Pale Blue

by Mike Jenne

  “Do they have the pilot?” whispered Glades.

  Finn shook his head. “I didn’t see him. Damn it, Nestor, they’re headed straight for us. Whatever we do, we had better do it chop, chop.”

  Glades nodded his head and motioned for the two men to return to their spots in the perimeter. He gestured for the team to be ready to move immediately. Rising to a kneeling position behind a tree, he peered through his East German Zeiss binoculars at the row of NVA soldiers slowly moving through the woods about three hundred yards distant.

  He was mystified by the development; it was as if the NVA knew precisely where they were. The NVA unit’s progress was apparently governed by a pair of men operating what appeared to be an RDF—Radio Direction Finding—device. The two men would move forward a few paces, sweep the air with a cage-like contraption of parallel antennas, and then repeat the process.

  The remainder of the NVA paced their movement on the RDF crew, so the mass of men appeared to like a giant sluggish caterpillar crawling sideways. Glades suspected that the RDF operators were sniffing the two SAR guard frequencies—243.0 and 282.8 megahertz—pre-set on the PRC-90 survival radio issued to the pilot.

  Glades considered the situation for a few seconds. Although the NVA unit’s relatively slow pace would buy the rescue team precious time, he saw that their options were painfully limited. The link-up site had been selected so that it could be readily located by the evading pilot but still offer him a considerable amount of concealment as he moved parallel to the river. As such, it was not a location tenable for mounting a sustained defense, particularly against the overwhelming force now moving in their direction.

  Glades knew that if they ran to the north, they would have to cross the river, and it was likely that they would be chopped to pieces as they swam for safety. At a minimum, they would probably lose a substantial portion of their critical equipment. It was also tempting to flee parallel to the river, but if they did, the NVA would likely surge forward and their escape would be like running through a protracted ambush.

  He saw only one practical way to escape, and that was to assault directly into the midst of the NVA force. Looking toward the other men, he issued instructions using slow motion hand signals. The three Vietnamese SMS soldiers were calm, almost unnaturally so, but Finn and Henson were now noticeably frightened. The Americans’ eyes were open wide and their lips were tightly drawn, as if their grim demise was all but assured. Glades shrugged his shoulders and the five men nodded in assent, indicating that they understood his hastily conceived plan.

  Slithering low, they silently dissolved their small perimeter and arranged themselves in a line parallel to the advancing rank of NVA soldiers. Spaced about ten feet apart, each man carefully positioned his heavy rucksack slightly in front of him, so that it would afford at least some modest protection against gunfire, and poked his left arm through a shoulder strap so that he could swing the pack onto his shoulder in one smooth motion. With their weapons ready, they waited in ambush. Glades wiped sweat from his brow before resting his M79 grenade launcher, primed to fire, beside him.

  Carefully watching the line of approaching troops through binoculars, Glades noticed something unusual. With the exception of the two men operating the RDF equipment, the NVA soldiers appeared to be kitted out with brand new uniforms and equipment. Their pre-mission intelligence reports stated that a newly formed NVA infantry regiment was training nearby, preparing for an upcoming offensive in the South, so he suspected that they had been pressed into service to search for the evading pilot.

  Soon, it was time to kill. Glades selected his target. He thought of the simple guidance he gave while training his Vietnamese recon troops. He had conditioned them to seize absolute advantage of the surprise granted by firing the first shot. He taught them that once the first shot was fired, there would be just the slightest instant of confusion and hesitation, and then people would instinctively react and take cover.

  So that first shot had to count; it had to kill, and selectively so, not just dropping the common soldier. In training, Glades had jokingly told his Vietnamese counterparts, “If there’s ever a question of who to shoot first, don’t shoot the guy with the radio, shoot the guy standing next to the guy with the radio.” And although the suggestion was humorous, to a certain degree, it also rang with truth. He scanned the line of troops and spotted a NVA soldier carrying a radio.

  Looking to the radio operator’s right, Glades identified a man who was clearly an officer. Although the green NVA uniforms lent few clues to distinguish superior from subordinates, Glades saw a map case lightly swinging at the man’s waist. The low morning sun glinted from a wristwatch on his left forearm. Those indicators—together with the mannerisms that naturally came with leading troops—marked the NVA officer for the first bullet.

  Glades signaled the others in the team. In a sign language that would be incomprehensible to anyone outside the intimate circle of the team, he conveyed his plan. In the subtle movement of his hands, he designated which target was his; from that, they knew to distribute their fire and select their own targets to the left and right. He specifically designated Finn and Hieu to engage the RDF operators; hopefully, killing them would snatch that card from the enemy’s hand.

  As he waited the last few seconds, patiently allowing the line of NVA troops to draw closer and closer, he carefully aligned his sights on the man he would shoot. His attention was riveted on the map case at the officer’s side. He wanted it badly, not as a keepsake but because it likely contained a map or other intelligence that might lend clues to the disposition of other NVA forces in the area. The terrain was furrowed with small draws and ridges running perpendicular to the river. Glades decided that he would wait until the officer walked about forty more meters, into a slight draw, which should afford some slight cover as he grabbed the map case.

  What happened next happened in a second. And if a second could be parceled into many pieces, the stories told and ended in that second would be manifold. Knowing that the timing was as close to perfect as it could be, Glades aimed steadily at the center mass of the officer’s chest, so that his bullet would pass directly through the man’s heart, drew a breath, exhaled half of it, and exerted gradual pressure on the AK’s trigger.

  It was just as if he was a boy again, hunting a rabbit for his mother’s stew; the gun went off almost by itself. The copper-jacketed projectile crossed the short gap in a trajectory that was almost flat. Sure that he had touched off a clean kill, Glades was dismayed as the NVA officer pivoted slightly and stooped slightly to the right in the last split-second before impact.

  Instead of smacking him square in the chest, as Glades had intended, the bullet caught the officer in his left shoulder and spun him off his feet. He pin-wheeled backwards, tumbling to the ground. In the same instant, the rest of the team fired; their weapons sounded in one report.

  Other NVA soldiers fell, and the rest were obviously stunned with momentary confusion. Finn yelled for everyone to put their heads down, and then detonated Claymore directional mines they emplaced last night to protect the perimeter. A gale of high velocity metal swept through the ranks of the NVA, blasting several more off their feet.

  The carnage continued. The team continued firing as Glades rose to his knees and pointed the M79 at the disintegrating green line. He was fond of the versatile grenade launcher; he didn’t use its sights—in fact, he had long since removed them—but aimed it instinctively, in a manner not unlike throwing a baseball or casting a bass lure.

  He fired, and the 40mm grenade detonated with a sharp CRUMP about twenty meters to the left of the wounded NVA officer. Even as the pale gold grenade was still in the air, he smoothly reloaded and sent a second grenade to a point about twenty meters to the right of his first target. He fired again, then dropped the M79 so that it dangled on a strand of parachute cord beside him, and picked up the AK-47. Then he was on his feet, swinging his rucksack onto his back and sprinting forward. Glades had created chaos
and now ran headlong into it. The other men were up and following him instantly, maintaining their tight little line.

  Glades had been in his share of ferocious firefights, but very few fought this closely and fiercely. The team instinctively slipped into the gap they had blasted in the NVA formation, and quickly fell into position as if they were securing a breach in a perimeter. Half the team oriented themselves to the left, directing their fire down the line of NVA troops to the east; the other half faced the opposite direction, firing at the green-clad soldiers to the west.

  Despite the overwhelming odds against them, the team fired methodically. Instead of relying on the standard American tactic of full auto “spray and slay” to compel the enemy to panic and seek cover, the men fired precisely and discriminately, every single bullet finding a target and in most cases, instantly killing the recipient.

  Brushed by scores of passing bullets, the vegetation was animate; leaves fluttered as branches and twigs twitched. The air was also alive, crackling and booming, laden with almost as much metal as oxygen, filled with the shrieks and anguished cries of dying men.

  Glades’s plan was simple. He wanted the two isolated wings of unseasoned NVA troops to turn towards the breach, where the rescue team was currently hunkered down, systematically decimating their ranks. Deprived of their leader, the unseasoned NVA soldiers would begin firing on themselves in the ensuing panic and confusion.

  He fired four quick rounds in succession, downing three NVA soldiers attempting to rush them, hurled a pair of grenades, and then knelt beside the NVA officer he had wounded only moments before. He drew a curved magazine from the cloth pouch across his chest, and reloaded the AK. He was angry with himself for not killing the officer outright; the man’s plight reminded him of the possum he had wounded in his first successful hunt as a child. He decided that since the officer was still alive, he might be of intelligence value.

  He gestured to Henson, waving him towards the downed NVA officer. “We’re taking him as a prisoner. Get him ready to move,” he calmly shouted over the din of gunfire. “You have about a minute at best. Stay with him and keep him alive. You can patch him up better down the road.”

  Henson deftly applied a combat dressing to the dazed man’s shoulder wound. As the medic exerted pressure on the wound to slow the profuse bleeding, Glades drew his Kabar knife and sliced through the strap of a map case slung over the officer’s shoulder. He glanced into the case, quickly inventorying its contents, before stuffing it into one of his thigh cargo pockets. As he frisked the officer, Dai Uy Quan rifled the pockets of the dead radio operator. After locating a notebook, Quan fired several rounds into the radio to ensure that it was out of commission.

  When it looked like they wrought enough mayhem, Glades pounded Henson’s shoulder. “Secure the prisoner! We move in ten seconds! Move in ten!” he shouted above the noise. He repeated the action with Finn on the opposite flank. “We move in ten! Move in ten!” He yanked a smoke grenade from an ammo pouch on his belt, tugged out the pin and dropped it at his feet. “Move!” he yelled as the obscuring smoke started to billow.

  Carrying the wounded prisoner, they ran approximately five hundred meters to the southwest. Glades paused momentarily so the men could sow a string of M14 toe-popper mines on their back trail, ideally to discourage any NVA soldiers who might stubbornly pursue them.

  Afterwards, they doglegged to the south and then to the northeast, forming a large buttonhook. He intended to gradually make his way back to the river, winding through a series of additional anti-tracking buttonhook maneuvers, hopefully to find a hiding place in the swampy ground running parallel to the waterway as it meandered toward the southeast.

  They had been moving for almost an hour before Glades ordered them to halt. There were no indications that they were being chased, so he granted the men a few minutes to catch their breath and grab a quick gulp of water.

  He opened the map case to examine its contents more thoroughly. He found a map and opened it, and was stunned to find the planned link-up site—the place where they had patiently waited last night—clearly marked in pencil. He was furious, but said nothing. Obviously, someone higher up the food chain was funneling information to the North Vietnamese. The prisoner was a heavy burden to lug along, but if he could furnish any clues concerning the leak, he could be worth his weight in gold. Not revealing his discovery to the others, Glades leaned toward Henson and said, “Make damned sure that you keep this guy alive.”

  12:48 p.m.

  The team sought asylum in a dense swamp adjacent to the river. Besides the need to remain silent, every step required a deliberate effort, since there was at least a foot of vile foot-grabbing muck concealed under the waist-deep water. After quietly slogging for almost three hours, Glades located a slightly elevated piece of dry ground sufficiently large enough to accommodate the seven men. Settling into a tight gaggle, the team packed onto the cramped hummock as best as they could. The moss-covered ground was damp and squishy, but at least it offered a respite from constant immersion in the murky water that surrounded them.

  Although his capacity for Vietnamese was limited, Glades examined the prisoner’s documents. In addition to his official identification, the man carried a ration card, a handwritten roster of about twenty personnel, and a small black-and-white photograph of a young woman cuddling an infant child in her arms. The woman’s face was sorrowful, as if she had not seen her husband in a long time and probably did not expect to see him again.

  The captive’s blood-spattered papers identified him as Bao Trung, a twenty-four-year-old lieutenant born in Haiphong. Dai Uy Quan, who possessed a good grasp of English as well as Vietnamese, interpreted the documents for Glades. According to the papers, Bao Trung had been in the North Vietnamese Army for six years. He had spent three years as an enlisted soldier, apparently in some obscure technical field, before he was commissioned as an officer.

  Quan reached into his pocket and pulled out the radio operator’s notebook. Smiling, he handed it to Glades. “Radio frequencies, call signs and code words,” he observed.

  “Monitor these,” stated Glades, passing the waterlogged notebook back. Quan softly issued orders in Vietnamese. Nodding solemnly, Trung si Dinh took the notebook before opening his soaked rucksack. The SMS sergeant extracted a Soviet-made radio from his pack, switched it on, fidgeted with some dials, and then clamped a set of awkward earphones over his head.

  Although clearly in severe pain, Bao Trung’s face exhibited a resolute demeanor as he watched the proceedings. He obviously expected to be tortured for information.

  “Whenever you’re ready, I can motivate him to talk,” boasted Quan. Grinning enthusiastically, he drew a thin-bladed Gerber combat dagger from a leather sheath and brandished it toward the prisoner.

  Trung si Hieu squatted behind the weakened Bao Trung, brutally snatched him by the wrists, and then stretched him out over a rucksack. Trembling and squirming, the captive’s eyes opened wide, silently pleading for Glades to intercede.

  “Stow that pig sticker, Dai Uy,” growled Glades. “I don’t condone that crap.” He dug a green-wrapped “indig” ration out of his rucksack. “Feed him. Give him some water to drink.”

  Glades continued. “Tell him that we’ll treat him humanely, but no matter what happens, he is coming out with us. Make sure that he knows that it’s better to cooperate now instead of later, especially if he keeps us from walking into an ambush. Tell him, Quan.”

  “I will, but I don’t know why you’re being so lenient,” said Quan. “And I think it is a bad idea to take him with us. He’ll be nothing but a hindrance.”

  “It’s not your decision, Dai Uy,” answered Glades.

  Wearing a stubborn expression, Hieu reluctantly released Bao Trung. The sergeant quietly tore open the indig ration. He poured water into a plastic bag filled with dried rice and shrimp, stirred it with a plastic spoon, and then set it aside to reconstitute. He unscrewed the lid from his enameled NVA canteen and held it to
Bao Trung’s lips. Obviously unsure of what was to ensue, the thirsty NVA officer gratefully drank.

  As the Hieu fed Bao Trung, Glades examined a folded piece of black silk that he found at the bottom of the map case. He opened it, and spread it out on the damp ground. Approximately a meter on each side, the square segment of fabric was intricately embroidered with odd symbols and Vietnamese characters. Thinking that it was somehow pertinent to the mission, he nudged Quan, who quietly asked Bao Trung about the mysterious cloth.

  Quan spoke quietly to the NVA officer. Glades didn’t understand the conversation, but he could clearly discern from Bao Trung’s face that it was a prized possession.

  Quan turned to Glades and explained, “Your prisoner is an amateur astronomer. That cloth is a homemade star chart that his wife made for him. She copied it out of an astronomy book and sewed it entirely by hand. It has all the constellations and planets. It took her months to make it. It was her wedding gift to him.”

  “A star map?” asked Finn. He leaned over to examine the needlepoint celestial map, and then started to roll it up. “Man, this will make a great souvenir!”

  Bao Trung was obviously distraught that the American would confiscate his precious keepsake, but obviously realizing that he wasn’t in a position to argue, he made a gesture to indicate that Finn was welcome to take it.

  “Cool,” noted Finn, jamming the black silk in his thigh cargo pocket.

  “Not so fast,” interjected Glades, yanking the cloth from Finn’s pocket. He neatly folded it and placed it in Bao Trung’s lap. “It’s his personal property, and we’re not taking it from him.” Glades turned toward Henson and added, “Patch him up as best you can. He has to be hurting something awful. Give him something for the pain, but lay off the morphine until I tell you. I don’t want him floating when we talk to him.”