The Green Berets: The Amazing Story of the U. S. Army's Elite Special Forces Unit

by Robin Moore

  “Sir, you’d better stand back,” Everett said. “No sense us all getting it if this thing misfires.”

  DePorta and Smith retreated to a safe distance. Everett pulled a long thin antenna wire from the transistor as he attached it to the balloon. The last thing he did before releasing the device was to pull the safety wire from a red button protruding from the transmitter. Closing his eyes and grimacing, he pressed the red button and let go.

  The balloon popped upward, carrying the radio high into the sky. The wind caught it and blew it eastward toward Hang Mang and the sea. The three men watched it float lazily away. Sky-colored, the balloon was soon invisible.

  Everett shook his head. “I know the charge isn’t supposed to blow it up for an hour or unless it touches the ground but I sweat those damned things every time.”

  “I don’t blame you, Everett,” DePorta said. “But think of the Communists trying to use their radio-direction-finding sets on a balloon. Must be pretty frustrating.”

  Everett grinned. “Yes sir. That message will keep repeating for an hour, from a different location every minute.”

  “And we’ll be moving to still another new location pretty quick too,” DePorta said. “So don’t get too comfortable here.”

  DePorta and Smith left the commo center and walked back to the sleeping platform the Tai men had built for the American commander. “Brick,” DePorta said, “we’ve got to find another new base. Ossidian and Vo will be going in to meet Ton near Hang Mang in two days. I don’t want any of us in this camp after they leave. If they are picked up and fail to bite the pill, the Communists would get everything out of them . . . even Ossidian.”

  “You want me to look for a new camp?” Smith asked.

  “Let’s talk to Muk Thon.”

  As they approached the Tai colonel, his daughter, and Pierre—whose skin sores were now almost cured—Luy looked up from the manioc she was pounding in a hollowed-out log. She caught Smith’s eye and smiled broadly. Smith grinned back.

  Smith spread his map on the ground and asked Muk Thon for directions to the high plateau the Tai chief had described to the Americans.

  “I hope this place is as good as they say,” DePorta said. “There should be a good DZ close by and water and strong natural fortifications, if everything Muk Thon says is true.”

  As they studied the map, Luy placed her wooden grinding club on the ground. “I know the way. It was my husband and I who found it. He was going to build a fort there. I will take you there.”

  “You must stay here, Luy,” Smith said. “It will be a long, hard jungle march.”

  “She does know this place,” Muk Thon confirmed, standing up abruptly. “She can lead you.” And satisfied that no more mental effort on such abstractions as maps was required of him, Muk Thon left.

  DePorta grinned at his XO and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve got a guide!”

  “But, Jesse, this will be one rough stroll.”

  DePorta shrugged. “Your mission is to find a B-team headquarters that can be at least semi-permanent. She can take you there. Frenchy will mind the boy.

  “You take half the team and send back guides for the rest of us. Ossidian and Vo go to Hang Mang to make their first contact tomorrow night and I want this camp cleared before daybreak the next day.”

  In French, DePorta asked Luy, “Can you take him to the place in time to send guides back by tomorrow night?”

  “But of course . . . if Colonel Smith does not get too fatigued.”

  DePorta’s brown face split in a white-toothed grin. “Take plenty of salt tablets, Brick.”

  In an hour Smith, Mattrick, and Rodriguez, with one platoon of Tai guerrillas, were on their way to the new campsite, Luy in the lead setting a brisk pace, her basket seeming to float on her back.

  As the day wore on and they plunged deeply into the heavily wooded mountainous jungle, Luy signaled one of the Tai men to walk in front of her and cut away the tangled thorny vines and scrub that slowed their passage and scratched their skin. Smith had issued his platoon sets of jungle fatigues and pairs of Communist Chinese-manufactured jungle boots, which made it easier for them to penetrate the thick foliage. Luy had allowed Smith to put a jacket over her but refused to wear the pants and boots, preferring her long black skirt and buffalo-hide moccasins.

  Smith was amazed at her endurance. He had been in training for such a mission over a year, yet he could feel the strain of this constant uphill climbing.

  It was late in the afternoon when the jungle began to thin out, and soon they were in high, open country. It was cool. Smith judged the altitude must be five thousand feet. Higher mountains ranged to the west.

  “We are here,” Luy announced.

  Ahead of them, beyond the open space, was a rocky knoll another two hundred feet high. A stream ran past the craggy head of rock.

  Smith looked about him, greatly pleased. The place could easily be defended long enough to allow most of the B team to exfiltrate through the jungle. Tired though he was, Smith climbed the rocky knoll. It provided an excellent view of the land area for fifty miles to the north, east, and south. He could see the lowlands lying in the haze. With a telescope it would be possible to observe traffic along the roads and into and out of the city on any reasonably clear day. For radio transmission and reception this rock was ideal, and their headquarters could be easily camouflaged from observation by the Communists’ sparse air force.

  Mattrick and Rodriguez also climbed the rock summit. “Just what we need,” the team sergeant said admiringly.

  Leaving the rocky crown the Americans scrambled down to the stream. The montagnards were already dragging bamboo poles and saplings from the tree line and constructing sleeping platforms. Luy, Smith noticed, had commandeered two Tai men to build hers. His pack had been carried over to where she was standing, supervising the construction of her quarters.

  With the help of several tribesmen Mattrick and Rodriguez began to build their own shelters. Smith strolled over to Luy. Anxiously she watched as he surveyed the work—it would be a king-size sleeping platform. Already, he noticed, his poncho had been stretched across the top of the frame to keep the dew off the platform, which was covered with Luy’s poncho.

  When Smith made no comment Luy gave him a saucy smile. “I thought it would be best if we shared our blankets. It will be very cold up here.”

  “We must not let you get sick from the cold,” Smith replied with a grin. He reached into his pack for a piece of soap. “Shall we scrub off the dirt?”

  Luy nodded and she and Smith made for the stream, walking downstream from the others until they found a wide spot. They stripped off their hot, sweat-soaked clothes and splashed into the cold water, soaping each other and laughing. Clean and refreshed, Luy washed their clothes and hung them up in the afternoon sun to dry. Then, still naked, they sat on a rock and let the sun dry them. It seemed natural; the montagnard men and women always bathed together.

  Later Smith slipped on his underpants, which had dried enough to wear, and Luy wrapped a cloth about her, sari-like, and they walked back to the camp.

  Refreshed and revitalized, Smith and Luy made a further inspection of the area. “We must get your people to work immediately on clearing fields,” Smith said as they walked about. “We have to grow enough crops here to feed 100 people, many more than that if we decide to hold the place after the Communists know we’re here.”

  “Yams and manioc will grow anyplace,” said Luy, “and during the rainy season these mountainsides are flooded, so we can grow as much rice in a hectare as they can in the lowlands. Very rich for growing poppy, too,” she added.

  “Money we don’t worry about, food is the problem,” Smith replied severely. “There is no reason to raise opium until we finish this war.”

  Luy shrugged her bare shoulders. “Poppy comes naturally to us.”

  Mattrick, Rodriguez, and a group of the Tai men had finished their shelters and were splashing around naked in the stream.
Luy’s presence inhibited none of them.

  A Tai tribesman came up to Luy and talked rapidly to her a few moments. She turned to Smith. “The men ask if they can go hunting now. It is the good time.”

  “What will they hunt for?”

  “They say there are plenty of gibbons in the trees”

  “Tell them to go ahead.”

  Curious, Smith followed the Tai hunting party. “In the early morning and just before dark is the best time for monkeys,” Luy explained. “Have you ever seen the mountain people hunt monkeys?”

  Smith shook his head. He watched as the tribesmen looked up into the trees alertly. Then he heard a shrill chattering and tried to locate the monkey. One of the Tai men spotted the animal peering down from a tree. From the quiver on his back he took out a long, thin, sharpened bamboo arrow with three woven fins. He had a square of white cloth in his hand through which he pushed the arrow. Then he dipped the arrow tip in a brown paste, laid the arrow in the groove, and pulled back the fiber bowspring until it caught on a peg.

  Everyone stood still as the crossbowman took aim and pushed on the peg. The arrow twanged into the air and impaled the monkey through the stomach. The shocked animal looked down at his belly and stared at the piece of white cloth partially protruding from it. Then, with his right index finger he industriously began to poke the piece of white cloth back into the wound.

  “The poison on the arrow does not work for a little while,” Luy explained. “The monkey could swing away from us before he died and we would not find him. But he thinks the little rag came out of his stomach and he will sit there trying to push it back in until he dies.”

  “Doesn’t the poison spoil the meat?”

  “We have been hunting like this for many generations. We never had any trouble.”

  The monkey’s motions became slower and slower, and in three minutes it toppled from the tree at the hunters’ feet.

  Four gibbons were killed this way, and brought back to the Tai camp. Cooking would begin at 8:00. Smith and Luy supervised the digging of the cooking pits and the placing of poncho screens around them to contain the glow of the fires. The pots the men had carried on their backs were filled with water and put on to boil.

  Much later, Luy brought Smith a pot of rice and monkey meat. They ate together at their sleeping platform, silently. Far below them the dim lights of Hang Mang gave off a faint brownish glow.

  Mattrick and Rodriguez had constructed their own sleeping platforms nearby so that the three Americans would be close in the very unlikely case of a raid. Half the platoon would be on the alert all night.

  The Tai platoon leader came over to Luy and talked urgently with her for several minutes. Luy looked up into the sky, shuddered, and said to Smith, “The Tai say bad sign in the sky, maybe new Yang, maybe bad new Yang, come. Star doesn’t work.” Luy pointed skyward and Smith looked up. A bright round star was visibly moving across the heavens.

  “Haven’t they seen that before?” Smith asked. “America put it there.”

  “Why did your country put it there?” Luy asked.

  For twenty minutes, until the star was out of sight and the tribesmen lost interest in it, Smith tried to tell them about bouncing radio waves off Telstar. As Luy translated his words, the Tais only scoffed. But they finally did believe that the United States owned its own star, and were impressed further with the powerful Americans who had come to help them.

  Smith was bone-tired. Rodriguez was already asleep, and Mattrick was on watch. They had divided the night into three three-hour stretches, and Smith had taken the 3:00 to 6:00 A.M. watch. He was a little uneasy about sharing a sleeping platform with Luy in front of his two sergeants, but since she was the chief’s daughter and the idea had been hers, everyone realized it would be impolite and bad form for him to have refused. Besides, he liked her. Smith and Luy lay down next to each other between their blankets, both wearing the standard peasant garb, black pajamas. Smith had hardly laid his hand across Luy’s thighs, in answer to her intimate caress, before he felt himself falling off into a deep sleep.

  “0300 hours, sir,” Rodriguez whispered, what seemed a moment later.

  “Right,” said Smith, instantly awake.

  As he sat up on the platform, he muttered, “Must be freezing.” Luy stirred but remained asleep. Looking around the dark silent camp, he suddenly thought of Kathy. He thought of the leg captain and let out a soft groan.

  Luy was sitting up beside him in an instant, her arms holding him tight.

  “Sorry to wake you,” he said.

  “You are sick?”

  Smith did not answer.

  “You think of other woman?”

  Still Smith remained silent.

  “When my people gave my husband to the Communists I tried to kill myself,” Luy said matter-of-factly. “They said he would not be hurt but the Viet Minh killed him even though the war was over.”

  “They’ll do the same to us if they get us,” Smith said, “though they can’t prove we are Americans.”

  Luy’s presence was quietly comforting. He felt rested now. He just wished he could stop seeing Kathy in his mind: her beautiful tanned face and blonde hair falling loosely about it.

  Luy drew him to her and then whispered, “Come, lie down. I’ll stay awake with you.”

  Luy shivered and rolled close to him. Her hands were loosening the waist band of his pajamas and he realized that she had already removed hers. He let her slide his pants off and open his jacket.

  Now, as her thighs and stomach drew close to his, Kathy was gone. Luy placed one of her thighs between his. He could feel her strong firm muscles quiver against him. His own involuntary reactions stirred Luy further and she pressed her full breasts to him. The coldness he had felt since losing Kathy began to melt. He wanted very much to take Luy’s taut body and lose himself in her. He pulled her under him. Luy gasped, and cried slightly. The bamboo slats of the sleeping platform squeaked, and the under-structure creaked like an ancient door.

  Brick remained motionless. Mattrick and Rodriguez could hardly help hearing, he thought. Slowly he allowed himself to part slightly from Luy and settle onto his back. But Luy gently pulled herself closer and they kissed. It was a firm, full kiss. As they lay together—waiting, anxious—the first shrill hooting came from the jungle. Soon it was answered and then the early morning shrieks and twittering of the gibbons resounded from every side of the jungle. A regiment could overrun the camp before it could be heard above the noise of a thousand simians screaming at each other.

  Luy and Brick Smith looked at each other in the pale dawn. They smiled, laughed, and in one smooth motion Luy slid under him, and he gently let himself deeply into her. Luy’s delighted cries, the protestations of the sleeping platform, and the muted body-sounds were drowned out by the shrill, siren-like cries raised by the thoughtful gibbon community.

  4

  Just after Smith had left for the mountaintop, Ton had contacted Acbat by radio and requested the earliest possible meeting, giving details for finding the rendezvous outside the Viet Cong check points ringing the city. DePorta held Ossidian and Vo from leaving camp until the guides reported that Smith had approved the new headquarters site.

  “Not that I think you or Vo would allow yourselves to be captured alive, Ossidian,” DePorta said as the intelligence men started off. “But it is impossible to be too careful.”

  Ossidian nodded. “You never know what’s going to happen, sir.”

  “You really think you need to go, Sergeant?”

  “Sir, I’ve got to get the feel of these underground agents Ton has recruited if I’m going to run intelligence. I’ve got to see a couple of them, talk to them, put them on the spot, maybe make them sweat a little. Then I know what I’m working with.”

  “We’d be in trouble losing both you and Vo.”

  “I’ll do whatever you say, sir.” Ossidian looked his commander in the eye. “But I’ve worked with agents all over the world and I know—”
/>   “Right, Ossidian. Do what you have to do.”

  The small commander of Acbat watched Ossidian, Vo and two Tai guides, all dressed identically in black pants and blouses, with black and red bands tied about their heads, and wearing Tai thong sandals, start out for Hang Mang.

  Four hours later they saw the main north-south road into Hang Mang running down the low, flat land below them. Ossidian called a halt.

  “This is no Boy Scout hike,” he panted to Vo. “But Jesus Christ, going back is going to be a bastard.”

  Vo breathed heavily and sipped some water. “I think I stay down. Ton say he have good identification and cover for me. I make my own contacts and check his out too.”

  Ossidian nodded. “If it looks OK you stay.” He stared down the valley at the cluster of buildings, two and three stories high, that made up the city of Hang Mang, about two square miles in size, with a population of 40,000. A thin layer of smoke, from the industrial complex the Communists had built up, lay over the city.

  “We got three jobs to do down there, Vo. First, we have to get the province political chief, Ti.”

  “OK.”

  “Second, we got to keep close watch on our targets: the power plant, Ti, and the bridge to the north.”

  “Right,” Vo said. “And third we start setting up the rescue nets for pilots.”

  Ossidian grinned. “Let’s go!”

  Once they reached the main road and started south toward Hang Mang, Ossidian felt a constant clutch in his stomach. Neither he nor Vo had any identification papers. They were absolutely vulnerable. He frequently glanced at the wart on the back of his left wrist and the clutch tightened. He didn’t want to die—certainly not before he’d seen his mission through successfully.

  They had been walking south on the road for half an hour when Ossidian began to recognize some of the landmarks Ton had described in the radio message. He looked for the large farmhouse on their right, set back about fifty meters from the road. Ton had called the rendezvous for 6:00 P.M. since there was a 10:00 curfew in the city, and without a special pass, anyone on the city streets or roads leading into Hang Mang was subject to severe interrogation.