“This is my final offer, gentlemen.” Dong said, then added, “And I expect delivery of the weapons this very afternoon. The soldiers over the next twenty-four hours—their transportation at no extra charge.”
There was a burst of grumbling from the board, but it was obvious that Dong was standing fast. Finally, the men began nodding their heads. Then the thirteen smiles reappeared.
They had a deal.
The chairman himself walked Dong back to his helicopter, presenting him with a small gift for being such a valued customer.
The chopper lifted off. From the air, Dong could see a convoy of supply trucks already on their way from the estate’s underground supply depots to the dozen cargo helicopters parked on the tarmac below. But Dong was far from happy with the situation.
“Bastards,” he whispered once they had turned south and started back to his base. “Rob me blind with your prices, and then you ask me why I have failed?”
An hour later, when the helicopter was passing over a boulder strewn ravine, Dong took the Chairman’s “small gift” and tossed it out the open door. With great joy, he watched the toaster oven drop five thousand feet and smash to pieces on the rocks below.
Chapter Twenty-two
EXCEPT FOR THE CONTINUOUS sniper fire and mortar shelling, the next day passed in relative peace at Khe Sanh. The rains came, but there was no attack. No one knew why. But many had already given up trying to figure out the very unorthodox enemy in the hills.
Geraci’s engineers took advantage of the situation and worked furiously on the two Galaxy transports. Using hundreds of sandbags and as many corrugated sheets of tin they could scavenge from the dozens of battered and useless Legion bunkers, fifty of Geraci’s men began work on erecting a giant wall encircling NJ104.
The other half of the 104th’s engineers concentrated on Bozo. Using jury-rigged jacks and counterweights, the wrecked C-5’s right wing was lifted out of the mud. Then the entire plane was righted on the runway.
Bozo was then shored up on all sides. Pieces of corrugated tin were welded together and erected over key areas of the once great airship. Several shoulder-high walls of sandbags—the first barriers of defense—were built all around the perimeter at distances from ten to thirty yards out.
Now jokingly rechristened “Fort Bozo,” serious work had been undertaken inside the C-5 as well. A number of defensive plans against the human wave assaults were worked out. The gun crews practiced in the spacious hold of the huge cargo plane to make the directing, loading, and firing the big guns more efficient, more accurate. They also drilled extensively on swinging the guns from one side of the plane to the other, using newly installed makeshift rails designed for that purpose. Additional ladders were rigged to the upper gun port stations and to the flight deck for quicker access. Any extra time was spent diligently cleaning and oiling personal weapons as well as the big guns of the ship. The crew took their MRE chow once every twelve hours, and slept in shifts—those that could sleep. Soon, like anything else, the little things became routine.
Trapped as they were, the crew of Bozo had become well-oiled cogs within a well-oiled, if improvised, killing machine.
Hunter and Ben arrived at No. 6 gunpost ten minutes after getting the urgent call.
Located about 75 yards off the tail of NJ104, the reconstructed mortar pit was now the furthermost American position facing the enemy held hills. The One Hundred and Fourth’s General Tom McCaffrey, a man who had come out of retirement to join the great airfleet mission, greeted them. Behind him was the reason for his request that Hunter and Ben come up immediately.
Held at gunpoint by three other engineers was an elderly man, wearing nothing but a ragged loincloth and a tooth-gaped smile.
“This guy just showed up out of nowhere,” McCaffrey explained. “One minute, everything was clear, the next minute—there he was.”
Hunter and Ben looked at each other, then back at the intruder.
Hunter recognized the man right away as a member of the famous Montagnards.
The Montagnards were the tribal people who once lived in the mountainous region of the Central Highlands, an area that straddled the political boundaries of three countries: Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. As part of the “Hearts and Minds” program during the last Vietnam war, the Montagnards joined forces with the U. S. Army’s Green Berets, trading jungle survival knowledge and local support for military protection against the hated Viet Cong. But when the war ended, and they found themselves on the losing side, the tribe had to scatter far and wide to escape certain extermination by the Communists.
“I have no idea how he did it,” McCaffrey went on. “We’ve got this whole area covered with razor wire, claymores—even old hydro-fluid cans hanging from string. Anybody out there would have been blown to bits. Or at least made some kind of noise. But this guy got through in one piece—and without a peep, in broad daylight.”
Certain that Hunter was this odd white tribe’s Chief, the old Montagnard increased his near-toothless smile even wider.
“Do you speak English?” Hunter asked him.
The old native continued to grin. Then he pointed at McCaffrey, uttered a few words that were unintelligible, and indicated with his hands that something had been taken away from him.
“He means this, Hawk,” McCaffrey said. He handed Hunter a walking stick.
The Montagnard shook his head in agreement and pointed to the top end of the shaft.
Hunter looked and saw it was a carving of an airplane.
“Hey, not bad,” Hunter said, studying the workmanship. “Looks like a Phantom.”
That’s when the old man indicated to Hunter that he wanted to take him somewhere—somewhere far out into the dark jungle.
And that it had something to do with the carved image.
Hunter knew that many years ago, when this native was younger, the Montagnards had been a great ally to the U. S. forces in Vietnam. He wondered if that was still the case. His gut feeling was telling him that this old man—or whoever sent him—were still sympathetic. He decided to take a chance.
Hunter handed the intricately carved walking stick back to the old Montagnard.
“We will go,” Hunter said, indicating with his hands that he would follow. The Montagnard smiled even wider, turned, and started to make his way back through the perimeter.
Ben grabbed Hunter’s arm. “You’re not going alone, are you, Hawk?”
“Nope,” Hunter replied, “You’re coming with me.”
With that, the two of them climbed out of the gunpost and caught up with the willing guide.
McCaffrey watched as they stealthily zigged and zagged through the trip wires of the base’s defense, following the old man’s lead.
“Either they’re very brave or very crazy,” McCaffrey said to the other engineers. “Or both.”
It took them almost three hours to reach the cave.
Getting past the Minx lines proved easier than Hunter thought. There were dozens of enemy positions just inside the extended treeline from which they launched the vicious assaults, with hundreds of Minx snipers and mortar men manning them. But the spry Montagnard had led them to a dry stream bed which cut right through the Minx lines. Using the bank overhang as cover, they were able to slip past several lightly manned sniper positions, finally coming to a large river on which they floated away from the Minx forward positions and into a small mountain river valley, a place even more isolated than Khe Sanh. Though still controlled by the Viet Minx, the area was lightly occupied. At a turn in the river, right before a series of cascading falls, they crawled up onto the bank and, without a rest, started up a steep ravine. Thirty minutes of nonstop climbing led them to the mouth of a cave. At this point, the Montagnard bid them a silent, smiling farewell.
Correctly guessing this is where they were supposed to go, Hunter and Ben slipped into the cool, dark cave.
It smelled musty and damp, but oddly, they also detected the distinct odor of electrical gear, a
burnt rubber scent. Hunter spotted a wiring conduit, running along the cave’s inner wall. They followed it through several winding passages, finally coming to a small chamber packed to the ceiling with various electronic devices, acoustical gear, and oscilloscopes. A small generator was humming in the corner, keeping the gear up and running and providing the telltale electrical smell.
“What the hell is this?” Ben asked. “The local phone company?”
“Talk about reaching out and touching someone.” Hunter replied.
At that moment, they heard a stirring noise. Then, in the dim light thrown by a single kerosene lamp, they saw an old army cot against the far wall.
And on that cot was a very, very old man.
Hunter quietly approached the cot. He found the man barely breathing.
The old man looked up and saw Hunter leaning over him. His eyes went wide with amazement.
“You’ve … you’ve finally come?” he gasped in a mixture of relief and disbelief. Hunter nodded slowly.
“You’re here?” the old man cried, this time with more energy. A wide, creaky smile spread across his creased, tired face.
“I’ll be goddamned, you’ve finally come,” the old man went on, propping himself up on one elbow and shaking his head. Then he offered his bony hand.
“My name is Willy Rucker, Colonel Willy Rucker, Special Forces.”
Hunter shook the old man’s hand. “Hawk Hunter, Major, United American Forces. This is Captain Ben Wa.”
“I see my Montagnard friend was able to convince you to follow him,” Rucker said with a smile. “If it weren’t for him and his tribe, I would have perished long ago. They’ve looked after me all these years, especially now that I don’t get around too much anymore.” The colonel painfully shifted his position. “When he told me of ‘great wounded birds no longer able to fly’ battling the Viet Minx at Khe Sanh, my curiosity got the best of me. What’s the hell is going on down there?”
Starting with the buildup of the great airfleet, Hunter explained what brought them here. He described the MiG air battle, how they ended up at Khe Sanh, the dire circumstances of the beleaguered base, the condition of their two C-5s, the constant barrages and sniper fire. And the daily human wave assaults.
The old man nodded throughout—obviously he was in frequent contact with the Montagnards who apparently hated the Minx as much as they hated the Viet Cong. And Hunter’s story confirmed everything they had told him.
“But how did you get here, Colonel?” Ben asked.
The man cleared his raspy throat and began his story. He was a Green Beret—maybe the last one ever. At the height of the last Vietnam War, he had been attached as an observer to a secret governmental organization known as the Jason Group. Their mission was to develop high-tech sensing devices used to detect the movement of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars crossing the so-called Demilitarized Zone which separated North and South Vietnam.
Some of these devices were quite bizarre, Rucker explained. One was called a “people sniffer.” It was capable of detecting the presence of humans by taking samples of the air and analyzing it for the elements of ammonia prevalent in human urine or sweat. Another device was aptly labeled “ROCKSID.” These were seismic devices made to look like small rocks that were dropped from helicopters or slow moving aircraft. When disturbed, they sent out a short, low-end radio signal, indicating some kind of troop or equipment movement. Other devices were more conventional: some could either sense ground vibrations or actually hear the enemy moving. Still others were camouflaged to look like small indigenous trees, branches, or even leaves.
As Colonel Rucker relayed all this information, Hunter saw a metamorphosis come over the old soldier. Instead of this effort draining the life from him, the elderly officer appeared to get stronger. As his story unfolded, the years of age seemed to amazingly shed rapidly from his face.
He continued his tale. At the height of the Vietnam war, he was part of the primary Jason group airdropped to place some of the far-out listening devices near what was considered at the time to be key NVA traffic points. As they made their way to the pickup point during one of these missions, they were ambushed. Most of Rucker’s unit was brutally wiped out by the Vietnamese Communists. Those that lived through the attack were taken prisoner—himself included. They were marched deep into what was then called Laos, and held at a prisoner of war camp.
The camp was basically self sufficient—the guards ate meat culled from hunting; the prisoners had to subsist on what they could grow in scratch gardens. Years passed. Some of the other prisoners died off. More years passed, and more prisoners died. And then the guards began to die off too. Rucker outlasted them all.
“I guess they forgot about their own people, too,” the old man said.
But his story was not over.
By the time the last guard died and he walked out of that camp, the Big Global War had already happened. The whole world had been turned upside down. Rucker no longer had a country to go home to. So he made his way here, to this cave, and single handedly rewired it so that he could monitor many of the decades-old listening systems, which were spread out all over the northern part of South Vietnam.
“I had to do something, just to stay sane,” Rucker told them. “For years I took notes of the activity all around—troop movements mostly. I figured out what they had, which direction they were headed. I knew that there was no one I could relay it to—no one was interested anymore. But it was my duty, and until I was told otherwise, I did my job. I had to …”
“We know that feeling,” Hunter said.
“But then all the activity stopped,” Rucker continued. “For years there was nothing. Maybe some peasants here or there, but as far as any troop movements, I was getting a big blank.” Excitedly, the old man got up from the cot and began pacing back and forth. He was now full of energy.
“Then, about a year or so ago, I suddenly started to pick up heavy activity again. I’m talking major duty—tanks, supply columns, thousands of troops—all sneaking south, just like before. I even went down and took a look for myself. The odd thing was, after all those years, they looked like old NVA.”
“They’re called the Viet Minx,” Hunter told him. “Different name, but same screwy expansionist ideas.”
“Tell me about it,” the Green Beret replied with a nod. He shuffled over to a small chest, opened it, took out a large knapsack. This contained a device which looked like a combination all-band radio and radar screen.
“This is the Jason Transcoder Module.” Rucker explained. “With it you can monitor just about all of our old listening devices.” He looked up at them. “You look like smart boys,” he said with a crinkly smile. “You should be able to figure out how to use it.”
He then retrieved a stack of hand drawn maps. He selected a couple dozen and handed them to Hunter.
“And if you’re stuck at Khe Sanh, then you better have these,” the old man said. “I’ve noticed an increase in activity near there.”
Hunter studied the maps. One indicated precisely where a particular field of listening devices had been planted; another detailed the trails to take to get there.
“I hope all this helps,” the old man said.
Ben looked at the elderly soldier. He might have been 100 years old or even older. “But won’t you need this stuff, to continue your mission?” he asked.
The old man smiled. “Don’t you think it’s time I started to collect my pension?”
Suddenly he exhaled violently, as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. His body began to shake from a horrible coughing spasm. He couldn’t speak—he could hardly breathe. Hunter and Ben carefully led him back to the cot.
The old man tried to regain his breathing—but couldn’t. He looked up at Hunter, the years of solitude and depravation instantly returning.
“I’m glad … someone finally … came for me,” he managed to gasp. “I knew they wouldn’t forget me…. Tell them I stayed with the mission.” With t
hat he closed his eyes.
Hunter was stunned. He shook the old man, and then checked his breathing, but it was too late. Ben quickly began CPR but to no avail. The man was dead.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Ben said. “Talk about flaming out. No wonder the native wanted us to get up here so quick. He knew he was close to checking out.”
Hunter nodded sadly and pulled the blanket up over the man’s face.
“Another ghost,” he said quietly.
It was unforgiving, primitive terrain. Impenetrable jungle, vertical cliffs, swamps. Quicksand. If you got lost, you stayed lost.
And then you died.
But using one of the dog-eared, hand-drawn maps given to them by the old man, Hunter and Ben were able to follow the slightest of trails through the thick forest, paths that led them around insurmountable rock formations and brought them to shallow crossings of otherwise unfordable rivers, all the while taking turns carrying the heavy sack containing the Jason Group’s transcoder module. They were grateful for the map’s accuracy and appreciated the care the old man had taken to create it. The scale was perfect, and the landmarks were clearly and exactly noted. As was their destination—just six miles north of Khe Sanh.
But the going was tough. Often they had to deftly skirt Minx positions or stop and sit tight as a Minx convoy passed by. But two hours after leaving the old man to be buried by the Montagnards, they finally reached their destination.
They silently crept forward until they came to the edge of a clearing.
That’s when Hunter and Ben saw the airfield.
It was a single runway job, 5,000 feet of asphalt cutting through a cleared field of about 100 acres and surrounded by dense jungle forest. There were three Quonset-style buildings by the runway and a modest wooden tower which functioned as the air traffic control center. Two small fuel tanks anchored the southern end of the base; a water tower stood nearby. At the far end, there was a large erection of some kind, covered by camouflaged netting. Undoubtably, this was where the small base’s aircraft were kept.
Ghost War Page 16