by G. E. Nolly
In Vietnamese, he explained what he wanted the cook to do. She was to defecate into the stuffing for the Easter meal.
“Nó sẽ được vui,” he said, “It will be funny.”
She took a long draw on her cigarette before dropping it to the ground and stamping it out.
“Tôi sẽ làm điều đó,” she replied, “I will do it.”
As he walked away from the chow hall, Triad closed his eyes and quietly intoned, “Tranh, this is for you.”
2047L, April 6, 1969
DaNang Air Base, South Vietnam
Guns and another Colonel were in his trailer, smoking cigars and talking about their tour in Korea sixteen years earlier. Over dessert and the remainder of a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka, they had been reminiscing about how great it had been when they were Lieutenants. Back then, they didn’t have a care in the world, other than the ever-present danger of dying in combat. They got to fly the top-of-the-line F-86. They got all the flying they wanted, which for Lieutenants was better than a pay raise. They got to duel with North Korean MiG-15s, which was like shooting fish in a barrel. They agreed, the flying was really great.
“Hey Guns,” the visiting Colonel said, “remember the time you and Dusty were up over MiG Alley and -”
Navarone’s brick crackled to life.
“Gunfighter Two, this is Gunfighter One. We’ve had six missions canceled due to sick aircrews. All twelve jocks at the hospital now. You need to get over there and find out what’s going on.”
“Roger. Gunfighter Two responding.”
Guns got in his jeep and raced to the hospital. As he strode through the emergency entrance, he was hit with the smell of people being sick. The stench was overpowering.
Five crewmembers in flight suits were in triage, sitting on the plastic chairs with bed pans on the floor in front of them, between their feet. As Guns approached them, they attempted to stand up.
“At ease, gentlemen,” Guns said, motioning toward their chairs, “stay seated. Any idea what happened here?
A Captain looked up, gripping his stomach, and responded.
“Sir, we were in our briefing, getting ready for a Steel Tiger mission, when we all started feeling under the weather. Really, really bad nausea, and a serious case of the shits. Wollensak, Miller and Cathcart are the worst off. They’re in exam rooms right now. The nurse told us to wait here until they have facilities for…” He suddenly stopped talking and leaned forward, picked up the bed pan, and heaved violently. Guns reflexively took a step back.
“Sorry, sir,” the Captain said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Not your fault, Captain. Tell me, who started feeling sick first?”
“I guess it was Wollensak, sir. I was in the briefing room, planning the mission, when he came in and said he didn’t feel well enough to fly.”
“So who got sick next?”
“I thought it was me, but when I got here, Miller and Cathcart were already being seen.”
“So, what do you guys have in common? Did everyone in your flight have coffee from the same pot in the squadron? Did anybody else in the squadron get sick besides your formation?”
“No, sir, on the coffee. I was drinking a Coke, and Wollensak is a Mormon, he doesn’t drink any kind of caffeine.”
“Okay, Captain. You hang in there,” Guns said, as he patted the Captain on the back, without actually making contact. “I’m going to talk to the OIC.”
Guns walked up to the nurses station.
“I’d like to speak to the Hospital Commander.”
“Right away, sir,” she responded. She picked up the telephone handset and pressed one of the buttons.
“Colonel Ryder, line three,” she announced over the loudspeaker.
Almost instantly her telephone rang. The nurse answered on the first ring.
“Sir, Colonel Navarone would like to see you at station seven.” She put down the receiver and turned to Guns. “Sir, he’ll be with you shortly.”
After a few minutes, there was a voice behind Colonel Navarone.
“Colonel Navarone, I’m Doctor Ryder. You wanted to see me?”
“Hello, Doc, Can you fill me in on what happened?”
“So far we have,” he looked down at a report on his clipboard, “fourteen cases presenting with abdominal cramping, diarrhea, vomiting, and high grade fever. At this point, we can’t tell if it’s viral, bacterial, or something they ingested. We’ve collected samples from several of the patients to run some cultures, but until the results get back – or one of these guys can stop vomiting long enough to talk – we just have to treat their symptoms. Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I need to get back to my patients.”
As Doctor Ryder was walking away, a bus arrived, teeming with seriously-ill enlisted troops. Guns could see that this was starting to become an epidemic.
David Rice entered the hospital through the Emergency Room entrance, squeezing past some of the patients being wheeled in. Guns spotted him and rushed over.
“Tell me you’re not sick, too.”
”No, sir. I’m here to tell you that this has all the markings of a Triad attack.”
“We’ve got something going on here, Donny, but I don’t there’s anything to indicate that this is an attack.”
“This is how Triad works. He makes everything look like an accident or human error.”
“But there’s nothing definite to suggest this is intentional. For all we know, this could be a mass case of the flu,” Guns challenged.
“But,” David protested, “what are the odds that everyone gets sick at exactly the same time? And on Easter?”
“What’s Easter have to do with it?”
“Triad likes to attack on a holiday. I told you that, I’m sure of it. This is too much to just be an unhappy coincidence.”
“Donny, you’re presupposing that this is an attack, when it could be something totally different. You’re looking at this through a very small lens. I think when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Let’s not go overboard until we see what the lab tells us why these guys are sick.”
“Fine, I guess we’ll have this conversation again when the results are available.”
“Sounds like a good idea, Donny.”
Just then Nurse Hunter walked by and caught the tail end of their conversation.
“Donny? I thought you said your name was David,” she said to David.
“Donny’s my nickname for him,” Guns replied. “Inside joke. So you guys have met?”
“We met at the DOOM Club the other night,” Kelly replied. “We’re supposed to go get some coffee later, but at the rate these patients are coming in, I don’t think I’ll be able to get away.”
Guns felt mildly hurt that David had spurned his invitation to go to the DOOM Club with him.
As Kelly finished speaking, another busload of patients arrived.
“I need to go,” she said, “David, give me a call later.”
Guns caught the wink she gave David as she walked away.
5
May 30, 1968
Bien Hoa Air Base, South Vietnam
Captain Bill “Jinx” Jindal, Covey 222, felt an uneasiness he hadn’t experienced since his first combat flight, twelve months earlier. Back then, it hadn’t taken long for him to lose the butterflies once he saw what actual combat was like. He even got a kick out of getting into pissing contests with enemy gunners. He enjoyed the adrenaline rush, the sight of secondary explosions, the feeling of getting great BDA - Bomb Damage Assessment.
But this was different. This was going to be his champagne flight, his last combat mission before his DEROS – Date Eligible for Return from Overseas – and he wasn’t going to do anything stupid to fuck it up. He’d fly the requisite four hours over the Ho Chi Minh trail, and look for targets, but he’d be damned if he’d hang his ass out just to get BDA this time. All he wanted was to complete the mission and get his ass aboard a freedom bird. If he
didn’t see any targets or control any airstrikes today, that was just just fine with him. And if he did conduct airstrikes, he'd fly well above small arms altitude. And if all he accomplished was turning trees into toothpicks, that was okay, too.
He didn’t even really want to fly his champagne flight, but it was a ritual he'd been waiting a year to experience. The guys in the squadron would be waiting for his return to hose him down with the base fire truck, then they’d all go to the bar at the DOOM Club and he’d ring the bell over the bar and buy drinks for everyone. And as everyone got shit-faced drunk, they’d all sing bawdy songs and tell war stories, stories with Jinx playing a leading role. It would be a way of providing closure, of saying goodbye to his squadron-mates, the guys who had become his brothers.
As he picked at his breakfast at the DOOM Club restaurant, another O-2 pilot caught sight of him and joined him at his table.
“Hi Jinx. Mind if I join you?”
“Morning, Biff. Have a seat.”
“Biff” was the nickname that Bill Bilford, Cottonmouth 3, had picked up when he’d arrived at Bien Hoa about six months earlier. It was unusual to see him at the club this late in the morning. Most of the O-2 missions were flown at night, so the pilots usually ate in the early morning after their missions or late at night, before they went to fly.
“A little out of your element when the sun is up, no?”
“Not so much,” Biff replied, “I’m DNIF, so Major Smith has me manning the duty desk starting at noon. Besides, I don’t want to miss your fini flight.”
The thought had crossed Jinx’s mind to put himself on Duty Not Involving Flying status also. All it would take would be a visit to the flight surgeon, and a small uncheckable lie, like “I can’t clear my ears,” or “I have a headache,” and he’d be temporarily grounded. But if he did that, he’d miss the closure, miss the ceremony at the bar, and maybe some day regret not having a champagne flight. And he’d feel like he was wimping out.
“Something wrong with the food today, Jinx?”
“No, I just feel funny about finally finishing up my tour. To tell you the truth, Biff, I’m not even looking forward to this flight. I just want to get it all over with and get on my freedom bird. I think I’ve had enough of Vietnam.”
“Jinx, you know I’m a big believer in following your gut. If you don’t feel like flying your final mission, just tell Major Smith. It’s no big deal, really. All of us Lieutenants are time hogs anyway, so it will be no problem to get someone else to take the sortie. I’d do it myself if I wasn’t DNIF.”
“Yeah. And then everybody will call me a wimp behind my back and after I leave, like with Pussy Peterson.”
“First of all,” Biff countered, “everyone called him Pussy Peterson to his face, because he only wanted to fly FCFs and was afraid of combat. And when he did fly combat, he never got BDA because he stayed as far away from the trail as he could. I didn’t call him Pussy, I called him the Astro-physicist, because all he did was take up time and space.”
Jinx seemed to relax a bit.
“That’s a good one, Biff.”
“Listen, Jinx. You’ve earned the respect of every swinging dick in this squadron. You don’t need to do anything to impress anyone. If you don’t feel like flying, listen to your gut, okay?”
Biff checked his watch and stood up.
“Gotta run, Jinx. Do what you think is right. I’ll see you at dinner either way.”
“Okay. See you.”
Jinx had no way of knowing that Biff was now more worried than he was. It seemed like everyone Biff had gotten close to had “bought the farm” – been killed – and now Biff couldn’t wait to personally pour Jinx into that freedom bird back to the world.
May 30, 1968
Bien Hoa Air Base, Vietnam
Major Smith was waiting at the squadron to greet Jinx when he arrived from the DOOM Club.
“Well, Jinx, ready for the big one?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been getting ready for today for an entire year.”
“You know,” Major Smith said, “when you get back from your flight, things will probably get a little hectic, so I just wanted to take some time now to tell you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for us during your tour. You know, when I arrived at Bien Hoa, Major Clark told me there were a few guys I could always count on to get the job done no matter what, and your name was at the top of that list. I wish there was some way to talk you into staying in the Air Force.”
“Well, to be honest, sir, my fun-meter has pretty much been pegged ever since MPC went back on their word.”
The Military Personnel Center – MPC – was the organization that was in charge of assignments. The standing joke in the Air Force was that the way to tell if a Personnel Officer from MPC is lying to you is that his lips are moving.
“Jinx, I’d be lying if I said we have a perfect system. But the most important thing is the mission, and sometimes the needs of the service take priority over previous promises.”
“I know, sir,” Jinx said, “But, at this point, I just want to get on with my life. Martha’s dad has been having some health problems, and I’m going to help him out with the furniture store. But I will always treasure the experiences and camaraderie we had here in the 19th.”
“I hope you get everything you’re looking for.”
“Thank you, sir. One more day and a wake up.”
The “one more day and a wake up” was a reference to the short-timer calendar that everyone received when he arrived in Vietnam. It was a sheet of paper with what appeared to be a spider-web of lines with numbers in each of the 365 openings between the lines. It was really a paint-by-the-numbers drawing where each day the GI would fill in one more opening with the color corresponding to that number. At first the picture didn’t make any sense, but as the GI got closer to DEROS, it would become easier to visualize what the picture represented. When fully completed, it was a picture of a voluptuous blonde and a reclining GI. The blonde in the picture was reaching down to touch the last block to be filled in, which, of course, was the GI’s crotch. The count-down calendar was a constant reminder that there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
Jinx seemed distracted as he went through his pre-mission duties. The Intelligence Officer noticed that Jinx wasn’t as engaged as usual. Even Sergeant Williams, the NCOIC of the Life support Section, noticed that Jinx was preoccupied.
“Forget something, sir?” the Sergeant asked Jinx, nodding toward the parachute rack. Jinx had actually started to go out to the airplane without his parachute.
“Oh, shit. Thanks, Sarge. Looks like I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached.”
“No problem, sir. Have a good flight. And congratulations. Oh, and Happy Memorial Day.”
Jinx performed a hurried preflight and pulled the pins on his rocket pod himself, so he wouldn’t need to taxi all the way to the quick-check/arming area. The practice of pilots pulling their own pins was strictly prohibited, but, “What are they going to do to me,” Jinx thought, “send me to Vietnam?”
Jinx cranked up the engines, checked in on Ground Control frequency, and advised he could accept an intersection takeoff. He was transferred to Tower and cleared into position at Sierra intersection, giving him 2000-plus feet of runway, more than enough for takeoff. When he received his takeoff clearance, he breathed a sigh of relief and fire-walled the throttles.
The aircraft accelerated normally and, with about 500 of runway feet remaining, was airborne.
But there was a problem. In his haste to finally get his champagne flight over and done with, Jinx had neglected to perform a critical pre-flight duty: he had failed to confirm free and proper movement of the flight controls.
The control yoke was totally frozen. Jinx couldn’t bank the airplane, couldn’t control the pitch. He frantically pulled on the yoke, but it wouldn’t budge. The nose of the airplane was rising precipitously and the stall warning horn was blaring. Then the airplane shuddered.
; Finally, Jinx identified the problem. He could see that there was a shiny metal object sticking into the flight control lock on the aircraft yoke. Someone had installed a bolt – a bolt! – into the opening used for the control lock on the column. Jinx reached for the bolt, but it was stuck. There wouldn’t have been time to remove it even if he had managed to loosen it because the airplane had already begin to stall and enter a spin from an altitude of 200 feet.
A few seconds later, it crashed in a fireball just off the end of Runway 9 Left.
6
April 9, 1969
DaNang Air Base, South Vietnam
The intercom on Colonel Navarone’s desk gave a sharp buzz and Guns picked up the receiver to answer it.
“Sir,” the Sergeant in the outer office announced, “Mr. Rice is here to see you.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. Send him in.”
David entered the room and began to salute.
“Come on, Donny, we can dispense with that. You’re right on schedule.” He motioned to a set of overstuffed leather chairs on the far side of the room and gestured for him to have a seat.
“Are you ready to discuss the Easter incident now, sir?”
“You bet. I’ve advised Gunfighter One that I’ll be in a classified meeting all afternoon.”
Guns strode over to his desk and retrieved a file folder from his in-basket.
“I have the lab results on the cultures from the hospital, and they all had the same thing: E. coli E157. We cultured all the food from the dinner, and the stuffing came back with the same result. To put it bluntly, someone defecated in the Easter stuffing. Holy shit, right?”
David reached into his briefcase and withdrew a folder. “I have the same report and this sabotage has Triad written all over it.”
“Yeah, it’s sabotage all right, but there’s nothing to even remotely suggest that this is Triad. In fact, we know who did it. It was some gomer cook.” Guns pulled a photograph from his file and slid it across the desk to David. It was a photo of an old Vietnamese woman. It appeared to have been taken at the base Pass and Identification section.