Into the Treeline

by John F. Mullins

  He was received with honor, as befitted his position. Tea was brought, ceremonially drunk. He politely refused the offered food, knowing that to eat would delay serious conversation for hours. He did not have hours to spare. The tea bowls were cleared away. His cousin’s wife left the room. It was time to talk.

  “My cousin,” he began, “I have seen something that disturbs me greatly. I am sure that there is an explanation for it. But you must answer me truthfully. There is great danger for you.”

  “Danger, honored kin?” The village chief tried to give nothing away, but the tiny twitching of his cheek indicated his agitation. Vanh had the fleeting thought that it was strange the Westerners thought his people to be, as they called it, inscrutable. This one’s face was easy to read. Of course, he knew him well. In the typical Vietnamese extended family they had been raised almost as brothers.

  “Danger, yes. Your name has been linked with some very strange ones. Buddhist militants, neutralist politicians; even, I am told, with high-ranking VC.”

  “And you believe this?”

  Vanh considered a moment before answering. He was on dangerous ground here. Finally he nodded.

  “And what do you intend to do about it?”

  “Nothing, at the moment. But I wish to understand. Why would you consort with the enemy? It was your mother and father too that we dug from the sand dunes. And your brother, and two of your sisters. And their children. Why?”

  His cousin sighed. “You were always one,” he said, “for absolutes. You should know by now that there are none. Perhaps it is because I stood there that day gazing down upon my family’s faces, sand in their eyes, the ants crawling all over them, knowing that there would be many more like them, that I do the things I do.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “For an educated man, you can be remarkably stupid! Perhaps it is because you have been around the Americans for too long. I belong to a group who think that this war must end. Soon. Far too many of our people have died fighting against one another. More will die, unless we stop it. We belong to no side. The ones you call VC know that if it goes on much longer they will no longer exist, and the ones from the North, who do not know our ways and would wish to impose themselves upon us, will be the only ones left. The Buddhists wish autonomy, to stop being persecuted by the Saigon government. And the ones you call, with such contempt, neutralists, know that compromise is the only way out. The Americans must and will go. It might surprise you to know that there are some of the Americans who know this, and who help us. All they wish is for the Northerners to not be able to take over, so that they can go home and say they won. Our movement is not large yet, but it is growing. And if you know what is good for you, you will join us.”

  “Now it is you who are the fool.” Vanh was furious. “Do you think the Northerners will allow this? Do you think that, even if you can come to some sort of accommodation with the VC, they will just give up and go back North? You have been listening to far too much of their propaganda. They only came south to help their fraternal socialist comrades? Nonsense! They are fighting a war of aggression, and they will not be satisfied until there is no more South Vietnam. That has not changed from the earliest days, when Ho was just another guerrilla in the Cordillera. They will allow you to do their work for them. They know it will dishearten those who oppose them, spread defeatism among our ranks. And when you have served your purpose they will sweep you away like the chaff after the rice has been sifted. Your VC friends take their orders directly from Hanoi. I do not doubt that they are very tired of their overseers, but if you think they will disobey them, you are not only stupid, but crazy.”

  The two men were still kneeling, facing one another. Both internalized the rage they felt. The only sign of emotion was the slight trembling of their bodies.

  After a moment his cousin shrugged, ever so slightly. “I should have known that you would not understand. It is unfortunate that you have found out. We had planned to be much further along before that happened.”

  “Perhaps I should now ask you the same question you asked me. What do you intend to do about it?”

  “That would depend, I suspect, on what you do. You have seen the size of our organization, who it contains. It would be very dangerous for you to oppose us. I will not have the blood of a kinsman on my hands. But there are others who would not be so fastidious.”

  “And what of the American?”

  “Ah, that one. What do you care of him?”

  “He is a friend, and a brave soldier.”

  “And very dangerous. You have not said so, but I know it must be that he is the one who discovered us. I respect your feeling for him. So it must be you who keeps him from doing harm. Otherwise, I fear, his fate is sealed. He has made many powerful enemies. Now you must go. I cannot guarantee your safety if you stay in this village much longer. Already the word has gone out that you are here, with no bodyguards. And you have made many enemies also.”

  The man who had been waiting there came from the next room after Vanh had gone. He waited for the village chief to speak, knowing that if this man said the wrong thing he too would have to go. The revolution had no place in it for these outmoded family connections.

  “I fear that he will not listen,” said the chief. “He must be taken care of.”

  The man nodded, satisfied. This one would do well. He departed as he had come, silently.

  Vanh reached his jeep where he had hidden it behind a clump of bamboo outside the village. The light had started to go, but the heat had not yet lessened. It would not, he knew, until early in the morning hours. There would be much time to sit in his room and sweat, and think, and fear. Perhaps he should talk to Jim. He, and only he, might understand. It was a strange thing, that he should come to trust this foreigner more than his own people. No, it would keep until the morning. Then they would make plans. This plot could not be allowed to go on. Between them, and with the PRU, they could stop it.

  He was in a hurry to get back. It would not do to stay in this area past dark. Even this close to Hue ambushes could happen. He knew that he was taking a chance, starting the vehicle without checking under the hood, but had long ago consigned his life to fate. If it happened, it happened. Still, he felt a wash of relief as the engine caught. He put the vehicle in gear, started to pull away.

  The watcher from the clump of bamboo gently squeezed the device, sending a burst of electricity down the wire that had been buried beneath the sand, to the Claymore mine placed, face up, under the seat. The two pounds of C-4 alone would have been enough to ensure death in the target; the hundreds of steel bearings they propelled upward just added to the effect. The explosion moved faster than nerve impulses. There was no pain.

  It was not real, Jim thought. Another dream. His mind shied away from it. No, not a dream. A nightmare.

  The bits of stray flesh, the charred legs still in the blackened jeep, these were not his friend. They had nothing to do with Vanh. They had contained him, but now he was gone. Why were the PRU soldiers crying? Didn’t they see that it did no good, that you could cry until your tears filled the Perfume River and it would not bring him back? It was no time for tears. It was time for revenge, to wash this place in a river of blood. Snatches of the hard-shell Baptist sermons he had heard as a child came back to him. “As ye live by the sword, so shall ye die by it.” There will be weeping and wailing in your tents, and your huts, and your fancy villas. I will root you out, stem and branch, and I will not rest until you all perish, or I do.

  Slowly, now. Make no noise at all. Move by inches and fractions of an inch. Soft black pajamas blending with the night. Face blackened so that the soft moonlight coming through the window does not reflect. Eyes slitted so the mad glitter does not shine through the room. If the intensity of the hate they held were light they would illuminate the room like spotlights. Vanh’s T-shaped tool is clutched in the hand, the point honed needle-sharp. The body on the bed, strangely, does not sense the black menace. Surely
he should feel it! Death is near, and he lies beside his wife, softly snoring. You were the last man to see Vanh alive, his brain is shouting, with such force that he thinks that the whole village must hear. You were his kinsman. You were on the list. You are dead, only still breathing at this moment because I have not yet reached you.

  Hand over the mouth, press his head down, hold it solid. The black eyes snap suddenly open, full of terror. Only for an instant, because the sharp probe is already crunching through the soft bones behind the ear, driving deep into the brain, twisting around, scrambling the centers that control breathing and heartbeat. Safe to pull the hand away now, nothing escapes the mouth except a soft sigh.

  The woman is awake, looking up at him with resignation written upon her features. She closes her eyes, waits. Hears the tiny sound as the probe is withdrawn, hardly more than a soft scraping. Was that what had woken her in the first place? She wished that she had continued to sleep, that the act had been performed without her knowledge. Now she had to wait for it to happen. She prayed, consigning her soul to the gods. Perhaps in her next incarnation she would not be so unlucky.

  But death passed her over on this night, gone as silently as it had come.

  Roger came to attend the funeral of Captain Vanh. It was an astute gesture, and important to the men of the PRU. That such an important man would come to do honor to their captain showed them that they, too, were important.

  “You okay, Jim?” he asked afterward.

  “Okay? Sure, I’m okay. Just someone else dying, isn’t it? Don’t you think I’ve gotten used to that by now?”

  Roger looked doubtful, but did not press it. He had seen the reaction before. It had not become real to him yet. It would. Some dime-store shrink would call it repression. Roger thought of it as the shock necessary to shut down the systems long enough for you to function. For a little while. Then it would hit with more force. It always did.

  “Listen, I think you should move back to the Embassy House. I heard what Copely did. Told that stupid motherfucker that if I heard even a hint of any of that kind of shit again, I’d fire his ass. You need to be back among your own kind.”

  “My own kind? Can you tell me what that kind is? Because I’ve sort of lost sight of that. Is my kind Copely? I don’t think he was really afraid of the actual danger, you know. It was more that it was a messy situation, and he didn’t want to have to explain it when something went wrong. Or is my kind those kids who are working for him, who aren’t bad people in themselves, but just don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on? No, it seems to me that my kind is in that urn they’re carrying away. Vanh fought as well as he knew how. He was a good soldier. And a good man. I’ll stay where I am. I feel safer there, anyway.” He did not add, And because none of the Americans will know when I leave the compound at night, and do the work I must do.

  “Okay, I understand,” said Roger. Privately he was wondering if it was time to withdraw the captain. He was showing signs of incipient burnout. His hands had a slight tremble, which he tried to suppress. He had lost weight, his eyes were sunk back into his head so far that it was like looking into a burrow. A burrow with something glittering and very, very deadly inside.

  “What have you found out with your Chieu Hoi program?”

  “Not much,” Jim lied, not knowing why he did it. He had before trusted Roger, still did, he supposed. But something held him back. Roger was, after all, a part of the structure. Perhaps as much a manipulator as any of the others. “I don’t know if it was such a good idea,” he continued. “But we’ve come too far to stop now, so I guess we’ll keep it up for a while. Hate to pull the plug on something too early. Might come up with something yet.” He was chattering, filling the air with words to hide the lies he was telling. He wondered if Roger could tell.

  Apparently not. “Right,” he was saying. “Don’t give up too early. It’s been my experience in work like this that nothing comes too quickly. Not like in the movies. Mostly it’s just a shitload of work, one detail piling up atop another, until finally, and you hope it’s not too late to do any good, you start to be able to see a pattern.”

  “How’s Al doing?” Jim asked to change the subject.

  “Slow going for him too, right now. You guys were just too efficient when you got here. Most of the hardcore VC in his area have pulled back, are living with main force NVA units. Shows how scared they are. But up there they can’t do as much damage, either. Can’t get out and visit the villages, having a hell of a time recruiting, having peasants actually refuse to turn over a part of their rice harvest. So either way, whether we capture or kill them, or make them so scared they stay away, we’re neutralizing them. And that’s the name of the game.”

  Not quite, thought Jim. There are things going on right under your nose that you know nothing about. Or do you? If we have this kind of secret structure in Thua Thien it must exist in other places as well. He wondered if he should tell Al; could think of no good way of doing it without giving the whole game away. Time enough for that, after he had done his work.

  “Any more word on the people from the south?” he asked.

  “Dead quiet. Sorry, bad choice of words. Haven’t heard anything from Saigon. I’ll get off a query when I get back. Maybe they’ve decided that you weren’t that important.”

  “Maybe.” Jim was doubtful. “Or maybe everyone has just lost track of them. And they’ll show up at my back door in a few days. Doesn’t matter anyway. I’m taking all the precautions I can. If they get me, they get me. Nobody lives forever.”

  He waited until McMurdock went back to Danang before putting the next part of the plan into operation.

  He knew that they would soon replace Vanh. And his replacement would be an unknown quantity, though he would have placed bets that the man would be a creature of the opposition. After all, he would be appointed by the province chief. Best, then, to do what was necessary before that happened. Then it wouldn’t matter who the new man was. He called in the intelligence sergeant, Tu Van Tuyet.

  “Trung Si,” he said, “I know that you loved Vanh. I think that you are a man who can be trusted. Are you?”

  Tu’s answer was simple. He pulled the knife from its sheath on his web gear, pulled the razor sharp blade across his hand. A thin line of blood sprang from the cut. He offered the hand.

  Jim took the knife, did the same. Clasped bloody hands with the sergeant. The cynic’s part of his brain said that if anyone saw them doing this they would have thought it insufferably melodramatic. But he knew what the gesture meant. Any doubts he might have had about the sergeant’s trustworthiness went away. And he’d had few in the first place. They had already been through too much together.

  “I have a plan to avenge the captain,” he said. “Although the man who probably ordered his death has since suffered the same fate, there are others who are in on the conspiracy. To fully avenge him, they too must be stopped. Do you agree?”

  Tu nodded. He had already suspected that the sudden death of the village chief had been the work of the American. The method, using the same tool that Vanh had so often employed, had been a stroke of genius. It was fitting.

  “Then we have an appointment at the temple. Get the men ready. I’ll brief them just before the operation. After that, we isolate everyone. No one leaves, no one gets close to a radio. Do you understand the need for that?”

  “D’accord, Mon Capitane,” said Tu, who had received his original training with the French Groupement de Commando Mobile years before Dien Bien Phu. In English that was equally accented by Vietnamese and French, he asked, “And will we be bringing a prisoner back?”

  “This time, I think so. So it will also be necessary to keep only a few people privy to the plan. I think that six will be enough. I don’t have to tell you to pick only the best men.”

  “It will be done.”

  “I’ll also tell you that you will soon be in as much danger as was Vanh. I wish you to understand that.”

  “Mon Cap
itane, I gave up my life many years ago. I have lived much longer than I had ever planned. So it does not matter if it ends now, or next week. I will go for now to pick the men. At what time would you like to brief us?”

  “Six o’clock. That gives us enough time to get into place before evening prayers.”

  The operation itself went so smoothly it frightened him. The monks were converging on the temple in ones and twos. He’d taken position at a point where he could observe all who came and went. The Chieu Hoi who had given him the information in the first place was by his side. Suddenly he stiffened, pointed out one of the saffron-clad monks. Jim whispered into the radio, and two other monks converged on the man. One pulled from his robes a silencer-equipped .22, poked it into the man’s ribs. The other took position in front of him, spoke to him briefly. There was a flash of movement as the target decided he would try to run. The .22 was inclined downward slightly, trigger jerked once. The bullet smashed through his pelvis, the noise it made inaudible over his scream. “Brothers!” the one monk called, “please help us.” He stooped over the fallen man, his robes covering the chloroformed rag placed over the mouth. Two other monks hurried to the spot, helped pick up the fallen man and carry him to a waiting vehicle. They were away before anyone from the temple knew that there had been a problem.

  The man stared at him in undisguised hatred. “Colonel,” Jim said, “you must know by now that you are in the hands of the PRU. You don’t have much of a chance. If I were to tell them who you actually were, they’d kill me to get to you. So let’s talk.”

  He’d already given the man a shot of morphine to dull the pain of his shattered pelvis. They’d brought him in still unconscious, and Jim had carefully monitored his blood pressure and pulse, hoping the round had not hit a blood vessel. That was the chance you took, but the slowness of the silenced round at least kept it from ricocheting around a lot. So far there had been no sign of major vessel involvement, but you could only tell so much without exploratory surgery. So he had to get as much as he could as quickly as possible.