The Phoenix Page 7

  Where was he? He had disappeared. Pistols in their hands, they tried to see through the darkness. Pham Dong nudged Ngo and pointed with his pistol to a narrow passage between two houses. There they could see the red glow of a cigarette. So that was it! The American was trying to lure them in to where he could get at them. Pham Dong thought Xin Loi, GI. But he wasn't really sorry.

  He and Ngo moved a bit away from each other, eyes straining to pierce the darkness. They could barely make out an outline with the lit end of the cigarette set head high. Was the man a fool or was he drunk? He didn't seem to be drunk, but then who cared. They had him! The space between the houses went nowhere. He was in a cul-de-sac.

  Both men raised their weapons. Fingers squeezed and the night exploded with the crack of their pistol shots as they pumped every round in the magazines into the shadowed outline. They were very cool, placing their shots just below the glow of the cigarette. The smell of cordite mingled with those of the street as they ceased firing.

  What was going on? The shadow didn't move. It just stood there with the cigarette still burning. They were still trying to figure it out when Casey rose up from behind the chopping block. Not wasting any time he shot each of them once in the back of the head. The 9mm bullets from his P-38 were the exploding types with mercury cores. The two men's heads looked as if they were ripe grapes placed between the fingers of a strong man and then popped. Their skulls simply exploded; ruptured brains and bone fragments spewed out the front of their faces.

  Stepping over the bodies, Casey went to the shadowy figure the VC had emptied their pistols into. He took his cigarette from between the fibers of the rolled up straw mat and took a deep drag. From a block away he could hear whistles starting to blow as MPs tried to figure out where the shots had come from. Quickly he checked the bodies for papers. There were none, only a few dollars’ worth of piasters. He took these and the two pistols with him and left the corpses for the cat-sized street rats to nibble on.

  He looked to the sky. Heat lightning flickered in the heavens. A false promise of rain that wouldn't come this night. Casey was tired but also relieved. At last something had happened. He knew they were not just a couple of would-be thieves or part-time guerrillas who saw him as an easy mark. They had to have come from Comrade Ho, and that was good. The way it should be.

  The MPs at the gate waved him in. They had been the same ones on duty when he'd left the camp. They wondered why he was back so early. Probably too broke to get any action.

  It felt good that night to crawl between clean sheets and close his eyes. He'd get his special gear in the morning and be on his way to join Phang the next day. He wondered how well Ho and Troung were resting?

  After a morning chow of powdered eggs and Australian bacon he returned to the transient barracks. He picked up the two pistols he'd taken off the dead Charlies and went to see Gomez, who was at his desk having his breakfast in the form of five cups of coffee. The captain hadn't been able to sleep, wondering what the events of the next few days would bring.

  Tossing the two guns on Gomez's desk he asked, "I guess you've heard about the two Viets who were killed last night?"

  Gomez picked the pieces up, checked the chambers and magazines on each of them, then placed them slowly back on his desk. "Would you like to tell me about it? Or should I just pretend this never happened?"

  Casey sat down in the metal straight-backed, gray-painted chair across from Gomez. "They were from our good friend, Comrade Ho. He knows who I am and where I am. I wouldn't be surprised if he knows about you too. If he's after me, then it's also possible that by our recent association you may be on his hit list now. If I were you, Captain, I think I would be very careful for a while."

  Gomez's response was drowned out by a flight of Cobras passing overhead, probably on their way to Vung Tau where they would be in support of an Air Cavalry, Search and Destroy operation in the "Special War Zone" near the Parrot's Beak.

  Gomez looked up at the ceiling with ill-disguised irritation until the choppers faded away. "I said, you certainly have a way of making a day start off like shit!"

  Casey grinned, the scar on his face folding into a wrinkle as he did. He liked the Mexican- American. A good man, as he'd thought earlier. He was tough, like the old Spaniards of Castile.

  Pouring a cup of coffee for himself from Gomez's overworked coffee pot, he asked, "Have you heard from our man in Saigon? I need that gear and I need it today so I can check it over before taking off tomorrow. By the way, what time is the flight laid on for, and have you decided whether it would be best if we go in for a landing or do I jump?"

  Gomez swallowed half a cup and grimaced. He was on the verge of a caffeine high. "The items you requested will be here by noon and you'll be jumping. It will be harder that way for any Charlies to locate you than if the chopper set down somewhere. You've jumped from helicopters before haven't you?"

  Casey nodded as he refused Gomez's offer to refill his cup. "Yeah, I've jumped from them a few times. No problem. Have you set up the drop zone with Phang?"

  Gomez replied a bit testily, "Don't you think that anyone else can do their job? Of course it's set up and if I have any luck at all the wind will blow you right into the center of a VC staging area, where you'll finally have something else to do other than bug me!"

  Casey smiled easily as he got up to leave. "I'll be in the barracks. Send someone to get me when my gear comes in. In the meantime you should lay off that poison you call coffee and take up something safe, like arsenic."

  It was a little after 1300 hours when a PFC came to fetch Casey back to Gomez's office.

  "Here's your gear. Check it over and see if it's everything you need."

  Casey opened up the gray-blue flight bag, checked out each article and zipped it back up. "It's all there. I'll need to borrow a jeep to go out to where I can test them in private. We don't need any audience."

  Gomez gave him his own jeep with a cautious warning. "You be careful with that damned thing. It took me six months to get one of my own, and don't you let anything happen to it."

  While Casey was in the field testing his new acquisitions, Dai Uy Troung was meeting with his superior officer. Ducking his head to avoid a low beam, Troung passed several guards in the tunnel passage leading to Ho's subterranean office.

  Announcing himself he forgot to lower his head and bumped it against a palm tree beam above the doorway as he entered the office. Without stopping work on the letter he was drafting to Hanoi, Ho laughed at his aide's accident. "If that gives you a headache I have some aspirin in my desk."

  Troung rubbed his head with his one hand. "I think that we may both have a headache, sir."

  Ho stopped what he was doing. "What do you mean?"

  Troung took a paper from the pocket of his black cotton shirt. "This has just come in. It was received by radio this morning. The two men we sent to kill the one named Romain have failed. They are both dead. Their heads were blown off."

  Ho's face developed a worried expression.

  "Comrade Troung. I have just had a most strange feeling. It was as if the scar-faced one was watching us, looking at us as though we were dead. I must have him dead. There is something about him that means nothing but evil for us as long as he is alive. You know that some people's lives are intertwined from the moment they meet? That is what I feel has happened with him. The only way to break the connection is by death, either his or ours. Come to me with a new plan by the day after tomorrow."

  Troung said nothing, only bowed in acceptance of his master's orders, orders he completely concurred with. He would find a way to put an end to their enemy. An enemy that had become a very personal threat. Sergeant Romain had to die.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was time. Gomez took Casey to the chopper pad. One of the older Hueys stood throbbing on the perforated steel-plated deck. It only carried the pilot, a lieutenant, and a warrant officer co-pilot. Casey climbed inside and Gomez handed him up his gear, including a bag with his par
achute inside. He'd harness up after they were airborne. He didn't want to give any eyes that weren't friendly any idea that he was going to make a jump somewhere. Having only the pilot and co-pilot on board was another false indicator that this was not a flight heading for any action. If it had been, there would have been two door gunners sitting behind M-60s.

  Gomez moved away from the slow spinning blades and waved a hand in farewell. He had to cover his eyes as the blades picked up speed, for an instant turning the pad into a miniature tornado.

  Casey fastened the seat belt holding him to the red canvas seats as the Huey tilted its nose slightly downward, lifted up from the ass end and moved away from the pad. The flight wouldn't take very long, less than an hour to the drop zone. As the chopper rose to a safer altitude, he leaned out of the open door to look down at the earth below. Terraced fields of rice lay in neat squares like those on a patchwork quilt. Song Be didn't even look clean from the air as they moved away from the warrens of tin roofs and shacks. They were following the sun. Here, where the land was low and flat, it took longer to set. The chopper sped on. It felt good in the sky, cleaner somehow. Maybe it was the wind blowing through the open side doors that made it seem so. Anyway it felt good. He could understand why pilots were so reluctant to do ground duty.

  By the time they reached the Cambodian border the sun was nearly down. The fields below had given way to rubber plantations. Fields of sugarcane interspersed with heavy patches of tropical forest. The greens of the fields and jungle changed to strange mixtures of blood orange and emerald as the sun set at the edge of the world. Its light lingered on for a few minutes more, then it was gone. The air grew chiller as Casey opened his bag and put on his chute, taking his time to adjust the straps snugly and still keep his family jewels out of the way. He had no reserve chute; he'd be jumping at five-hundred feet. At that altitude there wouldn't be time for a reserve to open anyway. The rest of his gear was strapped onto the D rings that normally held the reserve.

  Spotted around on the dark earth below them were pricks of light from campfires, where villagers made their homes near their fields and orchards. Some of those fires probably belonged to Charlie, but now that they were in Cambodian airspace the Vietcong wouldn't be too concerned about being hit.

  The pilot turned on the warning light and yelled back, "You've got five minutes to the drop zone. We're descending now, so get your ass ready." Casey hooked up his static line and moved to sit in the doorway, his feet dangling out over the darkness, ears deafened by the rush of wind and heavy throbbing of the chopper's blades.

  Phang had his men spread out around the clearing. Some had been placed at ambush sites on the trails leading in to the DZ. Four of his men had flashlights. They formed a cross in the clearing. When they heard the Huey, they turned on the lights to guide it in.

  Casey's other ally was on its way to join them. A typhoon, born in the Sulu Sea, had crossed over Palawan Island and was now off the coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea, bringing torrential rains and winds of a hundred and sixty miles an hour. There was nothing to slow it down before it hit land. On the coastal regions storm warnings had already been sent out. As for those further inland, many didn't even know the storm was on its way. The typhoon would lose much of its punch as it moved inland, but the winds should still be around eighty miles an hour when it reached Cambodia.

  Casey's greatest concern was that the typhoon might change course. If it did then the job would be three times as tough to do.

  The Huey flew with all of its lights off. The interior of the chopper was lit only by the dim red glow necessary to see the instrument panels. The pilot spoke to Casey for the second time. "There it is."

  Leaning forward out of the door to look ahead, Casey saw the thin tubes of light forming a cross on the black earth, marking the perimeter of the drop zone. He yelled back to the pilot. "Let's do it then!"

  At five-hundred feet the Huey slowed to a crawl, then hovered for ten seconds. It gave a sudden lurch upward as two-hundred pounds left it. Without waiting to see if Casey got down okay the pilot moved the Huey on. He'd go straight in for another twenty miles then make a circle, taking him back to Song Be.

  To exit the Huey all Casey had to do was lean forward till he fell out of the door. Then he was jerked up as the static pulled the chute out of its bag. The opening shock was, as always, welcome. He didn't have time to think about it much. At five-hundred feet he'd only be in the air twenty seconds before hitting the deck. It was pitch black. Once he'd jumped, the flashlights on the ground went out. He went into the landing position, chin tucked against his chest, toes down, legs slightly bent. He tried to see the tree line as he fell to give him some idea of how far he was from the ground, but it was too dark to even do that. He just had to wait for it. He hit, automatically going into a toes, hip, thigh roll that brought him back on to his feet, his hands hitting the quick release on his chest to free him from the harness. His chute was already being collapsed by the willing hands of Phang's Kamserai. They leaped on it to take the air out. Before he was out of his harness, his chute was already being rolled up and taken off the drop zone to be buried.

  Phang rushed to help him with his gear. Casey checked the action on the M-3 .45 submachine gun. After making sure it worked, he responded to Phang's greetings. "It's good to see you again, Old One. But I don't think we should stay here to visit." Phang grunted, a bit irritated at his friend's cursory welcome. But then all Big Noses were that way.

  Leaving the drop zone behind, they faded into the dark traveling in single file, with flankers out a hundred meters to their right and left, and a point man another fifty up to the front. Casey stayed to the center with Phang in front of him. All of a sudden the night became very close, very heavy, after the coolness of the ride in the Huey. Following a narrow trail between fields and small groups of rubber trees and plantains, they marched three hours till they reached the area Phang had selected as their base camp.

  Phang was a cautious old bird. He had chosen a site in a grove of wild plantains right next to a leper colony. The VC avoided the lepers as if they had the plague. It would be as safe here as anywhere.

  Late that night, he and the Kamserai chieftain went over the plans. Phang had been concerned about their chances of success until he'd found out about the typhoon. He knew something was happening because of the stillness of the air. Like many of the jungle animals, Phang had many of the instincts common to the so-called primitive peoples of the world who lived closer to nature. He had known that a storm was coming; he just didn't know how big it was going to be. Once he knew that, it didn't take him long to figure out the rest. The hardest part of the operation would be getting in through the initial defenses surrounding the village. They had till the next night to wig that out. It was Phang who came up with part of the answer. He would get some of his people inside the village before nightfall.

  Troung and Ho also knew that a storm was corning. They listened to the weather reports on Radio Saigon. Their own Giai Phong (Liberation Radio) weather information was not kept much up to date. The broadcasts from Saigon were much more accurate. As for storm damage, they weren't that concerned. Most of their important facilities and supply depots were underground. There would be a bit of flooding, naturally, and some temporary interruption of communication, but nothing they couldn't deal with. The storms were always much more damaging to the enemy than to them. What was the saying the Americans used? It is an ill wind that blows no good? If it was a good wind it would destroy many enemy aircraft while on the ground.

  With dawn came the first light winds, a touch of rain riding with them. Nothing threatening about them. Instead it made the day much cooler and pleasant, but Casey knew that would quickly change before night fell, when the winds would rise to an ear shattering crescendo that would bring death and destruction for hundreds of square miles.

  Phang sent five of his men into the village. Dressed as peasants, they carried no weapons with them in their baskets filled wit
h breadfruit, mangoes and plantains. Phang had met with some of the villagers who had come out to see that their goats and water buffaloes were taken care of. To the villagers he had said only that he wished for his men to be let into the village where they could get information on the Vietnamese there and report to the Cambodian government in Phnom Penh. The villagers figured they had nothing to lose if the government was wanting information about the Vietcong. Perhaps that meant they were getting ready to do something to get rid of them. That was a situation to be desired.

  The storm hit the Vietnamese coast, bringing tides fifteen feet above normal and winds that tore apart straw and board houses as though they were made of paper. It rode across the delta behind a front of black clouds filled with moisture gathered up in the South China Sea.

  Phang went over the layout of the village with Casey. It was a rectangle with a rim of trees running all the way around it. It was in the trees that the first line of defense waited. Hidden by the trees out of sight of the air were a line of bunkers and a single apron of barbed wire. In the wire were an unknown number of claymore mines and other booby traps, as well as a field of punji stakes. Not terribly formidable for a well-armed and equipped American battalion to take, but it was enough that, if they weren't careful, it could mean the deaths of many of Phang's men.

  In Casey's bag were what he hoped would be the easy way in now that Phang had some of his men inside the village. Once the main group of Kamserai made it inside, they'd head for entrances to the underground network. That was where the shit could get very heavy.

  Vietcong and PAVN troops were preparing for the onslaught of the storm, taking shelter. They had experienced typhoons before and knew it would be a long night, a very wet and unpleasant night. The winds were increasing, now up to nearly fifty miles an hour as the VC tied down and got ready.