by Eric Helm
TET
Vietnam: Ground Zero Series
Book Eleven
Eric Helm
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
AFTERWORD
ALSO BY ERIC HELM
GLOSSARY
“IT’S SERGEANT THOMPSON. BUT HIS FACE IS ALL WRONG.”
Gerber slipped into the paddy and rolled Thompson over. The face was distorted from the pressure created by a shot to the back of the head.
The ground in front of the jeep was littered with brass casings, and the vehicle was riddled with bullet holes. A couple of empty magazines lay under the jeep. At the rear was a vacant space where the radio had been. It was obvious. Thompson had been ambushed on the open road.
Gerber checked the body and found the bullet hole. The tattooing around it suggested that the weapon had been only inches from Thompson’s head. He had been executed.
“Captain,” came Fetterman’s voice. “Movement to the right. See that large palm with all the dead leaves? Now, to the right, about ten meters, there’s a rusting oil drum.”
Gerber stared at the open ground, but saw no movement. A gentle breeze stirred the dead branches of the palm. He suddenly became aware of the heat and humidity, and something else, which he couldn’t name. He swallowed. Then he saw it — a streak of khaki as someone dived from the doorway of a hootch to the protection of the rusted oil drum.
“Get ready,” hissed Gerber. “They’re coming for us.”
PROLOGUE
DOWNTOWN SAIGON, JANUARY 3, 1968
The funeral service was almost over. From her vantage point at the rear of the temple, Le Tran Duc stood unobtrusively, listening as the priest intoned the final rites. She tried to contain her impatience, wishing the cleric would hurry up and end the service. To take her mind off her restlessness, she let her gaze wander to each family member, finally coming to rest on the sacrificial foods at the front of the altar. In the tropical heat, buzzing flies flitted from sweetmeat to fruit-rice cakes, papaya, mango — then, satisfied, darted to alight on the cover of the coffin, which was closed due to the serious nature of the deceased’s injuries.
Soon it was over, and the coffin was borne from the temple and taken to a cemetery in the middle of Saigon. Staying at a discreet distance, Le Tran Duc followed the procession through a wrought-iron gate, up a gentle slope, where the coffin was placed next to the grave near a large tree.
As the funeral party departed, Le Tran Duc remained behind, waiting for the gravediggers to fill the hole. Once again she hung back, this time under the shade of the tree as the men slowly completed their job. When they finished and left the area, Le Tran Duc moved forward and inspected the site. There was nothing unusual about it. Just another grave of a man who had died in an accident recently. At least that was what it might look like to unsuspecting observers. It was one of many she had inspected in the last few weeks.
Le Tran Duc knew better. She knew what was really buried there, having witnessed the contents of the coffin. Her job was over for the time being. She left the grave site quickly, walked through the iron gate and turned once to look back. She was trying to memorize the exact location of the grave, because the next time she saw it it would be dark and there could be people who didn’t want her to find it.
She hurried from the cemetery, hailed a cab and climbed in. The driver paid no attention to her. He was angry that he hadn’t found an American he could cheat out of a couple of dollars.
Le Tran Duc smiled as they drove into downtown Saigon. The task was finished. At least for a couple of weeks.
CHAPTER 1
THE WIRE SERVICE BUREAU, DOWNTOWN SAIGON, JANUARY 19, 1968
Mark Hodges sat in the tiny cubicle off the so-called city room of his wire service bureau, studying the movements of the reporters and photographers who worked with him. Hodges was a short man, and slightly overweight. His black hair, which was usually greased down so that he didn’t have to comb it more than once a day, contrasted sharply with his pasty skin, the result of staying indoors most of the time. Hodges hated the tropics, the humidity and the South Vietnamese. He did as much of his work as he could by using the phone and only ventured from the air-conditioned comfort of his office when he couldn’t help it.
The office, a concession to his position with the bureau, wasn’t as large as those of the correspondents across the hall from the city room, but as a senior editor, he deserved more than a beat-up chair in the city room. His desk was a scarred relic donated by MACV when the generals replaced the worn-out equipment several months earlier, but it was functional. Battleship-gray paint was peeling from it, and one of the file drawers stuck most of the time, so he kept his bottle of bourbon in it. The chair, also from MACV, had an irritating squeak that Hodges refused to oil because it kept boring people out of his office. If someone was taking up too much of his time, he just rocked back and forth until they fled. To the right was a small bookcase that contained science fiction and mysteries but nothing that related to Vietnam or the war.
Hodges rocked back, laced his fingers behind his head and propped his feet on the desk. His shoes suddenly became the subject of intense scrutiny. Again they were military issue, shined each night by a maid whose teeth were nearly as black as his footwear. She was a young, attractive woman whose only flaw, as far as Hodges was concerned, was her black teeth. If she kept her mouth shut, he would be willing to overlook it.
He raised his eyes and surveyed the city room spread out in front of him. Many of the desks were scrounged from the military. The newer desks were near the windows at the front of the room or on the side opposite Hodges. The longer a reporter had been in Saigon, the closer to the windows he or she was allowed to move. To his left, along the wall, there were filing cabinets that contained everything that anyone had been able to learn about Saigon and its nightlife. But they really held little of actual importance.
His attention was diverted from the contents of the city room to Robin Morrow, a photojournalist who stumbled into the big room and dropped her camera bag on the chair at her desk. It was one of the few that wasn’t gray. Instead, it was an ugly washed-out green. She leaned a hip against the desk and began sorting through her messages.
Hodges sighed as he stared at her. She was a tall, slender woman with light brown hair bleached blond by the tropical sun and green eyes. She wore her standard uniform, which was a khaki jumpsuit with the legs cut off at midthigh, the sleeves chopped off and rolled above her elbows. Her hair was cut in bangs that touched her eyes. For some time now, Hodges wanted to get close to her, and he had offered her promotions and hot assignments to do so, but Morrow was too clever to fall into the trap. Besides, she was seeing, or loved, an officer in the Special Forces, and he had provided her with a couple of very good exclusives.
She tossed the messages on her desk and turned to look at Hodges. She smiled and lifted a hand in greeting. That was all the encouragement he needed. He dropped his feet to the floor, grabbed a file folder from his desk and stepped out into the city room.
Morrow saw him coming, moved the camera bag to the floor and sat down. She spun toward him, leaned an elbow on her desk and cupp
ed her chin in her hand, waiting.
Hodges approached, waving the file like a banner. “Got something here for you if you’ve got nothing else on.”
Morrow shrugged. “Nothing that can’t wait forever if it has to.”
Hodges stopped close to her desk and dropped the file on it. “Group of the local intelligentsia have called for new elections with the National Liberation Front participating.”
“Oh, Christ, Mark, get serious.”
He shook his head slowly. “Hey, it’s what’s going on now. Politicians at home falling all over themselves to make Vietnam the big issue in the coming election. Hell, a few days ago a couple of hundred college economists got together to oppose tax increases.”
“Who cares what a bunch of college teachers think?”
“I’m not sure that’s the point,” said Hodges. “I think the point is that the news has been so slow we’re interested in what they think because it uses up space in the papers.”
Morrow rubbed a hand across her forehead, massaging it as if she had a headache. “Comes to that, does it? We’re not interested in the story but only in filling space.”
“Now don’t start on that, Robin. Anyway, you want to run over to MACV and get someone’s reaction to this call for elections? Maybe throw in a couple of questions about the economists. Local reaction to the mood on the American college campuses.”
“What is the mood?”
Hodges shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. Opposition to the war. Something like that.”
“Aren’t you assuming a lot?”
“I’m not assuming anything,” countered Hodges. “I’m looking for stories. Everything’s winding down here. Number of contacts between our people and the enemy is dropping off. Nothing interesting has happened since the Saigon regime threw Everett Morton out two weeks ago.”
“Maybe if you work at it hard enough,” Morrow said, smiling, “they’ll throw you out, too.”
Hodges stood up. “No, I’ll never have that kind of luck. I could write that Thieu and Ky were running prostitutes and probably queer for each other and no one would notice.”
Morrow shoved her chair back and stood with a sigh. “If you really want me to go over to MACV on this I will, but I’d prefer not to.”
“Until someone does something interesting, that’s all we’re going to get. With the VC and NVA agitating for a truce during Tet, we’re not going to see a thing until the middle of February, if then.”
Morrow grabbed her camera bag and slipped the strap over her shoulder. “There had better be something of interest over at MACV, or I’m going to be royally pissed.”
“Robin! I’m shocked at your language.”
“You’ll be more than shocked if this is another of those lousy ‘let’s fill the newspaper with a lot of claptrap about the war so that Johnson and his cronies can look good in the Presidential primaries next month.’”
“Just go over and see what’s happening there. If nothing turns up, try the embassy or come back here.”
Robin stood for a moment, looking at the rows of empty desks around her, and wondered where in the hell everyone else had gotten to. She raised an eyebrow and pointed.
“They’re out looking for stories, but I think this one is about to wrap up. It’s all over except for the shouting, and in six months we’ll all be in the States telling each other lies about how rough the duty was.”
Master Sergeant Anthony B. Fetterman sat in the dayroom at MACV Headquarters, flipping through a copy of Stars and Stripes and listening to the rock and roll broadcast on AFVN. Fetterman was a small man, no more than five-seven, who looked as if he should be hustling pots and pans door-to-door. He had dark skin, baked to the color of mahogany by the tropical sun. His thinning hair was black, and he had a heavy beard that required him to shave twice a day while in Saigon. His jungle fatigues were clean and pressed but not starched, and there was a brush shine on his boots. He looked comfortable and relaxed and not the least bit dangerous, until you saw his eyes. Then he looked like the most dangerous man alive.
He was waiting for Captain MacKenzie K. Gerber, a Special Forces officer who, like Fetterman, was on his second tour in South Vietnam. Gerber was a young man, not much over thirty, tall and slim. Since he had arrived in Vietnam, he had lost weight, like almost everyone else. His brown hair was beginning to show a little gray, and his eyes were blue.
Fetterman turned in his chair, saw that he was alone in the dayroom and turned up the radio. Rock music had to be loud to be appreciated. There was such a blending of sounds and notes that the only way to catch the subtle nuances of the music was to play it loud. Parents, officers and teachers didn’t seem to understand that. They just labeled it all noise and condemned it. Fetterman understood why the kids were rebelling on the campuses. If he had been there, he was sure he would have joined them.
As he turned over the last page, having learned that, according to several high-ranking Democrats and more than a few highly placed sources, the war was winding down, he saw Gerber enter. He tapped the paper. “You seen this?”
“No,” answered Gerber. “I’m tired of the press and the politicians telling me the war is all but over.”
“That mean we have something cooking?”
Gerber dropped into a chair opposite Fetterman. He studied the diminutive sergeant and then the dayroom. A new couch, unscarred end tables, a refrigerator that was humming in the corner, racks of paperbacks with the covers looking clean and a console TV. “The brass sure take care of themselves, don’t they?”
“I think this is an NCOs’ lounge,” responded Fetterman. “We’d never get near anything for the real brass.”
“Right,” said Gerber, nodding. “You know, this makes me sick. Guys in the field living in rat-infested bunkers who are lucky to get one hot meal a day. Then in Saigon, twelve, twenty miles away, I’ll bet there are men who’ve never been without air-conditioning.”
“Yes, sir.” Fetterman was getting used to Gerber’s philosophical comments. He found that the best course was to ignore them. “We have an assignment?”
“Not much of one, I’m afraid. We’re to head over to Duc Hoa and check out the area. Seems there’ve been some documents uncovered that suggest the district is a hotbed of VC activity.”
Fetterman had to smile at that. “Not many places have been a hotbed of anything lately.”
Gerber rubbed a hand over his eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m getting very tired of this.” He tapped the paper. “According to these clowns, we’ll all be home by June.”
“That’s because the enemy has been defeated and is in hiding,” said Fetterman, quoting from the paper.
“I don’t think so. I know that’s what Johnson and his boys would like to think, but I just don’t believe it. There’s something brewing.”
Fetterman folded the paper and put it on the rack with the latest from Saigon, Time and Newsweek. “Yeah,” he said. “Charlie’s up to something.” He grinned sheepishly and added, “I hate to sound like a bad Western, but it is too quiet. I don’t like it.”
“Maybe we’ll see something at Duc Hoa that’ll give us a clue as to what Charlie has in mind.”
“Or maybe we’ll just see open rice fields and deserted swamps.”
Master Sergeant Andy Santini stood at the makeshift gate in the barbed wire and concertina fence that protected the intelligence bunker. The MP, a young man in sweat-stained fatigues and a black helmet liner, examined Santini’s ID card and then checked his name against the access list that was prepared each morning. The MP knew Santini well enough to buy him a beer in the club but insisted on seeing his ID anyway. Since the access roster changed daily, he had to consult it.
“Yep,” he said, “you’re still good.” He put the clipboard down and opened the gate. After Santini passed through it, he gave him another clipboard and asked him to sign in. That was in case something happened and there was an inquiry; the investigators would have a written record of who had been aroun
d to witness it.
Santini signed his name and glanced at his watch. He added the time and handed the clipboard to the MP. “Thanks.”
Santini was a small man, not unlike Fetterman. He had a thin face with a pointed chin and a dark complexion. With his dark eyes and dark hair he looked Latin. He had spent part of his tour in the field, but then had broken an ankle and was given duty at Nha Trang. He had found a niche that he liked and tried to be efficient at his job. Part of it was to stay current on the latest that the intel boys were gathering on a daily basis.
He entered the bunker, a structure created out of wooden beams and sandbags. There was a narrow stairway leading down, and the walls were made of thick boards that bled sap. The size and construction of the bunker gave it a cool interior that was augmented by several small air-conditioning units. Santini walked along a hallway lined with thick doors, some of which contained combination locks.
He stopped in front of one door, was about to knock and then decided against it. Instead, he turned a corner into another dimly lit corridor and walked to the end. There, he knocked and waited. A tiny window opened, a face appeared and then the window shut. A second later the door opened.
“Come on in.”
Santini entered the brightly lit room. There were two large tables in the center of it where a corporal and a private worked, plotting suspected enemy locations on maps. Santini noticed that the units being marked were small, platoon-size or company-size, but there seemed to be a lot of them.
At the far end of the room was another thick door, but it stood open, showing the interior of the interrogation rooms. Santini took a step toward it. The gently sloping floor led to a drain at its center. The walls were covered with thick padding, and there was a single light bulb dangling from an exposed wire. Two klieg lights on tripods stood near one wall, their power cords trailing into the map room.