Saigon (56 page)

A thin, tousled-headed boy dressed only in a pair of shorts rushed in with a message envelope at that moment and thrust it into Dong’s hands. While he waited, he watched the older man’s face intently, hopping excitedly from foot to foot. 

“Good Little Slug, well run,” said Dong softly when he had read the message. “Now race as fast as your legs will carry you through Tunnel Route Eleven — and stay and guard your mother and sister in the jungle for the rest of the day.” 

As the boy dashed out, grinning delightedly, Dong turned to Eat, his face serious again. “The enemy’s now entered Hamlet Three. I’m ordering Tuyet Luong to take up position with the two assault platoons.” 

While the battalion commander scribbled another note, Lat called for more tea for them both and handed Doug a cup when he had finished. “That last messenger boy was your younger son, if I’m not mistaken,” he said smiling. “The physical resemblance was very strong.” 

Dong’s face softened as he drank his tea. “Yes, he’s called Kiet 
— but as you heard he’s known affectionately in the family as ‘Little Slug.’” 

“And don’t you have an older boy too?” 

“That’s right — Minh is sixteen now. He’s acting as a sniper for the first time today. I’ve ordered him to hide in a tree at the far end of the field and help attract enemy fire if we need to lure the company across the dike.” 

“But why do you give him such a hazardous task for his first battle?” asked Lat in a surprised voice. 

Dong’s face stiffened a little, “I don’t want anyone to think Urn giving him special treatment because he’s my son. I want his training to be hard like ours was. But anyway, Minh lives only for the liberation struggle — that’s how I’ve brought him up. You should see his old Garand rifle — it’s shinier than any weapon I’ve ever seen in my life!” 

“But it wouldn’t hurt to nurse him along a little, my old friend,” said Lat gently. “Because your family suffered at Yen Bay and Vinh, there’s no need to be quite so hard on Mirth,” 

Dong sat staring at the map for a long moment. “It was here in Moc Linh that my father had the only 1)101 of rice land he ever owned,” he said at last in an emotional voice, “My brother, Hoc, and I were born in the village only a mile from here. the land was confiscated when we couldn’t keep up with our taxes and loan repayments, and it was then that my mother and father had to go and find work as domestic servants. Perhaps you can under. stand now why I jumped at the chance to come back here from the North. Here I cab at least try to settle some of the old debts owed to my father — and Minh wants to do everything he can to help.” 

Lat nodded slowly and sighed. “Yes, Dong, I understand — life is so ironic, isn’t it? Once your father and mother were forced to act as hired slaves for a French hunter and his rich American clients who came to our jungles for sport. If only they could’ve known that your sons and all our sons would one day become hunters in these jungles — and that the French and the Americans would become the quarry.” 

Dong glanced at his watch, nodding absently, and Lat saw for the first time the tension in his abstracted expression. 

“Our snipers should just be taking up their positions now,” said the battalion commander in a tight voice. 

“How in hell’s name can you fight a goddamned war if you can’t find it?” muttered Captain Lionel Staudt through his clenched teeth as he stood, feet astride, in the center of Hamlet Three. It was Len thirty A.M., and the South Vietnamese- soldiers were listlessly regrouping after completing another unproductive search of the huts. The usual knot of old women and small children had been assembled and questioned without result, and most of the troops now had dead ducks or chickens hanging from their packs, their minds obviously on the long noon break when they habitually cooked their main meal of the day; overhead the April sun was now producing a fierce, strength-sapping heat, and this was helping to heighten the tension between the Vietnamese officers and their perspiring American advisers. 

“If we spent as much energy fighting it as we’ve done looking for it, this flyblown war would have been over a year ago!” Staudt moved into the shade of a clump of coconut palms, mopping his brow, and stood watching Lieutenant Trang conferring with Captain Hoang outside the last hut. “Or maybe I mean not looking for it. The only thing that’s being ‘sought and destroyed’ around these parts so far today are three dozen Vietnamese barnyard fowl.” 

The British camera crew to whom the remarks had been addressed dumped their gear in the shade of the trees and sat down to rest, grinning broadly, but Naomi Boyce-Lewis, still looking cool and composed despite the heat, glanced out along the dike they would have to use to cross the shimmering expanse of rice fields to the next hamlet. “How much farther is this operation going, captain, could you tell me please?” 

Staudt unslung his Armalite AR-15, leaned it against the trunk of a palm tree and took a long pull at his water canteen. “You’re well aware by now. Miss Boyce-Lewis, that I don’t have operational control here. If Americans had direct command in this theater, you’d see us whip the VC pretty damned quick. I gave my advice that we should search right through Moc Linh half an hour ago — but we have to wait while our little allies make up their minds whether to accept all of that advice, some of it — or none of it at all.” 

“Are you so very sure, captain, that the South Vietnamese don’t want to beat the Communists just as much as you do?” 

The well-bred English voice seemed suddenly incongruous to the American amidst the torrid heat and rank animal odors of the Mekong delta hamlet; it conjured images in his mind of delicate traceries of lace, fine bone china, an obsequious butler with a tray entering from a dark paneled hall, and he looked at her quizzically for a moment. “Maybe one or two of them do — but President Diem’s never really changed the old French colonial way of running this part of the world, you know. All forty-five provinces are still run by a bunch of majors and colonels — mandarins in military uniform.” 

“But that doesn’t necessarily affect the quality of the army, does it?” 

“If you’re running a province or a district, you collect taxes, call all the shots and get plenty of kickbacks — especially if you can misappropriate a few million dollars’ worth of American aid and supplies along the way. It makes more sense, doesn’t it, to get rich as an army bureaucrat than to get yourself killed fighting the Viet Cong? So most of the ARVN officer corps want more than anything else to be fat cats behind a desk — and Captain Hoang’s no exception.” 

The reporter glanced across the clearing to where the two ARVN officers were engaged in what appeared to be a heated conversation, and she saw Captain Hoang summon his radio operator and take the handset from him to speak into it. 

“When I ship out of here in ten days time, Captain Hoang’s supposed to have absorbed everything I learned in Normandy and Korea — that’s the theory,” muttered Staudt. “But Hoang’s mind, if you ask me, is fixed on some quiet little provincial administrator’s office where he can start feathering his own nest 

Lieutenant Gary Sherman returned to the group at that moment and nodded meaningfully at Staudt; on his instructions the young American had been using their radio quietly out of earshot to pass on their own recommendation to the American major at Seventh Division headquarters that the sortie be pressed rapidly into the three remaining hamlets. The U.S. major, they knew, was sitting side by side with the ARVN commander of the operation and could help override any reluctance of the Vietnamese officers on the spot to continue. Gary Sherman’s confidential nod told Staudt that their message had been received and understood at headquarters, and he patted the lieutenant approvingly on the shoulder and moved away towards Captain Hoang. 

When he’d gone, Gary Sherman grinned ruefully at the English reporter, removed his helmet and ran a hand over his close-cropped blond hair, which was dark with perspiration. “I guess to an outsider Captain Staudt can seem a little hard-boiled, Miss Boyce-Lewis,” he said quietly after glancing circumspectly over his shoulder to check that he wasn’t being overheard. “But that’s just his way. He’d be the first to admit he’s a soldier not a diplomat — but under all that tough talk he believes as much as any American officer out here in the lob we’re trying to do,” 

The English reporter nodded and smiled, touched by the earnestness of the young American officer who was several years her junior. “I quite understand, lieutenant. I can see your job isn’t an easy one.” 

“I guess the captain tends to be a little hard on the ARVN troops .— and their officers too. They’re not really all as black as he paints them. A lot of them, like Lieutenant Trang, have good reason not to love the VC. And they can fight just as well as the VC do —- they’re the same people, after all. Families have been split down the middle since the time of the French war, and what it really boils down to is how well they’re led,,..” 

Naomi Boyce-Lewis smiled again, more playfully this time. “For someone who’s been out here only two weeks, lieutenant, ‘you’ve obviously got a good grasp of the situation already.” 

Gary Sherman’s youthfully handsome face crinkled suddenly into an embarrassed smile. “I’m sorry — I didn’t mean to try to come on too strong, Miss Boyce-Lewis. I’ve still got a lot to learn, I realize that. But my father spent some time out here as a correspondent in the ‘fifties.” He paused and mopped his brow again, and a faintly shamefaced expression crossed his features fleetingly. “I haven’t seen him in quite a while, but I guess I soaked up stuff like that from him without realizing it.” 

‘Then perhaps I can try and pick your brains sometime if the two of us ever get the chance to have a quiet talk.” She favored him with the kind of practiced, intimate smile that had long since become second nature to her when talking to men who might help her with information f& her news stories, and the young American, flattered as she’d intended he should be, grinned with pleasure. 

“I’d be glad to help you any time I can, ma’am.” 

Over his shoulder she saw Hoang call his interpreter to his side and begin speaking to Captain Staudt in excited high-pitched Vietnamese. “it looks as if we might he about to get some kind of decision now,” she murmured, signaling to her crew to pick up their equipment, and all of them trooped across to listen. 

“I had decided that we should curtail this operation and withdraw,” the little interpreter was saying on Hoang’s behalf while the Vietnamese captain stared angrily at his American counterpart. “But when I reported my intention to headquarters, to my astonishment my superiors countermanded my decision. They say the reserves are still standing by and can be here within minutes.” 

“So what are your orders, captain?” asked Staudt with scarcely concealed satisfaction. 

Hoang’s expression showed clearly that he knew he’d been out-maneuvered, and his pinched features darkened as he turned and pointed to the next hamlet. “We’ll proceed to Hamlet Four at once! I’ve already told my men to move briskly across the dike in single file and not bunch together.” 

“You’ve what?” Staudt’s voice was shrill with incredulity, and he stared aghast at the Vietnamese. “Have you taken a look at the terrain, Captain Hoang? That’s the most exposed stretch of ground we’ve faced all morning — ideal for an ambush. If I wanted to set one myself, that is where I’d do it. Your men must go through the goddamned paddy. Spread ‘em right across on a broad front 

The face of the Vietnamese remained as stiff as a mask, and although the American officer knew he must have understood him, Hoang insisted that his sergeant translate the reply. Then he rattled off another volley of Vietnamese, which the NCO conveyed haltingly into English. “The men are tiring. It’s very hot. To make them wade through the mud and water again would be foolish. I’ve already given my orders, captain, and they won’t be changed.” 

Staudt stared at him thunderstruck — then relaxed and drew a long exasperated breath. “Okay — so who’s going point?” 

The Vietnamese officer’s jaw flexed several times as he struggled to conceal his anger at being questioned further. “Does it really matter who goes point approaching an obviously deserted village, Captain Staudt?” 

“Yes, it sure as hell does matter! It has to be the best man OU have! With a hundred soldiers moving forward one behind the other, they could all be killed with the same goddamned bullet if it keeps going long enough. The only two men. who can return fire if there’s a head-on attack are the point and his companion. 

All your other men will be shooting each other up the ass if they open up!” 

“Then Lieutenant Trang will go point!” The ARVN captain spat the words out rudely, then turned and strode away towards the rear of the column, motioning the waiting troops past him. 

Lieutenant Trang, his handsome face expressionless, picked to accompany him a muscular little sergeant carrying one of the M-79 grenade launchers, and Captain Staudt, coming to a sudden decision, nodded towards Gary Sherman. The West Pointer immediately unslung his PRC-10 radio pack, and half a minute later the two young lieutenants led the column out onto the dike under the hot glare of the delta sun. 

The Viet Cong machine gunner, concealed in a clump of palm trees about a hundred yards from the canal, curled a forefinger around his trigger as soon as he saw the ARVN column emerging from the shade of Hamlet Three. Spacing themselves carefully ten yards apart in accordance with their commander’s orders, the government troops began to spread steadily across his field of fire like pop-up targets on a fairground rifle range. They were little more than silhouettes under the fierce flood of sunlight, but he could distinguish easily the bigger Americans among the smaller Asian troops; the taller, long-striding one near the front, the other, bulkier man humping a radio pack halfway down the line. 

The guerrilla’s captured Thompson machine gun, oiled and cared for more carefully than any other possession in his young life, was set up at right angles to the marching column halfway along the dike, and he had to curb his impatience to begin firing at once. He was under strict orders to wait until the last man was well clear of Hamlet Three; then the whole column would have to take cover down the far side of the bank where the fifty improvised mines were buried at two-yard intervals. They had been made from captured 105-millimeter shells, and the fuses in their tips had been replaced with percussion caps linked by wire to a detonator hidden in undergrowth at the edge of Hamlet Three; there, another guerrilla waited to activate all of them simultaneously thirty seconds after the machine gun opened up. 

Before he left the cover of the trees, Captain Staudt, acting on an impulse, had called up the American major at headquarters and asked him to divert two armed HU 1-Bs to the area immediately; hairs that had sometimes prickled on the back of his neck in France in 1944 and amidst the bare hills of Korea nearly a decade later, hadn’t felt quite comfortable suddenly. The major had promised he would get the choppers over as soon as he could, but they were supporting another skirmish at the moment. As he walked on across the dike, Staudt scanned the fields on either side ceaselessly for suspicious signs; an unnatural hush seemed to have fallen over the paddies, and he was certain now that his scalp had begun to tingle. He turned to look back at Captain Hoang, but the Vietnamese officer was walking near the back of the column, ignoring him, his lips still pursed in an expression of petulance and affront. 

Staudt, cursing under his breath, turned to peer forward again, and he happened by chance to be looking directly at the clump of trees where -the machine gun was concealed at the moment it opened up. He saw the first muzzle flashes spurt from the weapon as it began to hose the column from front to rear with a long unbroken burst of fire, and for a moment he stared at it stupefied. Then with the shrieks of half-a-dozen dying men ringing in his ears, he flung himself to the ground and swiveled to face the attack. Keeping his head low, he peered out under the rim of his helmet and began yelling for those around him to return fire on the tree clump. But there was no response, and when the machine gun began raking the column again in the opposite direction, he heaved himself reluctantly backwards off the dike into the paddy. 

Fifty yards behind him Captain Hoang had gone over the edge the moment the machine gun started firing, screeching orders for his men to do the same. He fell straight into a small pit filled with three-foot-long bamboo spikes, and at least half of his men tumbled cursing into similar traps. But their oaths were drowned seconds later by the roar of the fifty howitzer “mines” exploding as one. Geysers of earth, flames and muddy water rose among the tumbling, shrieking bodies, and into this inferno the two other machine guns concealed in a gun port at the base of the bank poured long new bursts of withering fire. 

One of the mines blew off both Lieutenant Trang’s legs and hurled his broken body high into the air above the head of the horrified Gary Sherman; dazed with shock, the American stood up, looking wildly around for cover, but despite this foolish mistake — or perhaps because of it he miraculously survived the first bursts of the twin machine guns. The squat Vietnamese sergeant with the M-79, in the eye of the storm with him, also escaped unscathed, and he remained crouching on the ground by his feet, his face frozen in an inane grin of fear. 

His commanding officer, Captain Hoang, however, was less fortunate; as he twisted and flapped like a speared fish at the rear of the column, trying to free his feet and legs from the punji trap, he caught the eye of Ngo Van Minh, the eager young son of the Viet Cong’s battalion commander. Settled comfortably in a sniper’s nest in a tree bordering Hamlet Four, Minh watched Hoang intently, squinting through the sights of his gleaming World War Two Garand rifle, and when the company commander finally extricated his legs and flung himself gasping with pain on the bank, the boy squeezed off one careful shot. It missed by several feet, but taking his time, he fired carefully again, and this bullet hit Hoang low down in the back. His third shot, entering between Hoang’s shoulder blades, killed him, and the elated boy, seeing the ARVN commander stop moving suddenly, defied all his orders and began scrambling down from his hideout. 

In the opening barrage from the enfilading machine guns, Captain Staudt had been wounded in the chest. Wincing with pain and cursing the goddamned soldiers and officers he was fighting with and the goddamned country he was fighting in, he lay three-quarters submerged in the mud of the paddy, radioing the coordinates of their position for the helicopters and the T-28s which he was calling in to make a napalm attack on Hamlet Four. When he had replaced the handset, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that the British television crew had managed to scramble up the dike onto the path and against all the odds had almost reached the cover of the trees. One of them, the cameraman, was hobbling badly with a leg injury, and he saw that Naomi Boyce- Lewis was helping to support him, her arm about his shoulders. Not far away his camera lay shattered by a mine, and tangled skeins of film were spread around among the writhing bodies of wounded and dying Vietnamese No more than two dozen of the troops, as far as he could judge, had escaped injury altogether. 

Staudt began shouting fresh orders for fire to be directed along the bank at the machine gun nest, but nobody responded; those terrified Vietnamese who hadn’t already been killed were obviously pretending they had, hoping they could escape that way, and he fished his own Armalite out from under the water where it had fallen. But even before he tried to fire it, he saw that mud and slime had clogged the moving parts, and cursing the weapon as well as the soldiers around him, he flung it away. 

The Thompson that had first raked the column from across the canal had strewn half-a-dozen dead or dying bodies along the dike path before unaccountably falling silent; the mines and traps together had killed and maimed perhaps another thirty or forty men, and most of the two dozen or so ARVN troops who had survived these onslaughts had dived Into depressions in the shallow paddy field to avoid the heavy-caliber machine-gun fire. A few, like Gary Sherman, after getting over their astonishment at finding themselves alive, had scrambled back up the bank to get clear of the deadly hail of frontal fire, and as he went, Gary had grabbed the petrified sergeant with the M-79 and hauled him bodily across the dike into the waters of the canal; crouching chest-deep to gain protection of the banks on both sides, he ordered the Vietnamese in sign language to load the grenade launcher. Christened “the elephant gun” by its users, the M-79 was a new weapon just introduced to the war. It looked like an enormous single-barreled shotgun, and its shell-shaped grenades sprayed enough hot metal in all directions on impact to kill everything within a twenty-yard radius. When the Vietnamese had loaded the weapon, to give him cover Gary straightened up suddenly and fired a long burst from his Armalite in the direction of the machine gun nest in the foot of the dike. The Vietnamese at his side grinned toothily, whether through relief or fear, Gary couldn’t tell, and lifted the unfamiliar weapon to his shoulder. Because it was designed for ranges up to several hundred yards, the little sergeant had to adjust its sights repeatedly, and it took him several trial shots to get his aim; but with the American officer firing covering bursts and urging him on, he worked fast, slapping shells into the breech in quick succession, slamming it closed and firing. His fifth grenade turned out to be right, and it rose in a gentle arc to drop accurately into the corner of the paddy below their direct line of fire. Immediately both machine guns fell silent, and the Vietnamese turned his gap- toothed grin on Gary again, this time undoubtedly beaming with delight. But as the American patted him on the shoulder in congratulation, he realized suddenly why the Thompson across the canal behind them had stopped firing; from the corner of his eye he saw two platoons of black-garbed main force Viet Cong rising from their camouflaged foxholes on the opposite side of the field to begin charging through the muddy water towards them. 

To Captain Staudt, lying prostrate in the muck of the paddy field, the skirmish line of Viet Cong seemed to be walking on water. He could see Captain Hoang slumped motionless on the hank of the dike, and since there were no commands coining from the point, he assumed Lieutenant Trang must be out of action too. At last, he realized, he had what he’d wanted so desperately for the past year — operational control! But the line of guerrillas was only twenty yards away now, close enough for him to see their narrow-eyed faces contorting with hatred as they splashed towards him with bayonets fixed, and he knew then that for him operational control was going to last about five seconds more. Hauling his pistol from its holster he took careful aim at the guerrilla racing ahead of the line — then with a palpable sense of shock he realized it was a woman and his finger faltered on the trigger; a second later several bullets from her revolver slammed into his head and chest, killing him instantly. 

In the canal Lieutenant Gary Sherman brought his Armalite to bear on the advancing enemy, but it jammed without firing another shot, and he watched helplessly as the Viet Cong closed with the remnants of the company, some shooting and stabbing with their rifles, others wielding crude, village-smelted knives. Methodically amid the butchery, the front rank of the guerrillas began wresting rifles, ammunition and radio packs from the dead troops, and on his orders the sergeant at Gary’s side fired his last two grenades at the second wave of attackers. But the speed of their advance made them a difficult target, and although one or two crumpled into the mud, the majority ran on and the last gaggle of ARVN survivors began flinging themselves into the canal in a desperate effort to escape the final act of the carnage in the paddy field. 

Almost all of them had already tossed their weapons aside and they ignored Gary’s desperate attempts to rally them. When he spotted one man still clutching his M-2, he rushed through the water to wrench it from him, and resting his elbows on the canal bank he sighted on the nearest Viet Cong, a dark-clad figure racing towards the head of the column where Lieutenant Trang lay dying. Like Captain Staudt before him, Gary Sherman experienced a moment of shock when Tuyet Luong turned her head in his direction; she hadn’t noticed him until that moment, and he saw the expression of alarm spread across her unexpectedly beautiful face as she caught sight of his leveled rifle. For the briefest instant their eyes locked, and the startled American delayed his shot; then Tuyet ducked out of sight below the bank and was gone. 

A moment later the two HU 1-Bs called in by Staudt as a precaution burst into view above the trees, their rotors thumping and stirring the quivering air above the battlefield. Immediately a whistle shrilled and the guerrillas broke off from their grisly task to begin racing back towards the camouflaged tunnel entrances in the far, bank. In the few seconds it took for the heavily armed helicopters to swing around and start their attack, most of the guerrillas disappeared, dragging their war booty behind them, but out ‘on the field the lone figure of young Minh was left struggling through the mud. From his sniper’s nest in the tree he’d had to run twice as far as the rest of the two platoons to get in at the kill, and he had arrived among the prostrate government troops only moments before the helicopters appeared. He had seen the American captain toss away his Armalite, and after Tuyet Luong had shot the captain dead, Minh had been forced to grub around beneath the muddy water to find it. In his anxiety to catch up with his comrades he had fallen twice, and now as he panted across the field, weighed down by his Garand and the prized trophy of the new Armalite, he looked up and saw the first American helicopter sliding down through the air above him, bringing its guns to bear. 

Because he was long-limbed like his father and a fast runner, he was sure he could dodge and sprint to Outwit the unwieldy aircraft, despite the weight of the weapons he carried, and as he quickened his pace he gloried in the unexpected excitement; fir a long as he could remember he had ached with impatience to grow up to be the kind of hero his father was, and now he’d be able to boast a little of how he had killed the Diemist captain with his third shot and then outwitted the American gunners in their iron skybirds. Perhaps he had disobeyed orders, But as soon as his father saw the new Armalite he would be proud of him, he was sure! 

When the fiery red tracers from the HU I-B’s six-barreled machine guns punched into the muddy water just ahead of him, Minh turned abruptly aside arid set off in a fast zigzag towards another set of tunnel entrances fifty yards away. The other helicopter, seeing this, swerved to cut him off, pumping its 7.62-millimeter bullets into the paddy at the ferocious rate of six thousand a minute — but, again Minh swerved from its firepath and doubled back on himself, throwing them off his track. 

Inside the first helicopter, the American gunner seated beside the pilot bent intently over his mirror gunsight, and a little grin of satisfaction began to spread across his face. “Okay, buddy boy,” he said quietly, “I think you’ve had all your fun for today.”