The Fall of Camp A-555: The Vietnamese Army are one step closer to victory... (Vietnam Ground Zero Military Thrillers Book 4)

by Eric Helm

  “You think that’s a good idea? It’s liable to blow the captain’s plans for the assault. We hit ’em, it’s going to be noisy.”

  “I don’t see that we have any choice, Sully. If we don’t do something, they’re going to take those guys out of here. What if one of them’s Westmoreland? We’ll just have to let them get out from the camp a ways and pray for the best. Our only chance is to take out the guards before they realize what’s happening, and hope that not too many of the prisoners get in the way.”

  “That sounds like a pretty lousy plan to me.”

  “You got any better ideas?” snapped Tyme, annoyed.

  “Nope. I’m just saying they’re sure to hear the shooting.”

  “Not much we can do about that.”

  “How about calling Dinh Dien Phuoc Xuyen and getting the ARVN battery there to drop a few rounds between the ambush and the camp? It might help mask the firing when we spring the ambush.”

  Tyme considered the idea, then rejected it. “No. They might hear a few rifle shots, and they might not. If we go to chucking artillery shells around, the VC in the camp are going to wonder why they’re shooting and who’s directing the fire, not to mention what’s being shot at.”

  He scanned the camp again. “They’re moving out. Looks like they’re heading for Cai Cai. They’ll probably cross the border north of Dan Chau where the swamp narrows. That’ll be our best bet to hit them. It’ll be far enough they probably won’t hear the shooting in the camp. Especially if we can catch them in the swamp where the trees will have a chance to deaden the sound somewhat.”

  “That’s a long way, Boom-Boom. Three and a half, maybe four, klicks. It’ll seem a lot longer going through the swamps.”

  “If we move now, we can get ahead of them, take the road to just south of Cai Cai, then strike straight north cross-country, bypass the abandoned village east of Cai Cai and set up along the main trail just where it enters the swamp again.”

  “What if they don’t take the main trail? What if they veer off someplace before they get to Cai Cai and strike straight north themselves, through the main swamp?”

  “Then we’ll miss them. There’s no way we can catch up to them from Dan Chau if they take the trail through the main swamp. Even if we crossed the border ourselves and moved along the edge of the swamp, I don’t think we could get ahead of them in time.”

  Tyme turned to the other striker. “Listen. I’m going to send your friend back here. I want the two of you to take this radio and follow the VC with the prisoners. If for any reason they change direction before they get to Cai Cai, you call me and let me know. Okay?”

  The striker nodded and grinned, showing his filed teeth. “Understand,” he said. “We follow VC. Call if they no go to Cai Cai.”

  “Right. Don’t let them see you following them.”

  The striker looked offended. “They no see. They Vietnamese.”

  “Right.”

  He turned to Smith. “Let’s move.”

  In the ravine Tyme quickly explained the situation to Hung. He advised him to remain in the ravine with the majority of his force but to send four men forward to reoccupy the OP and keep the camp under surveillance.

  Then Tyme and Smith each took one of the other PRC-10s, putting the radios in rucksacks and bending the antennae down at an angle of about one hundred and thirty-five degrees to the rear. In that position the antennae would avoid snagging, still give good reception and, combined with the rucksacks, would make them much less tempting targets for any VC sniper wishing to ding himself a radioman. Smith’s and Tyme’s size, which marked them clearly as American advisors, would provide plenty of temptation without the additional attraction of carrying a radio. They then joined the patrol waiting for them under Sergeant Harai.

  Tyme looked at the short tribesmen, bowed under the weight of their equipment and giant Second World War vintage Garand M-1 rifles. Everything was too big for them. They looked almost like little boys who had been given their fathers’ real rifles to go hunting with. That was one of the reasons the Special Forces tried to issue as many M-1 and M-2 carbines as possible. They were striker-sized weapons, and generally the troops could handle them a lot better. But there weren’t enough carbines to go around. The military assistance planners back in the States still hadn’t caught on to the size differential in Indochina and insisted that you needed a full-sized rifle to fight a war with, so they kept sending Garands. The Garand was a good weapon, reliable and accurate, proven in any number of combats. It was just too damned big for Vietnamese or Tai hands.

  Still, Tyme had asked for riflemen, not men armed with carbines. He’d done it because the straight-shooting Garand, with its big heavy bullet, could do what a carbine wouldn’t. Routinely deliver one-shot kills. The carbine would incapacitate ninety-nine times out of one hundred at close range — and the ambush would have to be sprung at very close range — but sometimes a follow-up shot with a carbine was needed to finish the job. Tyme wanted to make sure the job got done right the first time before the VC could kill any of the prisoners and with the minimum number of shots being fired. The Garands would give an extra edge.

  “Sergeant Harai,” said Tyme, “I sure hope your men know how to shoot. They’ll only get one shot apiece.”

  Harai nodded. “The worst can shoot fly off water buffalo’s ass at hundred meters.”

  Tyme gave him a look that said he wasn’t buying any of that crap.

  “Serious, Sergeant Boom-Boom,” said Harai, “they all number one shots. I pick them myself.”

  Tyme nodded. He knew Harai could shoot. He’d trained him. “All right, then, let’s go. We’ve got to get to Cai Cai before the Viet Cong do.”

  They moved out on the double, following the ravine until it met a larger one running to the northwest, with a small creek flowing through the center of it.

  Tyme knew that, if it had been the rainy season, the creek would have been a raging torrent, filling the ravine. At this time of the year it provided fairly decent walking. The bottom of the ravine, though rocky, contained little in the way of scrub or vines to hinder them.

  They followed the ravine until it petered out into a field, then followed the tree line on the other side until it cut the road to Cai Cai. After that they ran.

  It was a calculated risk to move in the open along the road. Tyme was banking on all the VC in the area being in the camp, except for the patrol with the prisoners. If he was wrong and they got ambushed along the open road, they’d probably be wiped out.

  They ran for twenty minutes, walked for ten and then ran again. By the time they turned off the road toward the abandoned village, both Tyme and Smith were wheezing like asthmatics. The diminutive strikers with their heavy equipment and eleven-and-a-quarter-pound rifles weren’t even breathing hard.

  They crossed the open ground, a combination of mostly rice paddies with an occasional vegetable garden occupying the rare spot of high ground, still moving fast. At the entrance to the swamp, Tyme had Harai drop off one of the strikers to watch for the VC, and they proceeded down the trail to set up their ambush.

  Tyme selected a fairly long, straight stretch of trail with good cover on both sides, just before the pathway rounded a slight bend.

  He deployed the men along both sides of the trail in an alternating pattern, making sure that each man understood to shoot only at targets within his own particular field of fire. The light weapons sergeant emphasized the need to kill the guards instantly without injuring any of the prisoners, and stressed that each man would have to carefully select and track his target and shoot without hesitation when the time came.

  Tyme said he knew that this would be difficult because prisoners might get in the way but that they must do the best they could. He made it clear to each of them that the only hope of rescuing the prisoners was to kill all the guards at as close to the same instant as possible. Anything less could allow one guard with an automatic weapon to slaughter all the prisoners before he was killed. Eve
n a dying man, Tyme pointed out, could reflexively pull the trigger in his death spasm and kill someone, even though he himself was technically already dead.

  The best way to prevent that, said Tyme, was with a zero reflex kill shot. If possible, the men should shoot the VC guards between the eyes, through the mouth, immediately below and behind the ear or where the back of the neck met the base of the skull. Any of those shots would cut the brain stem connection to the spinal column and kill the enemy soldier with no chance that he could pull the trigger. The signal to fire would be when Tyme did.

  Tyme had barely finished positioning the men when the striker left to guard the trail ran up. He was panting. For a Tai to be out of breath meant he had run very hard indeed.

  “Sergeant Boom-Boom, Sergeant Sully, VC come.”

  “How far?” asked Tyme.

  “Four, maybe five, minutes. No more.”

  “How many prisoners?”

  “Look like eighteen, maybe twenty.”

  “How many guards?”

  “Count eight rifles, two SMG.”

  “Was there any officer with them?”

  “If officer, no see. Count no pistol. If officer carry pistol, no can tell from prisoner.”

  Tyme appreciated the deductive reasoning. “How were they dressed? Could you see that?”

  “Think all prisoners wear tiger suits. VC wear black or green.”

  “Both guerrillas and Main Force, then. How were they dispersed?”

  “One VC walk point, maybe fifty meters. Him carry SMG. Other SMG walk behind prisoners. Rifles walk four each side.”

  “Fine. You did well. Go with Sergeant Smith. He’ll tell you what to do.”

  Tyme turned to Smith. “Sully, you two will have to take out the point man and deal with anyone who manages to slip past us. I’ll take the last man in line. I’ll break squelch twice on the radio when the point passes me. When you hear me shoot the last man in line, take the point out.”

  “Got it.” Smith and the striker hurried down the trail.

  Tyme checked his men’s positions one last time, making sure he couldn’t spot any of them from the trail. Then he took his own place at the end of the firing line.

  It couldn’t have been more than three or four minutes before the point man walked past him. Tyme let him go. He pressed the transmit button on the handset of the PRC-10 twice, then switched the unit off. The last thing he wanted was to have Gerber or somebody else try to contact him and tip off the ambush. He raised the M-14 and eased the safety off.

  As he waited motionless in the grass looking down the barrel, he could see the heat shimmering up from the front sight and flash suppressor, and for a moment he worried that the VC might see it, too. Then he remembered that it was a mirage effect, a property as much of the viewing angle as the temperature and atmospheric conditions. When he squinted through the rear peep sight, the illusion disappeared.

  He felt an involuntary twinge in his shoulder, a reminder of a wound only recently healed, and it brought back painful memories of his own capture and brutal treatment at the hands of a sadistic Main Force Viet Cong major named Vo. No matter what happened in the next few minutes, he would not permit these men to be taken away to suffer as he had. If something went wrong and the ambush went awry, if all the prisoners were killed, it would still be better for them than their winding up in a VC prison camp where they would be tortured and dehumanized, reduced to animals dependent upon their captors for survival, which would remain a daily uncertainty. Right or wrong, Tyme believed that with all his heart and soul. That was why his group had to try their best.

  The first of the prisoners came into view, and Tyme saw that it was First Lieutenant Bao, the Tai Strike Force commander. It made him feel curiously relieved. He had not dared to hope that his friend, a man he had helped train and had fought alongside on many occasions, had survived the attack on the camp. Beyond Bao he could see two of the LLDB team members, Tran, the Intelligence sergeant, and Tam, one of the medical specialists. He scanned the line of faces briefly but couldn’t spot any that looked American. Then it was time to stop sightseeing and concentrate on his target.

  As the last man came into view, Tyme noted his weapon, an old French MAT-49. Not the best submachine gun in the world by any means, but it had a certain romantic Foreign Legion flair to it and was still a deadly weapon at close range. Tyme sighted carefully on the man’s head, and as the enemy soldier came abreast of his position, the Green Beret sergeant shot him directly through the left ear.

  The VC soldier’s head exploded in a geyser of red-and-gray chunks, as if it had been a watermelon suddenly dropped from a great height. As he toppled, Tyme put an insurance round into his throat, then swung the M-14 to cover the next closest guard.

  The report of Tyme’s second shot was lost in a ragged roar as the peaceful jungle trail suddenly erupted in a tempest of muzzle flashes and copper-jacketed bullets. Tyme saw his second target go down before he could fire, the back of the man’s skull blown out, leaking pinkish-gray brains onto the trail like some disgusting mass of tapioca pudding. There were a couple of other shots and then silence once more.

  “Cease fire!” yelled Tyme. He rose slowly to his feet and went forward, weapon ready, to make sure of the kills and check that the prisoners were okay. A few minutes later Sully Smith and the striker who had gone with him reappeared from around the bend. Smith was carrying a Chicom Type 50.

  They freed the prisoners and treated the one wounded, an RF platoon sergeant who had been too close to one of the guards — his shoulder blade had been grazed by a stray round. A couple of the others had wounds, as well, but they had been received defending the camp. Tam took charge of them and changed their dressings, using bandages supplied by Smith and Tyme.

  The battle had lasted less than seven seconds. A total of twenty-eight rounds had been fired, all of them by the strikers and the two Americans. There were no VC prisoners.

  Tyme stared for a moment at the carnage. Ten men, VC to be sure, but still soldiers like himself, each with part of his head missing. There was a terrible, hellish beauty to the precision of it. He felt both exhilarated and ashamed. No. Not quite ashamed. Embarrassed, perhaps. A little self-consciously he glanced up at Smith, who flashed him a giddy grin.

  “Well, Boom-Boom, that’s what I call a smashing success,” said Smith.

  Tyme let out a sigh and shook his head. “No, Sully, only a partial success. No Miss Morrow and no American general. Come on. Let’s get back. We’ve still got a camp to help recapture.”

  They stripped the bodies of their rifles and ammunition to provide weapons for some of the freed prisoners, then formed the men and moved out. Sergeant Harai walked near the head of the column with Sergeant Tran, who was carrying the MAT-49. If there was any racial prejudice between the two men, they showed no sign of it now. Smith and Tyme walked near the center of the group with Bao and Tam.

  They left the VC with the shattered heads where they had fallen.

  CHAPTER 15

  MACV HEADQUARTERS, SAIGON

  While Gerber was planning the raid and Tyme was performing the rescue of Bao and the others, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Bates was vainly trying to find someone, anyone, who could tell him what in hell was going on.

  He’d tried General Crinshaw’s office first, but the brigadier was still doing his Judge Crater impersonation. Nobody had seen or heard from him since he’d left his office the morning before.

  A visit to General Hull’s office hadn’t produced any better results. His executive officer was still on R and R, and Hull was still unavailable. The administrative aide assured Bates that the general would be back tomorrow morning. He was very sorry, but he couldn’t tell Bates where General Hull could be reached. Bates got the impression that the confounded man knew where Hull was but was under orders not to divulge the information.

  Finally, in desperation, he contacted Lieutenant General John A. Heinteges’s office. He was informed that General Heinteges was currently
up-country observing the direction of Operation Masher but Colonel Bradlow, the general’s chief of staff, would be pleased to see Bates at 1400 hours that afternoon.

  Bates wasn’t sure the colonel would be pleased to see him after he’d heard what Bates had to say. As it turned out, it was Bates who wasn’t pleased.

  The meeting went fine until Bates tried to explain the purpose of his visit. Then the conversation took on a decidedly icy chill.

  “I can assure you, Colonel,” Bradlow was saying, “that General Westmoreland is not missing. I spoke with him myself on the telephone not twenty minutes ago.”

  “He’s here in Saigon, then?” asked Bates.

  “I didn’t say that. I said I had spoken with him on the telephone. He’s quite well and perfectly safe, I assure you.”

  “Well, where is he, then?” Bates wanted to know.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel Bates, but I am not authorized to give out that information.”

  “Well, then, perhaps you can tell me who is?”

  “Certainly. No one.”

  “Christ!” said Bates. “The man is the commander of MACV. Somebody’s got to know where he is.”

  “I do know,” said Bradlow. “I’m just not authorized to tell you, or anyone else.”

  “Fine. If General Westmoreland isn’t missing, then perhaps you can tell me who is because the VC who are in possession of Camp A-555 right now are holding a general officer as their prisoner.”

  “So you said. Do you mind telling me just where this report came from?”

  “From Captain MacKenzie K. Gerber, senior advisor at the camp.”

  “I see. Did you speak with Captain Gerber before the camp fell, or is he still in the camp now?”

  “Captain Gerber was not in the camp at the time of the attack,” said Bates tiredly. “The information was reported to him by Master Sergeant Anthony B. Fetterman after he had conducted a reconnaissance of the camp.”

  “So actually it was this Master Sergeant Fetterman who saw the captured general officer.”