Conspiracy (10 page)

An assignment Dean had successfully completed.

“You OK, Charlie?” asked Telach. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“I'm fine,” said Dean. “When's my plane?”

 

THE FACT THAT
Forester had a girlfriend erased some of the sympathy Lia had felt for him, even as it added more evidence to her suspicion that he hadn't committed suicide.

“Very possibly, this woman will have additional information,” Rubens told Lia as he briefed her in his office. “Or some insight into the situation. I'd like you to speak to her and—”

“I know the drill,” she said. “You don't have to connect the dots.”

Rubens frowned and began lecturing her on the “need for decorum” when dealing with “sister agencies.”

“Ambassador Jackson will assist you in speaking to Ms. Rauci, and then deal with the Washington people,” said Rubens. “I'd like you to work in the field, see what you can find. If Forester was murdered, his killer may lead us back to the conspirators.”

“Peachy.”

“We want you to look for computers Forester might have used to send e-mail when he went to Pine Plains. Check the hotel where he was found. There is a business center there.”

Lia found her thoughts wandering, first to the Forester family, then to Charlie Dean and what he had said about kids, then to Rubens himself.

Rubens was, by all accounts, independently wealthy. He was also consumed by his job, often working around the clock and sometimes spending several days in a row at the NSA complex. Overseeing Desk Three was just a small part of his duties. It was no wonder then that while fortyish—she
had no idea what his actual age was, though she guessed he was younger than he seemed—he appeared to have no life outside of the Agency. No wife, no child.

Lia didn't
really
know that, did she? He didn't wear a wedding ring, but many men didn't. She didn't see any family photos on his walls, only fancy paintings.

“Excuse me a second,” she interrupted. “Do you have a child?”

Rubens, though undoubtedly used to her impertinence by now, blinked twice.

“Because I'm wondering,” continued Lia, “if you were fighting for custody, and you didn't get it, would it be enough to kill yourself?”

“Assuredly not. But I hardly think I am a representative sample, Lia. Keep an open mind—draw no conclusions.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know all that.”

Rubens frowned, then resumed his lecture on how to behave.

 

THERE WERE SEVERAL
reasons Dean remembered the mission to kill Phuc Dinh. The first was the oddness of the first name—though it was common enough in Vietnam, the obscenity it sounded like in English was not easily forgotten.

The second was the comparative uniqueness of the mission. “Hunter-kills”—assignments to kill a specific person—while not rare for scout snipers in Vietnam, were relatively infrequent; even though Dean was considered good at them, he racked up only a handful during a year's tour. Most often, he and other snipers worked with Marine units during patrols or sweeps, striking North Vietnamese Army units operating in the area.

Even as a hunter-kill, the assignment was unique. It was on the Laos border, and the man giving the assignment went out of his way to specify that Phuc Dinh was a priority target “to the exclusion of all others.” Which meant don't waste your time shooting anybody else until this SOB is toast.

But for Dean, the assignment stood out for one reason far beyond all the others: it was on this mission that he had lost his best friend in the world, John Longbow.

Dean had met Corporal John Longbow in Scout Sniper School. Unlike Dean, who'd gotten the assignment directly out of boot camp, Longbow had already been to Vietnam before volunteering to become a sniper. Everyone in Scout Sniper School was a standout Marine. Longbow was a standout among the standouts.

At first, the instructors tried to push Longbow harder because he was the oldest, but it quickly became clear that he pushed himself harder than even the toughest taskmaster could. By the end of the first week, the sergeant in charge of the unit was relying on Longbow as a fourth instructor.

Despite all this—or maybe because of it—the other trainees in the unit shied away from him, especially in the few hours they had “off duty” following training. The corporal never said much, and many interpreted his silence as a kind of arrogance. And working with him on the range could be a little demoralizing—he was
so
precise,
so
controlled, so perfect, that anyone who measured himself against Longbow inevitably came up short.

Force Recon shared the camp with Scout Sniper School, and there was occasionally some bad blood between the two units. From the snipers' point of view, the Force Recon trainees were always looking for a fight, trying to prove that
they
were the real Marines and that everyone else in the service was an embarrassment. They called snipers' rifle boxes diaper bags; the put-downs increased exponentially in vulgarity from there.

One night Longbow had just made the chow line when four or five Force Recon show-offs began making fun of him, calling him Tonto and asking if he'd gotten his red face from lipstick. Longbow, who was somewhat touchy about his Indian heritage, ignored them at first, but this only egged them on more. Dean walked into the mess hall to find Longbow surrounded. Not knowing exactly what was going on—but already disliking the other unit for its habit of bragging and abusing the snipers—Dean double-timed to Longbow's side. The corporal glanced over his shoulder, saw Dean, then turned back and stared at the other men.

“Oh, whoa, it's the evil eye,” cracked one of the Force Recon trainees. “I'm feeling weak. Weak.”

He fell to the floor. The others convulsed in laughter.

For a moment, Dean wasn't sure what was going to happen. Or rather, he was
sure
Longbow was going to kick the
Marine on the ground in the face and after that wasn't sure what would happen. Dean figured, though, that he would be backing up his fellow platoon member.

Instead, Longbow stared for a second longer, then turned away. It was a good thing, too—a captain had seen what was going on from the far side of the mess hall and was on his way over. Had there been a fight, all of the men would undoubtedly have been kicked out of their respective schools.

Dean and Longbow ate together in silence. They never spoke of the incident again. But from that point on, Longbow helped Dean whenever he could, offering him different bits of advice on the range and helping him master some of the finer points of the shooting art, such as compensating for winds above 10 miles an hour.

They were assigned to the same unit in Vietnam—not much of a surprise, since about two-thirds of the school's graduates were sent there. After requalification at Da Nang, Dean, Longbow, and four other men they'd trained with joined a unit in an area known as “Arizona Territory.” Their assignments varied, taking them to the Laos border and back, generally to work with Marine companies on sweeps or at forward camps where at night the enemy was so close you could smell the fish he'd had for dinner.

The origin of the nickname Arizona was in some doubt. Some Marines thought it was an apt comparison of the highly dangerous area to the Arizona of the lawless Old West. Others thought it came from the parched pieces of landscape, scorched by Agent Orange. In any event, the nickname was not a compliment.

Usually the snipers went out in two-man teams, especially when they were working alongside other Marine units conducting patrols or attacking an enemy-held area. At first, the new men were teamed up with more experienced snipers; before long, they were the experienced hands and others the newbies. Dean and Longbow only worked together on CID missions, and then only very important ones for which they were hand-selected by their CO.

“CID” stood for “Counter Intelligence Department”; the organization was actually a CIA group that ran special operations in the area, often using Marine snipers to get things done. A CID mission could involve gathering intelligence, or it could target a special VC soldier or official for assassination. The mission against Phuc Dinh was the latter.

 

“
PHUC DINH LIVES
in a village about three miles from the border,” John Rogers told Dean and Longbow. The CIA officer had commandeered their commander's tent to brief the mission. Rogers had only been in the region for a few months, but that must have seemed like forever to him; he bucked up his facade of courage with gin, and the stink sat heavy on him even at 0800.

“There's a series of tunnels in this canyon here,” said Rogers, pointing at the map. He sat in a canvas-backed field chair; Dean and Longbow were across from him on the captain's rack. “They used to hole up in them on their way south until we got wise to them. Now they go much further west, over the border.”

Dean stared at the grid map. Experience had shown the relationship between such maps and the real world was often tenuous. Villages were often misnamed and in some cases a considerable distance from where they were supposed to be. More important, maps could never tell you the most important thing
—
where the enemy was.

“Phuc Dinh goes across the valley into Laos every week to ten days to make contact with units on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He travels at night. Your best bet at catching him alone is on one of those nights.

“Dinh is your target, to the exclusion of any others.”

Dean glanced over at Longbow. The sniper was staring intently at the back of the captain's tent, zoning in the distance. Dean guessed Longbow was thinking of the mission.

Rogers rose to leave.

“Can we go into Laos to get him?” Dean asked Rogers.

“Technically, no.” Rogers picked up the small briefcase
he'd brought with him. “Send a message back that the red hawk has died.”

 

THE MISSION BRIEF
did not include the reason that Phuc Dinh was to be shot. It was obvious that he must be some sort of important VC official, though that alone probably wasn't enough to arouse CID's wrath. But reasons were irrelevant to Dean and Longbow; Phuc Dinh was the enemy, and that was all the reason they needed to kill anyone.

The two snipers rode with a Marine company making a sweep about ten miles south of Phuc Dinh's village; the unit ran into trouble as soon as their helicopters landed and Dean and Longbow spent nearly five days with them, the first three within spitting distance of the landing zone. Dean and Longbow didn't much mind the time itself, since they weren't sure when Phuc Dinh would be moving, but the delay cost them valuable supplies, most notably about half of the ammo for Longbow's bolt rifle, a Remington 700. Dean, acting as Longbow's spotter, though ordinarily a team leader himself, carried an M14 with a starlight scope.

Finally, the unit managed to extricate itself and got under way. When Dean and Longbow split off from the others, they were just under six miles from Phuc Dinh's village. The jungle was so thick there that it took a whole day to walk three miles toward it. Then, just as they were settling down for the night, they caught a strong odor of fish on the wind.

A VC unit was moving through the area, possibly stalking the Marines Dean and Longbow had just left. The smell came from the food the Vietcong ate and meant they were incredibly close, perhaps only a dozen feet away.

To the Vietcong, Americans smelled like soap, and probably the only thing that saved Dean and Longbow was the fact that they had been in the bush long enough for the grime to overwhelm any lingering Ivory scent. The Vietcong passed them right by.

There was only one problem. The enemy guerillas were moving in the direction of the unit Dean and Longbow had left.

The snipers didn't have a radio. In those days, effective
radios were bulky and had to be carried on your back. They were also in short supply. So there was no way of alerting the other unit short of sneaking back and telling them.

Dean and Longbow discussed what to do. Their orders had priority, clearly—“exclusion of any others” was supposed to cover a situation like this—but they couldn't leave their fellow Marines to be blindsided. Dean and Longbow circled to the southwest, stalking the stalkers.

Four hours later, the Vietnamese unit reached the flank of the main unit. Dean, looking through the starlight scope of his M14, saw one of the Vietcong rise to throw hand grenades and begin the attack. He put a three-round burst into the man's head. The grenade detonated, and the firefight was on. The guerillas lost the element of surprise and quickly withdrew. Dean and Longbow had to retreat as well, barely escaping the crossfire. The detour had cost them not only several hours but also more ammo and water.

 

“
VILLAGE HAS FIVE
huts,” said Dean, looking at it through his field glasses. “Five huts. Shit.”

“You sure this is the place? Supposed to be four or five times that.”

He pulled out his map again. While it could be difficult to correlate points, in this case the location seemed fairly obvious
—
the village was located at the mouth of a bend in a small creek, which corresponded with the map. There were other geographic marks as well, including the road and the valley three miles to the west.

 

EVEN SO, THEY
took another day making sure, circling across to the valley and back, even moving to the edge of a second village two miles to the south. This village was also considerably smaller than the map and briefing had indicated, and in the end Dean concluded that the information, like so much intelligence they were given, was simply wrong.

So they went ahead and set up an ambush. There were at least four different paths from the village into the valley, but the sharp cliffs on the east side of the valley meant there were
only two passes across, and both lay within a half mile of each other. The snipers had their choice of three positions to fire from, all between five and six hundred yards. They settled on a good spot in the middle, not because of the range—even the M14 could handle that distance—but because a fifty-foot sheer drop made a surprise attack from the rear unlikely.