by David Wind
Xzi Tao and Captain Lin, with two NVA soldiers carrying Xzi’s belongings, and two more following behind, came down the steps of the central building. When they reached the ground, Xzi spoke to two of the soldiers, and pointed toward the copter.
The men carrying Xzi’s bags went to the copter while Xzi and Lin, with their guards, moved toward the prison hut. Once again, Steven’s dread built. Had Xzi been playing with him again? Had the man let Steven believe he’d gotten away with stealing the knife?
Steven looked at the spot where he’d buried the knife. No sign of it showed. Should he get the knife? Should they try their escape now? No, they had to brave it out.
Moments later, the door opened. Xzi Tao and Captain Lin came inside. Lin positioned himself against the wall, next to the door, while Xzi Tao walked up to the three men.
“All of you,” Xzi said, “performed your duty to your country in a manner which you can be proud of. I would ask no more from my own men. When the fighting ends and you return home, you will have no need to be ashamed of what happened here.”
Xzi returned his gaze to Steven. “Lieutenant Morrisy, I wish you to have these.” He pulled something from his pocket and offered it to Steven. “Too many people, on both sides, will be mourned without any final knowledge.”
Looking at what was in Xzi’s hand, Steven’s throat constricted. Slowly, he lifted Cole and Raden’s dog tags from Xzi’s palm.
Curling his fingers around the dog tags, and pressing the metal into his hand, Steven looked quizzically at Xzi. Xzi said nothing; he simply turned and walked out of the hut.
Steven was suddenly lightheaded. Xzi had not realized his knife was missing. They had a chance now.
He called them together to refine his escape plan.
<><><>
It was almost midnight, halfway through the second guard shift, when footfalls approached the hut. “Time,” he whispered.
They lay unmoving, listening intently to the approaching steps.
“Four maybe five,” Latham said, calling on his training as a scout.
The three friends had gone over the details of their escape, looking for anything that might trip them up. The only unknown was the number of men Lin would use to transfer them to the other side of the compound.
The known factors were all accounted for—the guard shifts, the number of guards at any given post, and the distances between guards.
Only one location suited their plans. A spot close to the central building, in the narrowest area, where the view from both the northern guard tower and the southern guard post was blocked.
Steven touched his left arm. Using his fingertips, he traced the outline of the knife hidden beneath his shirtsleeve, and tied to his forearm handle down. He forced himself to leave the knife alone, and keep his arms at his sides.
As the approaching soldiers’ footsteps grew louder, his nerves hummed.
Suddenly, the room came alive with strong beams of light. “Up. Up.” Lin screamed, kicking Steven and the others.
The three men floundered, as if caught by surprise. Lin and the guards laughed and pushed them to their feet. Steven and Latham cowered away from the soldiers, holding their hands over their eyes to ward off the powerful hand held flashlights.
One of the guards grabbed his shirt and pulled him forward. Steven let the guard throw him to his knees, near the door.
“Move!” Lin shouted, kicking Savak in the back of his thighs.
They struggled to their feet while the guards manhandled them out of the hut.
Then, as they stood outside, the guards in the tower turned on the spotlight and pinioned them within it.
“Now you join others. Now you learn what it like to be prisoner.” Lin sneered obscenely “Move!” he ordered, nodding to the guards who prodded them with their rifle barrels.
Steven glanced around. There were four men, not five—Lin and three soldiers. The guard behind him jabbed him again. Steven started forward; Savak and Latham flanked him.
As they crossed the compound, the light from the tower tracking them carefully, Steven’s palms turned moist. He continually rubbed them against his thighs.
When they were twenty feet from the central building, and entering the narrowest part of the compound, the tower’s searchlight no longer reached them. Ahead was the central building. Behind was another gun tower, its searchlight on and waiting for the small group to step into its circle of illumination.
Steven lifted his hand to his mouth and coughed: Savak stumbled.
Steven half turned to Savak, his hands outstretched. Before he could complete the movement, the guard watching him swung the butt of his rifle into the pit of his stomach.
With a strangled groan, Steven sank to his knees and clutched his stomach.
“Up!” Lin snapped, angling toward him even as Steven’s guard reversed his rifle and aimed it at Steven.
“Leave him alone, you bastards!” Latham shouted, taking a step toward Steven.
In the fraction of an instant that the three guards and Lin looked at Latham, Steven moved. He slipped the knife from the scabbard and lunged at his guard. He caught the man in the throat, severing his carotid artery and opening his windpipe with a single stroke.
Within the frozen seconds of time that Steven moved, and before the guard hit the ground, Steven heard a sharp snap from his left, followed by a strangled moan to his right as Savak and Latham took out their men.
Without hesitating, Steven whirled, and lunged at the spot where he had last seen Lin. The captain was just bringing his pistol to bear when Steven reached him. Lin’s eyes widened, but he was too late. Steven’s free hand clamped over Lin’s wrist, preventing him from moving the pistol.
In the same motion, Steven struck with the knife, pushing it hilt deep into the captain’s stomach, and then ripping up. Lin stiffened. His eyes widened in astonishment. The pistol fell from his hand.
Steven released the man, and Lin fell to the ground, dead.
Steven turned, his knife at the ready and found Savak and Latham stripping the weapons from the dead guards.
Steven picked up Lin’s pistol just as the alarmed shouts of the guards on the south end of the camp called out.
“Let’s go,” Savak ordered.
The three took off in unison, disappearing into the thickness of the Southeast Asian jungle.
Chapter Twenty-three
Hagerstown, Maryland.
The telephone rang. Its shrill, urgent call severed the past’s trenchant grip on Steven’s mind. One moment he was back in Vietnam, and the next, he watched Paul Grange answer the telephone in the living room of a Maryland mountain farm.
The timely interruption gave Steven the chance to clear the pain riddled sharpness of his memories, and the opportunity to stabilize himself in the present. He looked down at his hands, and saw he’d been holding Jeremy Raden’s letter throughout his hour-long discourse.
“Sorry,” Grange said, after hanging up. “Please go on.”
Steven put Jeremy Raden’s letter down next to him. “Tao was right about why I didn’t break under the drugs. He was partly correct about the reason for the mission’s failure. But it’s not the whole reason,” Steven said, his eyes locking on Grange’s.
Carla, not Grange, spoke next. “I feel like I’m missing something important. How could you not breaking under drugs turn your mission into a failure?”
Steven studied her face for a long moment. “If I’d broken immediately, or even after two or three sessions, and backed up Savak and Latham’s information, our information might have been accepted. But my resistance was absolutely total.”
The puzzlement on Carla’s face deepened. “I still don’t understand why that caused the mission to fail.”
He handed her Jeremy Raden’s letter. “Read it.”
He watched her closely while she read the letter, and saw her face register surprise. When she finished, she looked at Steven with dawning comprehension. Then she passed the letter to Grange.
As the Secret Service agent read the letter, his eyebrows shot up in surprise. A moment later Grange frowned. But it wasn’t until several seconds after Grange finished reading that he looked at Steven.
“Raden caught it first,” Steven said with a nod. “He had a sharp mind—very creative. It was Raden’s years in ‘The Nam’, and his rank, which enabled him to see through MI’s plan. Our having been gassed rather than shot, and our uniforms taken away so we couldn’t get to our suicide pills should have been confirmation. I didn’t want to believe it—not at first. Yet it was so damned logical. The brass was digging into their tried and true barrel of tactics, and utilizing the strategies that had always worked in conventional warfare to outmaneuver an enemy who was defeating them! Misinformation, misdirected intelligence made to look faultless and true, complete with invasion plans, ship routes and landing sights.”
Nodding, Steven said, “We were sent into the north, to reconnoiter the jungles for the best possible invasion routes for an attack that would catch the Cong by surprise and defeat them. It was our mission and we believed in it completely, because we wanted to. But the major difference between Nam and World War Two was that in the second world war, they made the enemy spies believe. In Nam they tried to use us to make the enemy believe.”
“Sergeant Jeremy Raden didn’t believe it,” Grange said as he leaned forward and extended Raden’s letter to Steven.
Steven looked down at the letter. “No, he didn’t believe it. Raden saw through the hoax because the brass wanted him to know all the details of the mission. As he says in the letter, corporals and sergeants are never privy to that kind of information, no matter what the mission is. He smelled the skunk before anyone knew there was one. Which was why, when I figured it out, I believed I had no other choice but to try and kill myself.”
Laughing bitterly, Steven drew up his left sleeve and showed them the ragged scar tissue.
“But if Raden died, and you didn’t break, how could they have found out?” Carla persisted. Steven took several shallow breaths, fighting down the harsh recall of his memories. “I didn’t break because of the way my mind is set up. Xzi refused to accept the information he’d extracted from the others. He told me that unless I talked, he could not believe any of it. When I refused to corroborate, it confirmed his suspicion.
“What happened when you escaped?” Carla asked, leaning forward eagerly.
Steven glanced at Grange. “Was that in the files?”
“According to the files,” Grange said, “after you took out your guards and Lin, and went into the jungle, you didn’t head for safety. You waited until a patrol came after you, and then the three of you went back to the camp, took out the guards in the south tower, and killed or captured the rest of the NVA troops. You waited in ambush until the patrol returned, and took them out as well.”
Pausing, Grange turned to Carla. “In all, they freed forty American and South Vietnamese prisoners. Then, with Latham leading the way, and Steven and Savak controlling the large party, they worked their way from the North Vietnamese bottleneck into Laos.
“When they reached the original extraction site, it was deserted. They travelled on foot from Laos into Cambodia, and then into South Vietnam. It took two weeks to reach American troops. They came home soon after that.” Grange turned back to Steven. “Is that accurate, or were there other deletions in the records?”
“Up to a point, except for the going home part,” Steven agreed. “While we were running, I told Savak and Latham about what happened. I couldn’t have before, because of the ongoing interrogations. They didn’t want to believe me, but in the end, there was no other choice.
“When we reached safety, and as soon as our arrival had been reported to Saigon, Latham and Savak and myself were separated from the others and flown to Saigon. They didn’t even give us enough time to take a bath.
“We got to Saigon on the day after Christmas, December twenty-sixth, nineteen seventy-one. We were brought directly to Colonel Botlin. We told him our mission had failed.”
Steven looked from Grange to Carla. “After welcoming us back with a smile and a handshake, and without letting us get in another word, Botlin told us, quite confidently, our mission was a success. I took it upon myself to tell him the truth. ‘No, sir, it failed. They didn’t buy our story.’
“The colonel expressed his deepest sympathies for our travails, and told us we were wrong. In fact, he admitted, our capture had been intended all along. He spoke to us as if what we had been through was nothing more than a police lockup back home.
“Botlin went on to confirm the information we had given up, had been exactly what was intended of the mission. Then he tried to assure us we would have been freed very soon, for the assault would indeed be taking place. Just not in the way we had understood.
“Savak asked him when the assault was to start. Botlin smiled, looked at his watch, and said, ‘The first bombs will fall on Hanoi in eleven minutes’.”
“Dear God,” Carla gasped, the brightness gone from her eyes.
Steven fixed her with a hard stare. “There is no God in the army, only superior officers, jackasses, and grunts,” he said angrily. “I can’t even begin to describe my loathing for Botlin and the others like him. Botlin was immune to our feelings as he explained to us how aerial reconnaissance showed extensive troop movement near the border, indicating how totally our false information was accepted. He went on to say the reason they chose the three of us for the mission was because we’d grown up together and had always worked well as a team.
“Apparently the computers in Intelligence had come up with our names. Then the shrinks and computer experts went over our personal histories with a fine toothed comb. Their pre-mission evaluation indicated we would not break under physical torture because we would not want the other two to see any weakness. And our resistance would add more validity to what the interrogation under drugs would reveal.”
“That sounds about right for the time,” Grange said tersely.
“For any time, Grange,” Steven corrected. “When we told him it was a trap, he wouldn’t listen. He went on to say in part, this massing of troops violated agreements drawn up before ‘68, it gave the Americans the ability to bomb Hanoi into oblivion, as well as the troops on the border. While the bombing went on, a pincer attack would cut off the NVA in South Vietnam from their supply lines in the north. Once accomplished, the NVA would be broken and destroyed.
“I don’t know whether you can imagine the desperation of our arguments with Botlin. We tried to explain, that the mission had failed—not the mission we were told about, but the mission they had programmed us to bring about.”
“What happened?” Carla asked, her eyes probing his, her upper teeth worrying at her lower lip.
Steven picked up his glass of scotch and stared at the amber liquid. “When Command Saigon learned we were right, they panicked. They couldn’t just call off the bombing, so they kept it up for five days, going along with what they originally intended; but cancelled the assault mobilization at the last instant.
“Savak, Latham, and I were shipped home that night. We were debriefed for ten days, and informed that a top-secret classification was on WEREWOLF. We were ordered to forget about everything that happened.”
“But the Medals of Honor?”
Steven looked at Carla, his face stoic. “On the surface, it was for the escape and liberation of the prisoners that we led out of the prison camp. In reality, the medals were as much a balm to salve guilty consciences, as they were a bribe to keep us quiet. I guess the record alterations were to make sure that even if we said something, it would be disproved.”
“And the rest is history,” Grange said solemnly. “The bombing of Hanoi put the last nails into the coffin of the war.”
“And ironically,” Steven added, “Xzi used our own history to turn the plan around and make what Botlin hoped to be his Normandy, into his defeat by making Botlin and the high command believe
that their plan had worked.”
Carla stared at him. Her eyes were distant, as if she were somewhere else. Then she bobbed her head, once, and said, “Now I understand why you were so edgy at last night’s reception. Ambassador Xzi...Colonel Xzi...Seeing him again must have been very hard.”
Had it been hard to face the man who had shown him the things he’d believed in were lies? “Oh yes,” he whispered.
“Morrisy,” Grange began, “we need to—”
Steven turned to Grange, cutting him off with a firm wave of his hand. “Whatever you need can wait,” he said, holding Grange’s surprised look.
He’d told his story for the first time in years, and opened his mind to the pain of the past. Now the time had come to learn if he had made a mistake about Grange, and find out if he was here and free, or if he had merely exchanged the FBI for the Secret Service.
He rubbed his side, and felt the hard lump beneath his jacket. “Before I go any further, with anything, there are certain things I need to know.” When Grange nodded, Steven put the scotch down. “How many men do you have here, besides yourself?”
“There are two men outside. Two more are in hidden watch posts at the entrance. There are four additional teams in cars, posted in strategic spots along the highway.”
Steven’s muscles tensed with anticipation. He picked up Raden’s letter and very carefully folded it. He shifted, resting his right arm on the back of the couch, his fingertips grazing Carla’s shoulder. “Have you found out why they tried to kill Ellie?”
He caught Grange’s quick glance at Carla, before the agent said, “I’ve gone over it a hundred times. I’ve put myself in your fiancée’s position, and all I can come up with is that Ellie must have either learned who the mole was, or she’d found something incriminating enough to have eventually led to the mole’s uncovering.”
“That’s your professional opinion?” Steven asked, looking down at Raden’s letter as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. He looked back at Grange and casually put the letter into his shirt pocket. He dropped his hand to his lap.