Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

  “Sophie, my darling.”

  “Mama,” our daughter cried. Helene scooped her up and gave her a huge hug. She carried her into the house and I followed with the others. I ran to join them and for a brief moment the dreadful slaughter of the past few days was forgotten as I hugged my wife and daughter to me. Then I said hello to Lan while I looked around the room. Everything seemed to have been well looked after, there were no signs of any serious damage.

  “How is everything?” I asked her.

  “Good, we’re fine,” she said. “God, I’m so glad to see you back, Jurgen. What happened?”

  I stood looking at her for a few moments, I had things to say and didn’t quite know how to say them. Maybe the direct route was the best, it usually was.

  “I take it you were asking after Major Son?”

  She looked quizzical. “Major who?”

  I smiled. “Major Son, the communist officer who was here, Helene was tending his wounds. He is an officer in the North Vietnamese Army, the PAVN.”

  “Oh, that man. I wasn’t aware of his name. It was a terrible time when they overran the district, they came in here and we had no choice but to let them do as they wished, Jurgen.”

  She heard a noise and looked behind her, Ritter was stood there with his Colt automatic drawn.

  “Ritter, what’s going on, why have you got a gun pointed at me?”

  “It’s no good, Lan, we’ve put it all together. Major Son is related to you, isn’t he?” I said to her. “When the MPs found the leaflets hidden in the bungalow it was you that put them there, wasn’t it? There was no way the communists would have bothered to hide them. It was you. What is he, your brother?”

  She was frozen with indecision. I saw her eyes glance slightly to one side, there was a table against the wall with a narrow drawer underneath it.

  “Don’t think about it, Lan. There are three of us here, all armed and we’ve got the armoured personnel carrier outside mounting a fifty calibre machine gun. Tell us about Major Son.”

  She was stiff for a few moments, then her shoulders drooped, she was beaten.

  “He is my cousin, a first cousin.”

  “So Giap is your uncle?”

  “Yes. Are you going to shoot me, Jurgen?”

  “I don’t know. What is your rank in the Viet Cong?”

  She had lost everything now, it all came out. “I am a Captain in the Office of the People’s Commissar, my task is to offer armed assistance to our commissars.”

  I heard Ritter give a low whistle. It was a very high rank, probably carrying a similar weight to that of colonel in a line regiment. But of course, she was related to Giap.

  “You invited them here, didn’t you?”

  “No, no, please believe me, it was the last thing I wanted. They had specific orders to stay away from me to preserve my cover, but when Son was injured they knew I was here and would be able to help them.”

  “Jurgen, you can’t kill Lan, you must realise that, she’s been looking after Sophie.”

  “She was also responsible for you almost getting killed and her being here brought armed Viet Cong into our home, threatening all of you.”

  “But surely...”

  “Take Sophie outside, Helene. Get her safely into the APC.”

  “But Jurgen, no, you can’t do this...”

  “Get her out of here,” I shouted.

  White faced, she picked up our daughter and left. Lan knew what came next, but I had to hand it to her, she was unafraid. She stood erect, proud and defiant.

  “You’d better get it done, Jurgen, I’m not afraid.”

  “I know. You’re aware that I met your uncle once, a long time ago?”

  She smiled bitterly. “Yes, he told me the story.”

  “I would let you go, Lan, on one condition. That you leave South Vietnam and agree to never, ever return, not for as long as the war lasts. I would need your parole.”

  “You’re letting me go?” she was astonished.”

  I nodded. “Are we agreed?”

  “You have my word.”

  “Right. Wait here until we’re gone, then you can start making your way North.”

  “Thank you, Jurgen.”

  I cocked my pistol and fired a single shot into the floor. Then I nodded to her, “Now you’re dead.”

  We turned and went out to the APC. Ritter said quietly as we walked up the path, “You’ll give the SS a bad name, my friend.”

  We all burst out laughing. Helene was red with rage. “You bastard, you killed her and now you’re laughing about it. You’re scum, all of you, SS scum.”

  Ritter and Paul rocked with laughter even more. Paul leaned across and whispered in her ear. I saw her expression change, her eyes widened and she looked across at me. She tried to keep a straight face, but her expression was still rueful. Eventually she lamely said, “Well, it wasn’t very nice.”

  “No, my darling, I’m sorry, but it had to be done.”

  I could see Abe Woltz nodding grimly, he’d known the situation before we went in. We stared straight ahead as we drove out of Cholon, in truth we had all agonised over how to deal with Lan. Helene would never know how close the Vietnamese woman had come to being shot. After all she was responsible for much of the terror that had come to Saigon, she had deserved to die. But she was our Lan, our office manager and Giap’s niece. It was an impossible decision, whatever we decided to do there would be enormous problems as a result. Not least of which was Helene, Lan had looked after and guarded Sophie, albeit as a result of the fighting that she had been a part of. But Sophie was safe. Maybe there was an unwritten law, you don’t shoot your children’s nanny, no matter what. It seemed a sound philosophy.

  We returned to Tan Son Nhat, the driver parked the APC outside out hangar. Work had already begun repairing it, more importantly Emile had good news.

  “The DC-4, it’s fully operational, we’re ready for you to take it on a test flight.”

  We were all astonished. “Emile, I thought you needed several parts that were going to be difficult to obtain.”

  “Yes, but I got talking to one of the ground engineers, he looks after a couple of USAF DC-4s that come and go from here. He had some spares that were lying around doing nothing, we did some trading.”

  I grinned, it was best not to ask. But we were in business.

  “I have to go to MACV in the morning, I’ll talk about getting the aircraft re-certified. They’re guaranteeing a leased DC4 to replace the second aircraft, so we should be back in business shortly. Provided the Viet Cong leave us alone, of course. Well done, Emile, a brilliant job, you too, Joe.”

  They nodded and looked away, embarrassed with the praise. Helene, with a woman’s touch, was already clearing away the wreckage of the office, it was starting to look more like home. All we needed was to rent a bungalow and we could start again.

  We left the hangar and went into the city to check into to a hotel. We found one and ate a good dinner. We kept Sophie close to us, we’d been apart so long, days when we thought we may never see her again that we appreciated every minute that we were able to spend with her. Afterwards we walked around the city centre of Saigon, it was cheerful and bustling as ever and I treated my wife and daughter to small gifts of jewellery from the stalls in the street. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and to our room where there was a cot made up for Sophie. She was already very tired and we put her straight to bed where she fell instantly into a deep sleep. Then we fell on each other, ripping each other’s clothes off and falling onto the bed. Afterwards we lay in each other’s arms. God, how I’d missed her.

  “What made you let Lan go?” she asked me. I told her that it wasn’t done to shoot your nanny.

  She smiled. “Really, what decided you?”

  I thought for a moment. “I guess because I didn’t want to become an animal like they are, Helene. The communists fight the war here with no concern whatsoever for human life. To them people are like grains of sand on a beach, there a
re so many that if the tide takes away a large quantity, there are plenty more to keep the beach whole. It was the same in Russia, they’d send men and women against one of our Tiger tanks armed only with rifles if it suited them. It’s not my way, Paul and Ritter both feel the same.

  “My word,” she smiled, “so you’re something of a liberal, Jurgen. Maybe you should consider a job working for the United Nations, working towards world peace. Would you ever consider a different line of work, something other than running a small airline in a war zone?”

  I pretended to consider. “It would depend what the women are like, Helene, if they were as beautiful as the ones here in Saigon.”

  I received a hard punch for my comment, then we slept, the best night either of us had had in a long, long time.

  In the morning, after a luxurious soak in a hot tub and a three-course breakfast, I left Helene to look at some bungalows with a view to renting and setting up a new home. Then I reported to MACV headquarters at Tan Son Nhat. Security in the city was still tight, my cab had to run through eight separate checkpoints guarded by trigger happy ARVN troopers before we drove onto the airfield. Ritter and Paul were already waiting there for me, this was to be a full debrief on the recent mission to the tunnels. Captain Vincent was back on duty, heavily bandaged and walking with a stick but he was well on his way to recovery. There was no sign of Westmoreland, the General was apparently in a heap of trouble, Ritter had whispered that he was in serious talks with Washington.

  The word was the General was likely to be replaced. His previous statements that the war was going well for the Americans, that the Viet Cong were virtually defeated, had proved to be far wide of the mark. The American public and politicians were very unhappy with the massive shock of the Tet offensive had. Edwards led us into a room, Abe Woltz was already there with Jack Bond. I was surprised to see him, but he seemed ok following the injury to his leg.

  “Gentlemen, the first question we want answered is about the casualties, let’s begin with Colonel Goldberg. I understand he was tortured, is that correct?”

  We went through the whole thing, starting with the North Vietnamese captain’s torture of Goldberg, then right back to the beginning of the mission through to the end when we re-entered Saigon. We omitted any reference to the ‘borrowed’ M113 armoured personnel carrier, other than that there seemed to be little to be cautious about.

  Like all missions, it had its good and bad points, although this particular one had seemed to involve excessive quantities of military ordnance to bring about its conclusion. I thought about the B-52 strikes, the Phantoms with their Vulcan cannon and napalm, the Cobra gunships, the Hueys. Edwards carefully noted all of it. When we were finished, he seemed satisfied.

  “Thank you for that, we consider it a mission properly carried out. Despite the casualties, the mission objective was satisfied and most of the participants returned safely. A good result, the General is well pleased.”

  The mission had been to assassinate one man as a kind of punishment for the Tet attacks on Saigon. I wondered how many millions of dollars it had cost to achieve that, as well as lives lost, both enemy and friendly South Vietnamese who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. High Altitude heavy bombers were not a pin-point method of attacking a target. But then Edwards pulled a pile of documents out of his briefcase.

  “Mr Hoffman, Mr Schuster, these are the lease agreements that relate to the replacement Douglas DC-4. The General insists that the military has priority on its use, other than that you are free to use it to transport general cargo. Apparently General Westmoreland thinks that a civilian aircraft could be more useful in certain situations, which is why he is able to help you.”

  Woltz broke into the conversation. “But surely, Captain, there’s Air America. There is already a civilian airline able to operate anywhere in Vietnam, or in the whole of Asia, come to that.”

  There was a silence at the table. We tried hard to suppress our grins, but Edwards had no qualms about clearing up this one for Woltz, the CIA man.

  “Abe, you know that Air America is about as civilian as the U.S. military. Wherever it flies it’s known to be showing the flag for the CIA. Generally, that’s not a problem, but it sure doesn’t win any hearts and minds. What we’re looking for is a purely civilian operation for certain uses. If the CIA doesn’t like it, they can complain to the President.”

  Abe was silent for a few moments. Then he nodded. “I see your point, I don’t think the company will be making any waves about it. After all, it’s only one aircraft.”

  One aircraft for now, my friend, I thought. But Emile has the other DC-4 ready for flight testing, that will make two. And if the Viet Cong stop bombing our hangar and aircraft, we’ll be looking for more. One thing there is no shortage of in South Vietnam is money to pay for the transport of cargoes, both military and civilian. Military meant Special Forces and civilian meant drugs. Invariably. I wondered about the drugs, it was a nasty business to be mixed up in, drugs caused considerable misery and deaths. But so did war. Where did I draw the line?

  I signed everything, as did Paul. Then we left the office and walked across the airfield to the hangar. Emile and Joe were waiting, as was Nhu, Lan’s office assistant.

  “Where is Lan?” she asked me. “Was she hurt in the battle?”

  “No, Lan is fine. But she left our employment, she had to go and visit her family in the North.”

  She gave me a sharp glance. Visiting one’s family in the North was a euphemism for defecting to the communists.

  “Did you keep up with her duties, Nhu? Could you take on some of her work?”

  She nodded emphatically. “Lan was often busy with other things, I covered for her frequently, I can do all of her work.”

  “Good, in that case you’re promoted to Office Manager. There won’t be any more money just yet, but if things go well in the future, there will definitely be a good raise.”

  She smiled. I wondered about the ‘other things’ that Lan was often busy with. Like running the Viet Cong cell inside Saigon and liaising with Hanoi. But in spite of everything, I didn’t harbour any grudges against her. Well, perhaps not too many. Emile came into the office.

  “The DC-4 is fuelled up and ready to go for the flight test, when do you want to take her up?”

  The three of us, Paul, Ritter and myself looked at each other, smiling. I turned to Emile.

  “I think now would be as good a time as any.”

  * * *

  ‘We were children of the 1950s and John Kennedy's young stalwarts of the early 1960s. He told the world that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" in the defence of freedom. We were the down payment on that costly contract, but the man who signed it was not there when we fulfilled his promise. John Kennedy waited for us on a hill in Arlington National Cemetery, and in time we came by the thousands to fill those slopes without white marble markers and to ask on the murmur of the wind if that was truly the future he had envisioned for us.’

  Joseph L. Galloway

  “Mr President, the only way for us to win this war is to employ more troops and re-commence the bombing of the North Vietnamese. It’s the only way we’ll ever really finish them off.”

  General Westmoreland sat back, satisfied that he had acquitted himself well during the recent offensive. Recalled to this meeting in Washington, he felt he had done everything expected of him. The trouble was, it was a two way process and the things he needed had just not been forthcoming. The other men were silent. Then Johnson gave him a fierce look.

  “General, several weeks ago you were on record as stating that the Viet Cong were as good as defeated, that the war was almost won and our boys could look forward to the day when they could come home.”

  Westmoreland opened his mouth to explain, but the President overrode him.

  “Damnit, General, many of the boys won’t be coming home at all, they’re dead. What do I tell their folks who listened to you on the t
elevision? They got the flags out ready, baked the cakes, now their boys are coming back in body bags. What do you want me to tell them, William?”

  There was another period of silence. Westmoreland tried again.

  “Mr President, are you aware of the communist casualties for the Tet offensive? They’re enormous, vast. My staff estimates that the back of the communist fighting ability has been almost totally destroyed, we beat them hands down. It’s a disaster for them, Sir.”

  Wheeler supported his General. “That’s true, Mr President, those losses have been verified, the North lost heavily in Tet.”

  “Not so heavily that they can’t continue fighting at Khe Sanh, they’re giving our troops a hammering as I hear it,” McNamara said.

  “It’s nothing we can’t handle,” Westmoreland hit back. “Khe Sanh isn’t going to be another Dien Binh Phu, of that I can assure you. We’ve got aircraft flying around the clock to supply our troops that are fighting there and I’ve ordered units to prepare to break through to them and relieve the siege.”

  Johnson raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Jesus Christ, am I hearing this correctly? You’re talking about having to supply our men that are under siege, units to break through to relieve them, and you think we’re beating the communists? Because we’re losing the war, gentlemen, and where we’re losing it may or may not be on the battlefields of Vietnam, but it sure is on the streets of the USA. It’s gone on too long, we’re losing too many men. Our people hear one thing, and then something contradicts it entirely.”

  He looked sharply at Westmoreland, who kept silent.

  “First of all, General, here’s the deal. I will not order any more troops to be sent to Vietnam, and that’s final.”