Vietnam II: A War Novel Episode 1 (V2) (6 page)

Technical Sergeant Tony Luciano

Air Force Operations Intelligence Specialist

Sanford, Florida

I met Floyd Johnson at a Winn Dixie in Sanford, Florida.  He worked there as a produce manager.

“We were pinned down between a ridge and the tree line.  We were south of the Hue.  It was maybe a week after Tet.”  Floyd explained.

“Tet 1968?”  I asked.

“No.”  He grimaced.  “Tet 1967.  They did a big attack every Tet.  The one in 1968 just got all the press.  Anyway fire was coming the tree line.  I was on the sixty that day.  You ever fire a sixty.”

“I have.  Blew a hole in the ceiling of the firing range.”  I smiled thinking of how pissed off the range monitor was.

“Did you?  You gotta aim low cause of the kick.”  He told me as if we were going out on patrol right now.

“Well I know that now.”  I said doubting, as an Air Force Intel guy, I would ever have the chance to fire one again.

“Loved that cannon.  I brought it to bear on those Gooks that day.  Gave them Hell.  Truth was I was scared.  We were taking a lot of fire.  When it looked like we couldn’t push our way out the Sergeant was on the radio calling for air support.  We held out until they got there.  Four casualties in the process, one of them dead, but we held out.  The Gooks took off as soon as they heard the choppers.  I got up and fired from the hip to try and fuck a few more of them up before they headed for the hills.  Most guys couldn’t fire from the hip.  It used to piss off my NCO.  I was strong as shit in those days.  That’s when it happened.”

“That’s when you saw them?”

“Yeah.  I saw them clear as day.  Salt and Pepper.  One black.  One white.  They were in Vietcong pajamas, but there was no mistaken that they weren’t Gooks.”

“What did you do?”

“At first we thought they were prisoners.  We told the chopper to get in there and get them.  Jarheads will eat their own guts to save one of our own.  When the chopper got close they opened fire on it.  That was the end of that.”

“What happened next?”

“They disappeared into the jungle and I never saw them again.  I told the Marine Intel officer when we got back to camp and they blew it off.  He should have listened though.  All that year though there were sightings by I Corps.”

“You think they were deserters.”

“I don’t.  Not at all.”

“But they weren’t Vietnamese.”

“No they weren’t that either.  You see the Vietnam War is also known as the Second Indochina War.  Most people forget the first.”

“You mean against the French.”

“Right.  If these guys were deserters they were French.  I mean we had no one missing that matched that description.  These guys were French Foreign Legion if I had to guess.  Tough motherfuckers those legionnaires.  Tougher than Marines, but don’t write that down.  Knew a guy back then who fell out and went to France to join the Legionnaires because he thought the Marines weren’t tough enough.”

“What the fuck?”

“Right.  Anyway these guys were deserters or mercenaries or some such shit.  There were other sightings if you don’t believe me.”

“I do.  We are looking into all of the sightings.”

“If you are looking for POWs Vietnam is not the place.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you ask me it was the Soviets.”

“We’ve heard reports that they may have been more involved than we realized during the war.”

“Hell yes.  They were over there from the beginning.  Their GRU officers were all over Hanoi.  Soviet pilots were flying in those MIGs the NVA had.  They were also running the AAA and SAMS.  I also heard rumors they were interrogating our guys.”

“We’ve talked to former POWs and none of them were interrogated by the Soviets or the Chinese for that matter.”

“What about the POWs you didn’t get back?  That’s what this is all about right?”

I ignored his question.

“You’re saying that the unaccounted for POWs may have been confined and questioned by the Soviets.”

“I am saying they might be up there right now in one of their Gulags.  They still haven’t shut all those things down.”

“To what purpose?”

“Same reason that all of our shot down aircraft ended up in Moscow and Star City labs.  They wanted our technology.  The Soviets have been reverse engineering our technology for years.  They created a whole air force based on our losses in Vietnam.  Look at the Tupolev Tu-4, the Yakovlev Yak 38 and the SU-24 and what you will see is the Boeing B-29, the Harrier and the F-111.”

“That’s dark.”  I admitted.

“It’s a dark world brother.” 

Lieutenant Colonel Carol Madison

Air Force Intelligence Officer

Defense Intelligence Agency

“So what do we have?”  I asked.

Everyone was gathered back at the office save for Brad who was stuck in Guam making his way back from Thailand onboard a KC-135.

“Caucasians, blacks and other non-Asians in the Vietcong and NVA ranks.”  Luciano said.

“Traced to mercenaries.  Possibly Dutch or French in origin.  Inconclusive evidence.”  Ellington said.

“Photos of ground signals possibly linked to POWs still in captivity.”  I said.

“Shown to be natural phenomena.  Inconclusive evidence.”  Carter said.

“Possible intercepts by NSA trained Thai listening posts regarding POW locations and movements.”  James said.

“Unsubstantiated for now.  NSA won’t release tapes if they even exist.  We are still waiting on the state department and the White House to sort that out.”  Smith shut that one down.

“Is that a fancy way of saying above our pay grade.”  Ellington added.

“You got it.  Let’s move on.”  I said really wanting to move on.  “Our own POW and MIA records and the discrepancy in numbers of missing?”

“Traced to redundant record keeping.  Especially in the pre Joint, pre computer record environment.  Inconclusive.”  Carter said.

“Eyewitnesses?”  Ellington asked.

“Among the boat people and refugees?  Several if not an overwhelming number of sightings.  Among returned POWs and missionaries.  None.”  I said answering for the absent Brad.

“So we have nothing?”  Smith asked.

“We have nothing new.  What we do have is the Thailand Box and those photographs.”  The photos were from some of the refugees that Brad had tracked down in Thailand.  They were all grainy and it was impossible to distinguish who was in the photos.  There were better pictures of Bigfoot.

“Rather uninspiring to say the least.  Thin at most.”  Carter said looking deflated.

“We are applying due diligence.  We are not here to solve a mystery if it doesn’t exist.”  Ellington said.

“Where do we go from here?”  Luciano asked.

“I don’t know.  Probably Kuwait if I had to guess.”  I said thinking we were in for a long year.  “I am going to put this all together in an after action report and pass it up.  We’re closing up shop early.”

The last words earned me a cheer from the group.

We all left the meeting thinking that would be the end of it.  I gave everyone a half day the next day and told them to come in after lunch.  They deserved some time at home.

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Adams

State Department

Washington D.C.

It leaked.  The whole thing.  Big time.  The administration had no chance to frame it. 

I spent the weekend at home with my daughters.  The news was banned for the weekend for some sweet relief.  While we played on their new Nintendo console we had no idea that bigger wheels were in motion. 

Sometime early Saturday morning while we were all home sleeping ten mail trucks in ten different cities carried plain vanilla envelopes with a fake return address.    The weekend staff checked their mail that day and got a big surprise
.
The entire briefing with pictures and everything was leaked to ten newspapers all over the east coast and all the way west to Kansas.

I drove through a wall of protesters on the way to work Monday morning.  The local police were struggling to keep it on the sidewalks.

Invade Vietnam protesters blocked traffic for miles in front of the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon.

The Invade Vietnam March had no less than three hundred family members of POW and MIAs from the war.  Grown adults who had never met their fathers marched next to old men, some veterans of Vietnam and others from the Korea and World War II, who had not seen their sons return. 

INVADE VIETNAM

SAVE MY FATHER

NUKE HANOI

SAVE OUR BOYS

None of the suspected POWs were boys anymore or even young.  Neither were the legion of men and women the President would send into Vietnam after them. 

God help them all.