Gene sighed. “That’s okay.” He folded the letter and put it back in its envelope.
“I’ll get NILO,” Jim said. “You get Marc and the old man.”
“Yeah.”
Willie was playing poker. Gene tapped him on the shoulder, and he looked up. “You ready to go?”
“Sure,” he said, and folded his hand.
Willie went to the KCS camp to get an interpreter and bring him back to Seafloat, while Gene talked to Brian.
“Get the old man’s clothes too and bring him outside. When Willie gets back with the interpreter, we’ll have a Whaler warmed up and standing by.”
Brian brought Raggedy out just before midnight. The old man was almost too drunk to walk in spite of Brian’s help. He was not only nodding and smiling, he was giggling and trying to sing.
Marc stood at the edge of Seafloat, next to an empty M-60 can weighed down by the sandbag inside. Gene faced him from some distance away, with Jim and Johnny from NILO standing behind him.
He motioned to his right. “Brian, take Raggedy and stand over there, by Willie and the interpreter.”
While Brian walked the old man over, Gene checked the inside of the magazine again before putting it into the M-16. He cocked the weapon. When Brian and Raggedy were in place, he spoke to the interpreter. “Tell the old man SEALs cannot be killed. Tell him we are letting him go back home, to tell his people that they have three days to surrender or we will come back in and kill them all.”
Gene waited until the interpreter had finished. Then he raised the M-16, aimed it at the middle of Marc’s chest, and squeezed the first blank round off. When he looked at Raggedy, Gene saw his eyes were wide. He was shocked.
Marc hadn’t flinched. He stood immobile, his startling light blue eyes slightly narrowed, with a look on his face that was absolutely cold—totally without feeling.
Gene cocked the M-16 and fired the second blank into him. He didn’t even blink. The Eagle, Gene thought, is one scary-looking dude. Raggedy was clinging to Brian’s arm, staring.
He cocked the M-16 again, knowing the old man would never notice. All his attention was on Marc. After firing, he had to re-cock the weapon. Having the bullet removed, and replaced with light wadding to keep the powder in, wasn’t enough to blow the bolt back. He’d have needed a blank firing adaptor, but they were only used in training. None was available on Seafloat. Too late for training here.
He fired two live rounds into the M-60 can, blowing holes in it that Raggedy could clearly see. Gene thought the old man was going to have a heart attack. He was praying and muttering a thousand words a minute.
“You evil spirits, you evil spirits,” was all Gene could make out.
After he’d fired two more blanks at Marc and two more live rounds into the M-60 can, Marc, still with that awful absence of feeling on his face, simply walked away and disappeared in the crowd of SEALs, who’d appeared at the sound of the first shot.
It took a little while for Brian to get the old man calm enough to listen.
Gene turned to the interpreter. “Tell him to tell his people what he saw, and that they have three days. No more.” He glanced around. “You-O, show him the M-60 can, up close.”
The old man looked, but wouldn’t touch it. He was repeating, “You evil spirits,” over and over.
“Brian,” said Gene, “get him dressed in his own clothes, will you?”
“Right,” he said. “God, I hope this works.”
When Raggedy was dressed, Willie, Brian, the interpreter, and Gene loaded him into the Whaler and moved out to drop him off at the mouth of the river to the east of Twin Rivers. After the old man had scurried off into the darkness, they returned to Seafloat.
Johnny, from NILO, stopped Gene, who was on the way to get some rest. “It just might work. We can’t go get them. Maybe they’ll bite and come to us.”
“Time will tell.” Gene started coughing again. “Gotta get some sleep.”
In bed, he said a prayer for the old man. He’d hated frightening him so, but maybe the villagers would come out, maybe Raggedy would have the chance to live out his life in peace. He reached for one of Karen’s letters. Tomorrow would bring another day—and another op.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GENE WOKE BEFORE SUNRISE, drenched with sweat, his bunk soaked with it. He squinted at his watch and calculated he’d had a badly needed six hours of sleep. In one motion, he sat up, swung his legs over the side, and dropped to the floor. The impact sent a shock wave through his body that culminated in his skull. His chest and throat were so congested, he choked, setting off a chain reaction of coughing. It felt like twenty pounds of C-4 had gone off, high-order, in his head.
He dressed in the dark and tried to suppress the coughing so it wouldn’t wake the others. They wouldn’t be getting up for another two and a half hours. Don’t want to be the one to do that, he thought as he took his meds. He sprayed his throat, wiped his face, and quietly left the hootch.
Outside, Seafloat lay silent in the night. Gene went to the east end of the barge to watch the sun rise. The dark sky, vast and majestic, glittered with what seemed a billion stars. Far off, on the horizon, the pale aura over the jungle told him a light rain fell there. The sight conjured memories of the rhythmic sounds of rain against a gray-black backdrop of sky, the cool night smell of it that always surfaced thoughts of home.
He stood watching, silently describing the feel of pre-dawn to himself—quiet, still, calm, peaceful. And suddenly he thought of Sara—her softness, how pretty she was, and how much she cared—not just about her patients but about all of them out here. She would never know how much she had eased his pain and loneliness.
Arms crossed, he stared out across the dark jungle, seeing only her face. Before they’d held each other, he’d seen the effects of stress, constant involvement with pain, and the weariness in her face. Afterward, for a while at least, there had been the absence of those things.
But he should never have…Even as he asked God to forgive him, Gene thanked Him for bringing him and Sara together. They would probably never see each other again. Fare thee well too, he wished her silently.
The horizon turned rose and lavender and peach. Forget, he ordered himself. Somehow, thoughts of Sara had to be buried. Dreaming of her, out here, was distracting—too dangerous to allow. Once back in The World, it could be dangerous to his marriage, and hurtful and unfair to Karen. He jammed his hands into his back pockets and focused attention on the fiery rim of the rising sun.
A gentle breeze came out of the west, caressed his face, and brought the aroma of coffee brewing. He headed in that direction. As he passed the hootches, he heard voices and the sounds of men getting ready for the day.
The hot coffee tasted great. Sitting with a cupful in his hands, Gene thought about the coming break-in op, for Hotel Platoon.
It would be a good op for them. And they’d be operating in an area close to support and extraction. Intel had it that three to five VC had set up a B-40 rocket sight, about a mile east of Old Nam Cam Annex. Their intent, as always, would be to launch rockets at the riverboats on night patrol. Fortunately previous teams had never been able to hit one of the boats, but sooner or later one would.
Overtaken by coughing, Gene almost spilled his coffee before he could set the cup down. Afterward, he felt limp. Each time he coughed it felt as if his head exploded, and a rough, tight chest pain followed. The more he coughed, expelling a thick green mucus, the more raspy his lungs felt. It hurt to take a deep breath.
He took several sips of coffee to soothe his throat before he picked up his fork again. A few minutes later, Hotel’s lieutenant, John Hagar, walked over, set his tray down, and joined him. As they ate, Gene went over the basics of the break-in op. They adjourned to the briefing room a short time later, where he gave Hagar the full intel report on the target.
“The insertion should be around 1600 hours,” Gene advised. “We’ll move slowly to enable the men to get used to the terrain they’ll be working for
the next six months.” Unlike all other military units in Vietnam, the length of a SEAL tour was 180 days. With the number of operations they performed, under their Military Directive, in actual combat time their half year would probably equal a two-year tour with any other unit or service.
“The patrol,” Gene continued, “will be able to familiarize themselves with the sights, sounds, and smells of the Delta. I’ll be your APL, but you should bring in men from your squad to do all the legwork. I’ll be there if needed.”
“Sounds good,” said John. “I’ll get things moving.”
Gene didn’t doubt it. As he expected, the new squad was professional in preparing for the Warning Order and the Patrol Leader’s Order. It seemed like no time before they were getting off the boat at their insertion point.
As substitute for Tommy, Gene took his position in the center of the squad’s file formation. There was still plenty of light as they moved out. The men would be able to see everything.
The silent squad patrolled slowly, observing everything in their new environment. After a time, dusk began to fall. The shadows grew long, and what sunlight filtered down through the levels of treetops to the floor of the jungle would be gone, Gene knew, within thirty minutes.
Oh, shit! Frozen in place, his hand shot up to halt the patrol.
Behind him, the men stopped, but in front, they kept moving. He snapped his fingers to get their attention and got them to halt. The moment John looked back, Gene signaled for him to come to his location. When he did, Gene pointed out the booby trap.
An M-26 fragment grenade was wedged between three branches of a tree, about five or six feet from the ground. Silently he showed John the trip wire running down the back side of the trunk and across the small area. The wire, suspended about six inches off the ground, fortunately was running parallel to the patrol’s movement. If they had crossed over at that point, toward the river, one of the squad would have snagged the wire and pulled the pin, exploding the grenade at head level.
John looked at Gene—with the kind of look that said, My God, but we’re lucky—before beginning the process of calling each man up to see the booby trap, as the rest set security and waited their turn.
“Look carefully,” Gene whispered to each of them. “Where there’s one, we’ll probably find more.”
When Hotel’s point man came up to look at the device, Gene handed him a three-foot pliable twig. “Hold it in front of you, while you lead us to the objective site, to detect trip wires. When the twig touches a wire, you’ll feel the resistance. The twig will bend without setting off the booby trap.”
The point man took the twig. Gene shook his head and stopped him. He took a minute more to show him how to hold the twig and his Stoner together, so that wherever his eyes and weapon tracked, the twig would still be leading. That done, they moved out and headed into their objective.
Once there, just as stated in the PLO, each man settled into position, to wait for the enemy to enter their kill zone.
They’re good, Gene thought. Quiet and wide-eyed. The adrenaline would be pumping through their veins while they waited for the click that would let them open up, with the overwhelming firepower they possessed. He knew, too, that after a few ops, the adrenaline flow would decrease, and they’d learn to relax slightly until the time came when the shit hit the fan.
But tonight they were wired. All senses on full alert, they would be flinching at the smallest noise in the darkness and trying to distinguish the differing sounds of jungle versus man. Gene had no doubt that this, their first op, would stay with them forever. He eased back into his position, closed his eyes for a brief moment, and relaxed.
He felt lousy. Several times during the patrol, he’d shoved his sweatband into his mouth to silence his cough. Sometimes he’d shoved it so far down his throat that he had gagged, and ended up both retching and coughing. Between the heat, the humidity, and his fever, he dripped sweat. Worse, nightfall had brought ten thousand mosquitoes. The noise of the humming little bloodsuckers was a constant background in the jungle.
If intel was correct, the B-40 rocket team would be moving down, in about an hour, to set up on the Son Ku Lon bank.
Slap!
Gene froze and listened hard. Everything stayed silent. One of the FNGs—fucking new guys—must have been bit by a mosquito or a fire ant and slapped his head or face. Very slowly, very carefully, not disturbing the silence, Gene crept over to the XM-203 man and leaned over his shoulder.
Staring into wide brown eyes in a young face, he whispered, “If you slap another mosquito, you could get us all killed. If you survive, and I get out as well, I will rip your head off, defecate in it, then screw it on backward. Here.” He handed the man his insect repellent and returned to his position.
Time crawled. Then Gene heard engines. From the sound of them, it had to be their own Swift boats patrolling, but they were in the wrong area. He and Hagar had cleared an AO of nine grid squares, one thousand square meters per grid, for their break-in op. All of it was off limits to all other operations while they were in there. Aircraft wouldn’t even fly over unless he and Hagar called them in.
Gene’s skin crawled. The boats were coming closer. The slightest sound from anyone in the squad, and the boat—or boats—would turn their bow-mounted, twin .50-caliber machine guns on their location and open up. Their rounds couldn’t pierce the boats’ armor plating, and with only brush for cover, there was no chance for survival.
He watched the two dark masses coming up the river, ever closer, and prayed that Hotel’s squad would maintain silence discipline, that the FNG wouldn’t kill another vampire mosquito. Let them pass…The squad couldn’t make radio contact with TOC…boat crew might hear the radio’s squelch.
Twenty meters from their location, the boats moved slowly. Only minutes until they’d pass—oh, shit! Horrified, Gene watched the boats turn ninety degrees and beach—right in their laps. At high tide, the boats were only feet away, their twin .50s looking down. Please don’t let anyone move…not one muscle.
Without sound, and very slowly, the squad had raised their weapons to return fire if the Swifts opened up on them. Gene felt fear run deep—knew the others felt the same. Now it was a waiting game. God help them if anybody moved.
Hours passed. His legs went numb. Though the 60 grew unbearably heavy, he kept it trained on the boats. In the night, around him, the rest were doing the same. He couldn’t believe their situation. One slight sound…one move…and they would be ripped apart by other U.S. Navy personnel.
The night continued, each second achingly long. The Swifts remained, bows at the bank. Gene’s fears intensified. The boats might stay until sunrise. If that happened, the squad had a good chance of being seen. Once the boat people saw any humans in the jungle, they’d open up, thinking they were the bad guys. Lucky he hadn’t had to cough during the past hours.
No sooner had it come to mind than the urge was there. Maybe fear had prevented it until that point, but once Gene thought about coughing, he had to. The back of his throat tickled, and built-up mucus choked him. With the boats’ .50-calibers staring down, he struggled to negate the need.
He couldn’t cough. The .50s would tear all of them apart. His stomach and chest muscles were rigid. Sweatband in the mouth…wouldn’t work. Even the muffled sound would be enough that they’d open up.
Slowly he took his left hand off the forward grip of the 60 and placed the total weight of the weapon in his right hand. His arms ached and muscles burned, but he had to stay as motionless as possible. Using his left hand, he pulled his sweatband off, then pushed it deep in his mouth to try to suppress the tickle in his throat. He couldn’t. It was too far down.
He had to stop the cough. He couldn’t cost the other SEALs their lives.
Slowly he pulled the sweatband out of his mouth. Holding one corner in his teeth, he wrapped the middle and index fingers of his left hand with the band. His right arm ached with the weight of the 60. He eased the two wrapped finge
rs back into his mouth, reaching down as far as he could, as deep as possible into his throat, and concentrated on not gagging or inducing vomiting. He twisted his fingers to scratch the tickle, and hoping the cloth had caught some of the phlegm, backed them out slowly, never taking his eyes off the boats.
By God, he thought, it had worked. His throat was eased—at least for now.
Well after 2400 hours, the Swifts’ engines kicked into life. Everlastingly grateful, Gene watched as they backed off and headed downriver to the Son Ku Lon.
Nobody moved until the boats were a distance down the river. Then they had to, to get the blood circulating in their legs and buttocks. For minutes, most couldn’t stand. When he could, John signaled for them to rally, two hundred meters to the rear.
In position once more, Hagar said he was ready to go home for the night.
Gene nodded. He had no problem with that. His hands, face, and neck were welted from mosquito bites, as were those of the rest of the squad.
John called for extraction, and when the boat came, they headed home.
“We need to find out who the boats were,” Gene told him on their way back, “and what the hell they were doing in our area of operations.”
With John beside him, Gene headed to TOC as soon as they docked, leaving the rest of the squad to go to their hootch and to bed.
TOC was a somewhat restricted area, and Gene knew it. All operations in their area of the Delta were monitored there. It housed all communications, time frames, call signs, and situation maps. He went straight to the section leader.
“Which Swift boats were on patrol and what areas were they to patrol tonight?”
“We’ll check the situation map,” the section leader said.
Gene stared at it. The area they’d cleared had been reduced by three grids. “Take a look at this, John.”
They had both checked the situation map to ensure there were no other operations scheduled in their AO. Where they’d cleared nine grids, only six were now on the board. Gene looked at the section leader.
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