CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
On the afternoon before the beginning of TET, the American leadership at Shit City, which by this time included Lump Adkins’ replacement, a tall lieutenant commander who resembled actor Rock Hudson and therefore called himself “Rock.” Rock Taylor Pete led a convoy of three trucks and two Nguoi Nhai fire teams to the city of Dong Tam to claim supplies and ordnance from the joint U.S. Army/ARVN installation outpost. An ARVN company had picked up the cargo at the Ton Son Nhut Airhead and transported it to Dong Tam before radioing Pete that he would have to haul it the rest of the way to Shit City himself
Since the Viet supply sergeant at the installation had mistakenly stowed U.S. provisions with his own stores, it would require until after nightfall to sort them all out and load them on the trucks. Even with a cease-fire in effect, a supply convoy driven through VC country at night offered a target too tempting to resist. In anticipation of some holiday down time, Pete decided to bivouac in town. There would be fireworks and other celebrations starting at midnight. He visited the PX at the army base as he left Shit City and stocked up on lawn chairs, food and coolers of beer.
Getting into a partying mood, the Americans and Piss Hole carried provisions to the flat roof of Bonnie My’s hotel and prepared to settle in for the evening’s entertainment. Dusk oozed purple over the Vietnam countryside. Bonnie My was putting the orphans to bed on the floor below. Mhai was helping Father Pierre deliver food to some war widows on the outskirts of town. Both women promised to join the celebration soon.
One of Bonnie My’s girls, a skinny young thing, cute, but with a flat face and a flatter chest, was already all over Comander Rock, wriggling on his lap, giggling and sipping from his beer. Rock had his hand up her miniskirt.
“For goo’ness sake! For goo’ness sake!” the girl squealed in imitation of Bonnie My.
It was a clear night with a moon that illuminated narrow streets and the tin roofs of buildings. Four stories tall, the hotel towered over all other structures in the vicinity. It set in the middle of a square with a wide avenue that boxed it in on all four sides, isolating it. “Good fields of fire,” Ensign C.C. Cochran idly observed as he keyed open a can of beer. Piss Hole prowled the roof perimeter, vigilant.
“Go!” Pete commanded him. He had already released the rest of the accompanying Nguoi Nhai for a free night on the city. “Get out of here. Sgt. Piss Hole, go get drunk. Strap on a piece of pussy.”
“Piss Hole stay,” the Viet replied. “Mebbe so Ohmja Nguoi Nhai need. VC have bounty on head of Ohmja Nguoi Nhai.”
“That’s an order, Sergeant. Go have some fun.”
Reluctantly, Piss Hole left, looking back over his shoulder.
Lounging in lawn chairs in the night air, awaiting the light and sound show, the American sailors did what down-time sailors did best: they ate, drank and told sea stories. Pete reminisced how he had slipped a commando team into Korea during that war. In between sharing his beer with the wriggling girl on his lap, Cdr. Taylor recalled that he had been a gunnery lieutenant aboard the destroyer USS Maddox when it was fired upon by communist patrol boats in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. That led to LBJ’s Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, commitment of U.S. troops and escalation of the war.
“I don’t know if the commies ever actually shot at us or not,” Rock mused. “I never saw any commie boats, but the order came to fire. So we fired at the water. I think Johnson had to have an excuse to start a war. Sort of a Pearl Harbor.”
“It’s not much of a war,” Pete said, “but it’s the only war we have.”
Mhai and Bonnie My soon joined them, slipping up through the roof door together. Mhai wore new American Levis and a print shirt Pete bought for her on his last trip to Saigon. Her long hair hung in a ponytail. Moonlight shining on her gorgeous face revealed an unusually-somber expression for these days. Pete frowned as she drew him aside.
“We must move the children to the mission,” she whispered urgently.
“What are you talking about? Why?”
“The children are in danger. We must hurry.”
Pete clamped her shoulders between his big hands. “How do you know that?” he demanded.
“You’re hurting me, Peter.” She always used his given name as a sort of endearment; no one but she ever called him that.
“How do you know?”
Her eyes flashed back at him. “Does it really matter, Peter? There’s no time for this. There’s going to be an attack tonight. Soon.”
“What about the cease-fire? You’re still meeting Minh, aren’t you?”
She ignored the question. “The children will be safe with Father Pierre. Help us evacuate them.”
Pete shook her angrily. The question about Minh and her relationship to him had festered at his core for weeks. She attempted to wrench free, but he held her.
“You’re hurting me, Peter, I’ll hate myself afterwards, but I’m going to knee you in the groin if you don’t stop and calm down. We have work to do.”
He relaxed his grip but did not release her. Her voice softened as she looked at him.
“Peter, isn’t it enough that I care for you. I betrayed my comrades because of you.”
“Have you betrayed them?” he snarled.
Rock Taylor’s girl stopped squirming on his lap. All attention centered on the clipped conversation between the SEAL commander and Mhai. Ensign Cochran stood up, looking uneasy, his arm draped loosely around Bonnie My’s shoulders. She encircled his waist with both arms, seeking reassurance.
“You haven’t answered my question?” Pete accused. “You care for Minh too? Enough that you keep sneaking off to see him. I should have kept you locked up. What about Minh?”
“Okay, you want to know?” she flared. She could be as strong-willed as Pete was stubborn. “Yes, I care for Minh. But you don’t understand. All you have to do is ask yourself this: Where am I now? I’m with you, Peter. With you.”
“You’re playing me for a goddamned fool. Why wouldn’t you betray me the same way you stabbed Minh in the back?”
She jerked free and turned to Bonnie My. “Hurry,” she said. “We’ll get no help from him. Get the children ready.”
Pete’s gnawing jealousy could not be put off. He lunged and grabbed her again.
“You’re behaving like a goddamned fool,” she cried, her anger matching his. “This warning comes from Minh. Now stop your bullish shouting and ranting, so we can move the children where they’ll be safe.”
Surprise set Pete speechless long enough for the women to get the movement organized. The orphans, most of whom were under ten years old, were startled and fearful at being so abruptly out of their beds. Poor things, they had been uprooted and terrorized so many times. Often they screamed and wept in their sleep. The first few days Bailey was at the orphanage, he crouched in a corner with his face to the wall and his eyes squeezed shut, often whimpering as though replaying in his tortured little mind the napalming death of his mother. He literally had to be dragged out of the corner to eat and be bathed. Bonnie My strapped him in his bed at nights to keep him there. Pete had been good for Bailey, like a rock upon which to cling in a raging storm.
“Leet? Leet?” he would cry in his limited English, meaning Pete. “Leet be?”
The thing between Pete and Mhai over Commander Minh would have to wait. Anxious children were herded quickly downstairs and out the back door into a dark alley, which paralleled Huang Avenue all the way to Father Pierre’s mission. Bonnie My threw out the hotel’s few male “guests” so the B-girls, equally upset, could join the orphans in their exodus. It was a strange procession, a string of hushed orphans and panicky whores shepherded by three armed Americans in camouflage and the two Vietnamese women. Pete carried Bailey in one arm, the boy clutching the SEAL’s neck tightly enough to cut off breathing, his mother’s locket clutched in his fist. Pete gripped in his free hand the Stoner 63 automatic rifle Lump bequeathed him when he was being med-evac’d out.
Mhai scouted ahea
d to make sure the way was clear. She attracted less attention than the Americans. Bonnie My brought up the rear for stragglers while Pete, Cochran and Rock Taylor ranged up and down the columns and kept an eye open for danger. The VC were coming. Likely they already had advance patrols probing the city.
Father Pierre had been alerted. He met them as they all rushed across the street in the darkness and through the open gate at the mission wall. He spoke not a word as he closed the gate behind them and locked it. There were no lights on anywhere. He motioned for Mhai and Pete to follow him with the refugees. He looked so thin and tense that his moon shadow on the ground made barely a suggestion.
The sound of fireworks accompanied by flickering and flashings lighting up the eastern sky a couple of miles away was worth one glance from the priest before the orphans were corralled inside the smaller chapel. Pallets had already been prepared for them on the pews. Mhai, Bonnie My and the whores started putting them back to bed with soothing whispers of reassurance. Bailey had to be pried from Pete’s arms.
“Leet! Leet!”
“Bailey, listen. I’ll be back, kid.”
Pete adjusted the patrol cap on Bailey’s head, made sure he had his mother’s locket, thumbed a tear off the child’s dusty cheek. He grinned his scarred grin. Bailey finally let go and went to Mhai. His eyes followed Pete until the SEAL was out the door and out of sight.
“God bless you all,” Father Pierre whispered, making the sign of the cross.
The fireworks in the eastern sky were not fireworks, not part of the TET festivities. Tracers of various colors, white, red and green, punctured the night sky in showers. The TET cease-fire had been violated. Dong Tam was under attack. Knots of local inhabitants, carrying their belongings on their backs or in their arms, were now fleeing past the mission. Some pounded on the gates. Father Pierre let them in until the garden was full. “Stay here,” Pete said to Mhai, who had followed him outside. She touched his cheek, caressed it with her palm. She kissed him quickly on the mouth, hesitated with her breath fresh and close in his nostrils.
“I love you, Peter,” she murmured. “Always remember that.”
It was the first time she had said it. Pete looked at her a long minute, unable to respond, He wanted to say it back to her, but he couldn’t. He broke away and left the mission with Ensign Cochran and Commander Rock, hurrying back toward the hotel to either set up a defensive position or join other troops apparently already engaged with the enemy.
You could have a few laughs with the Viet women, drink with them, fuck them, paint them when they were beautiful—but could you love one of them? Could you trust one?
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Piss Hole and the Nguoi Nhai company’s radioman, a short, squat Cambodian whose name was unpronounceable and therefore went by the universal RTO nickname of Dih-Dah, met the returning Americans in the shadows outside the now-deserted and darkened hotel. They looked wired and spoiling for a fight, as did the six other Frogs they managed to round up from various bars and brothels when the attack started. Piss Hole, even more so than Pete, took the defeat at Junk Base 35 as a personal affront. He was always looking for a chance to avenge his slain father and brother and add to his collection of ears.
The Frogs brought news that a company of ARVN, under strength because many soldiers had been on holiday leave, and a platoon from the 3/39th of the U.S. Army’s 9th Division temporally encamped at the in-city ARVN stockade had engaged what might have been at least two reinforced battalions of a joint VC/NVA force. Friendlies were being driven back toward the center of the city.
Fighting was drawing near. Shooting crackled and popped less than a half-mile away in the little city’s suburbs. The ARVN compound as well as the local population was battening down for a siege. The hotel lay in the path between enemy forces and the compound.
The Americans and Piss Hole huddled briefly for strategy.
“From the roof of the hotel,” Pete pointed out, “we got good fields of fire all the way to the ARVN base. We could catch the little motherfuckers in a crossfire and stop them right here. The downside is, there’s only eleven of us. I don’t think we can expect any relief tonight and probably not tomorrow.”
He gestured toward Dong Tam, the distant U.S. Army base camp. Flickers of heat lightning on the western horizon indicated the base had come under mortar attack.
“It looks like the city has been cut off,” he said.
Ensign Cochran looked nervous. Commander Rock said, “I haven’t fired a single round in anger since I’ve been in-country. I say we pick the fight right here.”
Cochran licked lips so dry they almost crackled. “I don’t want to be inside a wall with them all around me,” he conceded, but continued to look unconvinced that the hotel was the right spot.
“The hotel is solid brick,” Pete said, “with a brick parapet all around the top of the roof that’ll stop small arms fire, They won’t be able to get the right angle to use mortars. They’ll have to cross those wide streets all around to get to us. We can pick ’em off like prairie dogs.”
“Let’s do it,” the ensign finally agreed.
“Good. C.C., you take Piss Hole and shag over to the ARVN base and fill ’em in on what we’re doing. Bring back a truck loaded with food, water and ammo. Make sure you include a couple of cases of grenades, three or four M60s, plenty of bullets, and a few cases of LAAWS.”
LAAWs (Light Anti-Armor Weapons) were shoulder-fired rockets capable of knocking out light tanks or armored personnel carriers. Pete figured they would have plenty of use for them within the next few hours. He paused to listen to the approaching battle.
“Okay. Heave to. This time, Commander Minh is in for the surprise. “
By the time they had removed party supplies from the roof and formed a human chain to unload the returning truck and transfer ordnance to either the roof or the floor directly below it, it was 0300, about three hours before dawn. Cochran and Piss Hole had brought back filled sand bags to reinforce machine gun positions at each of the four corners of the roof. LAAWS, M26 and white phosphorus grenades were strategically placed. Urgency over, the defenders—three Americans and eight Nguoi Nhai—settled in to wait.
Pete and Piss Hole relaxed in side-by-side lawn chairs at the parapet, which placed them at eye level just above the lip of bricks. They watched as, below in the darkened streets, shadowy forms of retreating ARVN and U.S. troops withdrew toward the compound carrying their wounded and dead with them. Caught by surprise and undermanned, they pulled back past the hotel with their tails between their legs. The GI platoon from the 9th fought a delaying action, but it was no match for the overwhelming force of hardcore NVA supplemented by VC. As the fighting neared the hotel building by building, rifle fire echoed and rang downstreet, spitting red and green inter-mixed tracer streaks. Grenades exploded with bright flash bangs that turned the world into a bizarre black-and-white light and sound show. TET was offering plenty of fireworks.
Ensign Cochran was too hyped to relax, Commander Rock too eager. They crouched at the wall, LAAWs resting on its top, rifles at hand. Piss Hole assumed the same laid-back posture as his SEAL boss.
Bullets were thudding into the lower floors of the hotel when Pete rose languidly, Piss Hole following, and shouldered a LAAW. The weapon weighed less than the Stoner and its drum-feed of 5.56x45mm rounds, He extended the tube, snapped up the sights and pulled down the trigger mechanism. He waited, looking down from the darkened hotel roof, as the streets seemed to suddenly swarm with hundreds of enemy soldiers. One moment they weren’t there. The next, darker shadows around buildings started moving. Men poured out of hiding like cockroaches when the lights went out. Firearms rattled, winked and streaked.
Pete took aim at a knotted group of targets. “Lads, it’s party time!” he called out. “Happy TET, motherfuckers!”
His rocket zipped almost straight down, detonating in a blinding, banging ball of light. A man screamed and kept screaming as the little band on the roof open
ed up with everything they had—rockets, machine guns, rifles and grenades. Piss Hole manned one of the M60 machine guns and fired it until the barrel glowed red. Laughing, he poured a bottle of beer on the barrel to cool it, saving the last swig for himself. When that didn’t work, he pissed on it, then commenced firing again.
“Make many pratas tonight,” he gloated. “Many, many ears.”
Some of the confused enemy attempted to seek cover in the hotel itself. They made easy targets as they milled. All the lower windows and doors had been boarded up.
For the next three hours, Pete’s men on the hotel roof smoked and hammered the enemy. Incredibly, the enemy kept attacking. It was more like World War II action than customary Vietnam hit-and-run warfare. Bonnie My’s hotel, whorehouse and orphanage manned by eleven fighters from a place called Shit City became the enemy’s main obstacle in the taking of Dong Tam. To capture the city, they had to overrun the ARVN outpost. But to destroy the outpost, they first had to win the hotel fight. The main push was therefore aimed at the hotel.
Rockets exploded against brick walls of the hotel and nearby buildings; NVA 50-cal machine guns thumped their two-inch rounds into the hotel, chewing chunks out of the walls; Nguoi Nhai M60 machine guns banged back. Whenever the enemy organized rushes for the hotel’s barricaded doors and windows on the lower floor, defenders with their seemingly endless supply of grenades simply rained the little bombs down until the survivors scurried for cover, only to be picked off in the streets by withering automatic fire. Snipers climbed to the roofs of surrounding buildings in attempts to pick off movement on the hotel roof, only to find themselves picked off instead with LAAWs rockets or accurate rifle fire.
B-40 rockets and RPG-7 propelled grenades were lobbed, but the angle, as Pete surmised, was wrong. They roared contrailing completely over the roof, exploding on the other side among the firer’s own troops, or they splattered harmlessly against the sides of the building. The same thing happened with mortar fire; enemy gunners couldn’t elevate properly because of so many blocking buildings. They tried a few rounds anyhow, but inflicted far more damage to their own troops than to the defenders.
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