by Dale A. Dye
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Near the military crest of the hill, Captain Loan’s radioman died instantly, his chest shredded by shrapnel from a second mine blast. It was unfortunate, but Loan was a soldier and he understood the odds every soldier faces in combat: fifty-fifty at best, even less in an ambush or mine situation. It would be Loan lying dead on the trail if he had not been crouched behind a tree, responding to a frantic call from Comrade Dang when his point man tripped the mine.
Now he stood in what looked like a slaughterhouse. He had five more dead and twice that wounded. Survivors were probing the jungle on either side of the trail, while that idiot Camp Commander jabbered into the radio claiming that his camp was under attack.
Capt. Loan turned to look back toward the camp, careful not to silhouette himself against the fire that was still roaring atop the hill. He could see tracers lancing into the dark. They were all outgoing and green. Sentries were shooting at shadows, typical militia overreaction.
Ignoring the pleas coming over the radio, Capt. Loan considered what he knew at this point and what he didn’t know. There was no evidence that the camp was under concerted attack, and yet there were unexplained explosions on the perimeter. And someone who knew what he was doing had planted mines of some sort up on the hill. That someone wanted to draw him and his men in this direction. That certainly worked, but why? And then he saw it all plainly. The threat was not here on the hill. The objective was down below in the camp and Capt. Loan suddenly realized that what brought him to Camp 413 was more than an idle rumor.
He keyed the handset and shouted. “Find the American and stay with him! I am returning immediately!”
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Salt was standing by a window staring at the fireworks display on the camp perimeter when Willy Pud slammed into the hooch and dropped into a kneeling position just inside the door with a pistol pointed at his head. Cleveland Herbert Emory squinted behind his glasses, saw the pistol, and instinctively raised his hands.
The man kept him covered and moved toward him cautiously until they were face to face. This is an American soldier, he thought, wondering if he was about to be rescued or killed. There was something familiar about the camouflage smeared face. Somewhere long ago, he’d seen that face.
“Who are you?” Salt realized he’d spoken in Vietnamese so he repeated the question in English.
“Questions later, asshole…” Willy Pud glanced out the window where the chaos he’d created was beginning to dissipate. “I know who you are, and I’m here to take you out. Let’s get moving.” Willy motioned toward the back door of the hooch with the muzzle of his pistol.
“You’re an American…” Salt lowered his hands but stayed rooted to his spot near the open window.
“That’s right, Emory. I’m a guy you met a long time ago with your buddy Clay in Laos.”
Salt stood frozen gaping, remembering. Willy Pud grabbed him at the juncture of his neck and shoulder squeezing hard and watching the man he hated wince with pain. “You’re gonna do what I tell you right now and from now on, Emory. We can do it the hard way or the easy way.”
Before he could get a response, Willy Pud heard footsteps pounding across the compound heading in his direction. He pushed Salt down into the shadows and cocked the hammer on his pistol. “You make one sound and I’ll kill you right here.”
When he got a nod, Willy Pud slipped toward the door and put his back to the wall. Someone was shouting outside and then the door cracked. A Vietnamese in uniform with a pistol in his hand barged in and snapped on a flashlight. He focused the beam on Salt crouched below the window and said something conversational as he walked further into the hooch.
Willy Pud let Camp Commander Comrade Nguyen Pho Dang take two steps and then he grabbed a handful of coarse black hair, screwed the muzzle of the Kimber into the man’s left ear and pulled the trigger. Dropping the bloody body onto the bamboo floor, he turned his pistol on Salt who sat staring with a shocked expression on his face.
“Get up off your ass and follow me,” he said. “We got a lot of ground to cover.”
In the dark it was difficult to fit the pieces of the puzzle, but Captain Loan kept Camp 413 blacked out and refused to allow his remaining troops to use flashlights as they scoured the camp grounds. He felt certain that the camp had been breached by dangerous men, and they might still be somewhere inside the perimeter. That was one problem on a problem-filled night in this cesspool, he thought, staring down at the Camp Commander’s nearly headless corpse. Outside the hut was another dead man who had been killed very efficiently by someone who knew how to use a knife. And that someone or several men had obviously taken the American who could not be found despite the extensive search Loan had ordered when he returned from the hill.
The American was the objective. There was no question about that now. But who would stage a show like this one to rescue an American traitor, a turncoat? Was it other Americans, perhaps a Special Forces raid? How would they get into Vietnam undetected? Perhaps a gang of mercenaries, maybe Chinese or Laotian hired by the Americans? Loan leaned wearily against the wall of the hut feeling a debilitating mixture of shame and anger. It didn’t matter who did the raiding and the killing to abscond with the American. The important thing now was to stop them, to get the American back in custody. Conflicting emotions were clouding his judgment, but he could see clearly what had to be his primary concern. He needed to do something to rectify this situation and clean up the blunders. It would be difficult work with the small clutch of survivors he had left but it must be done…and it must be done quickly before unfiltered reports of this disaster reached Hanoi.
He turned to his senior sergeant who had been waiting patiently for orders. “Assemble what’s left of our unit and any militiamen you think are competent. We will begin a search immediately.”
“They most likely escaped by water, Captain.” The senior NCO has been thinking about how he would escape if he were among the men who staged this raid.
“Agreed. The militia has a boat that they use for fishing. Find it. We will send out a search party and hunt the local waters until dawn. Then we launch the helicopter.”
Captain Loan stomped off into the dark toward the commander’s hut where he could study detailed maps. The raiding party with the American would mostly likely head westward toward Laos. He was determined to follow as long and as far as necessary. And if he didn’t find them, he was equally determined to disappear across that border rather than face what would be waiting for him in Hanoi.
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To his credit, Salt had kept his mouth shut while they clung to the makeshift rubber raft and floated silently down the dark river. There had been some initial chatter and questions from Salt who was giddy over this adventure that had been so suddenly thrust on him. He tried to thank his rescuer several times but Willy Pud put an end to it quickly. “I’m not your pal, Emory. Just keep your mouth shut until I say otherwise.”
Salt stared wide-eyed into the gloom on either side of the stream and tried to help kick but his game leg wasn’t much of an asset. He mostly held on tight and tried to calm himself. They rode low in the water with just enough air in the mattresses to keep Willy Pud’s weapons and pack relatively dry and let the current do most of the work. About 30 minutes away from the camp perimeter, they were in mid-stream where the tributary widened and deepened. Willy Pud smelled the rotting stench that marked the beginning of the swamp. It was time to turn west.
“We need to get out of the water,” he whispered. “We’re making a turn.”
“Nothing but swamp in that direction,” Salt said.
“That’s right…and that’s where we’re headed.”
“But we can’t get through…”
Willy Pud grabbed him by an ear. “Listen to me, you turncoat sonofabitch, you go where I tell you to go and shut the fuck up!”
If Salt sulked, he did so in silence. Willy Pud had no time to ask if Emory was finally getting a grip on the diffic
ulties they faced. He pulled a full canteen from a pouch on his hip and punched a snap-link through the cap-strap. Then he pulled the coil of rope from his ruck and jerked a bowline into the bitter end. Attaching the heavy canteen to the rope with the snap-link, he fashioned an effective heaving line. On the third toss toward the shore, the canteen snagged and held in the tangled roots of a banyan. Willy began to haul on the line until their raft bumped the riverbank. They were just 20 meters or so above the entrance to the dismal mangrove swamp.
“OK, out of the water,” He said to Salt. “There’s socks and a pair of jungle boots in the ruck. Put ’em on and let’s go.”
While Willy Pud punctured and hid the air mattresses, Salt struggled into the socks and boots. He made no complain about the fit and Willy decided he’d made a good guess on the size given what he knew about the man’s build. He didn’t need the guy plagued by blisters or bitching about sore feet. Salt limped around a bit getting the feel of the boots then tossed the sandals he’d been wearing into the river.
“Can you hump?”
“What? I guess so, but I’ll be a little slow on the game leg.”
“Let’s go.” Willy pulled the AUG from a poncho and shouldered his rucksack which was now thankfully much lighter. “We got a lot of ground to cover.”
“We should get away from the water,” Salt said as he limped after his rescuer.
“Why is that?”
“They’ll be looking for us in the boat.”
“What fucking boat? I didn’t see a boat.”
“They mostly use it for fishing. It’s in a little shed by the riverbank.”
“Is it a powerboat?” Willy Pud didn’t need this complication. “Is it armed?”
“They got a little outboard on it. Sometimes they put a machinegun up in the bow, but not all the time.”
“Shit!” Willy Pud stood looking at the point where the river met the mangrove swamp. If he’d known there was a boat, he might have selected a higher, dryer escape route. He’d been planning to use the swamp as a deterrent to effective tracking and speedy chase. A shallow-draft little fishing skiff could power right through that stuff. He’d be smart to turn south were the map said there was high ground, but all those hills were thick with jungle and he might not make the border in time for the scheduled pick-up.
“Let’s go…that direction.” Will Pud nodded toward the swamp and started walking. They had about two hours to dawn and he needed to find someplace where they could ambush the pursuit he knew was coming.
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Willy Pud crouched and stared up the finger of shallow water that poked into the dense interior of the mangrove swamp from the muddy main artery. The inlet was only about 20 meters wide. It dead-ended some 50 meters away in a tangle of reeds and vines. A small skiff turning in here to investigate would be relatively restricted, like a tank heading into a narrow alley. It might fit, but it couldn’t maneuver.
Something even narrower would be better, but the sky was beginning to grey in the east and he didn’t have time for further search. He slipped into the swamp and settled as the muddy water rose to a level just under his armpits.
“You sure about the draft?” Salt sat on the bank, ignoring the mosquitoes that swarmed around his head, gobbling one of Willy’s sticky rice-balls and swilling from a canteen.
“About what?”
“About how much water the boat draws…you said it was only a couple of feet.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s about right. I don’t know.”
Willy heaved himself out of the water, slapped the rice-ball out of Salt’s hand and grabbed him by the jaw, squeezing until the man’s lips puckered. Salt’s eyes were wide, the eyeballs darting from side to side as Willy Pud leaned in to hiss at him.
“There’s a whole hell of a lot you don’t know, asshole. You better start getting smart right now. When that boat comes after us, I’m gonna stop it. And you’re gonna be the bait that lures it in here.” Willy let go of Salt’s face with a painful pinch and pulled a set of handcuffs from his pocket “When you hear the motor, you’re gonna start yelling in Vietnamese. When they turn in here, you wave and yell like you need to be rescued. Got that?”
“They might not come after us.”
“They’ll come…you can count on it. Those guys who arrived in the helicopter are pros. They won’t give up easy.”
“They might shoot me.”
“Emory, if they were gonna shoot you they’d have done it a long time ago.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Let me worry about that.” He snapped a cuff tightly around Salt’s right hand and clicked the other cuff around a nearby stalk of bamboo.
“I want out of here as bad as you do. You don’t have to use handcuffs.”
“Yeah, I do, Emory.” Willy Pud checked the end of the rope anchored to a large teak tree, picked up the remaining length, and slipped into the water. “There’s no telling whose side you’re on, is there?”
He waded across the water to the opposite bank and climbed into the low branches of a thick banyan. When he was satisfied with his seat some 12 feet above the surface of the brackish water, he computed angles by eye and secured the other end of the rope. When he dropped the line in the water, it came to rest about three or four feet under water.
Emptying a canteen, Willy Pud reached for a block C-4. He molded, prodded, and packed the doughy explosive until his canteen was full the then screwed the cap back in place. Then he used his K-Bar to neatly slice the top off the cap which gave him access to the explosive. He unscrewed fuse from a grenade, poked a hole in the C-4, and slid the blasting cap and striker assembly into the throat of what now amounted to a one-quart bomb.
Taping the improvised explosive device securely, he carefully straightened the tines of the grenade pin so it would slide out easily and tied a length of monofilament to it. Finally, he used a carabineer to attach the finished product to the rope he’d rigged across the length of the little inlet. He was as ready to deal with the chase he knew was coming as he could get with what he had at hand.
Thirty minutes later, just as he was starting to doze off in his perch in the tree, he heard the burble and hum of an outboard approaching from upstream. The revs of the engine slowed as the boat entered the mangrove swamp, and Willy reached for the rope he’d rigged. The canteen bomb was right where he’d wedged it in an upper branch. He glanced toward Emory who had his arms wrapped around his knees, rocking back and forth and swatting at mosquitoes. He jerked upright when he heard the sound of the outboard puttering in their direction.
When a powerful searchlight beam penetrated the gloom, Emory struggled to his feet and started waving. Willy Pud couldn’t tell what he was yelling in Vietnamese but it sounded frightened and desperate. The light found him and he yelled some more, pointing at the handcuffs that had him secured to the tree.
The light stayed on Salt as the man guiding the boat throttled back. There was some back-and-forth shouting in Vietnamese as the little boat with an RPD machinegun mounted in the bow swerved toward the entry to the inlet. Willy Pud saw four men in the boat. Two of them were NVA regulars. He just needed to hope they’d come on in to the inlet which would be the easiest place to nose ashore and go after Salt.
Salt waved his free hand and pointed at a landing spot. The boat turned right into the inlet and headed for where he was pointing. That put the skiff on a direct path to cross the line Willy Pud had rigged under the water. He waited until the broad beam of the boat was right over his line and then began to tighten the rope forcing is to rise. When he figured the stern was over his line, Willy Pud jerked hard and wrapped a turn around his tree limb.
The outboard motor canted forward sharply and screamed in protest as the rope snagged and fouled the prop. The boat slewed and stopped, tossing all four occupants into a tangle heap near the bow. They were struggling for balance when Willy let go of the canteen affixed to the rope and let the monofilament slid
e through his fingers. The jury-rigged bomb slid bomb slid smoothly down the rope toward the boat. When it thunked into the plastic cover over the engine, he jerked on the monofilament and pulled the pin on the fuse.
The explosion was spectacular. Willy had to claw at branches to keep himself from being blown from his perch. Debris was still splashing into the roiled water of the inlet when he began to snipe at floating bodies. He expended 10 rounds before he was satisfied that no one would survive.
It was nearly dawn when he freed Salt from the cuffs. The man didn’t have much to say about all the killing. He mainly bitched about having to sit so long as a buffet for mosquitoes. The business of moving only at night was at an end. Time was tight. They’d hustle hard through the remainder of the swamp and then hope the thick jungle of the mountains on the Laotian border would serve to hide them from further searches. They headed due west. There were eight hard kilometers to cover and one more day to survive before the scheduled rendezvous with Keo.
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Captain Loan pointed at a spot on the pilot’s map and keyed his headset. “Here. We know they were in the swamp, they should emerge here. We can spot them in the open before they start into the hills.”
The pilot lowered his visor against the sun streaming in through the cockpit windscreen and glanced down at the map. “As you wish, Comrade Captain.” He pulled the Mi-8 into a left turn. It staggered and strained in the air and he saw the needle of the turbine temperature indicator begin to climb. Precision flying was a joke with the equipment they were issued. The aircraft was old, poorly maintained, and balky in responding to the flight controls. Both engines were wheezy and due for an overhaul that the Air Force mechanics in Hanoi seemed incapable of performing.
“Tell your troops in the back to keep a sharp eye on the ground.” He tapped the fuel indicator. “We have limited loiter time.”