Dateline: Viet Nam: A Military Thriller Double

by Robert Vaughan

  A sergeant. The platoon was going out under the command of an NCO. How was that going to look on his records, if people realized that the battalion commander had so little faith in him that he sent a sergeant first class out in charge of an augmented platoon?

  There was a knock on the door of the orderly room.

  “Enter,” Cox called.

  Staff Sergeant Mills came in, then saluted. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

  “Yes, Sergeant Mills,” Cox said. Cox ran his hand across the top of his head. He did have hair, but he was very blond and he kept his hair cut so short that at first glance, he looked bald. “Have a seat, Sergeant.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Sergeant Mills, I’ve been talking to the colonel about you.”

  “About me, sir?”

  “Well, about you and the entire platoon. You know it’s a big job to act as platoon sergeant when there is no officer in the platoon.”

  “Yes, sir, I know. That’s why I’m glad SFC Two Bears is here.”

  “Mills, I think—that is, the colonel and I think—that your platoon could handle a big assignment. We’re sending you out after the Ghost Patrol. There won’t be any officers...You and Two Bears will have the whole thing to yourself. Do you think you can handle it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Mills said.

  Cox smiled. “That’s just what I told the colonel. He wasn’t so sure, but I persuaded him to give it a try. You aren’t going to let me down, are you?”

  “No, sir. Uh…Lieutenant Cox, shouldn’t Hunter be here?”

  “Colonel Petery is briefing Sergeant Two Bears,” Cox said. “I asked to brief you personally. We have something in common, you and I. We’re both filling positions of more responsibility than our rank calls for. I’m a platoon leader serving as company commander; you’re a squad leader serving as platoon sergeant. Because of that, we have to stick together.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mills said, not quite sure where Cox was going with all this.

  “Now, here’s what I want you to do. If you think the platoon is getting into a situation that is…well, more difficult than you anticipated, I want you to get word back to me.”

  “I’m not following you, sir.”

  “Say Sergeant Two Bears attempts to follow a course of action that is...in your eyes...not the wisest course of action. I want you to send me a message, a coded message known only to the two of us, and I’ll come as quickly as I can. Send the words ‘Garry Owen.’ That was Custer’s regimental song. That’ll be a good signal. Custer sure bit off more than he could chew.”

  “Lieutenant Cox, if Sergeant Two Bears is in command, I have no right to question his orders,” Mills said. “If I called you in behind his back, that would be the same as sedition.”

  “No, no, I’m not asking you to disobey any of Hunter’s orders,” Cox said. “All I’m saying is that I went out on a limb, way out on a limb, to talk Colonel Petery into using my old platoon. I have every confidence that you and Sergeant Two Bears can handle it. But I’m afraid that Two Bears may get himself in a situation that is more difficult than he suspected and he’ll have too much pride to call for help. All I’m asking for is that you help me give Two Bears all the support he needs. You do see that, don’t you?”

  “I...I guess so,” Mills said.

  “Good,” Cox said. “And I suppose that it also goes without saying that this conversation would be better kept between us. If Two Bears knew we were looking out for him, he wouldn’t like it much, and Two Bears is not the kind of man we want to have against us, is he?”

  “No, sir,” Mills said, smiling.

  “You do agree that this is the best way to handle it, don’t you? I mean, if I went directly to him and asked him to call me if he needed help, it would be an insult.”

  “Yes, sir, I guess it would.”

  Cox stood up then and in so doing signaled Mills that the meeting was over.

  “After all, I do have a vested interest in this operation,” Cox said. “If you guys look good it makes me look good. Now, any problems with what we’ve discussed?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I hope you don’t have to call me, Sergeant Mills, but I’ll feel better knowing we have something to fall back on. Good luck.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Mills said. He saluted again, then left.

  Cox walked over to his bunk and lay down with his hands folded behind his head. By giving Sergeant Mills the opportunity to call if things weren’t going right, he was also giving him the idea to call. No subordinate ever agreed with everything his senior did: This would make Mills question every action and the more he questioned, the more chance there was that he would be called. There was no way Colonel Petery could refuse to let him go to the field if his men called for help.

  Shit! This just might work out all right after all.

  Chapter Four

  Ernie asked Hunter if he could go along on the ambush patrol that night. Hunter told him he could if he would keep his ass out of everyone’s way and try not to get it shot off.

  “But you better get a little rest if you can,” Hunter added. “The nights get pretty long out there.”

  Most of the others in the tent, learning that they would have ambush patrol that night, sacked out for a little sleep. Ernie was surprised at how quickly the others were able to drop off. Within moments, the rhythmic breathing and soft snoring told him that everyone in the tent was asleep.

  Everyone but him.

  Ernie lay on the bunk listening to the filtered sounds of the base. A stream of water ran by just

  outside the fence and several Vietnamese women were doing their laundry there. They weren’t aware that any of the Americans could overhear them and one of them was talking in the most intimate detail about her sister’s appraisal of G.I.’s as sex partners. They were playing a radio. The music was a tuneless song: all flute, drum, and half-tone nasal sounds from the female vocalist who was singing about a lover killed in the war. Diplomatically, the song didn’t identify whether her lover was ARVN or V.C. Helicopters whirled in and out of the landing pad. Finally, even Ernie was able to drop off to sleep.

  “Okay, Mr. Chapel, roll out of the fart-sack,” someone said. “We’re going to eat now.”

  Ernie joined the others as they walked toward the mess tent. There was a long line waiting to eat, but when Ernie started toward the end, Pepper, the young man with the mustache, reached out and grabbed him.

  “We get to buck the line,” he said.

  “I don’t mind waiting.”

  “It’s not ’cause you’re a hotshot reporter or anything,” Pepper said. “Everyone on ambush bucks the line.”

  “The guys in the line don’t mind?”

  Pepper made a little sound deep in his throat. It could have been a laugh.

  “Think anyone in this line would trade places with us?”

  “Lookie there,” one of the men in the chow line said. “They got some civilian going on ambush with them.”

  “Yeah? Better him than me,” someone else said.

  Supper was steak, french fries, corn, and Kool-Aid.

  “You guys eat like this all the time?” Ernie teased.

  Pepper held up the Kool-Aid. “Just this,” he said. “No matter where we go, we got Kool-Aid.”

  After supper, Ernie went back to the tent to join the others as they prepared for the ambush. Their faces were blackened, their trouser legs were tied to keep from rustling, and they were given their instructions. Hunter handed Ernie an M-16. Ernie held his hands up, declining the weapon.

  “Hunter, you know what I told you. I can’t take a weapon.”

  “You going out there without a piece?” someone asked.

  “I have to. That’s the rules.”

  “Rules? Rules? What do you think—there’s going to be some asshole running around out there with a striped shirt and a red flag? You’re going to get a fifteen-yard penalty or something? No way, man. This is fuckin’ for real.”

&nbs
p; “I still can’t carry a weapon.”

  “Pepper,” Hunter said with a sigh, “keep him with you.”

  “Okay. Come on, Mr. Chapel, you can stay with me.”

  “I don’t want to be a problem.”

  “You won’t be,” Pepper said. “We get into a firefight, I’m going to be shooting from behind you.”

  The others in the tent laughed.

  “Here,” Pepper said, handing a little bottle of insect repellent to Ernie. “The dinks can smell this

  shit half a mile away, but if you get to slapping and scratching at mosquitoes they can spot you for a mile.”

  Ernie rubbed his hands, face, and neck with the stuff. It burned his skin and the smell made his eyes water.

  A few minutes later everyone who was going on the ambush patrol was assembled. It was immediately obvious that this wasn’t a routine ambush patrol—there were at least three times as many people as normally went out.

  “Okay, men, listen up,” Hunter said. He stood in front of the others, his face smeared with the anti-glare paint and for a moment Ernie could almost see Hunter’s great-grandfather half naked and painted, astride a war pony, with a long, feathered lance by his side. “As you can tell by looking around you, this is not the routine patrol. This is an augmented patrol. We’re going to take ambush for the next four nights...”

  “The next four nights?” someone groaned.

  “The next four nights,” Hunter went on, silencing the protestor with an intense stare, “until we can work together as a team. When that time comes we’re going after...”

  “Son of a bitch! We’re going after the Ghost Patrol!” someone said figuring it out before Hunter could say the words.

  “Is that right, Sarge?”

  “That’s right,” Hunter said.

  “All right!”

  “Fuckin’ A!”

  “Kick some ass!”

  “What officer’s going with us?”

  “None,” Hunter said. “There’s just going to be Mills and me.”

  “Fantastic!”

  “Tonight will be no different from any other ambush that you’ve been on except we’ll have more people out. I just want to see how we all work together, that’s all. Remember, if we get contact, shoot low. Everyone always tends to shoot too high. Shoot at their knees, you’ll be hitting them in the chest.”

  The M.P.s at the gate watched as the patrol walked through. One of them was a lieutenant and he was counting them and making a note in a small notebook.

  “There’s a lot of people here, Sergeant. You planning on starting a war?” the lieutenant quipped.

  “Hey, any of you M.P.s got a couple hundred extra Ps? I might get lucky and find a piece of ass out there, only I don’t have any money,” Pepper said.

  “Remember, keep five to ten meters apart,” Hunter hissed as they started across the rice paddies. They walked along the dike, moving so silently that the only thing Ernie could hear was his own breathing and the sound of his heart beating.

  They walked for twenty minutes, all the way across the fields that were close to the base, then through a narrow strip of wood line, and finally to the near edge of another field. This field was about two hundred meters across and on the other side of it was the edge of a very thick growth of trees. Ernie saw Hunter and Pepper coming back toward him.

  “You two guys will have this spot,” he said. “Take up a good position behind this berm and don’t talk. Pepper, your field of fire goes from that tall tree there, on your left. See it?”

  “Yes,” Pepper said.

  “To that clump of bushes on the right. Get a couple of sticks and put them up in the berm for firing stakes. Anybody comes, they’ll be coming through those trees.”

  “Right,” Pepper said.

  Hunter moved off to the left at a crouch to set up the next member of the team. Pepper signaled for Ernie to get down. Then he put up his stakes and slid down behind the berm, alongside Ernie.

  “What if we see someone out there?” Ernie whispered.

  “I’ll shoot his ass.”

  “Without finding out if he’s V.C.”

  “Look, Mr. Chapel, this ain’t no social engagement. If I see anything moving out there, I’m going to blow its ass away no matter what the fuck it is: water buffalo, VC, ammo-bearer, kid going to school, or the Pope. Far as I’m concerned, they’re dead meat.”

  “I understand,” Ernie said.

  “We’re going to be here till daylight, so you may as well get comfortable.”

  “Okay.”

  It was quiet. Ernie could hear sounds from way off. In the village, which was about five kilometers away, someone was playing a radio and he could hear it quite clearly. It sounded like the same song he had heard earlier in the afternoon, but then, as long as he had been over here, they all sounded alike.

  Ernie didn’t think he’d dozed off, but a sudden long burst of automatic-weapons fire made him jerk his head up and he knew he had been asleep. He saw a stream of orange tracer rounds spewing out toward the wood line, then another stream of tracer rounds, this time green in color, coming back.

  All along the berm, the Americans began firing. A moment later, a mortar flare burst high overhead and it floated down slowly under the parachute, lighting the entire field as bright as afternoon. That was when Ernie saw them. At least thirty Vietnamese were moving on line, across the field. They were all dressed in black pajamas and sandals, and they were running bent over, carrying AK-47s and assorted other weapons. They hit the ground when the flare popped.

  The nearest one was no more than one hundred meters out and Pepper squeezed off a long burst. Ernie watched the tracer rounds spew out the end of Pepper’s weapon and saw them spattering into the ground all around the Viet, but didn’t see any hits. Pepper raised his sights and the stream of tracer rounds from his rifle made a gentle curve all the way to the trees.

  “Damn! Too high!” Pepper said. Pepper pulled the trigger again, but he was out of ammunition.

  Ernie felt his stomach in his throat. Here he was, without a weapon, sitting in the middle of a battlefield, just observing. The V.C. were coming right at him and he was helpless. To make matters

  worse, the man who was supposed to protect him was out of ammunition.

  “Load it!” Ernie said. He handed Pepper another magazine. “Here, put it in, put it in!”

  The flare burned out then and it seemed much darker than it was before. That was when Ernie realized he had kept both eyes open during the time of the flare, thus destroying his visual purple. It would take him a few minutes to get back his night vision.

  Tracer rounds zipped back and forth between the berm and the middle of the field and Ernie saw a line of green squirt right for him, looking like a brightly strung line of glowing beads. Fortunately, the V.C. shooting toward him was making the same mistake Pepper had made and was firing too high because the rounds zinged and popped by overhead.

  Pepper fired off another magazine and had just loaded a third when another flare popped overhead. Ernie started to close one of his eyes this time but he was shocked to see a V.C. right in front of them, no more than ten meters away. The V.C. froze for an instant and Pepper, in fear and surprise, opened up on him. He fired off the entire magazine in one burst. Ernie saw blood squirt from the V.C.’s chest, neck, and face as he fell face down.

  “Son of a bitch!” Pepper shouted excitedly. “Son of a bitch! That motherfucker was right on top of us!”

  The augmented platoon had brought mortars with them and they opened up then. The first salvo

  exploded in the tree line but the mortar crews began walking the rounds back across the field until they were coming almost straight down. They burst so close that Ernie could feel the heat and shock effect and he got down behind the berm and put his face in the mud and prayed. If a V.C. happened upon him now, the V.C. could have him, because he was concerned only with surviving the American mortar barrage.

  The fire fight was over almost as
quickly as it began and Ernie lay there behind the berm, startled by the sudden silence.

  “You okay, Mr. Chapel?” Pepper asked. “Yeah,” Ernie said. His heart was beating fast and he was gasping for breath, almost as if he had run a mile. Each gasp of breath hurt his nostrils, for the air hung heavy with the smell of cordite from the gunpowder. A cloud of gunsmoke hung over the field for several minutes before it finally drifted away. Finally, Hunter came running down the line, bent over low behind the berm. He called out to Pepper before he came over to him.

  “Pepper, it’s me, Hunter.”

  “Come on,” Pepper answered.

  “You guys okay?”

  “Yeah,” Pepper said. “How’d we come out?”

  “One wounded, one K.I.A. at the other end of the line,” Hunter said. “Haven’t checked down here yet.” He continued on down the line. “Mac,” Ernie heard him call in the darkness. “Mac, it’s me, Hunter.”

  “Does it get this exciting on every ambush mission?” Ernie asked.

  “No,” Pepper said. “Wish I could tell you this was old hat with me, but the truth is, I was scared shitless.”

  “You were scared shitless,” Ernie said. “I, on the other hand, nearly crapped in my pants. I guess we had both ends covered.”

  “Yeah,” Pepper said, laughing. “Yeah, I guess we did.”

  “Pepper, it’s me, coming back,” Hunter said a moment later, reappearing in the darkness. “They got Mac. I moved Peterson in closer. Move your left parameter over another fifteen degrees.”

  “Gotcha,” Pepper said.

  “And keep a sharp eye and ear open. We don’t want the sons of bitches getting around our flank.”

  “Okay.”

  “How’d Ernie make out?”

  Pepper chuckled. “You shoulda seen him, Sarge. I had my own cheering section here. He was yelling and passing me ammunition.”

  “You did all right,” Hunter said. “Lots of guys would’ve cut ’n run if they got in a fire fight like this—especially if they had no weapon and nothing to keep them here.”