Conspiracy (11 page)

Twenty-four hours passed without them spotting anyone. While their position was shaded, the heat kept increasing and both men stripped to their skivvies to try to keep cool. Conserving water was difficult in the heat. It was the dry season, and a particularly parched stretch at that; moisture of any kind was hard to find. From about dusk to midnight—the time they figured Phuc Dinh was most likely to be traveling—they both stood watch. During the other twenty hours or so they took turns resting—it wasn't sleep really, more a fitful sitting in a nook of the rocks.

By the fourth day, they were both down to their final canteen of water. Refilling the others was not a problem—they'd spotted a shallow spring-fed brook about a mile away on the way in—but it was, of course, dangerous, since only one person could go and there was no way the other could cover him while watching the trail.

Dean, as second man on the team, should have been the one to go. But Longbow overruled him.

“I need to stretch my legs,” he told Dean, taking the M14. “Don't break my gun.”

Some men believed it was bad luck and worse to let anyone else touch your gun. Longbow didn't; Dean had fired his rifle before.

Still, Dean did think about it as he watched his companion climb up and then down the hill. There didn't figure to be any action while Longbow was gone, though. It was still daytime.

Dean made sure he had the bolt rifle sighted properly, then picked up the binoculars and resumed watching the trail. He stared through the glasses for more than a half hour without blinking. He could see a lot more with the binoculars than he
could with his sniper's scope, but he was always conscious that they, too, were limited. The world the binoculars showed was carved into precise circles, and the real world was not.

About an hour after Longbow left, a cone-shaped hat poked over the hill in the distance. Within a few seconds it was joined by a second, then a third and a fourth. Four men were moving across the trail toward Dean. They weren't “ordinary” villagers, either—all carried AK-47s.

Dean scanned them carefully. Phuc Dinh was not among them. Dean let them pass.

Not more than five minutes later, another villager appeared. It was Phuc Dinh.

Dean knew it was. He saw Phuc Dinh's face, and the scar. And he was moving quickly, confidently. Probably the four men who had passed first were a security team, making sure the path was clear.

Phuc Dinh had a pistol in his belt but no other weapon. Dean stared through the scope of the bolt rifle, steadying his breathing. Phuc Dinh's head moved toward the crosshairs. The wind was 3 miles an hour.

Just as Dean's finger started to pressure the trigger, shots rang out up the trail behind him. The shots were from an AK-47—years later, Dean would still remember the distinctive stutter the 7.62mm bullets made as they left the barrel, the sound partly echoing against the rocks, partly muffled by the jungle.

There was no way that the shots could have warned Phuc Dinh in time. Dean was already pressing the trigger. And yet for some reason Phuc Dinh had already begun to dive away.

Maybe Dean rushed the shot. Maybe the wind kicked up incredibly. Maybe the fact that the weapon wasn't his—even though he'd fired it before—messed him up. Maybe Phuc Dinh had seen a flash of light from Dean's scope, or realized he was vulnerable, or just had an itch to move. Maybe this was just the one time out of ten thousand that a sniper missed a shot.

In any event, Dean's shot went wide left, hitting Phuc
Dinh's arm rather than his chest as he fell or threw himself off the side of the trail.

Dean immediately corrected and took another shot. He struck the only part of Phuc Dinh that was exposed, his right leg. As that shot hit home, Phuc Dinh bounced farther down, completely out of Dean's view.

In the meantime, the automatic-weapons fire behind Dean continued. The gunfire wasn't meant as a warning, and it wasn't being fired at Dean. The men had obviously come across Longbow.

Dean ignored the other gunfire. His job was to take out Phuc Dinh. Only when that was done could Dean help his friend. Dean climbed up out of his “hide” or sniper's nest and began circling to the west across the ridge for a shot. He had to go about ten yards before he could see into the spot where Phuc Dinh had dropped.

He wasn't there.

Dean took a long, slow breath. The important thing, he told himself, was not to make a mistake. He knew he'd gotten Phuc Dinh in the leg and, while that wasn't fatal, it would slow him considerably. Most likely he'd moved back down the trail into the jungle. All Dean had to do was track him.

As Dean started down the rocks, he heard the gunfire in the distance intensify.

There was no question that he had to stay with his target until he was dead. Longbow would have done the same. The fact that the Vietnamese were firing so many shots was a good thing; it meant that they probably didn't have a real target, and they were giving their positions away besides.

And yet Dean did feel a tug as he moved down the hillside, low to the ground, snaking toward the edge of the jungle, hunting his prey.

It couldn't have taken Dean more than five minutes to get to a spot in the trail that he calculated would have been far enough behind Phuc Dinh that he could cut him off. But after Dean reached it, he spotted a few drops of blood, making it clear that the target had already slipped by.

Dean began to follow the trail, aware that he might be the hunted rather than the hunter. After about two hundred yards, he realized he wasn't seeing the blood anymore. He stopped, listening, but heard nothing. He moved into the brush and began paralleling the trail.

By now the sun was almost directly overhead, and while the trees provided shade, the heat steamed through him. He was thirsty. Dean told himself that Phuc Dinh had to be tiring as well and that, wounded, he'd be slower and less careful. Dean pushed on. He stopped every few yards, listening. Finally he heard a sound—brush moving—and he froze.

At first, Dean wasn't exactly sure where the sound came from. Then he heard something else, which helped him locate it thirty feet to his left. He snaked through the vegetation, moving toward the sound as quietly as he could.

The thick leaves were more effective than a smoke screen. Men could pass within a few feet of each other and not be seen. Hearing was more important, though the jungle filtered that as well, mixing in the sounds of animals and the natural rustle of the wind as a screen.

Finally, Dean spotted something that didn't look like vegetation about ten yards away. He wasn't sure if it was a man, let alone whether it was Phuc Dinh.

Dean moved forward so slowly it was as if he were only leaning in that direction. The gun was at his hip, ready to fire. The gray shape became the side of a chest. Something above it moved.

Eyes.

Dean fired.

The bullet punched a quarter-sized hole through Phuc Dinh's chest. In the sparse second it took Dean to chamber another bullet, life had ebbed from the VC commander; he fell straight back, collapsing against the trunk of a tree.

Dean's heart beat three times before he reached the body. A pistol lay next to Phuc Dinh; his mouth gaped open. There was no question he was dead.

Dean, like all scout snipers at the time, carried a small
Instamatic camera to record kills. He pulled it from his belt pouch and took two pictures. Then he took the VC officer's pistol, slid it into his waistband, and went to find out what had happened to Longbow.

 

WHEN NATIONAL SECURITY
Advisor Donna Bing asked Rubens to convene a joint briefing session on the Vietnamese Assassin Plot, as she called it, Rubens tried to demur, telling her he thought it was premature. But she had insisted, and so late that evening he and Ambassador Jackson trekked down to Washington via Admiral Brown's helicopter to meet with representatives of the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service to, as Jackson put it, sing for their supper.

It was easy to see how much credence the various agencies placed in the theory by how high-ranking their representatives at the meeting were. Collins was there for the CIA; the initial information was theirs and she had turf to protect. But Frey had sent one of his deputies and a mid-level member of the investigative task force on the McSweeney investigation. Rubens didn't even know the FBI officials representing the bureau.

He understood the skepticism. His agency's review of Vietnamese intercepts found nothing that indicated a plot existed.

“Of course they would be careful about it,” said Bing briskly. She badgered the other agencies for opposing theories—a disgruntled constituent was preferred by both the FBI and Secret Service, though he had yet to be identified—and then disparaged them. For once, she dropped her belligerent attitude toward Rubens and actually seemed—not
nice,
exactly, but human.

Rubens saw why when she summed up the session.

“Looking at this from the macro level, it makes utter sense,” Bing declared. “The ultimate players here are the Chinese. They've helped the Vietnamese set it in motion—I would be looking for that connection in the intercepts.”

Rubens was hardly a fan of China. But if there was still scant evidence that the assassination plot had been backed by the Vietnamese, then there was even less—as in nil—that the Chinese had a hand in it. He exchanged a glance with Jackson, who, diplomat that he was, returned only a hint of a smile.

“Was there something else, Bill?” asked Bing.

“I would only emphasize that we have yet to develop hard information about Vietnam's involvement, let alone China's.”

Disappointment fluttered across Bing's face. But she quickly banished it, saying, “Well, then we have to keep working. Unfortunately, this is the sort of development where I would expect future attacks to bear us out.”

She rose, dismissing them.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I'm sure the President will be pleased.”

“Interesting theory,” said Jackson on the helicopter home.

“That's one word for it.”

“Sometimes it's useful to know why the wind is blowing at your back.”

“In Donna Bing's case, it nearly always signifies there is a hurricane seeking to overtake you,” replied Rubens.

 

BY NOW, THE
rifle fire in the distance had stopped. Dean decided it was worth the risk to save time by taking the trail, doubling back to the sniping position to make sure Longbow hadn't returned. When Dean saw the nest was empty, he went back down, circling away from the trail and then paralleling it as he slowly worked toward the spot where Longbow would have gone for water.

It took Dean nearly an hour to find the first body. He couldn't be positive, but he guessed from the clothes that it belonged to one of the men he'd let go past him on the trail. Even in death, the man clutched his AK-47 so tightly Dean had to use a knife to pry it from the man's hands. Dean took two magazines from the guerilla's body, tucking them into his pockets before continuing across the ridge.

While the vegetation here was sparse, there were still plenty of places to hide, and Dean had to stop every few minutes to search the terrain and listen for movement. The impulse to rush to his friend's aid felt like a dog growling at his side, nudging him forward. But moving too quickly could get Dean killed, and he struggled to keep his emotions and adrenaline in check.

It took a good twenty minutes to find the second man. He lay a hundred and fifty yards from the first, curled in a fetal position, huddled around his gun. The top part of his head had been split open by one of the M14's bullets, revealing an oozing black mass where his scalp and forehead had been. Though hardened to death, Dean had to turn away as he
searched the body for ammo and anything else that might be useful.

A third Vietnamese guerilla had died a few yards away. He was a small man, barely five feet, and thin; his chest and back were pockmarked with bullets. It had taken six to put him down for good.

Dean found Longbow next.

Longbow's bush hat had been blown off during the battle, and it lay like a discarded rag in the pebbles near the water hole. The soldier lay on his side a yard and a half away, the M14 leaning against his body, as if it had been propped there.

Dean bent down on one knee, looking at his friend's face, hoping that he would be breathing, not believing what he knew was true. Longbow stared back at Dean, his expression twisting pain and bewilderment together.

Was he asking where Dean was when he needed him?

A shot ricocheted across the nearby rocks and into the water. Dean threw himself flat, smacking his rib on the butt of the AK-47 he'd been holding. He rolled right as another shot ripped through the ground nearby. Dean pulled the automatic rifle up and fired off a burst before jumping to his feet and running in search of cover.

There was no answering fire, but he knew he hadn't hit his enemy. The guerilla was firing from behind a large clump of jungle grass and rocks about fifty yards away. Dean decided that his best bet was retreating downhill, then circling back to flank the guerilla from the slope of the nearby ridge. The hardest part was the first twenty feet—under heavy fire, Dean climbed up the side of a large boulder, squeezed through a tumble of rocks, then crawled through a cluster of brush. His enemy emptied his rifle in the few seconds it took for Dean to reach safety.

Nearly fifteen minutes later, Dean reached a point where he could look down on the guerilla's position. It was empty. Bent grass showed the way he had gone.

By now tired, hungry, and thirsty, Dean considered whether it might not be better to let the man go. Probably it was, but logic didn't rule Dean that day. He slipped down the
rocks and moved as quietly as he could into the thick vegetation.

He nearly tripped over the guerilla, who'd collapsed only a few yards from the grass where he'd fired from earlier. He was wounded but still alive.