Long Range Patrol: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 1)

by Dennis Foley

  The others took the bulbs and the manioc, Anh took the basket to haul ammunition in, and Thanh told Bui he could have the cloth. The hoe would be turned in at the tunnel in order to use it to make tools or weapon parts.

  The stone’s warmth came through the cloth and relieved some of the pain in his leg. Even though it caused some of the ooze to seep from the wound itself, Bui still wanted the relief and tried to convince himself that the fluid needed to come out anyhow.

  Nightfall came too soon for Bui. He had been slipping in and out of a dreamlike nap as he leaned up against a sapling, his weapon across his knees, his leg elevated on a nearby stump to relieve the pulsing pain that came when his leg was lowered.

  “Come. We are moving now,” Thanh said in hushed but disapproving tones.

  It was clear to Bui that Thanh had begun to hate everything about him. They had never gotten along, but Bui thought that was only because Thanh had always been a soldier, beginning as a member of the older Viet Minh. He had fought the French as a boy and was mentioned in dispatches for his bravery in battle on three occasions since the French had left. But his bravery could do little to overcome his background.

  He was angry that he was still a sergeant after more than eleven years of fighting for the North. But because he was an uneducated farm boy from the South, he would never be anything more than that. He resented Bui for having been born in the North, even though his family had moved to the South when Bui was only two years old. Being from the North still gave him a leg up in the minds of all Communist soldiers. The fact that he had been educated by nuns at a Catholic school in Tay Ninh was another thing that Thanh hated about Bui. He could not read or write and Bui could do both, in Vietnamese and in French. The year they had been together had not warmed Thanh up. Rather, it had caused his resentment of what he considered as special privileges for Bui to grow larger.

  But the final blow was that Bui was slowing them down and would clearly be a liability if they made unexpected contact with an enemy unit on the way back to their base.

  Deciding not to argue with Thanh, Bui got to his feet and gingerly fell into the stretched-out single file that would be their movement formation.

  A small flicker of light was visible on the far side of the last rice paddy they had to cross. Someone stood in the palm grove with a small oil lamp to guide Thanh’s men into the clear lane, void of booby traps and mines, that protected the tunnel entrance.

  Bui’s arms shook from weakness as he tried to lower his legs and body into the opening the guide revealed. Even though it was hidden in a pigsty, it stayed dry and tight under the wash of mud and slop the pigs wallowed in.

  Once inside, Bui had to maneuver through the cramped passageway, scarcely an inch wider than his shoulders. And no matter how much he had denied the effects of his wound, he couldn’t conceal his loss of strength. He was glad to be at the tunnels finally, even though he would be forced to endure the unpleasantness that came with the security they offered.

  After passing through several yards of horizontal corridor only twenty inches high and fifteen wide, Bui followed the man in front of him through an open wooden shaft that took them down several feet into a tube of water that served as an air seal. Once under the water, they each had to feel their way down, then forward, then up to another layer. The water served much like the trap in a sink. It prevented air from getting deeper into the tunnels should the enemy try to force gas or smoke into the complex in an attempt to flush them out.

  Bui’s head broke the water on the far side of the water trap at the same time he ran out of air. He gasped for a fresh breath and found only stale, smoky air that had been in the tunnel for months without any significant freshening. Still, it was air. It was breathable, and it was what Bui needed after holding his breath long enough to get through the trap.

  He pulled himself up onto the mud-greased level above the water. Thanh reached out and slapped Bui on the kidneys. “Move! There are others! Move away!”

  Bui tried to stop coughing as he gasped for air. His back arched, his face near the tunnel’s muddy floor and spittle stringing from his mouth. “Yes. I am … moving. Yes …” he said, not really moving, hoping to have a moment to get just one more gulp of air.

  Stopping quickly dropped his body temperature. And this, coupled with the fact that he was still wet from the trap, caused Bui to shiver uncontrollably. His skin tightened into goose bumps, and his lower lip trembled as he listened to Thanh speak out loud for the first time in many days.

  “First order is to turn in the equipment we have brought back from the attack on the compound. Then we clean our weapons and equipment so that we may fight again on a moment’s notice should we be discovered here or have to come to the aid of our comrades aboveground. Next we will eat. But I want it to be quick. We have a meeting scheduled before we sleep, and I have many things to cover. Questions?”

  No one spoke. They were all eager to get on with the tasks before them and knew that nothing ever got done when they were talking. Bui tried to control his shivering, but found that the wall of the tunnel behind and underneath him was cold and damp and gave no relief. To make it worse, he felt nauseous and his leg wound pounded with hot pain, which had progressed to shooting pains that flashed up his thigh to a point near his groin. He knew his wound was much worse, and he just wanted to get on with healing and eating and sleeping.

  He was unable to stifle the urge to vomit and felt a moment of panic as he realized he had lost control and there was not an inch of open floor space on which to vomit. With no other option available to him, Bui grabbed the bottom of his pajama top, pulled it out and away from his waist, and vomited the rice and fish he had eaten earlier into the pocket formed by his shirt.

  “Bui! What is wrong with you? Are you so undisciplined that you can’t control yourself? You are a disgrace!” Thanh screamed as Bui rapidly emptied the contents of his stomach and resorted to dry heaving uncontrollably.

  There was no way to tell what time of day it was in the tunnel. It was always night down there. Bui awoke in a cutout shelf that had been carved into the side of a passageway near the complex’s tiny hospital. He couldn’t see much near him, but he could tell from the light at the end of the tunnel that there was a much larger one than the one he had crawled through getting into the tunnel complex beyond the light.

  “You have a very high fever, Comrade,” a female voice said.

  “What?” Bui asked, unsure if he’d really heard a woman’s voice or if it was a dream in his delirium.

  A spark turned to a flame, and the woman touched the flame to the wick on a small oil lamp. Bui squinted against the lamp flame and the woman behind it. Only her face was visible in the dim light, her black hair and black clothing sucking up the light and reflecting none.

  “I am told that your wound is very much infected. We must cut it open and clean it out or you surely will die, Comrade,” she said.

  “Okay, yes … but who are you?” Bui asked, so pleased to see a woman and hear a gentle voice.

  “I am Comrade Nguyen Te Tich.”

  Rolling his shoulders in order to be able to look at her face without straining his neck, Bui saw it behind the straight line of black soot that flowed off the top of the tiny flame and mushroomed against the tunnel ceiling, only a scant inch above her hair.

  To Bui she was beautiful. Her small round face was a classic Chinese form, painted with strong black eyebrows and very long eyelashes. Her nose was large for an Asian, as were her lips. They were full and had their own red-brown hue, which almost looked like the lipstick Europeans wore.

  “Comrade?”

  Her voice was so sweet it made Bui giggle as he answered her. “Yes, Comrade Tich …”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes … are you a doctor, Comrade?”

  “No, I am a soldier. But I work here in the infirmary until I too am well and strong.” She dropped her head as if guilty. “I have been ill with tuberculosis. But my stre
ngth will come, and I will be able to work to help fighters again.”

  He heard her words, but he didn’t believe a word of them. She was spouting acceptable rhetoric, common with Viet Cong who didn’t know each other and were cautious about being candid. He decided not to push her for her real feelings for fear that she would suspect him of being an agent who could cause her much trouble. He decided to go along with her, try to find some reason to keep her near him on the grounds of medical business, and enjoy her company without being too obvious.

  “Your wound is not large, Comrade—”

  “Bui. My name is Bui.”

  “—but your wound is very serious—Bui,” she said informally, without attaching “Comrade” to it.

  He tried to be strong and not show her how much pain he was in while she removed the dressings and tried to soak up some of the thickening fluid that was coming from the wound. He could tell that she was trying not to recoil from the smell. He wasn’t nearly as close to it as she was, and it still made him sick to smell it. Knowing it would become more painful as she continued to administer to his needs, Bui tried to distract himself from his wound’s repulsive look and smell.

  He watched her in the flickering light of the oil lamp she had placed on the tunnel floor near her. Her outline against the flame was exciting to Bui, even though he was in considerable pain.

  “I must get some ointment to put on this. It is infected, and if we don’t do something to heal it we—you—might be in for a very long battle,” she said.

  “Yes, do what you must.”

  She picked up the lamp and walked upright down the passageway.

  At the moment she turned, Bui reflexively reached out and touched the hem of her fitted blouse. He didn’t know what made him do it. Maybe it was because he wanted to make sure she was there and it was not some kind of evil trick his mind was playing on him. It had been so long since he had been able to talk to a young woman so privately. The few other occasions had been strictly business, at political meetings and at field messes.

  Once she had moved out of his reach, Bui didn’t pass up the chance to watch her walk. The light she carried in front of her outlined her tiny body. He could tell by the little he could see that she had unusually wide shoulders in contrast to her narrow hips. Her arms were slender, graceful, and strong—but feminine. At the turn in the tunnel, she disappeared from sight. Bui closed his eyes to hold the image in his mind for a few seconds before it decayed. He liked it—very much.

  The strain of holding his body up to be able to speak to her had drained Bui. He slumped back in the carved-out shelf and tried to muster some strength for her return.

  He couldn’t gauge how long she had been gone, but she quickly reentered the passageway carrying the lamp and bandages. This time the light played the length of her body and gave Bui a clearer picture of his underground angel of mercy. Her pajama bottoms stuck to her legs from the tunnel’s dampness. Her thighs were long and firm, her stomach flat, and her waist narrow. Bui thought of how long it had been since he had even touched a woman.

  He tried not to flinch at the pain she was causing while she tried to pluck the bits of rag and dirt from his wound. The smell of the wound grew more powerful. It embarrassed him, even though she showed no sign of being repulsed by it.

  “This is very dirty, Comrade. You must have someone more skilled to look after it.”

  Tich pulled away and stood up, a blood- and pus-soaked rag in hand.

  Bui reached out quickly to stop her from leaving. He grabbed her free hand. It was an unforgettable moment for him. The back of her hand was warm and soft. Her palm was rough, but not objectionable.

  “Can’t you take care of me?”

  “I am not a doctor. I told you, I am only here because I, too, have been sick and they need help down here. Soon I will be sent to work somewhere. Some say it could be back on the great trail, but I don’t know where.”

  “Maybe you can speak with someone. Maybe you are not well enough to go back up,” Bui said as he looked up in the direction of the outside world. “Maybe they will find you are better here than laboring to keep the trail open in Cambodia. Can’t you ask?”

  She was quiet for a long moment, not moving to resist his touch. “I don’t know. I have never asked. Maybe they will think I am trying to shirk my duty.”

  “What did you do before you fell sick?” he asked her.

  “I was hauling dirt from the tunnels near here. The earth taken from them had to be carried to the river and dumped there so that the republicans could not discover our digging.”

  “But it makes your beautiful hands hard, like a man’s.”

  Tich reacted by pulling her hand away from his, as if embarrassed by the intimacy. “It is not my job to question my role.”

  “But wouldn’t it be better to help a soldier return to the battle than to carry dirt?”

  She thought over his question and coyly replied, “I must think about that. Now, prepare yourself. I am sure this will hurt.”

  She was right. The greasy salve that she squeezed from a tube with French markings on it burned as it came in contact with the raw flesh of his inflamed wound.

  Buy Night Work Now!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I WROTE THIS BOOK with the fondest memories and deepest respect for those who gave of themselves to serve valiantly in reconnaissance and long range patrol units in Vietnam.

  It would not have been possible without their courage and tenacity. They never complained, never whined, and never gave up.

  I must also thank Owen Lock, Chris Bunch, and Allan Cole. Without their help, support, and encouragement these pages never would have been written.

  About the Author

  Dennis Foley retired from the army as a lieutenant colonel after several tours in Southeast Asia. He served as a Long Range Patrol platoon leader, an Airborne Infantry company commander, a Ranger company commander, and a Special Forces “A” Detachment commander. He holds two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts. In addition to his novels, he has written and produced for television and film. He lives in Whitefish, Montana.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1992 by Dennis Foley

  Cover design by Mauricio Diaz

  978-1-4804-7218-1

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  Dennis Foley, Long Range Patrol: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 1)