The Price of Blood (10 page)

LaPorte was a colonel by then, Pryce still a major, Tarantuna a master sergeant. For a month they flew around the collapsing Republic of South Vietnam trying to salvage Vietnamese agents who had worked for American programs—an alphabet soup of acronyms—CORDS and Phoenix and PRUs. It was like running into a burning house to find scattered pictures from a family album
.

Pryce had been closest to Trin, knew the language and the culture, they had worked some deep clandestine games over the years. The rumor was that Pryce had talked Trin into leaving the Viet Cong after Tet of ’68. LaPorte had the rank but Pryce was the ramrod
.

Down in Saigon, the lemming rush to the sea was over and the last chopper had taken off from the embassy roof. They were winding down, calling it quits, afloat on the departing fleet off the coast
.

A crazed huddle on the deck of a decrepit minesweeper LaPorte had commandeered for them. Cognac and the Gauloises and a slow voltage electrocution of adrenaline on empty. The insane notion was put forth by Pryce and seconded by Tuna—they didn’t leave Trin in 1972, so why should they leave him now. LaPorte wasn’t even there, he was stuck pulling refugees out of the sea around the port city of Danang. They had to expedite the raid on the radio
.

They sat down over a street map of Hue City with one of Pryce’s agents who’d made it out with a floor plan of the prison. Hopefully, the victory-drunk North Vietnamese might be literally drunk, celebrating on this particular night
.

Broker, with Quang Tri City on his mind, volunteered to lead the ground component of the operation
.

The last time Broker saw Ray Pryce he was on the deck of the minesweep that had crept in close to the mouth of the Perfume River. Hue City was sixteen kilometers upstream. A Chinook helicopter sat ready on the deck. Broker would go in early, by boat, set some diversions and then blow the jail. The Chinook would rendezvous with them and pull them out. Broker had barely met the pilots. It was all—hey hubba-hubba—let’s get this fucker over with
.

Before midnight, Broker, with six of Trin’s South Vietnamese commandos, slipped up the Perfume River in a fishing boat under the cover of a rain squall. After they set their diversions, the plan was to crack the jail at 3
A.M.
, free as many prisoners as possible, and get them to the broad lawn on the riverfront where the old province helicopter pad had been. Pryce and Tuna would come in with the Chinook, barrel down the river, land, and pluck them out
.

Broker had walked the streets of Hue back in ’72 and ’73. Now the streets were strewn with flags and clutter from a victory march. That night he crept through garbage in the back alleys, clad in black fatigues with greasepaint on his face and a black watch cap pulled down tight. He was not particularly thrilled or frightened. He was too preoccupied with not screwing up. But it was a mind bender—everyone was leaving and he was going back in
.

They set their diversions at a radio tower, a barracks, and the city hall. Just before they blew the plastique, he remembered hearing a dull rumble in the humid rain. Unafraid of the American Air Force, an unbroken convoy of trucks crossed the Perfume River bridge with their lights on, ferrying reinforcements and supplies down National Route 1 to the south
.

Then life accelerated and time slowed amid the confused stutter of one last fire fight in the shadows of the blown building. The durable smile of Colonel Trin appeared in the doorway of a cell and Broker made his radio call. They ran for the riverfront and waited for the Chinook
.

He remembered hearing the rotors and seeing the shadow of the big chopper flit through the flames from the diversion fires. But it swooped down two blocks away from their location. Frantic, he’d called on his radio. No reply. The helicopter struggled back aloft with a heavily laden cargo net. Wands of sparking groundfire batted around the chopper as it disappeared into the gloom
.

They’d been abandoned in the hostile city. North Vietnamese soldiers—angry at the rude nightcap to their victory celebration—boiled out of buildings and swarmed the streets. Broker and his team and the freed prisoners split into small groups and it was every man for himself. A steady cacophony of small-arms fire stalked them
.

Trin made Broker hide his radio and survival kit, then doff his weapons and remaining gear. They dove into the river and swam to the lower story of a restaurant built over the water. Trin left Broker in the care of the proprietor, a Frenchman, who hid him in his cellar
.

The next night Trin returned with a small motorized pirogue and Broker’s radio and the survival kit. They paddled through lotus-choked canals and then side channels, then started the motor and went down the Perfume River to the sea. Off the coast, at dawn, Broker raised a Navy rescue channel and a Sea Stallion chopper homed in on his beacon. Trin declined the offer to escape. They exchanged gifts. Broker traded his Zippo lighter for a tiger tooth set in gold on a neck chain. Then Trin turned his small craft back to the misty shore
.

On the deck of a navy carrier he learned that he was the sole survivor of the ground team. Only Tuna had survived of the Chinook crew that had gone in with Pryce
.

Dumbfounded, he was interrogated by tense, exhausted intelligence types who wanted to know why Pryce had used him as a diversion while he took the Chinook in to rob the National Bank of Hue
.

Broker and Tuna were placed in separate detention and didn’t get the whole picture until the preliminary investigation for their classified inquiry convened in Fort Benning
.

He was saved by the radio communications from the helicopter, which had been monitored by the fleet. And by Tuna who testified that Pryce had switched the plan after the chopper took off
.

According to Tuna, Broker’s raid was a decoy, to draw attention away from the real mission. Pryce had discovered that the Communists had amassed a huge cache of gold for shipment to Hanoi. Pryce intended to sling the booty and drop it in the Laotian jungle to finance continued resistance. He said it was a high-priority mission, denying assets to the Communists
.

And Pryce had it planned to the last minute. Two Vietnamese operatives were positioned inside the bank and had eliminated the guards. They rolled the crated gold ingots out on a forklift and dumped them into the cargo net that was lowered from the chopper. The inside men scrambled up the net and they left
.

Tuna had specifically stated under oath that he had queried Pryce about the ground diversion: Shouldn’t they pick them up
.

According to Tuna, Pryce replied that they were “expendable.” The gold came first
.

Tuna then described how the chopper was hit by ground fire, how Pryce was seriously wounded and their radio was damaged
.

Two radio messages figured prominently in the testimony. The first was a call from the pilot requesting clarification from someone in authority because the mission had been changed in mid-flight. The second was a mayday call. The pilot was about to send a coordinate when the radio stopped transmitting
.

The next day, as Broker hid in the restaurant cellar, Tuna was picked up on the South China Sea in a survival raft. He said they had looked for a place to put the bird down after the radio went out and decided against it. With Pryce wounded and the copter damaged, the pilot decided he’d never get back up if he set down. He opted to stay in the air and try to make it back to the fleet. But with the load in the net, he miscalculated. The damaged helicopter went down in the sea and only Tuna came out alive. Ray Pryce, the bird, the alleged gold, and the crew went to the bottom of the South China Sea
.

Colonel LaPorte had testified how he had signed for the bird and authorized Pryce’s plan for the prisoner extraction. But he’d handled it verbally on the radios and nothing was in writing. When he learned what had happened he burned up the radio channels trying to send in another helicopter to get Broker out. The command had vetoed the project. Radio logs were introduced to verify his testimony
.

Tuna and Broker’s appointed JAG attorneys presented the “good German” defense. They were cleared of charges when the inquiry board found that they believed they were following different versions of lawful orders. The blame for the renegade operation was conveniently placed on Ray Pryce, who was listed as dead, body unrecoverable. Inexplicably, no evidence was brought in the investigation that the gold really existed. The new Communist rulers of Vietnam never formally registered a complaint. The Hue gold became a mythic story
.

The incident was a final ripple in the sewage of defeat and was buried deep. But the stench attached itself to Colonel LaPorte, who never commanded troops again. Doggedly he stayed in the army and got his Brigadier’s star before retiring. The dishonor also fell heavily on the Pryce family. Broker had assumed that the weight of it had twisted Nina Pryce into the obsessed young woman she was today
.