Red Flags (14 page)

Dr. Roberta pointed out low shrubs growing amid the coiled barbed wire. "
Kpung,
" she said, "poisonous as snakes. One scratch from those nettles will inflict a week of excruciating pain."

The camp was a five-sided star, each side one hundred meters long. At each point a machine-gun barrel protruded from a bunker. Over the gate, a sign in several languages posed the Green Berets' standing challenge to their enemies:
ANYTIME, ANYPLACE
. A human skull wearing a green beret sat atop a post. A ring of machine-gun bunkers and earthworks in the center formed a second line of defense, a fort within the fort. Mortar tubes at facing sides of the camp tilted toward each other so they could each defend the other's side of the wire in an attack.

Jarai kids were everywhere. Barefoot and bare-breasted women, the dependents of the Montagnard militiamen, poured out of two fortified barracks. Dr. Roberta pointed out the Bahnar tribesmen mixed in among them, easily identified by their long, mangy hair. Half clad, wrapped in gray Navy blankets, they looked squalid, like forlorn street people.

Outside a smaller building, Vietnamese Special Forces soldiers in speckled tiger fatigues and silk scarves lounged on fortifications in studied postures of boredom, red berets tilted low on their brows. Even motionless, they managed to convey disdain and contempt and elicit wariness, like teenage gangsters. All they needed was a street corner and a victim.

I parked at the inner ring of defenses by the Green Berets' team house and got out. The colonel's jeep and the truck pulled up behind us. My gaudy shirt and hat drew stares.

"
Di uy,
you are down, man," a black Special Forces sergeant teased. "Thems some fly rags." He offered a fist and we dapped as he introduced himself. "Grady. Demolitions. Welcome to Fort Sucky-Sucky."

The doctor needed no introduction. The team members lined up to greet her and salute the colonel. They all looked gaunt and underfed. Several Montagnards rushed forward to welcome Bennett warmly. I changed back to my jungle fatigue shirt and boonie hat while they all caught up.

The Special Forces captain, George Cox, popped out of the team house flanked by two intimidating Nungs in black Aussie bush hats and black uniforms. He welcomed Colonel Bennett with a salute and shook hands with the doctor. "Ed," he called out and a sergeant emerged from an open-sided tent, stethoscope looped over his neck and kids bunched all around him. Brass bracelets chinged faintly on his wrists.

"Ed Sprague," Roberta exclaimed with real verve. Arm in arm, they walked off to speak privately above a growing sea of children, curious to see the pig-colored woman. Other youngsters cornered Checkman, fascinated by his head of red hair, which he obligingly lowered for them to touch. He smiled, passed around candy, and tried out his linguistic skills, but they didn't understand Vietnamese.

"Colonel," said Cox, "Captain Rider—this way," and he led us into the inner, second defensive perimeter to the command post at the camp's center. "During the day, only Americans and Nungs are allowed beyond this point," Cox said over his shoulder. "Once they accept your money, Nungs will watch over you, waking and sleeping. They're great fighters—loyal, ruthless—and handsomely compensated to cover our backsides. Sixty bucks a month, more than a Vietnamese captain. Pisses off the Vietnamese no end." He grinned. "Even so, after sundown it's Americans only inside the Alamo."

Checkman and I trailed behind Colonel Bennett and the Special Forces captain as they stepped up into the elevated bunker. Mahogany logs formed the roof, their ends exposed. Firing ports and weapons circled its walls. The whole structure was encased in sandbags many layers thick and topped with antennas.

Cox turned and said, "I'm sorry you missed our intel sergeant. He just took out our nightly five-man patrol."

Cox ushered us down some stairs into a short corridor that led to an underground room, spartan except for the torrid photographic studies plastered on one side. In front of the facing wall were radios stacked on a sawhorse table, and the captain's tiny work area decorated with tactical maps and gear. Behind a crude partition a dozen cots occupied improvised cubicles. Field equipment hung from pegs and lay draped over stools and locally made tin lockers. A long narrow table flanked by benches occupied the wide middle aisle.

"When's the general expected?" Colonel Bennett said.

The captain consulted his watch. "About eleven hundred, sir."

Despite the heat, we retrieved ceramic mugs from a side shelf and accepted the boiled coffee the captain offered. You could have stood a spoon in it. Army diesel.

"This is all their fault," a sergeant on radio watch grumbled, pointing above the sideband rigs to a framed color photograph of two Green Berets seated alongside commanding general Westmoreland, who was holding the working end of a very long straw arcing up from a ceramic jar of Montagnard moonshine. A shaman was putting a brass bracelet on Westmoreland's wrist to symbolize his initiation into the tribe.

The two Green Berets in the snapshot, Cox explained, had come up with this public relations ploy to put Mai Linh on the map of somebody who could actually do something for the Yards.

"And it worked, big-time. That photo of Westmoreland in Mai Linh appeared in the press worldwide."

"Westy has a distinct bias toward Airborne anyway," Bennett observed, "and Green Berets are all paratroopers, like him."

"The bracelet just helped seal the deal," Cox said. "Mai Linh has but to ask and supplies, equipment, air support, and helicopter assets arrive."

The downside was the camp also received an endless string of ranking officers hoping to get tribal bracelets like their leader's. They'd become coveted status symbols. A two-star was due within the hour. Technically, as Captain Cox's superior officer in the sector, Colonel Bennett should receive whatever general officer came through, but duties often occupied him elsewhere and he couldn't always show up.

Captain Cox jingled when he moved. He wore the serious carved bracelets on his right wrist, the more casually bestowed plain ones on his left.

Sergeant Grady climbed down the steps into the room carrying a box under his arm.

"Our camp's chief scrounger and purveyor," said Cox, by way of introduction.

"What exactly do you purvey, Sarge?" I asked.

"I got it all goin' on," Grady said, taking a mug. "Mostly war souvenirs. Real quality goods."

Cox stirred his coffee. "Grady takes them to big bases to barter and sell, or lays them off on our visitors and chopper crews."

Grady ticked them off on his fingers. "VC flags, Montagnard crossbows and pipes, pith helmets. AK-Forty-sevens when we've got 'em. NVA rucksacks too."

"Captured?" Bennett said.

"The weapons and rucks, yes, sir. The crossbows and pipes the Yards make. The ladies do the flags." He held up a yellow-blue Hanoi flag, soiled and bloody, with a yellow star in the middle.

"Very convincing."

"We're trying to lay in a money supply and build up an armory for the Yards for when we're not around and they done need hard currency and guns. Whenever we capture weapons, they cache some."

"You have reason to think we won't stick it out?" said the colonel.

"Not me, sir. It's them. They don't believe it anymore."

Bennett stroked his cheek. He turned to Captain Cox. "What's the current head count of Yard militia in the camp?"

"CIDG? Just under eight hundred Montagnard irregulars: mostly Jarai, some Rhade. A few Sedang and a fair number of Bahnar refugees. All together—with dependents—maybe three thousand souls. And ten of us Big Noses."

"Did I see Vietnamese Special Forces as we came in—LLDB?"

"Yes, sir," Cox said. "But just for today. I know their reputation and it's well deserved."

"They'll be out of here by tomorrow," Grady added.

Cox said, "They're posturing, showing they're not afraid. Not many Vietnamese have been in the compound since the uprising."

"Uprising?" I said.

"There've been a bunch."

Bennett motioned me closer. "Captain Rider's our new intel officer. It might help to make him aware of our skeletons."

"Yes, sir," Cox said, and turned to me. "We got brought in five years ago to organize the Montagnards into defensive militias. Found the Yards completely disarmed. Anything that looked like a weapon, the government had confiscated. Crossbows, guns, spears, bush axes. Montagnard province chiefs and leaders had been forced out. Vietnamese Catholics were running everything."

"Real honky shit," Grady muttered.

Cox ignored him. "We got along great with the Yards. Although the South Vietnamese forbade us to train them to lead troops, we armed 'em up with surplus carbines and taught them to defend their turf. They proved themselves real warriors, scrupulously honest."

"I swear, they'll banish a thief for life," Grady interjected. "In their eyes, stealin' rice or even water is worse than murder."

Cox silenced him with a raised hand. "The South Vietnamese freaked out. Carried on that we'd created an army of mercenaries poised at their backs. Two years ago they demanded we transfer command of the Yard militias and the strikers in the A camps to them. Their country, their call. The South Vietnamese Red Berets took command and we went from being independent operators for CIA to being advisers reporting to MACV—officially anyway."

"More like allegedly," Sergeant Grady added.

"Yeah, well. Real authority didn't shift so easily. The Yards and Vietnamese despise each other—have for centuries."

Grady banged down his cup. "The dumb slopes even tried to confiscate some of the arms we'd given the Yards. That didn't work out so good neither."

"No," Cox said. "The Viets started in with their usual crap. Their special forces jerked the Yards around on their pay, which the Red Berets took over issuing—and pocketed. Pushed them to go on the offensive too and take on the heavily armed NVA regulars streaming in, guided by their Montagnard allies. Our strikers were deployed to distant camps straddling infiltration routes, far from their own villages. They couldn't fathom fighting for some other tribe's turf and they sure weren't into fighting other Yards."

"The dinks were completely okay with usin' them for cannon fodder," Grady mumbled. "Fine with laying air strikes on their villages too. A little depopulating of the real estate for after the war, it seemed like."

Cox said, "Our Yards didn't trust their new Vietnamese masters."

"Or us either after that," Grady said.

"We'd promised them autonomy, title to their tribal lands. Trained them to defend their villages, then handed them over to the South Vietnamese, who were forcibly relocating tribespeople into government settlements—dumps—and ordering the men to fight main force North Vietnamese battalions coming across the borders. We had no say in the matter, but try telling them that."

"So what happened?" I said to Cox.

"Spontaneous firefights between the Yards and ARVN. Mass desertions to the VC. Sabotage. Finally, mutiny—armed revolt."

"Two years ago," Grady said, "Rhade militia in the province next door seized the Vietnamese Special Forces commanders and soldiers and the administrators in five camps. They just detained our guys, but absolutely mutilated the Vietnamese. Slit their throats. Shot 'em. Seventy of them. Did 'em up bad."

"Declared their own independence movement," Cox interjected.

Grady shook his head in resignation. "The Yards wanted their mountains. They thought we'd stand with 'em. Kick the North
and
South Vietnamese the fuck out of their Highlands."

Cox looked a little pissed. "You still got a hairball about this?"

The sergeant stood with his hands in his pockets. "We strung them along and sold 'em out."

"The Yards go bat shit and you figure we're responsible?"

"We let them think they were our troops—American legionnaires—doin' for us like their daddies did for the French. The young bloods even got uniforms made like ours—patches, flashes, berets, the works." Grady pointed at the Latin on his shoulder patch and translated. "‘To Liberate from Oppression.'"

Cox sighed. "Sarge, stow it. What's done is done."

Grady stared back. "They have went through hell cause we made 'em think it was gonna happen."

"What happened to the rebels?" I said.

Cox poured out another cup. "Three thousand marched just across the border into Cambodia and set up FULRO—their own liberation front."

"The ones who surrendered mostly got amnesty," Grady said. "But for months guns went off whenever our Montagnards bumped into ARVN or Vietnamese militia. ‘Accidental meetings,' according to Saigon. Full-out fights is what they were."

Cox nodded. "Meanwhile the Viets put General Vinh Loc in charge of Two Corps, an aristocrat with a pathological hatred of the Yards and no great love for us."

"Where were the Berets in all this?"

Grady looked downcast. "Transferred, reassigned, scattered all over. After the uprising, the U.S. Army treated us like we was Hell's Angels. They didn't trust us
not
to side with the Yards."

"And the Red Berets," I said, "they're still scared to come around two years later?"

Cox glanced at Grady. "It didn't end back then."

Bennett rubbed road grit from his face with a handkerchief. "Four, five months ago, the week before Christmas—this is fifteen klicks west of here—Jarai militiamen were standing guard on the perimeter at the Phu Thien District headquarters. They turned their guns around—then sounded the alarm. As the South Vietnamese soldiers poured out of their barracks, the Yards cut 'em down. Forty-three Vietnamese and an ARVN captain who'd been installed as the district chief."

"Jesus," I said.

Cox grimaced at his coffee and put it aside. "Their leader marched his column of rebels here. The plan called for simultaneous mutinies, but our Yards hadn't taken us down, thank God. When the dissidents saw it wasn't gonna happen, they surrendered."

"General Loc convened a military tribunal in Pleiku," Bennett said.