Unconventional Warfare

by Chris Lynch

  And the crapping. Oh, the crapping, my goodness all that crapping. I’m part of a six-man task force dispatched from a place we’re supposedly not allowed to be, to rescue one of our men who’s technically not even a member of the American military team. He’s a pilot for Bird & Sons, which is a private contract cargo airline that just happens to do a lot of contract cargo work for the Good Guys—who are us. One of their main contracts is to resupply the trailwatch teams who monitor the movement of goods and materials in secret. We watch a long network of connected roads, reaching all the way from North Vietnam, through Laos and Cambodia, and into South Vietnam. The Communists use these trails to resupply their forces.

  They aren’t supposed to operate in Laos, according to the Geneva Accords of 1962. Apparently the Communists don’t care.

  Of course, our trailwatch teams aren’t supposed to be there, either. Nor are any of our other teams. But what are we supposed to do, just not watch them? They need watching.

  So everybody’s breaking the rules. And since breaking rules was more or less how I wound up here in the first place … I don’t have a whole lotta problem with it.

  Truth is, there are no rules here. It’s glorious. If there are no rules, maybe that makes me the ruler.

  Yeah, it probably does.

  Trailwatching, though, is how I got to know a bunch of those Bird & Sons guys. And good guys, every last one of them.

  So, an extraction mission to save any one of them is a duty and a pleasure.

  * * *

  We are stopped for a break, at the point where there is no more up for us to climb and we’re about to make the final descent into the enemy camp to take back our boy. The physical nature of riding the elephants is fairly demanding, requiring more frequent stops than, say, a gentle troop-truck journey. Poop-trucks are rougher than troop-trucks. Especially for some of us.

  “Lopez,” I say as quietly as I can, despite my enthusiasm for the topic, “how much are you loving this elephant stuff?”

  “How much am I loving it?” Lopez replies, massaging his own rump with both hands. “Not at all much, is how much, Bug. I hate them. But that’s okay, because that is exactly the same way they feel about me, so I’m not gonna feel bad about it.”

  I’m laughing because I already know this, but I never get tired of hearing it. I never get tired of hearing almost anything my pal Lopez says, because he says everything as if it’s the most infuriating thing in the world. Or the funniest. Or the saddest. Or the reddest, ugliest, stupidest …

  “Stop laughing at me, Bug.”

  “No. Not possible. Never. Even the elephants are laughing. You’re a very funny person.”

  “They are not laughing. They are not humorous. I am not a very funny person. And neither are you, by the way.”

  “Wrong on all counts. And someday you’ll see. I’m gonna get one of these great beasts for myself soon.”

  “Your own elephant?”

  “Yup.”

  “And where you figure you’re gonna keep it?”

  “I don’t know. In my hat.”

  “Well, it’ll fit, that’s for sure.”

  “Ha!” I say, smacking him on his prized North Vietnamese Army–issue pith helmet. “Who says you’re not funny?”

  “I do.”

  He does, but he shouldn’t. Since the day we met at Fort Benning, Georgia, Gust Lopez has been brightening all my days. I call him Gust not only because it’s short for Gustavo, but also because he is a mighty wind of righteousness and certainty, no matter what the subject is.

  Suddenly, Col. Macias is right in my ear—and when I say he is right in my ear, it’s not the same way you might say that about other people being right in your ear. I mean I can not only hear the growly hiss of every word, I can not only feel his hot, angry breath tickling my eardrum, I can feel his lips sort of nibbling my ear the way a horse takes a sugar cube.

  “Do you two want to shut up, or fall down? Because that’s gonna be the choice if you cannot keep your voices quiet, and it’s a choice you’ll be making for all of us when you draw enemy fire and get us all killed.”

  “I think we’ll go with shutting up, Colonel,” I whisper.

  “Yes, sir,” Gust adds. “Shutting up now. Yes, sir.”

  We mount back up in complete silence, because while getting bisected at the waist by Vietcong AK-47 fire would be unpleasant, it would be patty-cake compared to the horrors that would follow if Col. Macias had to tell us to shut up again.

  He doesn’t really like to repeat himself.

  And he shouldn’t have to. We have been trained. We’re the most special Special Forces in the world. And we know it.

  We can jump out of planes without breaking our legs. We can put a bullet up a man’s nose from five hundred yards with the right scope. We know everything you would want to know about the fine art of demolitions. We can raise such thunder with just a handful of C-4 plastic explosive and a few yards of detonation cord, you’d think that God Himself was raging at you. But we can be quiet, and we usually are. We’ll swim out into a harbor where we know the bad guys are unloading arms, slap a magnetic mine on a hull, and be back on the beach all cozy in time to watch the fireworks.

  We know how to sneak up on a sentry so quick and quiet with a KA-BAR knife that his head can look up at his body as it falls down to catch up with it. We were trained as United States Army Rangers, right down to specialist jungle warfare instruction in Panama, which was the most fun I ever had in my life.

  And then we were stolen. Just imagine how tough an organization would have to be to steal anything from the Army Rangers.

  Technically we weren’t stolen, we were seconded. I wouldn’t have even thought that was a word. Does it mean we can be thirded? Or fourthed?

  But hey, I guess if you’re a truly special Special Operations Group, you can do as you please. Including inventing language.

  * * *

  My elephant, whom I call Dave, might be a secret operative for the enemy, the way he is trying to dump me over one side and then over the other before we ever reach our fallen comrade.

  But I’m not going down, no matter how hard he shakes me. I hope he keeps shaking and rocking all the way, because this convoy is the most awesome micro combat force I have ever seen. Especially the way we can move through the jungle, through the night, still managing to keep our secrecy until the moment we come pounding into the enemy compound.

  Which we do, right now.

  It is almost like a Boy Scout campground that we find, just where our local informants told us we would. There are a half-dozen tent-like structures made of bamboo and leaves, and as we roll up with M16s drawn, we see not a soul because we have caught them completely by surprise.

  That is, unless they have all dropped dead from the shock before we even get the chance to shoot them. That’s what I’d probably do if I was in their slippers.

  But then, here they are.

  Each elephant is driven by a Mahout, a local Meo tribesman who knows the animal like a brother. Behind the Mahout on each mount are two commandos leaning out of either side of the basket, guns raised and ready. As the Vietcong fighters roll out of the huts already shooting, the elephants fan out and we open up on every movement in our sights.

  It’s the smell as much as anything. Six M16s blasting away at once, we make an almighty din. The muzzle flashes just before first light are something brilliant to behold, but the scent of the firepower is intoxicating. I sense it, and off to my right I know Gust does, too. The Mahouts are right with us, charging ahead after a brief pause, while we slaughter the overpowered VC not just with hundreds of rounds but with enraged mighty beasts who stomp them out like screaming little fires.

  An enemy fighter straight in Dave’s path takes direct aim at me, and I think for an instant he might have my number. But as we charge ahead I see the very moment where terror overtakes his courage. He screams and the gun drops from his hands involuntarily. I actually pity him while he gamely claws and grabs
at the weapon as it scuttles down the front of him. He’s trying, bless his soul.

  But his soul is his business, and his body is mine.

  I pull the trigger while watching him give up on the gun and look straight up into Dave’s face. Pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-puh …

  And so on, as I empty all of my ammunition into this brave soldier who would have done the same to me. Who was terrified of my incredible friend Dave, and who was part of a team that was unfortunate enough to be holding our pilot from Bird & Sons.

  He hits the ground face-first before Dave reaches him and turns the unholy holey mess of him into pulp.

  * * *

  The sun is coming up orange somewhere ahead of us, beyond the jungle density on the other side of the village. The elephants are still. The men atop the elephants are still. The men splashed and splayed around the ground in front of us sure are still. For all of the howling mayhem we created just minutes ago, there isn’t the slightest echo of that in the air now, unless odors could be considered echoes.

  I think they could. Even through all the smoke, I can smell blood and shredded flesh and brains and intestines. Maybe this is influenced by the fact that I am looking at blood and shredded flesh and brains and intestines. Maybe.

  When we have waited just long enough, Col. Macias gives the signal and we climb down off our mounts.

  “Cool, man,” Lopez says low as we step through the bodies on the way to investigate each hut for live human beings.

  “Cool, man,” I say in return.

  There turns out to be only one live human left in the village, as the VC threw every man into their last stand. Remaining, though, is one completely naked Bird & Sons pilot, lashed up and stuffed inside what looks like a bamboo version of a medium-size dog’s travel cage.

  “Sure am glad to see all yous guys,” says the pilot, Donnie Marcotte.

  “Same to you,” Col. Macias says as Lopez works to get the cage open. “That is, not glad to see all of you …”

  * * *

  You don’t even know, when you go through something like that—when you survive or endure something like that—how much it takes out of you. As I climb up onto Dave for the trip back, I’m trembly and wobbly. Twice I nearly fall to the ground from a good height, before making it safely up. And I can actually feel my basket-mate Lopez shaking as he takes his spot next to me.

  “This is exactly what I wanted,” he says very quietly as the elephants start swinging and swaying toward Laos again.

  “Me too,” I say with certainty, despite fifteen different kinds of uncertainty trying to barge in.

  “I just always knew,” Lopez continues. “Or maybe not always, but for a long time, that I was gonna wind up having to kill somebody. So, I figured I might as well do it over here, where it’s legal and it pays. Y’know?”

  “I know.” I think.

  “But look at this, Bug,” he says, holding out a hand that will not stay flat or still from the nerves.

  “And you look at this, Gust,” I say, holding out a hand that matches his perfectly.

  Dave hitches up suddenly and weaves hard left, then right, plowing up an incline and into the thickest jungle. Lopez and I teeter and fall, flailing and rolling around in the basket before getting right again.

  “I hate elephants, though,” he says, appearing very much to mean it.

  “I know you do,” I say.

  All the while, I cannot stop smiling and I cannot stop thinking one thing: Who in his right mind would rather be in school than right here?

  “Focus, Manion. No daydreaming. Focus, or die.”

  “Yes, sir, Col. Macias.” He still talks to me as if he’s a teacher and I’m just a kid.

  I have never been prouder of myself, Dad. What I am is a World-beater. I’m a World-beater like you wanted me to be, like you wouldn’t believe. Like practically nobody would believe.

  Because I can’t really tell anybody, for one thing. Because I’m not where I’m supposed to be, and not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Officially speaking.

  Nothing new there, though, right? I was famously never where I was supposed to be and never doing what I was supposed to do. That was pretty much how I got myself sent here in the first place. Kind of a funny joke, when you think about it. Now that I’m doing these things for my country—and, I should add, doing them very well—I cannot be doing it famously at all because it is top secret.

  I’m the World-beater my father prayed I would be. And he can’t even know about it.

  Whenever I go down to the air base at Udorn in Thailand, I take loads of photographs. I send some of them home, because Udorn is official and aboveboard, and part of my story. My untrue story. My lie of good intentions. I supposedly have a safe supply job there, liaising with the Thai fliers, the PARU, while they go off to do all the dirty dangerous stuff.

  The truth is different.

  I do all the dirty dangerous stuff I can get my hands on. And it’s never enough, as far as I’m concerned.

  Actually, I’m just a photographer. Photo-Recon is my specialty, politely going out and about, on my business of collecting as much advance visual evidence as possible of the enemy’s capabilities.

  I can never get all the way through that without laughing. I do take pictures, sure, but I do lots of other stuff as well. Col. Macias calls me the Shutterbug of Death, and I don’t mind that one little bit.

  The Army trained me, right up to my bloodshot eyeballs, in every aspect of making guerrilla warfare, not just taking pictures of other people doing it.

  I am Bug here. Danny Manion was who I was back there.

  Whenever I’m in Laos, which is most of the time, I carry no identification. I wear no standard government-issue uniform. Officially, I am not here, but in every other way I’m very much here. In fact, I am more here than I have ever been anywhere in my life.

  And nobody can know, except the people who are here with me.

  If I get captured, though, then I’m really, really not here. Because a soldier who is not here, and who is not here while not in uniform—then he’s not anywhere.

  He is, in short order, simply not. He is a not, a never was, and nobody back home can be proud or grieving or anything.

  Could be scary, if one thought about it. So one does not.

  Dear Daniel,

  I am so proud of you. Worried, but proud. I couldn’t even manage to write until the election was over. Now that it is, there is some relief in knowing that the country isn’t going quite so crazy that we would elect someone like that maniac Goldwater. Forty-four states and the District of Columbia did the only sensible thing by voting Johnson, and I don’t mind telling you that I do not think I will be visiting Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or South Carolina anytime soon. Those places must be states of insanity, states of confusion, states of chaos, but not states of the great union you are fighting for right now.

  Or better, not fighting for, but photographing for. I like that, son. I like it very much. You just hold on to that supply job in Udorn, whatever it takes, and keep sending me pictures. Thailand looks like a fantastic place, and I hardly ever hear anybody on the news talk about wanting to bomb Thailand.

  Goldwater probably would have thought about it, though.

  Do you know what his slogan was? “In your heart you know he’s right.”

  Hogwash. In my heart I know he’s a maniac.

  I wish Johnson would make me feel better, though. He has so much power now in just his hands. That Gulf of Tonkin business made me very nervous. Still does. He can do whatever he wants now, with all the power Congress gave him. What happens if North Vietnam makes him very angry?

  It made me extra glad that you’re in Thailand, though.

  The boys say hi. They also say they cannot wait to go over there and fight with you.

  I don’t believe they were referring to assaulting you personally, but one never knows with those guys—with you guys—right?

  Either way, don’t get
in any fights, Dan. Just don’t fight. Take pictures. I like those.

  Johnson said just before the election that he didn’t intend to send American boys ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

  You are an American boy. That sounds to me as if you’re free to come home.

  I wish you could. I wish you didn’t have to go after all. I wish you were here causing me sleepless nights, instead of over there causing me sleepless nights.

  You don’t write often enough.

  Write. Do not fight. Write.

  And send nice pictures.

  Have to sign off now, son. My hand is getting weary and melancholy.

  Love my boy.

  Dad.

  What a jerk, huh?

  His stupid hand would be fine if he didn’t insist on writing in that stupid calligraphy all the time. He blames the polio for making him teach himself calligraphy, which never made any sense to me. Things that make no sense to me make me so mad.

  He works for a printing company, for crying out loud. He could have anything he wanted typeset for free. He could write me million-page letters that wouldn’t cost him anything, and wouldn’t have to make both of us so tired and melancholy, every single time.

  Every single time, Dad.

  One month later and still nobody is bombing lovely Thailand.

  Laos, on the other hand, has a different story to tell.

  Or to not tell.

  Operation Barrel Roll has begun, and with it the first Air Force bombing raids on the Ho Chi Minh Trail beyond the western border of Vietnam. In the early days the bombers do all of their work in the northern part of Laos, so we don’t see much, but the thunder rolls down to us loud and clear.

  We had been informed that this operation was coming, and it has been of great interest to all of us here because these raids have the power to alter our day-to-day operations profoundly. Because they are bombing the very same Ho Chi Minh Trail that we and a lot of other trailwatch teams have been spending most of our time on.