by Robin Moore
“What is it, sir?” Ossidian asked.
“Pham said that Quand was released again and is entirely clear. They are no longer suspicious of her, and she and Pham would like to meet with Lieutenant Vo and myself at the farmhouse tomorrow evening. They have important information to pass to us.”
Batcat’s commanding officer looked to the lowlands in the east. The sun was setting in the mountains behind them. “Vo’s agent, who Pham and Quand don’t know, was reporting that Quand, Pham, and their mother have been missing several days. You see what’s happening?”
Ossidian nodded grimly. “The Commies have them and are trying to bring us in.”
Vo joined DePorta and Ossidian. “I transmitted to my new agent, Toc, and told him to call us every morning and evening at 6:00.” Seeing the frown come to Ossidian’s face, Vo went on quickly, “There is no way they can pick up other agents’ signals with Pham’s radio. I gave Pham a radio made in Communist Germany. Toc has a Czech-made transmitter operating on a much higher frequency band.”
“Is Toc reliable?” Ossidian asked.
“I have faith in him. Like my family, his was Catholic but they had too much property and business to leave. They lost it anyway.”
A long series of dots and dashes came from the communications room. DePorta hurried back, standing over Everett as he took the letters down on his decoding pad. The transmission stopped and Everett handed the message to DePorta, who read it quickly. “Well, this is it. The SFOB asks us to pick the date for Operation Falling Rain. It must come before the last day of the month. That gives us fourteen days maximum.”
“Batcat is about ready now,” Smith said.
DePorta shook his head. “Negative. I was a guerrilla three years in the Philippines. I’ll leave the date to Buckingham.” DePorta wrote out a message for the commander of Alton and gave it to Everett for transmitting. “It is too soon,” he said. “But we will do our best.”
Captain Buckingham chose to take every one of the allotted fourteen days. Captain Locke was ready in less time than that. Meanwhile, Batcat had set up a new headquarters location for an emergency. Viet Cong troops from Hang Mang had twice more returned to Muk Thon’s village but failed to find any evidence of the guerrillas that had infiltrated from the south.
By monitoring Army channels and through Toc, Lieutenant Vo learned there was much unrest in Hang Mang. The curfew was strictly enforced. Many more soldiers were on the street now and the new chief political officer was questioning citizens day and night.
Batcat trained and rehearsed for its part in Operation Falling Rain. Luy could sense Smith’s mounting tension as the days passed. Their sleeping platform was removed from those of the other members of Batcat, and Luy had personally rebuilt it so firmly that they did not need to rely on the gibbons to insure their sound security.
Lying beside him, Luy sensed this was a momentous night. “It is tomorrow?” she asked.
Smith stared up at the thatched roof of the sleeping platform. He was aware of a profound change since he had come here. He was not afraid to die, but now he did not want to die. He said quietly: “We go tomorrow, we hit the next night.”
“I will go too.”
“No. There will be too much killing. You must stay with Pierre.”
“We should go together . . .”
“I cannot let you come, Luy.”
“. . . then if you die I will bring you back to the village and you will be waiting for me when I die. I could not live if you died and they did not bring you home.”
Smith turned on his side and reached for her. “Let’s stop all this ‘dying’ talk. We’re here, now, right now, aren’t we?”
Luy grasped him hard.
“So let’s do something about it.”
7
DePorta glanced at his Czech-manufactured wrist watch uneasily and then locked eyes with Muk Thon. “We are late already, Colonel.” DePorta tried to keep the irritation from his voice.
“Then let us go,” Muk Thon answered. The Tai chief was dressed for the mission, his pack basket containing an automatic rifle and five hundred rounds of ammunition.
“Colonel, we need you to stay here. If we are killed only you can help the Americans who will take our places to train the Tais to fight the lowland Viet Minh.”
“I am the colonel,” Muk Thon boomed in French. “I must lead my men.” He pulled his pipe from some recess in his black pants and savagely thrust it between his teeth.
“What do you think, sir?” Smith asked DePorta in English. “Maybe we’d better take him along.”
“He hasn’t trained with the others. He’s old. I don’t think he’d make it. If he held the others back we’d be in trouble. Besides, I really want him here. When he wants to, he can be a big help in recruiting and training.”
Smith shrugged. “If you can make him stay, my beret is off to you, sir.”
“There’s one thing I haven’t tried,” DePorta said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the silver star of a general and pinned it on the front of the black shirt he was wearing.
“I did not tell you, Colonel, but I just received orders making me a general before starting out on this mission.”
Muk Thon looked intently at the star. Then he took the pipe out of his mouth, gave a military salute, and said in French, “At your orders, my general.”
“Tell me, Colonel,” DePorta said, “have I been right in the orders and advice I’ve given since I came to you?”
“Certainly, General.”
“Have I always seen the men are paid on time, that they are properly uniformed and supplied?”
“Yes, General.”
“Has your village profited from our stay? Have we given you a better price for your poppy than the Viet Cong?”
“Always, General.”
“Was I not right to get my men and those of yours we are training out of your village before the Viet Cong came and searched it?”
“Yes, General.”
DePorta paused and went on in softer tones. “We are two experienced military men, are we not, Colonel? We have learned to work together well.”
“I am happy to say yes, General.”
“Then you will understand if I give you a direct command, Colonel. Your orders are to stay and help guard the headquarters and be prepared to work with the American who takes my place if I do not come back.”
Muk Thon stared at DePorta, his eyes dropping to the star. He nodded slightly. “I must obey the orders of a general. I will stay.”
“You are a fine officer, Colonel,” DePorta said, clapping the Tai chief on both shoulders with his hands. “We all feel safe going off because you are here.”
Muk Thon saluted smartly and DePorta returned it, watching the Tai chief walk back toward the headquarters area.
“Now let’s get started,” said DePorta.
Following the frequently rehearsed plan, DePorta, Smith, Rodriguez, Pierrot, and Lieutenant Vo left the camp at noon, 36 hours before Falling Rain would be activated. Master Sergeant Mattrick was in command of the B team. Sergeant Everett would coordinate all communications and Ossidian would keep a complete intelligence file on all activities of the two A teams and Batcat so that if a new B-team commander and XO had to be jumped in they could carry on. Sergeant Lin would be able to take care of the medical facilities of the expanding Batcat-Tai community and treat the wounded who made it back from Falling Rain. Sergeant Trung would be the commo man on the operation.
Spaced out over two miles the best Tai warriors led the way down from the mountains toward the lowlands and the targets in and around Hang Mang. Keeping clear of all trails and paths they made their way toward the first objective, the secondary mission support site.
The Tai tribesmen and all the members of Batcat wore the usual montagnard dress. Some were in black pajamas, some in nondescript slacks and short-sleeve shirts; a few wore the traditional loincloth. Every man had on his back a Tai basket in which he carried his weapon, grenades, and
food covered over with a Tai blanket.
The Americans were spread out throughout the file, DePorta at the front and Smith in the rear. Though it had been argued among the members of Batcat that it was unwise for both the CO and XO to go out on a mission from which neither stood more than a fifty-fifty chance of returning, both were so qualified for their particular jobs that nobody else could have replaced them.
It was late in the afternoon when Smith became aware that the Tai man behind him was “stealing his ass.” He turned to tell the tribesman to keep back six feet and saw it was Luy, striding along, a basket on her shoulders.
“OK, you asked for it,” he scolded softly, keeping up the pace. The Tai tribesmen near them were grinning broadly. Smith knew that with Luy watching not one of the Tai men would fail in his assignment. Muk Thon would have kept them in line too.
It was after dark when the point of the long column was challenged by the secondary MSS security squad and identified itself. Here a small camp within sight of the main north-south road had been prepared so everyone could rest the remainder of the night. Food had been stored and a radio transmitter and receiver already installed. At any time on the march from Batcat HQ to this point, the column could have dispersed, shed their burdens if necessary, and made their way one by one to this point, where a second supply of everything except the heavy TNT was stored.
The morning of the day of Falling Rain, Batcat began to fan out. Lieutenant Vo and Major DePorta, now dressed as petty merchants, in slacks and sports shirts, mounted two waiting bicycles, each with a bundle of effects tied over the rear fenders. They carried well-worn plastic briefcases. Soon they reached the main road into Hang Mang and became lost in the heavy traffic.
At noontime a buffalo cart half full of wood came to a halt on the main road, five hundred yards in front of the secondary MSS. The peasant driving it was having difficulty with his faltering beast. Rodriguez and four of the Tai tribesmen immediately made their way down a path toward the road. They reached the buffalo cart and offered assistance, unobtrusively placing their baskets on top of the load. Soon the water buffalo shaking his massive horns, started forward. The montagnards followed along.
Brick Smith and Frenchy Pierrot waited until it was dark. At 6:00 they set out. Luy insisted on following her man through it all, and rather than argue fruitlessly he agreed.
Frenchy, medical kit over his shoulder, commanded two platoons of heavily armed Tai tribesmen. Smith’s job was to demolish the only bridge over which rail and truck traffic could pass to reach Hang Mang and points south; Frenchy would set up two ambushes on the road north of the bridge. The closest Viet Cong garrison to the bridge was two miles north of it. A battalion was quartered here. As soon as the ambush was sprung, Frenchy would make it back to the operation’s rally point in the foothills and set up a medical aid station. A series of such stations led halfway up to the mountain HQ of Batcat.
Brick Smith, Luy, and their three assault squads of 12 Tai tribesmen each, reached their primary mission support site just before the 10:00 curfew. Two agents of Lieutenant Vo’s burgeoning underground had purchased three of the numerous small fishing shacks on the mud flats below the bridge ten days earlier and had been going downriver toward the sea in sampans every day. The bridge was well lit, the electric plant in Hang Mang feeding juice out to this most important structure on a priority basis. The lights of the underpowered town itself gave off at best a brown glow at night.
A locomotive dragged ten to fifteen and sometimes twenty freight cars across the bridge twice a day, Vo’s watchers had reported. Smith’s objective was to drop the bridge into the river, thus destroying both rail and road communications into Hang Mang and south to the Ho Chi Minh trail over which guerrillas and their supplies moved into South Vietnam.
Luy and Smith, followed by the first Tai assault squad, entered one of the fishing shacks. The second and third squads occupied the other two shacks. His men were ready. When Rodriguez destroyed the electric generator in town, the bridge would be plunged into darkness and they would blow it.
Jesse DePorta was slated for the first Batcat mission of the night: assassinating the new political officer. DePorta and Vo had casually cycled up to the checkpoint outside of town and flashed their identification documents. They were passed on, and proceeded into the middle of a meager market. Leaving their bicycles in the municipal rack, and taking their packages and briefcases, they walked to the rooms Vo’s agents had rented for their primary MSS. The surveillance of block chiefs was minimal during the day and the two strangers walked into the building and opened the unlocked first-floor room. It was possible to see a comer of the building housing the province political officer and his staff. Vo had learned that the new chief, sent from Hanoi, trusted none of the provincial officials. So suspicious of everyone was he, that he would not even allow anyone else to drive or touch the car he had inherited from Ti.
The great value of assassinating political chiefs, DePorta had stressed, was that you hurt the central government without alienating the population. In Hang Mang the people still knew one another and shared their own regional problems and sense of humor. The outside political chiefs remained outsiders. Even when a local boy had been sent as far as Hanoi for training, as in Ti’s case, and then returned to his native province, he could no longer communicate comfortably with his townsfolk. He was a bureaucrat with arbitrary power over them.
While Vo moved about Hang Mang, personally visiting his underground recruits and giving them gold leaf and currency, DePorta remained in their safe house until 9:00 in the evening. One hour before curfew he walked out onto the street. He carried a neat plastic briefcase as he strolled past the corner building of the province political officer. In the yard, beyond a guarded gate, stood the familiar drab little sedan. DePorta’s special pass with his picture on it would allow him to visit the province political offices. It was the one issued to the montagnard tribesmen who were loyal Hanoi political appointees. There was no way of telling whether by now the card was compromised. Still, DePorta chose a bold course of action. Just before 10:00, a wide smile on his face, he approached the guard at the gate and presented his identification. The guard looked at it, and up at DePorta, and let him walk through.
DePorta had studied sketches and drawings supplied by Vo of the courtyard of the chief political officer’s compound. Outside steps led from the courtyard to a balcony that surrounded the second floor and faced into the center of the compound. The security had been tightened, DePorta noticed, with two khaki-clad guards at each of the staircases leading up to the second-floor balcony. With the mysterious disappearance of Ti, which was probably no longer so mysterious after the interrogation of Quand and Pham, the new political chief trained in Peking and Hanoi, Le Xuan Dung, was understandably security-conscious.
Casually, as he approached the two guards at the center steps that led directly to the political chief’s office, DePorta slipped the large official government envelope from his briefcase. It was marked KIN (secret) and was addressed to Le Xuan Dung to be hand delivered and opened personally. The envelope had been one of Vo’s masterpieces—the contents one of Rodriguez’s.
The charge inside the envelope had been molded into the shape of a sheaf of papers from what the Special Forces men fondly called the “Pride of DuPont”—a plastic explosive, several times as powerful as TNT. It had even been bound into an official government document binder, fastened together with a red top-secret seal to be broken only by the person to whom the document was addressed. There was always the possibility that one of Dung’s aides might open the envelope for him, but nobody else would dare break the seal—which would detonate the charge.
Boldly, DePorta started to mount the steps, but was instantly halted by the guards. Smiling, he showed them the official envelope. Unconvinced, one of the guards escorted DePorta up the stairs to Dung’s office.
From this point on, DePorta knew his own chances of coming out alive were slim. But even if he had to detonat
e the charge himself, he’d get Dung. It wouldn’t be necessary to be close to the province political chief with this device: it would kill through the wall of a room. At the door to Dung’s outer office the guard politely knocked. The door opened. An Army officer, a major, stared at DePorta and his escort. There was conversation between the guard and the major, who turned to DePorta and asked him to identify himself. DePorta held out the envelope in one hand. The major looked at it suspiciously, saw it was official, and took it brusquely. DePorta took out the document identifying him as an official political representative of the Tai tribe.
The Communist major nodded, and DePorta, with a valid excuse for his accent, explained that he had been in Hanoi at a meeting of montagnard chiefs and had been asked to deliver this envelope personally to Le Xuan Dung.
The major assured DePorta that the envelope would be passed on to Dung and curtly dismissed the man he thought to be a montagnard courier.
“It is most important that the political chief reads the contents tonight,” DePorta said before turning away. The major did not answer.
DePorta outstrode the guard to the staircase and was at the bottom and heading out the gate before his escort had resumed his post at the bottom of the steps. DePorta’s only job now was to get himself back to Batcat headquarters. It was close to the curfew hour but his pass had held up. He mounted his bicycle and had just started pedaling out of Hang Mang when the tremendous blast knocked him off his bicycle. The concussion was stunning. In a triumphant daze he slowly picked himself up from the street. Looking back, he saw a thick cloud of smoke and debris sifting down from the dark sky. Other people were now trying to stand, staring about them in shock.
DePorta picked up his bicycle and, staying in the shadows of the barely lighted street, unobtrusively worked his way toward the outskirts of the city.
Rodriguez, hidden in the storage shack across from the electric plant, smiled grimly. The shattering explosion from the center of town signaled the unmistakable success of his handiwork. Peering out over the rutted street and railroad tracks to the most important source of power in the GWOA, Rodriguez watched the confusion within the heavily guarded plant. The armed guards at the gate looked nervously about. A personnel carrier, used by the guards, stood outside the barracks. Moments after the blast the guards, led by a sergeant and an officer, tumbled out of their quarters. Rodriguez had added enough thermite to his plastic explosive to start intense fires burning throughout the compound. The center of Hang Mang was streaking flames in all directions and the smell of smoke and explosive permeated the air.