Men in Green Faces (8 page)

Tong, small and wiry, listened to the question and replied. “About thirty men, ages from twelve to seventy, the eldest being the village chief.”

It seemed the chief gave some flak to the colonel. As Nguyen pulled out, he put out the word that every man would pick up a rifle and become VC, and that their taxes were being raised. The chief objected.

Tong became agitated, but continued. Gene concentrated, listening to the translation.

“The colonel, angry, singled out the chiefs family, ordering the chief and his wife to be held by NVA soldiers. Colonel Nguyen hit the chief with his handgun, splitting his face open. He then kicked the chief’s wife in the stomach. When she doubled over, he took a machete and, while she tried to catch her breath, decapitated her. By then, the chief was crying. The colonel blew his head off.”

The villagers, according to Tong, were told Nguyen would be back in five days. If the villagers refused to become VC or resisted in any fashion, he warned he would destroy the village and kill everyone.

Tong said he was the son of the village chief and had seen his parents killed. He had run, he admitted, and even as his eyes filled with tears, his voice got louder, the words tumbling out.

“What’s he saying?” Gene asked Willie.

“Saying he wants to fight now,” Willie answered, “but not the South Vietnamese or the U.S. He’s saying he wants to kill NVA and VC.” Willie stopped to listen further to the rapid-fire translation. “He’s afraid for his own family. He has a wife and two little girls, two and a half and four, who are still in the village. He wanted to return right away and get them, but he was torn between going back alone and wanting revenge for the way his parents were hacked down and shot in front of him.”

“All right.” For a few seconds longer, Gene watched Tong trying to regain his composure. “Have him kept under guard, Willie, until I can check out his information. Talk some more with him. Try and convince him to guide us back to his village. Tell him we’ll pull his family out and set them up in the KCS camp. Tell him we’ll house and clothe them and see they have medical treatment.
If
he’ll guide us in. I’m heading back now.”

“Will do,” Willie said. “I’ll see y’all later.”

If Tong’s story checked out, Gene thought, then finally they’d know where Colonel Nguyen would be, and when he’d be there. They had three days to put an op together.

As soon as he reached Seafloat, he went straight to the NILO hootch, also Johnny’s living quarters, and gave him the information. “I need intel on the colonel, no matter what or how little you get. If there’s any truth in Tong’s story, it’s the opportunity we’ve been looking for. We only have three days.”

Leaving Johnny to return to the western novel he’d been reading, Gene set out to find Jim. Nothing could be done until the intel came in.

Just outside their hootch, he ran into his lieutenant.

Jim’s brown eyes lit up when he heard Tong’s story, and he rubbed a nonexistent headband. “Maybe,” he said, “we can get him.”

“One of the most wanted men in the Mekong Delta, and he’s going to walk right into our hands.”

Jim considered it. “The asshole’s ours.” So, Gene thought, just before falling asleep that night, Colonel Nguyen has three days left until capture. His ancestors wouldn’t have long to wait for him after that.

T
HE RECON OP BEGAN
before lunch with Delta’s PL, Devin Walker, giving the Warning Order. That’s when Gene’s and Marc’s squads, Lima and Delta, learned they’d be inserting on the Mighty Mo. Gene could feel the strange combination of reassurance and concern among the SEALs in the room. Reassurance, because they all felt safe on the Mighty Mo. She carried four .50-caliber machine guns, four M-60s, two Honeywell grenade launchers, an 81mm mortar, and a 105mm cannon. Plus, she’d have the combined firepower of fourteen SEALs within her black, armor-plated interior. Concern, because any op that called for using her brought with it the possibility of very heavy contact.

Knowing it was a recon op didn’t help much. He remembered, very damned well, the crew of the Mo reconning by playing the Beatles’ music over their loudspeakers. Arrogant, crazy bastards. But it worked. Couldn’t argue with tactics that succeeded.

He threw a final length of ammo belt over the ones already crossing his shoulders, caught the ends, pulled them across his chest, broke off the excess length, and snapped the two ends together. However, he reminded himself, body-fitting more ammo belts around his hips, Delta was running this op. Devin Walker was patrol leader, with Jim acting as Devin’s APL…unless the squads split up after insertion. In that case Dev would remain Delta’s PL, but Jim would be PL for Lima. They wouldn’t be splitting while aboard the Mighty Mo.

He checked the bowie, making sure it was secure in its sheath, and flexed his shoulders under the belts of ammo. Good fit. He patted the grenades, made sure the Bible and cigarettes were in their pockets on his cami shirt, and ensured the compass was readily available. Finally he jumped up and down, making sure nothing rattled. Everything that could make noise was taped. Satisfied, he gave one last tug on his headband and picked up the big M-60 with about 150 rounds loaded and on safe. In green face and full combat gear, he left the hootch and joined the rest of Delta’s and Lima’s SEALs to go hear Devin’s Patrol Leader’s Order.

Devin stood, one hand on his hip, the other holding the PLO form, looking down at them. “Now, intelligence reports show heavy enemy movements,” he said, “in our area of operation.”

The Naval Academy grad had a voice like a bullfrog. Really deep. Gene liked to listen to him talk. Dev looked down on people even when they were standing. At six foot five, there weren’t many who could look him in the eye. A good operator too. Admirable poker player, good drinking capacity, but Dev couldn’t match him drink for drink. He’d tried. Passed out. Not an ounce of Dev’s 225 pounds was fat either. Clean-shaven, with dirty-blond hair and brown eyes, he looked, in Gene’s opinion, like an Old West gunfighter, only dressed wrong.

What really got all the SEALs’ respect was Dev’s deviousness in getting what he wanted, and what they wanted. He ran good ops.

“Now,” he said, “we’re going to be running day and night recons. We want to locate where they’ve set up camps and identify enemy personnel. We don’t want contact. We want to bring out information that will allow us to run a hard-target op on their base camp at a later date, with great success.”

At 1400 hours, the fourteen SEALs left the hootch to board the Mighty Mo.

“She looks like floating death,” Cruz commented as they waited to board, “with all those gun barrels sticking out. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Gene answered. “Like she’s daring the enemy to try it.”

On board, shaded by the helo platform above, Delta’s squad filed down to sit on one of the two long steel benches running parallel to the sides of the Mo’s interior. Lima, also in patrol formation, sat facing Delta on the opposite bench. Those of the Mo’s crew not operating the boat manned its weapons. Gene leaned back against the olive-drab flak blankets covering the bulkheads and settled down for the ride.

They moved slowly through the waters of the Son Ku Lon, then turned south, down another large river. It was on this river that large numbers of NVA had been reported. Here they slowed even more to quiet the throb of the Mo’s powerful diesel engines.

Just inside the river’s mouth, Gene stood up to study the villagers from Old Nam Cam Annex. Living seven or eight miles from Seafloat, the villagers were busy doing their thing—fishing, moving supplies to smaller villages by sampan. They paid little attention to the lethal black boat in their midst. But Gene paid close attention to them. Many of the South Vietnamese in the village were potential VCs, and were known to be North Vietnamese sympathizers.

At eight hundred meters past the village all the men were standing, made uneasy by the sight of large poles protruding from the river’s surface. Six wires stretched from pole to pole. Gene’s grip tightened on the 60 when a small sampan, powered by an equally small outboard motor, cruised directly toward them. As it neared, he lifted the 60 and aimed at the ragged, hatless old man in the sampan with the long pole sticking out the back. The villagers used poles to propel their boats in water too shallow for motors. The elderly man sailed alone.

Dev called him over.
“Li dai!”

The old man stared up at them.

“Li dai!”
Dev repeated.

Gene, the 60 ready, felt the tension. They were all prepared to blow the sampan to shit if it became a threat to their operation or their safety. Every SEAL knew that the raggedy old man could be a sapper, a suicide, his sampan filled with explosives.

It came as a surprise when the old man warned them, in broken English, “Don’ go no more. Boo-koo VC. They wait. Wires say, ‘Stay out.’ You stop, don’ go no more.”

Dev had him repeat his warning, making sure he’d understood, then motioned the old man on his way. The elderly man bobbed his head, then putted on toward Old Nam Cam Annex.

“Make sure you’re locked and loaded, off safe,” Dev ordered. “We’re going through.” He ordered the wires cut.

In silence, except for the soft, throaty sound of the diesels, the Mo moved between the poles and continued. All SEALs turned and stood on the metal benches where they’d sat, weapons ready, aimed at the banks on their respective sides.

Gene, poised to trigger the 60 at the slightest sound, watched the riverbanks for the least sign of the enemy. The jungle grew thick and dense right up to the water’s edge. With the Mo’s ten men and with fourteen SEALs, all with automatic weapons, anyone would be boo-koo
dinky dau
, crazy, to fire on her. They were about as safe as anybody could be on these rivers.

Eyeing the tree line along the bank, he heard the PL taking care of last-minute preparations. The final radio contact with TOC, Tactical Operations Command, prior to their insertion about a mile farther down the river, was made.

He couldn’t see more than six inches into the jungle even now with the river narrowed to about thirty feet. There was silence around him on the Mo. Everyone’s attention was trained on the bank’s heavy foliage. Back-to-back, the two squads waited and watched.

The air shattered.

Gene slammed into the flak-blanketed steel bulkhead, then fell sideways on the metal bench. Its edge bit into his thigh like a sharp-edged baseball bat swung full force, as his shoulder hit the deck. A terrific explosion had hit the Mo on Delta’s side. He rolled, stood, and jumping over a fallen crewman, came on line with Delta’s squad, the 60 firing even before he was fully erect. The crewman behind him had been hit, and hit pretty bad. Doc quit firing and ran to him.

For a full minute, the SEALs, standing side by side, all guns opened up, poured out a steady, deafening stream of bullets. When no fire was returned, Gene realized they were outside the enemy’s kill zone. Must have almost cleared it before the claymore hit.

The crew turned the Mo’s bow into the right bank five hundred to seven hundred meters south of the ambush site. Gene focused on Dev. The PL had to make some decisions, and quickly, on whether to drop the bow and insert, flank the ambush, and go on with the op, continuing downriver, or abort the op for now and come back another day.

Dev motioned Doc over.

The MSSC man was, Gene thought, in critical condition. Doc verified his opinion.

“If we go on,” he told Dev, “he will die. If we turn around, he still might not make it back.”

No op is worth a SEAL’s life. Tommy Blade’s words repeated in Gene’s mind. And this one, he thought, isn’t worth the MSSC man’s either. Turn around, he silently telegraphed to Dev. Turn around, and let’s get him out of here and back to the Float.

“Now let’s go back out,” Dev ordered, “and get a chopper to meet us at the mouth of the river at the Son Ku Lon for medevac. We’ll insert later tonight under cover of darkness. Now, get ready,” he growled. “They might hit us again.”

Gene took a deep breath. Might, hell. They’d be waiting next time.

He stayed, like the rest of the SEALs, on line, atop the steel bench facing the west bank. Off the bench, the Mo’s sides were too tall to allow a clear field of fire, and they wanted a damned good view of the tree line hiding any enemy. Up front, he noticed, one of the boat personnel struggled to turn the 105 cannon toward the same bank.

“Sir,” he yelled, “the 105’s been taken out. Hit by that claymore that got us.”

“Well, hell,” Cruz said, standing next to Gene. “After that claymore hit and we opened up, the enemy will think twice about hitting us again.”

“If any of them survived,” Alex muttered. “Couldn’t have been that many or they’d have hit us with a rocket, not just one claymore.”

The Mighty Mo, having turned about, opened her engines up full bore and headed back on step.

Gene narrowed his eyes against the sun. The Sea Wolves had been scrambled, were heading their way, but the Mo’d be in the enemy’s kill zone before the Wolves got overhead. The Mo was really moving for her size and weight.

“Get ready!” Dev snapped.

Boom!

Gene lurched, danced, trying to keep his feet, the 60 bucking in his hands. The whole world hit them. He flew across the boat, hit the other steel bench ribs first, rebounded, jumped back atop the first bench, the 60 gone rhythmic in his hands with its rapid, deadly song. The end of the kill zone was nowhere in sight.

Firing, he felt, saw, men being thrown across the inside of the boat, bodies falling. Seconds seemed forever, took an ungodly long time to pass. For an instant, he and the Eagle were the only ones standing, firing, then suddenly all of Lima and most of Delta were back on line. Roberts, Taylor, Mansen, all hit, but back up firing, others trying to get up. The only thing that would be in any of their minds was to gain fire superiority at all costs, or they were going to die. This was not a small group of enemy.

Foliage moved, clipped away by an enemy invisible but for the hundreds of gun flashes. The jungle was being chewed up by their tracers, every five rounds going into the trees…just pouring in, returning fire into the flashes.