Incident at Plei Soi (Vietnam Ground Zero Military Thrillers Book 10) Read online

  Fetterman stopped and nodded at Robin. “Good to see you, Miss Morrow. You’re looking especially pretty this evening.”

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice quiet.

  “Captain, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  Gerber nodded. “Spill it.”

  Fetterman looked at Morrow and smiled. “Sir, we’ve been asked to attend a briefing over at MACV Headquarters, due to start in the next few minutes.”

  “Now why aren’t I at all surprised about that?” asked Gerber.

  Fetterman ignored the question. “I’ll meet you in the lobby. I appropriated us a jeep.”

  As Fetterman turned to leave, Gerber said, “I’m sorry, Robin. I’ve got to go.”

  She couldn’t help smiling. “Somehow I knew this was going to happen. The evening was going too well. The gods don’t want us to get too happy. It frightens them.” She held up a hand to stave off his protest. “No, Mack, I understand. Call me when you get back, no matter what the time.”

  “You got it,” he said. He reached out and touched her cheek, wishing he could kiss her, but not wanting to do it in the public bar. “I’ll call.”

  He turned and hurried after Fetterman. Before he left the bar, he glanced back and saw her sitting quietly, a little smile on her face and her drink in her hands.

  He found the master sergeant standing in the hotel lobby. Gerber followed his gaze, coming to rest on an American woman. Probably an employee at the embassy, he thought. She was small, with short dark hair. She wore a white blouse and a knee-length skirt, and when she turned she smiled at them, displaying perfect white teeth.

  “Friend of yours?” asked Gerber.

  “No, sir, but I sure wish she was.”

  “Where’s this jeep of yours?”

  Fetterman nodded toward the double glass doors. “On the street of course. Double-parked with the doorman watching it for me.”

  Together they crossed the marble-and-carpet expanse of the lobby. The clerk, standing behind a long desk, had his back turned and was shoving messages into the mail slots for the rooms.

  As they passed through the doors, the heat and humidity of the tropical night washed over them like a wave on a beach. It was a physical assault. Even in the late evening the air was heavy with humidity.

  Gerber stepped between two parked cars and climbed into the passenger side of the jeep. Fetterman walked around the front and got into the driver’s seat. He twisted the ignition switch, turned on the lights, and then fought with the stick, shifting into gear.

  He pulled out into the heavy traffic. Bicycles, Lambrettas, cars, jeeps and trucks inched along the roadway. The night was alive with people, all looking for something in the nightlife of South Vietnam’s capital, while others walked along the streets, waiting for an opportunity to make some money.

  From an alley came the driving beat of rock and roll that attempted to drown out the other night sounds. Standing in front of a neon-lit nightclub were half a dozen GIs and their dates, dancing and drinking on the sidewalk while a small knot of curious onlookers stood nearby.

  Fetterman turned a corner, and the bustle was suddenly gone, replaced with the serenity of the wide palm-lined street that led past the presidential palace and a French cemetery. Gerber leaned back in his seat and put a foot up on the dashboard. The rush of air caused by the racing jeep dried the sweat from his face and cooled him. “I’ll never get used to this,” he shouted over the noise of the wind.

  “Used to what?”

  “Saigon. Christ, Tony, on one street you have whores chasing everyone and on the next you have a cemetery. The sound of traffic in the night, a horn, the roar of a souped-up motorcycle engine, and then the scream of rockets dropping into the crowd as jets fly overhead. It’s all unreal.”

  Fetterman shot a glance at the captain and then made another turn, bringing them back into the honky-tonk of another neon-splashed street. Music drifted on the warm breeze. Then a woman screamed as if in abject terror. Fetterman slowed. They saw a soldier chasing a Vietnamese woman who screamed again and then stopped and fell, giggling, into the arms of the man. She obviously didn’t need any help.

  “Christ,” said Gerber again.

  And then they were away from that and into the outskirts of Saigon. In the distance Gerber saw the blaze of lights that marked the MACV Headquarters, making it a bright, visible target for enemy gunners who somehow refused to shoot at it. Maybe they felt that dropping mortars and rockets on the offices of the generals would result in a renewed, more vigorous campaign against them.

  Fetterman turned into the parking lot and stopped near the white chain that marked the perimeter. He shut off the engine and then used a chain bolted to the floor of the jeep to lock the steering wheel in place. The chain and its padlock made it a little harder for thieves.

  Together Gerber and Fetterman passed through the gate where a bored MP looked at them, saw that they were obviously Americans and waved them through without asking for ID cards. Fetterman opened the first of the double glass doors that led to the air-conditioned interior, and Gerber got the second one. They walked down the green-tiled floor that had been recently swept, along walls lined with posters that told soldiers to wear their ribbons proudly, to avoid spilling secrets to the enemy by remembering COMSEC and to ignore the local women. It was the land of Army propaganda that threatened to ruin the war by turning it into a Madison Avenue campaign.

  As they approached a set of stairs, Gerber asked, “Where is this boondoggle taking place?”

  “Upstairs. Conference Room A-102.”

  They climbed to the second floor and entered another corridor. There were patches of light spilling into it from offices that were still occupied, even though most of the staff officers had left for the fun and adventure of downtown Saigon. Gerber stopped and read a few of the signs over the doors, surprised that offices that should be anonymous were clearly marked for enemy saboteurs if they happened to break into the building. It would be too bad if some general or colonel had to ask for help when he visited. Label everything so that it was easy to find.

  Gerber wondered where his bad mood had developed. Maybe it was seeing the waste in downtown Saigon. Maybe it was the contrast between the poor and the rich, or the soldiers who had nothing better to do than chase the local women who were trying to earn a few dollars. Perhaps it was the MACV Headquarters, where the generals and colonels sat in air-conditioned comfort from nine to five, running the war when it was convenient for them. He wondered if it was the poster that cautioned the average soldier to protect classified material, and then labeling every door in the headquarters so that an enemy who gained access to the building would have no trouble finding those protected classified documents.

  Fetterman halted in front of a closed door. “This is it.” He knocked, and a voice from inside told them to enter.

  The master sergeant opened the door and stood back to let Gerber in. The captain glanced at the men sitting around a highly polished conference table littered with the remains of a late dinner. There were plates covered with drying gravy and the remains of sandwiches and the wrappings they had come in. Styrofoam cups stood half filled. The ashtrays were overflowing with cigarette butts, and the air in the room was blue with smoke.

  “Come on in, Captain,” said the man at the head of the table. Unlike most of the others, he wore a khaki uniform decorated with general’s stars and rows of ribbons. He was a short burly man with thick wavy black hair sprinkled with gray. His eyebrows were massive, giving him a perpetual frown. “Come on in and have a seat. We’ve just about figured out what you’re going to be doing for the next several days. I’m sure you’ll find it most educational and very interesting.”

  CHAPTER 2

  SPECIAL FORCES CAMP A-337, PLEI SOI

  LLDB Captain Minh crouched in the sandbagged fire control tower and surveyed the open ground around his camp. Minh was a Vietnamese officer who had come up through the ranks after attending the British military academy
at Sandhurst, and who had earned his rank rather than having bought it.

  Using binoculars stolen from the American Navy, he scanned the light brush and rice paddies to the south and west and the thicker jungle to the north, searching for the flash of mortar tubes. So far he hadn’t been successful.

  He dropped to the dirty floor made of heavy planking as three rounds detonated inside his camp. The first fell among the hootches used by the Vietnamese strikers as living quarters, doing little damage and injuring no one. The second exploded harmlessly on open ground behind the bunker line, and the third detonated outside the camp in the wire.

  With the last explosion, Minh was on his feet again, but there was nothing more to be seen. He grabbed the field phone, the communications link to the command post almost directly under him, and blew twice into the mouthpiece. “Still nothing sighted. No evidence of movement near the camp.”

  Captain Roger Fulton, Minh’s American counterpart, crouched in the entrance of the command post, watching from ground level. He held the handset of the field phone to his ear while scanning the fields around him. Fulton was on his first tour in Vietnam, having arrived nearly nine months earlier with his A-Detachment. They had been posted to the camp, only a klick or so from Cambodia, with orders to monitor the traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

  Fulton was a big man, nearly six-five, and weighed almost 250 pounds. He was heavily muscled, and his forearms were bigger than some men’s thighs. While in Vietnam he had been tanned deeply, and with his black hair he looked Hispanic. There were laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, which suggested a sense of humor, but he wasn’t laughing now. He was worried about the mortar attack, because it was the fourth they had suffered in two days, and that suggested the enemy was up to something.

  He glanced over his shoulder into the dimly lit recesses of the command post. “Have pits one and two throw some illumination up. Two rounds each and have them stand by,” he ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” said Sergeant David Miller. Miller was a younger man and the senior communications NCO. He was lying on the floor behind the counter, the various radios and telephones near him. The heavily sandbagged command bunker was safe from everything except a direct hit by a rocket, but Miller wasn’t taking any chances. He wore a flak jacket and steel pot and wished he had a suit of armor. He was too short to get killed now that he was a double-digit midget. He was due to rotate home in fewer than one hundred days.

  He rolled to his right, grabbed the handset for the commo link with the mortar pits, then passed on Captain Fulton’s instructions.

  A moment later there was a dull pop and a flare blossomed over the camp, drifting slowly to the east, held aloft by its parachute and the heat from the burning magnesium. It was joined by another and then another.

  Fulton leaped to his feet, tossed the handset away from him and sprinted around the bunker to the base of the ladder that led up into the fire control tower. As the flares burned, some of the flaming magnesium dropping away, he scrambled up the ladder, nearly colliding with Minh when he got to the top.

  “Watch it, old boy,” said Minh, his British accent more prominent now than it had been on his return from England years before.

  “Still nothing?”

  “Still nothing,” said Minh. “I think they’ve built lean-tos in front of the tubes to conceal the flashes.”

  Fulton rubbed his chin, feeling the rough stubble that meant he’d have to shave soon. He put his binoculars to his eyes and began a slow scan. He hated mortar attacks. He wasn’t scared of them, because they did so little damage. He hated them because he was forced to respond in some fashion, and that ate up time. Time that he could be using in a hundred more profitable ways.

  Directly to the south were rice paddies, clumps of coconuts and palms that protected farmers’ hootches, and open fields. To the west were more open fields, some tree lines and the Cambodian border. North, about a half klick away, were the beginnings of the triple-canopy jungle. An entire NVA division could hide in the jungle, and unless there were American ground troops in there looking for that division, it could go undetected for months.

  “Tomorrow,” said Fulton, “I think we need to get some patrols out to the north, Dai Uy.”

  “Yes,” agreed Minh. “Two or three and have them out for several days. Charlie’s getting too bold.”

  There was a sudden rattling of small arms. Rifles and machine guns on the bunker line. The muzzle-flashes of the weapons twinkled below them, the ruby-colored tracers dancing out and bouncing high into the sky. Rounds tumbled through the air and climbed into the night.

  Minh was on the phone quickly, trying to raise the command bunker on that section of the line. “North wall, north wall, what’s happening down there?”

  One of the Vietnamese NCOs answered on the field phone. Behind his voice, Minh could hear the staccato bursts from the light machine guns.

  “We have movement in the wire.”

  Minh relayed the message, and Fulton spun around. He braced his elbows on the sandbags and studied the darkened ground in front of him. The last of the flares burned out, and the light vanished as if someone had thrown a switch.

  “More illumination,” he growled.

  Minh grinned to himself, thinking that Fulton was like Gerber in many ways. When Minh had served with Gerber at the old Triple Nickel, they’d often forgotten the charade of advisers. Gerber would give an order as if he commanded the camp. Now Fulton did the same.

  Minh picked up the field phone and gave the instruction to be relayed to the mortar pits.

  Again there was a pop overhead, and the ground was bathed in the eerie yellowish light of the flares as they oscillated under their parachutes. The shadows shifted and slid, but Fulton couldn’t see anything other than the bottom of a fifty-five-gallon drum that they had set out as an aiming stake for the machine gunners and grenadiers.

  Over his shoulder Fulton ordered, “Cease fire. I see nothing, no movement in the wire.”

  Minh relayed the order and then moved closer to Fulton. “You expecting trouble?”

  “Not tonight,” he said. “Not now. They’ve got us awake, but they haven’t subjected us to a heavy bombardment yet. I think maybe two, three days before they hit us with any kind of concentrated ground assault.”

  Minh let his binoculars fall against his chest, held around his neck by a strap. “I’ll call Saigon and let them know we’re expecting trouble.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Fulton. “Maybe you better let me contact my people in Nha Trang and see what they want to do. We don’t want to give anything away to the VC.”

  Minh nodded, understanding that Fulton was afraid the VC, who had infiltrated the Vietnamese army and political structure, would get the warning before Minh’s people did. Any help sent from Saigon would be riddled with VC and could prove to be more harmful than helpful.

  “I doubt we’ll have any more trouble for a while,” added Fulton. “Half alert until midnight and then full alert. Maybe rotate the men in the LPs. Let’s be ready in case the VC are being cute.”

  “I’ll relay the orders to my men. I’ve already put my best men out in the listening posts, so they should be fine until morning,” said Minh. “And you?”

  “I’ll be in the team house for about an hour and then I think I’ll tour the bunker line. Just in case.”

  “Good,” said Minh.

  Gerber slipped into a chair at the table and waited. Fetterman stood for a moment and then sat down next to a major who held a fancy briefcase in his lap.

  “All right,” said the general. “Now that we’re all here we can get this started.” He turned, leaning back in his chair so he could pull the cover off the easel that stood behind him.

  Under the cover was a large-scale map of a Special Forces camp situated close to the Cambodian border. It wasn’t a typical camp. There were actually three separate compounds protected by a large network of wire and punji barricades. The entire camp, including the center r
edoubt where the American Special Forces men worked and slept, was surrounded by more wire, punji pits and booby traps.

  “Major O’Herlihy, if you’ll provide us with the current situation please.”

  “Thank you, General Davidson.” O’Herlihy, a thin balding man with light eyebrows and a nose that was burned red and peeling badly, got to his feet. He moved to the front and took a pen from the pocket of his freshly cleaned, pressed jungle fatigues. He yanked on it, turning it into a pointer for use with the map.

  “Gentlemen, this is Camp A-337 near the Cambodian border. It’s always been a hot spot because Charlie can sit in Cambodia and lob shells and fire rockets into it without fear of retaliation by us.”

  Gerber interrupted. “But they’ve fired countermortar anyway?” It was a question.

  O’Herlihy looked at Gerber. “When they’ve been able to spot the enemy tube, they’ve returned fire, even when it was sited on the opposite side of the border.” O’Herlihy grinned sheepishly, as if he had just let a vital piece of information slip, and added hastily, “But that’s not for discussion outside this room.”

  He looked at the faces of the men, and before continuing, consulted his notes. He flipped through several pages, then glanced at the general. “Now, in the past few weeks, we’ve been getting an indication of a buildup around the camp. Charlie, supported by the NVA, has been moving people and supplies into the general vicinity of the camp. There have been attacks by the NVA and VC on the small hamlets near Cambodia, as if to drive the locals from the area. Not the normal warnings that would cause them to leave, but actual attacks that force them to flee. One village was wiped out recently. Given all that, we believe the enemy is going to make a push to overrun the camp.”

  O’Herlihy hesitated, pausing long enough to get a reaction from the men in the room. When that didn’t happen, he hurried on. “Given the location of the camp, we think it’s in a very bad position.”

  With that, O’Herlihy went on to outline everything that had happened during the past few days, including the evidence of heavy enemy traffic detected by the infrared and heat-sensing equipment that had been planted along the border. He also detailed the evidence collected by the patrols, not only from that camp, but from the other military installations in the area. It was a long list of seemingly random items that when plotted on a map showed a plan behind the incidents. It was a coordinated effort.