by Ian Slater
“Why,” General Vinh asked, “cannot the American carrier planes bombard the rail yards at Ningming?”
“Politics, General,” Freeman answered. “The White House categorically forbids any bombardment in China proper. They don’t want to risk the war spreading any further than it has already.”
“Is that the U.S. decision or the U.N. mandate?” inquired Vinh’s political officer.
“Does it matter?” Freeman asked them. “Whoever’s mandate it is, I’d get fired if I authorized beyond the border bombing. Only thing we’re allowed to do is send out patrols when our positions on this side of the border line are threatened.”
The political officer looked nonplussed. “But the planes from your carrier, they are allowed to bomb the northern side of the hill. It is very close to the border.”
“Yes,” Freeman said. “But our flyboys’ll be able to drop their ordnance just where we want it.”
“And what if some bombs land beyond the border?”
Cline held up his hands. “One or two won’t start an international crisis.”
“Exactly,” Freeman concurred.
Vinh had such a determination about him that Freeman in private was starting to refer to him as the “bulldog.”
“What will happen if your Special Forces are discovered sabotaging the Ningming-Dong Dang line? That would be considered by your White House and the U.N. as ‘in China’ surely?”
“Our Special Forces won’t be caught,” Freeman reassured him. “USVUN teams I’ll send in will be made up of crack American and British commandos. Special Air Service from Britain, Delta Force from us. They’ll go in NOE — choppers, nap of the earth flying. It’ll be drop in, set charges, and get out. Low and fast, General.”
Vinh nodded. “And what about this—” He momentarily forgot the English phrase he wanted. The interpreter listened to Vinh intently, conferred with their political officer, and when there was agreement, told Freeman, “—these condiments — salt and pepper number two.”
Freeman looked blankly at Cline, who looked just as blankly at Boyd, the press officer.
“Condiments?” Freeman repeated.
“Salt and Pepper,” Boyd interjected suddenly. “Condiments — they mean Salt and Pepper, the two MIAs — that report that came to us from our legation in Saigon — I mean in Ho Chi Minh City — about the two American deserters, one white, one black.”
“Yes, yes,” the interpreter said. “But this name, Salt and Pepper, is taken from long ago when there were two other Americans who came over to our side. This is why we call these ones Salt and Pepper number two.”
“Call them bastards,” Freeman said, infuriated by the possibility, no, the certainty, of Americans who had crossed over. “They must be damn near old men by now — I mean if they went over during ‘Nam.”
General Vinh began to talk, but his voice was drowned out by the sonic booms of the planes from the northern side of Disney Hill. Vinh raised his voice. “What will you do about them if this report is correct about them leading the Khmer Rouge up from Cambodia to attack us on our western flank?” Before Freeman could reply, Vinh went on, “The Chinese would be very happy about this. Two Americans fighting against the USVUN.”
The political officer was nodding vigorously. This topic was obviously of far more importance to him than the immediately pressing military situation on Disney. He spoke rapidly and passionately to the interpreter, who explained the political officer’s position to Freeman and his staff. “Hanoi is very concerned about the Khmer Rouge infiltration across the Cambodian-Vietnamese border while we are fighting here in the far north of our country.”
Freeman was also concerned about a war on two fronts, but he’d also seen photos of the Khmer Rouge’s tortured victims piled high at Tuol Sleng extermination center. He had once told the reporter Marte Price that if anything like the mass murder at Tuol Sleng had happened to a white population, there would have been U.N. action almost immediately. “The Khmer Rouge are the scum of the earth,” Freeman had told her bitterly, “and if I’d had my way, I would have turned Khmer Rouge staging areas into a parking lot, but of course, politics. You see, that would have offended their great ally — China.”
“General Freeman,” Vinh said, his expression of bland noncommitment now replaced with the look of an old warrior who, as hard as he’d fought against the Americans in ‘Nam, had never hated a foe as much as he did the Khmer Rouge. Yet as he talked to Freeman — at times using the interpreter — he was putting this hatred aside. It was not hatred that led him to uncharacteristically plead with his American counterpart, but military prudence. “If the Khmer Rouge are not stopped crossing over into Vietnam, all kinds of insurgents from Cambodia and Laos will be encouraged to start yet another war against the new Vietnam, which will quickly demand more USVUN intervention.”
Freeman knew Vinh was right. It was like one of the old oil change ads for your automobile — a case of “pay me now or pay me later,” the inference being that later would be one heck of a lot more expensive in lives and materiel. Either Freeman stopped them now, or at least made a determined thrust into the Laotian staging areas as an unmistakable sign of the USVUN’s commitment to stopping the insurgency, or he would pay heavily later.
“You—” Major Cline began, then changed it to, “We can’t make that decision, General.” Cline had said “General” in such a way that it was impossible for either Vinh or Freeman to know whom he was addressing. In fact he was talking to both, but was being careful, trying not to offend either one. “General Jorgensen,” Cline continued, “is the only one who can authorize such a move out of our immediate sector.” Cline paused and looked at Vinh’s political officer. “In fact, as far as I recall, Jorgensen would have to confer with the Joint Chiefs and the White House for permission to—”
“Find two of our MIAs?” Freeman interjected, another idea already forming on how to bypass the Joint Chiefs. “American people won’t stand for any delay on that score, Major. Over two thousand POWs and MIAs still missing. You think the American people are going to stand still for one minute if we know where our boys are and we say, ‘Oh wait until we’re finished with the Chinese’? Hell, they won’t put up with that for a second.”
“General, we’re talking about two guys who went over.”
“For what reason?” Freeman snapped. “Those Khmer bastards could be holding dozens of our boys.” Before Cline could answer, Freeman’s voice had taken on a terrible urgency. “By God, Major, these two you’re talking about may have been forced to run with those bastards, for all we know. An old story, right? ‘You don’t help us, we’ll kill your buddies!’ “
“But,” Cline stammered, “you don’t know that, sir — with all due respect.”
“With all due respect, Major, you don’t know the truth of it either.” Freeman looked at Vinh. “Matter of fact, quite a few volunteers in your army were more or less there because of families or friends held hostage.”
The political officer quickly responded. “This was a political necessity — at the time.”
“Oh,” Freeman said, “I see. So that’s what it was.”
Cline obviously didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. “Perhaps you’re both right,” he put in. “I mean, I see why it’s militarily important to send a strong message to the Khmer Rouge, some of our MIAs involved or not. All I’m saying, gentlemen, is that we’re going to have to go through Jorgensen and the President.”
“Jesus Christ, Major,” Freeman said. “Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been saying? If those fairies in State and the Pentagon get hold of this, they’ll take forever. Meanwhile we could be taking body blows from the Rouge.”
“Then what do you suggest, General?”
There was a pause as Freeman looked at Vinh and then Cline. “Leave it to me. Meanwhile I want you to make sure our boys stay on the southern side of Disney. Don’t want them getting pulverized by our own TACAIR.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And remember, no one moves forward till 0600. Everybody stays down till dawn. Then we’ll smoke out those who haven’t been blown out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Freeman turned to his press officer. “Boyd, sink that coffee you’ve got and come with me.”
Outside, the darkness seemed to be vibrating as F-14 Tomcats and F-18s flew in low, dropping their loads amid curtains of red and white tracer crisscrossing the sky. The AA tracer was coming from those Chinese who had made it through the tunnel system from the southern side of the hill to the northern slope of Disney Hill, only to find their exits blocked by the bombing. Even so, several of them managed to hastily man what triple A they had managed to hide in the northern complex.
Meanwhile those Vietnamese regulars and the American forces nearest the hill’s summit began “walking” their mortars across the PLA’s triple A positions at a nice, easy, murderous fire of ten to fifteen twelve-pound 82mm shells a minute. To an outsider, the fact that the Americans were using 82mm rounds instead of their standard 81mm rounds might have seemed inconsequential, but Freeman’s decision, indeed his insistence, that all U.S. front-line units from Second Army in the USVUN line trade their standard-issue 81mm mortars for North Vietnamese Army 82mm mortars proved to be a brilliant tactical move.
Freeman had always been a keen student of past battles and Benjamin Franklin, how for the want of a nail the horse wasn’t shod and for the want of a horse the battle was lost. He had also remembered the lessons of Korea and of ‘Nam when, with American GIs running out of their heavy 81mm mortar rounds, they overran enemy positions to discover piles of unused mortar shells, but shells that were useless to them because that extra 1mm diameter of Russian, Vietnamese, and Chinese 82mm rounds would not fit into the U.S. 81mm barrel.
Now the mortar positions the USVUN forces had managed to capture or overrun on their way up from the rice paddies to the southern slope of Disney Hill provided the Americans with lots of extra “help-yourself’ mortar rounds, courtesy of General Wang’s retreating units.
* * *
As Douglas Freeman set out back down the hill with Boyd, giving him a running commentary on what they must tell the media pack, which had now exploded in size due to Jorgensen’s “come one and all — nothing to hide” policy, the press officer suddenly fell in the darkness. Freeman, crossing over so he could use his right arm rather than his bandaged left to help, heard Boyd moaning and cussing — unusual for the press officer. As Freeman reached down to help him up, he felt a sodden, metallic-smelling warmth, with the consistency of a firm sponge — the brain’s pulse, like a thing breathing, not yet ended. Freeman kept moving, hearing bullets cracking past him as he crouched low, wondering why in hell the USVUN’s bandages were all white instead of khaki.
Boyd’s death told him something else, something he didn’t like at all, that some PLA sons of bitches were still in the tunnels on this the southern USVUN side of the hill. Not only were they there, but they had the balls not to sit quiet but pop up, God knows where, and were conducting sniper attacks using the momentary but brilliant light of white phosphorus and fuel air explosive against which to silhouette their USVUN targets.
When he reached the rear MUST area — Medical Unit Self-Contained and Transportable — where several reporters were stationed, most wanting to go up forward, Freeman immediately reported that Boyd had been killed.
“I’m sorry,” said Marte Price, who was in the MUST, her flesh wound well on the mend.
Freeman said nothing, sitting down on a box near the MUST’s long, snaking hoses that led from the refrigerator-sized gas turbine unit, unraveling his bandaged hand, now soaked in blood, the wound having opened up as he’d run down the hill, his adrenaline pumping. “Look,” he told Marte as a medical corpsman came toward him. “You’ve been in the thick of it on the road up to Lang Son. You deserve a break.” The corpsman took a pair of L scissors and cut the dressing from Freeman’s wrist to his fingertips.
“You’ve got this dirty again, General, sir. I’ll have to—”
“All right,” Freeman said. “Do what you have to, but if you repeat what you’re going to hear now, I’ll have your hide. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right.” The general waited for ten seconds or so to catch his breath, then told Marte Price that it had been reported there were American MIAs who’d been sighted in the south. She said nothing. She knew that there were still over two thousand MIAs unaccounted for. She took her notepad out.
“Rumor is,” Freeman told her, “that they’re yeller-bellies, crossed over, betrayed their country for preferential treatment.” Marte Price remembered reading about Korea, where dozens had gone over to the Chinese, so many that the government ordered an official inquiry. “How many?” she asked him.
“I don’t know. Two kingpins we know about and we want to get, but we’ve got a problem. Jorgensen.”
“Why’s he a problem?”
“You obviously don’t know Dangerous Dean Jorgensen. He’s a nice guy, but not too much in his top story. Career man. A yes-man. Pentagon sent him to Hanoi GHQ because he’ll do whatever Washington tells him, no matter how stupid it may be in the field. He won’t rock the boat.” Freeman paused for a moment. “I should tell him we have to go get these jokers, make an example of them. They’re supposedly helping the Khmer Rouge, trail finders on the Cambodian border, which means they were probably Special Forces, if they know the area’s trails that well. Might have been with the Montagnards — hill people — before they crossed over. I don’t know, but if we let ‘em lead those murdering Khmer bastards to hit our left flank, out of Laos, well, neither Vinh nor I want a two-front war. But if we stop them now before— Christ!”
The corpsman was dousing the punji stick wounds with iodine.
“Go on,” Freeman told him, then turned back to Marte Price. He could tell in the spill of light from the MUST hospital that she was excited by the story, her bosom rising and falling fast in the sweat-drenched khaki. He felt himself getting aroused.
“How many do you think there are, General — I mean MIAs?”
He grimaced as the iodine seeped deeper into the wounds. “I honestly don’t know. Two, two hundred, who knows for sure? But we have a definite sighting. A guy — liaison officer from Ho Chi Minh City — apparently picked up their trail in a place called Dalat — hill country a ways south of here.”
“General,” Marte said, “I appreciate the scoop — it’d get me on CNN — but I’m not some hick in from the sticks. You’re using me to bypass Jorgensen — and Washington.”
“Am I?” The corpsman was putting a new bandage on.
“You bet your sweet ass you are.”
“That’s no way to talk.”
“It’s what you understand.”
Freeman exhaled heavily. “All right, but it’s no game, Marte.” It was the first time he’d called her by her first name, and she didn’t need to make a note of it. “If we can get the green light,” he said, “to send a recon party to, say, the Laotian-Vietnamese border, we could kill two birds with one stone.”
Marte saw where he was going, a chance to actually find two MIAs while serving notice to the Khmer Rouge to stay in their own backyard. She also saw herself in her mind’s eye on the “Larry King Show” via special hookup with Hanoi. Just one MIA found would be one hell of a story amid the present inconclusive seesaw battle between the PLA and USVUN.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll run it if the networks okay it.”
“If? Pull the other one, Marte. MIAs found would be the biggest story since the Oklahoma bombing.”
“Think so?”
“I know so. And if you get the public demanding immediate action, our reconnaissance down there’ll send a strong message to Beijing, and the Khmer will hopefully stop a second front or at least prevent a fifth column from attacking us on our left flank.”
“One thing I don’t get, General. What’s in it for the Khmer Rouge?”
“Thanks,” she said quietly. “How’s the hand?”
“It’ll be fine. If I were you, I’d bounce your story from an unnamed source off the satellite right now.” She started walking away, and he caught a glimpse of her derriere in a residual stutter of flare light. He felt as hard as a rock.
She stopped, walked back to him, and spoke softly. “Is a dawn attack still on?”
He was hugely disappointed, for as she’d turned to come back, he would have sworn it was going to be to utter some term of endearment. “Yes,” he answered, “it’s on.”
“You think you’ll be able to push them back — all the way down the north slope?”
“Piece of cake,” he said, and gave her a smile she couldn’t see in the dark.
As she left, he berated himself for such an adolescent moment. But damn it, he hadn’t had a woman for — he couldn’t remember. And probably neither had young Boyd. It was ever a mystery why some men got hit and others didn’t. Freeman had never believed it had anything to do with God. It was a matter of pure luck and something he called survival know-how, which had to do with knowing what to do in the absence of luck.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
As Jae Chong staggered out of the karaoke club into Tokyo’s Ginza district, the forest of neons became a blur of light, the cold night air that made his nose run doing nothing to sober him up as he made his way, smiling, through the crowds, which dutifully ignored him.
Ironically, it was the fact that he was drunk that allowed him to go unnoticed, as Japanese in general, while disapproving, were used to the outflow of drunks in the all-but-mandatory swill that up-and-coming young male executives took part in with their bosses after the working day. Chong, though he knew perfectly well he was drunk and had difficulty even reaching in his pocket for tissues, felt invulnerable. If any Japanese dare fix him with a disapproving stare, he was ready to stare back and stare them down. To hell with the lot of them. They had never conceded that the Second World War was their doing in the Pacific, all their revisionist historians busy writing tracts about how Japan was a victim. What they did in Korea was unspeakable. They deserved the atom bomb, and now the Americans were their friends. Well, sort of. Damn them all, the Japanese and the Americans and—
