by Ian Slater
“Well,” the interviewer said, “Freeman’s lot around Dien Bien Phu are said to be top-drawer troops.”
“We’ll see,” the professor said dryly. “The PLA is no pushover, and their lot are also believed to be the ‘top drawer,’ as you put it — and there are many more of them.”
“One more question, Professor. If we — and by ‘we’ I mean the USVUN forces — have known about PLA intervention through Laos, why didn’t the Americans bomb them?”
“Because,” the professor said, looking bored, “the President of the United States has obviously made a decision — and in my view, a perfectly justified one — not to allow bombing on neutral territory. In this case, Laos.”
“Yet he let Freeman in with his special force.”
“Yes, but my dear chap, that was a field decision by Freeman, for which, my sources inform me, he came perilously close to losing his job.”
“But he’s a hero now.”
The professor blinked, his forehead furrowed under the studio lights. “A hero, yes, but for how long? If he loses what must surely be an outright battle at Dien Bien Phu and at Disney Hill, he’ll no longer be a hero. I can assure you of that. I might add that the eminent French reporter, Pierre LaSalle, is already predicting a humiliation for the Americans on both fronts.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
“You prick!”
“Calling me names ain’t gonna get us anywhere, brother.”
“I’m not your fucking brother, man.”
“You black, aren’t you — or that shoe polish?”
“I don’t go ‘round killing kids.”
“Then what took you so long to make up yo’ mind, man?”
“I thought you were bluffin’,” Kacey said.
“Until we did her, right?” Pepper smiled, his AK-47 pointing right at Kacey’s gut, his head nodding back at the two elderly sobbing Laotian hostages. “Life’s cheap over here, man. Dyin’ is a way of life this part o’ the world.”
Kacey said nothing.
“Lookit, man, all we want from you is the location of your boys settin’ up ambush ‘round here. We ain’t interested in yo’ fucking war, man. We just want safe passage.”
Kacey stared blankly at him before asking, “Safe passage for what?”
“Business,” Pepper said easily. By now a stream of porters were coming down the track, butter-box-sized loads suspended from poles and knapsacks on their backs. Kacey could tell they were Khmer Rouge, and when the Khmer Rouge didn’t want to kill people, there was only one other reason they’d be there.
“Heroin?” Kacey asked.
“Pure.” The other man smiled. “White as you inside, Oreo.” He jerked his head in the direction of the woman with the good figure and the camouflaged pith helmet. “Ain’t only thing I got that’s white.”
Kacey said nothing.
“You coming with us, buddy.” Pepper said. It was a statement, not a question. “You guys put up any ambushes, you’ll be the first in it, right?”
“What if I don’t want—”
“Hey!” The other black man suddenly lost it, jabbing Kacey hard in the gut. “I ain’t fuckin’ askin’, asshole. I’m tellin’ you. You’re comin’ or grandma gets it — then grandpa, right? You dig me, Oreo?”
“Yes.”
“Then off we go. You screw up, nigger, and grandma gets it. You understand?”
Kacey didn’t answer, so Pepper stuck him in the back with his AK-47. “You understand, asshole?”
“Yes,” Kacey said, and began to walk, knowing that up ahead, about two miles down the jungle trail, his buddies in Foxtrot were waiting, while behind him came Salt and Pepper Two with the two elderly hostages. He didn’t know what to do.
Pepper suddenly stopped the column with a hand signal and gave an order softly to Salt, who led the old folks back to the village. He could hear an argument, then Salt returned with two children, a boy and a girl around ten years old. Kacey figured that Pepper had suddenly realized how the old folks might slow him down. The kids could move much faster.
They started off again, and Kacey still didn’t know what to do. The only hope the Ranger could harbor was the possibility that Foxtrot’s western approaches security team of two would get a good look at him, recognize he was one of their own, and let him pass before opening fire. But what about the two kids no more than ten paces behind him? To make everything worse, more confused, it was getting dark.
Like most things in war, Kacey mused, no matter how well you plan things, something always goes wrong. What kind of luck was it to be setting a trap for Khmer Rouge troops and instead run smack into a freakin’ drug caravan armed to the teeth?
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Danny Mellin, Mike Murphy, and Shirley Fortescue were having their own bad luck. Above the POW camp white clouds of cumulus were crossing the moon like a line of silvered galleons, at once obscuring then revealing moonlight.
The silhouette of the four PLA trucks that had been parked in a square around Upshut’s guarded administrative hut were clear one moment, obscured the next, and there was no way of knowing how many guards were inside. Beyond the long coils of razor wire that made up the camp’s perimeter, there were two PLA soldiers for each side, eight guards in all, constantly walking up and down the side they’d been assigned. As the camp was not yet complete, four three-ton trucks were parked at each comer of the camp, a type 67, 7.62mm machine gun mounted atop each truck’s cabin. These would soon be replaced by regular guard towers. The on-again, off-again moonlight wasn’t making Danny Mellin’s decision any easier. If they waited a few days, the PLA would erect bamboo-supported towers, equipping each with overarching searchlights. Yet if they went now and were caught in a beam of moonlight…
“I say go,” Mike Murphy urged, glancing around at the other POWs. “Look,” he said, turning to Mellin, “pretty soon this thick cloud cover is gonna pile up, hiding the moon.”
“I don’t know if it will or not,” Shirley said, “but I’m leaning toward Murphy. They could start on those towers tomorrow. And as you said, Danny, someone’s bound to let something slip out sooner rather than later.”
“All right,” Danny said. “We go. Everybody know what they have to do?”
Mike answered for the others. “Yeah, two of us in the cabin, one navigator, one driver, four in the back of the truck, one man feeding the other on the machine gun.”
“Right. Remember ‘one’?”
“Cut the wire,” Murphy answered, the tension making his throat tight.
‘Two?” Danny said.
“Get the two guards nearest the truck,” Shirley answered.
“Three?”
“In the trucks,” one of the others said.
“Four?”
“Drive like hell—” Murphy began.
“Jesus, Mike!” Danny cut in.
“Sorry, sorry. Four — if any team has time, we hook the cut wire to the tailboard and pull the shit out of the perimeter.”
“And,” Shirley put in, “shoot up the four trucks inside the compound to stop them chasing us—if we have time.”
For better security, the people that made up the two squads had all been chosen from the same hut. They had split any money they’d managed to hide on themselves upon arrest by the PLA, some preferring to carry American cigarettes to yuan. There was no survival kit, unless you included a ball of rice saved here and there — whatever was left after they’d donated enough to Mellin’s wall — the wall of the hut nearest the wire, the wire looking like great rolls of silver in the intermittent moonglow.
Via biofeedback, Danny was willing his breathing to slow down, asking quietly, “Every team got their matchbox compass?” They all said yes. “Remember, the border’s fourteen miles due south from here.”
A voice in the darkness asked, “Mike, you got those wire cutters tied to your wrist?”
“No.”
“Well, you’d better. You drop them in the dark and can’t find ‘em, we’re
up shit creek.”
“Good idea,” Danny said, his heart racing. Damn! he berated himself. Tying the cutters to the first man’s wrist should have been one of the first things he’d thought of. He and the other nineteen in the two escape teams knew that the toughest part would be taking out the two-man PLA guards as they walked the couple of hundred yards or so along the wire. He and a couple of others were former ‘Nam or Desert Storm types, so they knew how to kill, but none of them were anywhere near their normal strength, having subsisted on little more than a bowl of rice and the weak, lukewarm green tea. Some, like Danny Mellin, had ground up the occasional bug with a spoonful of rice and forced it down. At least it was protein.
“One more thing,” Danny reminded them. “Be careful with the machine guns. I mean, when we break out, it’ll make one hell of a big hole for all our fellow POWs to run through. That’s good for everybody. PLA’ll have to look for two hundred of us if there’s a mass break, and every POW in here knows the importance of the Ningming-Dong Dang railroad.”
Having said his piece, Danny now turned his attention to the sky. It had always amazed him how cloud formations change in seconds, that the patch of sky you’ve been watching changes completely in five minutes. It was something he’d had ample time to notice while working, like Mike Murphy and the other POWs, on the rigs in the South China Sea, something that most people in normal, everyday life didn’t notice. There was such a change occurring now, the moon’s face becoming obliterated as anvil-shaped cumulus piled up. Where seconds before there had been a brilliant orb, there were now only dark storm clouds. Soon it began raining. There was nothing gradual about it — it simply fell in buckets, as was its wont in the region.
Then he saw lightning, and a moment later it seemed as if God’s artillery had opened up, the thunder so powerful they could feel it rumbling in the hut, rattling the locked door. Danny Mellin and three others, including Murphy, picked up the base of one of the bunks, counted in unison, “One, two,” and smashed it into the wall where the rice had formed much of the mortar. Immediately they could feel that several bricks had been displaced by the shock of the bunk base, the air pockets around the grains of rice having substantially weakened the mortar between the bricks.
Waiting for the next roll of thunder, they counted and hit it again. There was choking dust, and three of the ramming squad were on the floor. Mike was stuck halfway through the hole, his knuckles badly lacerated. But he felt the rain pouring on his head and murmured, “Christ, we’re through! We’re fucking through!” It was a ragged hole about three feet in diameter.
“Quick,” Mellin ordered. “Get to the wire.” There was another flash of lightning, during which the hole was brightly illuminated. Then there was another rolling barrage of thunder as the ten of them quickly got through the hole and within seconds were at the wire.
As Murphy cut the first strand, there was a rustling sound as the tension of the wire gave way, but the noise was drowned out by the gut-churning rolls of thunder and the hiss of the rain. Soon they were halfway through the concertina wire. Murphy stopped and listened for the sentries. He couldn’t see any in the rain-riven darkness, nor could he hear them, given the noise of the storm. Murphy cut more wire, stopped and listened, and all he could hear was his heart thumping. Soon, within seven minutes of reaching the razor wire, all ten of them were through, five turning left, the other five to the right.
Both teams, Murphy in charge of the first squad, Danny the second, all crouching low, moving along the outer wire, were astonished not to find any guards.
“Probably in the trucks,” Shirley whispered.
“Hope to Christ they haven’t locked the doors,” Murphy whispered in return. “Shirley, stay with me. You too, Frank. The other three of you go around to the passenger side.”
The sound of the rain was drumming on the truck’s canopy, rivulets of water running down the fenders and streaming off the running boards. Suddenly, Murphy saw a red spot dancing about in the cabin, someone in the cabin smoking, nice and comfy out of the rain.
“Now!” he said in a hoarse command, wrenched open the driver’s door, and pulled him out. Already three others of Murphy’s crew were up in the back, while the other guard, on the passenger side, who had also been smoking, was on the sodden ground begging for mercy. Shirley hesitated, so Murphy hit him with the brick — once — as he had the driver. “Frank, you man the machine gun, Shirley, you’re navigator. Let’s go.”
The moment Murphy felt the keys in the ignition, he couldn’t contain his excitement. “Jesus loves me!” He pumped the gas pedal twice and turned the key. The truck started to life, running roughly but going.
He drove the truck halfway down the wire, his parking lights on, and saw Danny’s truck, or rather its two orange eyes, approaching him. Shadowy figures jumped from both trucks and quickly hooked wire to their tailgate. But before starting northward for the secondary road west of Ningming, both trucks now swung their machine guns about and waited till the next flash of lightning, then fired at the four trucks around the administrative block.
It was about ten seconds before one of the trucks caught fire, and from then on they were easy sport for the two gunners. Another truck lurched hard to its right, tires now in shreds, the windscreens and engines of the other two shot through with full bursts of 7.62mm. The remaining two corner PLA trucks could be heard starting up, but they too were shot up in the surprise enfilade of fire from the two prisoner-commandeered vehicles.
There was pandemonium as lights came on in the administration building, only to disappear in the sound of crashing glass as Danny’s and Murphy’s machine guns raked the building at practically point-blank range, the temporary lights in it a perfect aiming point. Now, in the madly dancing glow of the burning trucks, Danny’s and Murphy’s teams could see scores of prisoners streaming out from what had been Danny’s hut, using bunk beds to ram the front doors of the other huts. More prisoners came out and raced for the five-yard-wide corridor through the razor wire.
Danny and Murphy knew it was time to go, a dozen or so prisoners clambering aboard as the wire on the two trucks’ tailgates was disconnected, the trucks heading off on the POW camp-Ningming road, sporadic AK-47 fire from the compound spitting into the night.
* * *
On Disney Hill, sixteen miles south, Colonel Melbaine’s counterattack had regained the hill’s summit by dark. The heavy rains slowed the USVUN advance in the later afternoon, but it sealed the fate of the Chinese tunnels on the north side, which were now no more than drainage conduits, their integrity gone because of the severe structural damage done to them by the heavy U.S. TACATR and artillery fire the day before.
Even so, Melbaine knew that if General Wei could be resupplied fast enough and with enough fresh troops, of which he had many more than the USVUN, it could quickly become a stalemate again, followed by another retreat by the Americans and their allies. And though Melbaine was a toughened combat veteran whose sole job was the conduct of war, he knew as well as Freeman did the symbolic, political importance of pushing the Chinese beyond Disney Hill to the 22nd parallel, beyond the border, to unequivocally signal the defeat and not merely the rout of the Chinese.
But if the big question for Freeman was enemy resupply — a danger that might once again push his troops back — the pressing danger for Danny Mellin’s escapees was whether anyone two miles away at the Ningming airfield had seen the explosion of the trucks in the POW compound. It was more man likely that the thunderstorm and downpour had muffled or completely drowned out the sound of their explosions, but it was just as certain that the brief firefight at the compound had been reported to the PLA guard contingent at the Ningming airfield.
* * *
The moment General Wei heard reports of an “attack” around Ningming, he immediately took it to be an Anglo-American special ground forces attack on his left flank behind his lines, specifically targeting the Ningming railhead, since Wei knew full well that the U.S. President had fo
rbidden any air interdiction inside Chinese territory. From Wei’s position, the enemy ground force was obviously trying what the Americans called an end run: bypassing the bulk of his PLA troops at Disney and trying to disrupt his vitally needed Ningming-Xiash-Pingxiang-Dong Dang supply line.
For half an hour all along the line, field phones were crackling, passing on the information that American saboteurs had reached Ningming. Comrade Upshut and the others at the POW camp went along with Wei’s interpretation of the presence of allied troops around Ningming; otherwise, Upshut and his comrades would have to confess to the spectacular breakout in their camp, and why two of eight PLA-type BM-14 trucks were missing, and four of them destroyed, two still aflame outside the camp’s administration hut. And then there was the not-so-minor point of Upshut and the others immediately calling for a head count of prisoners in the dancing firelight of what had been the administration building. It was a head count infused with fury and panic on the part of the guards.
The count showed that thirty-seven had escaped, about twenty more than in either Danny Mellin’s or Mike Murphy’s trucks, whose twenty had run out through the break in the wire, slipping away in the darkness even as the remaining prisoners were ordered to form up in their respective hut groups. Another dozen or so slipped away on their way back to the huts as the fires from the trucks, now subdued by the rain, failed to illuminate the open wire beyond the huts to any of the PLA guards.
When Danny Mellin saw the egg-yolk smear of light that was the perimeter lights of Ningming airfield, he also saw stalks of searchlights reaching out like long, white fingers south of the field into the rain-slashed darkness. This wasn’t how the breakout was supposed to end, with Ningming field suddenly bristling with PLA air force troops.
None of the searchlights had yet reached the two trucks, but already flares were bursting in the air beyond the airfield’s perimeter, showing just how heavily it was raining, the streaks of rain illuminated like so many icicles, and here and there Mellin and Murphy could see in the distance dim rectangular shapes coming out of the airfield’s perimeter: PLA trucks, no doubt full of troops.