Red Flags (28 page)

The militiamen attempted to barge past to search the premises, but I barred the way and said the doctor was
fatiguée
and pantomimed her sleeping. Nhu ordered them back. He said something about a Viet Cong being treated in the hospital. I explained that an emergency patient had come and gone in the middle of the night but that we knew nothing about his affiliation. Nhu scowled, snapped at his men, and strode away. The militiamen piled back into the vehicles and drove off.

When the sun was fully up, I used the field phone at the clinic to call the compound and update Miser. After which I hiked down to Ruchevsky's house and borrowed a jeep to drive the colonel back to the compound. I picked him up and we drove to the Brown Fairy; I went in, and the colonel stayed in the jeep.

The place was basic: a two-story Chinese-style shop with a hinged wood-paneled front that would swing open later in the day. Crude shelving held the pipes and paraphernalia. There was a small Formica table with low stools for socializing, and two plank beds toward the back for patrons to recline on and drift into reverie.

The proprietress looked surprised to have a customer so early. How many pipes did I want? I brushed past her and roused Sergeant Rowdy from his narcotic slumber, his arms around a naked woman.

"Captain—"

"Morning, Sergeant."

"Sir, I ..."

"You know," I said, warming up to some real bullshit, "you hold an extremely high security clearance. I'm not sure you're aware that I'm authorized to shoot your ass to prevent your capture. And I will, if you ever fuck up again. You're restricted to the compound until I say otherwise. Get your sorry self in the jeep."

The bare-chested girl stayed silent, only sniffed his cheek—a Vietnamese kiss. Rowdy dressed in record time and careened out the door. He froze, seeing the colonel, but recovered immediately and leapt in back. I tossed him my rifle.

"Look fierce," I said.

The perimeter seemed normal, the bunkers empty. Only one extra guard was on duty at the gate as the three of us rolled past like we'd been out reconnoitering. I don't think any of the men presumed anything. Actually, no one paid us much attention. They just seemed relieved to have made it through the long night without an attack.

M
AJOR JESSUP'S RESPONSE
to my inquiry came in the form of a radiotelephone call from an Army lawyer in Pleiku.

"There's precious little to be done about Mr. Lund," the JAG lawyer said, "since he's a civilian."

"Say if I'm wrong, sir," I said, puzzled. "I know the Uniform Code of Military Justice covers soldiers in combat and I thought also civilians in theater."

"It would apply to our civilians in the Republic of South Viet Nam if a state of war existed here. But ... there's been no formal congressional declaration of the same."

"So the code doesn't apply to them?"

"That's correct."

"Could the Vietnamese do anything about him, if we caught him dead to rights?"

"As an American, Mr. Lund enjoys the same grant of immunity from the Vietnamese judicial system as you or I. We're all immune from their civil and criminal system."

"They can't touch him either."

"'Fraid not."

"Do you suppose he's aware of these little loopholes?"

"I wouldn't be at all surprised. Consider yourself lucky he's just a trafficker and not a murderer."

"Not for want of trying," I said.

An artillery battery across the street fired a salvo that screeched across the top of the compound.

"Funny, I could have sworn it was a war," I said.

The JAG major laughed pleasantly. "Conflict. The Viet Nam Conflict."

 

I offered Ruchevsky some attitude about JAGs, the code, and the Viet Nam Conflict. He laughed and ordered up an Air America helicopter. No door gunners or armament, just us and the pilots. It wasn't much but it was all he could think to do, short of taking Lund with us and tossing him out at a couple of thousand feet. The chopper flew us south to the coordinates where Judd Slavin had said the Katu transferred the opium to the transporters. We lay flat on the deck in back of the bulkhead behind the cockpit, doors open, and peered over the edge with binoculars. We couldn't spot anything until the copilot pointed out specks of red among the green. Poppies. They clung to a steep mountainside in an irregular patch. The Huey descended until we were within fifty feet. Two wooden boxes held Miser's Molotov cocktails, each glass jar with a primed grenade pickled in aviation gas, more volatile than kerosene. We dropped the glass jars onto the flowering buds. They broke on contact with the ground and detonated seconds later, igniting the av gas.

We hovered, watching the last explosions and flare-ups. My sense of satisfaction was short-lived. The fires weren't efficient. The green growth and dew smothered them in short order. At best, we'd done little more than announce that outsiders were aware of the opium. Maybe we'd put a scare in the Katu growers though I doubted they'd be frightened off that easily.

The helicopter swung south. We looked for the village but the Katu remained true to their reputation. A hundred longhouses, invisible. We followed their river, looking for the transfer point where the Katu delivered their crop. All we saw was a lot of wood debris floating downstream. Were they reinforcing their village stockade? Ruchevsky shot a roll of film and signaled the pilot to take us home.

***

Colonel Bennett called me to an emergency meeting with Reverend Slavin and Joe Parks. We crowded into the tiny office. Audrey and Ted Baxter, the missionary couple who had come overland to the promotion party, had failed to confirm their safe return to their mission station.

"Both were recently hospitalized for malaria and dengue," Judd Slavin said. "They may be really ill."

"Or broken down on that excuse for a road," Joe Parks suggested, "or taken sick on the way home and laying over in a village."

"Might be just a busted transmitter," I added.

"Ordinarily I'd risk driving," Slavin said, "but it seems inadvisable at the moment with all the activity in the province."

Colonel Bennett rose. "Juddy, it's completely out of the question. Their place is far. They're practically in the next province."

Slavin said, "The Viet Cong have a liaison committee for missionaries. Maybe I should try to contact them."

I wondered anew just how chummy he was with local VC.

Bennett glanced at his watch. "We've got helicopter assets tomorrow. If they haven't called in by morning..." He looked at Sergeant Parks. "Should we, Joe?"

"Whatever you say, Colonel." Meaning
No, but you're going to do it anyway. It's on you.

"Okay," Bennett said. "Captain Rider, organize the first aid and medications. We'll go in two ships and evacuate the Baxters if need be."

"May I come along?" said Slavin. "I'll stay out of the way and make myself useful."

The colonel came around from his desk. "I'd appreciate it if you would."

The meeting broke up. When we were out of earshot, Parks said, "I've got rumors coming out of two districts about enemy activity: Montagnard villagers pressed into work gangs to portage NVA supplies."

"You think the Baxters ran into trouble on the way home?"

Joe shrugged. "No telling. There's NVA regulars and VC all over the province. I'm running out of pins to mark the sightings."

The Baxters still weren't responding to radio calls the next day, but our assigned helicopters were diverted for an emergency. We wouldn't get a bird for another twenty-four hours. I was duty officer and went to catch a nap before going on. A runner got me up an hour later. I put on a sidearm and my web harness and slung my M-16.

Except for Mama-san Duc, our Vietnamese workers hadn't shown up for the second day running. Never a good sign. But the Yards who guarded us at night came in early, and I went out to the corner of the compound where they liked to build their small cooking fire and greeted them. I checked the perimeter and the gate, officially closing it at the 1800 curfew. Most of the rest of the evening I was down in the commo bunker. Rain inundated us around nine, and an hour later I draped myself in a poncho and went out again to check the perimeter. Coming back, I ran into Miser near the mess hall, his fatigues plastered to his body.

"Sent Jessup the weekly update," he said. "No screaming yet."

"Good."

I trudged toward my quarters and dashed across the small patch of grass to the walkway. I let myself in, hoping to lie down for another half an hour. The downpour roared against the roof of the overhang and the bungalow. My pant legs were sopping from the short run. I dried my hands on the towel at the end of my bunk and reached for the field phone to let the commo bunker know where I was. I went to crank it, to generate the necessary electrical charge for the ringer, when I glanced down at the terminals connecting the commo wire to the equipment. Each post had an additional wire.

I let go of the crank and brought the gooseneck lamp closer. The extra wires ran behind the rectangular green box and into the body of the phone. I uncased it and traced them back to a good-size wedge of explosive, molded like clay to fit the empty space inside. The wires attached to a pair of detonators sticking out of the plastique, just like the booby-trapped psy ops radios Grady had shown me at Mai Linh. The charge was large enough to eliminate me and the neighbors on both sides. The explosive probably came from our own modest ammo bunker.

I removed the detonators and yanked out the deadly wires. Hands trembling, I cranked the phone to call Ruchevsky at his villa in town. Big John answered promptly.

"Well," I said, voice tremulous, "at least you didn't blow up answering."

"You okay? You sound shook up."

"I am. I just neutered a bomb in our field phone. Watch yourself. Check anything electrical. Go over your vehicles too."

A runner burst in, summoning me to the commo bunker. I grabbed my poncho and weapon and we jogged together through the downpour and down the steps into the underground room. Radio static filled the smoky air. Mai Linh was reporting a casualty. Their intel sergeant was down, seriously wounded by an explosive planted in the speaker of his tape deck. Ignoring the danger, the Berets were driving him in on a stretcher. Medic Ed Sprague wanted Roberta's help.

I sent the runner to wake Lieutenant Lovell and had the radio operator call for a medevac on the sideband. Weather or no weather, we needed the bird. Lovell clambered down the stairs. I told him to warn the Special Forces teams at Phu Thien and Phu Tuc. They should immediately check possessions and equipment for booby traps, especially anything electrical.

I inspected the field phone in the bunker and cranked it to reach the clinic in town while the radio operator pleaded with Pleiku for a chopper. Roberta came wide awake as soon as she heard what was coming our way. Pleiku confirmed a medical-emergency flight was airborne.

"I'll meet you at the strip," she said.

I took a backpack radio, smoke markers, and flares, and tuned in the frequency of the approaching Berets and the commo bunker.

Westy was just going back to bed after checking his generators. I enlisted his help on the spot to commandeer the colonel's jeep. He jumped in behind the wheel and sped us up to the gate. Hump hurried to open it and passed Westy his pistol as we rolled by. The Berets were two kilometers out, approaching fast. Roberta's Rover passed us and we swung in behind her. She drove with only parking lights on. My taped headlights barely illuminated the road, but Westy knew the way blind.

He reached the airstrip and drove us past the empty ARVN sentry box, onto the perforated steel planks. Roberta pulled next to us and we all killed our lights. The rain had let up but the sky was overcast and starless: utterly dark. I couldn't so much as judge the distance to the Rover as I got out and groped my way across.

"Doc?"

"You got a flashlight?" she said.

I turned on my red-lensed light and held it over her medical kit as she hurriedly organized instruments, bandages, gels, and hypodermics and rattled off instructions about what to ask the Berets by radio about the wounded man's medical treatment so far. I left the Rover's door open so she could hear and went to the radio in the jeep to raise the Berets' medic. Sergeant Sprague acknowledged and I posed her questions to him. The answers were chilling. The man was comatose though breathing, pulse thready. The wound ... A chunk the size of a coaster was missing from his skull.

Roberta stopped rummaging. "Ask Ed, can they see his brain?" she said.

"Can you see his brain? Over."

"Affirmative."

I rogered the call and signed off.

"How are you holding up?" I said.

"Sleep deprived. And hungry." I looked toward the sound of her voice. "I stopped being scared recently," she said. "Don't know why."

All we could do was wait. Westy announced headlights exiting the town. They passed our compound and made the turn for the airfield. A minute later their open jeep pulled up next to us, a stretcher with the wounded man laid out across the back. A second jeep, totally blacked out, stopped behind them. A soldier manned an M-60 machine gun mounted on a post in the back.

The medevac chopper came up on our frequency, reporting its approach. Roberta worked in the dark, aided by three red-lensed flashlights. The chopper pilot would need a light to guide in on. Westy strode into the blackness. I couldn't see him, just heard his boots clanking across the perforated steel planks. Faint
whomp
s drew closer. Westy struck the end of a flare, igniting the white magnesium tip, and held it aloft like a torch. Anyone could see it for miles—friend or foe.

"Just don't let him land on my ass," Westy shouted.

I alerted the pilot. He laughed and repeated the instruction: "Roger, no ass landing." The bird came straight in. When it was nearly on him, Westy tossed the flare aside and stooped. The helicopter settled thirty feet away. The Berets rushed their comrade aboard, and it lifted away, the drone of its jet turbine engine receding rapidly.