by Dennis Foley
“Everyone likes Coca-Cola.”
She blushed.
He had never seen her blush. He took in her native beauty and recognized the warning in his head to not cross a line he couldn’t cross back over. He had seen lots of Americans get into personal relationships with foreign national employees only to end up regretting it.
“Okay, I’ll wait ’til he comes back. Thanks, Jrae.”
She nodded, turned, and walked away.
He couldn’t resist watching her. Her fresh smell filled the tiny corner of his office and tugged at Hollister. He watched her as long as he could, until she turned out of his sight.
Chairs scuffed the floors, and the cross talk stopped when Hollister stepped up to the front of the group assembled in operations.
Thomas, Browning, the platoon leaders, air mission commanders, the FO, Easy, Caulter, and the senior medic sat in the cramped area used to brief teams.
“I just spoke with Deming. The Montagnard they picked up pointed out the tunnel entrances and said there’s a work party and a service unit headquarters in the area. They all work out of the same tunnels,” Hollister said, tapping the general area of the tunnels on the easel-mounted map.
“What kind of service unit?” Easy asked.
“Seems this guy is not too savvy about things military, but indicated to Deming they’re guiding the North Viet units in transit through the area to crossing points on the border,” Hollister said.
“Weapons?” Dale Tennant asked.
“They got enough to raise hell with your choppers, but that’s about it—just small arms. He didn’t know about any crew-served weapons.
“The plan stays essentially the same. One team slips up to the tunnels and tries to flush them with CS, while the other two watch the trails leading away.
“We still want to snatch someone with some good information. And we don’t want to turn this into World War Three,” Hollister said.
“How about extractions?” Tennant asked.
“No change—teams with prisoners and no casualties come out first. If we get anyone hurt, that becomes the priority for extraction. We’ll know exactly which teams by first light tomorrow. Tonight we see what they flush out.”
“And then?” someone asked.
“And then the leg units mount another incursion into Cambodia to exploit the information.”
“Bet General Valentine’ll be thrilled with that,” someone else said.
“Sir. Speakin’ of the good general, we have a dog and pony show in a few minutes,” First Sergeant Easy said.
Outside, Hollister held his hand up to his eyes and scanned the horizon. Large clouds built far to the south. He stopped long enough to light a cigarette and collect his thoughts. He felt anxious about the upcoming night, but couldn’t put his finger on just what bothered him. He’d seen so many similar operations turn out to be completely different than they had appeared only a few hours before.
He also distrusted intelligence from someone who simply walked into a Ranger perimeter. He didn’t smell a trap, but he worried about one.
Valentine arrived right on time. He already had a new second lieutenant with him, complete with general’s aides insignia on his collar.
Following the duo through the door was Captain Sheldon A. Depplemeier. Hollister recognized him immediately. Depplemeier had been an ass-kissing, lapdog assistant to Valentine back in the States. Hollister never liked him.
“Hollister, you know Shel Depplemeier. Don’t you? He’s my new provincial recon unit adviser. I thought I’d bring him along,” Valentine said.
Hollister didn’t want to recognize Depplemeier. Instead he changed the subject. “How could our operation be of interest to your PRUs?”
“Well, son, if your folks turn up something or create an opportunity for us—they’ll be the first unit my Vietnamese counterparts commit.”
After more formalities and a few introductions, Hollister finally got Valentine seated in the front row of chairs in the old maintenance shed. Sergeant Caulter had created a distraction for the general by dressing one of the sand tables and moving it to the front of the room. He had delicately tilted the table to allow the model to become a three-dimensional briefing aid for Hollister.
Michaelson’s chopper arrived only a few minutes after Valentine’s. “General,” Michaelson said. “General Quinn regrets he won’t be able to make the briefing. I’ll be standing in for him.”
“General,” Hollister began. He looked around at the others in the room, put on his more formal face, and recognized them. “Before I begin let me say that this briefing is Top Secret NOFORN. The sensitivity of this information is directly related to the security of the Rangers involved.” Hollister paused to let his words sink in.
He continued. “We’ve inserted three heavy teams on the ground. Here. Here and here.” He tapped the corresponding points on the map. “Their mission is to develop intelligence by possibly snatching prisoners from within the permanent contingent that services the units passing through and repairs the damage done to the lines of communication.”
It took less than a half an hour for Hollister to go through the motions of briefing the general without really telling him anything specific that might compromise his Rangers.
At the end the general asked, “Just when are you planning on gassing the tunnels?”
Hollister knew he had to avoid an outright lie. He chose to dodge the issue. “We won’t be executing that phase of the operation until we feel confident we have identified enough tunnel openings to make our efforts successful.”
“But when will that be?” the general pressed.
“At this point, I can tell you we have not yet identified any specific tunnel entrances. We hope to do some or all of that tonight.”
The general made a face. He appeared to sense he wasn’t getting the straight story, but there was little more he could get out of Hollister.
“I will add, General, if we don’t identify enough entrances, we’ll scuttle the operation and bring the teams in,” Hollister said.
“What kind of attitude is that? I would expect you’d be itching for a good fight,” the general said. “You ought to make it your business to find the tunnels, get your people down in them, and find out just what enemy resources are hidden in them.”
Hollister caught Michaelson’s eye before he spoke. “General, I am never eager to feed my Rangers into a fight. To me, combat is a necessary part of what we do, not the objective.”
The general jumped to his feet, his face flushing. “Then I suggest you have your priorities screwed up, mister!”
Hollister shrugged. “Maybe you’re right.”
Valentine looked around for his aide and Depplemeier and found them standing in the back of the room. “We are leaving,” he said. Without saying anything to Hollister or Michaelson, Valentine and his staffers hurried out of the briefing room.
The door slammed behind them and the room went silent.
Hollister looked at those remaining. “Gentlemen, this concludes the briefing.” He waited for them to clear the room and stood at the map waiting for Michaelson to work his way up to the front of the room.
Michaelson shook his head. “Jim, did you have to do that?”
“Sir, that man has been a bug up my ass since the day I met him. If I ever had a reason to get out of the army, it would be because of the assholes like him salted around.”
“Well, that bug up your ass is going to be up mine before dark. You can bet he’ll be on the landline to General Quinn within the hour,” Michaelson said.
“Sorry to get you in the middle, sir.”
Michaelson slapped Hollister on the back. “Don’t sweat it, Ranger. I got you into this. I guess I ought to run more interference for you.”
“How you going to do that?”
“I think I might have some chopper trouble. Might just have to spend the night here.” He poked his thumb toward Cambodia. “The last thing you need while your lads are playing out across the line
is clutter from a buck general.”
Hollister smiled at his old friend. “Thanks. I do need the help.”
CHAPTER 28
DEMING LEANED TOWARD DOC Smith. “How’s he doing, Jimmy Ray?”
Jimmy Ray looked over at Rat resting on a poncho liner under a large tree. “He’s responding to the medication; his fever’s coming down, and he seems to be more comfortable.”
“He going to be able to move to the objective area tonight?”
“I think so. But don’t expect much more from him. He really needs some hospital time with that break. I also suspect he’s malnourished and probably full of parasites.”
Deming nodded. He got to his knees and crawled over to Rat. He smiled at the Montagnard and got his attention. “We will move one hour after dark. Will you be well enough to go?” he asked in his bayou French.
Rat sat up and smiled back at the American who had treated him so well. “Oui.”
Caulter hung up the phone in operations. “We have some trouble coming. The weather folks at field force tell us a heavy tropical storm is rolling our way. Should blow through here in about two hours and on into Cambodia.”
“Shit!” Hollister said. “Just when we need the most control over the winds we get this.”
“How about postponing it for twenty-four hours?” Caulter said.
“If we wait any longer, the people in those tunnels are going to wonder what happened to that Montagnard. If they don’t find his body somewhere, they’ll know he either walked away or was picked up by Americans. Either way they’re going to spook.”
“What are you going to do?” Michaelson asked.
“First I’ll warn the patrol leaders. Then we’ll take a relook at the forecast. There still might be a way to pull all this off.” He absentmindedly popped the catch on his wristwatch loose and rubbed the skin underneath.
Hollister walked to the door and pushed it open. “Check this out.”
On the horizon, the sky was darkening with the approach of night. Below that a thin pillow of yellow-gray clouds separated the sky from the flat terrain of the Mekong Delta.
“Anybody not been through one of these?” Michaelson asked. “If we’re lucky, it’ll be a freight train that’ll blow through in a real hurry.”
“And if it happens early, it’ll help cover the movement of the teams,” Caulter said.
“All depends on timing. Let’s get on the horn to the air force weather guys and see what they have. Let’s not wait for it to come down from field force.”
The sun set within minutes and Hollister received the report that Deming was moving into a position to emplace the gas. DeSantis’s and Chastain’s teams were moving to positions along the likely trails to snatch anyone escaping the tunnel area.
Again it was time for Hollister to wait. He spent an hour working on contingency plans in his office while Michaelson had a long talk with Colonel Terry over the secure radio net.
When both were finished, they headed to the mess hall.
Michaelson stirred the sugar in the bottom of his cup. “How long have I known you?”
“Not counting Ranger School, it’d be since that day in sixty-five when you grilled the shit out of me about joining the Long Range Patrol detachment in the Airborne brigade.”
“You were a lieutenant then, green and eager. Now you have two and a half tours under your belt, you’re about to make major, and you’ve seen more combat than just about any two captains I can name.”
“I sure was green then. I look around at some of the lieutenants now, and it scares the shit out of me. How could you have given me such responsibilities?”
“You pamper lieutenants, and you end up with pampered captains and so on.”
“That include generals?”
Michaelson took a cigar from his pocket and began the ritual that led up to smoking it. He looked over at Hollister from under his eyebrows, suggesting that Hollister was rubbing it in. “Yes, including generals.”
“How’d it go with Colonel Terry?”
“He explained in painful detail the ass chewing Valentine gave him over the phone.”
“What did he tell Valentine?”
“That he didn’t work for him, and if Valentine had any problems, he could take them up with General Quinn.”
“Ouch!” Hollister said. “This is really going to come back to bite me, huh?”
“I figure Valentine has at least ten or more good years of active duty ahead of him. You certainly have that much time left. Chances of you two crossing paths again gets higher every day.”
Hollister got up to top off his coffee cup at the makeshift serving line. “You really know how to brighten up a guy’s day.”
“Hey, you were the one who gave the junior general the finger—figuratively speaking.” Michaelson blew a plume of smoke toward the low ceiling.
Hollister was silent for a moment.
“What?” Michaelson asked.
“I can’t think about him. I have to focus on those teams, and if protecting them from being compromised gets my root in a wringer—that’s why you gave me the job.”
Michaelson smiled. “On target, Mister Hollister. Now, what do you say we go find out about the weather?”
It was after eight when Hollister and Michaelson returned to operations. Hollister looked over Loomis’s shoulder at the radio log. “What’s going on out there?”
“All three teams have been moving since you left. DeSantis is settling into his snatch site. Chastain’s team is only about a half hour away from his,” Loomis said. He looked back down at the entries in the log. “Lieutenant Deming reported they are still moving and on schedule. He did ask for a weather forecast.”
“And?”
“The air force has it nailed,” Caulter said. “We can expect heavy rains, winds and gusts up to forty miles an hour out of the southeast in another hour to an hour and a half.”
“And out there?” Hollister said, nodding toward Cambodia.
“Half hour after it hits us—it hits them.”
“Duration?”
Caulter made a face. “They weren’t as positive about their forecast concerning the duration. They said all they could do was narrow it down to being gone on into Cambodia and Thailand by early morning.”
“Great. We could have made that good a forecast walking across the compound.”
“Sorry, sir,” Caulter said.
“Okay. Let’s hit them up for an update every hour. Pass this on to the teams?”
“Yes, sir and yes, sir.”
Hollister put his hands on his hips and looked around the room. “Okay, folks. Make yourselves comfortable. It’s going to be a long, wet night.”
Deming stopped the patrol and called Iverson forward.
While Deming waited, he pulled out his compass and rechecked his route. According to his estimate they couldn’t be more than a hundred meters from the center of the tunnel complex.
Rat sat down to rest. He had moved well and not caused a delay for the patrol. But Deming knew Rat was hurting. His color was bad, and his brow often showed beads of sweat, even when the team was moving at a comfortable pace.
He crawled over to Rat and asked him to point out the tunnel entrances.
Rat moved to a pool of light on the ground to draw a diagram of the area as Iverson arrived. He began by dragging his finger in the dirt and sketching out the Y created by the river and the two converging tributaries. He punched his finger into a point along the stem and then pointed to the trio.
Deming nodded. It was clear they agreed on their location. He pointed in the direction the team should move.
The trees rustled as the wind came up. Deming looked back toward the southeast and decided they had to move to the upwind side of the tunnels if they hoped to use any of the CS gas against the inhabitants. He felt by being upwind they could control the drift of the CS and would not have to be in the clouds they would create. It would also improve the chance of snatching a disoriented soldier
or laborer. Those with any experience at all would try to move into the wind to get away from the CS.
The wind was much stronger at the launch site in Tay Ninh several minutes before the rain began to fall. A shutter on one of the buildings in the compound flapped furiously, slamming into the wall it was hinged to.
“Somebody going to go out there and secure that thing before it drives us all crazy?” Hollister asked.
But before anyone in operations replied, the noise created by the shutter stopped. “Good. Somebody else is tired of listening to it.”
The squelch broke. “This is Georgia. Over.”
Loomis scooped up the hand mike from the tabletop. “Campus Killer Control. Over.”
They could hardly hear Deming’s whisper above the wind. “Being slowed up by booby traps. Will Charlie Mike. Over.”
Hollister took the mike from Loomis. “This is Six. Roger your transmission. Don’t get too eager to beat the weather. Move carefully. Stop if you have to. You understand?”
“Roger. Out.”
Hollister looked at Loomis. “Shit. That’s all we need.”
“We could have expected it near their tunnels,” Caulter said, leaning back in a folding chair, balancing it.
“Yeah, but you always hope they get lazy and leave some of the approaches clear.”
“Maybe the next war. This one’s ’bout over,” Caulter said.
The comment stabbed Hollister. It was enough to worry about teams on the ground when there was an all-out war on. Knowing they were part of the drawdown made the feeling that much more distasteful.
Rat pointed to something in the brush a few feet from where they stopped.
Deming leaned over and whispered to Rat, “What? I don’t understand.”
“Air,” Rat said. “They breathe.” He motioned for them to follow him.
The small recon party followed Rat. After only a few minutes’ movement, Rat reached out in front of Deming and pulled a branch of a bush away. It revealed a wire stretched across their path.
Rat held up his palm to keep Deming from moving forward. He then reached up and pointed to a new path around the booby-trap wire.
Deming looked back at Sergeant George, a stocky veteran of a previous tour with the Tiger Force in the 101st Airborne Brigade. George held his rifle low enough to fire on Rat if it became necessary. He followed Rat around the trip wire to a spot closer to the clump of bushes Rat had first pointed out.