The Return: A Novel of Vietnam

by Charles W. Sasser

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “You have remarked that if the NLF had many battalions like the 514th, you Americans must either nuke us or pack up and go home.” The smile turned into a low chuckle. “I am here to help you pack.”

  At least he possessed a sense of humor. Pete hesitated in sudden recognition. He was the man in the photograph with Mhai—the elusive and wily commander of the 514th VC Battalion.

  “Commander Minh!”

  Pete studied the stranger with new interest.

  Minh said, “We are enemies who can respect and admire each other. You remarked that you would like to meet, as you put it, ‘that genius of a soldier Minh and shake his hand…”

  “…’Just before I killed him’…”

  “...’On the field of battle.’ Was that not the way you ended it?”

  Pete had indeed been generous in his praise of the enemy leader.

  “From whom did you hear such things?” Pete asked.

  “As I said, a good soldier—“

  “—has his sources. Was it from Mhai?”

  Minh’s brows lifted, as though in puzzlement. He ignored the question. “A truce for the evening, Mister Brauer?”

  He thrust out his hand. It seemed curious to Pete that the lover of a woman shot and held captive by another man would even consider a truce. Nonetheless, intrigued, he shrugged and took Minh’s hand. The grip was firm, unlike the normal limp-fingered Asian shake.

  “Would you do the honor of having dinner with me this evening?” Minh asked in a way that made Pete think the invitation was unintended and spontaneous.

  Pete studied the VC for a moment before saying, “You wouldn’t want my prata riding your ass if you killed me other than in battle.”

  Minh chuckled again. “Yours is undoubtedly a badass spirit, Mister Brauer. Neither of us will go down before the other unless it is honorably in battle.”

  “I have a friend waiting.”

  “He is being entertained and will be waiting when we return.”

  “What the hell,” Pete decided, his curiosity aroused. “Lead ahead, Commander Minh.”

  Minh directed the way to a taxicab parked on the side street. It was a much-dented version of a New York City Yellow taxi. Minh climbed behind the wheel and waited for Pete to sit beside him in the front seat before he whipped it expertly into traffic. He careened around a water buffalo being driven to market with a kid riding on its back and turned toward Cholon, the forbidden Chinese section of the city owned by the enemy as soon as the sun went down. The streets were narrow, pocked and beginning to darken. Minh pulled up in front of a storefront restaurant and led the way inside, where he was obviously known. People stared at the American.

  “This restaurant is famous for its seafood,” said Minh, the gracious host.

  They took a table against the rear wall where both men sat where they could observe the other diners as well as the front door.

  “If you prefer,” Minh offered, “you can sit to my right where your gun hand is more free. I assure you, however, that we will not be interrupted.”

  Pete gradually relaxed as they had dinner. The lobster was delicious as Minh promised. As they ate, they talked, more like a couple of old buddies before a big game than sworn enemies at war who would kill each other the swiftest, most brutal way possible should they meet on the battlefield.

  “You Americans can learn much from the Vietnamese,” Minh said. “In Vietnam, the cycle of life is more regular and kinder to the soul.”

  “If not kinder to the body,” Pete added, referring to papasans and mamasans he saw daily toiling in the rice fields, their flesh already worn out and ancient by the time they reached forty.

  Minh nodded that he understood without it being phrased. “But is not the soul the most important part of the human?”

  “I thought communists did not believe in a soul.”

  “I am a nationalist,” Minh responded. “I dream of a united Vietnam free of all foreigners.”

  In spite of assessing the VC commander as a potentially dangerous and formidable foe, Pete found himself liking this man with his honest hawk-like eyes and the slight twinge of an accent almost British in its tone. Minh explained that he learned English while attending university at Oxford. He was the scion of a Vietnamese mother and a once-wealthy French plantation owner who committed suicide in despair after the French suffered defeat at Dien Bien Phu. Much of South Vietnam’s upper and ruling classes were composed of mixed bloods. Minh had gone against his father while still a teen and fought with the Viet Minh. After the French left, the Americans came. The Viet Minh turned into the Viet Cong and... Minh shrugged. He was still fighting.

  Pete continued to wonder why Minh had gone to so much trouble to find him and arrange this meeting. Enemy commanders simply did not get together for a friendly chat over dinner. Not in this kind of a guerrilla war where passions so often guided strategy, and certainly not when a woman was involved. He was convinced it had something to do with Mhai’s supposed chieu hoi following her recovery. Mhai had to be the key. He recalled only one time having referred to Commander Minh as “that genius of a soldier,” and that was during a talk with Mhai in the garden at Father Pierre’s mission.

  When dinner was almost over and it became apparent Minh was not going to explain further, Pete took it upon himself to ask. He fished out the battered snapshot of Minh and Mhai together and passed it to his host without comment, He watched Minh’s face. For just an instant he thought he detected a flicker of uncertainty, of something. Then the inscrutable mask fell over the enemy commander’s features and he glanced up without expression.

  “Yes?” he said casually, a question.

  “You do know the girl?”

  Minh studied the photo. It seemed he was buying time to collect his thoughts. There was something between him and Mhai. Mhai was lying when she said there wasn’t, as Minh was lying now. Lump believed Mhai’s chieu hoi was subterfuge, that she was a double agent. Was Lump right?

  “I must have encountered her,” Minh admitted, “We’re in a photograph together. She seems recognizable. Who is she?”

  “A girl that gorgeous would be hard to forget.”

  Minh laughed gently in dismissal. “Vietnam has many gorgeous women.” He passed the photo back to Pete. His response was altogether too casual, too controlled, “I merely wanted to see what sort of American soldier befriends a Catholic priest, a Vietnamese whore madam, a Buddhist monk and a hotel full of orphans. I am not disappointed, Mr. Brauer. You and your Nguoi Nhai fight fiercely and well. Of course, I shall have to defeat you. It will not be a pleasure for me that the next time we meet must be in combat.”

  “Nor for me,” Pete replied.

  They shook hands when Minh taxi’d Pete back to the Paris Fan.

  “The girl,” Minh said before Pete got out of the cab. “Treat her well.”

  The evening left Pete confused and puzzled.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was an accepted fact that in Vietnam almost nothing remained secret and certainly never for long. VC commanders commonly gained access to accurate and detailed intelligence about U.S. and South Vietnam’s ARVN posts and outposts, Some of the locals the U.S. Army’s 9th Division at dong Tam hired in the mess halls, laundries and as grounds keepers and maintenance crews most certainly had to be spies. Informers on both sides operated clandestinely in the villages and towns and even as soldiers in order to gather intelligence and pass it back to their commanders. Desertion among troops provided information back and forth. It was all part of the risk and business of conducting this kind of war when the enemy, by day, were farmers, village merchants and whorehouse madams and, by night, bloodthirsty Viet Cong.

  When Commander Minh attacked Junk Base 35, that “hemorrhoid” in his ass, he seemed to know things about the fortress he couldn’t have known without inside contacts—such as the locations of the 30-cal and 50-cal machine guns and the 81mm mortar pits, the strengths and weaknesses of
fortifications and breastworks, weaknesses in the wire, even the exact number of Biet Hai and local Popular Forces defenders and their assigned fighting positions.

  He began his probing shortly after nightfall. Sappers sneaked up to the wire in blind spots not covered by sentries, cut the concertina and laid Bangalore torpedo pipe in preparation for blowing breaches into the base. Other sappers sabotaged PBRs and junks moored at the piers. It was all well-coordinated. Explosions lit up the river and countryside and vibrated the ground as far inland as the village of Vam Tho. The majority of ten boats were either damaged or sunk at their moorings while swaths were cut through the wire. The fight began with Chief Callahan’s forces at a severe disadvantage.

  The night had started off especially dark, without moonlight. Lump Adkins, a crew of his Biet Hai, and three of his PBRs left Shit City to transport Pete and Ensign Cochran and two fireteams of Nguoi Nhai on a mission to cut off and ambush a VC sampan force. The boats skimmed downriver at half-throttle. Ensign Cochran rode the drag boat with Sgt. Piss Hole. Lump and Pete were at the helm in the lead. Lump, a square, solid figure, peered ahead into the watery darkness. Looking, listening, sniffing the air, both he and Pete. They were hunters. Acute senses made them survivors as well.

  “I needed the Turncoat yesterday to drive into Saigon,” Lump said with a peevish tone in his voice. Noise watch had not yet been clamped on the mission.

  “You should have said something, Lump. I can’t read your fucking mind.”

  “Where were you? In Dong Tam at the mission?”

  Lump’s disapproval of Mhai was no secret. Pete stared silently ahead. Lump had no intention of letting it drop.

  “You still painting that cunt’s picture?”

  Pete growled a warning in his throat, but still said nothing.

  “Minh’ll want her back one of these days,” Lump said. “The next time you meet him in Saigon, he’ll cut your throat.”

  That struck a nerve. “He’ll have to pay to get her,” Pete retorted before catching himself.

  “You’ll have to pay to keep her,” Lump said.

  They were both quiet for a while as the little squadron negotiated downstream, keeping to the middle of the river and out of effective ambush range of the banks. They were only uncomfortable with each other when the subject of Mhai came up. Lump could never understand what he considered Pete’s preoccupation with a slant-eyed gook whore, beautiful or not. The bitch posed a real danger. She was a fucking spy for Minh. Couldn’t Pete see that?

  “Pete, let me tell you an old Vietnam fable.”

  “I didn’t know you were interested in indigent folklore.”

  “Only when it might save my ass—or yours. “

  Lump drew a deep breath and kept his eyes focused ahead. He hated lecturing Pete. But someone had to talk him back to his senses.

  “Once there was a scorpion and a turtle,” he began. “The scorpion wanted to cross the river, but the river was too wide. He said to the turtle, ‘Will you please swim me across the river on your back?’

  “‘I would like to take you across,’ said the turtle, ‘but if you bit me I would die.’

  “‘But if I bit you,’ said the scorpion, ‘I would drown.’

  “The turtle considered this. Then he agreed to take the scorpion across. Halfway across the river, the scorpion bit the turtle. The turtle cried out, ‘Why did you do that? Now I am dying and you will drown.’

  “The scorpion said, ‘Ah, but Mr. Turtle, you have to understand. This is Vietnam and you know what I was before you agreed to swim me across. ’”

  Pete refused to respond. Lump cut power to nose along the bank for the entrance to a canal-leading interior where they would set up the ambush. He found it after a few minutes. He eased back throttles even more. The little flotilla crept into the canal, burbling quietly,

  Pete leaned over toward Lump. “I’m no fucking turtle,” he murmured irritably.

  The narrow waterway blended black into sky and overhanging foliage. Everyone came alert and manned weapons. Army 105 Howitzers were pulverizing something on the distant horizon in response to a fire mission request. The explosions flickered like flashes of heat lightning too far away to produce sound. Even Ensign Cochran’s youthful intensity for noting detail paid little attention to it. That was a different war over there and had little to do with their hide and-seek against Charlie here.

  Lump monitored RIVDIV-51’s radio guard channel as he maneuvered the leading boat, headset draped around his neck. He suddenly stiffened. Pete shot him a sharp, questioning look. Lump sidestepped and offered Pete the earphones. They each listened through one of the ears.

  The transmission was cutting out, but the raw anxiety in Chief Callahan’s Texas twang came clear if tinny through the radio set. In his background were explosions and the stutter and pop of small arms fire. It sounded like Junk Base 35 was getting hammered.

  “—River Rat, this is River Dog, you copy? River Rat, Dog… Copy? Rat, I’m advising... Do you copy, over? High Tide! High Tide! Goddmnit, High Tide.!”’

  “They’re under attack,” Lump whispered tautly. “How about them Nguoi Nhai of yours? Pete? Can they fight?”

  Although the Frogs had been blooded well in numerous ambushes, raids and skirmishes during past weeks, they had yet to be tried in a real battle.

  “From the sound of things,” Pete said, “I think we’re about to find out.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Shit City was on stand down for the evening. Everyone except a bare on-duty defense element and those Biet Hai and Nguoi Nhai on mission had been granted a rare night off to visit families or go to the bars and whore houses in Dong Tam. Lump and Pete sounded recall through radio ops, but it would still require several hours for the troops to return to base and organize a reaction platoon. That meant the three-boat flotilla with its contingent of less than thirty fighters was the ready reaction force.

  Tonight’s mission had carried raiders downriver an hour. Zipping back up-current toward the junk base, Lump didn’t even bother to stop at his own harbor. It would do no good and would only delay relief to Callahan. He and Pete radioed their ops to speed up the recall and left a stream of curses slapping against their wake as they passed the base. Tonight, of all nights, to have stripped the post.

  “—River Dog, this is River Rat, over...

  “—River Rat.. copy... We’ve got… breach... Copy? A breach... in the wire...

  --River Dog, can you hold out? Our ETA your location, one hour...

  “—River Rat, do we have... choice... ? “

  They didn’t. A sense of urgency and excitement overcame the rescuers. The Viet special operations force lined the gunnels of the boats, gripped their weapons and peered anxiously ahead.

  The battle at Junk Base 35 had been raging for over two hours, the defenders still holding out, by the time the PBRs in three-boat tandem swept around a bend in the river and bore down upon the smoldering piers, whose red-ember fire eyes glowered at the approaching intruders. Bursting parachute flares hung in the night sky above the “Indian fort” like miniature dying suns, illuminating with an eerie greenish glow the grass flats surrounding the base and much of the base itself, Mortar rounds flashbanging inside the compound opened quick bright glimpses into the power of the universe. Hooches blazed like giant torches. Undulating waves of red tracers from the defenders mixed it up with VC green tracers in a weird psychedelic aerial battle of supersonic fireflies.

  An enemy heavy machine gun placed out of range of the base’s smaller 30-cals coughed out death in measured, rhythmic cadence. Flocks of green tracers appearing as big and bright as jungle birds arced lazily out of distant jungle, soared over the open fields of fire and crashed into the base with heavy impacting echoes that seemed to ripple the surface of the river. The machine gun swept the base with its heavy fire, back and forth, back and forth. The grass flats were literally crawling with flitting, menacing shadows. Like unstoppable warrior ants chewing down everything in th
eir path.

  It was a macabre scene, hazy and surreal in rapidly changing patterns of dark and light. Lump poured on the power and led the charge.

  “Hold on! We’re gonna give them motherfuckers hell!” he shouted angrily above the whine of boat engines and the sudden banging of his 50-cal bow gun. The big gun vibrated the PBR down to its hull.

  One behind the other, Lump’s in the lead, the boats swept in close to shore and raced along it with their wakes crashing against the mud banks. Machine guns mounted fore and aft on each fast boat propelled red jungle birds of destruction swarming into the darting attackers on the grass flats. Biet Hai and Nguoi Nhai cheered, stood up or knelt on the boats and crackled away with small arms. Pete emptied a clip through his carbine, picking at attacking VC in the weird glow of slowly-descending parachute flares.

  The boats screamed past the destroyed piers and circled around and back into the middle of the river, like a carnival ride, and made a second pass along the bank. This time, enemy gunners were prepared. Silver splashes in the reflected light of flares resembled schools of herring leaping around the fast-moving boats. Tracers in dazzling green arcs streaked at them.

  A third run-by in the glass boats meant certain suicide. Still chattering with Callahan over the radio, Lump cut throttle and rode his own thumping wake into the charred remains of the piers, followed by the other two boats. Here and there, a PBR or wooden junk remained afloat. The other boats were either half-filled with water, listing dangerously or already sunk. Bows stuck up out of the water like the stumps of rotted trees.

  The wild river charge forced a temporary respite for the beleaguered defenders inside the wire, retarding the attack’s momentum. Enemy troops burrowed into the surrounding grass, but the mortaring continued and the heavy machine gun off the apex hammered away at the stronghold. Viet PBR boatmen seemed reluctant to scramble ashore into the maelstrom. The Americans yelled at them and Piss Hole bodily flung some of them overboard into the shallows at shore’s edge, where they crouched in the mud or crawled up the bank like D-Day invaders.