PRAISE FOR
CLUB SAIGON
“Club Saigon is a murder mystery with an abundance of intrigue, plenty of action and never lacking in interest or excitement. It’s a combination of military and police work set in the aftermath of Vietnam War. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, in fact, it’s one of the best I have read.”
— James Clendenin
5th Special Forces/A-243 RVN 1968
Orange County Deputy Sheriff
“Club Saigon is a fast-paced, action packed murder thriller that is equal parts police and military drama. In addition to entertaining his readers, Mr. Grossman sheds much needed light on the struggles too many Vietnam Veterans continue to face to this day.”
— David R. King
LTC(R), U.S. Army
“Club Saigon reminds me of the gritty Matt Helm stories I read back in the 1960s. His lead character, Police Detective Jerry Andrews, is jaded, ruthless, pragmatic, and yet somehow competent—I can’t put it down!”
—Jerry L England
US Army, 7th SFG, Airborne
Author: Reel Cowboys of the Santa Susana’s, Rendezvous at Boulder Pass, Ripples from La Prairie Voyageur Canoes
“Club Saigon hits the nail right on the head: If the career politicians send American GI’s to fight, then the career politicians should get out of the way, and let the career military do the job. It made no sense to me that the politicians in Washington, D.C. were making us GI’s play by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules . . . which wasted 50,000+ GI lives.”
—Howard Sanger, Esq
1/83 Arty RVN
“Club Saigon - a realistically gritty crime drama that succeeds in painting a vivid picture of the unspoken struggles often experienced by Vietnam Veterans long after returning home.”
— SSgt Mark Dehe
U.S. Air Force
Club Saigon
by Martin Robert Grossman
© Copyright 2017 Martin Robert Grossman
ISBN 978-1-63393-451-1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other – except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters are both actual and fictitious. With the exception of verified historical events and persons, all incidents, descriptions, dialogue and opinions expressed are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Published by
An imprint of
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Virginia Beach, VA 23451
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to the men and women, who honorably served this country in our armed forces— “to the wall.”
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINTEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon
This story started long ago, not on the streets of L.A., but in a small Southeast Asian country called Vietnam. The Vietnam War took a terrible toll on many countries, many families, and many individuals that were drawn into the geopolitical struggle.
Life is not a straight shot. It is not predictable. Two events only are guaranteed . . . a slap on the ass when we first arrive and a shovel-full of dirt in our face when we exit. Everything else we get is a result of the choices others make for us when we are young or those we make for ourselves. Life is as simple as that!
The ’60s marked the beginning of the end for more than a way of life for the good old US of A; it also marked the end of the trail for more than 58,000 of America’s finest. For those brave Americans that made it home, there were no parades, but for those that came home in body bags or those who never came home at all, they at least got a marble shrine with their names engraved on it many years later—a metaphor for a parade.
World War II was mostly run by the generals and admirals who reported directly to the President, like General Eisenhower, General Patton, General Bradley, General McArthur, General Lemay, and Admiral Nimitz, just to name a few. They didn’t ask the President for permission to engage and kill the enemy. They just did it and that’s why the Allies won the Second World War. They kicked ass and took names. Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo—they were all kicked to the curb without a second thought.
“Power tends to corrupt. But the power in Washington resides in Congress if it wants to use it. It can do anything—it can stop the Vietnam War, it can make its will felt, if it can ever get its act together to do anything.”
—Antonin Scalia
Vietnam was another story. By the ’60s, the politicos had their fingers into every aspect of American society, and to continue their march toward absolute power, they needed to micromanage the Vietnam War. In the ten years from 1965–1975 that Americans were on the ground in Vietnam, they never lost a serious battle. The boys on the ground had guts and resolve and they took it to the enemy wherever they found him. It was the folks at home, driven by politics and bleeding hearts, that lost the Vietnam War for America . . . and many brave citizen soldiers went to their graves believing that was the case. In 1975, America cut and ran, struck the American colors for the first time in this nation’s history, and flew off from the roof of our embassy with our tails between our legs for the whole world to witness. The politicians, using politico-speak, called this sorry excuse “Peace with Honor.” As those choppers flew away from the promises the soldiers had made to their Montagnard brothers and their families, the real fighters in this war had their hopes dashed, and they would pay the ultimate price after Americans were no longer there to fight by their side. It seems sure they never got a granite wall constructed in their honor; no parade for them either!
The road through life for most of us is a meandering, bumpy highway . . . never smooth. That can especially be said for those who fought in the Vietnam War. They came from all over America. Some were drafted, as the draft was in full force during the ’60s. Others were like Jerry Andrews. He enlisted thinking that our country was fighting against the Communist takeover of a small, faraway Southeast Asian nation with little to no resources or national resolve to resist the onslaught of the neighboring North Vietnam Communist government. While the draft snared many who were not exempt—the boys from the heartland and the prairie states—most of the conscriptions came from the poorer areas of the
inner cities. In talking with these “grunts,” as they were known, Jerry soon came to the conclusion that they didn’t have a horse in this race, were in it for the short term, and weren’t too happy about it . . . one and done. Unfortunately, more than 58,000 of these troops really ended up one and done. They would all become collateral damage in a political tragedy.
America got involved in the “conflict in Southeast Asia,” sending the first contingent of fighting forces over in 1963. Jerry was nineteen years old at the time and just starting to feel the need to go and fight for “Mom and Apple Pie and my country’s interests,” just as his grandfather, his father, his uncle, and his cousins had done, during what were called the two “Great Wars.” It is a long story of how he came to that conclusion, one that would eventually affect his moral compass, forged over twenty years by loving and devoted parents, family, and friends. Before the ’60s, in his experience, America was a strong nation of patriotic, hardworking individuals and families. It was only after the War in Vietnam started that this country, her government, and her people began to unravel into an unruly mass of longhaired, sign carrying, anti-war, anti-American-soldier citizens, hiding behind their First Amendment right to free speech. The peace movement flourished, defined by the death of every fallen soldier that fought for this country’s liberty in that theater of war. With the help of do-nothing politicians, that movement turned America away from being “The Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” to being the Land of the Freebie and No Place for the Brave . . . where, except for its fighting men and women, it would remain.
By then all the generals wanted to become politicians so they could have “THE POWER . . . ” the same kind of power that the politicians had used to micromanage the war. So the generals did anything the administration, and those that held the ear of the President, told them to do. So instead of an Eisenhower or a Patton or a MacArthur, Jerry and his fellows got Westmoreland. His strategy, instead of scorched earth, was “body count.” He planned to count his way to victory. A real general, by the name of Vo Nguyen Giap, planned on using a time-honored strategy proven over a hundred years; a strategy that worked before and would now work again. He counted on and received a lack of resolve by the American people at home, measured against his massive army’s tenacity, and steadfast determination. So, in spite of their massive losses, tiny Communist North Vietnam gained victory over the formally greatest military and industrial country in the world. You might say that “body count” was a metaphor for what was about to happen in the future of the once great nation.
From the time the first boots hit the ground in Vietnam, failure was predestined. Not failure by the brave men and women in those boots, but failure by America’s ever more immoral and unethical politicians doing whatever was popular to get votes and assure reelection. The die was cast. If the bullets and shrapnel didn’t get you, then Agent Orange would. The young, America’s best and brightest, were sacrificed on the altar of injustice at the expense of a system of government that had once been the model for the world but had now fallen into corrupt hands.
As Jesus was led to his death on the cross in Golgotha, He must have felt much like the Americans who fought in the Vietnam War. He had been unjustly accused by heretic Hebrew politicians and savagely scourged. Then. weakened by his loss of blood, he was made to carry his lumber on a circuitous journey through jeering crowds to the place of his execution. He was stabbed with a lance and as he was dying, his last fluids ran from his body and he was gone. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they have done.”
Vietnam was America’s Golgotha. Politicians put its soldiers there, watched them bleed as local longhairs cheered, made them carry their own crosses, then drove the final nails into them.
The “brilliant” generals that led the troops in the Vietnam War were not interested in winning. Their mantra seemed to be that thing called “body count,” a strange way to win a war by most accounts. But over 58,000 vinyl coffins were filled with Americans. That is the important number to remember, not the hundreds of thousands of estimated enemy killed. Death was never the real tragedy there. Sure, the families back home were hurt when they got their letter from “a grateful nation,” but in a lot of respects, the dead were lucky, because they wouldn’t have to watch the United States of America slowly erode into a third-rate power on a world stage that it had once dominated.
Every time he and his comrades went out into the field, Jerry looked out into the dark jungle fringe and saw the yawning mouth of a giant Python. Like a siren, it flicked its tongue and begged them to enter, and they willingly did. The Python swallowed them whole. Some were consumed, but most were shat out with the rest of the dung, never to be the same again. They never had an inkling, not a conscious thought, that once they entered the jungles of Vietnam, there would be no going back. A normal life, as they knew it, was over and never to be recouped. Ignorance is bliss.
“And on the third day, he rose into heaven.” Their last kick in the nuts came in 1975, when the politicians declared “Peace with Honor.” America rose into heaven from the roof of its embassy, not on the wings of angels, but on the rotor blades of helicopters.
This is the picture that those returning soldiers had to face every day of their lives. What about their lives? Remember, they had become collateral damage. Sure, some went back to school and tried to fit into the new American way of life. Some of the more intense entered covert government service. But most came home to a hostile, unrewarding, and ungrateful country. Most returnees’ lives were fraught with the demons of the Python.
In L.A., where Jerry lived twenty-two years after he left the war, the results of that dynamic could be seen all around him. Unkempt, mentally challenged, alcoholic, drug-addicted vets were homeless by the thousands, wanting nothing from the system that abandoned them. They got by, panhandling for change, so they could buy their next bottle or get their next fix. Disease was rampant and dirty needles either killed them outright or, worse, gave them AIDS so they could die another slow and painful death.
It’s a brand-new day—The doors to CLUB SAIGON are opened for business. Welcome to the nightmare!
ONE
1968 was a bad year for Jerry. ’67 was bad enough, but ’68 redefined the word “bad.” 1968 was the year that only half of A Detachment 255, Camp Plei Me, came back from the Central Highlands of Vietnam.
He remembered it as clearly twenty-two years later as he remembered it back then. Hanoi Hannah was shouting her shit over the single sideband radio, telling every swinging dick from Hanoi to Haiphong how Ho Chi Minh was going to kick old A-255’s ass off the face of the planet, just like they did in the siege of ‘65. At the time, Jerry thought they were being boastful and tried to laugh it off, although he knew from intelligence reports that the NVA had a large strike force in their AO (Area of Operation). When the smoke finally cleared that day, the NVA left 200 of their own dead on their concertina wire. That was a significant loss of manpower for any army to absorb, but they did, and managed to remove the U.S. from that particular piece of real estate, just as they’d predicted.
Dust-Off Two-Nine carted off six of Jerry’s teammates that afternoon, stacked on the floor of the chopper like cordwood. The other soldiers sat in nylon jump seats, trying not to look at their dead buddies, watching out the open doors as the door gunners laid down heavy M-60 fire into their former compound, a compound then being overrun by hundreds of NVA soldiers. It’s a sad sight to watch your colors being struck and replaced by another banner, but that’s just what happened, and that sight stuck with Jerry like a bad dream ever after.
A worse nightmare occurred on their arrival back in Kontum. It’s bad enough having to be pulled out of your camp, but it’s worse yet to return to the “C” Team with a chopper-load of full body bags. Body bags are nothing more than vinyl repositories for leftover blood and gore. Hopefully, a soldier’s dog tags can be located amongst the miscellaneous body parts and GRU (Grave Registration Unit) can pour the contents into a sta
ndard military-issue coffin filled with bags of ice and send the body home for a decent, closed-casket burial.
There were six bags brought to GRU that afternoon, and Jerry had to stand around for a couple of hours until all the remains were identified. Sergeant Mack “Blaster” Adams, their demolition man; Specialist Five Nelson Rotun, medic; Sergeant First Class “Blackjack” Baker, their “First Shirt”; Lieutenant “Baby David” Collins, XO; “Daiwe” Jackson, their commanding officer, and Staff Sergeant “Gunner” McConnell, a weapons specialist. Six good men that would never drink another brew, go to another family picnic, or sire another child. Six more bodies, part of the fifty-eight thousand or so that would bite the bullet for an unpopular cause.
Back in the states, the hippies were burning the flag, the Buddhists were burning themselves, and Jane Fonda was beginning to sound and look more and more like Hanoi Hannah. It was one hell of a war and after three tours of duty, Jerry was ready for a permanent R&R. It was February ’68 when he officially retired from Uncle Sam’s finest, the best part of a very bad year. All he wanted to do was go home and drink some real beer, get laid by a round-eyed girl, and kick some hippie ass. He accomplished all three within eight hours of getting off the plane.
TWO
There was something familiar about the crime scene. Jerry was working homicide on the night watch out of the Rampart Division.
For twenty-two years after his tours of duty working for Uncle Sam, he had been Police Detective Jerry Andrews, formerly of Special Forces A Detachments A-243 and A-255, an L.A. cop. Twenty-two years of decent pay, long hours, and no home life. Three more years and he could kiss this shit goodbye, take a 70 percent retirement, and head south to leisure in Baja.
Despite twenty-two years on the L.A. Police Force, his mind told him that he had seen all this before, somewhere else. The concrete felt soft, like the floor of the jungle, and this dead Vietnamese he found himself looking down on looked like “Charley.”
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