“Damn,” Elmo said, his face falling comically. “Is it that you’re just jealous, Top? Of my manly physique? My obvious physical beauty? My mile-long…”
Finn left them to it. They’d been together so long and through so much that they acted more like a family than a military unit.
A family that was soon likely to be much smaller.
Within a few minutes they were outside, readying the Montagnard troops that made up the bulk of II Corps Mike Force. The ’Yards, as everyone called them, were an ethnic Indo-Malayan group who had settled in the highlands long before the Vietnamese came down from China. The Vietnamese scorned them as savages. They cordially returned the hatred, being perfectly happy to kill Vietnamese of any stripe, but in this case more particularly the North Vietnamese who came into their villages and pressed their people into labor as porters. The Special Forces had been working with the ’Yards almost from the beginning, following the example set by the French commandos who had fought their own war on the same territory.
Lots of SF called them “little people,” with nary a trace of denigration. The average ’Yard stood about five foot four and weighed perhaps 120 pounds. But the Americans knew they were some of the best fighters in Southeast Asia. Absolutely loyal to the Americans, they would fight to the death rather than let the North Vietnamese (or Viet Cong, though there were few of those to be found these days) kill their friends.
Now they were forming up in ragged lines, shouldering weapons, complaining bitterly as the Americans made them leave behind the huge amounts of ammunition and grenades they habitually carried. Finn had, out of idle curiosity, once weighed the gear an average Montagnard carried into battle and had found that it outweighed its owner.
But it always left them with plenty of ammunition for the fight, an important factor when resupply, they not being an American unit, was problematic. Coming up against a Mike Force company was like being thrown into a buzz saw.
Finn wasn’t too worried about the shortage of Americans. The ’Yard platoon leaders were certainly competent, having had the benefit not only of years of example from their American friends, but combat experience far beyond anyone now serving in Vietnam. Their only problem was language—if they got into a serious fight and needed air support, there was no one within the organization to call for it. But since they were going to be within the confines of Camp Boun Tlak, that wasn’t an issue. There would be plenty of Americans to do that chore, and if there weren’t, well, that would mean that everybody was probably dead, anyway.
His interpreter, Bobby, approached. “A good fuckin’ day, huh, Dai Uy?” he said.
Bobby was half-Vietnamese, half-French, fruit of a long-ago liaison between a soldier of Groupement Mobile 100 and a bargirl from Qui Nhon. Shortly after Bobby had been born, his father was killed, along with most of the others of his unit, in a mile-long ambush in the Mang Yang Pass. Bobby had grown up shunned by both worlds, the Vietnamese looking down on half-breeds and the French abandoning the country. He’d lived by his wits and hard work, supplementing the meager income he made shining shoes on the streets of Qui Nhon with petty thievery. There he was found by a Special Forces sergeant, who not only took him in but started teaching him English to add to his already formidable French, Vietnamese, and Jarai (a Montagnard language). Over the years his instructors had continued to be Special Forces types, which was why he could not string three words together without one of them being fuck.
But he was a brave soldier and utterly reliable in the field. More American, some people said, than the Americans. Snaggletoothed, freckled, his features owing more to his French father than his Vietnamese mother, he could have passed for a darker-skinned American teenager.
His name was actually Robert, but in his hatred for the French, who had abandoned him and his mother, he disdained the pronunciation Roh-bair and had taken to the Americanization of his name with glee.
Finn shook his head. “You’re gonna give the church ladies back home the fits,” he scolded. “Gotta clean up your act.”
Bobby grinned, unconcerned. “Yah, but I bet the girls will like it.”
Finn had promised to look into getting him into school back in the United States, feeling fairly certain that with the drawdown of American forces, Bobby was going to have a lot of trouble with his own countrymen. And that was if the South Vietnamese were able to hold out.
If the NVA won, Bobby was a dead man, as would be all the people who had worked with the Americans.
“The girls,” Finn said, “the nice ones anyway, will be shocked.”
“Dai Uy, what would I do with a nice girl? I find me a nice young whore, we make lots of babies, call the first one Finn.” Bobby interrupted the banter to shout a stream of obscenities at one of the Montagnard soldiers who had just dropped his M16 in the red dirt.
“Betcha he not do that again,” he said, grinning at Finn. “Gonna be hot today, huh?”
“Maybe too hot. You stick close to me. Chopper goes down, we’re able to get away, we’ll E and E. We make it to the camp, we’re gonna have a lot of work to do before tonight. I’ll need your help.”
“No sweat, Dai Uy,” Bobby said. “I stick to you like stink on shit. Kill a whole bunch a fuckin’ communists, you and me. Just like always.”
Gotta hope just like always, Finn thought. Luck is going to run out, one of these days.
Hope it’s not today.
Captain Cozart sat in the cockpit of the Huey, going through the start-up checklist with his copilot. The whine of the turbine soon filled the cabin, and slowly the rotor blade started to turn. Within moments it was chopping through the air, filling the world with a sound that Vietnam veterans, years afterward, would hear and suddenly be transported back in time, the memories so sharp they would swear they could smell the exhaust.
He looked back over his shoulder at the passengers, Captain Finn McCulloden, his interpreter, radio operator, and eight Mike Force troopers jammed so tightly the door gunners had to stand on a tiny piece of floor. He pulled pitch and the chopper slowly, complainingly, lifted a tiny bit, allowing him to turn the nose down the pierced steel-planking runway. He moved forward, gathering the airspeed necessary to get the thing to fly. Normal helicopter takeoff was impossible with this sort of load; they were going to have to make a run at it.
The chopper slowly gained airspeed, and he brought up the stick a tiny piece at a time, finally getting just enough altitude and speed to clear the trees at the end of the runway, albeit by inches. Looking out the rearview, he could see the rest of the lift pulling in behind him, their formation not exactly what would be regarded as precise by the instructors back at Fort Rucker.
“Heading?” he said to the copilot, who studied the map strapped to his thigh and who, after a moment, gave it to him.
He swung the heavy bird in that direction, enjoying, as he always did, the rush of cool air through the opened window. Up here you could imagine you were in an air-conditioned office, far away from trouble of any sort, your only concern whether your bar tab at the “O” club was too high to allow you to drink as much as you wanted to.
The triple-canopy jungle below disabused you of that notion. At any moment it could erupt in green tracers, or worse, a stream of radar-guided 23mm shells. Then you could think about how painful it was going to be as they smashed through the thin Perspex under your feet, seeking soft flesh in which to embed themselves.
Just as it had been for many—all too many—of his friends.
Screw that, he thought. They want me, they got to catch me first. He keyed his mike, made contact with the Air Force forward air controller, now flying over the battle zone in a flimsy O-2 propeller-driven airplane. The O-2 had one propeller in the front of the fuselage and another pusher propeller at the back. The brass said it was to assure redundancy—if one prop went out, you could make it back home on the other.
The pilots and backseaters argued that it was so that if the front one didn’t chop you up as it came whirling back thr
ough the fuselage, the rear one would make sure you looked like mixed salad.
“ ’Bout ready for the festivities?” he asked.
“Got ’em stacked up,” the FAC replied. “Fast movers coming in five, CBUs and nape. Four flights, two Air Force and two Navy, off the Forrestal. Snake escort will rendezvous at BR775420, go down the river with you, then pull off as you land, suppress fire around the camp. That do it for you?”
“Good as it’s gonna get, ain’t it?” Cozart replied. He looked over at his copilot, who was grinning in anticipation. “Tell the boys back there to get ready. Here we go.”
Sam Gutierrez watched the last of the lift helicopters fade out of sight before walking back to the tactical operations center. He felt an ache in the pit of his stomach that was not altogether attributable to the indigenous rations he’d had for breakfast.
Damn, he thought. I should be up there.
He was not unaccustomed to sending men into combat. But it never seemed right not to be leading them himself. From the moment when, as a young second lieutenant in the Twenty-fourth Infantry Division, he had been given the mission of holding a critical mountain pass against the North Korean invaders, he’d been leading troops in life-or-death situations. And had found, much to his surprise, that he was good at it. His platoon had delayed the advance of the enemy for twelve critical hours, allowing the Americans and their allies to strengthen the Pusan perimeter the amount necessary to deny the communists final victory. For that action, he had been awarded his first Silver Star.
He’d also found himself assigned as a junior aide to the division commander, a job he hated. And when volunteers had been solicited for something called the United Nations Partisan Command (UNPIC), and he’d found out that it involved guerrilla warfare and commando raids against the North Korean rear, he had immediately volunteered. And had been accepted, much against the wishes of the division commander.
“You’ve got a fine career ahead of you,” the general had said. “Top of your class at the Citadel, excellent combat record, maximum efficiency reports. You could be a general someday. You want to piss all that away, running around with a bunch of crazy assholes? If you don’t get yourself killed, which is very likely, you’re going to be out of the mainstream. Regular officers, and those are the ones on the promotion boards, don’t like people out of the mainstream.”
It was a remarkably long speech for such a taciturn officer and affected Sam Gutierrez not at all. What the general didn’t realize was that Sam didn’t necessarily want to be in the mainstream. Even in the short time he’d been in the Army, he’d seen the difference between those on the promotion track and those who did the job. The former were always looking over their shoulders, worried that the next action might put an indelible blot upon their records. So largely, they did nothing at all, until forced into it. And when they did do something, they made sure there was someone else upon whom they could throw the blame.
The doers, on the other hand, didn’t give a damn about their records. And it often showed. Many of them were World War II vets, some of whom had been company commanders and battalion commanders in Europe and the Pacific, who had been reduced in rank to sergeant after the war. Now that the country needed them again, they had been restored to former positions and were leading troops day to day in heavier combat than most had seen even during the bad old days of the world war.
After this war they would probably be reduced again, and most of them didn’t really care. His old company commander had once told him that he believed he had the best, and most important, rank in the military. A captain had enough rank to influence the action, but not so much that he got pulled off into a staff somewhere. He would, he declared, be happy to stay a captain until the day he died.
He’d achieved that wish, his life cut short by a North Korean artillery shell only a few days later.
Sam Gutierrez had seen the truth in the general’s statements in the years after the Korean War. His contemporaries had gone on to command companies, serve on battalion staffs, in a couple of cases even command infantry battalions. They had been decorated profusely by a grateful Army, while Sam had to content himself with the single Silver Star. UNPIC had been notoriously stingy with awards and decorations, the attitude being that everyone was doing things well above and beyond the call of duty, so how could you distinguish yourself from all the others in your same position? It was the same attitude he’d later found in the Special Forces.
Which he’d joined, almost as soon as it had been formed. His next few years were spent leading teams in Germany, Okinawa, South America. Always a captain, as his contemporaries were promoted well past. His regular Army commission saved him from the reduction in force (RIF) that decimated the ranks of the reserve officers throughout the fifties, a situation he found unfair in the extreme. The very best of the reserve officers were soon gone, and with them the leadership of the lower ranks, leaving the troops at the mercy of regular officers who couldn’t hold a candle to their reserve contemporaries.
But that was the way it was, and he soon became resigned to it. He was having fun, doing important things, while the rest of the army was concerning itself with IG inspections, and CMMIs, and spit-shined boots, and changing the color of their uniforms.
He made his first trip to Vietnam in 1957, on a TDY tour from Okinawa. Had realized that, barring giving up, the United States was going to be heavily involved in the insurgency and had set about learning all he could about the country. Other TDY tours followed, sometimes teaching Vietnamese Ranger battalions tactics and weaponry, sometimes honing the skills of the men of what was to become the Vietnamese Special Forces, and finally building a fighting camp on the Cambodian border and leading Civilian Irregular Defense Group personnel against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese who thought they owned the area.
Still a captain, he’d been surprised and somewhat dismayed when, shortly after that tour, he’d found himself promoted to major. The Army was once again needing experienced combat officers, and he was one of the most experienced of all. Two years later he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.
And was, finally, in a position he detested. Sitting behind, on the radio, as men he should have been leading left without him.
“You got commo with the camp?” he asked.
“I’ll get it, sir,” Lloyd Johnson, his operations sergeant, said. Ordinarily he might have made a wiseass comment. But something in the old man’s demeanor told him it would be best to keep his mouth shut and do as he was told.
Colonel Gutierrez was a world-class ass-chewer. And today, Johnson suspected, anybody foolish enough to get into his sights was going to have a real problem.
Chapter 2
“Trung Ui Sloane, somebody on the horn for you,” Sergeant Alvin Becker, the junior commo sergeant, said.
Sloane turned reluctantly away from the bunker embrasure, where he had been scoping out the surrounding terrain with the Zeiss binoculars he’d purchased at Abercrombie and Fitch, so many years ago it seemed now, though it had only been a few months. The excellent optics picked out flashes of movement, khaki-clad soldiers who never exposed themselves long enough for the sniper to get a shot at them. Sometimes they raised pith helmets on sticks, an old trick, but usually enough to get one of the Montagnard soldiers on the perimeter to fire at it, whereupon their own snipers opened up on him.
“I don’t have time for that right now,” he said. “I’ve got a battle to fight here.”
“I think you better take it,” Sergeant Becker replied. “It’s Charlie Six.”
Sloane scowled at the impertinence of the sergeant. He was yet another one who would be written up, once this was over. By now every surviving member of the team had a black mark against him in Sloane’s little notebook. Insubordination, refusal to obey a legitimate order, insolence—the list ran into several pages.
But he thought it best not to ignore the call. He remembered the C team commander looking at him in disbelief and barely disguised scorn as he we
nt through his litany of qualifications, finally silencing him with his own silence.
“That’s very impressive,” Gutierrez had finally said, his voice clearly indicating how little impressed he was. “But irrelevant. I’m assigning you to A-228, Camp Boun Tlak. Get out there, listen to your NCOs, try to stay out of the way. Maybe you’ll learn something. Dismissed.”
Sloane’s face still burned at the thought of it. Damned Mexican, anyway. What did he know! Some things, he thought, should not have been changed from the old days, when officers came from one class, and other ranks included the Negroes and Irish and Mexicans and whatever other riffraff was necessary to throw into the mouths of the cannon.
“Bravo Tango, do you read me?” came the tinny voice over the radio, sounding irritated. Wordlessly, Becker thrust the handset at him.
“I read you Lima Charlie, Six,” he said. “This is Bravo Tango Six, over.”
“ ’Bout damned time,” the voice on the radio answered. “Operation Habu is under way. Be ready.”
Sloane grimaced. He’d already insisted that the camp didn’t need to be reinforced, that given enough airpower they could hold out forever if necessary. Gutierrez had overruled him. He’d opened his mouth to protest again, thought better of it. Lieutenant Colonel Sam Gutierrez could be quite profane when crossed. Just another sign of his ill breeding.
“Roger, Six,” he said. “Estimated time of arrival?”
“Why don’t I just tell you that, in the clear, so everybody can be ready,” Gutierrez said, sarcasm heavy on his voice.
Sloane colored again, looked sharply over at Becker, who was trying to keep a smirk off his lips. “I understand, Colonel.”
Over the handset came a truly inspired stream of profanity, the point of which being that you never gave someone’s rank over the radio, that now Gutierrez was going to have to change his call sign, and that obviously Bravo Tango Six hadn’t learned a damned thing since he’d been there. Sloane stood there and took it, there being no other choice with Becker watching him. To make matters worse, his nemesis, Master Sergeant Billy Joe Turner, came in just as it was trailing off. He knew the story would be all over the camp within minutes.
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