Red Flags (33 page)

"Some sacrifice. You don't now."

How had the NVA gotten so close to the compound? How had they slipped past the ARVN perimeter to reach us? Were they so expert in the dark, or had the ARVN let them pass unchallenged? Our allies hadn't fired a shot, even after the shooting started.

The town remained shut, the Vietnamese battalion locked down. Checkman drove to the airstrip with an armed escort to meet the incoming courier flight. On the way back, he noticed four black splotches on the outside of the perimeter wall. The colonel and I went along with Joe Parks to investigate.

"There," Checkman said, pointing.

Sergeant Parks knelt next to a smudge. He clenched the pipe in his teeth and touched the stain, rubbed it between his fingers, and sniffed. "Motor oil."

Checkman was embarrassed. "That's all? Just motor oil?"

Joe Parks said, "I've seen this before. The VC splash motor oil on steel to make an adhesive for C-four charges. Makes the putty stick, even to wet metal."

"C-four is pliable," Checkman said. "Couldn't they just push it into the perforations in the planks?"

"NVA don't improvise," Bennett said. "They do it exactly as rehearsed."

"True, sir," Parks said. "They're rigidly disciplined. Crept up to here in the dark and prepped the steel with motor oil, as ordered." He scratched at his cheek with the pipe stem. "Maybe while we were distracted with the assault at the gate."

"Cut the commo wire to ARVN too," I said.

Joe nodded. "Planned on rain giving them cover when they stormed our perimeter. They were relying on the bad weather to deny us air support and keep from getting anviled from the air when they were done with us."

Joe stood up. "Except blessedly it didn't pour. So they canceled. They must have been sitting out there half the night, waiting for a downpour."

"They skipped us because it didn't rain," Checkman said, awe in his voice.

"Joe," I said, "you think they have some reserve force prepping to assault us the next time it pours?"

Parks shook his head. "Undoubtedly they left a reserve in the foothills. But the units that rehearsed the attack on the compound must be en route to their main objective by now. I think we're okay." He looked at the colonel. "The mobilized battalions are past us, sir. They're off our plateau and in the mountains ... on their way to whoever's going to take the full brunt. We got a reprieve."

"No thanks to ARVN," I said, "who did absolutely nothing."

Bennett licked his dry lips, face bathed in sweat, his blond hair dark with it. "Damn. It's like someone walking on your grave."

When we returned to the gate, the civilians were just leaving. Lund and his colleagues were almost the last in line, driving out. Ruchevsky, in his Bronco, waved me over.

"Captain Cox and Sergeant Grady are waiting on us by the river," he said.

I got in and Ruchevsky sprayed gravel rushing through the gate. "What's up?" I said.

"The snatch. The courier is getting closer. We need a head session."

Ruchevsky drove us to the edge of town to where the Ea River joined the Ayun, and where off-duty advisers and civilians occasionally congregated at sunset, like Californians. A peaked thatched roof, like on a Montagnard longhouse, rose over an elevated earthen floor, supported by six wooden columns. The place was sunbaked and bare. Nearby, a gaunt Vietnamese watered a cadaverous herd of horned cattle. Captain Cox sat behind the wheel of the Special Forces jeep; Sergeant Grady leaned against it. The back bulged with essential supplies: ammo, Budweiser, a crate of Vienna sausages, a bag of mail. A bullet hole blistered the windshield on the passenger side.

Cox stepped out as we rolled to a stop. "Welcome, pilgrims."

"Captain." Ruchevsky greeted him and nodded to Grady. "Sarge."

"Vandals?" I said, indicating the punctured glass.

Grady said, "Some cracker tried to light us up on the way in."

I said, "I can't believe you drove in after what went on last night."

Grady snorted in derision. "Police action is all that was. Wouldn't hardly qualify as a fight."

Ruchevsky said to Cox, "You want to lay it out?"

Captain Cox slipped off his green beret and pushed it through an epaulet. "Big John thinks our target is accompanied by four or five escorts and hauling a radio and a couple kilos of paper."

"They don't trust radio communications," Ruchevsky said. "They commit a lot to paper."

"Is he transmitting as he goes?" I said, trying to get an inkling of how he was being tracked.

The pair looked to Ruchevsky. He hesitated a beat. "Yeah," he said.

"Morse or voice?"

"Not voice. He's using a key."

The guy wouldn't be transmitting that much while trekking. Had John substituted one of his agents for a VC guide along one of the legs of the trail? Easily done. The guides had little contact with one another or their Vietnamese handlers, and the infiltrators walking the trail were strangers.

Cox drew a crude map in the dirt film on the hood.

"We'll rendezvous with the chopper near the abandoned A camp at Buon Beng and load out from there. We dress and camouflage at the old camp, arm up with CAR-fifteens, silenced. The silencers are handmade, but they work." He brought out two rifles from the jeep. "Sight them in ahead of time. Everything stays under wraps. We want as little attention as possible beforehand."

"Right," I concurred.

"Rider, you'll hump the radio and handle our communications. Sarge will haul the extra battery and a grenade launcher."

"How do we get put in?" Ruchevsky said.

"By Huey. I just spoke to the colonel. Bennett is laying on a flight of three ships the day after tomorrow to help cloak our mission."

"That soon?" I said, taken aback.

"Affirmative. The birds will make half a dozen touchdowns. Four will be false insertions. We'll get off at one of them. The colonel and his people will jump off at another."

"With any luck," Grady said, "we won't be detected. Then two hours of humping to reach the ambush site. It's not an area any Americans have been in, other than John. So we'll risk taking trails. Big John says there are plenty."

Ruchevsky nodded and Grady went on.

"We get to the ambush point, familiarize ourselves, and take up positions for the night."

"What's the pecking order?" Ruchevsky said.

Grady said, "Jarai Willie walks point. I follow, walking slack. Captain Rider, behind me, handles the radio. Followed by Captain Cox with the grenade launcher, followed by John. The other Yard, Rot, walks drag and covers up our tracks."

"And you're confident," I said, "that your Yards aren't VC?"

"Completely," Cox said. "Grady I'm less sure about."

"Where do we intercept the travelers?" I asked.

"They'll lay over in a rest station near a shallow branch that leads into the river proper." He drew an oxbow in the dust on the hood and an
X
for the rest hut. "The next morning they'll set out just before dawn and ford the little river a few minutes later. The water's not deep yet, about knee high. Their point man will cover their crossing." He drew a trail and tapped out dots along it. "We spring the ambush when they start up again on the other side. Okay?"

We nodded.

Cox pointed his chin toward Grady. "Sarge."

Sergeant Grady propped a foot up on the front fender and leaned on his knee. "The Yards will take care of the point guy and their rear guard. We'll each have a man to take down, except Big John. I'm hopin' the silencers do the job but, you know, out of half a dozen spooked gooks, somebody's going to yell out and like that. Still, it'll be remote, early morning, right on the edge of thick jungle. The next closest group traveling that stretch of trail should be ten klicks back. It oughta go okay."

He paused to see if we wanted to say anything.

"Right," he continued. "Big John's responsible for neutralizing the radioman and prepping him for travel. Smack 'im, gag him—whatever works, big man. Just as long as he's standing and mobile. We don't carry nobody. We do the snatch and cut out for the extraction point. John, you got fifteen seconds to subdue him and get him up and running once we take 'em down. Fifteen seconds ... and we're gone."

Grady said, "Our priority is the courier and whatever paper he's carrying. If we get into a jam, trash the Commie radio and abandon it—lighten the load. We won't have no backup team to drop in and save our sorry butt ends if we get in the shit. Comport yourselves accordingly."

"And if it goes wrong?" Ruchevsky asked, for the record. "Or the guy refuses to march ... collapses from the heat?"

"We can't carry his sorry self," Cox said. "We'll go down with heat exhaustion ourselves. Encourage him. If he totally resists or is slowing us, don't think. It's
xin loi.
"

"Okay, we done?" Grady smiled broadly. "We're on."

Cox noted the time on his Rolex and slipped on his beret. "It's late, Sarge," he said to Grady. "Let's
di di.
"

Big John and Cox shook hands. Grady and I dapped.

"Don't forget the camo for your honky mugs," he said.

As the Berets drove away, Ruchevsky tossed me a padded envelope. "Merry Christmas."

Madame Chinh's cousin's bank records, as promised. Dates, deposits, amounts—the works. I sat up that night and went through the bank records of Mrs. Chinh's cousin in Taiwan and especially the itemized list of deposits, hundreds of thousands of American dollars. I compared them to the deposits made to the VC's Hong Kong account. Equivalent sums were deposited on the same days to both. Hong Kong's were withdrawn quickly, presumably to become goods and guns. The Taiwan bank account remained untouched and simply grew.

I exhaled and stretched. There was something important in the figures in front of me but I couldn't immediately pin the thought down. As plain as the hole on a gnat's ass, my dad would have said. In any case, there was no mistaking that Chinh—not Lund—was their main man.

T
HE PRIORITY CALL
from Saigon came into the signal shack close to midnight, relayed along the American coastal bases up to Qui Nhon, directed inland through An Khe, across to Pleiku, and down to us. It was like calling long distance station to station to reach Cheo Reo. Any break along the way and you'd have to begin again. The caller must have spent hours getting through. Whoever it was, he was hot to get word to John Ruchevsky immediately.

Miser had summoned me to take the call. No one was answering the field phone at Big John's house.

"I'll bring Ruchevsky to the phone here," I told Miser. "Just keep talking to them. Don't lose the connection."

Curfew was long past but I had to go outside the wire. With headlights taped, I could barely navigate the short familiar route. I'm sure it wasn't any quieter than usual but it seemed eerily so as I pulled up to his house and greeted his night guards. When he heard why I'd come, John grabbed an Uzi and a sling bag of magazines from a guard and slid in beside me. We made it back in record time.

Miraculously, the spliced-together radiotelephone call had held. Saigon was still on the line. John took it in the shack, looking unhappier by the minute. By the time he signed off, I saw a new level of anger in him and not a little fear. Outside, he told Miser and me a warrant had been issued early that morning in Saigon for the arrest of Nay Lo.

"Who's Nay Lo?" I said.

"Little John."

"I thought working for you he'd be immune."

"He should've been," he said. "Nobody local would dare touch him. Sector headquarters here got Saigon to issue a federal warrant."

"Chinh."

"Who else?"

"They're actually going to arrest Little John?"

"Two white mice left Saigon yesterday, manifested for Cheo Reo. They could be here already."

"National Police," Miser said, "here?"

Of all the corrupt institutions in South Viet Nam, the Saigon police might have been the oldest and the worst. They were extortionists and plunderers. Everyone in the country loathed and avoided them.

"What's he charged with?" I said.

"I don't know." Ruchevsky tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. "No one's seen the writ."

It began to dawn on me. "Little John knows everything you know."

"And everybody. He's my go-between with all the agents and informants. If Chinh gets hold of Little John, he'll extract everything we know about him and who gave us the information." Ruchevsky smacked a sandbag. "We've gotta find him before the white mice do."

John wanted to go immediately. I barely talked him into waiting at least until it was light. I thought I had a way to distract him. Back in our room, I spread out the bank records of Madame Chinh's newly rich cousin in Taiwan. Alongside them I laid the front organization's account. Curious in spite of himself, Big John stopped pacing and took my seat to peer at the figures. I leaned over his shoulder.

"Remember the twenty kilos of heroin that landed on Grady's patrol?"

"Yeah." John nodded. "Just like the airdrops reported in Pleiku Province last year."

"You said word was the province chief there got five grand for every load parachuted into his domain."

"So?"

"What do you see?" I said, leaning over him.

"The deposit dates and amounts line up like twins."

"What does that tell you?"

He stared at the numbers some more. "That Chinh's not getting any measly five grand a pop. He's banking the same huge chunk as the VC. He's not just getting gratitude money for ignoring the drugs passing out of the province. It's his operation. He's their equal partner."

"That's damning enough, but there's more."

Ruchevsky looked at me, stared at the figures some more, and shook his head. "I don't see whatever it is you're seeing."

"The Taiwan deposits are
identical
to the Hong Kong deposits. Which means Chinh isn't kicking any part of the profits to his superior. He's sharing nothing."

"Shit. No tribute, no gifts to his patron."

"Exactly. Chinh's gotten greedy. He's keeping it all."

John rubbed the stubble on his cheek. "He's playing with fire."