by Robin Moore
“Snatch minus fifteen,” Pierrot answered.
The montagnards, having no idea what to expect, watched the proceedings with great curiosity, pointing at the balloon and then at Ti.
“Jesus!” Rodriguez exclaimed. “Wait until those nice clean Air Force types get a smell of Ti. They’ll eject him.”
“They’d better damn well not,” said Ossidian.
The four Americans waited tensely. Ti flopped over on his side, but Ossidian and Rodriguez, holding him, sat him upright. Then, in the distance, they heard the buzz of plane engines. The sun was rising, painting the white balloon gold. The red pennants hung down in the stillness. Suddenly, on a north-south course, they saw the drab-brown, unmarked Army Caribou coming at them just above the treetops. Every man held his breath. It was a tough catch to make. A yoke protruded from the front of the plane, which headed straight into the fifty-foot target section of the rope. The yoke hit the stretchable nylon rope and the catch in the center sprang shut on it.
Ti was gently raised a foot and then two feet above the ground from between Ossidian and Rodriguez. And suddenly the Communist was snatched high into the sky so abruptly that he seemed to disappear. The Tai tribesmen shouted in awe, slapping themselves all over; then they laughed and cried out to each other until the plane was out of sight behind the mountains and the sound of its engines no longer vibrated in the sky.
“OK,” DePorta ordered. “Let’s police up and get out of here. We’ve got a tough march ahead of us if we’re going to make it home before dark.”
It was just before sunset when the four exhausted Americans and their Tai tribesmen made contact with the outer-security listening posts of the camp. Captain Smith, alerted to their approach by the short-range radio, was at the edge of the woods to welcome them back.
“Congratulations, Major,” he said, reaching for DePorta’s hand. “My God! You all stink—sir.”
“You should smell the other guy.”
Smith grinned. “So that’s what they meant at the SFOB?”
“What did you get from them?”
“We are now Batcat, the B detachment of this GWOA. You have been promoted—in the U.S. Army that is—to major. Alton and Artie are ready to go when you call for them. And S-2 says the prisoner is one of the toughest Communists he’s ever worked over—his stinking so bad doesn’t make it any easier for them either. But he’ll break. They’re sure of it.”
DePorta and Ossidian grinned at each other and kept on walking, followed by Pierrot and Rodriguez, directly to the stream. There they stripped off all their clothes and sat in the water splashing themselves. “Man, get some GI soap,” Ossidian called to Smith.
While the four Americans scrubbed, Smith continued bringing them up to date. “Things are really going to hell in Saigon. The SFOB said we must activate Falling Rain before the end of the month.”
“That’s pretty short notice,” DePorta snapped.
“Right. But we’ve been lucky so far, we’re ahead of schedule. Krak’s all ready in the north. He says our medical program is winning over the whole village, and other villages too. Alton can recruit a minimum of 100 healthy Tai guerrillas right away.”
“Good,” DePorta said.
“Manong, is ready for Artie. They need medical help badly. He’s spending most of his time trying to help the sick and reports that a good medic can get the entire Bru population with us. The Viet Cong are walking south through the Bru country every day, sometimes in company and even battalion strength.”
“Batcat’s making progess,” DePorta said. He stood up, naked and walked toward Smith. “Do I still smell?”
“Well ... nothing we can’t live with. Here’s a clean set of pajamas.”
Two evenings later Batcat received a serious setback. Ossidian, haunting Everett’s communication shack, was on hand for Vo’s first radio check-in since the kidnapping.
Quand had been picked up for interrogation, Vo reported. Although she had an unshakeable alibi, he was worried.
On his safe channel, far out of range of the nearest Communist radio-directional-finding equipment in Hanoi, Vo described what had happened after DePorta had left.
When it was dark, Vo and Quand walked toward Ti’s car, waving the security squad to go on ahead. Vo followed the jeep out the driveway and into town, the security squads behind the sedan.
Quand, who had many times driven with Ti, showed Vo how to drive into the electricity-starved dimly lit compound. The car and the girl were familiar and Vo, dressed like Ti, was his same stature, so that they had no trouble once inside the compound getting into Ti’s office.
Using the keys he had taken from Ti, Vo searched the office for two hours. Prepared for this foray, he had brought along the materials to make wax impressions of all the official stamps. He collected every type of blank identification document he could find and then he and Quand locked up, left the office, re-entered Ti’s sedan, and drove out of the compound.
It was midnight, two hours after curfew, but Ti’s car was well known and they were not stopped. Vo drove up in front of the house Quand shared with her brother, Pham, and her mother. Across the street from Quand’s home lived the block captain, a minor Communist functionary charged with checking and reporting on every man, woman, and child in the block to the area chief, who in turn reported to higher Communist authorities all the way up to Ti himself.
They remained parked, the car’s headlights on, until the block captain came to his door to check on the flagrant violation of curfew in his block. Seeing the political chief’s vehicle, the old party hack came to attention, saluted, and went back inside after watching Quand step out of the car and enter her home.
Vo also reported that he had set up two new underground cells entirely independent of Ton, Quand, and Pham. These groups were recruiting auxiliaries. He had given both unit leaders radios so they could communicate with him. Now, Vo reported, it was time for him to get out of Hang Mang. At any hour he might be compromised.
Ossidian agreed and told Vo to come back to the Tai village, where he would be met and escorted to Batcat headquarters.
“Here it comes, as it had to,” DePorta said when Ossidian gave him the report. “These province officials will probably let Quand go, but when the new political officer comes in, he’ll put her through an interrogation that will break her.”
“We’ve probably got a few more days, sir,” Ossidian said.
“Why don’t we tell Vo to bring her out with him?” Smith suggested. “When you think what they’ll do to her!”
DePorta shook his head. “They’ll be watching her. Anyone who talks to her now will be compromised. Vo’s right. He’s got to get out. I’m afraid we can do nothing for her.”
Batcat’s commander walked to the communications center. The black sergeant was screening the airwaves. “On your next report to the SFOB give them Request Bravo. Ask for earliest possible DZ.”
“Right, sir. 2200 hours is next normal contact,” said Everett.
“That’s good enough.”
6
DZ Bravo was confirmed for 0200 hours on the day of the infiltration. Since DZ Bravo was the open area in front of the outcropping of rock around and on top of which Batcat was set up, it would be an easy reception. The biggest problem was to judge the wind so that none of the jumpers landed on the rocks.
Vo had arrived at Batcat headquarters the afternoon of the DZ with all the blank identification documents he had taken from Ti’s office.
“They let Quand go, as I thought they would,” he reported. “I kept away from her, although by radio I talked to Pham. Quand’s story held up. She and her brother think they are safe now. Ton knows better. He has already headed north and will keep in touch with us. I told him his most important mission was to get the escape and evasion net set up. Soon many pilots will be down in the north.” Vo smiled. “Pham asks for more gold to sell, and poppy too.”
“Pham and Quand could be real number one black market operators if they live
long enough,” Ossidian remarked grimly.
Vo stared at the ground. “A new province political chief is coming down from Hanoi today. Tomorrow they’ll surely take Quand again. Maybe she’ll hold out a day, perhaps even two days. No more.”
“Lieutenant Vo,” DePorta said, “we have two A teams coming in at 0200 tomorrow. By 0300 we’ll begin briefing. I want you and Ossidian ready to help brief them on your experiences setting up the underground. They in turn will have all the information extracted from Ti at the SFOB to pass back to you. Time will be short. Their guides will start leading them to their operational areas at 0700. 1 want them on site before Quand talks.”
“Yes, sir,” Vo replied. “I confess my failure in not killing her before I left but I would have compromised myself. Also there was Pham. I would have had to kill him too. The risk of compromise was too great.”
“You did well, Vo. I’ll report your professional intelligence work.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“The identification documents you got from the political chief’s office and his capture have been the two biggest victories of our mission.”
The drop had taken much planning. Since the day of Acbat’s arrival at the permanent headquarters, the prevailing wind for every hour of the day and night had been studied. Direction and velocity were carefully plotted. At 2:00 in the morning it had been found that the air was invariably still, with the breeze picking up on this high mountain plateau just before sunrise. It would be a two-door jump from 800 feet, and with little or no wind the 24 men and 6 bundles would land in a tight pattern about 850 yards in length. The open area was 900 yards long, so the wind drift had to be calculated closely.
The operations area had been enlarged, and benches made to seat the two A teams for the briefing. A high bamboo fence, the poles split down the middle and placed gripping each other so not the faintest glimmer of light could get through, had been built around the briefing area.
Thirty minutes before the drop, five of the trained Tai tribesmen, holding flashlights, formed a T at the north end of the field. The plane would fly directly down the leg of the T from north to south and the first man would jump directly on the cross. DePorta stood 50 yards east of the T and precisely lined up on the crossbar. Thus the pilot looking out his left window would easily be able to line up and know when to press the button changing the red light above the door to green for jump.
The positive identification for the plane was time, altitude, and course. If it was not on exactly a 360 degree heading, at 800 feet altitude, and arriving within two minutes of 0200, DePorta would not turn on his flashlight, the signal for the others to light theirs. Sergeant Pierrot and ten tribesmen were stationed in the trees at the south end of the DZ in case any jumpers overshot and landed in them. As much as a one second delay in getting out of the plane could cause the last men in the stick to land in the trees.
The quiet of the night was broken precisely on time by the sound of airplane engines. At 0158 DePorta flashed his light skyward. The five tribesmen followed his example. The large, dark plane loomed against the sky and exactly over DePorta the parachute canopies began to blossom in the air. First came the bundles, then the 24 men.
It had been a precision drop and the last two men out of the plane landed 20 yards short of the trees. Twenty-four disciplined Tais, lined down the field, dashed out as the infiltrators landed, to help carry in parachutes and harnesses, and the packs each man wore hanging below the emergency chute clipped to his chest. Recognition codes were answered with numbers of fingers held up and less than ten minutes after the first man hit the ground the two A teams were grouped around their commanders at the west side of the field. The montagnards carried the six bundles to the operations area as the two A teams followed DePorta. All 24 men were dressed identically in sterile camouflage fatigues.
Luy and some of the women were in the briefing area serving soup, hot rice, and monkey meat. As soon as the two teams were seated, the members of Batcat standing opposite them, DePorta began the briefing.
“We have little time,” DePorta began abruptly. “One of our female underground agents may be picked up for interrogation at any time. Alton and Artie will start out at 0700 hours today for their objective areas. We have good guides for you. You will not consult maps or compasses. Ten minutes out of here you would never be able to find your way back. If you are ambushed and you know you can’t make it, shoot your guides. Only they could lead the Communists to us.”
The grim briefing went on for an hour. Lieutenant Vo was introduced and he, Ossidian, and the intelligence sergeants for Artie and Alton withdrew for a specialized briefing. Other specialists met in separate groups.
“Jesse,” Captain Sampson Buckingham said, “S-2 told me to tell you that getting Ti has put this program ahead three or four months.”
DePorta nodded. “Let’s go over your missions. Vic, you are taking Artie down with the Bru tribe to the south of the GWOA. What did they tell you to do at the final briefing?”
“Train guerrillas,” Locke answered, “and set up escape and evasion nets for pilots. The Navy and the Air Force will start hitting targets in this GWOA first and then work up until they start hitting Hanoi.”
“It’s about time,” DePorta said. “What else?”
“We’ll work on intelligence and set up ambushes and assassination squads. Ti gave us a list of every political officer both civilian and military. We know their names, where they live, and how to hit them. My main job is to build up a G force and kill as many VC on their way to the south as possible. The SFOB figures that if Artie is successful it will take ten men from the Regular Army divisions chasing us for every one guerrilla they can send south. And that ain’t economical for them. When I’m organized I’ll split the detachment and set up an SFOB with some of my old Meo buddies across the border in Laos.”
DePorta nodded. “Buck?”
Captain Buckingham approached the map of his area. “Like Vic said, thanks to that fellow Ti, who finally cracked and spilled buckets, we got names and locations of the three political officers we assassinate. Our big job, though, is the industrial plants in the north of the GWOA. My team’s strong in demo men, we have four. We’ve got the lightweight plastic mortars and we’ll have that road so lined with electronically detonated mines that patrols won’t dare use it for a week.”
“What about psychological warfare?” DePorta asked.
“I’ve got ten balloons. Each one will float a radio transmitting easy-to-decode messages. My radios are set to blow themselves up after six hours of transmissions. In Hanoi’s radio-monitoring center it will sound like a hundred different guerrilla groups are taking over in this GWOA. The Vietnamese Air Force will stage flyovers and dummy parachute drops.” Buckingham let out a basso laugh. “The Viet Cong will be running every way at once.”
“Yes,” DePorta said gravely, “and the police will start picking up and jailing civilians all over the GWOA. There’ll be a thousand false confessions tortured out of innocent people who will implicate 10,000 more. The way the Army and political police will go after the citizens will stir up plenty of dissension for our psy warriors to work on. But we’ll have a hellofa time not getting caught when we form underground organizations and E and E nets.”
“The theory is,” said Buckingham, “that Hanoi will be so shaken when it sees what we’re doing it will start wanting to negotiate. Uncle Ho doesn’t want the Chinese to come down to North Vietnam and help him any more than we do. The Viets had the Chinks for two thousand five hundred years and hated every day of it.”
DePorta looked at his watch. “Let’s get over to intelligence. Lieutenant Vo will manufacture identification documents for you. But don’t trust them too long. Vo’s little larceny will be discovered sometime. Most of what he got were identification papers for politically stable montagnards. I guess that means yards that turn their poppy over to the government. When they find out that one hundred blank documents are missing they’ll be arrest
ing and interrogating half the loyal Communist montagnards in the GWOA. And if I know my Meos and Tais and Tays and Muongs we’re going to have a lot of montagnards who suddenly hate Communists.”
It took four days before Artie arrived at its operational area and made contact with Manong. Alton radioed into Batcat five days later that it had joined up with Krak. Both teams admired the amount of preparation before their arrival.
The evening of the day Buckingham’s team reported reaching its operational area, Muk Thon brought DePorta the most disturbing news yet. The village had been surrounded and searched by a company of soldiers. It was the first time that soldiers had been up into the mountains that high. Although Muk Thon declared not one person in the village had told about the Americans, the soldiers had been suspicious. They had dragged Muk Thon’s deputy chief away with them for further questioning.
DePorta called a meeting of Batcat. “We’ve been lucky so far but now we must be doubly cautious. We may have to run at any time. We have another base secured and everyone should know how to find it in case we get separated during a breakout.
“Rodriguez?” DePorta called.
“Su.”
“Tomorrow I want to inspect this area with you for defenses. If we are attacked we might as well kill as many Viet Cong as we can before we break out.”
“Yes, sir. Captain Smith and I have rigged up a lot of good stuff around this B team. We could kill two companies with our mines before we had to start shooting.”
Sergeant Everett called out for Lieutenant Vo. Signals were coming in on the frequencies assigned the underground recruits. Vo, Ossidian, and DePorta clustered around the four radio receivers in front of Everett. “Two transmitters are sending simultaneously from Hang Mang,” he said.
“One is my new agent,” said Vo. “The other is Pham.” He listened, frowning deeply and shaking his head. DePorta who had also been listening, sighed and walked away from the commo center.