

  I jabbed earthward. Bennett nodded and spoke into his mike. The pilot signaled his assent. The helicopter dipped and slowly spiraled down. The warrant officers set the Huey down right on the road, raising a storm of dirt and small stones. Five of us jumped off. The pilot barely decreased the rotations and the downdraft pummeled us with grit. Bennett and I approached the disabled truck warily while Macquorcadale and the others secured the perimeter. The windshield and cab were riddled with bullets. A shot-up tire smoldered. The gaping entrance wounds and the large exit holes were undoubtedly made by the nasty, spiraling rounds from Kalashnikovs.

  The roadbed had been hastily swept in two separate places to cover tracks. A few feet off the road, both spots showed a mass of boot prints. Several hundred NVA had crossed in two files and disappeared into the heavy growth along the stream.

  "Maybe the driver refused to stop," I said.

  "Or the ARVN escort panicked," said Bennett. "I would have thought a safe conduct came with the logging deal."

  "Maybe the People's Army hadn't gotten the word or wasn't interested. Or just didn't want to leave any witnesses to who was marching through, or how many, or what direction they were going."

  The pilot signaled us back aboard but I needed a closer look. I motioned toward the load. Bennett nodded and took up a position facing away, rifle stock braced. I jumped up on the truck bed and touched the thick raw timbers, three feet across, freshly sawed and aromatic. Mahogany. The bottom timbers were cut in half lengthwise, the flat halves face-down on the bed to make a steadier platform for the ones piled on top and chained to the rig. The two topmost logs had skidded off and lay half on the truck, half off. They'd been cut in two lengthwise and rejoined. One log lay open, its innards filled with coarsely wrapped packages: a hollowed-out container for contraband.

  The loggers were smuggling raw opium, probably had been all along. The wooden debris I'd seen floating on the current in the Katu River was man-made: the transfer point for the opium was a sawmill. Madame Chinh's loggers. I ripped open a package and pulled out two wrapped bricks of raw opium, tossed one to Bennett, and shoved the other in a thigh pocket.

  The only two roads in or out of the province, 7 and 2, crisscrossed each other at Cheo Reo. The opium was undoubtedly loaded onto the truck somewhere along the lower leg of 7 and driven southeast toward its junction with National Highway 1, which continued south to Saigon and the refineries in the Cholon District. The bank deposits to the Hong Kong accounts were never interrupted because the real traffic never faltered. If we had disrupted their marijuana harvest and singed a few poppies, we'd done nothing to the mainstay of their opium trade.

  It wasn't safe to investigate further. Bennett ordered Macquorcadale to puncture the gas tank, opened a jerry can of gasoline and splashed the logs, then threw two cans of motor oil atop the pile. I took a jar from the cab, spilled its contents on the road, refilled it with sawdust and gasoline, stuck a sock over the mouth, and set fire to it. I hurled the jar at the rig. The bark and exposed flanks caught instantly. We ran to the chopper. The gas tank went up before we left the ground, sending a thick plume of smoke rising toward the layer of black cloud cover.

  I typed an encrypted message to Jessup telling him to have our MPs stop all rigs hauling timber south on National Highway 1, toward Saigon. That door would shut in hours.

  I went to find Big John and let him know that we'd discovered—and sealed off—the land route. He wasn't in our room, but I could hear him yelling. He was in the colonel's office, berating both Bennett and Major Gidding. I tiptoed into the outer bullpen and suggested to the civilian interpreter that he go for a smoke. Slight and sensitive, Mr. Cho looked grateful to escape Big John's disturbing volume. Checkman volunteered to go too.

  "You don't smoke," I said.

  "Neither does Mr. Cho."

  "Go." I sat at Checkman's desk in the cramped bullpen, listening to Big John vent his wrath on Major Gidding.

  "Siphoning our gasoline. Selling staples in volume at Chinh's wife's market. Sweet Jesus, the wife of a full colonel in the South Vietnamese Army is facilitating the resupply of the North Vietnamese Army under our noses. He's practically provisioning their rest-and-recuperation spas in the mountains, providing them with a rear staging area for whatever offensives they're planning ... planning against us all."

  "I seriously doubt the Chinhs are even sympathizers," Gidding said. "He's too much the capitalist, as is she."

  "Oh, for—who cares about their motives or politics," Ruchevsky snapped. "What difference does that make? The result's the same, Major. NVA bellies are getting filled, NVA ammo replenished. And— surprise!—Chinh refuses to send out patrols against his best customers."

  "That's pure supposition," Gidding spat. "He's only got four hundred soldiers. The NVA number in the thousands at the moment. He's simply being prudent and conserving his forces." He turned to the colonel. "If he goes, do we really think another province chief would behave any differently?"

  "I hope to God," Ruchevsky fumed.

  "Where does it stop?" Bennett said, genuinely torn. "Madame Chinh sells a license to log hardwoods, that's not our business. But I saw what was traveling inside those logs."

  There was a thump. He had dropped the brick of raw opium on the desk to show John and Gidding.

  "She's selling licenses to dope smugglers."

  "Sir, we're not here to reform their system. We're expected to go along and get along—give them support in their fight and keep out of the way. We've got too much on our plate to become narcotics agents on top of it."

  He shifted his attention to John.

  "Look," Gidding said. "We're in Viet Nam by invitation. On their sufferance—Chinh's sufferance. We're here as advisers, not Chinh's superiors. As far as we're concerned, Chinh operates with impunity. I can't rein him in or order his men into the field. Neither can the colonel. We're not Saigon, we're not General Loc up in Two Corps. Their private undertakings are their business. They're none of yours."

  I got up and stood quietly in the doorway.

  Ruchevsky banged the desk. "My business is to protect your backs and ferret out Commies in the population, not local corruption. But Chinh's side ventures are lending significant aid and comfort to the enemy. And that is very much my goddamn concern, Major."

  Gidding looked annoyed. "We all know Vietnamese military and civil servants aren't properly compensated. It's made exploitation of one's position part of the cultural norm."

  "Cultural norm, my ass."

  "We do not have operational control," Gidding said slowly, enunciating each word. He leaned across the desk toward Bennett to plead his case to his superior. "This isn't Schweinfurt, sir. Or Seoul. We don't have authority over their officers or officials. It's their military, their country. We can't very well impose our will or our values."

  "Well, maybe we should start," Ruchevsky said sharply. "His customers are killing us, if you haven't noticed."

  "I was speaking to the colonel."

  "I'm speaking to you."

  The colonel tried to calm them down but Ruchevsky wasn't listening.

  "I'm risking my ass for nothing going out there," he said, "gathering intel for air strikes on a bunch of fucking Houdinis. I came here to tell you I just got the follow-up on the last sortie, and whaddya know—we destroyed another shitload of trees and jungle. Our actions against the enemy are being undermined because Cheo Reo's leaking and the enemy is anticipating our every move."

  Gidding shook his head in disbelief. "So Pleiku's not leaking? Saigon's not? You have proof it's all only spilling out of Cheo Reo? Or is this more conjecture?"

  "Oh, I'm sure Chinh draws the line at selling information," John said sarcastically. "Food, sure. Gasoline, why not? Beams for NVA bunkers? No problem. But intel, absolutely not. No doubt his code of honor forbids it." Ruchevsky glared. "You know what, Gidding? You're—"

  "Gentlemen," Bennett said, rising to his feet.

  "—full of seepage."

  Giddi
ng bristled. Ruchevsky barged through the bullpen, slamming the screen door as he exited. I ran out to catch up with him.

  "That fucking Gidding," he fumed, walking across the quad.

  "It's a nutty war," I said, trying to calm John down. "ARVN selling ordnance that gets shot back at them—and us."

  "We're supplying all sides in this mess," John said. He fired up a wooden match to light his stogie. "The latest? ARVN keeps reordering and reordering this rubbery plastic from DuPont for military boot soles—more boot goo than they've got feet, it turns out. The VC scarf up the shipments and combine the goop with USAID fertilizer to make a high explosive. And guess who's been selling it to them?"

  I felt a pang of pessimism. The corruption seemed overwhelming and impossible to stop. Making a killing was taking on a whole new meaning for me.

  "Here," Ruchevsky said, and pulled a black-and-white glossy from a manila envelope: a peacock displaying its plumage in a huge fan.

  "What's this?"

  "The wages of sin—Chinh's hacienda. One of the exotic pets running around Colonel Chihuahua's garden in Saigon. He's got miniature deer too. And ponies for his kids."

  A wide shot of the residence showed an ornate French-era mansion and outbuildings surrounded by a high brick fence topped with broken glass. Hand-printed at the bottom was an address in an exclusive district in the capital.

  "Little John's best informant says the Chinhs are looking at land around Dalat for a mountain retreat near Madame Nhu's old place."

  "Damn, I'm in the wrong army."

  Mr. Cho's elegant gray head poked around the corner of the mess hall.

  "Mr. Cho?"

  He'd undoubtedly heard us. I sent him scurrying back to the office.

  "So you heard how the opium's getting to Saigon?" I whispered.

  John nodded. "Chinh's going to be more than a little annoyed when he finds out you've got MPs shutting down the route." Ruchevsky closed an eye against his cigar smoke. "And I'm looking forward to Lund finding out you're putting an end to his pension plan. You light up a couple of fields and suddenly there's a few extra wires in your field phone. I'm not liking your odds of survival once the MPs start confiscating those logs."

  Checkman called me back into the bullpen. Lieutenant Lovell stood nervously in a corner of Bennett's little office. Sergeant Divivo had reported by radio that the ARVN company he advised was refusing to go out on a sweep in spite of all the mounting evidence of enemy strength increasing and drawing nearer. They wouldn't budge, citing the danger of nearby Communist forces. The rifle company was about to be dismissed.

  "ARVN is completely intransigent," Bennett said. "Looks like we've got to put out patrols ourselves. Immediately. Captain Rider, take six men. Patrol a radius of three kilometers, looping northwest from Cheo Reo. Do a cloverleaf. Lieutenant Lovell, take a second patrol and loop a cloverleaf south. I'll go up with Major Hopp and we'll recon a twenty-klick circle around Cheo Reo."

  I picked Sergeant Divivo, Rowdy for my radioman, and four off-duty perimeter guards, ordering them to stand ready in forty minutes, each man carrying a day's rations and four hundred rounds, every round of the first magazine a tracer. If we got into a fight I wanted an initial fusillade of screaming red. We'd fire blind and split. It wasn't brilliant but I'd seen it work: blast away like crazy and disengage. As in run like hell.

  Cheo Reo's artillery battery would be of no use to us. We'd be on our own, except for whatever air assets might divert to help us. "Leftovers," Miser called them: warplanes coming off of missions with unused ordnance.

  The Vietnamese sentries at the checkpoint on Road 7 watched us march past. One soldier squatted over a live duck, blade in hand; another lounged in a hammock. Others leaned on the sandbag walls piled chest-high around the roadblock, smoking as we trudged by.

  We marched three kilometers and left the track to move west through scrub, counting off three hundred yards before turning back toward town. Avoiding trails, we patrolled cross-country, rifles up. My map indicated a Montagnard village less than a klick ahead. A hundred yards farther on we came upon a six-year-old youngster straddling a huge water buffalo wallowing in a mud hole. Just beyond him were the village longhouses. Young palm trees marked the community's borders. I led the patrol through, stopping to souvenir the chief an extra pack of cigarettes and try out the few words of Rhade I knew.

  I asked if he had seen northern troops or Viet Cong. The chief said the VC had been there propagandizing. I didn't know how to ask him how long ago. I'd run out of vocabulary.

  Near a stream fenced across with bamboo and clogged with fish traps, we came across a mass of footprints on a path. A large group wearing NVA boots. The impressions were less than a day old. Two klicks from Cheo Reo. NVA units were maneuvering that close, totally unchallenged, in mortar range.

  I broke off our route and turned the patrol around to head out at an angle from the way we'd come. Three thousand strides farther, another village appeared on a rolling ridge above a river tributary. No children, no women—young or old. No men. Divivo pointed out branches laid across paths leading into the village, meaning they weren't receiving visitors. The village stood empty, weaving looms and threshing abandoned, cooking fires smoking in the longhouses. No one in the gardens or by the river. They'd hidden from us. All except the little boys herding buffalo in mud holes. They stood like birds, motionless on the large wallowing beasts. I wondered aloud why these kids had stayed at their posts.

  "Lookouts," Divivo said.

  "For the villagers?"

  "Or the VC. You never know."

  We passed by quickly, worried about being in the open, and forded a wide coil of river that came up to our waists. Crossing, I took the opportunity to pee in my clothes without stopping. What looked like a huge dead fish floated by.

  "Body," Divivo said, as we pressed on, the younger men wincing at the sight.

  We made two more loops, seeing signs of more booted traffic and the marks made by sampans beached on the bank. They'd bivouacked near the boats. No fires.

  "You think it might be ARVN, sir?" a private asked quietly.

  "I wish."

  On the fourth loop our flanker stumbled on a shallow grave. We excavated enough of it to see three Montagnard men, hands still tied behind them, all recently slain by hard blows that had caved in the backs of their heads. Persuasion had given way to ultimatum.

  "Poor bastards," Divivo said and crossed himself.

  Rowdy offered me the handset. I waved him off. I didn't want to take the time to call in anything in the open or stop to encode a message. VC were undoubtedly monitoring our frequencies. The less aware they were of where we were and what we were finding, the better. If we didn't make it back, that would be message enough. I ordered Rowdy not to acknowledge calls with more than a click on his handset.

  We covered the bodies again, dropped everything but our water and ammunition, and made straight for home base, praying all the way we wouldn't bump into the people's liberators maneuvering through the jungle and scrub around us.

  Joe Parks was waiting at the front gate. He took the enlisted off to debrief while Lovell took me and Sergeant Divivo to the colonel. Major Gidding joined us. It didn't take long to give them the bad news. Gidding grew agitated. I asked about the latest alerts from II Corps.

  "The NVA are on the move," he said, "maneuvering in large numbers. Two Corps is betting Pleiku City is one objective. NVA deployed to their south along Road Fourteen in blocking positions. They're expecting the road to their north will get cut next. Other enemy units are moving in the opposite direction, southeast—toward us. Road Seven is already blocked with trenches dug across; two small bridges were blown."

  Bennett nodded. "I've got to light a fire under the ARVN battalion. Face Chinh down. Press him to take immediate action. Our Special Forces camps are at risk. So are we and Chinh's battalion."

  "Not really," I said. "Our South Vietnamese neighbors seem to have an understanding with the enemy."

&nb
sp; Major Gidding bridled. "That's an ill-considered comment, Captain. You and John Ruchevsky seem determined to undo every bit of what we've achieved here."

  "Gentlemen," Bennett said, "we don't have time for this. I need to see Colonel Chinh, right now."

  "You want us to come, sir?" the major asked.

  "A show of unity and concern?" Bennett said. "It's a thought. God knows, private talks haven't done anything for us."

  "The more the merrier at this point, no?" Gidding said.

  Bennett gathered himself to his full height. "Maybe not just yet. We'll keep it respectful. Captain Rider and Private Checkman will accompany me. Major, secure the compound in the meantime. Radio me any further news of enemy movement."

  The parade ground in front of the ARVN battalion office was empty. Checkman asked some officers where to find the province chief. Colonel Chinh, they said, was in his quarters.

  We drove across the bare parade field, not a blade of grass on it, not so much as a weed, and pulled up next to the officers' billet, a refurbished French colonial residence circled by a wide veranda. A pair of bloody elephant tusks, freshly harvested, stuck out of an empty metal drum in front. We mounted three steps up to the porch and entered. Each officer had an individual room off a long, wide hallway, with a common mess at the end. On the far side of the dining hall we came upon Chinh's valet, who led us down a short corridor into the colonel's sitting room. Not much by way of décor: a faded couch, an armchair, a Ping-Pong table, a cloisonné vase on a teak stand. No wall decorations whatsoever, no pictures of the family or anyone else. The manservant led us through to the back veranda, where Chinh stood, espresso cup in hand, leaning close to his caged songbird, which fluttered and warbled as we approached.

  Bennett didn't even apologize for the intrusion and wasted no time pressing Chinh about the lack of patrols and the cancellation of the day's sweep. Chinh remained in a benign mood as he contemplated the vista of the Cheo Reo basin and the mountains in the distance. He dismissed the valet and addressed us in a pleasant tone, Checkman translating.