by Eric Meyer
"They're not here. There’s nothing.”
"Perhaps."
She sounded uneasy, and I didn't ask for the reasons. She was sniffing the air, looking around, holding up a finger to test the wind direction, and at one time she put her ear to the ground. I cringed, imagining some poisonous insect crawling into her ear canal, but when she put her head up, she didn't appear to have been invaded by the Vietnamese insect population.
"What did you hear?"
“Quiet. There's something, but I can't work it out. I need to listen."
She flattened on the ground, and a moment later I heard the quiet rustle as someone pushed through the foliage, and then he was standing over me. Charlie. Maybe two meters away, and as I watched, he unbuttoned his flies and urinated on the ground. It was a close call, and I came within an ace of being splattered by Communist urine. It didn't happen. He re-buttoned his fly and walked on; talking quietly to another man I couldn't see. They took another few paces, and then vanished into nothing. I stared at that spot where they’d disappeared, and it was like stage magic. One moment they were there, and the next they weren’t. We crawled forward and came up against a huge tree, which must have been several hundred years old. One of those massive trunks that grow in places around the world, and the illegal loggers have yet to uncover. We circled the tree, tiptoeing in silence in case they were close, but there was still nothing.
"They've gone,” I murmured, “We should get back and make the helicopter pick up at dawn."
"I'm sure there’s something here."
"If there was, we’d have seen it. Let's go.”
I started to retrace our steps, except this time there was no need to crawl. The enemy had gone and so we walked away. We didn't get far before I banged my boot against something solid and I almost fell. I cursed. "I don't know what the hell that was, but it felt like I just kicked a lump of iron."
While I was nursing my bruised toes, she began scrabbling on the ground. "You are right, it is iron. I believe it's… I don’t believe it. A piece of a gun."
I forgot my sore toes and joined her. A little moonlight pierced the jungle canopy, enough for us to see the heavy lump of forged steel. It wasn’t rusty, suggesting it hadn't been there for long, and when I heaved it over with a huge effort and looked closer, the other side looked like nickel chrome. I still wasn't sure it was a piece of a gun. After all, what would the VC be doing burying a gun in the earth? I explained my doubts to Tam, but she saw it from a different angle.
"I believe they must be storing heavy weapons underground, and they were trying to bury this gun when we arrived, so they covered it with earth hoping we wouldn't come across it. Until you tripped on it.”
She had a point, and I considered going back for LeBlanc and his men. But by the time we got back the evidence could have disappeared. "We need to look around some more. Where would they be hiding heavy ordnance?"
“Underground. A tunnel," she said.
I looked at the lump of steel again, and still didn't get it. It was big and heavy, over a meter long, and when I’d lifted it, I had to heave with both arms. The thing was damn heavy. "There's no way they could hide this thing in a tunnel." I inspected the chunk of metal again and it sure was big. I heaved it back over and finally worked it out, "My guess would be a 105mm howitzer. Except it can’t be, not here. There's just no way, there has to be another reason for this chunk of metal being in this place."
We continued surveying the ground and unearthed what could only be a barrel, short and squat, and if we needed confirmation we’d found an enemy gun, that was it. "There’s is no question, it’s a disassembled 105mm howitzer. We have to call this in."
"We don't have a radio."
I remembered. "You're right. We need to get back to LeBlanc, and he can pass it on. We can go out with the Huey that’s due at dawn."
I started to move, but she didn’t. "Private Yeager, we should find the tunnel entrance before we go back. It has to be big to accommodate the parts of an artillery piece, so how hard can it be to find? We're not looking for a spider hole. Think of the gun carriage, that would be impossible to hide in a conventional VC tunnel."
Something told me I could be putting my head further into a noose, but I agreed to scout around some more, provided we didn't miss our early morning ride.
We explored in a widening circle, and I felt nervous. Tam carried the M1 carbine, which could put out a worthwhile volley of shots if we ran into trouble. My Colt was something different. A short-range weapon, squeeze off a few rounds, and Charlie would still charge you down, spitting bullets and hatred. I'd seen her shoot, and that was something. But if the shit hit the fan, we’d need a lot more than an assault rifle and a handgun.
We found nothing. The enemy had vanished into thin air. Or thick air as it happened, for once again the stench of the jungle, the rank humidity and the sweat -soaked misery made it like walking through soup. We arrived back at the tree, and it must have been four meters in diameter. How men had failed to find it and turn it into planks for sale on the international timber market I couldn't imagine. That enormous trunk was sufficient to build several hundred picnic tables and garden benches. Yet somehow it had survived, and I devoutly hoped it would survive for a few hundred years more.
"It's dead."
"Excuse me?"
She was pointing at the tree, and a branch that was hanging down low within arm’s reach. She pulled it closer, "I said it's dead. The branch is dead. Therefore, the trunk is almost certainly dead."
I felt a pang of regret. Of all the death, hatred, and division in this miserable country, this tree represented a living thing that had outlasted the soldiers, the warlords, bandits, and the armies, and it was still standing. Except it was dead.
"That's a real shame. Tam, we’ve looked everywhere, we should head back."
"We should check the tree."
I stared at. "It’s dead. There’s not a damn thing we can do about it."
I had a crazy thought she was talking about bringing the tree surgeons in to breathe new life into the magnificent trunk and the vast, spreading branches that formed a canopy over much of the jungle, but she meant something different.
"This could be it."
"It?"
"The entrance to the tunnel. Think about it. It's wide enough, and they could have dug down through the roots to make an entrance to a large underground chamber. Big enough to store an artillery piece."
I chuckled. "Tam, it's a solid trunk. It must weigh a thousand tons." I banged my fist against the rough bark to demonstrate it was solid, and to my astonishment it sounded hollow, “Or maybe not.”
I tapped it again, and there was no question. It was hollow, and we instinctively crouched low. If it was true, a storage facility for an artillery piece was sure to be heavily guarded. The enemy had to be around here somewhere, suspicious eyes watching us. Maybe they were already cocking the action of an AK, ready to step out into the open and let loose a withering burst of automatic fire. Nothing happened.
She looked at me. "What we do next?"
I still thought we should head back and call it in. Hollowed out tree trunks were the stuff of boyhood adventures, and I had a shrewd suspicion they wouldn't believe us if we told them. There was only one way to do it, the hard way.
* * *
"What is it?"
Trinh Tac looked up; his expression still filled with irritation after the order that came down from Hanoi. From General Giap, no less. The Americans were hitting them hard, causing serious losses to the Vietcong forces massed inside the Iron Triangle, and troops were starting to desert. Men can only withstand high-explosive bombs, napalm, and artillery shells for so long before they start thinking of home. Their families waiting for them to return and wondering if they ever would. Men were slipping away, and Giap had made it clear they had to do something, and fast.
He hadn't wanted to bring out the howitzer, not until they'd thoroughly checked the surrounding area for enemy soldiers,
but the order was to hit back at the Americans and restore morale. They’d brought out pieces of the gun one by one, men struggling, bent double, sweating and groaning under the massive weight as they dragged up the components of the artillery piece. At last it was all above ground, and it was time to assemble it and commence firing. Until the Americans reached the area.
A few brave men had thrown themselves at the enemy, fighting to hold them off while others battled to disassemble the gun and return it to its hiding place. Until time ran out, the Americans were close to uncovering the secret, and with no other choice, he'd ordered them to cover the remaining parts of the gun buried under loose earth and leaves, and the men had disappeared back underground.
"Commissar, there're two soldiers outside, next to the tree. I think they may have discovered our hiding place."
He cursed and went to look for himself. Fifty meters from the tree they had an observation post inside a clump of bamboos where a man peer out.
"How did we let them get this close?"
"Sir, we didn't have any choice. We were trying to hide the gun."
They were poking around, but he couldn’t see any sign of the bulky radio transmitters the Americans carried, which meant they had no way of telling the outside world what they'd discovered. There was still time.
"Take a squad. Get out there and kill them. Now!"
The man took off down the tunnel, and the fool was shouting for more men to join him. He wanted to bellow after him to tell him to keep his stupid mouth shut, that they’d hear him from outside, but he couldn’t shout without making the same mistake.
Reluctantly, he went after him, snatching up an AK-47 as he ran. This was too important, a mission tasked by none other than General Vo Nguyen Giap, the commander of the entire North Vietnamese forces. A man who stood shoulder to shoulder with Ho Chi Minh, the father of their war to liberate the South. But he failed to catch up with the faster, younger man, and heard him continue to shout, ordering men to the surface to kill the Americans.
He slowed. If they sent ten or twenty men up there, they were sure to get them all, but there’d be shooting. It would be best if he stayed back. Someone would be needed to clean up the mess after the shooting had died down. A man like him, a Commissar, was answerable only to Hanoi. A man destined to join the most senior ranks of the Politburo after they’d won the war. Perhaps he’d be in line for the top spot, Chairman of the Politburo. Anything was possible, for a Communist victory was inevitable. The enemy had yet to understand Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap were prepared to sacrifice almost the entire population if that was that it took to achieve victory.
These Americans prowling around outside had yet to discover that their war was about to end.
Chapter Seven
Action Report – Lessons Learned
Recognition of their cellular nature is important for understanding tunnel complexes. Prisoner interrogation has indicated that many tunnel complexes are interconnected, but the connecting tunnels, concealed by trapdoors or blocked by three to four feet of dirt, are known only to selected persons and are used only in emergencies. Indications also point to interconnections of some length, e.g. five to seven kilometers, through which relatively large bodies of men may be transferred from one area to another, especially from one fighting complex to another. The fighting complex is terminating in well-constructed bunkers, in many cases covering likely landing zones in a war zone or base area.
I didn’t like the idea of knocking on the front door. If this was what we thought it was, there could be VCs waiting for us to show our faces and they’d blast us. We needed to find another entrance, and we retreated into the jungle and started to look around. At first, we thought we’d found it, a tiny concealed hole in the ground, but it was a spider hole, a lookout post for a sentry, or maybe an ambush point, around a meter deep and empty. We tiptoed around the jungle, and I had the feeling they were watching, gloating at the easy prey about to fall in the laps. Like bloated, black spiders sitting astride their webs. Only spiders didn’t carry AK-47s.
It was Tam who found it, and at first it looked innocent. A collection of huts that had been abandoned a long time back, and outside one hut, a tiny shrine. The kind of thing Vietnamese built to honor their ancestors, and this one was constructed of small, rounded stones, crafted into a cairn, with gaps for small, brightly colored plants. Amidst the ugliness and the decay, the colors were a relief, a reminder that at some time in the past, humanity had existed in this place.
I was about to walk past when Tam stopped me. “We should check it out.”
“Check what? The names of their ancestors and see if they’re related to Ho Chi Minh?”
She didn’t smile. “There’s something wrong with the shrine. In such a poor place as this, the locals would have more important priorities than building a lavish shrine. It just doesn’t fit.”
She bent down and removed one of the larger stones, about six inches in diameter. She removed another and another, and we were staring at a black emptiness, but it wasn’t so much what we saw as what we smelled.
“That stink!”
“It’s the tunnel stink,” she murmured, her voice barely audible, “It’s either an entrance or a ventilation shaft.”
They sure needed some ventilation. The stink was enough to knock over an elephant.
“Let’s take a look.”
We pulled away the stones and exposed a shaft that descended for around two meters. I looked at Tam.
“If this is what we think it is, and they’re sure to be lurking down there somewhere. Someone has to go inside and look around. We need a tunnel rat like Jesse Coles. Except he’s not here.”
She was about to reply when I put a finger to my lips and signaled her to drop flat. I’d heard the rustling in the bushes, which could mean an animal was on the prowl for a midnight snack, or Charlie was on the prowl, but not for a midnight snack. We lay flat on the jungle floor, and she had her M1 to her shoulder, ready to open fire. I had the Colt ready, my finger taking up first pressure on the trigger. I was so keyed up, waiting for a score of howling Communists to come charging out of the jungle, I almost fired when I saw a man appear no more than five meters in front of me.
“Yeager.”
I lowered the Colt and felt my hand shaking with relief. “Sergeant LeBlanc, it’s good to see you guys.”
The rest of the Rangers materialized out of the gloom, and one was helping along a wounded man who had a rough bandage wrapped around his leg.
He saw the direction of my gaze. “Yeah, he took one in the leg while we were fighting off those gooks, but it’s nothing serious.”
“Why are you here?”
He chuckled softly. “Why? Because we heard some shooting and thought you might be in trouble. It seemed like a good idea to get you out before you ran into something you couldn’t handle.”
“It’s appreciated. Say, take a look at this.”
I pointed to the shaft we’d uncovered beneath the shrine. “Over there there’s a huge, hollowed out tree, and we suspect they have a large tunnel complex right beneath where we’re standing.” I also told him about the parts of the gun we’d found, and he shook his head in disbelief.
“They’re stashing a gun underground and bringing it to the surface during the night?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
Before we could go on, a Ranger murmured a warning, “I heard someone, some guy shouting, not far away. It sounded like it came from underground.”
“Cover,” LeBlanc murmured, and we melted into the undergrowth.
They sprouted above the ground like magic, and I counted twenty VCs. The man in the lead was chattering excitedly to the others, giving orders, and I reflected as a guerilla leader, he was a dead loss. They could probably hear him all the way back to Saigon.
They were heading in our general direction. Twenty men, each man toting an AK-47, and they should have chewed us into little pieces. Instead, LeBlanc waited until the
y were no more than five meters away, and he said it so quietly I almost missed it, “Fire.”
I didn’t miss the hammering of the Rangers’ rifles, and Tam and I fired. The Rangers used a simple and overwhelming technique, hit the enemy hard and fast with massive firepower, and every single man fired on full auto. Even against twenty men, five assault rifles firing on full auto is enough to ruin a man’s day. I managed to knock down one man running ahead of the others, the guy who’d been shouting orders. He’d come close, and somehow flitted through the shadows unnoticed.
He was standing over Tam, his rifle pointed at her slim body, and I saw the glint of his eyes reflected in the muzzle flashes. She looked up at the same time, and her eyes flared wide, but I wasn’t looking at her eyes. I was looking at the chest of the Viet, and I aimed in a split second and squeezed the trigger. Two bullets spat out from the muzzle of my Colt, and they both tore into his chest. He staggered and looked down with an expression of total surprise. I guess he was stunned. For at first, he didn’t seem to acknowledge the two chunks of lead I’d just pumped into him.
He still wasn’t dead, refused to go down, and looked ready to pump a bullet into Tam. I was already moving, catapulting to my feet after I realized I was out of spare magazines. Ready to grab him and beat the crap out of him, but his mouth opened wide, and blood poured out of his mouth, trickling down the front of his shirt. He was still holding the gun, and I took two steps toward him and wrenched it out of his hands, while at the same time I hammered a bunched fist into his head.
My fist met empty air. He was already falling, and when he hit the ground, he gasped a final breath, and a spout of blood fountained from his mouth. I looked at Tam, who was staring at the body in horror.
“I thought I was going to die.”
I thought she was going to die, but she’d had enough of a scare for one night. “Nah, not while I’m around. I’ll take care of you.”
I’d spoken without thinking, like a guy would talk about protecting a vulnerable girl, and LeBlanc chose that exact moment to approach. “We got most of them, except three or four that scattered into the jungle. All okay here?”