“You know that won’t happen,” Carlos said smartly. “These hamburgers ain’t smart enough to catch us.”
Then he looked at Burke and grinned. “But we ain’t gonna take any chances either.”
The two snipers began creeping silently through the jungle. They planned to move ten kilometers over the next mountain and up the next ridge, where they could observe the stucco house at a close distance without being seen.
DANG CLOSED HIS thick book and gently placed it inside the leather satchel he had set on the floor next to his chair.
The chain-smoking watchdog folded his newspaper when Dang stepped through the doorway and made his way down the stairs to the hotel lobby. The young architect climbed into a cyclo taxi parked at the hotel entrance and gave the driver directions to his father’s house.
As the driver peddled the three-wheeled, bicycle-driven carriage with its rickshaw-style passenger seat away from the hotel, Dang glanced across the street at the two Americans. They casually finished their beers, stepped away from their street-side table, and began window-shopping as they strolled up the sidewalk in the same direction Dang traveled.
The police jeep pulled away from the corner and turned left in front of the hotel. Another police jeep passed him as he rode toward the edge of town where his family’s small farm had been for three generations. Dang’s older brother would take it over once their father had passed away.
He had chosen to ride home in the cyclo so that the watchdogs could keep close track of him. He wanted to keep them fully occupied with him, especially tomorrow when he would return to the hotel and wait while his brother took their father’s old Land Rover north on Highway 14 to Kontum, and then west on a rugged back road that forded the Ya Krong Bolah, on through Plei Nong and northwest another eight kilometers, along a faint trace, to the stucco house.
There he would deliver the four rolls of film that contained detailed drawings of new facilities and defense structures on and around Tan Son Nhut Airbase. While there, his brother would pick up another box filled with dragon fruit,2 a delicacy that once grew in abundance in the forested mountains west and south of Pleiku. Since the war began, the fruit had stopped growing. Now, one could only obtain dragon fruit from eastern Cambodia, where war and defoliants had not destroyed the fragile plants that produced it.
People in western Vietnam considered dragon fruit sacred. They believed that it would only grow where peace and happiness prevailed. If the plants refused to produce their unique fruit, it meant that an evil time had come upon them.3
As night fell, Dang sat with his father, mother, brother, and young sister, looking at old photographs. His father especially liked a portrait Dang had taken of his sister. He had taken it just after he had returned from Paris and she had enrolled in a Catholic high school in Pleiku. The white audsai4 she wore, her long black hair that hung straight nearly to her waist, and her smooth, narrow face and large black eyes gave her a look of angelic innocence.
Gazing up from the photo, Dang smiled at his sister, who now held her four-month-old baby at her breast. He then turned his eyes toward his brother, whom he loved dearly, and thought of what he must do tomorrow. His risk was great. It posed a serious threat to the safety of his father, mother, sister, and his infant nephew. People they had never known watched them now. But they especially scrutinized Dang. And he now used it to his advantage.
WHILE DANG SAT with his family, a tiger’s roar echoed from somewhere in the valley below the ridge where the two snipers hid. The big cat sounded far enough away that it presented little real threat, but close enough to hear and to raise concern in the minds of Carlos and John. They lay quietly listening to it. Perhaps it called a mate. Maybe it celebrated a kill. More likely, the animal called out caution to all who might trespass here tonight.
Oil lamps glowing inside the house cast a dim orange light through the front windows and across the wide porch where Hathcock and Burke could clearly see a dozen Viet Cong guerrillas squatting barefoot in their dark outfits, talking and eating. The snipers were so close they could hear the men’s voices and words. A black dog ran loose in the front yard, barking incessantly.
“He knows we’re here,” Carlos thought. “Probably smells us. If he comes a-hunting, we’ll have to catch him with a K-Bar. I hate killing a dog, but he’ll probably wind up on their dinner spit tomorrow anyway.”
One of the men threw a sandal at the dog and swore at him. A person did not need a translator to know that the barking irritated the men. An old woman hurried into the yard, caught the dog by the scruff, and tied a short rope around his neck. She disappeared with him behind the house and the dog quit barking.
The tiger roared once more. Voices from the porch followed. “Thank God for the tiger,” Carlos thought. Burke laid his head on his hands and closed his eyes. He would relieve his sergeant in four hours.
LIGHT FOG ROSE from the ground in the valley, laying an eerie cloak over the predawn world. John Burke nudged Hathcock with his heel.
Carlos slowly raised his head and saw the dozen guerrillas in their black shirts and pants—wearing sandals made from tire treads—slip through the fog, rifles in hand. The twelve soldiers followed a trail that led up the ridge, passing within fifty feet of where he and Burke lay hidden. Each man in the Viet Cong patrol carried a large pack strapped to his back.
“Not just a short patrol,” Carlos thought. “They’re heading east, and we’re going to have to deal with them when we leave here.”
The guerrillas passed so close to Burke that he could smell their body odor drifting up the hill on the slight breeze. As he watched the dark shapes creep slowly past him, the words and melody of one of the many Beatles songs that the young pilot had kept playing on the jukebox replayed over and over again in his mind. “How ironic,” he thought.
He knew he would always remember this moment
and the black-dressed enemy coming so close to him. “Baby’s in black” now had a whole new meaning.
IT WAS JUST after nine o’clock when Dang climbed inside the Land Rover and his brother drove him to the hotel. He had arranged to meet a friend he had known since grade school, who now served as an artillery captain in the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam.
He hoped to point out the people watching him, and would ask his friend if he could find out why. He would be very convincing in proclaiming his unyielding loyalty and diligent service to the Republic. Why in heaven’s name would they be watching him? What had he done to deserve such scrutiny? He was only a simple architect.
Dang Quang Phung embraced his friend, who waited in uniform at the corner, in front of the hotel. He had not yet seen the watchdogs, but he knew they were there, watching him greet his old schoolmate.
JOHN BURKE CHECKED his wristwatch. Straight-up noon.
He and Hathcock both heard the distant whine of a jeep-type vehicle climbing through the rocky roadway that led across the low part of the ridge where they lay hidden. Carlos trained his rifle to his left limit, looking to see what approached.
A dark green four-wheel-drive carryall dropped its square snout over the ridge, into a washout of rocks, slamming its front end into the boulders and then lurching forward. Carlos could see the four men inside toss into each other as the vehicle struggled down what may have once been a road but now more closely resembled a stone quarry.
He withheld the laughter that erupted inside him. “Every one of those hamburgers has got busted kidneys,” he thought. “Bet they wished they walked now.”
John Burke put his spotting scope on the vehicle as it approached and saw that the four men wore tan uniforms with red cloth sewn to the epaulets on their shirts. He could see gold devices pinned in the red. “Four officers, NVA, company grade,” he concluded, and then looked at Hathcock.
“Some sort of lieutenants or captains,” Carlos whispered, and Burke nodded.
When the carryall finally stopped in front of the house, the four officers climbed out, stretching their legs and arms. T
hey laughed as they stood around rubbing the circulation back into their thighs.
“These jokers act like they’re back on the block,” Carlos mused in his mind. “One thing for sure, we are someplace where they don’t think they have anything to worry about. We’re probably way the heck across the border in Cambodia.”
He worried a bit more now about what Burke had asked earlier, regarding who knew they were out here. “Long as we get home safe, and no one is the wiser, we best just keep on moving back to the operation where we belong,” Carlos concluded.
Nearly an hour had passed when the snipers heard the noise of a second vehicle climbing its way along the rocky roadway. In a few minutes the front end of the brown Land Rover bounced over the ridge, dropping into the washout with a bang. One man occupied the all-wheel-drive utility sedan.
“Bingo,” Carlos whispered as the vehicle chugged down the slope and then parked in front of the house.
Both snipers trained their scopes on the man as he stepped from the driver’s seat.
“That eliminates the woman and the old man,” Carlos told himself. Then he glanced at Burke who had the spotting scope, which had twice the magnification that Hathcock’s telescopic rifle sights possessed. The sergeant studied the expression on his partner’s face and it confirmed his conclusion. This man was none of the three suspects.
He was young, perhaps late twenties, but he had a thin build and narrow face. A completely different look from the photo of the young man who had a round face and stocky build.
“A complete and total waste,” Carlos thought as the man disappeared inside the house.
Ten minutes later the man walked out the front door, carrying a cardboard box. He bowed to the four officers and they waved good-bye to him. Moments later the brown Land Rover bounced up the rocky roadway and disappeared over the ridge.
The four officers went inside the house, and Carlos decided to wait.
DANG OFFERED TO buy his friend another glass of Johnny Walker Red Label scotch whiskey. Two bar girls had joined the young men and drank their mostly water cocktails slowly, trying their best to entertain their clients and glean more from the large stack of 500-piaster bills that the civilian gentleman carried in his wallet.
As the two men sipped their whiskey, Dang glanced at his watch through the corner of his eye. In another half-hour he would be sure that he had given his brother ample time to have returned home. A woman and a man watched him in the bar across the street from the hotel where he sat with his friend. Outside another police jeep waited.
His leather satchel with Proust’s novel inside had kept the watchdogs’ interest.
Dang had pointed the police jeep out to his friend, as well as another man in the hotel, and now the couple at the bar. His friend had a difficult time believing him, until the young architect took him for a walk two blocks over and one block down, and then back to the hotel, and then across the street to the bar. Throughout the trek, the observers kept them in sight.
“We should go to my father’s home,” Dang suggested. He knew his friend would argue. He would want Dang to accompany him to his apartment and have more to drink.
“I will share a taxi with you to your apartment,” he told the young Vietnamese officer, “but I will just make sure you get home safely. I must be at my father’s home before dinner. However, you are most welcome to join me. The family would be excited to hear your stories of how you are beating these rotten Communists.”
The ARVN artillery captain considered the offer once more. He missed home cooking since his parents had relocated to Na Trang, where they felt much safer. However, he had been drinking most of the day and did not want to risk embarrassing Dang’s family with his drunkenness.
“We have both consumed too much spirits,” he told his friend. “You are welcome to come to my apartment and drink more with me and stay the night. Perhaps these lovely ladies would also enjoy accompanying us?”
Dang smiled. Perhaps he might. However, he must first inform his father of his plans.
“You and I shall go to my father’s home and tell him that we have made plans, and I will be with you tonight,” he said putting his arm over the captain’s shoulder. “I am sure these ladies will wait here until we return.”
“I will sit in the cab, though,” the Army officer said.
“That will be fine,” Dang Quang Phung5 said. “I will speak to him only briefly. Perhaps my brother will join us, too.”
Long shadows faded into the early evening grayness as the two friends hailed a taxi.
AT THE SAME time, the Four North Vietnamese Army officers bounced in their carryall as it climbed across the rocky ridge and disappeared from Hathcock’s and Burke’s sight.
“That was our spy,” Carlos whispered in Burke’s ear. “Colonel won’t like the news, but that’s all we can tell him. I think the only person down there now is that old woman. I expect the show is over.”
Throughout the remainder of the night, the two snipers picked their way quietly down the back of the ridge, across the valley, and over the next mountain. At its base, a narrow stream cut through the ground, eroding the soil from beneath the tall trees that grew along its banks.
Hathcock and Burke had just begun to feel their way toward a place where the ground had broken from the steep walls of the wash and offered them a means of crossing without having to drop ten feet to the water, when footsteps above them froze the two Marines in place.
“Ah yes, our friends in black,” Carlos whispered in Burke’s ear. The lance corporal nodded and pointed to a tree just below them. Half of its roots dangled over the embankment, offering not only handholds down, but a hiding place as well.
“Snakes and scorpions,” Hathcock thought as he slipped down the roots with Burke. “Probably full of ’em. All kinds of nasty critters, I’ll bet.”
Less than ten yards upstream, the first of the twelve Viet Cong slid down the cut in the wash and splashed in the water with a thud. A man above him muffled his laugh. Another guerrilla whispered something to the others, and then the next soldier slid down to the creek.
John and Carlos had pulled themselves up into the mass of roots that emerged beneath the tree’s base, and hung suspended like giant sloths among the tangle of dangling wood, debris, and mud clods. Ants and other biting bugs began to sting the two men as they held their lives in the grips they maintained with their hands and legs.
Ten feet below the two Marines, the water cascaded across fallen logs and rocks that had once lain on the ground by the tree. Floodwaters had taken away the soil and left the heavy objects piled in a jagged mess. If either man dropped, he would most likely impale himself or break an arm or leg. Their only way out was back up.
Carlos felt the muscles in his arms begin to tremble as the Viet Cong continued to slowly cross the stream, one man at a time. The weight of his pack pulled against his shoulders, and he asked God to please hurry the soldiers on their way.
One by one, he counted silhouettes as they emerged into the skyline on the far side of the deep streambed. He could see the packs still on their backs, and believed confidently that these were the same men he and Burke had watched leave the house this morning.
After the twelfth guerrilla disappeared, the snipers waited for what seemed another eternity to be sure no one else followed the patrol. Then, like spiders on a ceiling, the Marines crawled their way back through the roots, and climbed out of their precarious hiding spot.
At the top, Carlos and John saw the distraught looks on each other’s faces, and then began to fight laughter. Burke clamped his hand over his mouth and shut his eyes.
“Never again,” he thought.
HELICOPTER BLADES CHOPPING through the morning air awakened the two snipers as they lay in a hide, catnapping. They had placed themselves well back from the clearing where they would meet their ride home. They crept forward to a place where they could dash to the Huey as it dipped into the landing zone, even so they would only have seconds to fall inside
its open doors. Suddenly anxiety swept over the duo as they heard breaking twigs and thudding feet somewhere behind them.
“They’re coming to greet our ride,” Carlos told himself, looking for a hiding place. Nothing would do. He looked at Burke and whispered, “Let’s get going.”
Both men dashed into the clearing as the gray helicopter appeared at the treetops and then dropped into the tiny meadow. A crewman inside waved at the snipers to come ahead just as bullets began to snap past their ears and pop through the waist-high grass.
Several rounds blew through the Plexiglas windscreen in front of the pilots, and Carlos could see the helicopter begin to tilt forward, lifting the heels of its skids.
As it rose from the grass, both snipers fell into the door, clinging to chair legs and straps as the bird lifted away. Only their arms, shoulders, and heads were inside. The lone crewman in the back began to pull against their pack straps and shirts while Hathcock and Burke kicked and scrambled, and finally slid onto the helicopter’s metal floor.
“Cheated death once again,” Carlos said, lifting his eyebrows, trying to raise a smile from Burke.
“Bug-bitten and scraped up, our clothes all torn. Hell the whole Viet Cong Army right on our heels, shootin’ everything they got at us. I guess we cheated death, all right,” Burke said, finally grinning at his partner. “But not by much.”
8
Hunting White Feather
IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON when the gray helicopter landed at Hill 263 and the snipers hopped out. They had met with the colonel and the intelligence agent to break the news that the man they saw meet the NVA officers was none of the three people in the photographs.
Identifying the Land Rover helped, but not much. There were many like it in this country, especially in the rough territory south and west of Pleiku. Most of the vehicles were refurbished and pieced together from those left behind by the British and the French, like the one owned by Dang’s family in Pleiku. Nearly all were either brown or green.
Silent Warrior Page 14