by Eric Meyer
We landed at Tan Son Nhat and I taxied around to our hangar. Dao was waiting there with a truck, he had half a dozen tough looking Vietnamese with him, all armed. I stopped the engine, I reckoned it deserved a chance to cool down. He came up to the cabin and looked at the broken window.
“Problems?”
I shook my head. “Just a slight accident, nothing serious.”
“I see. Nothing to do with a Cambodian police helicopter getting shot up?”
“Were there any casualties?”
“One officer took a bullet through the leg, it wasn’t critical.”
“We wouldn’t have been there, so I wouldn’t know. We didn’t have clearance to cross the border.”
“Of course not. Did you get the goods?”
Paul climbed out of the aircraft and started to lift the package out. Dao beckoned his men forward and they ran to take hold of it and carry it away, two to carry it and four to cover them with their assault rifles.
“A valuable cargo, my friend.”
He smiled. “Not really, just vegetables, my grandfather likes them to be fresh.”
It was heroin, of course, I estimated that its street value must have been in the millions of dollars. It was just as well that the Cambodian Air Force hadn’t scored a lucky hit. I felt a twinge of guilt, the drug trade was unpleasant and not something I would have got involved in through choice. But who was I to judge? Forty years ago in the U.S. it was alcohol that was the dangerous drug, banned by law. All it did was promote lawlessness and gangster violence, so it seemed was happening now with heroin. It was addictive, sure, but so were cigarettes and some people said even chocolate. If they were that worried about it, maybe they should come out here and try to put a stop to the trade themselves.
Dao handed me an envelope. “It’s all there, Jurgen, as promised. I wish you luck, take out the bastard.”
“Because he’s bad for trade?”
“That’s right, he is indeed bad for trade. I wish you good night.”
He climbed into the passenger seat of their truck and the driver roared away. I stared down at the piece of paper in my hand. The name ‘Trang Bang’ was written there. There was an address and a date and time. Phuc, we had him. The date was the following evening, they’d put the meeting forward. We needed to get to MACV right away, it was time to prepare.
* * *
‘Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace.’
Charles Sumner
It was dark, as it always was in the tunnels. The room seemed cramped, although the ceiling had been hollowed out and made higher to allow the wounded more ventilation, more airflow to help their wounds heal, it was still too low. The Vietnamese lay propped up in the bed, he was heavily bandaged and obviously still in a lot of pain. Phuc tried to hide his contempt and anger as he looked at him, Son had caused him so much trouble he wished that the wounds he’d suffered in Cholon were enough to have killed him. Of all the luck, to be tasked with such a crazy mission by no less than Vo Nguyen Giap, then to have his son here running around like an American cowboy with an AK47, leading his troops to glory. Except that there was no glory, most of his men were dead. Major Son was here and his father, Giap, was pressuring him constantly both for news of his recovery and for progress reports on the battle. As if they didn’t know already. The battle was lost, how many more of his men did Giap want to shed their blood for this insane assault. They were outnumbered, outgunned and outmanoeuvred. Everyone knew it. He started, suddenly realising that Son was speaking to him.
“Excuse me, what was that?”
Son and Trong, the Viet Cong commander in the area of Cu Chi, were both looking at him curiously. He needed to be more careful.
“I said are your plans in place for the next assault, Comrade Phuc?”
“We are meeting tomorrow evening, Major Son. All of the area commanders will be present to coordinate a strategy for the grand assault on Saigon.”
“Let’s hope it will be more successful than the last one, Comrade.”
Phuc seethed with anger. And how successful was your assault, he wanted to ask him. As I recall you lost most of your men and achieved nothing. Even now, it is only through the efforts of a European doctor that you were able to survive yourself. But of course, he said nothing, merely smiled.
“We will endeavour to achieve the goals set out by your father, Comrade Giap. And how are the other assaults he had planned progressing, Major?”
Son winced, the barb was not well hidden. Everyone knew that the Tet offensives were grinding to a halt, had ground to a halt. Except for Hue, where the fighting continued, although it was bitter and the Viet Cong and People’s Army forces were being slaughtered. Here in Saigon the fighting went on, but again the enemy had regained the initiative and Phuc’s forces were being pushed back and shot down like dogs. It was the same everywhere, even in Khe Sanh, which Comrade Giap has assured them would be the next Dien Bien Phu, was a graveyard for the brave men and women who constantly pressed forward on the attack.
“I’m sure that Comrade Giap will see us no less successful that the other forces under his control.”
Trong was appalled. The anger between these two was thick and vicious. Sooner or later he would be called upon to take sides, who would he ally himself with? Giap of course was all powerful, but Hanoi was very distant. Phuc was a wily politician too, as well as a clever leader, he could just as easily arrange for a stray bullet to hit Trong during an attack. The best solution would be to mediate between these two men.
“Comrades, we are all grateful for the esteemed leadership from Hanoi and for the bravery and courage of Comrade Phuc. We need all of these things to succeed. Perhaps the next battle will see the people rise up against their cruel masters, but if not we will try again, and keep trying until we succeed.”
“Stirring words, Comrade Trong,” Phuc said acidly. “So you will be leading the next assault, will you?”
Even Son had to smile as the Cu Chi commander flushed bright red with embarrassment.
“I will do whatever is necessary,” he mumbled, “as I have always done.”
“Gentlemen, it is time to change Major Son’s dressings, I must ask you to leave us for a moment.”
They looked up at the European doctor, the one kidnapped from Cholon to care for Son.
“We are not finished, you will have to wait, we do not take orders from you,” Trong said, asserting his authority as area commander in Cu Chi.
“I said you need to leave,” she snapped back at him. “If his dressings are not changed he may catch blood poisoning and die. It is not my order, it is nature that dictates the progress of infection. It’s up to you, if you want him to die, ignore me.”
The two men got up to leave. Son chuckled as they were left alone.
“You dealt with them well, Helene.”
“Believe me, Major, it was only what was medically necessary. I care nothing for you or for Trong. You are my jailers, nothing more.”
“But surely you see how necessary it is that we win our independence from the Americans?”
She sighed. “Major Son, I came to this country almost twenty years ago. During that time I have seen the vile things done by the communists, I have twice been kidnapped by them and once left severely wounded and fighting for my life. I told you, all I see are my jailers.”
“Why is my father interested in your husband, Mr Hoffman?”
She looked at him sharply. “My husband? I have no idea, why should he be interested in him?”
Son shrugged, as much as he was able covered in the bandages. He winced.
“I don’t know, but he has asked about him twice, and about you. It’s almost as if there is some kind of a bond, perhaps from the past.”
“I’ll ask my husband when yo
u release me, perhaps he will know.”
Son ignored that. They were chronically short of doctors in the tunnels, he hadn’t told her yet that there were no plans for her release.
Helene carried on with the dressings, hiding her concern. Almost sixteen years before Jurgen and his men had freed her from a Vietminh work camp, on their way to the north of the country on a mission to capture or assassinate Giap. It would be well that his son did not know of her husband’s involvement.
CHAPTER 5
‘Tell the Vietnamese they've got to draw in their horns or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.’
Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964
The following morning we were to meet with the team at ten o’clock to prepare for the insertion that evening. We went early to check on Captain Edwards who was in the base hospital. It was a habit from the old days, we always went to check on casualties from actions we had been involved in. He lay in bed, swathed in bandages, he did his best to smile when we arrived.
“Nice of you to call in, guys.”
“How long are they keeping you here?” I asked him.
“Another three or four days, so they say, but I aim to try and get out by tomorrow. Is everything going ok, Major Willis taking care of you?”
“He’s fine, yes. Everything’s organised, well, we think so, we’ll know more later. You know we can’t discuss it,” I said to him.
“Tenshun,” a shout sounded from the entrance to the sick bay. A bustle of uniforms and General Westmoreland swept in with his entourage. He spotted us and came over, I was amused to see even Captain Edwards stiffen to attention in his bed.
“Hoffman, Schuster, von Schacht, how’s it all going?”
“It’s coming together, General, we’re seeing the team at ten hundred hours,” I replied.
He drew us away to a quiet corner. “I saw the information you brought back, that was good work. A pity it’s such a rush job.”
“That’s war, General,” Paul said with a smile.
“True. Listen, about your business. We need more capacity for our military cargoes up and down the country, some of our more specialised equipment and personnel could do with some civilian help.”
He meant black operations, deniability, secret incursions into enemy territory, of course. I wondered what the problem was with Air America. Maybe they were overstretched, but probably it was just the politics of the military versus the CIA. I knew they often fell out over the most minor differences of how to run the war.
“What do you mean, General?”
“Just that I’ve asked my engineers to schedule in some time to rebuild your hangar and I’m also prepared to get our people to underwrite the lease of a replacement DC-4.”
We looked at each other, Paul, Ritter and me. Perhaps miracles did happen after all, but then again, this was still Vietnam, there would be a heavy price to pay.
“What’s the quid pro quo, General?”
“Just the occasional contract for the military, things that we can’t sanction our own people to undertake. With no questions asked. Is it a deal?”
We all nodded emphatically. Running Special Forces and mercenaries into the North was dangerous. But which part of Vietnam wasn’t dangerous?
“Agreed, and thanks, General.”
He nodded and went on his rounds of the wounded. We left to find our way to MACV, a corporal showed us into a room at the side of the building. When we walked in, there were some familiar faces waiting for us. Abe Woltz, the sniper turned CIA man, Joe Russo and Jack Bond. Colonel Goldberg, the man we’d taken out of a North Vietnamese jail cell. There was also a man in the uniform of the Vietnamese Rangers who introduced himself as Major Ho Tan Diem.
“Gentlemen, come in and let’s get started,” Goldberg said. “Firstly, thanks to Hoffman and Schuster here, we have a time and place to hit Phuc, so that simplified things quite a bit. Due to the shorter time scale we’ll have to risk going in by helicopter, we’ve got two Hueys and a Cobra to escort us. It’ll be a rapid incursion, land, take out the target and get back out quickly.”
I noticed he’d forgotten the nicety of pretending that we would capture Phuc if possible. Paul and I exchanged smiles. He went on, showing us maps and charts of the landing area, pictures of Phuc to identify him and a host of background intelligence. Then he looked at us, “Hoffman and Schuster are familiar with the ground, they’ll lead us in. Any questions, gentlemen?”
Paul, Ritter and I looked at each other. We had a hundred questions, but none that he could have answered. We also had our own agenda that we didn’t intend discussing with the Colonel.
“They’ll abandon the meeting when they hear the choppers arriving,” Paul said abruptly.
Goldberg looked at him, as if Schuster had just vomited over his immaculate uniform. “What do you mean?”
“Colonel, when they hear the helicopters land, they’re going to wonder what the hell we’re up to and a high level strategy meeting would be an obvious target. What we need is a diversion, a convincing reason for being in the area.”
The others nodded, it was obvious to anyone who had fought insurgents for any period of time. Goldberg flushed red, he should have thought of it.
“Good point, Mr Schuster. Any suggestions?”
We looked at his map. Approximately ten miles from Trang Bang there was a small village, Binh Ho, with a red star marked against it indicating it was a VC stronghold. I went up and pointed to it on the map.
“If we go in there on a search and destroy mission, it would be a legitimate excuse. Land the Hueys, clear the village and take off again. Except that we don’t leave, the helicopters take off and we march to Trang Bang. We’ve covered that ground on several occasions, we can guide your party there with a good chance of not being seen by the enemy.”
Goldberg considered for a moment. “So, you’re proposing that we destroy an entire village as cover for our mission, am I correct?”
“Essentially, yes. A Viet Cong village, of course. We would be denying it to the enemy, so it would achieve an additional objective.”
“There could be women and children in that village, Hoffman.”
I nodded. “There are also women and children in Hanoi, Colonel, but in this case I’m not proposing a B-52 raid, indiscriminate high level bombing. They would at least stand a fair chance.”
He was quiet as he thought about it. “Major Diem, your thoughts on this?”
The tough looking Vietnamese looked up. “Fine.”
Obviously a man of few words. Goldberg nodded and went on.
“Right, we’ll go with that. Search and destroy mission at Binh Ho, we disperse the occupants and when the choppers lift off, we stay behind. Anything else?”
I pictured the hell that lay behind his simple phrase ‘disperse the occupants.’ The reality was the three helicopters would swoop down on their village and disgorge a group of heavily armed men. In theory it should be possible to order the villagers out and destroy their huts, they called them hooches. The reality was that there would be arguments, tears and sooner or later someone would start shooting, then the bloodbath would start. Of course we would do everything possible not to shoot at non-combatants, but here in Vietnam the communists often employed women and young children as soldiers, knowing that we would be reluctant to shoot at them. They were also known to drive women and children in front of them when they attacked. I hoped we would be able to disperse them without too much bloodshed, but I doubted it.
Goldberg ended the meeting, we all had a good idea of what we were doing. At least, I hoped so. The Colonel came over to us.
“Is there anything you need, weapons, uniforms, anything like that?”
We all shook our heads. “Colonel, we’ve got our M2s, they’ve always worked for us,” Ritter said. “As for uniforms, why would we bother? Your men are not going to shoot us by mistake, we’ll be the only white faces for more than twenty miles.”
“I was thinking that it might help if you we
re captured by the Viet Cong, Mr von Schacht.”
Ritter laughed. “I don’t think so, if they want to shoot us they will. If they don’t, they won’t. But I’ve never been captured by the communists, Colonel, you’d know more about that.”
I winced, it was a hit below the belt. But there was a grain of truth, for all of their vaunted technological excellent and superiority, the Americans were not achieving much. The vast bombing raids with the B-52s, the attack bombers, the F-4s, their tanks, artillery, machine guns and a variety of exotic weaponry had still not turned the tide.
“As you wish,” Goldberg said stiffly as he turned away.
I turned to him. “Ritter, that was confrontational, why make an enemy of the Colonel?”
He shrugged. “Their stupidity almost got everyone killed before, as well as himself captured. Until Paul here pointed out the idiocy of going straight into Cu Chi, he probably would have done the same thing again. Sorry, my friend, but I’ve got no confidence in the man. Thankfully the soldiers he commands are good, very good.”
“Well, ok, but try and rein it in a bit, Ritter, we don’t want open hostility to sour this mission.”
“I will do, certainly. Sorry. Me and my stupid mouth, I suppose I should have kept quiet.”
“Just be polite around Goldberg next time you see him, Ritter.”
“Ich verstehe, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer,” he said.