And the work continued.
With Hunter’s help, the flight engineers rigged auxiliary electrical power, splicing wires and patching hoses, repairing what damage they could. With the mechanics, Hunter helped plug the larger holes that perforated the deck and ceiling of the plane. After everything was done to give them at least a fighting chance should another attack come, many of the crew members collapsed, some even falling into a fitful sleep.
But not Hunter.
He’d spent another hour trying to get the flight deck radios to work—but again, it was no use. Now he sat alone in the C-5’s cockpit, staring through the shattered windshield and off into the darkness. His mind was spinning too fast to sleep, pondering the dire situation. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had let everyone down.
He had landed the plane in the worse place possible, right in the middle of a desperate military situation, and right in the middle of a country that was apparently overflowing with desperate situations. And the base defenders appeared to be the worse military organization he had ever seen. Just what the Legionnaires were doing here, he had no idea. This was a place under siege and attack, yet they had no command structure, no discipline, no nothing. Judging from what they’d witnessed in the Legion’s bunker, insanity ruled this place.
And now they were stuck in the asylum.
He sat there all night, mulling over every detail, fact, and piece of information he could conjure up. Right through the darkest hour before dawn, he hoped that somehow, two, or three of these details would add up to something—something tangible, something he could use to turn this whole thing around and get his men out of this trap. But nothing added up. The hills themselves prevented them from walking out, even if they weren’t crawling with enemy soldiers. They had only so much ammo on board the downed plane, so much fuel for electricity, so much food and water. The enemy was obviously well-equipped. From what he’d seen during the attack, they might be two full infantry divisions strong, and not reluctant to sacrifice large numbers of men.
The situation seemed hopeless.
Dawn finally broke. Before the monsoon clouds rolled in, the sky overhead was perfectly clear. Hunter watched gloomily as the early morning sun sent shafts of sunlight across the surrounding ridges and probing through the thick fog that covered the jungle floor, the base, and the runway. As the morning mist slowly burned off, he began to make out the shapes of the dilapidated bunker and fortifications of the battered outpost. And he was reminded, once again, that he was responsible for placing the lives of his men in jeopardy, here in the middle of a muddy, battered hell.
But then through the fog, a reflective glint caught his eye. It came from the direction of the other end of the runway, about a mile away. As the fog lifted, he squinted hard, trying to make it out.
Then suddenly, he saw it very clearly. Lying belly down at the opposite end of the runway was another battered C-5. And on its crumpled wing were about twenty soldiers waving their arms.
They had seen Hunter before he had seen them.
Chapter Fourteen
IT TURNED OUT THAT the other C-5 was the one flown by the New Jersey 104th—Frank Geraci’s elite combat engineers.
As soon as he’d spotted the Galaxy at the far end of the runway, Hunter rushed back into the hold of Bozo to get the brightest hand-held torch in the plane. Word had traveled fast throughout the plane that another C-5 was down on the base. Now many of the crew were crowded into the Bozo’s cockpit, anxiously watching as Hunter conducted a morse code conversation with the other aircraft.
Flashing back and forth for more than ten minutes, the crew on Bozo learned that NJ104 had come down shortly after they did, sometime during the attack. Thankfully, according to the flashing message, with no casualties.
Only by the fact that they had landed at the opposite end of the base did they avoid the brunt of the last human wave assault. But it was clear that NJ104 was in a very vulnerable position—in a wide open area and completely exposed.
Hunter sent one last return message to the other Galaxy, telling the crew to stay put until he got there.
Then he grabbed his M-16, a bandolier of smoke grenades, and went back into the hold of the plane.
Ten minutes later, Hunter and a squad of volunteers from Bozo’s crew hit the tarmac and broke into a run.
Within seconds, sniper fire and mortar rounds began to rain down on them. But following Hunter’s expert lead, they made it unharmed to the main forward trench. From there they followed the man-made ditches through the camp, making left and right turns through many junctions, stopping occasionally to get their bearings. Finally, they came to the end of the trenches about center field—500 yards from where the 104th’s C-5 sat crumpled at the far end of the runway. There, the squad took cover in the rusted hull of a long-ago crashed C-124 Globemaster.
Hunter considered the immediate situation. From here on, it was 1,500 feet of wide open, flat, bare tarmac with not a blade of grass or a mud hole for cover. It was a virtual shooting gallery for the snipers and mortar crews hidden in the hills. He couldn’t risk the lives of the other men of the patrol—from here he would have to go it alone.
He had a plan, though.
He checked the wind direction. There was a good breeze blowing towards the direction of NJ104—about 10 mph, he figured. Gathering his dozen smoke grenades, Hunter yanked the pin on one of them and tossed it out into the open. The grenade popped and hissed, emitting a cloud of thick white smoke that started to drift downwind. Taking a deep breath, he jumped out of the trench, into the smoke, and started his long run towards Geraci’s Galaxy.
Immediately, the air rang with the cracks and zings of sniper fire. Hunter was safely hidden from view—but not for long. As soon as he outran the smoke, he dove flat out on the tarmac. The snipers and mortar crews in the hills opened up again. Hunter quickly yanked the pin to a second grenade and tossed it ahead. Then he was up again and into the white cloud, dodging and twisting the hail of hot lead probing for him through the smoke.
Now he was throwing the grenades ahead of him as he ran, planting before him a path of hissing canisters to continue obscuring his mad dash.
But every sniper in the area quickly got wise. They immediately sighted in on the general direction of the white smoke and opened up. The mortar crews had seen what was going on, too, and cranked down to get the most distance. Realizing that this man would soon be past their limited range, they dropped their shells all over the thinning white cloud drifting along the runway.
Hundreds of pieces of lead flew past Hunter, sounding like a mass of insane mechanical bees. Explosions rocked the ground all around him, sending him sprawling several times. But as soon as he dove for cover, he was up and running again. Rifle fire continued to stab into the smoke, searching for a target, but the snipers were firing blind. On the other hand, Hunter could feel their cross hairs trying to catch him, and many times abruptly changed his course just as a round zipped by where he had been.
With only 100 yards to go, he tossed his last smoke grenade. Now it was going to be a wide open run for him.
But then a weird thing happened.
The bullets and the mortar shells stopped following him.
Hunter quickly realized that the enemy’s weapons were no longer able to reach him. As they were currently positioned, he was out of their range.
Still, Hunter had to scamper the last forty yards without the benefit of his smoke covering.
It took two rolls to avoid the longest-range sniper bullets. With one last dive he made it over a ditch and into a small stream. He hit it with a spectacular splash of mud and water. When he looked up, he saw the grinning faces of Geraci and his men looking down at him.
“Nice technique, Hawk,” Geraci told him. “Good follow-through. Good extension.”
Hunter picked himself up and started wiping the mud off his already dirty flight suit. “I should have packed another bag.”
They helped him out of the ditch, the cra
ck of sniper fire still echoing in the distance. There were handshakes all round—Hunter just could not believe that they were actually there.
“We must have come down right after you,” Geraci told him. “We saw the fires and the smoke, but we had no idea that you guys were in the middle of it.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Hunter told him. “It was a party you were better off missing.”
He quickly filled them in on the vicious attack on Bozo, and the discovery of the madman in the Legion bunker. He also told them that Bozo was wrecked beyond repair.
Geraci shook his head gloomily. “Same for us,” he said pointing back to NJ104. “It’s a miracle we all made it down in one piece.”
Hunter studied the big C-5 wreck. Like Bozo, its wings were crumpled, its fuselage battered and laced with MiG cannon shell holes.
“Those MiGs really fucked us up in that storm,” Geraci told him. “We came in just about dead-stick. I’ll tell you, we were literally gliding at the end. Lucky we had a good man at the controls …”
That’s when Hunter looked over Geraci’s shoulder and saw the smiling face of Frost, his long-time friend.
They embraced warmly. “You did have the best,” Hunter told Geraci. “Compared to what I did with Bozo, it looks like you came down on a three-pointer.”
“Hardly,” Frost told him. “Let’s just say I did a classic pancake—with my wheels down.”
They walked back to the crumpled airplane, several mortar rounds coming down out-of-range about fifty yards away.
“Well, you picked a better spot to set down than I did,” Hunter said. “At least they can’t shoot at you from here—not yet anyway.”
Geraci had already deployed NJ104’s six bulldozers around the exposed end of the Galaxy, giving the crew some protection from wayward shrapnel or an incredibly lucky shot from the enemy-occupied hills. Other heavy equipment aboard the airplane had been used to break up some of the tarmac and place it around the airplane as a barrier should the Minx decide to launch what would be for them a very long-range ground attack. Several machine-gun posts were set up along this asphalt defense perimeter, with lines of concertina wire and claymore mines serving as the tripwire.
But they all knew that it was just a matter of time before the Minx moved at least some of their weapons and bring them to bear on the second C-5.
“This is quite the pickle then, isn’t it?” Frost asked Hunter with classic understatement.
“We always seem to find ourselves in these kinds of predicaments, don’t we?” Hunter replied wryly. “Maybe we should get a different agent.”
“I think we need a meeting of the minds,” Geraci said. “And we should combine our forces. The question is: our place or yours?”
Hunter thought for a moment. “Well, the accommodations aren’t as good,” he replied. “But we’ve got more firepower on Bozo, therefore better defense. If these guys ever attack you way out here …”
He didn’t have to say anymore. Both Geraci and Frost were nodding in agreement.
“We’ll go back with you now,” Geraci said, retrieving a bag of smoke grenades. “Then we’ll work out a plan to bring my guys over.”
“Sounds good to me,” Hunter said, checking the wind and finding it had shifted and was blowing in their direction. “You guys bring your jogging shoes?”
Chapter Fifteen
Behind enemy lines
HIS NAME WAS LONG Dong Tru.
He was commander of all “liberating” forces in-country between the forty-sixth and forty-seventh parallel, a territory which gave him several hundred square miles in which to operate, with approximately 33,000 front-line troops to do it with.
His forces weren’t part of a larger national army, per se. Rather they were “affiliated partners” in a collection of other armed units, contracted to conquer to the southern part of Vietnam. Their employers were the board members of Capitalistic Communism, Incorporated—CapCom, for short. The conglomeration of CapCom’s hired military units was known as the Vietminx.
At the moment, most of Dong’s forces were in position around an old U.S. Marine fire base known as Khe Sanh. They were, at last report, finally about to annihilate the most recent defenders of this cursed position, and then move on to take the strategic highway beyond. This road led to the poorly defended cities of the south, which were Dong’s actual goals. They offered vast opportunities for plunder, valuable resources and taxable populations.
But his troops had to get by Khe Sanh first.
The campaign to do so had been going very slowly. The enemy at Khe Sanh, a mishmash of Caucasian defenders, led by a cadre of romantic French fools, had certainly been stubborn. They were heavily armed and had a wide field of fire. But with each attack by Dong’s forces, the enemy base came that much closer to being overwhelmed, and this brightened his spirits immensely. The sooner they were able to roll over Khe Sanh, the sooner they could reach the highway and be in position to sack the cities beyond.
Dong sat back in his custom-made chair, momentarily looking up from the most recent battle reports from the front, which was about fifteen miles to the southeast. His rather palatial headquarters looked especially pleasing to him today. It was a mixture of communications gear and artwork, war maps and fine threaded rugs, a beautiful marble conference table holding no less than twelve radiotelephones. Best of all, the HQ was mobile: it was actually built into the back of a large trailer truck which was pulled by a heavy-duty, high-performance Mercedes-Benz armored truck. This way, Dong could live in the splendor he thought he deserved, and still stay close to his line units, and thus keep them on a very tight leash.
He was very new to this commander business—up until a few months before he’d been a lowly corporal in a truck supply unit, lugging water and food to Minx expeditionary forces operating inside what used to be called Laos. Despite his middle age, he’d been conscripted into the Minx forces a year earlier. Given the most basic of training, he was handed the keys to a supply truck and told he was now a driver.
He’d never fired a gun, never faced an enemy. The extent of his military service had been driving the old Route 7 between Hanoi and the Pathet town of Qientienne and back again. A chronically stiff back, and modern version of saddle sores were his only rewards.
Then Dong got lucky. Very lucky.
One night, while returning from Qientienne, he came upon what he first thought was a traffic accident. There were three vehicles, two ancient Jeeps and a supply truck like his own, fused into one big pile of smashed metal and busted glass. There were a total of thirteen bodies lying about, some mangled and crushed, others bleeding, but relatively undisturbed. There was no one else around.
It took Dong a few minutes to figure out that what he’d come upon was not a traffic accident, but an ambush, one in which both sides seemed to have got the last shot in. His main clue was that seven of the dead were dressed in black pajamas and ski masks, the garb of choice for Chinese highwaymen who were known to operate in the general area. The others were apparently civilians. Closer inspection revealed that many of the dead had been shot and then run over by vehicles. Others had been stabbed to death. Two figures were still locked in a death embrace, their respective daggers plunged into one another’s chests. In any case, there were no survivors.
Dong was two seconds away from calling in a report to the nearest Minx headquarters, when something stopped him. He would never really know what it was—an unseen force, almost physically removing his fingers from the radio button, and then leading him to the back of the heavily-damaged truck. It was here that he discovered what the ambushers had been gunning for: seventeen large boxes filled with gold bars.
By new world monetary standards, Dong had stumbled upon more than $50 million in gold. What it was doing out there, under limited guard, he would never know. Or care.
Before that time, Dong had not considered himself an insubordinant man. He had respected his father and his elders while growing up, and he respected his superior
officers now. Nor did he consider himself a dishonest man. He’d been kettle-maker for most of his adult years, and had charged his customers fair value for his work. And neither did he consider himself a greedy man; he’d plied his wares in a small village near the Chinese border and he had not seen a great deal of money in that time. He never thought he needed it that much.
It went without saying that his duty was to report what he had found and stand guard over it until someone in authority arrived.
But Dong stole the gold anyway.
He barely remembered doing it to this day. It was as if a supernatural force manipulated his hands to lift the heavy boxes out of the demolished truck and put them in his own. The same ghostly force then made him start his truck, put it in gear and hastily drive away.
And it was a spirit that showed him exactly where to bury the fortune in the field near his unit barracks. And the same ethereal presence gave him the balls to march right into CapCom’s main office in Hanoi and announce that he wanted to buy an army and offer its services as part of the Viet Minx.
That’s how things were done in Hanoi these days. No more bullshit about “the endless revolution,” or “the People,” or “socialism.” No—these days CapCom, Inc., would literally sell you an army, and everything needed to go with it: equipment, ammunition, weapons, food, fuel, water, and, of course, troops. And with that army, you went out and did CapCom’s fighting for them.
To those who could afford it, immense power and prestige came with that army. For an army could gain conquests, and conquests meant the spoils of war, and captured territory, which meant taxes, tolls, and whatever valuables came with the land. If the product was right, the operational arm of CapCom, the Minx High Command, would even reimburse you for some especially valuable piece of conquered territory, including expenses. When the campaign was over, you simply wrote them a bill. Depending on the breaks, $50 million dollars could double or even triple very quickly. Dong had seen it with his own unit’s money-hungry officers.
Ghost War Page 11