by Robin Moore
“Right. Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas.”
“Wish my wife a Happy New Year for me too,” Arklin answered dryly. “And don’t forget to send some presents to the kids.”
“The Agency has activated a fine Christmas shopping section for its boys in the field. And Bernie, you’ll find a few trinkets for your Meo family in a box with your code number on it.” With a raucous laugh he pulled the door shut. Immediately the pilots started up the engines, and Arklin and his Meos hastened from the field.
The platoon arrived back at the village by mid-day. Arklin saw that all the new weapons and equipment were stored in the arms room, and then took the mail sack and wood chest and went back to his house. Once inside he pried open the box.
He burst out laughing as he pulled out a pink Angora sweater and held it up to Nanette. One of the guys must have some sense of humor, he thought.
“Here.” He handed it to her. “This will keep you warm these cold mornings.”
“But I have you,” Nanette protested.
“Try it on,” Arklin urged. “I just hope it stretches good.”
“If it will please you.”
She took the sweater and pulled it on over her head. Arklin chuckled. “God, what a sweater girl. If they could see you back in the States the girls would all give up.”
“This is good?” Nanette asked anxiously.
He nodded and looked into the box. “Let’s see what else we’ve got.” He pulled out a longhandled mirror, a comb and brush and gave them to Nanette. She looked at herself in the mirror with delight and began combing her hair.
Further down in the chest was a complete selection of contraceptive devices, for both male and female use. “Son of a bitch,” he said aloud. “If that isn’t locking the barn after the horse is out.” He examined Nanette a few moments and made some rapid calculations. “Maybe not, though.” He decided that he would start giving Nanette a little advanced training in certain intimate female matters.
“You keep looking through the box, Nanette. I’ve got some homework to do.”
Going over to the door where the daylight streamed in, he sat on the floor and pulled out a large stack of letters.
Tenderly, envelope by envelope, he sorted the mail by date and then began to read in order. So absorbed was he in the news from home that he suddenly realized it was too dark to read. He looked up, for a second surprised to find himself where he was, and saw Nanette staring at him, a strange expression on her face. Her eyes went from his face to the pile of letters and back to his face. Wearing the Angora sweater she could have been a suntanned teenager; she had worked vigorously at her sleek black hair with the comb and brush.
“I wish I could write a letter,” Nanette said. “Would you read them if I sent them to your other home when you go?”
“Of course.”
“Your other wife won’t mind? I will learn to write.”
Arklin hesitated too long formulating an answer.
“Your other wife would hate me!” Nanette burst out.
“Perhaps not,” Arklin said thoughtfully. “Not if she could understand this other world over here.”
“What would she think if she knew about me?” Nanette pursued.
“Let’s not talk about it,” Arklin said quietly. “I’m here with you. We are living and working together. That’s what is important now.”
“But you will leave me for your American wife!” Nanette started to sob and Arklin went to her and held her in his arms. The sweater came between them, and impatiently she tore it off, her breasts exposed and pushing to her man now.
She fell back on the blankets, pulling Arklin to her, kissing him. One of her hands pulled at the belt to his fatigue pants. She slipped her hand inside.
Arklin groaned inwardly. He adored his Nanette, but right now, after reading the letters from his wife and children—
He pulled away from her gently. “Please, Nanette. I’m very tired. It’s been a hard two days.”
“You don’t love me, you want your other wife,” Nanette cried. “You will leave me and forget all about me just as soon as the Meo do what you want them to.”
She stood up, her face an immobile mask of sullen anger. “You just use us, all of us, to get what you want. Then you leave us the way you did before.” Holding her head high she walked out the door of the house and down the notched log into the darkness.
What she says is basically true, Arklin thought miserably.
Then he remembered Methuan’s final warning. Gathering the letters in a thick bundle he stepped down to the ground and squatting in front of the nearest fire he sadly burned the letters one by one. How much it would have meant to be able to keep and reread them. But this was his duty.
Only after the last letter had become ash did he straighten up and start back to his house. Suddenly Nanette came rushing from the darkness and threw herself on him, kissing him, taking one of his hands and placing it high up between her strong thighs.
“You do love me and not her,” Nanette cried. “You burned her letters.”
Nanette half dragged Arklin back up to their house, happily crying, “You burned her letters, you love me.”
But before they lay down together there was one thing he badly needed. He rummaged in the box until he found one of the bottles of good bourbon whisky.
3
Peacefully 1964 crept into Laos. The Laotians paid no attention to the Viet Cong, Communists from North Vietnam who openly used the country as a sanctuary for organizing their forces and infiltrating South Vietnam. The VC, after all, only caused trouble to the South Vietnamese. And most Western diplomatic missions in Vientiane enjoyed, to the full, the amenities the city offered, secure in the apparently peaceful intentions of the Pathet Lao.
But not a member of the Meo tribe doubted that the Communists would soon be on the march again. As a result, Arklin had no trouble convincing his charges that they must be constantly ready to meet and kill the Pathets. Pay Dang, in fact, frequently expressed the consensus of Meo opinion when he said they should launch a surprise attack on the Pathet with their new weapons. That way they might be able to kill more than 100 and lose few men themselves.
Arklin tried to explain the Geneva convention: How the Pathet, neutralists, and rightists had promised to live together in harmony, and all foreigners had promised to cease military aid to any of the three factions making up the government. How it was not the way of democratic countries to anticipate Communist aggressive designs and attack first. The entire concept of not attacking first was beyond the realistic Meos’ comprehension.
As Arklin’s patrols and agents reported a steady flow of Communist troops and equipment traveling south unmolested along a trail only thirty-five or forty miles away, it was difficult to resist Pay Dang’s coaxing that they take a company and ambush a Communist column. The montagnards were getting anxious to kill their hated enemies. Arklin had to permit more frequent animal sacrifices and drinking parties to hold in check his tribesmen’s blood lust, inflamed by the profusion of new weapons and their ability to use them well.
The Communists were quietly biding their time; Arklin wished they would attack and get it over with. He was constantly worried that some of the Meos might disobey his orders and stage a raid on a Pathet Lao village. Meanwhile U-10 flights kept him supplied and brought in more arms.
By March, 1964, the weapons room contained enough heavy and light weapons and ammunition for battalion operations. Arklin had more than 400 men. They were paid monthly in Laotian currency flown in to him. Morale was high and the men were honed to a keen fighting edge when the first signs of militancy on the part of the Pathets was reported by a patrol.
In April Communist military units were processing only twenty miles away to the North and then marching south to Pathet Lao headquarters at Khana Khay. Arklin radioed this information to control and requested permission to ambush the columns of Communists now moving along trails within striking range of the strongly fortified M
eo village.
Permission was refused, pending the Pathet showing their hand more openly, but during the first week of May a message arrived that control would be at the airstrip the next morning. Arklin took an entire company with him to meet the plane.
Two U-10s landed and the Meo carriers ran across the field to unload. It was a less-than-jolly Frank Methuan who stepped from the ship. Arklin noticed his control’s mood at once.
“What’s the matter, Frank? I’m the one that should be looking like a six-week case of the ass.”
“You look like the sorriest major I ever saw,” the CIA man snapped.
Abashed, Arklin realized that unconsciously he may well have been letting himself go. In spite of all his precautions he had somehow contracted dysentery, which had taken its toll physically, to say nothing of reducing his desire to preserve military neatness at all times.
“I’m sorry, Frank. Guess I have been kind of careless lately. Not that it ever mattered to you before.”
“Oh, Christ. I’m sorry, Bernie. I wish I was up here with you instead of fighting the Saigon-Bangkok-Pentagon-State Department war.
“What’s it all about?”
“There’s been a big flap between Military Assistance Command and the rest of the country team in Vietnam and Thailand.”
“That sort of Olympian struggle never gets down to my level,” Arklin said. “At least not when I’m out here with a bunch of restless montagnards.”
“Well, it’s getting down to you and your montagnards. For one thing all Special Forces in Vietnam now come directly under Military Assistance Command. They’re trying to streamline things—they think. But what it comes down to is that a lot of Special Forces and our Combined Studies Group programs are being run by conventional army generals.”
“This one too? In Laos?”
“They haven’t gotten around to Laos yet. It may be a while, since the orthodox types running this crazy war don’t like to admit to themselves that Americans are violating treaties—even though if we didn’t the Commies would take this dinky little country that happens to be so strategically located any week they wanted.”
“That’s going to change a lot of things. From what you say, conventional officers sitting in comfortable offices will be writing the efficiency reports on Special Forces officers out in the field who are trying to outfight and outsmart the Viet Cong with their hands tied behind their backs.”
“That’s exactly what happened on May 1st.”
“And my little operation? Are we going to piss all over the Meos again, take their weapons away like we did before and leave them to be butchered by the Pathet Lao?”
“Not as long as the Agency is running the show.”
“We’ll keep running it. We’re ready to go. We have been for six months.”
“You’ll be getting action, plenty of it, soon. There’s been a half-assed coup d’état in Vientiane. Nothing much. A new right-wing general has taken over control of the government temporarily. But this is all it takes to give the Communists an excuse to start moving into Vientiane.”
Methuan pointed across the entrance to the flat Plain of Jars below them to the east. “General Kong Le has a few thousand troops over there which are all that’s standing between the Communists and his HQ at Vang Vieng. If the Pathet can roll into Vang Vieng they’ll be fifty easy miles from Vientiane and taking over Laos. Your job is to do everything you can to harass and slow down the Pathets. We won’t be able to give you direct orders. All we can do is tell you they’re rolling. The rest is up to you.”
“Fair enough.”
“If it looks like you’re going to get overrun we’ll try and evacuate you by chopper. So I guess you’d better cut a chopper pad at the village.” Methuan put his hand on Arklin’s shoulder. “Your next control may be Military Assistance Command. By the way”—he handed Arklin the familiar orange bag of mail—“everything is smooth at home.”
“Thanks,” Arklin murmured. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a long letter. “Will you mail this to Nancy? There is nothing in it about what I’m doing of course.”
“Someone will have to look it over to make sure, Bernie,” the CIA man said, “but I’ll see it gets off to her.” He climbed back into the plane. Before closing the door he called, “If the Pathet look like they’re going to attack and you have to move, radio us before you do anything. And don’t get yourself captured, Bernie!”
Arklin watched the two planes leap up into the air, and then he began the familiar, exhausting trek up the side of the mountain. He poked the mailbag into his pack resolving this time to devise some way of keeping Nanette from seeing it. He was surprised to realize how much he looked forward to returning to the house on stilts and Nanette.
He was sitting with her outside their house next to the fire after eating a nostalgic American supper of fruit cocktail and beef stew when Pay Dang came up with a barefoot montagnard dressed in loincloth and blanket. Arklin motioned them to be seated and Pay Dang said that the newcomer was from a Meo village twenty miles to the northeast. It was mostly populated by old people and women and children who cultivated and milked opium poppies.
“Their men, some of them are with us,” Pay Dang said, “are leaving the village because the Pathet Lao and Viet Minh are moving west and the Meos do not want to be forced to fight for them.”
“Ask him how many Communists are moving toward us,” Arklin said. “Try to get an accurate number from him, not just ‘many, many Pathet come.’”
Pay Dang questioned the youth at length. Finally he turned back. “He says many hundred.”
“OK, Pay Dang,” Arklin said decisively. “Let this boy lead a platoon out to where the Pathet are moving. Be sure you send along a good scout who can count. Tell them to pick up any people they see and bring them back. If they can capture a Pathet prisoner, so much the better.”
“Yes, Major.” Pay Dang stood up. He flashed his big toothy grin. “Soon we kill Pathet and Viet Minh.”
“If they don’t get us first. Tell them to move fast and get back as soon as possible.”
When they had gone Nanette turned to him fearfully. “Soon the war starts again?”
“Looks that way, Nanette.”
“We had so little chance to be together.”
“We’ve got plenty of time ahead of us,” Arklin said with a heartiness that sounded false even to him.
Nanette said nothing, then stood up and started for the house. “I will wait for you inside. Always mail comes to you in the airplane.”
Arklin watched her lithe figure, bare from the tightly knotted cloth skirt up, daintily mount the notched log and disappear into the dark bamboo house. He sighed and reached for the mailbag. . . .
For the next day and a half Arklin had every company commander check his men’s equipment. Excitement was in the atmosphere. The Meos seemed to sense their enemy’s proximity, but Arklin did not want to base an operation on the mystical feelings of his men.
From control, late in the afternoon, came a message that the Pathet Lao had attacked a government-controlled and -fortified village in the north near the Red Chinese border—the first overt breach of neutrality. Twenty-four hours later the reconnaissance platoon Arklin had sent to spy out Pathet positions returned. He hurried to the bridge to meet them. The two scouts he had trained so laboriously in map reading, compass work, and reconnaissance met around the fire, along with Pay Dang and the platoon leader. The chief scout, only a boy but exceptionally receptive to instruction, spread a map out on the ground and described the route the patrol had taken.
“On a bearing of 70 degrees from here, only 20 kilometers from where we now sit,” the boy said—technical words in English, narrative in Meo—“we found camped last night a company of Pathet Lao. We hid until morning and watched them moving south. I saw maybe 50 Viet Minh in their brown uniforms with them. There were maybe 200 men walking along the trail.”
So the Viet Minh were marching south with the Communist Laotian
s, Arklin thought. This was an unmistakable sign that the North Vietnamese Communists were egging on the Pathet Lao to make another attempt to take over Laos. When such a large force reached its destination a sudden attack on neutral Laotian forces would surely follow. If this Communist column could be stopped, there might be time for the pro-government Army to prepare for the onslaught.
Arklin studied the map for a while and turned to Pay Dang. “If we took the 3rd and 4th companies out tonight, heading southeast, we could cut them off above Pathet Lao headquarters at Khang Khay and ambush them.” Arklin traced the route on the map as Pay Dang and the others watched intently. “Maybe we could kill half the company or more.”
“We must go out now? At night?” Pay Dang asked.
The montagnards were still superstitious, even though Arklin had been training them in night patrolling for six months.
The American shrugged. “Someday maybe we’ll have another chance to kill the Pathet.” He started for his house.
“No!” Pay Dang cried, suddenly determined. “We are ready now. We go now. I give the orders.” Then he looked at Arklin for confirmation. “This will not hurt you with your big political men?”
“Only if we do not kill fast and run,” Arklin answered. “I do not want any of our men captured alive. You understand? The Pathet Lao will make them talk. If one of your people tells them there is an American fighting with the Meo it will cause trouble.”
“We will go,” Pay Dang declared. “We leave as soon as moon comes up. It will help us find paths.”
“Good. Bring the two company commanders and the platoon leaders to me.”
Pay Dang ran off to get the two companies ready. Arklin beckoned a husky young Meo boy to follow and climbed the log into his stilt house. Nanette watched as the boy got on the seat of the radio’s generator and with both hands began turning the cranks over, making electricity for the “Angry 9” radio transmitter.
On his code pad, by flashlight, Arklin composed the message he would send to control station one hundred and fifty miles southwest across Laos in Thailand. From this forward base the message would be relayed back to Bangkok where it would be decided whether or not Arklin had done the right thing. The Agency would approve, he felt sure. His orders were to slow down the Pathet, and even though nobody else knew they were on the move again, he did. If he took no action the somnolent Laotian government might be defeated before it could prepare to fight off the Communists. There would be no time for the United States to come to the aid of Laos and protect its neutrality.