Black Market

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  Sanchez was the first one to react to the unexpected scream and swung around, holding the pistol in front of him. He dropped his sight and fired. The NVA jerked slightly and twisted on the ground. Sanchez fired again and ran forward to the base of the tree. He shot the NVA again at close range. The pistol hadn’t made a sound.

  Woods was a step behind Sanchez and held his CAR-15 at the ready. A large black wasp circled his head once and then took off to hunt for spiders in the underbrush.

  Sanchez pointed to the field telephone on the ground between the tree roots, and a couple feet away from it, he pointed at the half-covered skull.

  Woods shook his head slowly and leaned forward so that Sanchez could hear his whisper. “Looks like he was an outpost.”

  Sanchez nodded in agreement. That meant there were a lot more NVA in the area.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here and call in that airstrike. It’ll cover his getting killed by the people at the other end of that line.” Woods was glad Sanchez had used his silenced pistol, or they would be fighting for their lives against a large NVA. unit.

  Woods hadn’t been paying much attention to Welburg, who had been standing nearby. The swaying bodies had gotten to the NCO and he started gagging and throwing up. His flunkies ignored him and took a couple steps closer to Woods and Sanchez.

  Woods didn’t hold getting sick against the sergeant; anybody would have felt the same way after witnessing so many of their fellow Americans dead. What did bother Woods is what Welburg did next. The NCO reached in his pack, pulled out a two-thirds-full bottle of Jim Beam, and took a very long pull.

  “You dumb son of a bitch!” Woods snatched the bottle from the man’s hands. “I can’t believe you’d get drunk on a fucking recon patrol!”

  “Please! Don’t pour it out!” Welburg’s voice rose above a whisper, which angered Woods even more. He poured the booze out on the ground and dropped the bottle at his feet.

  “Get your ass straight, Sergeant! Or I’m going to leave you here to get extracted on your own!” Woods shook his head. He just couldn’t believe that Welburg would get drunk in the bush!

  Woods oriented himself and selected their route of travel. He figured they were eight hundred to a thousand meters away from their observation site near the river and decided that he would call in for the napalm now and not risk any unnecessary radio traffic when they got there. He reached for the radio in his side pocket and called the forward air controller. The teams were all carrying the tiny URC-10 pocket radios for communications with the FAC controllers, who were circling high above them. Woods gave the controller the data and said that the target was a confirmed NVA bivouac site. He wasn’t lying; there was at least one confirmed NVA there.

  Sanchez took the point and led the team away from the old battle site. He found an old deer trail and used that to get down to the river. The decision proved to be a good one because they could move fast and got away from the dead Marines just in time. The FAC had disregarded Woods’s requested time for the strike and had brought the napalm-carrying F-4s in a half-hour after the team had left the site. The FAC had a flight of F-4s about ready to return to Da Nang fully loaded, and the airfield did not appreciate the aircraft landing with napalm. Woods’s request had tied in perfectly with the FAC’s flight, except for the time requested.

  Woods stopped walking and looked back over his shoulder when he heard the first jet make its pass and unload. He was glad that they hadn’t stayed there to eat. They probably would have if it hadn’t been for the bodies. He blinked; that was one sight he knew he would have to get out of his mind.

  Arnason pulled the collar of his cape tight against his neck to keep out the bugs. He sat upright, Indian style, with his camouflaged cape completely covering him and his gear. Unless he moved, it was nearly impossible to distinguish him from the surrounding jungle covering the riverbank. Koski and Warner sat nearby in basically the same manner, except Warner was leaning against his pack trying to get a little sleep before it was his turn to pull guard. The best he could do was to rest his eyes. He was rocking inside from all the amphetamines he had taken to stay awake. The pills were issued to all of the recon team members while they were out on patrol, and none of them realized the trouble those pills would cause them later on, if they couldn’t dump the addiction.

  The river watch site Arnason’s small three-man team was assigned to observe was perfect. The large ford across the river was fifty feet below the rock cliff they were observing from, and then the natural trail broke to their left and disappeared into the jungle. Arnason had plotted their position down to twenty-five meters and had already called in DEF-CONs around them and the ford. The team could call in air and artillery strikes all day long and not be detected by the NVA.

  Arnason thought about Woods and Sanchez. There had been no weapons firing to his north or for that matter to his south, which meant that the teams had all been inserted without making any contact. Arnason frowned. The recon company had been inserted almost ten hours and there had been no contact at all. He had expected something to have occurred within a couple of hours after the helicopters left. He wasn’t bitching. There was nothing much worse than having to land on a hot LZ and not knowing where you were or where your men were. The NVA had given him a chance to assemble his team and hide. Now he had the advantage and he planned on using it.

  Warner had the midnight watch. He sat as far forward as he could on the cliff edge and watched the silver river reflect in the pale moonlight. The scene was very romantic, and if he had a woman with him there was no doubt he would be screwing before the night was over. He felt the pressure against the front of his camouflaged pants and couldn’t believe himself. He was out in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by what probably were thousands of NVA soldiers, and his buddy wanted to get hard. Warner smiled, then remembered what Sergeant Arnason had told him about white teeth giving away a camouflaged position, and closed his mouth. He felt his solid erection pressing against his pants leg and reached down from his waistband to adjust his buddy to a more comfortable upright position. He had a tremendous urge to masturbate and glanced over to see if Arnason was sleeping. He saw the sergeant’s eyes reflect the moonlight. The NCO was lying on his back, but he was awake. Warner felt disappointed and patted his buddy. He would have to wait until they got back to An Khe, and then maybe Woods would go with him to one of the Vietnamese steam baths. Buddy flexed; he liked that idea much better.

  Warner’s thoughts slipped back to his home in Bloomfield Hills. He was extremely alert to the sounds of the jungle, to any movements in the trees or on the water that were caused even by the wind, but his thoughts went back home. He thought about his AC Cobra and the women who had paid the price to ride in it with him. He smiled at the thought, then frowned when he realized that by now his sister would have already sold the car. Warner shrugged under the camouflaged cape. It was not that big a deal compared to Koski’s problem.

  The first piece of the jungle on the far side of the river broke away from the bank and started moving across the ford. Warner watched as another piece of dark jungle broke loose and started across the ford, followed by another and another until the river was filled with pieces of the dark jungle bank on the Laotian side. The first piece of jungle was halfway across the ford before Warner’s excellent eyesight could make out the silhouette of a wading NVA soldier.

  Warner nudged Arnason and then Koski. Arnason reacted instantly and pushed the switch on the small URC-10 that he had been holding. He whispered so softly that Warner could barely hear him. “Cloud Cover 22 … Mud Puppy 6 … NVA in the open … DEFCON 7 and 8 … Over.”

  The radio buzzed for only a second and a voice answered, “Roger Mud Puppy 6 … Fire DEFCONs number 7 and 8…” There was a pause and then the calm voice added, “… I have a Spooky gunship in the air that will attack the target in 30 seconds … Over.”

  Warner could hear Arnason whistle softly between his teeth. “Those guys are ready and waiting tonight!”r />
  The AC-47 gunship appeared in the sky out of what seemed to be nowhere and opened fire. A red hose composed of tracer rounds left the side of the ship, followed by a soft hum from the Gatling guns. The river boiled and the dark shadows dropped down and floated away in the current. A stream of green tracers left the Laotian side of the river and tried challenging the AC-47’s dominance of the sky. An adjustment was made up in the aircraft and a stream of red tracers touched down on the ground where the green tracers had originated. There wasn’t an answering burst from the ground-mounted weapon.

  A series of whining whistles shot over the recon team’s heads and the Laotian riverbank erupted. Warner could hear the screams coming from the NVA wounded who had been caught in the artillery barrage. A flight of F-4 jets screamed by and their jet engines were followed by bright bursts of flame from the napalm explosions. Then the jungle became quiet. The whole show had lasted less than five minutes and had left the river filled with floating NVA dead.

  Warner felt his buddy pressing against his trousers and realized that throughout the complete destruction of the NVA unit, he had maintained an erection.

  Arnason leaned over and tapped Koski’s shoulder. He whispered in the big Pole’s ear, “Be on the lookout for NVA stragglers.”

  Koski nodded and turned to cover their rear approach from the trail. Warner maintained his overwatch of the wide river and Arnason called in for another napalm run on the Laotian side of the waterway.

  The burp from the circling AC-47 had alerted Woods that something was happening downriver, and when the artillery rounds exploded five hundred meters south of his team, they were all awake and waiting. The high whine of the jet engines as they were put into afterburner almost directly over Woods’s location hurt their ears. Sanchez had his hands pressed tightly against the sides of his head and fought the pain the loud engines inflicted on his ears. As swiftly as the jets had arrived, they were gone and the jungle became quiet again.

  Welburg scooted next to Woods and whispered in his ear, “What the fuck is going on?”

  Woods cupped his hands over the team sergeant’s ear and replied, “Arnason must have caught somebody coming across the river. He’s located at the wide ford that’s wade-able…”

  Welburg burped and Woods could smell the whiskey. He wondered if the NCO had another bottle, and was distracted from the thought when another flight of F-4s screamed overhead.

  Warner’s legs were cramping up on him, and he changed his position on the riverbank. He had been awake all night. First light broke through the trees behind them, revealing the actual destruction. NVA bodies littered the far bank of the river, and a couple of the tan-uniformed soldiers had washed up at the base of the cliff below them. Captain Youngbloode’s plan was working perfectly. The recon team hadn’t received a single small arms round in their position. The NVA had been fooled into thinking they had been observed crossing the river by a night-flying aircraft.

  Arnason tapped Warner and nodded at a spot about a hundred meters up the river. A squad of NVA soldiers were trying to recover bodies floating in the slow current. Two of the soldiers had been posted as air guards and kept looking up in the clear sky for low-flying helicopters. Arnason noticed that none of the soldiers seemed to be worried about a ground attack.

  A muffled sound of small arms firing about two thousand meters to the north drew Arnason’s attention. Within minutes, small-arms fire erupted to the south, about the same distance away. Arnason listened and realized that the Marine units to the north were engaged in a firefight and the Cav recon unit to the far south was also fighting. The image of a classic anvil and hammer maneuver formed in his mind. He was almost sure that the NVA hadn’t attacked as soon as they had landed because they had waited to give the American teams time to set up along the riverbank. Then they planned on just establishing a blocking force to the south and sweeping the riverbank from the north, eliminating the teams as they went. All of the Americans would have to cross open elephant-grass-covered hills if they planned on escaping to Lang Vei, to the east.

  Arnason had no way of knowing that the North Vietnamese regimental commander had realized, as soon as the helicopters had dropped the teams off along the river, that there was a major operation in progress on the plateau. The NVA colonel had fought pitched battles at Khe Sanh since the beginning of the French–Viet Minh War and had personally accepted the surrender of the French commander at the fort near Khe Sanh. He had allowed the American teams to take up their positions along the riverbank because he had planned on using them for bait.

  A dozen .57mm antiaircraft guns had been set up along the riverbank on the Laotian side during the night, and more than fifty heavy machine gun emplacements had been established around the long line of recon teams. He had sacrificed one of his companies at the ford because he had underestimated the reaction time of the American forces. Normally it took at least a half-hour to get jets out on the plateau, and the almost immediate attack by the AC-47 had caught his unit cold. Casualties were extremely high, but he had a battalion already on the plateau that had taken up blocking positions between the river and Lang Vei, and he had a company in blocking positions to the south that were well entrenched and could withstand direct hits from up to five-hundred-pound bombs. The company that was sweeping down from the north were taking the greatest risk, but if they moved fast as he had ordered them, they would overrun the small American teams quickly and take a lot of prisoners.

  Woods heard the small-arms fire to his north and became very nervous as the sound of AK-47s and NVA light machine guns drew closer. They were still a good fifteen hundred meters to his north, but he didn’t like the feel of it. NVA bodies in the river had started floating past his team’s position.

  Welburg grabbed Woods’s arm. “Let’s get the fuck out of here! Man, there’s too many NVA!”

  Woods was about ready to agree with Welburg when he saw movement on the far side of the river. He instinctively lowered himself down and nodded for Welburg to shut up. Sanchez slipped next to Woods and dropped down in the prone position. He pointed a little farther downriver at a larger group of NVA. Brush cracked on his side of the water, and Woods shifted the barrel of his CAR-15 to the north to meet the new threat.

  “Don’t fire … unless you have to!” Woods hissed the words at Welburg. The whole idea was to allow for the NVA units to pass by, and then they’d call in artillery fire on them. The noise was a lot louder, and Woods guessed that there were at least four or five men breaking through the jungle—or it was a herd of deer that had been scared upriver.

  The jungle parted about ten feet in front of Sanchez and a very scared-looking Marine Force Recon man holding an M-60 machine gun broke out in the very small clearing bordering RT Southern Hellions’ location.

  Woods stayed hidden and called out to the Marine. “Over here!”

  The man paused for only a second and called back over his shoulder to someone who was following him. “I’ve linked up with the Army guys!” There was a tone of relief in his voice, as if he had found a secure base.

  A dozen more Marines broke out in the clearing carrying three badly wounded men. Woods stepped out from his hiding place and startled the Marines closest to him. One of them nearly opened fire on him, thinking that he was a camouflaged NVA.

  “Hold it!” Woods’s voice calmed the Marines a little.

  “Who the fuck are you?” A senior Marine team leader approached Woods but kept looking back over his shoulder.

  “The team leader here.” Woods didn’t care if Welburg heard him or not.

  “The NVA are right behind us…” The Marine switched the conversation to the urgent topic at hand. “They hit us at about two this morning. They either wiped out the teams north of us or have cut us in half … but they’re sweeping south and there’s a lot of them motherfuckers!”

  “How far behind?”

  “Close! We’d better get moving…”

  “How about Lang Vei?” Woods nodded to the east. />
  “We tried that. They were waiting for us in the elephant grass…”

  Woods thought about Arnason to his south and a linkup with him. Arnason would know what to do. “Head south, and link up with Sergeant Arnason’s team.” Woods looked at Sanchez. He didn’t want to order him to stay behind with him, but someone had to act as a rear guard to slow the NVA down so that the wounded could escape. “I’m staying back here until the NVA catch up, to slow them down…”

  Sanchez nodded that he was staying too. Both of Welburg’s flunkies joined Woods.

  “Fuck this shit!” Welburg started south along the deer trail that bordered the river.

  The Marine sergeant smiled. “Thanks. We can’t move very fast with our wounded…”

  Two of the Marines joined Woods’s small force. He was glad to see that the man with the M-60 had stayed behind. He could use the firepower the weapon provided.

  Warner pushed the TALK switch on his URC-10. “Cloud Cover 22 … this is Mud Puppy 44 … Over.”

  There was a long pause before the FAC pilot answered. “Cloud Cover 22 … send your traffic … Over.”

  “Mud Puppy 44 … I need some napalm and arty for a blocking fire at…” Woods paused, looked up his coordinates, and gave them to the pilot. “We are expecting a lot of NVA shortly … can I have everything on call?”

  “Roger … four minutes for the fast movers and the artillery should be ready soon … 8-inchers … Over.”

  “Excellent … stand by … Out.”

  Woods pointed out the positions he wanted the men to take after he had briefed them that the tactics were going to be to withdraw south until they linked up with Arnason’s team. He held his URC-10 in his left hand and his CAR-15 tucked under his right arm and waited for the NVA.

  The Marine operating the M-60 machine gun was the first to open fire and then all hell broke loose. The NVA had been advancing in a two-hundred-meter skirmish line with only a couple of squads held in reserve to support the line in spots of major resistance. So far the tactic had worked and they had overrun each of the small Marine recon teams without much effort. Woods’s small fire team was not taken by surprise and planned on fighting. The NVA skirmish line disintegrated in front of the heavy volume of fire from the team. A couple of the NVA on the far side of the river opened fire but were quickly stopped by their NCOs because they feared that they would hit their own men.