The drone of the boats was now quite distant. I shivered in the cool evening air. I would never have thought I’d shiver in Vietnam, but I was cold.
We crawled up the bank, moving mere inches at a time along the fifty-yard-wide tip of the island, until we’d set ourselves up in ambush position behind the stump of a downed tree. Four of us—Patches Watson, Camp the radioman, Ron Rodger with his Stoner machine gun, and I—separated into two pairs eight yards apart and scrutinized the southern shore of the river, a spit of sand and mud a hundred and fifty yards away, for any hint of movement. Jim Finley and Eagle Gallagher took rear guard, fifteen yards inland, and covered our butts.
By now I couldn’t hear the support boats at all, and I was suddenly overcome by an incredible sensation of aloneness. Simultaneously, I was struck by a degree of paranoia I’d never known before. Shit—we were actually out in the jungle with live weapons and people who wanted to kill us. If this was a trap, if Charlie was laying for us—Jesus. I shook myself out of it. I blinked, squeezing my eyes tight and then releasing, to control the hyper stage into which I was rocketing. I tried breathing-control exercises. They worked. I relaxed.
The dial on my watch read 2140. It’d taken us about twenty minutes to crawl through twenty-five yards of jungle scrub and river grass into our ambush position. So far, we’d been on station half an hour. The island had accepted our arrival and was alive again with the sounds of unknown critters that chirped and whistled and buzzed all around us. I found the ambient noise to be loud and decided it was accentuated by my alert condition.
We hadn’t spoken a word since we’d left the STAB. We didn’t have to.
I looked up. The sky was as clear as I’d ever seen it. The stars—millions of them—shone as brightly as if it were a crisp fall night in New England. The air had turned quite cool, and my teeth started to chatter. I forced my jaws together to stop. How goddamn incongruous. To be cold in the tropical jungle. I thought about Ev Barrett, and Mud, and pulling low on my last Med cruise. I thought about St. Thomas—rum and Coke and humping that wonderful, big-titted schoolteacher from New Jersey. I thought that maybe tomorrow I’d write a postcard to each of my kids. Souvenirs for them when they learned to read. I remembered how terrified I was the first time the freight train pinned me against the wall in the tunnel to Hauto when I was seven.
Then I heard it. Creak-creak.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I got goose bumps.
Creak-creak. Wood on wood. An oar in an oarlock. Creakcreak.
From the sandspit opposite where we lay, the nose of a small sampan poked into the slow-moving river.
I raised my finger slowly. Wait. He’s 150 yards away. He’ll come closer. Don’t spoil it by going too soon. I held my breath. Not a hair on any of my guys moved, even though four weapons were following the sampan.
He came across slowly, slowly, agonizingly slowly. One Vietnamese in black pajamas, no hat, no visible gun; an Asian gondolier, his single oar stirring a creaky, steady “J” stroke against the Bassac’s sluggish current. He came right at us.
I let the first shot go when he was less than twenty feet away. The others fired so quickly after my round that the poor guy must have thought he was looking down one big 16inch barrel. Whatever he was thinking, it was the last thought he ever had. All of us hit him simultaneously with full 30round mags. But it was Ron Rodger’s Stoner that really did the damage—a hundred and fifty rounds of .223, every twentieth round a tracer.
“Let’s go.” I was up on my feet, scrambling for the bank. I charged down to grab the VCs body and empty what I could from the shredded sampan before it sank.
Patches was hot on my tail. Ron Rodger wasn’t far behind.
I sloshed through the water, my feet sticking in the mud. The sampan began to slip into the water. It became a footrace. I was swimming now.
“Come on.”
Patches and I reached the sampan first. I pulled myself over the gunwales. The inside of the boat was covered with blood, bone fragments, and shreds of black pajama. But it was empty except for a small cloth pouch, which I grabbed.
“Find him,” I shouted.
Patches dove. I followed. We came up empty. He’d probably been blown backward into the water by the Stoner. Shit.
We were dragging at the sampan when the water around my head started kicking up. From the bank. Joe Camp pointed. “Automatic fire—eleven o’clock.” He dropped to the ground and let a full mag of covering fire go over our heads. “Get your asses back to shore.”
Patches and I swam like hell, dragging the sampan, and made it to the bank. We scrambled up and over, back into our firing positions, and I dove for the radio. The M16s and the Stoner didn’t have the range we needed. It was time to call in the cavalry—the PBR and Mike boat, which had .50caliber, the .57 recoilless, and mortars.
I grabbed the receiver from Joe Camp. I gave our call sign and coordinates. No answer. Only static. I tried again and again without success.
Eagle Gallagher’s urgent voice cut through the firefight. “They’re coming from the back side, Mr. Rick.”
Were there VC on the island? I wasn’t about to take chances with my men. “Use grenades. Frags and WPs.” WPs were the white phosphorus kind that burned brightly. And God help anyone hit by one.
We took fire for maybe eight or ten minutes—an eternity—while I called and called for the PBR or Mike boat. Finally, one of the STABs showed up. We moved down the bank, shouting for covering fire as we slithered, ducked, and rolled our way through the jungle underbrush, as VC bullets sliced the leaves just over our heads or dug divots too close for comfort as we scrambled toward the STAB. I jumped for the boat only to discover that there were already three PBR sailors in it, as well as the two-man crew. STABs are only supposed to hold nine. This one now held eleven, and it was heavy.
I waved my squad aboard. The STAB reversed its twin Mercs and backed off the island—onto a sandbar. As the sailors fired over our heads, Patches, Finley, and I went over the side, floated the boat clear, reboarded, and hauled ass.
I was furious. That is an understatement. I wanted to kill somebody. “Where’s Henry’s Mike boat? Where’s the PBR? What are these crewmen doing here?”
A sailor said, “Lieutenant Henry saw a sampan and gave chase. He didn’t think you’d have any problems so he took the two other boats and sent us back for you.”
Christ, he was supposed to be backing my mission up, not chasing VC sampans. If Charlie’d fielded a sizable contingent, Bravo Squad would be hamburger by now, thanks to Adam Henry. Goddamn it to hell. I checked my guys over to make sure we had all our fingers and toes, then looked up to notice we were heading away from Tre Noc, moving farther upriver.
I grabbed a sailor by the flak jacket. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Lieutenant Henry wants you.”
“Hey, my guys are cold and wet. Let’s turn this thing around.”
“No can do, sir.”
I considered the possibilities. Maybe Adam was in trouble and needed us to save his ass. It was unlikely, but not totally impossible. We sat hunkered on the deck and I steamed for fifteen minutes until we reached Henry’s Mike boat and tied up to its onshore side as it chugged steadily up the river. I clambered up and found Henry. “What the hell’s up, Adam? You in trouble?”
He shook his head. “Nah—there’s an outpost under attack about two clicks from here. I want to go support it.”
“Screw that. I’m gonna take my guys and go home.”
He put a restraining hand on my web-gear suspenders. “No, Dick, I may need you. It’s better if you ride the Mike boat with me. The STAB is too small, and besides, it’s unarmored.”
I removed his hand delicately. “Look, schmuck, it is now almost twenty-three hundred. My guys made their bones tonight—we got ourselves a VC courier, and we got him good. Why not let us take our toys and go home. We don’t want to play with you right now.”
“Play?” His baby blues seemed to
darken. “What the hell do you think this is, Marcinko—a game?”
“Hey, asshole, the only games that are being played right now are the ones you’re trying to run on me.”
“What the hell you mean by that?”
“I mean that you fuckin’ left me hanging out there to dry. You were supposed to be supporting me—not looking for your own goddamn VC to shoot at.”
“If things had really been bad enough, I’d have been there.”
“Really?”
“That’s a roger, Dick, and you know it.”
“I don’t know what you would or wouldn’t do.” I grabbed two handfuls of Henry’s shirt and brought us nose to nose. “Listen, you dipshit pus-nuts pencil-dicked asshole scumbag, we took automatic weapons fire from two directions. Is that bad enough for you? The STAB you finally sent to snatch us was filled with frigging sight-seeing sailors—and we got stuck on a goddamn sandbar while Charlie made bang-bang at us. Is that bad enough for you? I pleaded for covering fire and you were so goddamn far upriver you were out of goddamn radio range. Is that bad enough for you, you pussy?”
I shoved him up against the cockpit bulkhead, popping his back against the gray metal with every other syllable. “I mean, old pal of mine, just how the fuck do you define ‘bad enough’?” He sagged into a sitting position and just stayed there, his eyes unfocused. I felt like breaking the son of a bitch’s neck. Instead, I retreated to the portion of the deck where my squad now was. (Asked about this incident today, Larry says it never happened.)
We watched, sodden, cold, and miserable, as Adam ordered the Mike boat into firing position. The incredible high we’d experienced only a few minutes before had totally evaporated. We’d been transformed from warriors into spectators by this insensitive, unproven asshole. He was trying to get himself a kill, but he was doing it at the expense of my men, and I didn’t like that one bit.
To add injury to insult, when he commenced firing, I saw that his red-hot .50-caliber machine gun casings were raining down on my STAB, with its open cockpit and exposed gas tanks. Worse, since the STAB had been moored to the onshore side of the Mike boat, it was being shot at by the bad guys. Mike boats are armored. STABs are fiberglass.
After about five minutes of Henry’s screwups, I’d had enough. “Come on, guys, we’re going home.”
We rolled over the side, unmindful of incoming fire, the Mike boat’s hot .50-caliber casings, and the water plumes made by VC mortar rounds. We jumped into the STAB. Gallagher hit the starter, Jim Finley and Patches Watson cut the tether lines, while Joe Camp and Ron Rodger laid down some covering fire.
I grabbed the wheel, peeled away, and put the pedal to the metal. The twin Mercs slalomed us easily through the waterspouts of enemy fire. I veered sharply, cut the STAB’s sleek hull around the back of the Mike boat, and headed downriver at top speed. I could see Adam Henry’s face as we sped away. He was shouting something at me, but it was impossible to hear anything over the roar of the Mercs. I saluted him with my middle finger.
The following week, Bravo Squad and I bid a not-so-fond farewell to Tre Noc. Skipper Witham, no fool, realized I was going to kill Henry, or that Hank Mustin was going to have me carted off in chains to Leavenworth.
So it was decided that Marcinko’s Merry Band of Murdering Marauders would move forty kilometers northeast to My Tho. There, the Navy kept a PBR flotilla on the river. And there, Commodore Witham decreed, safely out of Hank Mustin’s way, I could broaden the horizons of SEAL deployment on the Delta without the temptation to kill any of my fellow American officers with my bare hands in the process.
The senior man at My Tho turned out to be a terrific officer named Toole, a commander, who had never worked with SEALs before but had the good sense to leave me alone, just as long as I gave him results. Toole was an uncommon Navy boss, a lean, mean, caustic, wry curmudgeon whose aggressiveness was a big bolster for Bravo’s morale at My Tho. He wore olive-drab jungle fatigues instead of an officer’s tan blouse and slacks. He trusted his chiefs. He’d prowl the PBRs and tinker with the .50-caliber guns. He’d actually go out to see what action was like.
Best of all, he didn’t second-guess me or set up parameters that confined us. He realized instinctively that SEALs are unconventional warriors and encouraged me to be as unconventional as I thought prudent and effective. Bravo was responsible for covering a 60-mile section of river, along with its innumerable canals, tributaries, bayous, brooks, streams, creeks, and ditches.
My Tho was more rustic than Tre Noc. The PBR dock was jerry-built—wood planks atop floating 50-gallon oil drums, attached to a pair of flimsy pilings. The offices, shops, and supply lockers were right alongside the river in Butler buildings—Tinkertoy structures of concrete slab and aluminum siding—or Quonset huts. Decidedly unfancy. We did, however, live well. Two blocks from the river was an old European-style hotel—it could have been transplanted from Hemingway’s Paris—where all the Americans slept. There were creaky fans suspended from high ceilings, louvered windows, and French furniture.
By now we’d grown accustomed to Vietnamese cooking, and although there was Western-style food both at the hotel and the Navy installation, we’d visit the innumerable vendors on our way to and from the river each day, tasting and experimenting. In fact, Jim Finley—the “Mayor”—somehow managed within hours of our arrival to slip away and discover the best dozen food hootches. By the time the rest of us found the time to get out and about, he guided us from stall to stall and we were greeted like long-lost family.
We started our patrols slowly, riding the river with the PBRs, talking to the chiefs, learning what Charlie’s routes were, when he crossed the river, where he staged his crossings, and why he was moving. Then came short patrols—night insertions like the one we did out of Tre Noc—and static ambushes. I called those patrols “Mustins” because that’s how Hank had envisaged SEAL deployment—as support for the full spectrum of riverine operations. But I wanted to go beyond Mustins, to “Mar-chinkos.”
“Mar-chinkos” entailed longer patrols-twelve, eighteen, even twenty hours in the Delta—and different tactics. Aggressive tactics. It made sense to me that the closer to the Delta Charlie got, the more alert he became. And why? Because that’s where the PBRs and Mike boats and SEALs were. But when Charlie was still staging his convoys, three hundred, five hundred, seven hundred meters away from the river, he was relaxed—because he was on his own turf.
I knew instinctively that the earlier I could hit Charlie the more damage I’d cause. But I knew we couldn’t go balls to the wall quite yet. We were still green; still learning the ways of the jungle. So, like the first days of UDT training, I did nothing outrageous. Instead, I built the squad’s confidence with soft hits, patrols that were guaranteed to include VC kills without endangering Bravo. But each time we patrolled, I’d take us farther and farther up the canals. When Bravo was comfortable with the canals, we extended onto the dikes. We began yards at a time, until we were comfortable moving a kilometer or two. We snatched our first prisoner—Patches Watson and Eagle Gallagher came up out of a bunch of reeds and almost gave the poor asshole a heart attack—and interrogated him before turning him over to the ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, which I normally referred to as Marvin the ARVN.
After about a month I started pushing the guys more. We’d insert at night, roll off a STAB, swim up a canal, clamber onto a dike or footpath, and set up an ambush three hundred or four hundred yards farther inland than Charlie ever expected us to be. As we became more confident, we moved farther and farther up-country from the river, running the dike trails over which VC couriers carried intelligence, and ambushing sampan convoys as they loaded the goods that had been carried down through Cambodia from Hanoi along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
We learned about intelligence, and what to look for. At first we left some of the VC’s personal stuff behind. Now I realized it was important source material, and we took everything we could get our hands on. Forget all those TV-movie scenes
of the grunt who finds the picture of the dead VC’s kids and wife and goes to sentimental pieces as he realizes he’s just killed a fellow human being. Scenes like that are probably written by people who’ve never had shots fired at them in anger.
Fact is, Comrade Victor Charlie wanted us dead, deader, deadest. And if taking a cute snapshot or a letter from a VC corpse somehow helped us in the effort to get him first, then too bad for Mr. Charlie, Mrs. Charlie, and all the little Charlies.
I also used to booby-trap our VC kills. The enemy often booby-trapped their own dead, so we did it to them, too. It made me feel good to hear an explosion after we’d left the area. One less Charlie to shoot at us—maybe more.
This probably sounds as if I were a cold, unfeeling, chilledout dude in Vietnam. Fact is, there’s very little time for introspection on the battlefield. We saw the enemy up close and personal on a daily basis, and we sometimes had to look him in the eyes as we killed him. It gives you a different perspective.
What you learn very quickly is that your men—your unit—are everything. Like a mafioso, you take an oath of blood with your men. You cherish them, nurture them, protect them. You keep their foibles to yourself. You must be completely loyal to them—and they will be the same to you.
I regard my first Vietnam tour as a sort of SpecWar Genesis, in which I was re-created out of the primal mud of the Delta and the purifying heat of our gunfire. In the beginning, I was a green ensign who’d spent his whole life talking about kicking ass and taking names, but had never done it.
Then came the evening and the morning of my First Day—the free-fire island, where I went to create noise and play with my toys.
The evening and the morning of my Second Day was the courier ambush, where I learned how to use the water and the land to my advantage, and how to kill my enemy.
The evening and the morning of my Third Day I learned to treasure the fruits of intelligence, and I began to harvest every scrap of paper so we could learn where Charlie’s head was at.
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