by Ian Slater
Both Mellin and Murphy saw that it was impossible to get past the Ningming field using the Ningming secondary road, and the rain that was obscuring them at the moment was also turning the marshland around the levy road into a sea.
Mellin, about fifty yards ahead of Murphy’s truck, pumped the brakes and stopped. Shirley Fortescue jumped down and ran, already soaking wet, to the dark shape of the Australian’s truck, the vehicle momentarily etched in the glow of a descending para flare.
“What’s up?” Murphy shouted, head leaning out the driver’s side.
“Mike,” Shirley told him, “Danny says we won’t get past them, and if we go off the road we’ll be bogged down.”
“So what’s he suggest? We swim?”
“More or less,” she answered, her voice all but lost in the torrential downpour. “He’s telling everyone to get out of the trucks and head south.”
“I want to talk to them,” Murphy yelled. “You get your mob out, Shirley, I’ll get mine.”
Within a minute there was a sodden conference on the levy leading toward Ningming, with both Danny Mellin and Murphy knowing they probably had no more than ten minutes before the PLA would arrive.
“Listen up,” Murphy said. “Danny’s right. We’re going to have to ditch these trucks and split up. That way it’s going to take them a bloody lot longer to track us all down, including the ones who got through the wire after we got through. This way we can tie up a lot of Chinese troops that might be otherwise guarding that railroad from here to the border. I suggest we pair off. Let’s get going.”
“Michael.” It was so unexpected, it stunned him. It was Shirley.
“Yeah?”
“What are you and your number two…” She indicated a Vietnamese/Chinese in the truck’s cabin.
“Yeah, well, young Trang and I figured we might give you a bit of a head start.”
“Mike!” Danny shouted. “Don’t try—”
“Upshut!” Murphy yelled, and it elicited a grim laugh. “Now go on, get lost, and try to team up with someone who speaks Cantonese.”
Shadows of the escaping POWs were vanishing beyond the flickering gray circles of dying flares, and now Murphy could see six pairs of yellow-slitted headlights, like a short, fast, winding snake, no more than a mile away to the north, and another two trucks coming from the camp behind as he quickly backed up the truck that Mellin had been driving, moving it askew so as to block the road. He tossed the keys away and, uncinching the PLA-type light machine gun from its mount, ran back to his own truck and lay down by the rear right wheel.
Already the graceful arcs of light machine-gun fire were reaching toward him from the north, while behind him, Murphy could see the two remaining trucks from the POW camp now screaming along the levy. He and Trang could hear the heavy whoomp of mortars hitting the marsh water about them, sending spumes of water over a hundred feet into the air.
With the two opposing forces heading for one another along the levy, Murphy suddenly decided to change tactics. “C’mon, Trang,” he shouted. “Let’s get down the bank into the water, quick. Grab the gun from the other truck!”
And it was in that position, from the marsh, that Trang and Murphy let rip with the two 7.62mm machine guns. Soon both lead trucks on either side of the two abandoned POW trucks were afire, Trang yelling out, “Kill! Kill!” in Chinese. Further confusing the issue, the trucks behind the lead truck from Ningming field were unable to fire for fear of hitting their comrades in the front trucks.
NCOs were screaming at enlisted men to get off the trucks and engage the enemy in the POW trucks because of the direction of fire coming from Trang and Murphy. Murphy fired a long burst, killing the driver of the first Ningming truck and setting its gas drum afire. The truck blew up, hurling bodies every which way, the PLA troops in the trucks behind now spewing out to run alongside the levy.
“Let’s get out of here,” Murphy yelled at Trang, and after firing the last magazine into the two camp trucks that had come up behind them, with both sets of PLA firing away at one another, Murphy and Trang dropped the LMGs into the waist-deep marsh water and, tearing out reeds for snorkels, began swimming away from a situation of utter confusion, of Chinese firing upon Chinese in the raging storm, and of escaping POWs who by now, thanks to Murphy and Trang’s delaying action, had had a good twenty- to twenty-five-minute start toward the border.
* * *
But if the Chinese were confused by that night’s debacle, by the following morning, though the rain was still falling in sheets, they were much better organized for the hunt. They’d already caught several of the escapees who had become disoriented and headed east in the storm instead of south. Upshut had them garroted, following strict orders not to waste valuable ammunition, particularly the expensive Black Rhino rounds, on prisoners.
Some of General Wei’s staff officers initially thought that Wei was making a meal out of the escape, until Wei — and this, he informed them, was why he was being paid 675 yuan, $144, a month instead of the 21 yuan of a private — drew his staff officer’s attention to the fact that most of the escapees, if they had any brains at all, would stay in sight of the Ningming-Dong Dang rail line, traveling parallel with it until they reached the border and the country around Disney Hill. Wei also advised his subordinates that if any of the escapees, most of them technicians from oil rigs, decided to try to sabotage the line and were successful, even in delaying the heavy artillery-mounted supply train to the front for a few hours, it could prove decisive in the battle against Freeman’s mounting thrust against Disney Hill and environs.
“But Comrade General,” an eager young division commander pointed out, “we — you have already posted a man along every fifty yards of track.”
“Yes, yes, I know this, but anyone who is innovative enough to mix his rice with brick mortar — to engineer such an escape out of practically nothing — he is a dangerous man, comrades, and so we must not only try to capture as many of the escapees as possible, but we must be particularly vigilant along the thirty miles of rail from here to the border. I want all rail-section commanders to emphasize this to their troops.”
Among themselves, Wei’s senior officers were convinced that Wei was overreacting. In their view — and they were correct — most of the escapees from the POW camp would have only one thing on their mind: to get back through enemy lines to safety, and to hell with messing around with Wei’s railway. Oh yes, there might be the odd fanatic who would try something like the genius who pulled the rice trick, but with a PLA soldier every fifty yards — what chance did he have?
Nevertheless, Wei was not to be dissuaded from taking extra precautions, and so onlookers saw the strange sight of a regiment of mounted Chinese troops — an anachronism in modern war — heading out in marshland south of the Ningming-Pingxiang line, able to go where armor or any other vehicle could not. And they were protected from U.S. TACAIR by both the foul weather — God’s response to Freeman’s prayer— and by the President of the United States, who, like Truman forbidding MacArthur to take action beyond the Chinese-Korean border, had ordered Freeman not to launch air strikes over the Sino-Vietnamese border.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Shortly before Pierre LaSalle returned to her tent, Marte Price had found her asbestos-lined film box had been opened. She’d put a hair between the lid and sides before closing it, and now the hair wasn’t there. While she was no military strategist, she believed that in matters of sex and blackmail, a good defense was the best offense. In this instance, her offense took the form of insisting that Pierre wear a condom.
“You’re the only one, chérie” he said.
“And I’m Marilyn Monroe.”
“No, truly,” he told her. “You are the only one.”
“Not counting your wife, you mean.”
“Of course. But this is the grande affaire, no?”
“It’s good sex,” she said. “If that’s what you mean.”
“Surely it’s more than that.”
“If you say so.”
“You are a hard woman.”
“You’re the one that’s hard. I still have some illusions.”
“About what?’
“Oh, I don’t know — about honesty among friends, loyalty.”
“I hope you are not talking about me!” He sounded offended.
“No,” she lied. “Just in general.”
He slid his hand between her thighs. “I love the smell of you….”
She said nothing for a moment, then suddenly mellowing from her public persona of tough, hard-bitten war correspondent, having shown she could mix it with the boys, she was now the vulnerable, soft lover Pierre wanted her to be. She gently stroked him, and as he grew hard, she touched a freckle near the base of his penis, all but hidden by his pubic hair. “You always had that?”
“Yes,” he said. “A little birthmark, I guess.”
“It’s cute,” she said, stroking him. “Pierre?”
“Oui?”
“Do you love your wife?”
He shrugged. “You know how it is. We’ve been married—”
“You don’t love her?”
“No, not really. She’s more of a — how do you say, friend, confidante.”
“Then she wouldn’t mind you making love to me.”
He gently pushed her down on the army cot. “I think she would mind,” he said with studied understatement. He laughed. “She would mind it very much, chérie.”
She moaned softly as he entered her.
* * *
After, when they had parted, Marte went to the media pool office and told the officer in charge that if they were ever asked to send a pix of General Freeman “in action,” she hesitated, “with the wounded,” she would appreciate them telling her.
“May I ask why, miss?”
“Yes,” she said bluntly. “It’s my fucking picture and anyone who tries to send it is stealing it. And rest assured I’ll have the general on my side.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She put a hundred-dollar bill on the table. “So you won’t forget.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Kacey, now forced at gunpoint to lead the Khmer Rouge column away from the Foxtrot ambuscade out toward the valley of Dien Bien Phu, could hear the pat-pat-pat sound of the children walking behind him. He knew there was nothing he could do about the little girl who lay dead and discarded by Pepper by the trail, as if she were nothing more than refuse to be consumed by some carnivore during the night. In all his years in the Army, he’d never seen anything so wantonly cruel. But now he tried to put it out of his mind, knowing he had to stay alert.
Kacey had no way of knowing that radio silence had been broken and Foxtrot ordered to withdraw to boost the defense of Dien Bien Phu. But he did know that even if the prearranged signal spot on the trail told him the column had been ordered to withdraw, soon Pepper’s column would be leaving the jungle canopy and entering Delta’s fire zone in the valley. And, being the first man in the column, he had no desire to be the first blue on blue in Operation Homecoming.
Then they heard the faint rattle of machine guns and the louder whoomp of mortars.
It meant that Delta and the PLA paratroops were already at it.
“Hey, Ranger!”—from the side of the trail. It was a scout from Delta. Pepper unleashed a burst. The scout dropped to the ground, and Kacey dived off the trail, the scout returning fire at Pepper. Kacey moved fast and low — fuck the bamboo, fuck the brambles, fuck the thorns, just run, man, run — as Pepper and the Delta scout continued the duel, the terrified children flat on the trail, Salt at the rear telling them to stay put or she’d do them. Somebody — Pepper maybe, or the Delta scout? — ran out of ammo, only one man firing, then the two were at it again. Jesus, could they even see one another, or was it all bullshit fire?
Then Kacey was yelling to his fellow Delta buddy, “Delta, he’s a turncoat! They’re Salt and Pepper Two — our MIAs— both gone bad! Heroin!”
The jungle reeked of cordite and decay. The Delta scout didn’t care who the fuck they were — Salt and Pepper, Oil and Vinegar — all he knew was that some fucker was trying to kill him.
“Back off!” Kacey yelled to his fellow Ranger. “We can pick ‘em up later.”
No one was moving now — no birds, nothing — except in the distance they could hear the thump! and thwack! of mortar rounds in the timber around the Delta perimeter.
Kacey knew it had to be the PLA paratroopers harassing the Delta perimeter till they had time to set up heavy arty in the hills around the valley. The mist was thicker now, and ten minutes — an eternity — passed, and who was heading where? Kacey kept heading east, glancing at his watch compass in the gloom. Only once did he see the trail, a rust-red strip about a hundred feet off to his right, while to his front, a half mile off perhaps, he could hear the chatter of small-arms fire. Through it all he felt that something or someone was marking him, either his compadre from Delta or Pepper, who would now be eager to meet up with the PLA troopers.
“Jesus Christ!” Kacey stopped. He could be walking into his own — Delta Force’s — ambuscade. They were bound to have rigged one up as soon as he’d gone forward to try to warn Foxtrot. Shit a brick, it was getting all screwed up, as usual. Didn’t matter what plans you made, something always went — He froze. A drop of moisture on the trip wire, that’s all it was. He was in the middle of a claymore alley. “If anyone can hear me,” he said in funereal tones, “get me outta here!”
“ ‘Bout time, you fucker. We were gonna see how far you’d go!”
“Very funny.”
“Turn right, my man, and go straight ahead.”
In three minutes he was out on the trail. God, it felt good! “Where’re all the chinks?” he asked.
“Just north of us, Ranger man.” It was the Delta scout who’d been keeping parallel with him.
“How far north?” Kacey asked, his breathing short and fast.
“Not far enough,” the scout said as he passed his canteen to Kacey, “but they’re just probing now. Won’t do any major stuff till they get arty in around us — which they’re doing now.”
“Where’s our TACAIR?” Kacey asked.
“In this pea soup? Home, where you’d be. Back in Hanoi, waiting for it to lift. Only do so much with infrared, man.”
* * *
“Scout tells me,” said Delta’s CO., Roscoe, “that you ran into Salt and Pepper.”
“Yeah,” Kacey said.
“They’re probably headed north of us for PLA sanctuary. You get a good look at them?”
“Pepper, but not her.”
“A woman?”
“Yeah,” Kacey said. “Made a real nice couple. Moving dope.”
“A woman!” Roscoe repeated, as if it were an offense against nature. “All right,” he said. “I want you and Jonson to stay here on the perimeter where the trail exits the canopy — make a damn nuisance of yourselves against any chinks who try setting up mortar positions or whatever—’specially since you know, Kacey, what this Salt and Pepper look like. They might just come our way. I’ll send a squad out here with you and—”
Suddenly there was a horrendous rattle of machine-gun fire, both M-60 and Chinese-type 67 LMGs. Then more mortar rounds, but for the experienced men of Delta like Kacey, Roscoe, and Jonson, it all had the sound and feel of probing, no one really sure yet of exactly where the other side was.
“Wish we could get out of this fucking marsh,” Jonson said.
“I agree,” Roscoe said. “Trouble is, if we do that, we no longer have an LZ when the choppers arrive.”
“They’re not going to come in this weather,” Jonson said.
“They’ll come in any weather. But clear weather’d help.”
Jonson shrugged mischievously. “Then maybe we should let the old man to pray for a typhoon!”
“Yeah — incoming!”
They hit the marshy ground as a PLA 82mm mo
rtar exploded twenty-five yards away, earth and water erupting in a high, dirty column. For Delta’s Roscoe there was something wrong — he felt it in his bones. Something peculiarly disconcerting about the almost laissez-faire way in which the PLA mortar squads were lobbing their mortar rounds, an almost lackadaisical attack, filling in time. But for what, to sucker Delta’s British and American forces into wasting precious ammunition in return fire? But return fire where?
Roscoe concluded it could mean only one thing — that the PLA paratroopers, having landed farther north near Dien Bien Phu, had not yet connected up with the PLA ground troops on the way to the valley. Once they connected, they’d no doubt ring the whole valley, sealing the Americans and their allies in the marsh, where they could cut them up piecemeal as Giap had done to the French in the very same valley in ‘54.
In fact it wasn’t as organized as that. Few battle plans are, the hand of chance always in play. Due to the unusually heavy rains, the PLA infantry columns — over a thousand strong — had round it much more difficult, much more time-consuming in the wet, to manhandle the bits and pieces of their heavy artillery south from Mengzi to Dien Bien Phu.
* * *
It was now 0230 hours, and the day before, Wang had ordered the elimination of Echo, Foxtrot, and Delta forces. But the weather and the apparent failure of Echo and Foxtrot to yet join Delta had fouled up the timetable. Colonel Cheng, the PLA military officer in charge of the destruction of Freeman’s Special Forces, had wanted to attack at 0230 hours, while Delta Force was still only thirty strong. The political officer, however, argued forcefully that it would be better to wait till all three Echo, Foxtrot, and Delta columns had rendezvoused in the valley, so that they might be wiped out to a man. Such a victory, he argued — the annihilation of an entire U.S.-led force — would be infinitely better from a political and international point of view than a piecemeal attack on only one section of it.