Night Work: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 2)

by Dennis Foley

  “Are you just stupid, or can’t you understand English—Mister?”

  “Probably a bit of both,” Nessen said.

  “Don’t get smart with me. Now what the hell is your holdup?”

  “We’ve lost a man into a hole or something. He’s okay—just gonna take a bit to recover him,” Nessen replied.

  “What is it?” Fowler asked excitedly.

  “Can’t really tell. Lots of vegetation. Might be a well or a cistern or something.”

  “A tunnel? Is it a tunnel complex? Stop everything, and check it out. If they are around, they’re bound to be in there,” Fowler said.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think that’s a really bad idea. We have bad guys running around somewhere out here. They know where we are, and we’re too damn light in the ass to stop and do an underground search.”

  “You will do as I say, and now. We’ll talk about your insubordinate tone when you get back,” Fowler snapped.

  “Six, if we make contact—it will be their call. I’d rather not walk into an ambush. Could be really bad news,” Nessen said.

  There was a pause.

  In Operations Hollister and Vance continued monitoring the radio cross talk. “He’s getting rattled by Nessen’s act.”

  “He hasn’t got a clue, has he?”

  “About?”

  “About how Nessen can waltz him around until he runs out of fuel and needs to come back to top off.”

  “Yeah. Then he’ll get back—get the runaround again, run short of light, and be forced to pull the team. Nessen’s smarter on his worst day than Fowler’s ever gonna be,” Hollister said.

  Nessen came back on with an interim report. “Six, this is One-five. Looks like it’s an old tunnel all right.”

  “They could be in the tunnel,” Fowler said, satisfaction in his voice.

  Nessen took a long time to reply. “I don’t think so. There don’t seem to be any signs of recent use.”

  “That means they’re in there for sure,” Fowler said. “They are expert at camouflaging their traffic.”

  “Holy shit!” Vance said. “Now he knows more about it at fifteen hundred feet than an experienced team leader who’s standing on the spot.”

  “Search it,” Fowler said.

  “For what?” Nessen asked.

  “For VC—damnit!”

  “We’re not set up for tunnel searches. But I’ll pitch some grenades and some smoke down into the tunnel.”

  “Negative! Negative!” Fowler said. “I want prisoners. Anybody can get a body count by throwing grenades into a tunnel.”

  Kurzikowski had returned and stood behind the two captains. Hollister turned to him. “The Cav?”

  “They’re ready, and the chopper crews are belted into their seats,” Kurzikowski said.

  “Crank ’em.”.

  “What are you thinking?” Vance asked.

  “Got a feeling that things are going to get sour out there quickly.”

  Hollister turned to Vance. “You can hold things down here? I’m going with the Cav. If I let them go out there alone, Fowler’ll have that platoon leader talking up his sleeve and then the troop commander will get involved, and it will be a fucking committee trying to decide what to do.”

  Vance made a painful face. “Fowler’s gonna eat your shorts over this.”

  “He ain’t getting no cherry,” Hollister said. “Get the Cav Troop CO in here, so we can keep him up to speed. Okay?”

  Vance patted Hollister on the shoulder. “You got it. We’ll hold things down here.”

  Fowler’s voice boomed over the speaker. “Three? I want the horse element out here to set up a cordon. One-five will be searching a tunnel, and I don’t want to let any VC escape through other exits. Tell Saber Six to have his remaining forces standing by for deployment as well. And I don’t want any screwups. You got that?”

  Hollister reached for the handset, but Vance stopped him. “Let me handle this. You just get going.”

  Vance took a deep breath and then spoke. “Six. This is Five. Three is outside cranking the horse subelement right now. They should be skids up inside of zero five.”

  “Roger. Break. One-five. This is Six. Did you copy? Horse soldiers are inbound to give you some help. Have you made any progress?”

  Chapter 29

  “SIX. THIS IS ONE-FIVE. We are following what looks like a horizontal section of tunnel shaft. We can’t get down in it because it is too fragile. So we are trying to trace it above the ground, probing with a cleaning rod,” Nessen replied.

  “Where is the wire?” Fowler asked from his circling chopper.

  “The wire?”

  “The commo wire. My guess is that it is probably going to end up inside the same tunnel complex you are probing.”

  “I don’t think so. The wire is a hundred mikes from here and parallel to the direction of the tunnel. And this is not a complex. I just might have simply uncovered part of a very old tunnel or a large bunker,” Nessen corrected.

  “You just keep searching, and let me worry about what is going on.”

  The Cav platoon arrived at the landing zone nearest Nessen’s team in six sucks. Hollister rode with the third chopper in the formation while Lieutenant Boyce, the platoon leader, rode in the lead. Hollister had made it clear to Boyce, at the chopper pad, that he was riding along to get out to the site and that Boyce would be in command of his own platoon, not Hollister.

  The copilot in Hollister’s chopper turned to talk to him. Hollister got up on his knees to get closer.

  “Your CO’s C and C is in trail with our flight. He wants to put down on the LZ with us and drop off the interpreter. Then he’s going back to refuel.”

  Hollister nodded that he understood. But he didn’t. Interpreter? He must have meant Bui. That was still another thing that upset Hollister. Fowler still couldn’t distinguish between Bui as the senior Hoi Chanh and interpreters, which they didn’t have.

  Hollister was happy to hear that Fowler would be leaving the area for a while. He might be able to get things sorted out and resolved before the major returned.

  The activity on the LZ was chaotic. It had been some time since Hollister had made an airmobile assault with a full platoon. By the time the choppers had cleared the LZ, the squads had assembled in tactical formation and Lieutenant Boyce had them moving toward Nessen’s location. Hollister found Bui. “Where’s your weapon?”

  Bui turned his palms skyward and shrugged. “No hab.” Hollister was angry that Fowler had put Bui out of the chopper with no field gear and no weapon. He pulled his .45 out of its holster and gave it to Bui. “Try not to lose this. Okay?”

  Bui smiled and nodded, then hobbled off to join the Cav troopers.

  Movement to Nessen’s position only took half an hour. And based on Nessen’s recommendations, Boyce moved his squads out into a wide semicircle to watch for tunnel exits.

  Hollister and Bui had joined Nessen’s team, which was already searching the tunnel.

  Hollister’s first look confirmed what Nessen had been saying. It was not a new or even recently used tunnel. The floor of the exposed section showed light debris that had been deposited by rains and runoff. Any recent use would have disturbed the dead leaves and flushed most of them away. The tunnel walls, only a foot below the surface of the ground, were laced with a web of tiny roots that surely would have been disturbed by frequent VC use.

  “Well, we can probably guess that no one’s been using this section. How do you think the new major’s gonna take it?” Nessen asked Hollister.

  Hollister shook his head. “Not well. I think he believes that COSVN Headquarters is stashed in here.”

  “You want I should tell him, Cap’n?”

  “Not yet. Let’s just see where the ends of this thing go. There might be something yet. If we don’t look …”

  Nessen finished it for him. “I know, he’ll want us to check it out anyhow.”

  “Well, I got my Hoi Chanh in there now,” Nessen said.


  “In the tunnel?”

  “Yessir. We found another section of it just behind that clump of bushes,” Nessen said, pointing to the other branch of the tunnel.

  Hollister walked over to the second site and squatted down. He could see the first few feet of another abandoned tunnel shaft that went down, then turned, and then turned again, restricting his view. Near the opening a second LRP fed a length of commo wire into the hole. “Where’d you get the wire?”

  “We found it near the landing zone … didn’t seem to be connected at either end, and I wanted to be able to find Mister Loan if it gets shitty down there,” Nessen said.

  “Good idea,” Hollister said. He realized what pressure Nessen had been under from Fowler since he had been on the ground. Not to let it get to him and still keep focused on his team was something that Hollister admired.

  The tunnel search went on for an hour. Then the wire went slack, and the LRP started reeling it back up. Mr. Loan, as 1-5 called him because of his tendency to borrow money from the team members, was coming out.

  “Get Bui over here,” Hollister said.

  “I am at here,” Bui said, standing just behind Nessen.

  Hollister grinned at Bui’s fractured English and pointed him toward Mr. Loan’s tunnel. Loan emerged, filthy and soaked with perspiration, a .45 in one hand and a GI flashlight in the other. He looked like something had shaken him up and started spewing Vietnamese even before he was out of the hole.

  Nessen, Hollister, two LRPs, and the nearest Cav troopers watched as Loan and Bui talked excitedly.

  “What?” Hollister asked.

  Bui turned to Hollister and spoke rapidly. “He say he foun’ dead man.”

  “What kind of dead man?”

  “He don’ know.”

  Hollister knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere having Bui translate the excited jabbering of the frightened Hoi Chanh. “Give me that flashlight.”

  “Sir? Where you goin’?” Nessen asked.

  Hollister looked over his shoulder and nodded toward the horizon. “We’re going be out of light and shit out of luck if we don’t get some answers so we can get all these people the hell out of here. This has turned into a fucking spectator sport. I doubt if any VC within ten thousand meters doesn’t know how many of us are here and how far up our butts we have our thumbs.”

  Nessen agreed with Hollister and shook his head at the gaggle.

  After dumping his gear and taking off his shirt, Hollister tied the wire to his web belt, turned on the flashlight, and grabbed Bui’s pistol. Just before he stepped into the tunnel opening, he stopped long enough to check to see that there was a round in his chamber. There was.

  The tunnel was built for men much smaller than Hollister. Each move, on his hands and knees, caused him to dislodge the earth above his head and it fell, sticking to the sweat on his back and neck.

  The passageway continued to show a lack of use, except for the recent visit by Mr. Loan. Still, Hollister wasn’t convinced that just because the passageway was unused that the entire tunnel was unused.

  After twenty yards of zigzag horizontal movement, Hollister came to an air lock. It was a water trap, like under a sink. Normally, they were filled with water and a visitor would have to hold his breath and pass through the water-filled trap. But Hollister was lucky. Over time the water level had been neglected, and it only filled the bottom two feet of the trap. It would allow him passage, and he wouldn’t have to hold his breath.

  The water smelled of microscopic organisms and decaying root growth. Its color was almost black and a scum, broken by Mr. Loan, was trying to reconstitute itself. Hollister steeled himself for the entry and stepped into the trap. He wasn’t sure what was in the water with him and really didn’t want to know. He just moved as quickly as he could and stepped up on the other side. He realized the smell would be with him the rest of the day.

  Continuing down the new passage, Hollister followed the scuff marks that Mr. Loan had left and stopped often to listen for any other movement in the tunnel. There was none.

  At a turn, Hollister suddenly felt a small breeze. Somewhere, air was entering the tunnel and moving down the shaft he was in. The smell of the fresh air was a welcome experience, but he was concerned that there might be an opening up ahead guarded by one of the Cav troops, who might get spooked. He was as concerned about being shot by a VC in the tunnel as by an American. He had to hope that the Americans all got the word.

  The tunnel turned again and began to slope downward. At the end of the slope, it spilled into a large room. Hollister noticed that Loan’s marks stopped at the end of the shaft. He had obviously not gone beyond that point. Hollister could feel the anxiety gripping his chest like a fist. He tried to take a couple of deep breaths to calm himself. He then realized that the air was again foul and stagnant, which meant he had missed the fresh-air leak on his way down the shaft.

  At the very end of the shaft, Hollister stopped and held his flashlight as high above his head as he could reach. He thought that if someone was going to take a shot at him, he wanted the shooter to be distracted by the location of the light and misjudge his aim.

  The fractured circle of light played across a room that appeared to be not much more than twenty feet deep, fifteen wide, and eight high.

  He started at the top and looked at the bristle of roots that had entangled themselves in the wooden shoring holding the ceiling in place. The walls were covered with a white, scaly, lichenlike growth that gave the room a whitewashed appearance.

  He turned the light and began his search at the far end of the floor. The first thing he saw was one, then two, large mahogany logs running parallel to each other, about two feet apart. They were at least twenty inches in diameter and ran the length of the room.

  Then he saw what had spooked Loan. Each log had heavy chains wrapped around it at every five feet. The chains stretched across the floor toward the walls. At the end of each of the six chains was a skeleton—clean, white, and old.

  The sight shocked Hollister, too. It was some kind of prison. He played the light on the nearest skeleton. There was no sign of who it might have been. It was hard for him to gauge the age or size of the dead man. Not a single thread of clothing remained. The piles of rat droppings around the bones explained their cleanliness and the missing clothing. One ankle was still shackled to an end of the chain.

  Hollister sank to a sitting position. The horror of the deaths of the six men hit him. Had they been starved to death? Were they Vietnamese? What war were they from? Could they be French? Had their deaths been as horrible as he imagined?

  No one had been in that room for years, and Hollister didn’t want to disturb the remains. As far as he was concerned—there was no reason to.

  The air on the surface was fresh and clean and cool. Hollister took a few deep breaths and shook his head at what he had seen. He lit a cigarette, put his shirt back on, and explained what he had found to Nessen and Lieutenant Boyce.

  “What now?” Nessen asked.

  “I can’t imagine we’re going to make contact on our terms if we continue to press back toward where you saw those VC. This tunnel complex is older than dirt. Lemme report all this to Major Fowler and see if I can get us out of here,” Hollister said.

  “I could go for that,” Nessen said.

  “When you get back here, we’ll get to the matter of what the hell you are doing out there when I specifically told you to get back to Operations!” Fowler screamed over the handset.

  Hollister rolled his eyes and held the handset away from his ear while Fowler continued to scream. Finally, Fowler ended his transmission long enough to take a breath, and Hollister jumped in. “Roger all that, but we better get to extracting this lash-up before we run out of light. Over.”

  “Negative! Negative! Negative!” Fowler yelled. “I want you to send your senior little person back into that tunnel to see if he can identify the remains. We will have to make a complete report of what you found, and so fa
r it is woefully incomplete!”

  “Six, I don’t recommend we send anyone back down there.”

  “Again … I didn’t ask you your opinion. Now get that man down in that hole, and do what the hell I told you. Do you understand? We are about ready to land at the refueling point and should be at your location inside of four five. Now, get cracking, damnit!”

  “Roger. Out,” Hollister said.

  Bui took Mr. Loan with him. They had been down in the tunnel for almost thirty minutes when Hollister began to worry about the time. It was getting late enough in the day so that if Fowler hadn’t made arrangements to have the choppers standing by to pick up Nessen’s team and Boyce’s platoon it was almost too late to start. Hollister decided he had to influence things some other way and walked over to Nessen. “How ’bout getting Captain Vance on the Admin push for me?”

  “Can you talk?” Hollister asked Vance, wanting to make sure Fowler wasn’t somewhere near the radio or aware he and Vance were talking.

  “Yeah … it’s cool. What you got?”

  “We got to get moving,” Hollister said.

  “I’m on it. Got the choppers ready. Instead of waiting for an okay from Six, I’m launching them when you say so.”

  “He’ll hang you from the jump tower,” Hollister cautioned.

  “Won’t be the first time. You just let me know if you need anything else.”

  “There’s one other thing. Get ahold of Edmonds in the C and C on his push and tell him I think he should be very, very careful about his ship’s maintenance status before they return to this location. Very careful.”

  “Got ya. I’ll tell him how concerned you are about readiness. Let me handle it for you,” Vance said.

  “Roger. I knew I could count on you. Out.”

  Hollister checked his watch and worried some more about how long Bui and Mr. Loan were taking. He looked at the sun moving down on the horizon and reached for another cigarette. He was out. Nessen offered one from his crumpled pack. Hollister took it and was starting to thank Nessen when they heard a muffled noise. The first thing that came to Hollister’s mind was the sound of the big wooden door closing at the icehouse in his hometown. It was heavy, but still muted. The two looked toward the tunnel shaft and saw a puff of dust and a gush of air come out of the small opening.