by Dennis Foley
“Hello, sir,” Jrae said in almost perfect English.
Hollister smiled and stopped in front of Jrae’s desk. “And how are you getting along? Is First Sergeant Easy treating you well?”
Jrae giggled for the first time. She had a beautiful smile and some of the tension Hollister had seen in her face when she arrived was gone.
Since leaving her village many months before, she had put on a few pounds. The weight only brought her up to normal for anyone who was not a mountain woman. Someone had taught her how to pin her hair back in a fashion that was more contemporary and less native looking.
She stood to hand Hollister some messages.
“Hey, I like your new uniform. Whose idea was this?”
“Like that?” Easy’s booming voice asked from the other side of the room.
“Where’d you get this rig?”
Easy walked over and stood next to Hollister while the two Americans looked at her. She wore the standard issue camouflage fatigues and jungle boots. Over her pocket was a nametape with the letters JRAE embroidered in black, and on her left shoulder she wore the red, black, and white Ranger scroll patch identifying Juliet Company, 75th Infantry.
“This is not issue uniform specs,” Hollister said. The shirt had been taken in to fit close to her body, showing her nicely proportioned figure and her tiny waist.
“’Course not,” Easy said. “I had them seamstresses in the ville who cut down the ARVNs’ uniforms tailor Jrae’s.”
“Isn’t it a little too, ah … formfitting?”
“Not for me,” Easy said, rolling his eyes. “I think she does a certain something for the uniform. Anyway, we couldn’t let her be mistaken for a day laborer. She’s now an important member of Juliet Company.”
Hollister looked from Easy to Jrae. “Forgive him. He can’t help himself.”
“What does it mean?” Jrae asked.
“It means he is a great admirer of pretty women. Just take it as a compliment.”
She smiled, a little embarrassed. “I will.” She turned and stepped back to her desk.
Hollister’s and Easy’s eyes met. Easy was right. She looked good in her new outfit.
“The way I look at it, we’ve made some good choices on our first tries over the fence,” Captain Thomas said, tapping the team markers grease-penciled in on the map overlay behind him.
Hollister, Browning, the platoon leaders, and two of the platoon sergeants sat in two parallel semicircles in the tiny briefing room.
“Run some of it down for those who haven’t been to all the briefings,” Hollister said.
Thomas nodded and quickly scanned the notes he had placed on the podium.
“There’s a pattern of movement. It seems to end just a few thousand meters north and west of our teams and turns in toward the Viet border. Somewhere nearby, the bad guys must have a release point where they break up into smaller groups to infiltrate across the line.
“We’ve found some commo wire, and we’re tapping it. And we’ve picked up quite a bit of paperwork from two successful snatches. Both prisoners appear to be local—not new to the area. And if my guess is right, they’re part of some kind of service unit that guides arriving North Vietnamese regulars.
“Soon as we get those documents translated, we’ll have a better idea about just who the players are,” Thomas said.
“I think that we might turn up the brain center of this whole operation and get a chance to screw it up for them. That’s basically our short-term objective,” Hollister added.
“What are the numbers?” Captain Browning asked.
“We’ve put eleven teams in, spent a total of fifty-one team days on the ground, had to pull three teams early, made four contacts, and we’ve stacked up six enemy KIA and two POWs.
“We’ve gone through two busted choppers, and we’re just at a hundred and twenty percent of our allocated blade time,” Master Sergeant Caulter read from a clipboard in his lap.
A few heads in the room nodded approvingly at the statistics.
“For some reason, I’m not being advised of the details of your operations, mister,” Colonel Valentine said, standing on the porch of the orderly room, his face too close to Hollister’s.
“I can’t understand that. I passed on your wishes to Two Field Force to be added to the distribution list, and I’ve been running overlays to your headquarters for coordination.”
“I’ve been getting squat through the pipeline, and your overlays don’t tell me a thing.”
“I can only give your people overlays up to the level of their security clearances. We’re working at security levels quite a bit higher than the ARVNs are cleared for,” Hollister said, shrugging his shoulders.
“Bullshit! I want to get to the bottom of this. And I want full access to your op plans and after-action reports—starting today. Do we understand each other?”
“Oh, I understand you all right, Colonel. I just can’t do that. I don’t have the authority to declare you a need-to-know organization.”
Valentine’s face reddened. “Don’t fuck with me, mister. You better find a way to include me or you’ll wish the hell you had.”
“I’ll mention your request to Colonel Terry.”
“‘Mention’ it? Who the hell do you think you are screwing with? Dump this attitude quickly or you are going to find me on your back. And you don’t want that. I can promise you that,” Valentine said, raising his voice for emphasis.
Hollister was still standing on the porch when Valentine’s jeep drove through the wire and out onto the dirt roadway.
“Hope you and the good colonel had a nice chat,” Easy said from the doorway.
“Somehow I have a feeling this conversation will come back on me like bad chili.”
“Count on it, Cap’n.”
“Better call Colonel Michaelson and tell him Valentine is coming his way.”
Easy looked at Hollister and smiled. “Ah. The privileges of command.”
“Don’t be a wiseass, Top.”
Hollister sat in the dark in his room and tried to get some perspective on his efforts. Several more patrols went in and out of Cambodia with little or no contact. But movement, sightings, and increased intelligence data were the fruits of the missions. He was pleased with the way the teams were coming around. Training was showing up in preparedness for missions and speed in execution.
Rangers knew each other and seemed to be developing esprit de corps. Morale was up. Appearance was sharper, bravado was getting to be commonplace, and bad-mouthing of everything that was not Ranger or Juliet Company had replaced bitching.
The discipline problems were being handled where they should be—at team and platoon level. Platoon leaders each had a few good patrols under their belts, and their stock was going up in the eyes of the troops.
Hollister lit another cigarette and took a sip of the straight bourbon he nursed. He wondered why, in the face of all the positives, he felt so damn down.
He swallowed a larger sip and faced the reality. He knew what it was. He ached for Susan and had a sinking feeling about Vietnam.
He had lost her. And he was getting sick of the attitude infecting everyone outside of Juliet Company. It was a why-bother attitude. The war was closing out soon, and public opinion about the war had picked up downhill momentum, reaching breakneck speed.
Everyone wanted out. None wanted to recognize the facts—once the Americans left, the South Vietnamese Army would collapse. And the cost of it all would be paid for with the blood of the people. Not the government, not the fat cats—but by the peasants, the farmers and the children. The same people he had thought were worthy of risking his life for and then putting off his personal life for almost seven years.
He shook it off, killed the drink, and decided to get some air.
He walked out to the steps and looked around the compound. Music drifted from a couple of the team hootches, and the smell of rain was in the air.
He turned to go back into his hoo
tch and caught something out of the corner of his eye.
Several yards away stood the remains of what had once been the Vietnamese dependents’ living area. On the steps of the poorly constructed building, Jrae sat bundled in a cotton pak cloth. She saw that he recognized her and nodded silently.
“What are you doing up this late?”
She stood. “I cannot sleep, Captain,” she said, a hint of a French accent still in her English.
Hollister saw her tuck the corners of the lightweight cloth under her arms, near her waist, to ward off the night chill.
“Are you cold?”
“Oh. No. I am okay,” she said, smiling at his concern.
Hollister couldn’t miss the contrast between her white teeth and her dark skin and hair. He was pleased that she was getting more comfortable around him. He liked Jrae and was happy she had found her way to Juliet Company.
The troops had taken her on as their mascot. Anyone who might have had other ideas about her was quickly dissuaded by Easy’s protective growl. So she became a novelty and a point of pride for Juliet Company and not a cause of friction.
“It’s starting to look like we have the area bracketed,” Captain Thomas said, pushing his mess hall tray away from the edge of the table.
“We ready to put someone in there?” Hollister asked.
“I think so.” Thomas got to his feet and picked up his coffee cup. He thrust it toward Hollister’s cup. “You want a refill, sir?”
“No. I think I’ve had enough to get my heart started.”
Beyond Thomas, Hollister spotted Jrae entering the room and getting into the chow line.
“Top, how about scrounging up a couple of GI blankets and sending them to Jrae. She’s freezing her butt off at night in that hovel we got her in.”
Easy raised an eyebrow. “Would the captain be an expert on Miss Jrae’s nighttime activities?”
“Would a one-legged first soldier like to do some push-ups for his company commander?”
“The first soldier respectfully withdraws his question. The captain can consider the blanket situation taken care of.”
Michaelson’s chopper landed on the far side of the pad at the launch site, and Hollister threw him a large salute. “Mornin’, sir.”
“Morning, Jim. How are you?”
“I think I’m ready to go, full bore,” Hollister said, leading Michaelson to operations.
“We think so, too. We’ve been watching the results of your early team operations, Jim. I’m glad we were able to talk you into taking the job. I doubt very much if this company would still be on the rolls if you hadn’t.”
They spent the next two hours in a corner of the briefing room, talking about the possibilities. Hollister’s company had turned up several bits of information that suggested iceberg tips. After narrowing it down, they came up with three possible targets to develop.
Michaelson tapped his notes with the plunger on his ballpoint pen. “I’ll take these options back to Colonel Terry and see if we can match them with the other intel we’ve collected. I’d prefer to develop something that has a high likelihood of success rather than a long shot with a bigger payoff.”
“I’ll buy that. I think it will help build confidence around here,” Hollister said.
Michaelson got to his feet and picked his hat up from the field table. “Better get on the road or I’ll miss the afternoon briefing back at Long Binh.”
The two walked out of the mess hall into the hot midday sun. “So what’s the deal with you and Valentine? You know he’s not your biggest fan,” Michaelson said.
“Isn’t his number coming up soon? I’m sure they’ll reassign him as soon as he pins on his stars—right?”
“You just better hope he doesn’t go over Colonel Terry’s head and start whining to General Quinn. There’s some kind of brotherhood thing among generals. Even if Valentine isn’t a real one yet.”
“I’ll renew my efforts to dodge him,” Hollister said.
Michaelson laughed. “You better.”
It took field force less than three days to decide on an operation. Michaelson brought it to Tay Ninh and briefed Hollister on the concept.
After hours of refinement, Hollister, Thomas, and Michaelson finished roughing out the plan to change their operations from heavy intelligence gathering to the destruction of the enemy infrastructure in the Cambodian sanctuary.
CHAPTER 23
THE CROWD WAS TOO large to assemble in the briefing room, so the mess hall was pressed into service. The note on the door and the banner over the map board inside said the same thing: TOP SECRET—NOFORN.
“Let me state at the outset that most, if not all, of what we are about to discuss is classified top secret, no foreign dissemination. Is there anyone in here who is not cleared for this level of information?” Hollister asked the group.
The seated members assembled looked around to see if anyone identified himself—and ultimately excused himself. No one did.
“Good,” Hollister said. “Let’s get started.” He stepped to the podium and scanned his notes. “We can start with the big picture and then go to smaller and smaller ones until we get to the X rays that make up the individual team missions.”
He stepped to the map behind him and picked up the pointer made from a rifle cleaning rod. He made a circle on the Cambodian side of a border pocket called the Angel’s Wing—a name that sprang from the obvious outline it created. “We’ve been saturating this area with patrols, sensors, aerial photo flights, and aerial recons for weeks now, and everything points to just what we expected—this is a good hunting ground.”
The comment prompted a few in the room to exchange glances and make encouraging noises—nervousness masqueraded as bravado.
“Now, if we were working in Vietnam, we’d back off and let an infantry brigade go in and kick some ass. But we’re not in country. And mounting large combat operations in Cambodia never fails to become a pimple on the ass of the White House, Congress, the Defense Department, and on down the line—’til it rattles the windows at Two Field Force.”
The comment brought groans of disapproval.
“We don’t make the rules, and we aren’t in Vietnam to worry about public opinion. But if we’re going to do our job and avoid the heat, we have to recognize the problems.”
“That mean we aren’t going to kick ass?” Lieutenant Hill asked.
“No. It means before we mount any new incursions into Cambodia, we have to justify the shit out of the operation,” Hollister said.
“What we’ve been doing isn’t enough?” Sergeant DeSantis asked.
“No. The hunting we’ve been doing only told us where to hunt for bigger game.”
More groans.
“It may be enough for us. And we can often work off of known intelligence and a good dose of Ranger intuition. But we have to have more than a strong smell of bad guys to justify escalating cross-border operations.”
“So?” someone in the room asked.
“So we go deeper. Up the ante from armed reconnaissance to prisoner snatches and raids. If we can confirm the presence of larger units—Saigon will have the ammunition it needs to pound the piss out of the area.”
“What’ll it be, sir?” Fass asked.
“If we can get someone out and get them talking, we can put that together with the intel we’ve already collected and make our case.”
Hollister tapped the map where several red grease-pencil marks were clustered. “We’re pretty sure this area is hot with bunkers, tunnels, and hidden way stations that are damn near the equivalent of our replacement battalions. North Viet troops, individual units, and supply convoys slip through this area with the help of service units. They get food, fuel, ammo, and medical attention, and then break up to infiltrate across the border—only to converge later in staging areas north and west of Saigon.
“Most of you weren’t here for the Tet invasion in sixty-eight. We kicked some ass and got embarrassed that time. We could not surv
ive another Tet. There aren’t enough Americans left, and the South Viets can’t do it.”
Hollister put the pointer down. “We can save lives if we get them early. Now that we’re pretty sure where they’re changing buses—we need to punch their ticket.”
“Let’s go get ’em,” someone said.
“We’ve got some special training to do first. Our inserts will be by chopper and rubber raft. Anyone in here feel comfortable enough to do some rafting tomorrow?”
There was no answer.
“I didn’t think so. And we’ll need to bone up on our CBR training and equipment. We’ll be using gas to flush ’em out.”
The room filled with grumbling at the mention of gas. No one in the room had ever had a pleasant experience with gas in training or combat.
After the others were dismissed, Hollister spelled it out for Browning and Thomas. “Brownie, I want you to get them new working protective masks and cameras.
“I want enough rubber boats to train ten teams and deploy three heavy teams. Let’s not use the same boats to train that we take to the bush. We can count on trashing the boats they train on.”
Hollister turned to Thomas. “I want every Ranger in this company to be able to walk, talk, eat, and shit in his protective mask. I know they’re hot and a bitch to work with—but they’ll save lives and screw up the enemy.”
“Why such heavy use of the masks? Can’t we just dump some tear gas in the bunkers and tunnels and snatch ’em when they come out with snot running out of their noses?” Thomas asked.
“I don’t want to just use gas when the going is easy. I want to be ready to drop tear gas by plane, lob it in by artillery, and leave it behind—everywhere. That, mixed with harassing fire, will account for random losses and won’t give away where and what we’re up to.”
“That means our folks will be operating in the gas. Right?” Browning asked.
“That’s right. They’re going to hate it, but it’s the best way to pull this off. So let’s build a gas chamber and put everybody—and I mean everybody through it.”
Browning and Thomas exchanged glances and then nodded to Hollister. “Everybody?” Thomas asked.