Half an hour later the point man was back. He whispered to the patrol leader, who translated as fast as the scout could talk.
“About two hundred meters away,” he said. “Ten men. Half are asleep, the other half on sentry duty. Very alert. He had to be special careful.”
Ten. That was slightly more than they had figured. Maybe Korhonen will think it’s more of a fair fight now, Jim thought.
Nah. Probably won’t.
“Did he see the American?”
The patrol leader posed the question, then translated as the scout answered. “Yes. He is in center of perimeter. Couldn’t see if he’s okay or not, but they wouldn’t be guarding a dead man. One more thing. Says that one of the guards has AK roped to your friend’s neck. He tries to get away, or we try to rescue him, all he’s got to do is pull the rope tight and pull the trigger. Can’t miss.”
Shit, Jim thought. That ruined his hoped-for plan. He’d been thinking about trying to infiltrate the camp, get close enough to kiss them with the knife. But all it would take would be a small mistake and Jerry would be dead. If they’d only posted one or two sentries he might still have tried it. But five? No way.
“Ideas?” he asked.
Korhonen looked at the patrol leader, who nodded in agreement.
“We wait,” he said. “Find out which way they’re headed tomorrow, get in front of them.”
Jim didn’t see how that was going to work any better than trying to get in there at night. Probably even worse during the daytime. Set up an ambush? You’d have to make damned sure the guy holding the AK was dead before he could pull the trigger. How were you going to guarantee that? Even dead weight as he fell would be enough.
He voiced his concern.
“Bobby, here, has a neat trick,” Korhonen replied. “He can do it.”
The patrol leader nodded in confirmation. “Something I learned at CCN,” he said. “I’ll tell you how we used to do it.”
The enemy patrol broke camp just before dawn, when the false light coming through the triple canopy made visibility tricky. Sometimes, Jim thought, I’d rather have it still dark.
The moisture that had collected as dew during the night softened the leaves underfoot, and that was good. Made it much easier to walk without making a lot of noise.
Bobby had stationed men all around the enemy campsite, making sure they knew in what direction the patrol was going to travel. Within moments of the start of movement the man covering the west side of the site came back to the patrol to tell them the enemy was going that way.
Bobby quickly made his deployments. The man who had spotted them would trail behind, making sure they didn’t change direction. Jim gave him a spare Motorola with which to make contact.
The remainder of the group swung out into a circle, moving fast. They had to get ahead of the enemy, and thus would take the chance that there might be someone else out there. Someone who bore them no goodwill at all.
They had dropped rucksacks, carried only their web gear with plenty of ammunition, grenades, and a couple of canteens of water. And, of course, their weapons.
Two men carried claymore bags.
Jim had to hope this was going to work. If not, he was going to have a very dead friend.
Jerry woke only after being prodded so hard the bayonet brought blood. Goddamn them! Couldn’t they just let him lie there and die?
He sat up and was rewarded with such dizziness he realized he was swaying. He wished he could reach up and touch his ears. Was he still bleeding? If so, it probably meant the explosion had ruptured something more than his eardrums. He thought it unlikely. He hadn’t been particularly good at remembering the signs and symptoms of brain damage, or any other medical phenomenon, for that matter, during cross-training, but was fairly sure that if the covering around his brain was torn he would probably be dead by now.
Too bad. Wouldn’t that have pissed them off! He almost smiled.
The officer spoke to his guard, who looked like he didn’t care for what he was hearing. Then after a moment he roughly shoved a rice ball under Jerry’s nose. It stank of nouc mam, the fermented fish sauce of which the Vietnamese were so fond, and, in Jerry’s experience, was probably filled with insects of various kinds.
He wolfed it down. One of the primary tenets of E&E, escape and evasion, was to keep your strength up. That meant eating whatever was offered, as often as possible.
He made a choking sound, meant to inform them that he was thirsty. Reluctantly the guard unscrewed the cap off his canteen—an American plastic model, Jerry noted—and poured water in his mouth.
Jerry swallowed as much as the guard would allow—not much, but it was better than nothing, and for the first time he felt just the slightest tinge of hope. They weren’t going to take him somewhere and shoot him, of that he was sure. If they wanted him dead he would already be. And they couldn’t keep him tied up like this forever.
To test that theory he said aloud, “Shit.”
The guard looked at him in askance.
“I need to take a shit,” he said, although he didn’t.
The guard obviously didn’t understand English, and Jerry wasn’t willing to tip his hand to how much Vietnamese he knew, so he repeated what he’d already said.
The officer, who obviously did understand, came over.
“Later,” he said. “We go now.”
Bobby had picked the site well, Jim conceded. There were very few chokepoints in the Laotian jungle, but this was one of them.
An outcropping of karst, the rotted granite of which the Annamese cordillera was largely made up, would make for hard going if they tried to climb it. To the other side was a swiftly flowing stream. Also not easy going. If the patrol kept on the same track they would have to come through here. And it seemed that they were—he’d gotten no transmissions on the Motorola to indicate they’d changed directions.
The team was lying in well-camouflaged ambush. The two RPD gunners had the flanks, both to contain the enemy within the kill zone and to take care of any possible outside response.
He and Korhonen were lying about five meters from each other near the middle. The others were scattered at about the same distance—just far enough apart that a grenade couldn’t kill more than one, and close enough to support one another.
Bobby and another man had just come back in from where they’d been emplacing the claymores. They had taken a long time, sighting and resighting the mines until they were completely satisfied. Now Bobby held the clacker in his hand, ready to send the spurt of electricity down the lines that would detonate the explosives in the deadly little weapons.
Jim hoped Bobby knew what he was doing. The mines sprayed a fan of steel balls that totally annihilated anything in their path. They were excellent in an ambush if you wanted to slaughter everyone in the kill zone. Not so good otherwise.
The sweat was starting to run in rivulets down his sides even though it wasn’t all that warm yet. He had his head cocked forward enough that the drops collecting in his eyebrows fell to the ground without getting into his eyes. He stifled the urge to get a drink of water. If you moved at all while in ambush position it was achingly slowly—the eye picked up movement before it did shapes—or you didn’t move at all.
Best not to move at all.
The best measure of how well you were doing in a situation of this sort was the animals. They generally fled at your approach, at least those in visual range. If you were quiet enough the ones that didn’t catch actual sight of you went on with their daily business.
It was after you settled down and remained motionless that the true effectiveness could be judged. They returned, tentatively at first and then with increasing frequency and casualness, heartened by the fact that the lumps lying on the jungle floor offered them no danger.
Above him a chittering flock of black and gold birds of a type he hadn’t seen before happily pecked away at the insects that infested the foliage, occasionally letting go with foul-smelling dropping
s that pelted his back. Some time later a krait slithered by about a foot from his nose, flicked a tongue out to feel his heat and then, finding him far too big to be prey, went on its way. Jim was glad that it was already quite warm. Occasionally the deadly little snakes would come up into your sleeping position to share your warmth.
A large bug of some kind crawled up his back and danced across his unprotected neck. He had to hope it wasn’t a scorpion.
One night back in ’66 he had made the mistake of lying on a bed of termites during an ambush like this. He hadn’t known about them until they’d chewed through the poncho he’d laid down to protect against the ground moisture, whereupon they started trying to chew through his skin.
That was one night he’d had to abort the mission. When they’d gotten back to the patrol base he’d inspected himself by flashlight to find a hundred bleeding wounds where the bugs had torn pieces of flesh out of him with mandibles designed for tearing down trees.
Nothing like that today. It was pleasantly warm, speaking of the heat that would follow in the afternoon. Not too bad, though. Here high in the cordillera it never got as warm as it had in the lowlands back in Vietnam. What little sunlight made its way through the trees felt good on his back. It was easy to drift off into uncaring drowsiness when you were out here. No matter what your physical condition you were always tired when you were on patrol. Part of it was due to tension, part to the physical exertion, and a major part to the fact that you never really slept. Each sound brought you instantly awake, clutching your rifle and hoping the crackle of brush was an elephant, rather than a platoon of searchers resolutely looking for your position.
He was jerked back into alertness by a tug of the thread tied to his little finger. He in turn tugged the one connected to the man on his left. Each man in the position was thus linked.
They were coming, the unspoken message said. Get ready.
Jerry was feeling better and better, something he hid from his captors. The dizziness had gone away, but he still stumbled as often as he thought he could get away with. Make them think you’re helpless, he strategized. That way they’ll be all the more dumbfounded when you make your move.
They’d already become far more relaxed. The farther away from help from his side the more, he suspected, they believed they’d gotten away with their audacious move. He also suspected that there were reinforcements not too far away. That made his plans all the more urgent. If he waited to try to escape until he was surrounded by a battalion, rather than a small patrol, the likelihood he could get away would be so minuscule as to not be worth counting.
He’d repeated, several times, his need to take care of nature’s call. The lieutenant kept telling him to wait. He’d considered just going in his pants to force the issue. There were few people who could stand the smell of feces from another person. Only the individual whose shit it was thought his shit didn’t stink.
He glanced up to see the karst on his right, the rotted granite so full of holes you could hide in there forever. Yep. It’s time.
He also smelled water and realized once again just how thirsty he was. He wanted to ask for a drink again, remembered the guard who had so reluctantly given up his canteen. The lieutenant was well forward in the patrol, would not likely hear his request, and the guard damned sure wouldn’t give him anything without a direct order.
Give it time, Jerry, he told himself. You’ll either be drinking water a free man, or you’ll soon be dead. Either way it was better than what he had.
He looked ahead, saw a small space where the vines and underbrush were thinner than the area in which they’d been traveling.
Right there, he told himself. That’s where we’re gonna do it.
Jim Carmichael saw the point man pass his position and tried to make himself even more a part of the ground than he was. He thought that the eager glitter of his eyes must give him away, shining like a beacon in the morning sun.
Number two, scarce a few feet behind the point. Bad tactics, he told them. Thank you very much.
Four and five, and finally he caught sight of Jerry Hauck. Stumbling and reeling. Making the Viet who was obviously his personal guard, who still had the AK tied to a rope around Jerry’s neck, very pissed off.
Don’t make him kill you, he silently told the NCO. All we need is a couple more seconds.
He’d noted the piece of brush that Jerry would have to pass before Bobby kicked off the ambush. He aimed at the guard, centering the front post of his sights on the man’s head, then moving it slightly forward, to about the base of the nose. Sometimes it didn’t seem like you’d need much lead when people were moving that slowly, but it could be deceptive. By the time your brain told your finger to pull the trigger, and then your nerve endings actually performed the act, a center of mass target could be moved a few inches. Just enough to make a brain shot a clear miss.
Almost there. His finger tightened on the trigger, taking up the slight amount of slack. Two more pounds of trigger pressure and the bullet would be on its way. Give it just a couple more seconds and…
There were no words to describe the actual deflagration of high explosive. He’d read comic books, so avidly his parents had despaired of his ever getting out of a fantasy world, as a kid. WHOOM! CRAAAK! BLAM!
If only they knew. It was a cataclysmic event, something you simply had to experience. And having done so, even as many times as he had, it still came as a surprise.
The claymores went off simultaneously, and where there had been living men was only empty space. Lying on the ground, he knew from experience, would only be shattered flesh and bone where there had once been hopes and dreams and the knowledge only a life could contain.
His target had disappeared.
So had Jerry.
Fuck!
Then came the familiar voice. “Sonofabitch. Mother-fuck. Goddamn pricks!”
Jim grinned with relief. Leave it to Jerry Hauck to be pissed off when someone saved his life. He jumped up, ignoring the single-round reports as one or another of the Montagnards finished off the wounded. Ran to where Jerry was still lying on the ground, struggling to get to his feet. He ignored the NCO’s loudly voiced protests, checked for wounds, and finding none extracted his survival knife from the sheath on his harness and cut Jerry’s bonds away.
Hauck’s arms fell uselessly to his sides. The tingling of blood returning told him that soon he was going to be suffering full-flood agony.
“Claymores?” he said. “You fucking crazy?”
“Only way we could figure we could get you out without their blowing your brains out,” Jim said. He was already searching the dead guard for anything of value. “Guy who runs this patrol said that was how they used to get prisoners. Set up the claymores to take out everybody else, a chunk of C-4 to stun the target. Worked like a charm, he said. Had to hope he was right.”
“Ain’t doin’ my hearing a goddamn bit of good,” Jerry said. “Blow out my friggin’ eardrums twice in twenty-four hours. We get back, I’m gonna claim disability.”
Jim grinned. “You do just that,” he said. “Hell, I’ll even sign the papers. Right now, however, we might want to think about how we’re gonna get back home so’s you can do that.”
Bobby was already signaling withdrawal. His team had thoroughly searched the dead, were carrying away anything of value. The weapons that hadn’t been destroyed in the mine attack were a first priority. After that it was papers, diaries, pictures, maps. You never knew what someone might be carrying.
“Can you walk?” he asked Jerry.
“Goddamn right. Only one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I really need to take a dump!”
“That’s gonna have to wait. We be gone.”
“Mighta known,” Jerry said. He grabbed his CAR-15 from the guard who had carried it, cursed once again at the sight of a claymore pellet hole through the receiver. “Shit,” he said, tossing it away. He grabbed one of the undamaged AKs, jacked the bolt back,
put it on safe. The AK fired from the open-bolt position—that is, when the trigger was pulled it released the bolt, picking up a cartridge from the magazine, inserting it into the chamber and striking the primer with a fixed firing pin. Not the most reliable or the most accurate system in the world, but it had the advantage of not leaving a live round in the chamber when the barrel got hot enough from automatic-weapons fire to cause the bullet to go off all on its own.
Satisfied, he assumed the port-arms position and a loose, very loose, position of attention.
“Okay, fearless leader,” he said. “We want to get the fuck out of here?”
Two hours later they took their first break. Even the ’Yards were sweating profusely. They’d been moving hard, putting as much distance between themselves and the ambush site as possible.
Jim took the opportunity to check Jerry’s ankle, was happy to see that the flesh was granulating nicely. He replaced the filthy bandage with a fresh one, gave the NCO another couple of tetracycline tablets and a drink from his own canteen.
“Sorry, Dai Uy,” Jerry said.
“About what? Close as I can tell, they had that whole damned stream rigged. Wasn’t a place you could have gone, you wouldn’t have run into something.”
“Which means that…”
“Which means they had plenty of time,” Jim answered for him. “They knew about us right from the beginning.”
“And I think I know why,” Korhonen said, waving the map he had taken from the NVA lieutenant. “What were your jump coordinates?”
Jim gave them to him. Korhonen showed him the map.
There was a clearly marked red X on exactly those coordinates.
“They were waiting for you on the DZ,” he said. “Followed you the entire way. Now, how is it the NVA knew exactly where you were going to be?”
“Dunno,” Jim said. “But I sure as hell intend to find out.”
Bayonet Skies Page 19