by Robin Moore
Ossidian carefully instructed Co Binh to become friendly with Mr. Hinh, a prominent lawyer and businessman working both sides of the war. Through past agents Ossidian knew that Hinh had close contacts with the highest officers in the National Liberation Front.
Hinh developed an immediate interest in Co Binh, who talked frequently about the Americans and their camp which she had been invited to visit several times. As Ossidian had foreseen, Hinh soon realized that Co Binh could be a useful tool in fostering his relations with the National Liberation Front commanders.
Hinh introduced her to Colonel Ling, the Viet Cong commander of the whole corps area, who was an occasional visitor to the Hinh establishment in the province capital. She convinced Ling that she was against the government and the Americans meddling in her country.
Ling invited her to visit his headquarters, a permanent, comfortable series of concrete and stone buildings in the thick jungle and scrub forest thirty miles northwest of the province capital. In spite of constant urging by the American advisers, no segment of the Vietnamese Army had ever dared go into this hill country near the Cambodian border.
Now Mr. Hinh and Colonel Ling were each trying to make Hinh’s protégée his mistress, Ossidian told me proudly.
Targar shook his head. “I’m a humane fellow, a medic. If I wasn’t too old to go back to college I’d become a doctor. This man, Ossidian, sometimes I am sick with him.” Targar grinned at his teammate. Then to me he said, “So what is our intelligence sergeant doing in Saigon? Already he is looking for a new agent to replace Co Binh when she is caught.”
“She’s just about to be her most effective,” Ossidian explained. “Unfortunately, maximum effectiveness is usually soon followed by compromise.”
“But, my friend,” Targar said, “she cannot reach max performance without the help of the medic.”
“You see, Co Binh has been playing off Mr. Hinh against Colonel Ling just a little. And, the colonel has been out in the jungle without anything nice like Co Binh around for one hell of a long time. His Communist nuts are mighty hot for our girl; he wants her all to himself and told Hinh the Front would execute him if he attempted to seduce a loyal female agent.”
The intelligence sergeant’s laugh was deep. “For the last week Hinh has been pleading with Co Binh to spread for Ling. Old Hinh is one scared double-agent businessman.”
Ossidian’s problem now was that Co Binh’s hatred was so intense for all National Liberation Front members that while she was willing to use her body to bring defeat to the Communists she had a terror of a Viet Cong-fathered child growing in her body. She knew she would kill such a child at the moment of its birth, before if possible; and this would be such a mortal sin—after her Catholic training—that she could never live with herself or face a priest the rest of her life.
To the surprise of Ossidian and Targar, Co Binh had absolutely no knowledge of contraceptives. The intelligence sergeant, however, was as resolved as the impassioned Colonel Ling that Co Binh and the Viet Cong commander should have frequent sexual congress, the earlier the better.
Thus, while Co Binh kept putting off an increasingly anxious and more irritable Colonel Ling, Ossidian asked Captain Martell to request through B-team channels that a female contraceptive kit be immediately flown into Nam Luong.
The order had arrived on Major Fanshaw’s desk his first week in command. The explosion was instantly radioed back to Captain Martell, who was summoned to the B team forthwith.
With his continental urbanity Brandy succeeded in making Fanshaw—carrying out his first Special Forces assignment—appear, even to himself, naive and inexperienced in intelligence matters. It was with enormous disinclination that Major Fanshaw took on the most distasteful chore of his career. He appealed to the chief naval surgeon in Saigon for a graduated set of contraceptive diaphragms from small to medium. He further requested the proper instrument to determine the correct-size article that should be issued. The remainder, he promised, would be returned.
The day following the request, as Ossidian, and undoubtedly Colonel Ling, grew increasingly restive, word came back from Fanshaw to Captain Martell that neither the Navy hospital nor any of its dispensaries carried such medical supplies. Martell, standing by the radio as his sergeant decoded the message, sent back in exasperation—“Make request for subject medical supplies to Central Intelligence Agency operating group at MAAG headquarters, Saigon. Will arrive Saigon tomorrow personally to accept issue.”
Targar held up a handsome, leatherette kit. “And here is subject issue. Madame Nhu really had this country tied up. There still isn’t any way a poor girl can have a little fun and keep out of trouble.”
“Suppose she’s a virgin,” I said.
Ossidian shook his head. “I don’t think she is. But if so—Targar, you know your duty. That girl’s got to be able to use the thing immediately!”
The intelligence sergeant looked at his watch and then pushed his chair back. “Got to leave you for a while. I have another interview at the office of the good Doctor Hinh—no relation, by the way, to Mr. Hinh. I checked that out. I’ll meet you and the old man at the Continental at 1730 hours. See you then.” Ossidian hauled his bulky though disciplined and even agile body out of the chair and headed for the door.
“Another schoolteacher, this time?” I asked.
“Thank God, no,” Targar replied. “This is a high-class whore whose family were killed, and her sisters raped. We’re going to get into a new kind of civic action program. We’re starting a high-class whorehouse in the province capital. Only the highest-ranking VC will get in.”
At 5:30 Targar and I found Captain Martell sitting in the back of the Continental Palace terrace bar, looking out over the busy square. “Some day the VC are going to toss a bomb in here,” I grumbled, sitting down.
“Never will that happen,” Brandy assured me. “This is French-owned. They pay their taxes to the VC. This is the safest place in town. And nice. None of those steel-wire screens. What will you have?”
Targar and I drank beer as Brandy slowly sipped his vermouth.
“Ossidian went to interview the young lady?”
Targar nodded. “Did you have any luck policing up strike-force recruits, sir?”
“Yes,” Brandy said. “I wonder if you would mind going over to the prison with me tomorrow and giving our share of delinquents a physical examination. We have enough diseases out at Nam Luong without importing more from Saigon.”
“Our share, sir?”
“Some of the other A-team captains in need of VC fodder heard of my idea. But I got first choice. You’ll see a number of our old copains, Targar.”
Brandy looked up, smiling. “Ah, here comes Lieutenant Vinh. He is the LLDB Executive Officer at Nam Luong,” Brandy explained to me. “He has come in town with two of his best sergeants to personally escort our young warriors back to where their talents for mayhem and assassination can be put to work on behalf of national objectives.” Martell gestured to the empty chair and Lieutenant Vinh sat down. We were introduced. “By the way,” Martell asked me, “how about coming back to Nam Luong with us?”
“You couldn’t keep me away.”
“Good. We’ll go out on the MAAG milk run tomorrow afternoon. Vinh will put our new contingent of hoods on a special morning flight as soon as Targar checks them over.”
“How close do you want me to check, sir?”
“No leprosy, no chancres. I don’t want any blood-spitters. If they have the clap, and I assume most of them will, we can stick them full of penicillin when they get to Nam Luong.”
Brandy grinned at me. “The first time I came to Vietnam the Army had only two physical tests. A man must not uncontrollably spit blood when he talked. Then they had a ring about five inches in diameter for the pinhead test. If the top of the recruit’s head protruded through the ring, he was, quite rightly, judged a cretin. He didn’t have to serve. My first advice was to make the ring a bit larger. Too many troopers who could o
nly drool and make monkey-chatter were passing the physical. Of course”—Brandy gave a Gallic shrug—“most of them were shot for insubordination.”
Captain Martell turned to Lieutenant Vinh. “May I buy you a drink?”
2
The Army Caribou clattered to a halt on the perforated-steel strip runway, and Martell, Ossidian, Targar, and I disembarked.
A jeep pulled up to meet us, driven by a tall, open-faced, smiling, first lieutenant, green beret low on his forehead. I was introduced to Bob Barton, Captain Martell’s XO and we piled into the jeep. It was about 1:00 in the afternoon when we arrived, and the drive to Nam Luong took another twenty minutes. Barton drove full tilt down the road and I held on tightly to my treasured jungle campaign hat.
Brandy laughed. “Too fast? We make it as hard as possible for the odd sniper to get one of us.”
Finally Barton turned off the once-paved main road, now fast disintegrating to gravel, and took a right up to the outer barbed-wire perimeter around Nam Luong. Outside the perimeter were rows of wooden shacks.
“We’ve got about two hundred and fifty women and children dependents of the strike force living there,” Brandy said.
Two tiger-suited strikers saluted and let us into the outer perimeter. We drove another fifty yards to the bamboo-spiked mud and stone wall. Again two guards saluted and let us past the comer machine-gun bunker. Behind us a barbed-wire barricade was slid back into place.
“Nice permanent cement-type buildings you have here,” I remarked.
“Used to be a French fort. The Viet Minh took it for a while and then the French captured it again and really fixed it up.”
The jeep stopped under a tree in the center of an L formed by two cement longhouses. “Ahead of us is the American chow hall, the kitchen, and further down the operations and supply room.” Brandy pointed at a long low building, with a series of doors along it. “There’s where we sack out. Bring your gear. There’s an extra cot in my room.” Brandy’s accent was particularly noticeable when he used American slang.
After depositing my pack in the captain’s quarters I was introduced to the other members of the team—all but two sergeants who were out on an operation. “Let’s get some chow, now,” Brandy suggested. “Then, you will see everything.”
Barton and Ed Swiggert, the team sergeant, sat down with us. A Chinese girl came in with a pan of hot rice. “Ah, yes, there she is. Sweet Lips.” Brandy called out, “Sweet Lips, you don’t let any of these boys be naughty with you when I go away?”
Sweet Lips giggled and filled our bowls. Brandy turned to his XO. “Bob, I think we will see problems with this new bunch of criminals. They all arrived with Lieutenant Vinh?”
“Oh, yes. They’re here, every one you bailed out of jail this morning is accounted for. What’s the trouble besides we all have to get new pickproof locks on our doors?”
“We must keep them fighting all the time, always on operations, like before. Only now we have Captain Cam who tries to cut down on combat operations. But I think we are in for trouble with Major Fanshaw. He doesn’t like our hoods.”
“He isn’t the only one, sir,” said Master Sergeant Swiggert.
“He doesn’t even like them being here,” Martell added. “He is planning a big inspection this week. We must try to shape them up. Maybe we take the best of this new group, make an honor guard, give them special colored scarf or something. Give them little extra privileges. Then the others try to be better soldiers so they can be honor guard.”
“Right, sir,” said Barton.
“Good. Now, while Swiggert and I go over some things maybe you will show our guest here around the camp.”
I followed Barton out into the hot sun and he began pointing out the various facilities of the camp. Near the strike-force barracks on the opposite side of the parade ground from the American quarters was a large, shrieking and laughing crowd of strikers.
“What gives?” I asked.
“That’s the zoo.” A sheepish grin came over Barton’s wide, ruddy-complexioned face. “The strikers get a big jolt out of the monkeys.” Seeing I was interested, he walked me in the direction of the noisy throng. “The boys have a funny sense of humor. Looks like some of the returnees from the Saigon jail checking up to see if their old monkey friends are still around.”
As we strolled toward the monkey cage Barton told me about the camp’s most popular pet, a gibbon. “We started out with a male and a female in the cage together. Trouble was the female was frigid. Our male turned out to be an oversexed little bastard. He had a miserable time. The goddamned female would bite him every time he came after her.” Barton laughed. “Well, one of our hoods felt sorry for the poor sonofabitch and tossed a hen in with him.”
“A hen?”
Barton laughed. “Come on.” He shoved his way through the crowd around the cage, the strikers laughing and plucking at him. In front of the cage there was a mean-faced little Viet holding a clucking hen just outside the gibbon’s reach. Both hairy arms were thrust through the chicken wire, bright eyes fixed on the nervous fowl. The striker would let the gibbon almost get to the hen and then pull it an inch out of the little beast’s reach. Each time this happened the gibbon screamed in shrill frustration, ran around the cage several times, and banged his head. This was the signal to put the hen close to him again and the gibbon immediately made another lunge through the cage. The screams of laughter from the strikers drowned out the siren-like shrieks of the gibbon.
Seeing that the American officer and another American were present, the striker in charge of the entertainment decided to get down to the main attraction. The laughter and what could only be Vietnamese obscenities reached a crescendo as the door to the cage was opened a crack and the hen thrown inside.
The lusty cheers that went up as the gibbon chased a now thoroughly terrified hen around the cage and finally caught it, reminded me of the first appearance of the bull in a corrida.
In a businesslike, down-to-earth manner the gibbon turned the hen upside down and began to pluck out the screeching fowl’s tail feathers. Expertly he divested the hen of every feather about its tail and then ignoring the furious protestations, assaulted the rear of the squawking biddy.
That such a noise could come out of a small bird rocked me. Even the strikers, fighting each other for a better view of the proceedings and crying out encouragements to the camp mascot, couldn’t drown out the reedy shrieks.
The gibbon was soon surfeited and threw the now limp and wounded hen aside, where it lay, flapping its wings. The show was over and the still noisy strikers began to disperse.
“Quite a matinee,” I remarked.
“When they really want a spectacle they throw in a rooster.” Barton chuckled grimly. “Oh yes, we do have a ball with our allies around here.”
We walked back toward the chow hall and met Ossidian and Targar, who said Captain Martell suggested they take me downtown and show me their civic action project—the school.
“Watch out for these two,” Barton warned with a grin. “They’ll sure as hell get you in trouble.”
Ossidian got behind the wheel of the jeep; Targar and two boxes of medical equipment took up the back. “It’s sick call at the school today,” Targar explained as the green-bereted sergeant drove off at a frightening pace. In town he wove through a tangle of streets and finally pulled up in a pleasant, grassy yard with a brightly painted jungle gym, slides and swings.
“School,” Ossidian announced.
A crowd of children surged out of the door of the freshly painted structure. They called out happily and surrounded the two sergeants as they stepped from the jeep. Recognizing me as an American, some of the kids grabbed me too.
Co Binh, wearing a white au-dai, emerged into the sunlight. Her pique at the children for summarily deserting her classroom made her delicate features all the more appealing.
“Ah, hello Co Binh,” Targar called to her cheerfully. “Your gynecologist is here!” Although his words ob
viously meant nothing to her, Co Binh blushed prettily. She had been expecting Targar for two days.
Ossidian nudged me. “What do you think of this place? Killing two birds with one stone. Civic action at its best and intelligence at its most effective. The taxpayers ought to be happy—two deals for the price of one.”
Ossidian and Targar met each other’s eyes for a moment.
“Oh, shit,” Ossidian muttered. “What are you going to do? We’re over here to win, aren’t we?”
Targar, a medical kit slung over his shoulder, went over to Co Binh, said something, and then they walked toward the back of the school.
“Funny thing about old Victor Charlie,” Ossidian mused. “He thinks Americans are dickheads for coming over here and trying to drill water wells and build schools and orphanages. The only time he respects us is when we’re killing him.”
The intelligence sergeant took a handful of candy from his pocket and started distributing it to the children. “You’d think it would be compromising Co Binh for all of us to be around the school this way—Targar going back there alone with her. But hell no. When we get on this do-good kick Victor Charlie just thinks we’re nuts and laughs. It’s funny to them. We finance a school and pay one of their agents because we want everyone to love us.”
About fifteen minutes later Targar rejoined us out in the yard. He started getting the kids lined up for medical inspection.
“How’d it go?” Ossidian asked.
“No sweat. I’ve found my niche in life at last. I have just the right bedside manner to be a hellofa specialist in intimate female problems. That’s where the money in medicine is, you know. Got her measured up, gave her the right size, showed her how to use it without Colonel Ling being any the wiser. And I do not embarrass her at all. She thinks I am great. I think she is falling in love with her gynecologist.”