by Eric Meyer
“Two hundred feet, flaps down, one hundred knots,” I said.
He nodded. The Junkers had a huge wing flap that gave us a low stalling speed, he was bleeding speed off quickly to lower our landing speed on the unknown field.
“One hundred feet. Eighty knots.”
We crossed the lights and almost simultaneously hit the field with a bump. Paul throttled right back and I hit the brakes hard. The field was still wet, we slewed at an alarming angle, but he corrected with a touch of throttle and rudder and we eventually came to a stop. We had landed in North Vietnam, there was no time to celebrate. I rushed back into the cabin.
“We are in Le Van Tri’s field, we need to get out fast and establish a perimeter, watch out for his people, we don’t want anyone getting shot accidentally.”
Cady looked at me resentfully for shouting the orders, but I didn’t give a damn, this was bandit country, we had little time for niceties. I wrenched open the door, dropped the ladder to the ground and climbed down into the field. Several shadowy figures surrounded me, all armed with a variety of weapons, I recognised Soviet or Chinese AK47s and a couple of American M1s. An elderly Vietnamese walked through them and came face to face with me.
“Mr Hoffman, do you have my son?”
“Yes, Mr Le.” I called through the aircraft door, “Dao, come out, your father is here.”
He came to the door, Tim Beckerman jumped down and helped him down the ladder. His father gave a small smile of relief.
“I am pleased you are back safely, my son.” Dao nodded. “Thank you father.”
At a nod from Mr Le two guards helped him away and across the field, I assumed they had some kind of transport waiting. The rest of the Special Forces were unloading their equipment from the aircraft. Le frowned when he saw the huge quantities of weapons. “I thought this was a simple rescue of two men, Mr Hoffman. Is it wise to carry so much weaponry?”
At that moment Cady jumped down into the field. “Mr Le, this is Captain Cady of the U.S. Army, he is leading this mission.” They nodded to each other. “Mr Le, pleased to meet you. How far away is this prison?”
A younger man stepped forward. “This is my other son, Bao,” Le said. “He will guide you, it will take about half an hour to get there.”
“Form up, men, we’ll be leaving soon,” Cady shouted. They all looked around in alarm. “Captain, I would suggest you keep it quiet, we are in enemy territory,” Le said respectfully, but the scorn in his voice was there for all to hear.
I couldn’t see his face in the dark, but I was certain it reddened. “Yeah, well, there’s no one around,” but he kept his voice lower, “let’s move out.”
Paul was at the door of the plane. “I’ll go with them, Paul, I suggest you get the aircraft refuelled from the drums, can you manage?” He nodded grimly. “It’ll be a long job with the hand pump, but yes, I can do it. That fool Cady will need you along, he’s going to get everyone killed. Good luck, Jurgen.”
“You too,” I replied.
We walked along a mud track for almost half an hour until we saw a few hundred yards away the looming shape of a concrete factory. Bao stopped us. “They’re being held in there, Mr Hoffman. We understand that there are eight guards, four will be on duty and four asleep at this time. There is no rear entrance, only one double door at the front with a smaller door to one side. The double door is rarely opened since the factory became a prison.”
“Are there any more prisoners being held?” I asked him. He shook his head, “no, only the two Americans.”
Cady came up to us, clearly he was irritated that we were excluding him from the conversation. “Right, Hoffman, here’s what I propose.” I held up a hand. “Captain, please. Save it for later, let’s just go into the prison, bring out your two men and go home.”
He glowered at me. “Damnit, Hoffman, this is a military mission, if we encounter a North Vietnamese Army unit…” “Then we’re finished, Captain. If we do run into the communists, they’ll just call up reinforcements we’ll find ourselves in a battle we can’t win. Let’s get in and out without stirring up too much fuss, ok?”
He looked furious, but his men were making encouraging noises, “makes sense, Cap’n,” and more like that. In the end he gave a curt nod. “Have it your way, Hoffman, but God help you if it all goes wrong.”
I didn’t add that if it went wrong we would be beyond any help. Bao crept forward and then held up his hand. We stopped. Outside the building we could see the glow of a cigarette and the vague outline of a helmeted soldier became apparent, the strange pith helmet favoured by the North Vietnamese regular army. Thank God they all smoked so heavily.
Woltz was already bringing up his rifle. It was fitted with a huge silencer, making it look as if it had part of a cannon on the end of the barrel. There was a faint thud and the guard crashed to the ground. We ran forward, Burr checked his pulse and shook his head, he was dead. Woltz stayed back with Jack Bond, the communications sergeant, as the rest of us waited outside the door, there was no other sentry outside. The rest of us, Burr, Russo, Beckerman and Cady waited either side of the door. I spoke quietly to Bao. “Tell them you’ve brought women up from the village, do they want any.”
He nodded, and then knocked on the door while I waited to one side. After a few moments a suspicious looking guard opened the door a crack and looked out. Bao spoke to him quietly, I saw the man’s expression change. They negotiated for a few moments, then the door opened wide to let Bao enter. He moved to one side, the four Americans stepped around the door, a knife flashed and the guard was carefully lowered to the ground. They dashed in and I followed. Two soldiers were sitting at a desk reading magazines, two shots coughed out from silenced pistols and they crashed to the floor. The Americans rushed over and checked that they were dead, I went past them and opened a door at the back of the room. There was a long corridor with more doors leading off it. I heard one of the doors opening and ducked back out of sight, a sleepy Vietnamese voice shouted something. I pointed to Beckerman, who was holding a silenced pistol, he jumped through the doorway, another cough and a clatter as the man dropped to the floor.
I looked around, he was in his shorts and t-shirt and probably had got out of bed to go to the bathroom. We ran down the corridor, a door was partly open to sleeping quarters with eight bunk beds. Three were occupied, the Americans went to work, the pistols coughed and they all died without even waking.
“The officer,” I whispered to Beckerman and Burr. They nodded, there were two more doors both closed. One was reinforced steel, that had to be the cells. The other was a normal wooden door. They burst through, both pistols coughed and another crash. They came back out.
“That should be the lot, let’s see if our boys are in here.” Cady came up and gestured for them to cover him while he opened it. There was another corridor with three barred cells, Miles Anderson and Aaron Goldberg were in one of them. Their faces lit up when they looked through the bars and saw us.
“By Christ, are we glad to see you boys,” Goldberg said. I rummaged through the keys on a panel on the wall and found the one that opened their cell. “Miles is in a bad way, he’s got a broken leg and some cracked ribs,” Goldberg warned.
“Can you walk, Mr Anderson?” Cady asked. He looked dazed, I looked at Goldberg. “Hard interrogation,” he explained.
“Shit. Russo, Beckerman, give him a hand, we need to get back to the aircraft,” he looked at me, “do we have much time left?” I shook my head. “We need to be airborne within the hour, Captain.”
“Right, men, let’s go,” he called out.
When we got outside the building, there was no sign of Bao. “Where’d the gook go?” Cady asked me. I shrugged. He asked Woltz and Bond but they hadn’t seen him slip away in the darkness. He looked irritated. “Fucking natives, never trust them. Right, let’s move.”
We stumbled back along the path to our landing field. I had memorised the path and managed to guide us back. When we got to the field I
put up a hand to stop them. “What’s up?” Cady asked. “Schh. We’ve got trouble.” “Yeah? What kind of trouble?”
“Can’t you smell it, Captain, cigarette smoke?”
“Maybe it’s Schuster,” he said, “No, he doesn’t smoke,” I replied. “One of Le’s men, then?”
“I don’t think so. Stay there, I’ll go and check.” I skirted the field and looked closely. Nothing. In the cockpit, I could make out the figure of Paul Schuster sat at the controls. Then the clouds slid away from the moon and in its dim light I could see another shadowy figure behind him, holding something to his head. It was enough. I crept back to the Americans. “North Vietnamese, they’ve taken Paul and are holding him in the cockpit. Somehow they found us.”
“Damn,” Cady looked flustered for a moment, “we’ll have to go in and take them out, we need that plane to get out of here.”
I shook my head. “Captain, you can forget the plane. They’ll have heavy machine guns set up around the field, the minute they see us they’ll open fire. Besides, they could have twenty men hiding in and around the plane.” “Shit. We can take twenty of these bastards, no sweat,” he said cockily.
His men looked concerned at his stupidity. “Captain, even when American and ARVN forces outnumbered the Viet Cong ten to one at Ap Bac, they couldn’t beat them. I suggest we use a little caution.” He didn’t like me correcting him, but the alternative was this officer getting us all killed. A shadowy figure ran up to us and gun barrels swung around to cover him, but it was Bao returning, Le’s son. “I’m sorry, we didn’t know they were coming,” he said.
“Not your fault, thanks for coming back. What do you know? How many of them are there?” I asked him. “It looks like a half-platoon, about twelve men. They’re from the local barracks in Trung Chau, about twenty five kilometres from here.”
I felt strangely alone without Paul Schuster to talk things over with, we’d been together for so many years that it seemed second nature to turn to him and say, ‘What do you think, Paul?’ But this time, he needed help and I was determined that I wouldn’t leave this Godforsaken country without him. I spoke urgently to Bao.
I heard Cady giving orders to his men, preparing them for an overland trek to the South. “Captain, could I have a word with you?” I said. He looked annoyed at the interruption. “Yeah, what is it, Hoffman?”
“You’ll never leave North Vietnam on foot, it’s virtually impossible.” He was too angry to be told how to do his job.
“Mr. Hoffman, I can assure you that we’ll walk out of here and kill any sonofabitch that gets in our way. What the hell do you mean, we’ll never leave?”
I sighed, he was going to be difficult, and I needed him, or at least, his men. I explained about up to a million North Vietnamese Army regulars, the guerrillas, the Viet Cong, and the peasants, every hand would be turned against them and every eye would be watching for them.
“The problem is they know we’re here, Captain. It’ll be the biggest manhunt in their history, no matter what you do they’ll find you and probably sooner rather than later. Your mission will all be for nothing.”
“So what do you suggest? I assume you do have a suggestion?” he sneered. “Certainly. We can fly out, after we’ve picked up Paul Schuster, of course.”
“But you said that reaching the aircraft would be impossible, it would bring down the Viets and we’d be blown out of the sky.”
“True, it would be inevitable in that plane, now that it’s compromised. I’m suggesting that we go elsewhere and take a different aircraft, we steal one.”
He was interested, so were the men and they clustered around while I outlined what I had in mind.
“There’s an airfield twenty miles from here at Bach Mai. These troops will give up at dawn when they know we’re not coming back and return to Trung Chau. If we move quickly we can be there before dawn and ambush them when they get there. We release Paul and head for Bach Mai, Le says that there are at least two transport aircraft stationed there. We simply take one and fly home, their air defence system will be looking at the Junkers. With any luck we’ll get away before they know what’s happening.”
Cady looked sceptical. “You and I both know it won’t be so easy, Hoffman. What do you plan to do about the survivors of the ambush? Take them with us?”
“That won’t be possible,” I replied. A silence descended on the group. “For God’s sake,” Frank Burr protested, “you’re saying we’d have to kill them all, aren’t you? Jesus!” I heard someone say the words ‘goddamn Nazi’ quietly.
“There’s no alternative, if we leave them alive they’ll raise the alarm. If we tie them up and one escapes, we’re finished. We have to kill them all. It’s either that or we die here, those are the choices.
You need to decide quickly, we’ll need to get in position before dawn.” Across the field, we could see two of the Viets had climbed out of the aircraft and were pouring petrol into the ground to make sure it never took off.
They talked among themselves. I heard some arguing, but I knew from past experience in Russia that when a man is thousands of miles from home, those kinds of decisions preyed less heavily on conventional morality than when safely within the borders of your own country. I told them that Paul wouldn’t admit to carrying American troops, at worst he’d spin a story about Vietnamese smugglers trying to earn a few extra dollars. The prison guards were all dead, there was no one there to sound the alarm about an American led rescue mission. So far, we had a few things in our favour. If we could release Paul and steal an aircraft, we had a good chance of getting home. Otherwise, we may as well hand ourselves into the waiting North Vietnamese Army unit.
“Ok, we’ll do it your way, Hoffman. God help you if you’re wrong,” Cady whispered. “If I’m wrong, Captain, I’ll be beyond God’s help.”
He nodded and quietly gave orders to the men to form up. Bao had offered to lead the way and we marched away in the darkness towards Trung Chau. According to Bao there was only one viable route to Trung Chau and we were on it. I looked at the sky, the glow of dawn was just over the horizon. I didn’t think we’d make it in time, but Bao had been scouting ahead with Abe Woltz and they came running back.
“Sir, the Viets have set up a checkpoint about half a mile up the road from here, there are four Viets guarding it, a sergeant and three soldiers,” Woltz said to Cady. “It’ll be a bitch to get past it unnoticed.” I asked him to describe it for me, it sounded exactly like the small fortified posts that the French built during the first Indochina war. “This could be useful to us. If we can kill the garrison, we could set the ambush there and catch them by surprise. I don’t think we have sufficient hours of darkness left to get to Trung Chau, this would be perfect.”
Cady saw the sense of it, I think by then he realised that he was out of his depth and welcomed the advice. We put together a simple plan and Bao agreed to act as a decoy. Woltz went off the path to get his sniper rifle into position while remaining hidden, Tim Beckerman went with him as his number two. We gave them ten minutes to get into position, and then started towards the checkpoint. Bao ran ahead, he’d torn his clothing and had prepared a story about being attacked by bandits who’d stolen his money belt. It was thin, but the guards would be tired and we had a good chance of making it work. He hurtled around a bend in the path and we heard shouts in Vietnamese as they ordered him to stop. He was good, playing his part to perfection. I understood him pouring out his indignant story of being robbed under the noses of these guards, what were they going to do about it? They barked a series of questions and it sounded as if a row was developing.
We got to the bend in the path and stopped, peering through the undergrowth to see Bao arguing strongly with the soldiers. I couldn’t see Woltz and Beckerman but I knew they were there. The argument peaked to a shouting match, they were angry, Bao was virtually calling them cowards for not keeping the roads clear of thieves. Then he stomped away up the track. The sergeant shouted to him to stop and he ignor
ed him, turning his back and making a rude sign as he walked off. The sergeant shouted louder, gave an order and one of his men cocked the bolt of his rifle. That was enough, Bao darted off the track and threw himself flat, the soldiers looked bemused, then two shots cracked out and the sergeant and the soldier with the loaded rifle were flung to the ground. The other two looked panicked and quickly chambered rounds into their rifles, but Cady’s men hit them with a barrage of sub-machine gun fire that almost sliced them in two. We walked warily up to the checkpoint but they were all dead and no more soldiers waited to ambush us. Cady gave orders and the bodies were dragged away into the jungle and the path cleared of any evidence that there had been a slaughter. We looked at the building, it was quite small, maybe fifteen feet square with just one door at the front and two windows. There was an observation slit at each side of the building as well as two at the front on either side of the door and another at the back. There was only one room, it stank of cigarette smoke, sweat and urine. We prepared the area as best we could and settled down to wait. Frank Burr and Bao retraced out steps back down the path to watch for the Viets, the rest of us set up the ambush. The key to it was Abe Woltz, he was hidden with Beckerman behind fallen tree trunks that looked as if they’d been cut down for firewood, opposite the checkpoint. I went inside the evil smelling room with Cady, Joe Russo and Jack Bond setting up a position twenty yards from Woltz so that they could catch the Viets in their crossfire. We all had grenades, although I spoke sharply to them about using them.
“If you throw one of those near Paul Schuster, you’ll kill an expert pilot and maybe the only chance you have of getting out of here.” Cady looked amused. “Hey, Hoffman, we’ve got you, you’re the pilot. We’ll take care of Schuster, of course, but he’s not vital to the success of the mission.”
“Isn’t he?” I said harshly. “Let me make this clear, without Paul, I won’t fly you out of here, period. We helped each other through the Eastern Front and through the French Indochina war and I’m not leaving him now.”