Red Flags (11 page)

"Former Viet Minh commander. Led a Montagnard battalion against the French. He remained in the Highlands after they kicked out the French. When President Diem launched his campaign to eliminate all ex-Viet Minh fighters in the south, he fled into the bush. Hid among the tribespeople."

"What was with his teeth? They looked odd."

"Wolf Man had himself tied to a tree and had his front teeth filed down like theirs. Trained for a year at the Gia Lam school for ethnic minorities, in Hanoi. Speaks several Montagnard languages, knows their customs, how to use a crossbow. Ingratiated himself with a chief. Took a daughter as his wife, put on a loincloth, lived the Montagnard life, and patiently swung everyone in the vil to the Commie cause, mostly by telling them Ho Chi Minh will give the Yards the Highlands and autonomy after the war. They were reluctant to believe it—until they heard it on Radio Hanoi. The Reds broadcast it in the major Montagnard languages."

"And the teeth are why he's called Wolf Man?"

"His pointy teeth, yeah, I suppose. And the heavy beard. His facial hair is unusual as well. Like Vietnamese, Yards haven't much body hair to speak of. A beard is the sign of someone with the qualities to lead. Like Ho Chi Minh. Like the Yard holy man they call the King of Fire. Also, Wolf Man bellows. Gets loud when he harangues villagers. He's got an agitprop team that roams the province proselytizing, and intimidating when needed. You miss your twice-monthly tax of two hundred grams of rice or your annual tax payment of five thousand piasters if you're a shopkeeper, and you're likely to get a visit from Wolf Man."

"Do we know where he is now?"

"He gets around, never beds down in the same place two nights running. Sleeps five hours—if at all." Ruchevsky darkened. "He's executed half a dozen village chiefs, lots of minor officials, teachers, wives, even kids, for collaborating with the Saigon government. Like those two who floated into Cheo Reo."

"How large an NVA force was being supplied by that jungle market?"

"Their buddy system is built on units of three," he said. "Everyone we saw made purchases for the other two."

"The cadre allowed sixty soldiers at a time into the market for no more than fifteen minutes. Two hundred and fifty total."

"Right," he whispered. "Multiply that by three and that's their unit, bivouacked up there in the mountains someplace."

"Seven, seven fifty."

"Seven hundred sounds right. And there are signs of lots more hardhats out there in the hills—more than two or three times today's group. More customers for Madame Chinh's next country market."

"Our province chief's wife?"

"It's her show, according to Little John's sources. She's behind the black market operating in town too, but that's small potatoes compared to this."

"Then Madame Chinh's running a fucking supermarket for the NVA. Forget the snacks and smokes; they were selling enough staples to keep a large group fed for a week or more."

Ruchevsky sipped his water, sweat pooling in the corners of his eyes.

"Whatever you do," said Ruchevsky sternly, "don't put a word of who we saw at this shindig in your report."

"You don't think the colonel should hear about this?"

Ruchevsky stared me down. "Not a word until we figure out what we're dealing with. A priest, a missionary, a USAID rep, and an unarmed ARVN meet with a VC commander in the jungle. It's like the setup for a joke. But what's the punch line?"

"You know," I said, "you could have warned me the two of us were going to get so up close and personal with hundreds of VC."

"Well," Ruchevsky said, "if I had, you might not have come."

Little John finally showed. We mopped off the face blacking and changed into our regular clothes. When we got back to MACV, Ruchevsky went straight to our room, and I went to report to the colonel, but he wasn't in his office. So I sat down at Checkman's big Underwood and, using two carbons, typed up an intel summary describing the scope of the market and our encounter with the infiltrator we'd killed. As instructed, I made no mention of the meeting between Wolf Man and the odd quartet, and I gave the reporting agents a high reliability rating of B. Colonel Bennett would know they were John and me, but we went unnamed. In case the information leaked, we didn't want our methods known.

I left a copy on Bennett's desk in a sealed envelope and marked it
commanding officer—eyes only.
He wasn't going to be happy about the market, and even less so about the growing NVA force out there in his province.

The original went in the courier bag Checkman would swap tomorrow morning at the airstrip for one coming in. I took the carbon papers and the second carbon copy to Sergeant Rowdy in the signal shack to teletype immediately to MACV in Pleiku and Saigon and warned him not to discuss it, even with the other enlisted man who had clearance for the crypto van. He gave me a surprised look. I hesitated, said, "Never mind," and ducked into the crypto rig and typed it myself. Afterward I got Miser to follow me out to the barrel in which the detachment burned its classified paper and handed him the sheet. He shook his head in dismay as he read.

"How are we supposed to look for Mary Jane and opium production with NVA and VC crawling all over the province, stocking up like fucking squirrels for winter?"

He reached in his leg pocket and pulled out a map that he snapped open. "The province is five thousand square kilometers—five thousand itsy-bitsy one-kilometer grids on this map. You could hide a whole division in a corner of a single grid, much less a bunch of VC dope. Who knows how many NVA are out there. What do we go looking for and where do we look?"

"Not me, not tonight," I said, feeling the waves of fatigue.

I set the sheet aflame with my lighter, holding it by an edge until I was satisfied, and burned the two carbons. Before I left, I filled him in on what wasn't in my report.

"And Ruchevsky didn't want you to write up the meeting in the woods?"

"No."

"He doesn't trust it won't leak," Miser said, guessing correctly. "Fucking hell." He sighed. "What have we stepped in?"

I walked to my quarters. Ruchevsky, naked to the waist, fresh from his shower, was bent over the rucksack we'd brought back. He tossed aside two NVA uniforms and a pair of boots and laid out currency, scraps of writing paper, a notebook, some photos, and two crudely dried cannabis leaves rolled up in a shirt.

He examined each item with a flashlight and a magnifying glass.

"I'm sorry I had to do that kid," he said, not looking up.

"You didn't have much choice."

"I hate it when they're kids."

I peered at the materials spread on the bed. Vietnamese loved photographs; the boy had secreted his in the journal. He wasn't supposed to be carrying either. A girl, maybe fifteen, smiled in one photo. Sister, girlfriend? A snap of him, a family gathering... His people would not have the solace of a grave, much less his remains. Perhaps they'd get them back after the war, more likely never. Whether his comrades discovered the body or not, the youth's death wouldn't be reported to his family. The NVA didn't notify soldiers' families about casualties. Hanoi had declared funerals detrimental to morale. Even if his kin learned privately that he'd been killed, they were forbidden to conduct a funeral. Most probably his family wouldn't know he wasn't coming home until the war was long over.

I picked up a photo of the kid and two North Vietnamese Army buddies. Written on the back:
Nam do a di da phat.
May God protect us.

"You think they'll find his body?" I said.

"I hope not. I don't think his fellow travelers will stop to look for him. On average they lose four or five men from a company on the march south. His mates will leave the rest hut in the morning and trek on. If we're lucky, they'll assume he deserted or hurt himself in the jungle, or ran into a tiger."

Wanting to get my head off the subject of the dead boy, I pointed to the articles on the bed. "What are you seeing?"

"They're supposed to surrender all personal letters and papers at the border before stepping onto the trail in Laos. But they're inveterate journal keepers." Ruchevsky flipped open a notebook filled with handwriting. "Checkman did a quick read-through for me."

He held up a sheet of paper. Checkman's summary fell from his fingers, and Ruchevsky picked it up off the blanket and gave me the highlights.

"They started out seventy-one days ago, it says. Each got issued twenty kilos of rice for half the journey. They subsisted on two small meals a day, pepped up occasionally with wild game, since they're expected to provision themselves. They boiled ants for condiments, picked wild bananas, gathered bamboo shoots."

Ruchevsky held the notes closer to his gooseneck lamp.

"He's lost a lot of weight, so have his buddies. They're jaundiced, fevered. A couple can barely carry their weapons. One of his comrades was hurt during an air raid. They packed the wound with cow dung and dirt to stop it bleeding. They buried him at station fifty-seven." He looked up. "The stops aren't numbered sequentially so we don't know where that was." He referred again to the synopsis. "Another comrade came down with dysentery so bad he couldn't get out of his hammock. They cut a hole in it so he could relieve himself. Made him smoke weed. He succumbed during the night."

"Can you tell where they were," I said, "where they got the marijuana?"

"Not really. You know the problem. The trail is a twelve-mile-wide corridor of paths."

Ruchevsky opened the journal to a place marked with a strip of paper.

"They pass a shed with Montagnards bundling cannabis plants. This is the third entry from the end, just before their comrade checks out from dysentery and before they turn north. They're in the province at that point. Somewhere vaguely west of here."

Rubbing his eyes, Ruchevsky said, "They trek down in small groups and get assigned where needed when they arrive at their destination. This soldier was a replacement. Most are joining NVA divisions. Some are getting assigned to the local VC battalions, which are filling out their ranks with northerners as they lose men. Here's his trail ID." Ruchevsky laid a small rectangle of paper alongside the notebook: D-384. "The
D
stands for
doan
—group."

"What does this trail ID tell you?"

"Nothing much. The first and last digits always add up to seven. That's all I know."

His name and rank followed: Nguyin Thanh Sin, private in the People's Army of Viet Nam.

"His group was hiking north," I said, "not toward the coast?"

"Their comrades are camped up in the mountains, getting supplied and refitted. It's like a rear area for the NVA."

Ruchevsky took a cigar from the ledge. "Did you notice the items bought in bulk? Either they're stocking up so they can avoid contact with civilians to keep their location unknown, or they're camped somewhere where there are no locals to provision them or eavesdrop." He lit the cigar. "Gathering their strength."

"Maybe rehearsing their upcoming campaign for the monsoon season," I said.

"That's what I need to find out." Ruchevsky puffed until the end glowed.

He stared at the picture of the three Red soldiers going off to the defining adventure of their young, uncertain lives, a small flag stretched between them, their faces smiling above it.
TOAN THANG
printed across the bottom. Complete Victory. Odds were none would see home again.

"How many NVA are out there in the province, do you think?" I said.

He gave me a wary look and dropped his voice. "You really want to know?" Ruchevsky buttoned his shirt. "Something like five thousand."

"Holy shit. What's five thousand to fifty-two of us? A hundred to one?"

"Fifty-three if you count me." He tucked in his shirttails. "They're not about to risk manpower like that to take down this little compound."

They wouldn't have to. They didn't need anything approaching such numbers to overrun us. Two hundred and a dark and stormy night would do it. "Right," I said.

The gong signaled supper, but neither of us could face food. We decided to drink our dinners instead. Westy set 'em up on the bar and we knocked them back without speaking. I threw mine down quickly so no one would notice my shaking hands. Ruchevsky was quaking slightly too.

"We look like two alkies," I said, downing another shot. "You ready for AA?"

"Assassins Anonymous? Hell, yeah."

After the third round, I excused myself and went to the signal shack to check on the encrypted transmission of my report. If I had another drink, I knew I wouldn't stop.

The sky was darkening again, a blanket of black clouds fighting the remaining light. The rainy season would soon be upon us. A huge swarm of winged termites had found an open door in a new hootch lit with fluorescent lights. The residents stood outside, staring through the screened upper walls at the creatures shedding their wings in some kind of frenzy. The bugs covered the screens inside and out, as well as most of the concrete floor. Every surface in the hootch rippled under a mass of tiny frantic bodies. Two of the Montagnard night guards appeared with broad sticky leaves and started rolling up the bugs to cook them.

I left the guys to their show and continued toward the signal shack to pick up the perfunctory confirmation of receipt. At the four-foot-high wall of sandbags across the front, Sergeant Rowdy, Geronimo, and some other enlisted stood peering into an empty cookie tin from home. Inside, in slow motion, two fierce-looking beetles clutched and slid across the bright metal, pincers at the ready.

"They're not fightin' yet," whined one of the privates. Deros, the compound's hound, barked with excitement.

"Fuck," said Geronimo and doused the pair with lighter fluid. Sergeant Rowdy set it off. The beetles hissed in anger or maybe agony as their bodies roasted. I stepped behind the backup-generator shed and leaned on the sandbags, my stomach churning. After more than three years in country, I was hardly the innocent. But today I felt like a murderer. I'd been in Asia long enough to believe the universe wasn't going to give me a pass. There'd be redress.