by Robin Moore
Arklin tapped out the message in his slow but adequate keying that only Methuan would be able to decode, then told the boy to stop cranking. The receiver worked by battery. He received an immediate confirmation that the message had been received and sat by the radio hoping for approval of his operation plan.
Pay Dang arrived at the house, combat-ready, his automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, and pouches of ammunition and hand grenades hung all over him.
“We are ready, Major. The men want to kill the Pathet and Viet Minh.”
Arklin nodded and threw a hopeless glance at the silent radio. Strapping on his pistol belt and harness, and picking up his AR-15 automatic rifle, he rubbed noses with Nanette, kissed her in the warmth of her neck and followed the Meo chief out.
The two companies were drawn up in ranks ready to go. Arklin assembled the company commanders and platoon leaders, and on the ground, using his flashlight, gave them a thorough description of the mission and what was expected of them.
The ambush, which would extend about two hundred yards, would be set when they reached the road to Khang Khay at a point about twelve miles from the foot of their mountain. They would reach their objective before dawn, set up, wait, and when the Communists were in their killing zone let them have it with all the fire power at the strike force’s command.
The two companies started off in high spirits. Arklin and Pay Dang walked between the lead and rear company, posting scouts ahead of the first company to make sure they followed the correct course to the objective. Arklin checked his watch and saw it was 9:30. He had slight trepidations about how the news would be received at higher headquarters that he and his montagnards might be firing the first shots in the new Communist campaign to take over neutralized Laos. He rationalized by considering the Agency’s message reporting the Communist attack in the north as giving him open season on the Pathets in his area. In any case, if all went as planned and no one was captured or left behind, the Communists publicly could only blame the ambush on internal dissension within the country.
The march to the road into Khang Khay was almost entirely downhill. Arklin worried about the trip back with wounded and dead. It would be a tough one, even for his hardy Meos who had been walking up and down the mountains all their lives, since they would have to take evasive action and thus couldn’t follow the trail.
Before dawn they came upon the road in virtually undisputed Pathet Lao territory. Though they were a scant ten miles from Pathet Lao headquarters in Khang Khay, there was no sign of guards or road security. Under Arklin’s unobtrusive supervision Pay Dang and his two company commanders set out the ambush. Each company covered one hundred yards of road. At the beginning and end of the ambush, two L’s of heavily armed men stretched fifty yards back into the jungle. These were secondary ambushes to stop Pathet Lao or Viet Minh troops who might rally their forces and try to flank the ambushers. Arklin was proud of the professional manner in which his so-called primitive tribesmen prepared to receive the Communists.
The two company commanders positioned themselves at the extremities of the ambush, each holding a radio handset transmitter. When the last of the enemy passed into the ambush, the company commander on the north would signal with his transmitter button. Pay Dang, standing on a rise in the middle of the ambush zone and able to view most of the road, also carried a handset. It would be he, guided by Arklin, who would give the signal to open up. If, by chance, the enemy column was longer than expected and the vanguard passed out of the killing zone to the south before the rear came through, Pay Dang and Arklin would decide when to start firing. Hopefully they could distribute the enemy free to flank the ambush evenly to north and south, where the L’s on each end should be able to take care of them.
By the time daylight fully penetrated the jungle the Meos were in position, machine guns, automatic rifles and heavy M-1’s leveled at the road. Each man had his grenades hanging loosely from his harness and belt for instant plucking. Every man in both companies knew his job and route of withdrawal.
As they waited for the enemy to walk into the ambush Arklin thought of all the things that could go wrong. What if the Pathet had already passed this point? This did not seem likely. More important, he knew he should not have come down here himself. Though he was personally out-fitted entirely with sterile equipment—nothing he wore or carried could identify him as an American and none of his supplies had been manufactured in the United States—if he were captured or his body was found there could be no disguising the fact that a Caucasian was with the Meo tribesmen. It would give the Communists great propaganda capital and embarrass the U.S. government. Everything depended on the discipline the Meos maintained. This would be the test.
Arklin and Pay Dang stood tensely above the middle of the ambush, concealed by the thick jungle. The cool of dawn dissipated into the muggy heat of the tropical day. Arklin looked across the road at the mucky drainage ditch on the other side. It was an inviting depression, just what the surprised Communists would jump into. His eyes hardened, his lips twitched in a thin smile. . . .
Four slight clicks sounded from the radio handset. The Pathet column had been sighted. Pay Dang nudged Arklin excitedly. Arklin laid a restraining hand on the Meo’s shoulder. They waited in absolute silence. Then the company commander to the north pressed his transmitter button three times and three clicks came over Pay Dang’s set. The point of the enemy column had entered the ambush. Minutes later, off to their left, Arklin and Pay Dang saw the first of the Communists on their way to join the Pathet Lao battalions at Khang Khay for the drive across the Plain of Jars. They were wearing a conglomeration of uniforms—black pajamas, khakis, and combat fatigues. They were well armed and walked with precision, officers in khaki ranging up and down the column.
“Viet Minh!” Pay Dang whispered, as black-clad, flat-helmeted, machine-gun-carrying men began to appear, closely interspersed with the shabbier-looking Pathet Lao troops.
Arklin prayed the training and discipline he’d instilled in his men would hold up. The Laotian government soldiers were quelled by the mere mention of Viet Minh—they believed implicitly in their savagery and invincibility and were paralyzed with fear at the idea of fighting them—and it took only a small number of North Vietnamese to terrorize and set them to flight. Even the Meos, although they would not admit it, were afraid of the Viet Minh; but they hated the Communists even more, so they would fight.
Arklin was ready for the first signs of flagging courage on the part of his Meos should the Viet Minh be able to mount a determined counterattack into the ambush. From squad leaders all the way up to Pay Dang, the Meos knew they must force their men to stay and battle until the signal came to pull back, dragging all dead and wounded with them.
As the Pathet Lao and Viet Minh marched along the road in front of them, Arklin realized he was wise to have brought two full companies. Either his scouts had miscounted or more troops had been picked up since the patrol had sighted the column two days before and counted 200 men.
Two clicks sounded on the handset. The van of the column had passed the second Meo company commander to the south and was already out of the killing zone. Arklin waited for the single click which would tell him that the end of the column had entered the ambush.
Arklin looked up the tree in which a scout was posted. The scout gave him a vigorous shake of his clenched fist. To Pay Dang, Arklin whispered, “He sees the end of the column. We can’t wait for it to get into the ambush. The point will get too far out. Shoot!”
Pay Dang needed no more encouragement. Sighting down the barrel of his automatic carbine he squeezed the trigger. In the burst, shattering the early-morning silence, two khaki-clad North Vietnamese dropped. Instantly the Meos opened up. Firing cracked and stuttered up and down the line as the shocked Communists, deep in the supposed safety of their own territory, froze in panic and surprise. The officers shouted at their men and began shooting even as rounds tore through them. Following their officers’ orders the Comm
unists sprayed back bursts of fire, but they could not see their targets. Fusillades of bullets and grenades ripped into the column. Those not killed or wounded in the first, intense blast from the ambush, fell and tumbled into the ditch on the opposite side of the road and began returning heavy fire.
To the south, the section that had walked through and out of the killing zone had turned back through the jungle in an effort to hit the ambush from behind. The same was happening on the north end of the ambush. Pay Dang screamed with joy as he poured fire into the Communists pinned down in the ditch. The exultant shouts of the Meos could be heard even over the heavy firing. Within minutes after the first burst of fire the ambush had become a stalemate. Those Communists left alive were either pinned down in the ditch and firing back or skirmishing to the north and south against the protective L’s.
“Let’s get out of here, Pay Dang,” Arklin commanded. He pulled a flare gun from his pistol belt.
“We stay, kill more Pathet and Viet Minh,” Pay Dang shouted.
Arklin grabbed the montagnard leader by the shoulder and swung him away from the firing. The American’s eyes flashed. “We go now. Hit them again later.”
Pay Dang regained his control. “We go, Major.”
“But first—” Arklin handed the signal pistol to Pay Dang and picked up a small hand detonator. He gave the handle a sharp twist and there was an ear-splitting explosion along the entire length of the ambush. Screams came from the ditch. Pieces of legs, arms, heads, and unidentifiable red meat blasted onto the road. The Meos shrieked with chilling glee at the mayhem wreaked on their hated enemy.
Arklin snatched the flare gun from a hypnotized Pay Dang staring raptly at the carnage below. He fired a red flare, reloaded and fired again, then a third time.
Immediately the Meos began pulling back from their positions. Crouched low they ran through the jungle, converging in an orderly, self-protecting formation on their rallying point half a mile behind the ambush site. Even as he ran Arklin couldn’t help thinking that never had he seen detonating cord used with such devastating effect. It had only taken ten minutes to string the highly explosive half-inch cord the length of the ditch, giving the line a few extra swirls in likely places of refuge to increase the force of the blast. It had been a simple matter to stretch the thin electric wire across the road and conceal it in the dirt. Every Communist in the ditch must have been killed or badly wounded.
Well, Arklin thought, for once we hit first and hardest. Now the problem was to get his Meos back to the village without running into a Communist unit.
At the rally point the company commanders rapidly took count of their men. The ambush had been successful. Arklin estimated that two-thirds of the Communists had been killed or maimed. At final count only three Meo men had been killed in the heavy return fire and seven wounded. Each of the bodies was tied to poles slung on the shoulders of two men. Others took turns carrying them. The walking wounded were helped by their comrades. Three men were seriously hurt and had to be carried. Arklin stifled the groans of the badly wounded with shots of morphine.
Now began the long uphill march back to the village. At Arklin’s insistence they followed a different route; Pay Dang, though he knew this was the most basic doctrine of guerrilla warfare, still tried to persuade Arklin to follow the easier, shorter path. Arklin refused.
It was a struggle through the jungle with the dead and wounded but the montagnards kept going. Arklin and Pay Dang moved up and down the long, twisting column encouraging the men. Once they came so close to the beaten, less-steep path they had followed down from the village that Arklin was afraid he would have another argument with Pay Dang. By late afternoon they were still six hours from camp because of the difficulty of forcing their way through trailless jungle. The men were exhausted. They found a small hilltop with a stream flowing by and Arklin let them camp, though maintaining a 50 per cent security guard.
When all the stragglers reached the hill, Arklin went searching for the wounded men to tend their wounds and administer more morphine. He pushed through the growth, stepping on men lying exhausted, but nowhere could he find the three litter cases and four walking wounded.
He returned to the command post he and Pay Dang had set up. The Meo chief was sitting on the ground, his back against a tree, puffing on his stubby pipe.
“Pay Dang,” Arklin said sharply, “I can’t find the wounded.” The Meo gave him a bland look, saying nothing. “Do you know where they are?” Arklin insisted. When there was still no answer Arklin knew. “Did the wounded and some of the men take the other trail home when we passed by?”
“I could not stop them,” Pay Dang finally replied. “They are men. We do not stop men from doing what they must.”
“But this is a military operation. You are in command. You take my advice and they must take your orders.”
Pay Dang stubbornly continued to smoke his pipe. Arklin realized there was nothing he could do now. For a while, because things had gone well, he had deluded himself into believing he had created a real paramilitary organization. “I hope they get back all right, Pay Dang. Did they have any security?”
“Two squads, 20 men go with the wounded.”
Arklin glanced at his watch. It was 4:00 in the afternoon. “They should be reaching camp in a few hours.” He gave Pay Dang a steady look. “Pay Dang, this is very dangerous for all of us. Do you realize what will happen if they’re caught? They’ll be tortured. The wounded will tell the Pathet that two-thirds of the camp is out. Maybe they attack.”
“They do not get ambushed or captured,” Pay Dang said positively. “No Pathet around these hills.”
“That’s what the Pathet thought this morning when we ambushed them.”
This gave Pay Dang a moment’s searching thought. Finally he said, “I did not see my people go, a platoon leader told me. I do not tell you, make you feel bad after big win.”
“Listen to me carefully,” Arklin said forcefully. “I know the men are tired. I am more tired than any of them.” Painfully he knew this to be true; at thirty-eight a man, no matter how strenuously he has trained, bounces back from extreme physical exertion slowly.
“We must start right now and keep going until we get back to camp.” The Meo chief’s eyes widened in surprise. “Don’t you understand, Pay Dang, if those people who broke away from us are ambushed and caught, the village may be lost. The Pathet will find out that we are a long way from home. We have most of the weapons with us. The Pathet could take the camp.”
The Meo chief began to get a glimmer of the seriousness of the situation. He stood up and stretched. “Meo people will do what you want, Major. But they say you make them train too hard. No Pathet near us now. Meo men happy they kill so many. They want to rest now.”
“Pay Dang,” Arklin said urgently, “tell your men, the company commanders, the platoon leaders and the squad sergeants, that I want them to follow me. Tell them we must keep going. We will be home before dawn. There’s a good moon.”
Arklin saw that he was making some headway, but a clincher was needed. Something to appeal to the human side of the Meos. He thought a minute and then, smiling, he walked to the pipe-puffing, still-unconvinced chief and put an arm around the small man’s immense shoulders. Winking broadly Arklin said, “Tell the men I promised Ha Ban I’d give her the biggest loving she ever had before daylight tomorrow.”
Arklin slapped his right bicep with his left hand, clenching his right fist at the end of a rigid forearm. The gesture was universally unmistakable. “If we don’t get back, maybe she’ll go to that big captain we left guarding the village.”
In a roar of laughter Pay Dang spit the pipe out of his mouth, wheezing and coughing from the foul smoke of his home-grown tobacco. He bent over, convulsed, and weakly picked up his pipe and jammed it back in his mouth. “OK, we go,” he said in English. “We go take Major to Ha Ban.” Pay Dang went to find his officers and give orders to move out.
Arklin pulled out his map and studie
d it. Only two and a half hours of daylight, then blackness until the moon came up. He decided to change the route, bringing it closer to the direct one they had followed from camp, but still far enough to circumvent ambushes that the wily Pathet and their even more sophisticated mentors, the Viet Minh, might have set out.
Ten minutes later Pay Dang, still grinning, returned. The men would push on, he reported. In fact some of them were also worried about their women, especially since many of the men in the 5th Meo Strike Company, who had been left to guard the camp, had come from another village and did not have their own women.
The two companies pushed on again, with Arklin this time at the point to make sure they followed the new bearing. The jungle was thick, necessitating considerable slashing at vines and trees, but Arklin and his Meos fought their way onward.
It was almost dark when the thing he had feared, yet perversely had almost hoped for, happened.
To their north a sudden, nerve-jangling thunderclap of shooting broke out. The unmistakable chatter of light automatic weapons, the deep-throated stuttering of BAR’s and then the loud bang of grenades echoed across the jungle. Arklin glanced at his watch. It was 6:35 P.M. The whole column stopped to listen as the furious fire-fight raged. In less than five minutes the last shots died away. An ominous silence pervaded the mountainous jungle as dusk and then darkness fell.
“Tell your men to move fast,” Arklin whispered to Pay Dang. “It won’t take the Pathet long to find out what they want to know.”