by Tom Clancy
Soldiers.
Wait, Johnnie-boy, don’t panic. Take your time . . . maybe . . .
They turned around the base of Snake Hill. A guard in one of the towers shouted something. The call was relayed. Lights came on in the officers’ quarters. Somebody came out, probably the Major, not dressed, shouting a question.
The first truck stopped at the gate. A man got out and roared for somebody to open it. The other truck stopped behind it. Soldiers dismounted. Kelly counted . . . ten . . . twenty . . . thirty . . . more . . . but it wasn’t the number. It was what they started to do.
He had to look away. What more would fate take away from him? Why not just take his life and be done with it? But it wasn’t just his life that fate was interested in. It never was. He was responsible, as always, for more than that. Kelly reached for his radio and flipped it on.
“CRICKET, this is SNAKE, over.”
Nothing.
“CRICKET, this is SNAKE, over.”
“What gives?” Podulski asked.
Maxwell took the microphone. “SNAKE, this is CRICKET ACTUAL, what is your message, over?”
“Abort abort abort—acknowledge,” was what they all heard.
“Say again SNAKE. Say again.”
“Abort the mission,” Kelly said, too loudly for his own safety. “Abort abort abort. Acknowledge immediately.”
It took a few seconds. “We copy your order to abort. Acknowledged. Mission aborted. Stand by.”
“Roger, standing by.”
“What is it?” Major Vinh asked.
“We have information that the Americans may try to raid your camp,” the Captain replied, looking back at his men. They were deploying skillfully, half heading for trees, the other half taking positions inside the perimeter, digging in as soon as they picked their places. “Comrade Major, I am ordered to take charge of the defense until more units arrive. You are ordered to take your Russian guest to Hanoi for safety.”
“But—”
“The orders come from General Giap himself, Comrade Major.” Which settled matters very quickly indeed. Vinh went back to his quarters to dress. His camp sergeant went to awaken his driver.
Kelly could do nothing more than watch. Forty-five, maybe more. It was hard to count them as they moved. Teams digging machine gun pits. Patrol elements in the woods. That was an immediate danger to him, but he waited even so. He had to be sure that he’d done the right thing, that he hadn’t panicked, hadn’t been a sudden coward.
Twenty-five against fifty, with surprise and a plan, not hard. Twenty-five against a hundred, without surprise . . . hopeless. He’d done the right thing. There was no reason to add twenty-five more bodies to the ledger sheet that they kept in Washington. His conscience didn’t have room for that kind of mistake or for those kinds of lives.
“Helos coming back, sir, same way they went in,” the radar operator told the XO.
“Too fast,” the XO said.
“Goddamn it, Dutch! Now what—”
“The mission’s aborted, Cas,” Maxwell said, staring down at the chart table.
“But why?”
“Because Mr. Clark said so,” Ritter answered. “He’s the eyes. He makes the call. You don’t need anybody to tell you that, Admiral. We still have a man in there, gentlemen. Let’s not forget that.”
“We have twenty men in there.”
“That’s true, sir, but only one of them is coming out tonight.” And then only if we’re lucky.
Maxwell looked up to Captain Franks. “Let’s move in towards the beach, fast as you can.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hanoi? Why?”
“Because we have orders.” Vinh was looking over the dispatch the Captain had delivered. “Well, the Americans wanted to come here, eh? I hope they do. This will be no Song Tay for them!”
The idea of an infantry action didn’t exactly thrill Colonel Grishanov, and a trip to Hanoi, even an unannounced one, also meant a trip to the embassy. “Let me pack, Major.”
“Be quick about it!” the little man snapped back, wondering if his trip to Hanoi was for some manner of transgression.
It could be worse. Grishanov now had all his notes together and slid them into a backpack. All of his work, now that Vinh had so kindly released it back to him. He’d drop it off with General Rokossovskiy, and with that in official hands, he could make his case for keeping these Americans alive. It was an ill wind, he thought, remembering the English aphorism.
He could hear them coming. Far off, moving without a great deal of skill, probably tired, but coming.
“CRICKET, this is SNAKE, over.”
“We read you, SNAKE.”
“I’m moving. There are people on my hill, coming my way. I will head west. Can you send a helo for me?”
“Affirmative. Be careful, son.” It was Maxwell’s voice, still concerned.
“Moving now. Out.” Kelly pocketed the radio and headed to the crest. He took a moment to look, comparing what he saw now with what he’d seen before.
I run especially fast in the dark, he’d told the Marines. Time now to prove it. With one last listen to the approaching NVA, Kelly picked a thin spot in the foliage and headed down the hill.
30
Travel Agents
It was obvious to everyone that things were wrong. The two rescue helos touched down on Ogden not an hour after they’d left. One was wheeled aside at once. The other, flown by the senior pilot, was refueled. Captain Albie was out almost the second it landed, sprinting to the superstructure, where the command team was waiting for him. He could feel that Ogden and her escorts were racing into the beach. His dejected Marines trailed out as well, silent, looking down at the flight deck as they cleared their weapons.
“What happened?” Albie asked.
“Clark waved it off. All we know is that he’s moved off his hill; he said other people were there. We’re going to try to get him out. Where do you think he’ll go?” Maxwell asked.
“He’ll look for a place the helo can get him. Let’s see the map.”
Had he had the time to reflect, Kelly might have considered how quickly things could go from good to bad. But he didn’t. Survival was an all-encompassing game, and at the moment it was also the only game in town. Certainly it wasn’t a boring one, and with luck not overly demanding. There weren’t all that many troops for the purpose of securing the camp against an assault, not enough—yet—to conduct real defensive patrols. If they were worried about another Song Tay-type mission, they’d keep their firepower in close. They’d put observation teams on hilltops, probably nothing more than that at least for the moment. The top of Snake Hill was now five hundred meters in his wake. Kelly slowed his descent, catching his breath—he was more winded from fear than effort. though the two traded off heavily against each other. He found a secondary crest and rested on the far side of it. Standing still now, he could hear talk behind him—talk. not movement. Okay. good, he’d guessed right on the tactical situation. Probably more troops would be arriving in due course, but he’d be long gone by then.
If they can get that helo in.
Pleasant thought.
I’ve been in tighter spots than this, Defiance proclaimed.
When? Pessimism inquired delicately.
The only thing that made sense at the moment was to put as much distance as possible between himself and the NVA. Next came the necessity of finding something approximating an LZ so that he could get the hell out of this place. It wasn’t a time to panic, but he couldn’t dally either. Come daylight there would be more troops here, and if their commander was a competent one. he’d want to know if there might be an enemy reconnaissance element on his turf. Failure to get out before dawn would materially degrade Kelly’s chances of ever escaping this country. Move. Find a good spot. Call the helo. Get the hell out of here. He had four hours until dawn. The helo was about thirty minutes away. Make it two or three hours to find a spot and make the call. That didn’t seem overly difficult. He k
new the area around SENDER GREEN from the recon photos. Kelly took a few minutes to look around, orienting himself. The quickest way to a clear spot was that way. across a twist in the road. It was a gamble but a good one. He rearranged his load, moving his spare magazines within easier reach. More than anything else, Kelly feared capture, to be at the mercy of men like PLASTIC FLOWER. to be unable to fight back. to lose control of his life. A quiet little voice in the back of his mind told him that death was preferred to that. Fighting back, even against impossible odds, wasn’t suicide. Okay. That was decided. He started moving.
“Call him?” Maxwell asked.
“No, not now.” Captain Albie shook his head. “He’ll call us. Mr. Clark is busy right now. We leave him be.” Irvin came into the Combat Information Center.
“Clark?” the master gunnery sergeant asked.
“On the run,” Albie told him.
“Want me and some people on Rescue One. riding shotgun?” That they would try to get Clark out was not a question. Marines have an institutional loathing of leaving people behind.
“My job, Irvin,” Albie said.
“Better you run the rescue, sir,” Irvin said reasonably. “Anybody can shoot a rifle.”
Maxwell, Podulski, and Greer stayed out of the conversation. watching and listening to two professionals who knew what they were about. The Marine commander bent to the wisdom of his most senior NCO.
“Take what you need.” Albie turned to Maxwell. “Sir, I want Rescue One up now.”
The Assistant Chief of Naval Operations (Air) handed over the headset to a Marine officer only twenty-eight years old; with it came tactical command of the busted mission. With it went the end of Dutch Maxwell’s career.
It was less fearful to be moving. Movement gave Kelly the feeling that he had control of his life. It was an illusion, and intellectually he knew it, but his body took the message that way. which made things better. He got to the bottom of the hill. into thicker growth. There. Right across the road was an open space, a meadow or something, maybe a floodplain area from the river. That would do just fine. Nothing fancy. He grabbed his radio.
“SNAKE to CRICKET, over.”
“This is CRICKET. We read you, and we are standing by.”
The message came in gasps, spoken one short breath at a time: “West of my hill, past the road, about two miles west of objective, open field. I’m close. Send the helo. I can mark with strobe.”
Albie looked at the map, then the aerial photos. Okay, that looked easy enough. He stabbed a finger on the map, and the air-control petty officer relayed the information at once. Albie waited for the confirmation before transmitting back to Clark.
“Roger, copy. Rescue One is moving in now. two-zero minutes away.”
“Copy that.” Albie could hear the relief in Clark’s voice through the static. “I’ll be ready. Out.”
Thank you, God.
Kelly took his time now, moving slowly and quietly towards the road. His second sojourn into North Vietnam wouldn’t end up being as long as the first. He didn’t have to swim out this time, and with all the shots he’d gotten before coming in, maybe this time he wouldn’t be getting sick from the water in that goddamned river. He didn’t so much relax as lose some of his tension. As though on cue, the rain picked up, dampening noise and reducing visibility. More good news. Maybe God or fate or the Great Pumpkin hadn’t decided to curse him after all. He stopped again, ten meters short of the road, and looked around. Nothing. He gave himself a few minutes to relax and let the stress bleed off. There was no sense in hurrying across just to be in open ground. Open ground was dangerous for a man alone in enemy territory. His hands were tight on his carbine, the infantryman’s teddy bear, as he forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly in order to bring his heart rate down. When he felt approximately normal again, he allowed himself to approach the road.
Miserable roads, Grishanov thought, even worse than those in Russia. The car was something French, oddly enough. More remarkably, it ran fairly well, or would have done so, except for the driver. Major Vinh ought to have driven it himself. As an officer he probably knew how, but status-conscious fool that he was, he had to let his orderly do it, and this little lump of a peasant probably didn’t know how to drive anything more complicated than an ox. The car was swerving in the mud. The driver was having trouble seeing in the rain as well. Grishanov closed his eyes in the rear seat, clutching his backpack. No sense watching. It might just scare him to watch. It was like flying in bad weather, he thought, something no pilot relished—even less so when someone else was in control.
He waited, looking before crossing, listening for the sound of a truck’s engine, which was the greatest danger to him. Nothing. Okay, about five minutes on the helo now. Kelly stood erect, reaching back with his left hand for the marker-strobe. As he crossed the road, he kept looking to his left, the route that additional troop trucks would take to approach the now entirely secure prison camp. Damn!
Rarely had concentration ever worked against John Kelly, but it did this time. The sound of the approaching car, swishing through the muddy surface of the road, was a little too close to the environmental noises, and by the time he recognized the difference it was too late. When the car came around the bend, he was right in the middle of the road, standing there like a deer in the headlights, and surely the driver must see him. What followed was automatic.
Kelly brought his carbine up and fired a short burst into the driver’s area. The car didn’t swerve for a moment, and he laid a second burst into the front-passenger seat. The car changed directions then, slamming directly into a tree. The entire sequence could not have taken three seconds, and Kelly’s heart started beating again after a dreadfully long hiatus. He ran to the car. Whom had he killed?
The driver had come through the windshield, two rounds in his brain. Kelly wrenched open the passenger door. The person there was—the Major! Also hit in the head. The shots weren’t quite centered, and though the man’s skull was opened on the right side, his body was still quivering. Kelly yanked him out of the vehicle and had knelt down to search him before he heard a groan from the inside. He lunged inside, finding another man—Russian!—on the floor in the rear. Kelly pulled him out. too. The man had a backpack clutched in his hands.
The routine came as automatically as the shot. Kelly clubbed the Russian to full unconsciousness with his buttstock, then quickly turned back to rifle the Major’s uniform for intelligence material. He stuffed all documents and papers into his pockets. The Vietnamese was looking at him, one of his eyes still functioning.
“Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?” Kelly said coldly as the eyes lost their animation.
“What the hell do I do with you?” Kelly asked, turning to the Russian body. “You’re the guy who’s been hassling our guys, aren’t you?” He knelt there, opening the backpack and finding whole sheaves of paper, which answered his question for him—something the Soviet colonel was singularly unable to do.
Think fast, John—the helo isn’t very far out now.
“I got the strobe!” the copilot said.
“Coming in hot.” The pilot was driving his Sikorsky as hard as the engines would allow. Two hundred yards short of the clearing he pulled back sharply on the cyclic, and the forty-five-degree nose-up attitude stopped forward motion quickly—perfectly in fact, as he leveled out within feet of the blinking infrared strobe light. The rescue helicopter came to a steady hover two feet over the deck, buffeted by the winds. The Navy commander was fighting all manner of forces to hold his aircraft steady, and was slow to respond to something his eyes had told him. He had seen the rotor wash knock his intended survivor down, but -
“Did I see two people out there?” he asked over the intercom.
“Go go go!” another voice said over the IC circuit. “Pax aboard now, go!”
“Getting the hell outa Dodge City, now!” The pilot pulled collective for altitude, kicked rudder pedal, and dropped his nose, heading back to the rive
r as the helicopter accelerated. Wasn’t there just supposed to be one person? He set it aside. He had to fly now, and it was thirty twisty miles to the water and safety.
“Who the fuck is this?” Irvin asked.
“Hitchhiker,” Kelly answered over the din of the engines. He shook his head. Explanations would be lengthy and would have to wait. Irvin understood, offering him a canteen. Kelly drained it. That’s when the shaking started. In front of the helicopter crew and five Marines, Kelly shivered like a man in the Arctic, huddling and clutching himself, holding his weapon close until Irvin took it away and cleared it. It had been fired, the master gunnery sergeant saw. Later he’d find out why and at what. The door gunners scanned the river valley while their aircraft screamed out, barely a hundred feet over the meandering surface. The ride proved uneventful, far different from what they had expected, as was the case with this whole night. What had gone wrong? they all wanted to know. The answer was in the man they’d just picked up. But who the hell was the other one, and wasn’t that a Russian uniform? Two Marines sat over him. One of them tied his hands up. A third secured the pack’s flap in place with the straps.
“Rescue One, feet-wet. We have SNAKE aboard, over.”
“Rescue One, this is CRICKET, roger, copy that. Standing by. Out.” Albie looked up. “Well, that’s it.”
Podulski took it the hardest of all. BOXWOOD GREEN had been his idea from the start. Had it been successful, it might have changed everything. It might have opened the door for CERTAIN CORNET, might have changed the course of the war—and his son’s death would not have been for nothing. He looked up at the others. He almost asked if they might still try it again, but he knew better. Washout. It was a bitter concept and an even more bitter reality for one who had served his adopted country for nearly thirty years.