by G. E. Nolly
He had seen the teletype message two days earlier advising him that an OSI agent would be arriving shortly, but it had contained no additional information about the purpose of the visit. As he looked through the classified file again, all he could discern was that a Mr. David Rice would be leading the investigation. There was no background information, no estimate how long the agent would be on base, and not a hint what this was all about.
“Sweet Jesus,” he muttered under his breath, “I have a war to fight, and now I have to babysit some REMF.” (Rear Echelon Mother-Fucker)
Colonel Navarone sat down at his desk, picked up his telephone handset and pressed the intercom button.
“Fill me in, Sergeant.”
“Colonel, there’s a Special Agent Rice waiting to see you.”
“Okay, send him in.”
Special Agent David Rice walked into Colonel Navarone's office, halted, and gave a formal salute.
“Donny!” Guns exclaimed, as he rose from his desk. “How have you been?” Guns walked around to the front of his desk and moved to embrace him. David recoiled and took a step back.
Guns studied David’s face, which didn’t betray even a hint of recognition. The air of formality cast a chill on the meeting. Guns chose to ignore it.
“Uh, what are you doing here?” Guns asked, as he returned the salute.
“You should’ve received a classified file from the OSI last week. It explains what I’m doing here. I’m working a case.”
“Yeah, I saw a file. It didn’t say much other than there’s reason to believe that this Triad character is on base. It certainly didn’t say anything about you coming, Donny.”
“I’m operating under the name David Rice. It’s my cover while I’m here at DaNang. I suspect there’s going to be an attack soon, potentially on Easter. Triad likes to attack on holidays.”
“Well, while you’re here, we should grab some dinner at the DOOM Club” he said, referring to the DaNang Officer’s Open Mess, “so you can tell me how you’ve been.”
“I’ll brief you weekly on the operation as protocol dictates. I just wanted to check in with you because it was required. If that’ll be all, Colonel, I need to be going. I’ve got work to do.”
“You haven’t even told me how you’re doing or how your mother’s been,” Guns said, motioning for David to take a seat. David ignored the offer.
“No. I haven’t. Good day, sir.” Rice straightened to attention, saluted, and performed a crisp about-face.
As Guns watched his nephew leave the office, he was proud of the officer that had just stood before him and saddened by the stranger he had become.
0847L, April 5, 1969
DaNang Air Base, South Vietnam
David returned to his dimly lit room at the Bachelors Officers Quarters. The stale smell of tobacco still lingered in the air from the previous occupant. He sighed and sat down in the ancient rattan chair that occupied the corner of the room. He was troubled by the meeting with his uncle. If his uncle had really cared about him or his mother, he would’ve tried harder to stay in touch after Dad died. If he had, he would’ve already known how Mother was; she was not well.
He closed his eyes, ground his teeth and balled his hands into fists. A searing pain shot up from his right hand so he loosened it, shook it, and took a deep breath. Focus, he needed to focus on why he was there at DaNang. He wasn’t there for a family reunion. He was there to catch Triad. Triad was most likely at DaNang probing for weaknesses and preparing his next strike. David took out his case files from Bien Hoa and Cam Ranh and reviewed them. There had been three attacks at each base. The trademark that Triad left at the last attack on each base was a small plastic doll, perhaps ten inches high, of a Vietnamese girl wearing the traditional ao dai. Nothing special about that. Triad could have gotten the doll anywhere. It was the kind of souvenir that was sold in any of the hundreds of stalls outside every base in Vietnam.
Triad’s knowledge of Air Force operations indicated he was either military or former military. And Triad knew to hit where it would hurt. And he was a round-eye, that was certain. A gomer would’ve been too conspicuous and would never have gotten access to the areas Triad had breached. Yeah, he was a round-eye. And he would’ve had to have shown an an ID card of some kind, either civilian contractor or GI, to have been able to send a package through the military post office last December.
David remembered how excited he had been when he returned to his quarters at Cam Ranh with the package. There had been no return address on the box. It had simply been addressed to “Donald Navarone and Family.” Probably some sort of Christmas gift from a relative, most likely his cousin Suzanne, wanting to make it a surprise. That would have explained why there was no return address. He'd opened the package and had withdrawn the round cookie tin, embossed with the words, “Merry Christmas!” on the top. He couldn’t wait to try some real, American-made Christmas cookies. He'd pried off the lid and caught sight of the doll. It was a small plastic figurine of a Vietnamese woman with hair tied in a ponytail, wearing a coolie hat. That was the last thing he remembered.
Donald Navarone died that day. He went into deep cover and assumed the name David Rice.
Rehabilitation had not been easy. Three surgeries, physical therapy, and countless hours on the pistol range to retrain his aim couldn’t restore David to the skilled professional he once was.
Triad was working his way north. His first attacks had been at Bien Hoa, in the south, near Saigon. Then Cam Ranh, half-way up the coast. Even without the allure of a Navarone, DaNang would be the next logical target. And DaNang had a Phoenix Center, just like the previous bases. DaNang also had a Colonel with the last name of Navarone. It was unlikely that detail would be lost on Triad.
David opened his folder on the Phoenix Program. It was sparse. Even though Phoenix was a joint operation between the CIA, military, and local police, David’s OSI clearance and connections didn’t grant him much in the way of information. He was barely able to confirm its existence and presence on several bases. The South Vietnamese police force, the white mice, were worse than useless. They had actually been putting roadblocks in his way. Whenever he would put in a request for information from them, at either Bien Hoa or Cam Ranh, they would either give him the wrong information or pretend that they didn’t understand his request. Language difficulties.
At Cam Ranh, his most reliable indigenous Confidential Informant, a twenty-something man named Nguyen, had helped him get close to finding out something about Phoenix, and perhaps Triad. And then, he was arrested. His sister reported that the white mice had stormed into his shack at dinner time and taken him away with a canvas bag over his head. When David attempted to check on Nguyen, the white mice insisted that there had been no arrest, that perhaps Nguyen had gone away to visit relatives in Hoi Anh. They certainly had no record of him, and there was no such thing as a Missing Person Report in South Vietnam.
“They many peoples here name Nguyen,” the white mice commander told David. “Maybe you confuse. Maybe we all look like to you,” he said, with a contemptuous smirk.
0853L, April 5, 1969
DaNang Air Base, South Vietnam
Guns Navarone sat down heavily at his desk, opened the upper right-hand drawer and withdrew a large envelope, labeled “Danny.” He spilled the contents onto his desk and shuffled through the items. A black-and-white photograph lay on top of the stack. He picked it up and looked at it wistfully. In the picture, two children were playing on a seesaw. The inscription on the back read, “Johnny, age nine, Danny, age six.”
He put it down and picked up the photograph underneath it. In the picture, Guns was pinning Danny’s wings on him as he graduated from Undergraduate Pilot Training. Danny had been first in his class. Picture after picture were reminders of the brother he lost.
As he sifted through the contents of the envelope, a folded yellowing piece of paper fluttered to the floor. It appeared to have been torn out of a spiral-bound notebook. He carefull
y picked it up, opened it and read the letter, meticulously penned by a child.
“Dear Uncle Johnny, Daddy and Mommy said you are in coria and I already miss you. I hope you come back soon and take me on another airplane ride. Love, Donny Navarone. P.S. - Daddy said to get a ming for him, whatever that means.”
He carefully re-folded the letter and gently put it on his desk. Then he picked up a small glossy black-and-white photograph. Four faces smiled at him from the picture. In the center was Judy, Danny’s wife, flanked by Danny on one side and Guns and Donny on the other. Donny was about six years old, and the picture had been taken when they had all gone on vacation together, right before Guns had left for Korea.
There was another photo, more recent, identical to the photo in Guns’s wallet. Two Air Force pilots stood in front of a fighter aircraft parked in a revetment. They had their arms around each others’ shoulders, their other hands holding their helmets under their arm pits, a defiant, confident look in their eyes. It was taken the day Danny had arrived at Takhli, and was the traditional fighter pilot “hero” pose.
Guns had been trying to stay in touch with Judy, but after her hospitalization she had broken off all contact. He sensed she blamed him for Danny’s transition to fighters and his subsequent death. She had insisted on Donny leaving pilot training, and Guns knew that Donny blamed him. “It’s your fault,” Donny had said, “that Mom can’t deal with me becoming a pilot.”
By the time Danny had finished pilot training, the Korean War was already over, and Danny was assigned to fly transport aircraft. There was no way Danny would have gotten a fighter without Guns interceding on his behalf. If only Guns had kept his mouth shut when he was talking to General Lumley, Danny would have stayed in MAC. If only he had kept Danny off that Doumer Bridge mission… if only -
The intercom buzzed and Guns was jarred out of his rumination.
“Yes, Sergeant, what is it?”
“Sir, Colonel Davis is on line one.”
“Thank you.”
Guns pressed the first button on his telephone and was back to being all business.
3
March 16, 1968
Chu Lai Air Base, South Vietnam
Everything was working out better than expected for Sergeant Walters. The early morning MAC flight arrived and left with only three Marines to process. The expected mass influx of new leathernecks had never materialized because they had been rerouted to DaNang at the last moment. That made his workload incredibly easy.
More important, he had received word earlier that the afternoon MAC arrival had been canceled. The MND – Maintenance Non-Delivery – of the C-141 at Travis Air Force Base the previous night had produced a ripple effect of cancellations throughout Southeast Asia. That meant Walters would have the entire afternoon off. He knew exactly what to do with it.
As he approached the main gate to leave the base, he saw Tranh by the guard shack, nervously pacing back and forth and sucking on a Lucky Strike cigarette. What the hell was Tranh doing there, Walters thought. There was no reason he should be at the base and certainly no reason to make contact in the open. Tranh looked panicked, but Walters didn't care. At this point, the only thing that mattered was that Tranh was somewhere he shouldn't be. Tranh knew never to contact him on base. Even Linh knew this. Whenever Walters saw Linh on base, they both acted like they didn't know each other.
As soon as Tranh made eye contact with Walters, he tossed his cigarette to the ground and started shouting belligerently.
“Linh, Thien, they die! American watch me! It Phoenix! They shoot! I leave right way,” he screamed, “You need leave too!”
Walters was pissed. Tranh had publicly yelled the word “Phoenix”. Phoenix was a term that, if spoken at all, was whispered. The Vietnamese used the word Phung Hoang, but, again, only in guarded speech. It was bad luck, very bad luck, to say their name out loud. It was especially bad for Tranh to utter the word, in public, in the presence of Walters. Tranh was jeopardizing everything.
“This guy’s had too much to drink,” Walters said to the gate guard. “Why don’t I see him out?”
Walters quietly ushered Tranh to his motor bike, away from the eyes and ears of military personnel.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” He hissed at Tranh, but before he could continue or press him for further details, Tranh turned and sped off in the direction of his village.
Walters looked around for a way to follow him. His eyes lit upon a rusty bicycle that was leaning up against the fence. He ran over to the bike, straddled it, turned it around and furiously pedaled, trying to keep Tranh in sight. As he frantically rode off, the bike’s owner, an old Vietnamese man who'd been squatting nearby, jumped up and unsuccessfully chased after him, shouting unintelligibly. Walters wanted to know what the hell Tranh was talking about. Linh and Thien couldn’t be dead. No, that didn't make sense.
There was no way Walters could keep up with the motorbike, but he pedaled as if his life depended on it. As he fell further behind, Walters could see that Tranh was driving his motorbike erratically enough to attract a lot of attention. He was weaving between other vehicles, and several times pedestrians had to jump out of the way to avoid getting hit.
In his paranoia, Tranh stared at every GI he passed on the dusty road to his village. But then Walters noticed that, several times, the GIs Tranh had been glaring at actually seemed to be glaring back. Walters saw one of them pick up a portable radio and make some sort of transmission right after Tranh rode past. He could’ve sworn that some the Americans were guys he recognized but maybe that was Tranh’s paranoia getting to him.
Walters pedaled as fast as he could. His fatigues were soaked, and his pants clung heavily to his legs. His lungs burned. Even pedaling as fast as the rickety bike could go, he couldn't keep up with Tranh. Before long, Walters had fallen a full 200 meters behind him. At one point, Tranh stopped his motorbike, looked behind him, and spotted Walters. It looked like he would wait for him to catch up, then he abruptly sped off just as Walters closed to within 100 meters. The road to the village wound through thick jungle, and Walters periodically lost sight of Tranh, but caught sight of him again every time the road straightened out.
Finally, Tranh reached his hut, tossed down his Vespa, and ran inside. Exhausted, Walters threw the bike aside and stopped to catch his breath before walking the remaining distance. He was going to read Tranh the riot act and apprise Linh of the situation with Tranh.
Then he saw black rain drops fall from the sky onto Tranh’s hut, and the next hut, and the next, as the entire village erupted in a gigantic fireball. Walters realized, instantly, that what had looked like rain drops were Mark-82 bombs, delivered by F-4 Phantom jets in wave after wave of explosions. He recognized the aircraft from the black smoke trails they painted in the sky as they pulled off from their bomb deliveries. Even from his distance, he recoiled from the heat and could feel the concussion.
Tranh had been right. The F-4s were American planes; the South Vietnamese didn’t have them in their inventory. Phoenix must have seen Walters visiting Tranh off base. So Phoenix must have seen Linh and Thien also. Was it possible that Linh and Thien were dead, as Tranh had said?
The sound of continuous automatic weapons fire filled the air, as well as grenade explosions behind him. The violent overpressure knocked him to the ground, and he quickly scrambled to his feet and took refuge in the nearby jungle on the outskirts of the village. From the cover of darkness, he crouched and took in the view of the hamlet. He had to find out if Linh’s home had been hit. He edged closer to the village and squinted through the flames, trying to see it. Then he saw her house completely consumed by fire. As he watched, he saw the hut collapse under the flames. There was no way anyone could have survived.
Rage built up inside him and he could feel his blood pounding at his temples. His perfect team was gone. Linh was dead, Thien was dead, and even Tranh was dead. Phoenix would be coming after him next, and he needed for them to think he had been ki
lled, too. He ripped his dog tags from his neck and threw them onto the dirt road, grinding them into the red soil with the heel of his boot. He had to disappear. Now he had no name, no home, and nothing left to lose. But he had a triad of reasons to get even.
4
1412L, April 6, 1969
DaNang Air Base, South Vietnam
Triad confidently walked up to the dining hall. It was a low building with a corrugated steel roof and sandbags piled waist-high around the periphery. He was dressed in Army fatigues embroidered with a Commissary Services patch. He quickly found the Admin Office.
“This is a rush order from the Commissary,” he said, handing a large bottle of green liquid to the Senior Airman seated at the desk. “It’s the extract for the key lime pie for tonight’s special dinner. Colonel Howell said it was the direct request of General Wilson. Nothing but the best for our troops and all that.”
“Okay, Sarge, I’ll take care of it. The chef is getting ready to work on dessert right now. I’ll get this right to him.”
Triad walked out the back door and lit a Camel cigarette.
He had one last thing to do. He stood at the back door of the chow hall, still smoking a cigarette, when the Vietnamese cooks arrived for their afternoon shift. He sized them up and picked out his mark, an older woman who was unsuccessfully attempting to bum a cigarette from some other Vietnamese workers.
“Thuốc lá?” he said, offering her an unfiltered Camel.
“Cảm ơn bạn,” she thanked him.
Triad waited for the other cooks to finish smoking their cigarettes and go inside before he spoke to her again.
“Tôi muốn chơi một trò đùa bạn bè của tôi,” he said, which meant, “I want to play a trick on my friends.” She looked surprised, then her eyes widened even more after he reached into his pocket and withdrew an American $20 bill. Real greenbacks were immensely valuable in Vietnam. They were incredibly rare, since all monetary transactions were either in MPC – Military Payment Certificates – or piasters, Vietnamese currency. This greenback was worth enough to support her family for over a month.