LeBlonde held up a leather carrying case, “to check each brick of opium to ensure it’s real, and then line up the bricks in stacks of five and sprinkle on the powder. I want a picture taken of the piles of opium with the 35mm provided in your packs.
Destroy the camera and bring back only the film. By the way, a little of the powder goes a long way, so you don’t have to put a lot on the stacks of opium-base bricks.” LeBlonde lit a fresh cigar and looked over the burning tobacco at Paul.
“We’ve had a small setback, but I think you can handle it. We can’t extract you from your mission area—you’ll have to walk out to the Special Forces camp at Lang Vei.” He looked over at Mills for a reaction and then back at Paul.
Lieutenant Bourne packed the canister of powder and the test kit into his rucksack. “You and your people have done an excellent job preparing us for this mission and I want you to know that we appreciate it.” Paul held his hand out for LeBlonde to shake.
The agent took the offered hand and grabbed the lieutenant around the shoulder with his free arm. LeBlonde was showing emotion.
Four sleek Cobra gunships lined the ocean side of the PSP helipad and two Huey slicks were parked in the center. The black stepvan stopped between the two passenger choppers and the rear doors flew open. What looked like a North Vietnamese squad exited the vehicle and scrambled into the waiting American helicopters. One of the door gunners did a double take when he saw the team. He had been told not to be alarmed over who they were transporting, but the NVA-looking Special Forces team had caught him off guard. The pilot’s voice coming over the intercom system calmed the young soldier. Paul slid backward onto the steel deck of the slick, leaving his rucksack on. He sat in a crossed-leg position and smiled over at the door gunner.
The thick jungle was abnormally quiet once the helicopters had dropped off the special team and disappeared almost instantly from sight. Paul ran toward the protective shelter of a bamboo thicket, followed closely by his team. The men zigzagged around the low branches and vanished in the dark foliage. Paul dropped down on one knee and removed his lensatic compass from its nylon case attached to his shoulder harness. He shot an azimuth and touched Mauk on his shoulder, nodded, and pointed in the direction he wanted to go. The team automatically took their assigned places in the short battle column behind the pointman. Very few words would be spoken; hand 49
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signals would be used until they reached the prearranged meeting spot in the jungle three days away. Mauk slid through the undergrowth like one of the wild animals it concealed. The farther they moved away from the insertion site, the more the jungle began to regain its normal sounds.
The next forty-eight hours of travel produced very little action for the team, with the exception of two small North Vietnamese patrols that had passed them on a hidden jungle trail that led south. The enemy soldiers had talked in loud voices, which told Paul that they felt secure and didn’t suspect any danger.
Lieutenant Bourne halted his team and checked his map to make sure they were at the right location. Huge boulders covered with jungle vines and small plants dominated the clearing. Paul nodded reassuringly to Mills and motioned for the team to travel in a spiraling circle around the spacious dealing where they were to meet the warlords. Paul had pushed his team hard through the jungle so that they would arrive a whole day early at the site. He wanted to ensure that his team was the first party at the meeting place, in order to guard against an ambush or betrayal. There was the possibility that the warlords would kill the special American team and take the money. The NVA would be blamed for the act, and they could sell the opium base at a premium price to the South Vietnamese generals. Paul wasn’t going to take that chance. A small freshwater stream appeared near the far edge of the clearing and Paul led his team up it for a few hundred meters before he raised his hand to halt. A natural pile of vine-covered boulders had forced the stream to change directions, but also made a natural landmark. Paul removed his rucksack and took out the small packets of gold coins. The rest of his team followed his lead and stacked their gold next to Paul’s. The Special Forces lieutenant used hand signals to tell Mills to take the team back downstream while he hid the gold coins in a crevice of the rock formation. Paul constantly kept an eye out for cobras while he worked in the natural hunting grounds of the deadly snakes.
Dusk was beginning to change the jungle undergrowth when Paul rejoined his waiting team from a different direction than they had taken from the rock formation. He selected locations in the jungle surrounding the ren-dezvous site for his team to take up hiding places, and helped camouflage each of them so that they blended perfectly with the jungle setting. Paul was impressed with the Meo tribesmen, who had blended perfectly with Paul and Mills as a team. They had worked together as if they had trained as a team for months instead of just a few days. Paul finished camouflaging Sergeant Mills, and then found himself a nice open spot in the clearing next to a flat rock where all of his men had a clear view of him. Paul leaned his back against a small boulder and waited.
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Morning broke quickly through the jungle once it had decided to make its appearance. The hours had passed slowly for Paul during the very long night of waiting in the nearly total darkness of the nighttime jungle. He had taken three amphetamine tablets from his pill vial in order to stay awake. A hunting tiger had coughed earlier in the evening from the far side of the clearing, which had kept him alert until the very early morning hours.
A troop of monkeys passed through the tree tops around noon and stopped to feed two hundred meters south of Paul’s position. Around mid-afternoon, the troop leader paused in the act of turning over a rock and sounded a warning to his females. The clearing emptied of scrambling monkeys as they scurried for safety in the tall trees. The jungle quieted to the north of Paul’s position, alerting him. Paul placed his thumb on the selector switch of his CAR-15 and waited as the jungle around him stopped making its natural sounds. The insects on the edge of the clearing were the last to become quiet as the circle of silence closed in around him. The warlords had arrived in exactly the manner Paul had guessed they would, coming from all directions at the same time. Paul eased the air out between his teeth in silent relief for having had the foresight to hide his team and bury the gold coins. A quick movement caught his eye near Mills’s position, and then fifty armed men appeared simultaneously in the clearing surrounding Paul’s rocky location. The band carried weapons covering a dozen different countries—from American Thompson submachine guns to French MAT-49s and Russian AK-47s. Paul even saw a Swedish K over the shoulder of one of the rear guards. He hated to think of the ammunition resupply problems that warlords had. Paul’s combat eye quickly noticed that the men carrying the American and French weapons held the guns as if the feel was uncomfortable. Paul stepped down from his low rock ledge with his CAR-15 off-safety and pointed down slightly at the ground, just enough to be polite, but ready. A tall Frenchman stepped out from his concealed position at the edge of the jungle catching Paul slightly off guard. The Frenchman smiled, using only half of his mouth.
“You have come here alone? Yes?” He glanced around the clearing as if he were waiting for men to emerge from under the rocks.
“I come here alone, no.” Paul returned the Frenchman’s half-smile.
“Where are your people?” The tall man, kept glancing around the clearing past his own men.
“I’ll conduct whatever business there is between us . . . alone.” Paul’s mind began receiving danger signals from many different sources.
“You are too untrusting for one so . . . young.” The man looked deeply into Paul’s eyes, trying to size him up quickly. “We must trade quickly or the People’s Army will come here.”
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The Frenchman allowed a small chuckle to slip through his lips. “The opium base is here . . .” He raised his hand and a portion of the jungle parted, letting a packtrain pass into the clearing. Sixteen horses were visible within a few minutes. “You take the opium and give me the ten million dollars promised us.” He nodded to one of his lieutenants and then looked back at Paul. “I hope you have followed our instructions and bundled the hundred-dollar bills in twenty-thousand-dollar packets.”
Lieutenant Bourne’s suspicions were confirmed. He didn’t know what had happened to the warlords, but he knew that someone had probably paid with their life to set the Frenchman up. “First, have your men unload the horses and place the opium bricks in rows five high . . . and I’ll take you to the money.”
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders and smiled, mostly to himself. He spoke in fluent Vietnamese to the men standing near the horses and they began unloading their cargo. Paul walked back to the rock formation that he had been hiding near and recovered from his rucksack the test kit and the canisters LeBlonde had given him. The black opium bricks had been laid out in long lines next to the horses as he had requested when he returned. Paul spot-checked different bricks to ensure they were opium base and then, quickly, before the Frenchman realized what was going on, he opened one of the canisters with the blade of his Randall knife and walked back down the line sprinkling the powder on the opium. Paul remembered as he was walking fast what LeBlonde had said about a little of the stuff going a long way.
Bourne stopped in front of the Frenchman and grinned. “I have your money hidden back in the jungle . . . if you’re ready.” He watched the expression on the European’s face when smoke started on the tops of the piles in little wisps and then turned into columns as the chemical reaction destroyed the opium. The muscles around the Frenchman’s mouth tightened when he realized what Paul had done.
“Why did you do that?”
“It’s mine . . . right?” Bourne raised the barrel slightly on his CAR-15, expecting trouble to start. “I can’t take it with me . . . so I destroyed it. Come on and get your money.” Paul turned on his heels and started walking toward the jungle. If they were going to kill him it would be after the Frenchman got his money. He couldn’t afford to lose both the opium and the money or the North Vietnamese would kill him. Paul could almost feel the eyes burning against his back with hate.
“Are you coming?”
The Frenchman nodded to one of his bodyguards and started after Paul.
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slipped the safety off his AK-47. Paul stopped near a huge tree when they were halfway to where the money had been stashed.
“I’ve got a bad case of dysentery . . . I’ll be right back . . .” Paul didn’t wait for a reply and reached for his belt buckle as he left the trail.
Laughter followed Paul into the jungle when the Frenchman translated what he had said to the bodyguard. Paul pulled his .22-caliber silenced pistol from its hidden holster and quietly slipped around the far side of the tree trunk. The bodyguard was squatting ten feet up the trail from the Frenchman.
Paul shot him in the back of the head and watched as the guard slumped down. The Frenchman’s eyes were riveted to the spot of the jungle where Paul had disappeared. The lieutenant stepped out from his hiding place with his pistol leveled at the enemy’s surprised face.
“If you touch your rifle . . . you’re one dead commie!” Paul reached out and grabbed the folding-stock AK-47 the Frenchman had rested on the trail next to him and threw it out into the jungle. The pistol in the holster at the man’s side followed his rifle seconds later.
Paul pushed against the communist leader’s back. “Move!”
The pace the lieutenant set down the trail had the Frenchman gasping for breath in a matter of minutes. Paul grabbed the man’s collar to stop him and then pushed him into a thicket. The enemy fell down on the bamboo leaves and gasped for breath. It was obvious he wasn’t a field soldier.
“What happened to the warlords who were supposed to meet me?”
“How . . . how . . . did you know about me?”
“Only a fucking commie would ever refer to the NVA as the People’s Army . . . that was your first fuck-up . . .” Paul leveled the pistol in his hand at the man’s left eye. “Answer my fucking question!”
“Please . . . they forced me to help them . . . After the French Army was defeated and my outpost was captured . . . I had to help them or die!”
The Frenchman’s voice carried a whining tone but failed to convince Paul of his sincerity. I’ve been waiting for a chance to escape from them!
Now that you have liberated me, I can tell you Americans many things about the NVA!” Paul moved the tip of his silencer against the Frenchman’s ear. “Please!” The man was scared and knew that his life was in jeopardy.
“How many men did you bring with you?” Paul listened to the jungle sounds around him.
“We were supposed to meet up with you and get the money and then ki—I mean, capture, your unit. The opium was supposed to have been returned. You know they will kill me for allowing you to destroy it.” The Frenchman had been talking so fast that he had to pause to breathe.
“Who are they?”
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“General Ho Van Duc. He is the one who tortured the information about this meeting from the warlords.”
Lieutenant Bourne was glad that one of the warlords had taken his revenge by giving the North Vietnamese general bad information. “You still haven’t answered my question—how many soldiers did you bring with you?”
“I brought one of my companies . . . 120 men . . . The remainder of the battalion is bivouacked two thousand meters away.” The Frenchman nodded his head in the direction of his unit.
Paul had extracted enough information from the NVA battalion commander to make a run for the border with the majority of the enemy unit to his west. Paul hoped that his team members had observed enough at the ren-dezvous site to make it to one of their prearranged assembly points.
The soft hiss was the only noise coming from the pistol when Paul pulled the trigger. The copper-coated bullet entered behind the Frenchman’s left ear and came out of his right eye socket. Paul searched the man’s clothes and removed his wallet and some folded papers from a side pocket. He placed the end of his pistol up against the Frenchman’s heart and fired three more shots as a coup de grace.
The sun had set when Lieutenant Bourne stopped for his first break since leaving the dead Frenchman. He was headed for Co Roc Mountain, which he had designated as the last assembly area for his team in the event that any of them became separated from the main body. Paul scanned the jungle from his prone position, trying to find a suitable tree in which to spend the night. He forced himself to stand on his exhausted legs and continued heading west. He spotted the perfect tree just as the last rays of light filtered through the thick growth. The tree had a big fork twenty feet off the ground, which would hold him with room to spare. Paul slung his CAR-15 over his back and climbed the tree trunk using small branches for footholds. He removed his rucksack and wedged it in the fork of the tree for a backrest. Leaves had filled part of the hol-low formed by the joining of the two huge branches, making a natural mattress that needed only to be checked for snakes and scorpions before being used.
Paul placed his CAR-15 against the tree and stretched out in his nest. He took a deep breath and relaxed, allowing his eyes to wander down to the base of the tree and lock on the face of a huge tiger that was looking up at him.
There wasn’t a sound from either of them as Paul realized that the tiger had been stalking h
im. The two natural adversaries stared at each other for a long minute, both of them. knowing that Paul was safe in the tree nest and had the advantage. The tiger emitted a low rumbling sound from deep in his throat and vanished into the shadows. Paul blinked his eyes and leaned forward from his perch. He wondered if his eyes had been playing tricks on him, but he was too tired to think much about the subject before he fell asleep.
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A loud pathetic scream woke Paul with a start that almost had him falling out of the tree. The tiger had made a kill, probably a small forest deer. Paul pulled the piece of green cloth tape off the crystal of his watch and read the luminous hands—fifteen minutes after three. He replaced the tape and felt with his hand in the total darkness for the side pocket on his rucksack. He removed the canteen and a small vial of salt tablets. Paul’s whole body ached from the severe workout he had had the day before, trying to break through the thick undergrowth of the jungle. He needed salt or his legs would cramp up. Paul replaced his canteen and lay back wide awake, and started plotting the new day’s course of action. He figured he would reach Co Roc Mountain sometime during the late afternoon if he got an early start and didn’t run into too many thickets of new bamboo. He planned on waiting at Co Roc for a half day to see if the rest of his team would show up, and then strike out on his own for the Lang Vei Special Forces Camp. The NVA would surely have patrols searching the jungle for him by morning and would probably be using tracker dogs. Paul grinned when he thought about the big tiger that had been tracking him, It would be funny when the dogs hit the cat’s spoor.
Daylight crept through the jungle canopy in fine slivers of soft light. Paul checked the ground carefully before he lowered himself nervously to the jungle floor. The kill the tiger had made during the night should have satisfied the animal’s hunger, but Paul was still very cautious just in case the cat’s lair was nearby and it decided he was encroaching. The fear of the beast’s tracking him without his slightest awareness the day before was fresh in Paul’s mind. He had to remain very alert traveling alone in the jungle. Fear had its good point, especially in keeping survival senses working at peak levels.
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