Red Flags (39 page)

"ARVN actually leaving their billets," Ruchevsky said, looking victorious. "Hell must be getting chilly."

R
UCHEVSKY AND I
managed only a few hours' sleep before heading out to put our pouches aboard the courier flight.

"I have a suspicion about you, John."

"Oh, yeah? What?"

"I think you knew Wolf Man was accompanying that courier, and that we had a shot at taking him down and grabbing the documents that would incriminate Chinh."

"No kidding."

"You set 'im up."

Ruchevsky smiled. "Wolf Man had personally delivered Chinh's intel before. There was a good chance. We got lucky. He was there, the classified stuff was on him."

I pointed to the four dots in the lead-gray sky—choppers coming in from the southeast.

"The rice roundup," I said.

Three jeeps appeared, passed the raised barrier, and drove onto the apron to surround us. Ruchevsky waved to the colonel and pulled away in his Bronco, heading back to the compound.

"Morning, Captain," said Bennett. "Sergeant Divivo's presence has been requested for a patrol with his ARVN company."

"Wonder of wonders," I said.

"You'll take Divivo's mission," Bennett said. "I'll take Captain Nhu with me. Here's the list of all the villages we're going to overfly. Chinh wants each of us to land at at least one to make sure all is actually proceeding as planned. I've got the hamlet of Hiong Cham. You take the second one I've circled. Lieutenant Lovell the third, Major Gidding the fourth. Chinh has ARVN and regional militia clearing and securing the vils we're landing at. Don't go into the villages before you're sure the army or the militia's there."

"Yes, sir." A hundred yards back on the regular road, Chinh, in his open staff car, was leading a convoy loaded with troops standing in the truck beds. Bennett saw me staring and turned to look himself.

"Colonel Chinh in the field," he said.

"Yeah, a historic moment. Now that the main-force NVA have departed, he's rolling into action."

The four Hueys came closer, their long blades whopping the hot air. A solid layer of dark clouds blanketed the north.

"Monsoon later," Bennett said.

We leaned against a jeep and watched the four helicopters land close to the fuel truck to replenish their tanks, engines running, props turning through the process. Bennett gazed at the retreating plume of dust raised by Chinh's command car and ARVN trucks.

"Can you spare a cigarette, Captain?"

"Didn't know you smoked, sir." I offered him my pack, shaking out a butt.

"Haven't in years. Saw forty coming and quit."

I held up my lighter and he sucked in the flame. Bennett was oddly subdued for somebody who had just won a very personal fight by a knockout. The last helicopter finished topping off and signaled for us to load.

"Here we go," Bennett said and took a long drag. He tossed the cigarette and got in his jeep. Nhu and I jumped in back and Checkman sped off, heading for the first bird. The other two jeeps fell in behind as we lumbered down the steel plates.

Checkman dropped me at the second bird and drove on toward the lead chopper to deliver the colonel and Nhu. We loaded in seconds and were airborne. The Hueys half circled the field and sped off in different directions: the colonel, west; my ship, northwest. We sailed out over the endless green. The cold light beneath the solid layer of black clouds turned the rivers silver.

We arrived at the first village and orbited slowly, observing ARVN on the ground confiscating rice, then proceeded to the next location, where farmers were resisting the insistent troops. After much gesticulating and shoving by the soldiers, the villagers finally surrendered their stores. And so the morning droned on. As we neared the sixth hamlet the ship suddenly broke off its approach. The crew chief handed me a miked headset.

The pilot came on. "Captain, we just got a mayday from the lead ship."

"The colonel's bird? What's their situation?"

"Don't know. Can't raise them. They're on the ground... We're heading over."

The jet turbine howled, churning full out. The sky grew even darker, the jungle shrouded and shadowed beneath us. The seconds tortured. I leaned into the air streaming past us, squinting to see. We banked and descended. Out the open door, I could see a small village abutted by rice paddies. Men trotted toward the thick jungle and disappeared into the fronds. Next to some huts the colonel's Huey sat smoldering.

Our bird shot over the area, the door gunners fixed on the ground. The gun on the left side opened up, sweeping the foliage. Red tracers floated up in response, momentarily confusing the gunners. Both quickly resumed firing. Red pulses crisscrossed.

I lay on the floor and fired into the tree line where black figures in conical hats hid in the broad leaves. One of our sister ships arrived and joined in, firing continuously. There was no more return fire. Our pilot dropped in for a quick landing. I leapt out and raced for the colonel's helicopter, ran to its right side and pushed open the spring-loaded panel at the base of the rotor shaft to reach the fire-extinguishing system, then slid open the copter door. The colonel lay slumped on his back, clothes smoking, his glasses melted to what was left of his face. Lips and eyebrows gone, head burned bald.

The pilots were in their seats, the door gunners at their posts, the colonel and Nhu prostrate on the deck in the compartment behind the two fliers. All six of them shot to pieces. The crewmen and pilots had on their white helmets, their bodies black and blistered from soot and fire, much of their uniforms and skin burned away. They were slippery with blood and exposed layers of yellow fat.

For all the pomp surrounding the profession of arms, in that instant it seemed barbaric and crude, about as noble as an abattoir. I felt nothing but the indignity of his dying like this: roasted, ruined, the silver eagles mocking his charred remains.

 

The downed chopper pilots' unit rushed three helicopters to the site, and a sister outfit laid on four gunships to fly cover. They offered as many slicks or shooters as we wanted: they'd divert everything. Gunships circled like angry hornets as more Hueys landed.

John Ruchevsky, Major Gidding, Checkman, and Sergeant Parks arrived to help with the recovery. The corpses leered as we struggled to get them into green mortuary bags. Each had been shot multiple times, the copilot nearly cut in half. He and the pilot were difficult to extricate from the well of the cockpit. The men from their unit bent to the task, faces grim, fatigues smeared with offal.

The colonel lay on the metal floor close to the door, his clothes burned into the singed flesh. Gunshot wounds riddled his torso and one leg. Captain Nhu lay across the aluminum bench, punctured and destroyed, the canvas seat burned away and collapsed under him. Parks inspected what was left of the chopper as I collected their weapons. Ruchevsky was talking to some villagers.

I said, "The ship's radio and both door gunners' machine guns are missing."

"Yeah, they stripped them out. Left their personal weapons."

I laid out the small arms and proceeded to clear them. Major Gidding watched me remove magazines and eject rounds from the pilots' .45s and the colonel's and Vietnamese captain's carbines.

"They didn't get off a shot," I said, clearing the last rifle.

Major Gidding stepped closer. "Damn. You sure?"

"Yes, sir. Not from these weapons." I turned to Joe Parks aboard the helicopter. "You find any casings from the door guns?"

"No," he said.

Gidding squatted in the wrecked passenger section. "I don't suppose it matters," he said, "but I wish they'd had the chance to go down fighting." He seemed almost offended.

Ruchevsky came over and we gathered around him. "Checkman's questioned a couple of farmers. And I debriefed the other chopper pilots about what they heard on their radio net as the colonel's ship came in."

Gidding turned abruptly. "What are they saying?"

"Provincial militia came into the village two hours before the colonel's helicopter arrived and told the villagers to keep working. The farmers say the helicopter approached and hovered. The pilots say no radio contact with the vil was overheard on the net. A red smoke marker popped on the ground."

"The operation's signal color," Gidding interjected.

"The copter landed. The militiamen waved a greeting. Someone aboard the bird waved back. The pilot shut down the engine. The tall American officer and the South Vietnamese got out."

"They cut the engine?" Parks said, incredulous.

"Yeah, according to the farmers. Bennett and Captain Nhu climbed down and walked toward the militia. They were gunned down over there." He pointed to a spot forty yards off, near a young palm tree, the broad leaves punctured with round holes. "Simultaneously, the militiamen closest to the chopper drew down on the crew, riddled the American pilots and door gunners."

Parks stepped down from the gutted chopper. "That was clever, what they did with the red smoke, enticing them to land. Seems like the ambushers knew exactly what to do."

"What arms did the VC carry?" I asked.

Ruchevsky said, "U.S. carbines."

"Like the militias," Gidding said. "They were supposed to be Ruff Puffs—Vietnamese Popular Forces militia—but they must have been Communist irregulars. VC."

Parks circled as he spoke: "I'm not so sure of that. This was really planned out. For sure not just a piece of bad luck."

He led the four of us to the spot where Nhu and the colonel had been slain. He indicated the ocher dirt stained dark with blood, the young palm tree stippled with bullet holes. Spent carbine casings lay scattered everywhere.

Parks policed up some of the cartridges and removed his cotton hat to mop his forehead and cheeks with a handkerchief. "The pilots never would have shut down their engine unless Colonel Bennett or Nhu identified the armed men on the ground as friendlies. That's standard procedure. They'd never deviate."

"Poppycock," Gidding disagreed. "We're all capable of mistakes."

Joe Parks turned to him. "I promise you, unless he was dead certain who they were, Colonel Bennett wouldn't reassure the pilot, much less get out of a chopper and walk toward a bunch of armed irregulars. He must have recognized some of the militiamen."

"Recognized individual VC?" I said.

Gidding slapped his hat against his leg. "You're not making sense," he half shouted over the engine of a Huey lifting away.

"The other odd thing," Parks said, "the ambushers put the bodies back on board the helicopter." Parks pinched his lower lip. "Taking the armament and destroying the ship, I get that. But why move the two bodies?" Parks brushed a hand across his tan scalp. "They didn't lay them out like trophies or anything, to get in our heads. Why squander time to put them back on board and risk being caught out in the open instead of concentrating on getting away as fast as possible?"

"Why do
you
think they moved them?" Gidding said, growing visibly annoyed with Parks's insistence that something was amiss.

I stepped in to deflect some of his building anger and said, "They wanted us to think what you're thinking, Major. That the colonel and Nhu never got off the ship, that the chopper landed, and the crew, the ARVN captain, and Colonel Bennett all died in a hail of VC bullets. It was meant to look like they had mistaken Viet Cong for friendly militia and landed in the middle of an enemy force."

"Yes, sir," Parks said. "They didn't want us to know that they'd deceived the Americans."

"Fuck me," Ruchevsky muttered. "Why would they bother?"

I touched Parks on the arm. "Joe, you said Bennett may have recognized them."

Ruchevsky rubbed his face with a cloth. "The province paramilitaries are thoroughly infiltrated. Some are certainly VC."

"Like the militiamen who were here," Parks said.

I faced Ruchevsky. "John, you think the Communists would do this just to protect their man and keep him where they need him?"

"Wouldn't you," Ruchevsky said, "in their shoes?"

"What man?" Gidding said, blinking and sounding worried. "You're suggesting—"

Ruchevsky's eyes stayed on me as he answered. "That's right—their spy and protector. Chinh's worth a lot to them. They'd do whatever to keep him in place. Then again, Chinh could have laid this trap himself."

Brow furrowed, Parks said, "Chinh commands the Vietnamese militias personally. He could order up any platoon of territorials he wanted."

Gidding colored. "Good God. You're saying this is murder."

I looked at Joe. "South Vietnamese militiamen known to Bennett? A unit he was familiar with?"

"Phu Thien District headquarters," Parks said. "He knew the militias there pretty well." He rested his weapon across his shoulder like a yoke, one arm over the barrel.

Ruchevsky stared off toward the mountains. "Chinh sees to it the province serves as a safe staging area for the NVA, provisions them, sneaks them our classified information. Bennett threatens his operation, Chinh orders Bennett killed by his militia." Big John turned back toward us. "We're scrambling to figure out how the shooters did such a good job deceiving the colonel. But that was the easy part."

Gidding held his forehead. "You've got to be kidding."

"Get serious, Major," Ruchevsky snapped. "You still think Chinh is intending to resign? He only told Bennett he would to buy himself time to set this up. This"—he pointed back at the mayhem—"this is all about saving his ruthless ass and his cash flow. He's outmaneuvered us all and you're refusing to see it."

"Sweet Jesus," Gidding exclaimed. "If what you're suggesting is even possible, how could you ever prove it?"

Abruptly he set off toward the downed chopper. Big John and I walked the area and obsessed, growing more convinced the more we turned over the facts. Little John was eliminated—gone from the province—rendering Big John completely ineffective. With Bennett's death, any accusation of treason by the ranking American officer vanished. If the suggestion ever surfaced, Nhu was also conveniently dead, so it would be easy for Chinh to discover his trusted aide had been a traitor all along, meeting with VC commanders in the jungle, accepting their money in exchange for our intelligence and classified procedures. As John talked, it dawned on me that if I'd been on the chopper as planned, my threat to expose Chinh's greed to his superiors would have ended too. Like in the Saigon tailor's game, we were left staring at the last pieces on the board, not realizing we'd lost before we had even known what was happening.