The Phoenix

by Barry Sadler

  On the fourth day he sat on a rocky ledge and saw a French made Citroen come into the camp. Troung came out and put a suitcase in it then moved to the hut where Ho kept his office. Casey thought about it for a moment. This could be his break. If Troung was going to leave the camp, then perhaps...

  Ho walked with his trusted aide to the car. "Comrade, give my best regards to General Giap and the members of his staff. Tell them all is going according to plan and we should have positive results very soon." Into Troung's hands he placed a folder containing the names of those who had been selected for death. Troung put these in his briefcase and locked it, then handcuffed the case to his own wrist. It would not leave him till he reached Hanoi.

  The road from the camp was secure. There had never been any trouble on it and if there was there were regular strong points along the way where Troung could receive aid if needed. With Troung, Ho sent three of his best men as bodyguards. They would readily give their lives for him before they failed in the mission to protect Troung and the papers he carried.

  Troung settled into the unfamiliar luxury of the plush car seats of the Citroen. To have such a vehicle for his journey was significant of the importance of his mission. He was singularly honored to have such a responsibility entrusted to him. It was most certainly a high mark of favor. In the front seat with him were the driver on one side and one guard on the other who watched the road ahead of them on either side. Though it was a bit cramped with their weapons, behind him were the other two men who were responsible for his safety. The camp disappeared from sight in less than a minute as they rounded a curve that led into the cool shadows of overhanging trees laced with lush vines and flowers.

  Troung closed his eyes to get some badly needed sleep. There had not been much rest since they had returned. He was just in that half-asleep zone, where reality and dreams sometimes overlap, when the front of the Citroen lept into the air followed by a dull crumping noise. It took less than half a second for Troung to rally his senses and know what had taken place. A grenade had exploded. The driver of the car frantically tried to regain control of his careening vehicle as it spun out on the road and crashed into a wall of trees, driving his head through the windshield. The guard riding shotgun tried to get the door open only to have his face ripped off by a burst of automatic fire. Troung's two guards in the rear seat both hit their doors at the same time firing and rolling to try and get whoever it was that was shooting at them to reveal his position. Troung covered up, ducking down behind the seat. There were a couple of quick bursts of fire, glass blew out from the rear window, and thousands of minute shards covered the back like diamond dust. Then it was quiet. A voice made him raise his head.

  "Comrade Troung, I believe?" Troung wiped blood from his forehead amazed that he wasn't hurt and terrified of who might be speaking to him. The accent wasn't Vietnamese. A hand jerked him from the back seat and onto the road, where he stumbled over the body of one of his guards to land on his knees. He knew the others in his party were dead too. For the first time he got a good look at the face behind the voice. His bladder released itself and warm urine ran down the inside of his pants leg.

  "Don't cry little man. As you can see I'm not dead and neither are you—yet." Casey pointed the muzzle of the AK-47 at the briefcase. "What do you have in there that's so important?" Troung said nothing, just clasped the briefcase close to his thin chest.

  "Give it to me," Casey demanded.

  Troung shook, his head croaking out, "I don't have the key."

  Casey grinned evilly. "Then that is too bad for you." He kicked Troung under the chin. It was always easier to work with an unconscious patient. From his belt he took his bayonet and tested the edge with a thumb. It would do.

  Troung was found by a patrol that had heard the shots and rushed to the scene. They found only dead men and Troung lying in the dust of the road. A tourniquet around Troung's left wrist had kept him from bleeding to death. His hand and the precious briefcase with its list of targets was gone.

  By radio the nearest VC center was contacted and a truck was sent out to the site of the ambush. Troung was in a half coma, snapping out of it now and then to scream in agony at the burning in his hand. He tried to move his missing fingers but they wouldn't bend or respond to his commands. Then he'd pass out again.

  Ho had been informed by radio of what had happened. As soon as he'd got the word of Troung's ambush and the missing briefcase he'd ordered massive patrolling to find the assailant and if possible bring him back alive. But at all costs they were to recover the briefcase.

  Back at camp, Troung was unloaded with care, his body placed on a stretcher and taken to the hut which served as a dispensary for the Vietcong troops. Ho was there waiting for him with the regimental doctor he had sent for from the 126th PAVN.

  Ho bent over the stretcher. Troung was unconscious. Drawing his hand back he gave his aide a slap which could have been heard fifty meters away. The shock of the slap brought Troung's eyes half open.

  "How many ambushed you and who were they? Vietnamese or Americans? Which way did they go?"

  Troung tried to speak but his voice was weak. Bending over to place his ear by Troung's lips, Ho's eyes grew wide with disbelief. "Impossible. It could not be the same man. He was dead. Absolutely dead. It must have been someone who looked like him." Troung shook his head weakly from side to side then passed out again. Ho left Troung to the care of the doctor and went back outside to the compound and looked to the mountains surrounding his post. A cold chill ran up his spine as he felt that other eyes, pale, gray-blue eyes, were also watching him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Casey lowered the binoculars from his eyes. He would have preferred to wait a bit longer to get a clearer shot at Ho, but things had changed since he'd gotten his hands on the papers in Troung's briefcase and this was the best he could hope for right now. Gauging the distance to be about four hundred meters, he sighted downhill about two feet above Ho's head, took in the slack on the trigger and fired off a three round burst. Ho hit the dirt. One of the Russian made 7.62 rounds clipped his right shoulder. The other two only served to add impetus to his hands and feet as he scurried for cover.

  "Shit!" grumbled Casey. "If I'd had a decent Springfield or Mauser I'd have taken the son of a bitch's head off."

  From the Viet camp, return fire began to come up the hill. They didn't know exactly where he was but they could still get lucky. A mortar round exploded forty feet in front of him, sending shards of white hot shrapnel whistling through the branches of the trees. Time to get hat and get gone. He'd had his chance and blew it. Now he had to take the papers he'd gotten from Troung and get them back to Intelligence. His Vietnamese wasn't the best, but he could tell from the list of names in the documents that they were very important. He'd have to try for Ho again later.

  Colonel Ho van Tuyen was very upset. Not only had his best man been mutilated but he himself had very nearly been killed.

  "Get him!" he screamed in a combination of fright and anger.

  "Tieu' die't Nguoi ban trom!" His order to kill the sniper wasn't going to be an easy one to obey. Casey had already vacated the vicinity and was heading back east. He'd have to move carefully at least till nightfall. He'd seen the patrols being sent out and knew they'd been drawn by the sounds of his gunfire.

  Ho had his wound treated. It was painful if not serious. The bullet had burned a groove through the thin meat covering the tip of his right shoulder socket. After he had been treated he left Troung to the sometimes less than tender ministrations of the doctor and took to the hunt himself, taking his own personal bodyguards with him. He still didn't believe Troung's story that the man who had taken the Kill List was the same one they'd left for dead. He believed Troung must be suffering from shock and having hallucinations.

  Casey moved smoothly, easily through the brush and trees, letting his instincts guide his steps to take the line of least resistance. He didn't try to fight his way through. Instead he moved with the terrai
n, not rushing it. He measured himself and his strength. He had one advantage. He knew for certain which way he was going and the Viets didn't. Until he was spotted he'd have the edge.

  At the Song Cai he changed direction and headed north, rather than taking the crossing. He figured the Viets would most likely think he'd try to get across the river as fast as possible to get back to the South Vietnamese side of the border. Traveling about an hour, he found a spot to hole up in—a thick cluster of bamboo, the shoots measuring the thickness of his arm. Twisting his way inside he settled down to wait. Let the Viets run after him in the dark and wear themselves out. He'd make the river crossing after dawn and cut around them.

  Twice, before darkness fell, he heard the hunters searching for him as they spread out along the riverbank looking for any sign of their elusive prey. From behind the cluster of bamboo he watched them enter the brown waters of the Siakuang and wade over to the other side.

  Good, let them all get in front of him and he'd be at their rear. As they advanced to the east, they'd have to spread themselves thinner and thinner, making gaps between them that he should be able to slip through without too much trouble. With a sigh, he opened one of his cans of rations and dined on the meal he hated most: cold ham and lima beans.

  Concealing his body from view by burrowing deep into a nest of leaves, he slept. Near midnight, when the Southern Cross was high in the Asian sky, he woke. Lying there, he looked to the skies above him, the stars cold and distant. He listened. A thousand different sounds came to him. He heard the croaking of tree frogs and the rustle of leaves in the high trees as night creatures of a hundred shapes hunted, fed and bred in their endless cycle of life, death and procreation. Uncovering himself he rolled over, then rose slowly to his feet, his body stiff, joints cracking. Ho waited again to let his senses take in all that was around him so that he would know which things were natural and which caused by man. The briefcase in his left hand, the AK in his right, its safety off, a round in the chamber, he left the bamboo thicket and moved to the river. Lightning rumbled in the distance. Like an artillery barrage it rolled over the crest of the mountains, momentarily lighting up the horizon, then disappeared as the dark returned till the next assault. Wading into the black waters felt good. He waded deeper, keeping his weapon at the ready. At no point did the river climb above his waist, but he knew that if the rains moved this way the river could change in seconds into a raging torrent.

  On the South Vietnamese side of the river he paused, listened, used his peripheral vision to check for anything that moved in the maze of shadows that was the tree line in front of him. Nothing! With only the dull roar of his own heart beating the pulse in his temple, he moved forward in the covering shelter of the jungle. The enemy couldn't see any better at night than he could and there were more of them to make mistakes and sounds as they coughed or bumped their weapons. The going was slow. But this was no time to rush.

  Ho sat beside the only fire he permitted that night. He had made camp several kilometers behind his lead patrols. The wound in his shoulder had become quite painful and had made him a bit feverish. Legs crossed in front of him, he went over a map of the area. The map, like most of those available, was less than complete, even though he had painstakingly hand drawn in many of the terrain features himself. It was hard to concentrate and he was furious. His men had found no sign of the sniper. From radio reports he didn't think that a helicopter could have come in and extricated him. He had to be somewhere in the vicinity. In the morning he would send out to the Montagnard villagers for trackers. He still had patrols out on every trail he knew of, though there were always some approaches that only the natives knew, but he would find those too. The heat thunder from the heights was no comfort to him. It mocked him as if it were the voices of the "Than Tien," the spirits of the mountains. His shoulder throbbed and he was tired, but he couldn't sleep. He had to get that list back. It was a matter of honor, not that he really cared that much if the enemy found out that some of them were marked for death. That might even help in his battle for their minds. True, it could make some of the kills a bit more difficult, but for those he could always select alternate targets. He was not a man who was completely rigid in his thinking. To be adaptable to changing circumstances was always a most admirable trait, and he did certainly consider himself to be an admirable man in all respects. But he would have the swine who shot him, even if it meant going into MACY headquarters for him. He would find out who it was that had dared to come so far into a country that he, Ho, considered his personal domain.

  Casey stopped for a breather to gather his bearings. During this interval he took enough time to slip the briefcase handle through his belt so it would hang at his back bumping into his butt and leaving both his hands free.

  From a ridge Casey saw the glow of a camp fire over the trees, a reddish light that waved and moved.

  "Shit!" he grumbled to himself. He would have to pass close to the camp if he was going to get clear. This was the most critical junction, where winding tortured valleys and gorges turned back on themselves into a maze. If he varied from his course, it might take days to correct. He would have to go straight on. Still, it might not present too much of a problem. The Charlies were probably looking for him far to the front. If he was careful he'd most likely be able to get by them without being spotted.

  Moving carefully, as silent as possible, he placed one foot in front of the other on the thin animal trail that served as a road through the jungle. Holding the AK-47 in front of him, he tried to gauge the distance he'd advanced against that to the camp fire. He'd lost sight of the red glow since he'd entered the forest. The smell of wood smoke drifted to him. He could still be a hundred meters away or two hundred; he couldn't tell. But whatever the distance was it was now time to get off the trail. This close to them it would be wishful thinking to imagine they didn't have any sentries set out. He didn't like having to move through the thick brush off the trail, but he had no choice. It would take a lot longer but it was safer.

  The next hundred meters took him nearly an hour to travel. Every step he was forced to push or duck under vines and branches, several times getting on his hands and knees to crawl beneath the thick interwoven branches of thickets. Sweat poured from every pore, his mouth sticky and foul tasting. If he'd been able to see, salt sweat would have blinded him. But as it was, he could see nothing. Only his instincts led him in the right direction. The smell of smoke became stronger. He could hear voices speaking normally. He was quite close to the camp. Closer than he'd wanted to be. He decided to take a chance and crawled closer to the sound of the voices.

  From where he lay under the cover of a thick clump of brush at the edge of a small clearing, he could see the Viet camp. There were three men sitting by the fire, and barely visible on the far side of the camp he could make out at least two more men walking the perimeter of the clearing. There would be others nearby. He started to pull back, scuttling his legs and arms in reverse. Then he froze. He had pulled back just far enough under the bush to where he couldn't see anything. Footsteps crackling on leaves and twigs had stopped his retreat.

  Ho grunted in pain as his shoulder moved when he undid the zipper of his khaki trousers. The night was warm but not overly so. It would get worse before the monsoons came. He was still thinking of the monsoons when he emptied his bladder on the bush at the edge of his camp.

  The sudden unexpected shower of hot urine on his back caused a spontaneous grunt from Casey, He was caught! Jumping to his feet to stand in the middle of the bush he tried to get his AK-47 raised up to at least hip level where he could spray the camp and the son of bitch who'd just taken a leak on his back.

  Both stared at each other in surprise. The light of the camp fire clearly showed Casey's face. The scar, running from his eye to the corner of his mouth, looked even deeper than Ho remembered it being. Ho let loose of his now shriveled organ as it reacted on its own accord and tried to retreat back up into his groin. Casey cursed at the brush wh
ich kept him from being able to raise the assault rifle up high enough for him to at least kill the man in front of him. It was almost as big a shock to him when he made out the features of Ho. He hadn't been able to see at first, because the light of the camp fire was behind the Viet.

  Ho screamed like a wounded pig and hit the ground, his fly still open and his shriveled organ getting badly scratched as he crawled on his belly away from the bush. His cries brought the sentries. Casey swore at them, dropped back down in the brush to his knees and at last let loose with a long hosing burst of full automatic fire that knocked the kneecaps off one of the Viets and slowed the others down. He broke free of the bush and began to run as fast as he could, ignoring the whipping lashes of thorn vines and brush that tore at his clothes and flesh.

  Bursts of machine gun fire rattled after him ripping gouges out of tree trunks. He hit the trail by accident. This time he made no effort to get off of it. Running as fast as his legs would take him, lungs heaving, he rounded a bend to find he was running through the center of a VC outpost. His AK took out two guards. Both had been kneeling behind an RPD light machine gun set up behind a log facing east. As he cleared the log, several shots came from his rear as the pursuing Viets tried to close the gap. Running till he could hear no more sounds of anyone on his trail he slowed to where his heart, after threatening to leave his chest, finally eased back to a mere chest crushing throb.

  Ho was in a near state of shock. Troung had not been having hysterical delusions. The man who had cut off his hand was the one they had killed. No! Ho had it wrong. Ho wasn't a superstitious peasant. He was an educated man who knew better. If the scar-faced sergeant was still alive, then it was only because he hadn't died and they had not really killed him. There had been many men who had survived wounds that looked to be fatal. Still he had looked awfully dead. Trying to reconcile what he knew against what he had seen was too much. Ho gave it up. To continue that line of thought would only lead to madness. It was enough that the scar-faced one might still be alive, but if so, he would see to it that the mistake would soon be corrected.