He waded into the brush, not moving far from the trail but looking for a place where he could sit or crouch and remain hidden from the camp. Pos jerked his head at Burlee, and both men did the same. Within moments, they were almost invisible, even though Lincoln had watched them go to positions almost right beside him. Asking for skilled hunters had been a good idea, he decided. He’d rather have had skilled soldiers, but none of the men really fit that description yet.
And yet, whoever was running this from the Pentagon wanted him to attack this heavily fortified camp with the resources he had. From here, that looked like a suicide mission.
Thirty minutes passed. The sky had not lightened even a smidgen. Lincoln rose, stretched his muscles. The other men stayed put, seemingly content to squat in the brush as long as necessary. As he sat down again, he brushed against a broad leaf, making a rustling noise.
In the same instant, a strange voice barked out a question. Shit, Lincoln thought, there’s a sentry after all. He could glimpse the man now, his green fatigues largely camouflaging him, just feet away but illuminated by the light spilling from a window.
“Lao!” Pos whispered. “He ask who is there.”
Two options—stay silent and risk the sentry raising an alarm, or take him out.
“Tell him ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”
“Hmnh?” Pos said.
“Just say it.”
In English, Pos said, “Nobody here, only chickens.”
Not exactly what Lincoln had been hoping for. He’d wanted a joking answer, in Lao, that might have made the sentry think he had just stumbled upon a fellow soldier.
Instead, at the sound of English, the man made a startled sound and started to swing his gun into position.
That wouldn’t do. Lincoln burst from the brush, yanking his knife at the same time. He hit the sentry hard, before the man had a chance to fire, and drove him to the ground. There he slammed a knee into the sentry’s gun hand, knocking the weapon from his grip. In the same instant, he slashed his knife across the man’s throat. Blood spilled from the sudden gap, and bubbled up through lips that moved in soundless agony. Lincoln stayed on top of him until the light vanished from his eyes and his struggling stopped.
He climbed off the dead man and found Pos and Burlee right behind him. “Sentry,” he said. “I couldn’t let him alert the camp.”
“A chicken is a bird, no?” Pos asked.
Lincoln chuckled. “Yes, a chicken is a bird. It was a joke. Not a very good one, I guess.”
He watched the camp for a few minutes, to make sure that the commotion hadn’t been observed. Still dark and quiet. But where there was one sentry, there might be more. And it was possible that he would be expected to report in at any time. They couldn’t stay until daylight now. He started to say that, but then he had another idea.
He turned back to the dead man. Pos and Burlee had both crouched down beside him, huddled around his head. Checking for life? he wondered. “He’s dead,” he said. “Trust me.”
Pos shifted position to show Lincoln what he was doing. His knife was out, and he held on to the sentry’s ear with one hand and sawed at it with the other. “We know,” he said.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Lincoln asked. He didn’t need an answer. They were taking souvenirs. “Stop that!”
He was afraid his order might have been heard at the camp, so he lowered his voice and said it again. “We don’t take parts off bodies,” he said. “We’re better than that.”
Pos looked disappointed, but he told Burlee to stop and shoved his knife—still dripping blood and tissue—into its sheath.
He knew soldiers often took mementos of their dead. It happened back home, too. He remembered a job he had done with a couple of Sammy’s men. It had been a vengeance killing of a very personal sort. Two men—unaffiliated with any of the city’s mobs—had assaulted a parishioner at Saint Jerome’s Catholic Church. Father James had mentioned the attack to Sammy, and Sammy had instructed Lincoln to find the culprits and punish them appropriately.
Lincoln had gone to question the victim, a woman he knew from church. She told him she had recognized one of the men, because he worked at a butcher shop she occasionally patronized. She had been there two days before the attack and wondered if she had been targeted because the man had seen her that day.
With the description she gave him, Lincoln easily identified the man as a redneck named Toussaint. He and the other men from the mob took turns watching the butcher shop and trailing Toussaint after he left work, until they were able to determine who his accomplice was. One night, three weeks after the attack, the two were drinking in Toussaint’s ground-floor apartment. Lincoln and his friends knocked on the door, and when Toussaint opened it, beer in hand, they had barged in.
Lincoln had known from the moment Sammy gave the order that they were going to kill the men. It wasn’t what Father James would have wanted, and Lincoln didn’t know how the victim would feel about it. But while Lincoln had no compunctions about killing a couple of rapists and hadn’t minded getting covered with blood in the process, he had drawn the line when one of the other men pulled down Toussaint’s pants and started to slice off his dick.
“What the hell are you doing?” Lincoln had asked.
“I’m puttin’ it in the other guy’s mouth,” the man answered. “It’s kind of a lesson.”
“Ain’t nobody comin’ in here but the police, and they don’t need that lesson,” Lincoln said. “We don’t desecrate the bodies. Shit is wrong.”
The man looked chagrined and left the body alone.
Now, Lincoln shook his head. “Shit is wrong,” he said, knowing Pos wouldn’t understand. He indicated the sentry. “Pick him up. We’re taking him with us.”
“We take?” Pos asked.
“That’s right. You two carry him. Let’s get out of here. Double-time.”
The men did as they were told. Pos took the man’s arms and Burlee his legs. His head lolled back, barely connected to his shoulders, and blood spilled onto the brush. There was no way the Pathet wouldn’t find this spot, but Lincoln hoped the blood trail would peter out before too long. He started quickly back up the way they’d come, with the Hmong men and their grisly burden close behind.
He knew the communists would figure out that their sentry was dead. The blood and disturbed brush would paint a clear picture. What he hoped was that they wouldn’t know whether what had killed him was human or animal, and the disappearance of his body would disturb them.
Lincoln was furious with himself. He had screwed up this simple mission, big time. He’d lost the opportunity to gauge the size of their force, and he might have inadvertently tipped them off that an enemy knew where their camp was. But maybe the nature of that enemy could be disguised. If he could unsettle the men in the camp, make them anxious, maybe lose sleep, that would work to his advantage. He knew from being inside American camps that when the enemy was out there in the bush and you never knew when the next mortar round might come in or the next sniper’s bullet—or, worst of all, a sapper on a suicide mission inside the wire—then it messed with morale. Men suffering from nerves were less prepared and more apt to make fatal mistakes.
He couldn’t outnumber the Pathet Lao, and his men were far less experienced at war. But if he could wage psychological warfare on his enemy, he might still have an advantage.
The sky was growing lighter by the time they reached the jars. He had been checking their back trail now and again, and the sentry’s blood had indeed stopped marking the way. He found a jar that was taller than him, its walls almost seven feet high. “Toss him in there,” he told Pos.
The man looked at the high walls of the jar, then at the body in his hands, then back at the high walls. “Give him to me,” Lincoln said. Without waiting for an answer, he stepped forward and took the dead sentry from the others. Fortunately, although the man was dead weight, he was slight, and Lincoln was able to throw him up to the wall, then push him the
rest of the way in.
The Pathet Lao soldiers might find him in there, but probably not soon or easily.
And even if they did, what would they think had left him there?
24
* * *
Without lugging the corpse, they moved faster, and they were back at Vang Khom by late morning. Sho was in the village center, surrounded by the children she was teaching. She shot him a smile as he passed by, and he heard some of the kids making what he assumed were smart-aleck cracks. He didn’t stop, though. He was filthy, and one of the things he’d built with the materials Corbett had brought was a crude shower right behind his longhouse. It had no showerhead, but opening a valve released a cascade of water from a few inches above his head. He used it to rinse off, then shut it off to soap up, turning it on again to rinse that away. He had no privacy and often saw women—and sometimes men—staring at his naked body, but nudity wasn’t a big deal to these people, so he got over any concerns about it quickly. They stared only out of curiosity, because a big, muscular black man was something different. If a moose wandered into their village, they would stare at that, too.
Feeling sufficiently clean, he lay down, still naked, on the framework of leaves that passed for his bed, for a quick nap. It still smelled like Sho there. He wanted her again. He knew if he called, she would come to him. But he had stressed the importance of the school having regular hours—he didn’t know why schools were that way, but he assumed there was a good reason—so he didn’t want to interrupt her lessons. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to come up with a plan to attack the Pathet Lao camp that might have a ghost of a chance of succeeding.
• • •
When he woke, she was there, sitting cross-legged beside the bed. He hadn’t heard her come in. “How long you been there?” he asked.
“Little while,” Sho said. “I wanted to touch you. But I did not want to wake you.”
“It’d be okay,” he said. “I never mind waking up when you’re here.”
He pushed himself upright and reached out to her, drawing her near. His lips found hers. He pulled her onto the bed, kissing her, running his hands through her thick, dark hair. Her weight on him was pleasant, right. After a few minutes she started kissing down his neck, down his chest, taking his nipples in her mouth and tonguing them. Then she continued, across the flat plane of his stomach, and lower. She took him into her mouth, and he lay back, enjoying her ministrations until he was spent.
After that, she wiped her mouth and peeled off her clothes, snuggling next to him. “When I saw you, you were covered in blood,” she said. “I had to make sure it was not your blood.”
“Not mine,” he assured her. “I took a quick shower.”
“I can wash your uniform for you.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I don’t need to. I want to. In a Hmong family, the woman does the wash.”
Family? he thought. Is that what we are now?
It had taken him by surprise, but he found that he didn’t mind the idea. “Well, it sure as hell needs washing.”
“I will do it.”
“Thank you, Sho.”
“No need to thank me,” she said. “I am your woman now. I do things for you.”
“You don’t have to—”
She pressed a finger against his lips. “I am your woman. I do these things. And other things. Better things.”
“Better is right.” He let his hands roam across her body, feeling her smooth flesh, cupping her full, heavy breasts, penetrating the moistness at her center. “Looks like it’s my turn to do for you,” he said.
“You do not have to—”
He silenced her by pressing his lips to hers, then said, “Not have to. Want to.”
• • •
Later, he adjusted his map and drew a more detailed sketch of the camp as he remembered it. Using that he again studied the aerial shots, filling in the blurred and unclear parts in his mind’s eye. Now he had a pretty good idea of how the camp was laid out. He thought he knew which building—a smallish, square one, facing onto an open space that probably served as a sort of parade ground—was the headquarters of Colonel Phan, the man Corbett had called a “warlord.” He had seen that security was fairly lax, although that might change when the sentry’s death was discovered. He still didn’t know if the open area around the camp was mined, though. If he’d been running the camp, it would be. He would mine the perimeter of Vang Khom if he didn’t think it would mostly blow up unsuspecting water buffalo and the occasional villager.
As he formulated a plan, he drilled the men with it in mind. They practiced advancing under fire, one man running forward while another man covered him, then switching off roles. He worked them on their bellies, and after a couple of days, he added live fire to those exercises to teach them to keep their heads down. He made them practice with mortars, RPGs, and hand grenades. He set up targets of varying sizes and had them shoot from different distances, until they had internalized how changing conditions could affect their accuracy.
Using bamboo and brush, he mocked up a model of the fence line they were going to attack and had them practice going through it. The model didn’t much resemble real chain link fences and barbed wire, but he didn’t have those materials to work with. He explained what it would look like, drew pictures of it for the men, and told them how to deal with it.
He also worked with them on the art of retreat. Green Berets were generally opposed to the whole concept of retreat, but he believed they would be vastly outnumbered and outgunned, and he didn’t want his men running blindly into the jungle in that event. He noted spots along the trail down the mountain where they could rendezvous and stressed the necessity of breaking up into smaller units and spreading out if retreat was necessary, rather than everyone running the same way.
He still didn’t think they were ready to go up against a force of that size—whatever the size of the camp’s force might be—but then he got a coded message from Donovan. “Time to go,” it said, and Lincoln knew what it meant.
As before, they left the village in late afternoon and reached the Plain under the cover of night. This time he had sixty-four men, not two. He didn’t have uniforms for them, so they wore their own clothes, but each one had weapons and a pack and a belt for supplies. They were all being paid with Laotian currency Corbett brought with him on each trip, so even if they weren’t combat-hardened, they were by definition professional soldiers. He had even made Koob a captain, recognizing that the rank carried no weight at the Pentagon.
They threaded their way between the jars. Lincoln’s eyes were drawn to the one in which he’d deposited the sentry, but he wasn’t about to climb up to see if the corpse was still there. Lincoln didn’t want to see what condition it was in now, anyway.
He made them walk in single file down the game trail that led toward the camp. It had been less than two weeks since the scouting trip, and he knew the Pathet might have taken new precautions—stationing more sentries, even booby-trapping or mining the path. He doubted the latter, since if it was genuinely used by large mammals, as it appeared, they would be more likely than attacking soldiers to trigger the mines. But he knew it was possible, anyway, and he wanted to do everything he could to minimize the danger to his men.
As they neared the camp, Lincoln took the lead, watching the trail closely for trip wires or other defenses, and for signs of ambush. He saw none. Maybe the sentry’s death had been ruled accidental or been ascribed to animals. There were plenty in the Laotian jungles that could carry off a grown man, after all.
Then again, maybe the camp’s warlord felt the place was secure against an attack by poorly trained, untested troops. In that, he might be right.
They made it to the spot from which Lincoln, Pos, and Burlee had watched the other night. The camp was in clear view from here and looked much as it had on that occasion. Lights burned in some places, and cigarettes glowed in others. There were men in the towers and the bunkers
, ready to fight.
From here, Lincoln’s plan—such as it was—grew more complicated and relied heavily on the stealth of his Hmong soldiers. Moving unheard through the jungle was an almost impossible task. Instead, they would have to flank out at the jungle’s edge—in full view of the men inside the wire, if they had spotlights to train across the open space. Lincoln was counting on the cover of darkness and the ability of the soldiers to move quickly and silently. He didn’t want to attack from the south—the direction of the village—but from the east and west. The men on the east would engage first, with the rising sun at their backs. Once the camp’s focus had shifted that way, then the main force would come in from the west. They would throw woven mats over the barbed wire to neutralize it, climb over the fence, and take the Pathet Lao by surprise.
Captain Koob was in charge of the squad coming in from the east, and Lincoln would command the western flank.
Using hand signals and as few words as possible, he communicated to Koob that they had arrived. Koob understood his job, and he led a group of ten men toward the camp’s eastern end, traveling just at the fringe of the tree line. They ran quickly, at a crouch, and by the time they were twelve feet away, Lincoln couldn’t hear them anymore, or see them through the pitch-dark night.
“Come on,” he whispered to Pos, his second-in-command. He started toward the west, and the other thirty-plus men followed. Lincoln thought he sounded like a lumbering elephant, in his boots and fatigues, compared to the Hmong. Still, no alarm was raised in the camp.
A few minutes later, they were in position and ready. Nothing to do now except wait for the sun and hope for the best.
Instead, they would face the worst.
25
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