Authors: Donald E. Zlotnik
Sanchez was the first one to react to the unexpected scream and swung around, holding the pistol in front of him. He dropped
his sight and fired. The NVA jerked slightly and twisted on the ground. Sanchez fired again and ran forward to the base of
the tree. He shot the NVA again at close range. The pistol hadn’t made a sound.
Woods was a step behind Sanchez and held his CAR-15 at the ready. A large black wasp circled his head once and then took off
to hunt for spiders in the underbrush.
Sanchez pointed to the field telephone on the ground between the tree roots, and a couple feet away from it, he pointed at
the half-covered skull.
Woods shook his head slowly and leaned forward so that Sanchez could hear his whisper. “Looks like he was an outpost.”
Sanchez nodded in agreement. That meant there were a lot more NVA in the area.
“Let’s get the hell out of here and call in that airstrike. It’ll cover his getting killed by the people at the other end
of that line.” Woods was glad Sanchez had used his silenced pistol, or they would be fighting for their lives against a large
NVA. unit.
Woods hadn’t been paying much attention to Welburg, who had been standing nearby. The swaying bodies had gotten to the NCO
and he started gagging and throwing up. His flunkies ignored him and took a couple steps closer to Woods and Sanchez.
Woods didn’t hold getting sick against the sergeant; anybody would have felt the same way after witnessing so many of their
fellow Americans dead. What did bother Woods is what Welburg did next. The NCO reached in his pack, pulled out a two-thirds-full
bottle of Jim Beam, and took a very long pull.
“You dumb son of a bitch!” Woods snatched the bottle from the man’s hands. “I can’t believe you’d get drunk on a fucking recon
patrol!”
“Please! Don’t pour it out!” Welburg’s voice rose above a whisper, which angered Woods even more. He poured the booze out
on the ground and dropped the bottle at his feet.
“Get your ass straight, Sergeant! Or I’m going to leave you here to get extracted on your own!” Woods shook his head. He just
couldn’t believe that Welburg would get drunk in the bush!
Woods oriented himself and selected their route of travel. He figured they were eight hundred to a thousand meters away from
their observation site near the river and decided that he would call in for the napalm now and not risk any unnecessary radio
traffic when they got there. He reached for the radio in his side pocket and called the forward air controller. The teams
were all carrying the tiny URC-10 pocket radios for communications with the FAC controllers, who were circling high above
them. Woods gave the controller the data and said that the target was a confirmed NVA bivouac site. He wasn’t lying; there
was at least one confirmed NVA there.
Sanchez took the point and led the team away from the old battle site. He found an old deer trail and used that to get down
to the river. The decision proved to be a good one because they could move fast and got away from the dead Marines just in
time. The FAC had disregarded Woods’s requested time for the strike and had brought the napalm-carrying F-4s in a half-hour
after the team had left the site. The FAC had a flight of F-4s about ready to return to Da Nang fully loaded, and the airfield
did not appreciate the aircraft landing with napalm. Woods’s request had tied in perfectly with the FAC’s flight, except for
the time requested.
Woods stopped walking and looked back over his shoulder when he heard the first jet make its pass and unload. He was glad
that they hadn’t stayed there to eat. They probably would have if it hadn’t been for the bodies. He blinked; that was one
sight he knew he would have to get out of his mind.
Arnason pulled the collar of his cape tight against his neck to keep out the bugs. He sat upright, Indian style, with his
camouflaged cape completely covering him and his gear. Unless he moved, it was nearly impossible to distinguish him from the
surrounding jungle covering the riverbank. Koski and Warner sat nearby in basically the same manner, except Warner was leaning
against his pack trying to get a little sleep before it was his turn to pull guard. The best he could do was to rest his eyes.
He was rocking inside from all the amphetamines he had taken to stay awake. The pills were issued to all of the recon team
members while they were out on patrol, and none of them realized the trouble those pills would cause them later on, if they
couldn’t dump the addiction.
The river watch site Arnason’s small three-man team was assigned to observe was perfect. The large ford across the river was
fifty feet below the rock cliff they were observing from, and then the natural trail broke to their left and disappeared into
the jungle. Arnason had plotted their position down to twenty-five meters and had already called in DEF-CONs around them and
the ford. The team could call in air and artillery strikes all day long and not be detected by the NVA.
Arnason thought about Woods and Sanchez. There had been no weapons firing to his north or for that matter to his south, which
meant that the teams had all been inserted without making any contact. Arnason frowned. The recon company had been inserted
almost ten hours and there had been no contact at all. He had expected something to have occurred within a couple of hours
after the helicopters left. He wasn’t bitching. There was nothing much worse than having to land on a hot LZ and not knowing
where you were or where your men were. The NVA had given him a chance to assemble his team and hide. Now he had the advantage
and he planned on using it.
Warner had the midnight watch. He sat as far forward as he could on the cliff edge and watched the silver river reflect in
the pale moonlight. The scene was very romantic, and if he had a woman with him there was no doubt he would be screwing before
the night was over. He felt the pressure against the front of his camouflaged pants and couldn’t believe himself. He was out
in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by what probably were thousands of NVA soldiers, and his buddy wanted to get hard.
Warner smiled, then remembered what Sergeant Arnason had told him about white teeth giving away a camouflaged position, and
closed his mouth. He felt his solid erection pressing against his pants leg and reached down from his waistband to adjust
his buddy to a more comfortable upright position. He had a tremendous urge to masturbate and glanced over to see if Arnason
was sleeping. He saw the sergeant’s eyes reflect the moonlight. The NCO was lying on his back, but he was awake. Warner felt
disappointed and patted his buddy. He would have to wait until they got back to An Khe, and then maybe Woods would go with
him to one of the Vietnamese steam baths. Buddy flexed; he liked that idea much better.
Warner’s thoughts slipped back to his home in Bloomfield Hills. He was extremely alert to the sounds of the jungle, to any
movements in the trees or on the water that were caused even by the wind, but his thoughts went back home. He thought about
his AC Cobra and the women who had paid the price to ride in it with him. He smiled at the thought, then frowned when he realized
that by now his sister would have already sold the car. Warner shrugged under the camouflaged cape. It was not that big a
deal compared to Koski’s problem.
The first piece of the jungle on the far side of the river broke away from the bank and started moving across the ford. Warner
watched as another piece of dark jungle broke loose and started across the ford, followed by another and another until the
river was filled with pieces of the dark jungle bank on the Laotian side. The first piece of jungle was halfway across the
ford before Warner’s excellent eyesight could make out the silhouette of a wading NVA soldier.
Warner nudged Arnason and then Koski. Arnason reacted instantly and pushed the switch on the small URC-10 that he had been
holding. He whispered so softly that Warner could barely hear him. “Cloud Cover 22 … Mud Puppy 6 … NVA in the open … DEFCON
7 and 8 … Over.”
The radio buzzed for only a second and a voice answered, “Roger Mud Puppy 6 … Fire DEFCONs number 7 and 8…” There was a pause
and then the calm voice added, “… I have a Spooky gunship in the air that will attack the target in 30 seconds … Over.”
Warner could hear Arnason whistle softly between his teeth. “Those guys are
ready
and waiting tonight!”
The AC-47 gunship appeared in the sky out of what seemed to be nowhere and opened fire. A red hose composed of tracer rounds
left the side of the ship, followed by a soft hum from the Gatling guns. The river boiled and the dark shadows dropped down
and floated away in the current. A stream of green tracers left the Laotian side of the river and tried challenging the AC-47’s
dominance of the sky. An adjustment was made up in the aircraft and a stream of red tracers touched down on the ground where
the green tracers had originated. There wasn’t an answering burst from the ground-mounted weapon.
A series of whining whistles shot over the recon team’s heads and the Laotian riverbank erupted. Warner could hear the screams
coming from the NVA wounded who had been caught in the artillery barrage. A flight of F-4 jets screamed by and their jet engines
were followed by bright bursts of flame from the napalm explosions. Then the jungle became quiet. The whole show had lasted
less than five minutes and had left the river filled with floating NVA dead.
Warner felt his buddy pressing against his trousers and realized that throughout the complete destruction of the NVA unit,
he had maintained an erection.
Arnason leaned over and tapped Koski’s shoulder. He whispered in the big Pole’s ear, “Be on the lookout for NVA stragglers.”
Koski nodded and turned to cover their rear approach from the trail. Warner maintained his overwatch of the wide river and
Arnason called in for another napalm run on the Laotian side of the waterway.
The burp from the circling AC-47 had alerted Woods that something was happening downriver, and when the artillery rounds exploded
five hundred meters south of his team, they were all awake and waiting. The high whine of the jet engines as they were put
into afterburner almost directly over Woods’s location hurt their ears. Sanchez had his hands pressed tightly against the
sides of his head and fought the pain the loud engines inflicted on his ears. As swiftly as the jets had arrived, they were
gone and the jungle became quiet again.
Welburg scooted next to Woods and whispered in his ear, “What the fuck is going on?”
Woods cupped his hands over the team sergeant’s ear and replied, “Arnason must have caught somebody coming across the river.
He’s located at the wide ford that’s wade-able…”
Welburg burped and Woods could smell the whiskey. He wondered if the NCO had another bottle, and was distracted from the thought
when another flight of F-4s screamed overhead.
Warner’s legs were cramping up on him, and he changed his position on the riverbank. He had been awake all night. First light
broke through the trees behind them, revealing the actual destruction. NVA bodies littered the far bank of the river, and
a couple of the tan-uniformed soldiers had washed up at the base of the cliff below them. Captain Youngbloode’s plan was working
perfectly. The recon team hadn’t received a single small arms round in their position. The NVA had been fooled into thinking
they had been observed crossing the river by a night-flying aircraft.
Arnason tapped Warner and nodded at a spot about a hundred meters up the river. A squad of NVA soldiers were trying to recover
bodies floating in the slow current. Two of the soldiers had been posted as air guards and kept looking up in the clear sky
for low-flying helicopters. Arnason noticed that none of the soldiers seemed to be worried about a ground attack.
A muffled sound of small arms firing about two thousand meters to the north drew Arnason’s attention. Within minutes, small-arms
fire erupted to the south, about the same distance away. Arnason listened and realized that the Marine units to the north
were engaged in a firefight and the Cav recon unit to the far south was also fighting. The image of a classic anvil and hammer
maneuver formed in his mind. He was almost sure that the NVA hadn’t attacked as soon as they had landed because they had waited
to give the American teams time to set up along the riverbank. Then they planned on just establishing a blocking force to
the south and sweeping the riverbank from the north, eliminating the teams as they went. All of the Americans would have to
cross open elephant-grass-covered hills if they planned on escaping to Lang Vei, to the east.
Arnason had no way of knowing that the North Vietnamese regimental commander had realized, as soon as the helicopters had
dropped the teams off along the river, that there was a major operation in progress on the plateau. The NVA colonel had fought
pitched battles at Khe Sanh since the beginning of the French–Viet Minh War and had personally accepted the surrender of the
French commander at the fort near Khe Sanh. He had allowed the American teams to take up their positions along the riverbank
because he had planned on using them for bait.
A dozen .57mm antiaircraft guns had been set up along the riverbank on the Laotian side during the night, and more than fifty
heavy machine gun emplacements had been established around the long line of recon teams. He had sacrificed one of his companies
at the ford because he had underestimated the reaction time of the American forces. Normally it took at least a half-hour
to get jets out on the plateau, and the almost immediate attack by the AC-47 had caught his unit cold. Casualties were extremely
high, but he had a battalion already on the plateau that had taken up blocking positions between the river and Lang Vei, and
he had a company in blocking positions to the south that were well entrenched and could withstand direct hits from up to five-hundred-pound
bombs. The company that was sweeping down from the north were taking the greatest risk, but if they moved fast as he had ordered
them, they would overrun the small American teams quickly and take a lot of prisoners.