Dateline: Viet Nam: A Military Thriller Double

by Robert Vaughan

  As they bathed, Mike noticed that he was gradually able to see more and more of her body. At first he thought it was an accidental exposure. Then he realized that it was a studied movement as she wiped away more of the suds. Each minute after tantalizing minute, she opened more of herself to his view until every delightful curve was finally laid bare. But only briefly, because as soon as she had removed the last of the suds and was completely exposed, she stepped out of the tub and covered herself with a large towel. For one maddening instant, she had been totally nude. And then, once again, her body was protected from his gaze. She walked into the bedroom and he, wrapping himself in an oversized towel, followed.

  “Would you?” she asked, holding up a flask of oil. The oil was an amber color, and the glow shining through it made it appear as if it had an inner fire.

  “Yes,” Mike said. His tongue was thick and his throat dry and he found it extremely difficult to talk. He took the flask, half expecting it to be hot from its brilliance. Le turned her back to him, then removed her robe.

  Mike took a short breath of appreciation at the sight of her nudity. The smooth flow of her skin continued in an unbroken line from her shoulders down her gently curved back, across the soft mounds of her buttocks, split by the smooth fold between the cheeks, and on down her thighs and calves, ending in perfectly proportioned ankles and feet.

  Le stretched out on her stomach, and Mike poured some of the oil on her beautiful golden skin, then began rubbing. The sensuousness of it moved through his fingers and inflamed his whole body until he was consumed by desire.

  “Now, my beautiful American flyer,” Le said in a voice that was low with her own passion. She turned over and held her arms up in invitation to him, beckoning him down to her. “Make love to me now.”

  Mike moved over her and Le put her arms around his neck and pulled him to her, taking his tongue deep into her mouth, then pushing it back with her own tongue thrusting into his mouth. Mike abandoned himself, subject to the whims and dictates of this beautiful creature. He returned her kisses and caresses, and felt every inch of her soft, pliant body as it surged against his, urging him on.

  When the moment was exactly right, he moved into her, helped by her cool hands and long, supple fingers. He pushed against her unbelievably wet softness. Le raked his back with her nails and for a moment Mike was afraid he would lose control, but he managed to hang on, to match his rhythm to hers, allowing her time to reach her own pinnacle. Then, as he felt her melting into white-hot fire beneath him, he allowed his own body to erupt into a shattering climax.

  Afterward they lay together for several moments, neither moving nor speaking. But the feel of her skin and the scent of her musk reawakened his ardor. He went to her and they made love a second time.

  This time Mike had no difficulty in controlling himself, and it was slower and even more sensual. When they finished they lay in each other’s arms and Mike thought of how it had been with her. It was exotic and exciting, and his head spun with the dizziness of it. They had asked nothing from each other, save the momentary truth of sexual pleasure, and in that they had given as much as they had received.

  Colonel Mot sipped his drink quietly and looked through the large window into the bedroom at his wife and the American helicopter pilot. The glass through which Mot was looking was actually a oneway mirror, which in Le’s bedroom was the mirror on her ornate dresser.

  Mot felt a fluttering in the pit of his stomach, a slight weakness at the back of his knees, and a dampness in the palms of his hands. His breath came in short, ragged gasps, and there was a pounding erection pushing at the front of his pants. It was always this way when he watched his wife having sex with another man, or with other women.

  Theirs was an accommodating arrangement, he thought. She enjoyed sex, and had been wonderfully cooperative over the idea of having a one-way glass installed in the bedroom so that Mot could watch anytime he wished. As soon as he learned of Le’s infatuation with the American pilot, he had urged her to find some way to bring him over. It was for that reason that he asked to present an award personally. That, and the “reception,” was all it took to get him here. And now, it was well worth it.

  The arrangement between Mot and his wife wasn’t all one-way. He allowed her to enjoy sex with other men, and women, while she allowed him to indulge in his own particular tastes.

  “Colonel, do you wish to make love now?” a voice asked from behind him.

  Mot turned toward the sound of the voice. There, standing by the bed behind him, was a beautiful young girl...a very young girl.

  “Yes,” Mot said thickly. He went to the girl’s bed and stood there as her experienced young hands removed his clothes. When he was totally naked, the girl lay down, then looked up at him, waiting expectantly.

  Across town, Ernie made Olympic circles on the table in the bar of the Hotel Caravel. The Caravel was Saigon’s most elegant bar and hotel. Many of the TV reporters had suites there. Ernie had a low-rent apartment down on Le Loi, but he sometimes came here for dinner and drinks. He didn’t come here too often, though because he was disgusted with the phoniness of the correspondents who stood around in neatly tailored jungle fatigues, telling lies of their adventures. Often one reporter’s lie would end up in another reporter’s story.

  “Hello. May I join you?” A soft female voice came from behind him.

  Ernie started to wave her away. She was one of the Vietnamese bar girls. She was an exceptionally beautiful woman, and, like all the Caravel women, very cultured. But she was a whore, no different, except for her price, from the whores who worked the doorways and corners of “100 P Alley.”

  Ernie hesitated for a moment. Then he thought: Why not? Who the hell did he have to be faithful to? He had never found the right woman to make marriage work. There was no reason for him to hold back. He smiled at the girl and her hesitant smile deepened. She sat at his table.

  “I’ll get a room,” Ernie said.

  “You don’t want to have a drink first?” the woman asked.

  “I’ll buy a bottle of champagne,” Ernie said. “We can take it with us.”

  “Oh, champagne! What are we celebrating?”

  “A friend of mine got an award today,” he said. “And if my suspicions are right, he wound up getting more than he ever thought he would.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Come along, let’s get the champagne and a room.”

  A few moments later, Ernie was standing at the large, tinted window in the room on the seventh floor. From here he could look out over the Saigon River, and in the evening sun, the river gleamed like molten gold.

  “It’s pretty from up here,” Ernie said, “where you can’t smell it or see the turds floating in it.”

  “Why do you talk that way?” the woman asked from the bed behind him. “I thought you bought champagne to be happy.”

  Ernie turned toward the bed and saw her lying there, totally nude, waiting for him. She was on her side, and her head was propped up on her elbow. Her other arm was resting on her bare skin, with her hand at her hip. Her fingers seemed to be gracefully inviting him to the center of her charms. Ernie smiled at her and walked over to the bed. He began taking off his own clothes.

  “Honey, if a man saw someone like you waiting in his bed and he wasn’t happy, I’d say there was something seriously wrong with him.”

  The woman laughed, then lay on her back and raised her arms to him.

  Ernie reached over and turned off the light as he went to her. Without the lamp, there was only the soft, golden light of sunset, and the image of the girl on the bed with him softened in the shadows.

  Ernie looked into the girl’s eyes and saw they were half closed, like almonds, shielded by lashes of delicate lace, and he wondered why anyone so beautiful would be in such a profession. He bent his head to hers and their lips met. Her teeth nibbled against his bottom lip, and her tongue teased his.

  She guided him into her a
nd they made love, slowly and sensuously, until he felt himself approaching the pinnacle. He forced himself back, holding on to the delicious agony of the quest. Finally he heard the girl beneath him take several sharp gasps. Then he felt her quiver, and her hands gripped his back. She let out a long sigh, and when she did, he surrendered himself to the white heat that had been pulling at him for several moments. He felt himself slipping down through space, drained of all sensation save the connecting flesh and splash of seminal fluid. And the rush of white heat that blotted out everything.

  Chapter Seven

  Ernie watched the aircraft coming back from their mission. They banked low around the 605th DS shed, then followed in a long line, finally breaking off to hover over the individual pads. He drove the borrowed Jeep out to the ship he knew Mike was flying, then got out and stood in the hot breath of jet fumes as Mike killed the engine. He walked up to the pilot’s door and saw Mike filling out the logbook.

  “How’d it go?” Ernie asked.

  “It’s a bitch out there,” Mike answered. He took off his flight helmet, leaving his sweat-dampened hair plastered to his forehead. “They moved some anti-aircraft guns onto Widow’s Peak.”

  “Widow’s Peak?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what it’s really called; it’s a hill about thirty minutes northeast of here, right at the entrance to Di Shau Valley. We’ve been working that area for the last month with no problem. Then today, right out of the blue, they opened up on us with flak. They got two ships.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Move the chicken plate for me, will you?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Ernie said. He opened the pilot’s door, then slid the armored plate back so Mike could get out.

  “What are you doing up here?” Mike asked. “Hopped a ride up this morning,” Ernie said. “Thought I might come up with an idea for a story, but nothing yet. Now, I’m looking for a ride back to Saigon.”

  “If the evening distribution hasn’t gone yet, I’ll take you back,” Mike said. “You still owe me a dinner.”

  “You’re on,” Ernie agreed.

  “Mr. Carmack, Colonel Todaro wants to see you,” someone called.

  “Shit! Wonder what he wants,” Mike said.

  “Want a ride over to his office?” Ernie offered. “I borrowed Sergeant Pohl’s Jeep to come out to the flight line.”

  “Sure,” Mike said. He carried his flak jacket and helmet over to the Jeep, then tossed it in the back. Ernie slid in under the wheel and they started across the airfield toward Colonel Todaro’s headquarters.

  They drove by a row of cut-down fifty-five-gallon oil drums along the edge of the runway where half a dozen Vietnamese women, under the watchful eye of Specialist Schuler, were pouring diesel fuel into the drums. The drums had been pulled from the outdoor toilets and they were called honey buckets. Every day, the honey buckets would be burned off and the foul-smelling smoke would drift over the compound. No part of the camp would escape the odor, not even the mess tents where the men ate.

  Beyond Schuler’s mama-sans was the 605th Maintenance Company, and there, on the perforated steel planking, sat several helicopters in various stages of assembly. It was this company that would send a helicopter into the field to recover those helicopters that had either crashed or been shot down. The recovery crew was known as Goodnature 3 and Ernie once did a story about them. The V.C. knew that any downed helicopter would bring the recovery crew in, so they often set ambushes for them.

  Colonel Todaro’s headquarters, a newly installed Quonset hut, was on the other side of the field hospital. As Ernie drove by the hospital he saw two Dustoff Hueys sitting on the pads out front. Both had been used to evacuate the air crews of the two helicopters that were shot down by anti-aircraft fire from Widow’s Peak. He also saw a couple of bikini-clad nurses lying on a blanket in front of the hospital, sunning themselves. Ernie watched a three-quarter-ton truck loaded with E.M. turn around and drive back slowly to enjoy a second look.

  The sign outside the headquarters building read: CLEAR YOUR WEAPONS HERE. An arrow pointed to a fifty-five-gallon drum full of sand. Ernie had no weapon to clear but Mike slipped the magazine from his .45, jacked the barrel back to clear the chamber, then pulled the trigger with the gun pointed into the sand.

  “Oh, Mr. Carmack, just a minute,” Sergeant Pohl said. “I’ll tell Colonel Todaro you’re here.”

  “Thanks,” Mike said.

  A moment later Colonel Todaro appeared, and seeing Ernie, he invited him into his office as well.

  “You might as well get in on this now,” he said. “After all, we do have to keep the folks back home informed, don’t we?”

  “We try to, Colonel,” Ernie said, following the two men into Colonel Todaro’s office. Todaro indicated they should have a seat.

  “Captain Wilson came back with the first element and gave me a full report. I know we lost two helicopters,” Todaro said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What happened?”

  “There were anti-aircraft guns at Widow’s Peak. They opened up on us, taking us completely by surprise. They must have moved them in during the night. They weren’t there before.”

  Todaro sighed and rubbed his cheek, then looked at Mike. “Those guns are going to cause us a lot of trouble,” he said. “A great deal of trouble.”

  “They don’t have to,” Mike said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We know where they are now. All we have to do is avoid them.”

  “We can’t avoid them.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because, Mr. Carmack, in three days we’re going to put two battalions of troops into Di Shau Valley. There’s an entire V.C. regiment in there, and we’re going to wipe them out.”

  “Colonel, if the V.C. are in there, let them stay in there,” Mike said. “What the hell harm are they doing? We have no supply routes through there and they can’t operate as an effective unit from there without coming out through the mouth. Looks to me like we’ve got them bottled up. We ought to just keep them there.”

  “They can slip out a few at a time,” Colonel Todaro said. “Mr. Carmack, you know how this war is. It’s a rare opportunity when we can get so many V.C. in one spot. We must take advantage of it when we can.”

  “When we can,” Mike said. “It’s no accident they are in there. They know we can’t come after them without going through the mouth of the valley. And that we can’t do that as long as the guns are in place.”

  “Then we must take them out,” Colonel Todaro suggested.

  “How?”

  “The same way we took out the guns at Binh Loi. Take them head on.”

  “No, sir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This isn’t the same situation we had at Binh Loi,” Mike explained. “There we had all kinds of maneuverability against the guns. We could come at them from any direction we wanted...we could even evade their fire. But at Widow’s Peak, the guns are right inside the valley mouth and the only way to hit them is straight on. That means they know where we’re coming from and how high we’ll be. They also know how fast we’ll be flying...which, believe me, isn’t fast enough.”

  “Nevertheless, those guns have to be taken out,” Colonel Todaro said. “And I was hoping you would volunteer for the mission.”

  “Colonel, what made you think I’d volunteer?”

  “Well, after all, Mr. Carmack, you are our most experienced pilot.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mike answered.

  “So?”

  “Colonel, how do you think I got to be the most experienced? You’ve heard the story, there are bold pilots and there are old pilots but there are no old bold pilots. I intend to be old.”

  “That’s too bad,” Todaro said. “I’m sure I could get Captain Bailey to volunteer to lead the mission.”

  “Bailey? Colonel, you aren’t serious. Hell, he’s only been flying a year.”

  “Nevertheless, he is a dedic
ated officer who realizes where his duty lies.”

  “Goddammit! Colonel, there’s nothing in the book that says a man’s duty is to commit suicide. Unless you’re planning on starting your own Kamikaze unit.”

  “There have always been dangerous missions, Mr. Carmack,” Todaro said. “And there have always been men dedicated enough and brave enough to take them on.”

  “Look, why don’t you just ask for an air force strike? They can slip a couple of jets in there, burn the shit out of it with napalm, and that’ll be all there is to it.”

  “No,” Todaro said. “I don’t intend to give the air force the satisfaction of coming to our aid the first time we have an air strike that’s a little tough.”

  “Coming to our aid? Goddammit! Colonel, that’s what the hell we have the air force for! That’s what they do for a living.”

  “And I’m trying to get it through your head that this is also what we do for a living,” Todaro said.

  “If we try that, some of us are going to wind up dying for a living,” Mike replied. “Especially if you have Bailey lead the mission.”

  “Suppose I lead the mission,” Todaro suggested. “I have almost as many hours as you. Would you give the mission a better chance of success if lied it?”

  “A little better, yes, sir,” Mike agreed.

  “All right, Mr. Carmack, I’ll make a deal with you. You volunteer for the mission and I’ll lead it. Otherwise, it’ll be Bailey and anyone he can get to volunteer.”

  “Every low-time pilot in the goddamned unit will volunteer for it, Colonel, you know that. They’re all a bunch of gung-ho bastards who have no idea what they’d be getting into.”

  “Then you volunteer,” Todaro said. “And you select the team from among the other volunteers. I’ll lead it and we’ll take those guns out.”

  “You’ve got me by the balls, Colonel and I don’t like that,” Mike said.

  “You know what they say, Mr. Carmack—grab them by their balls and their hearts and minds will come along.”