Into the Treeline Page 14

  It satisfied the troops. It satisfied Jim somewhat less. He held his peace until they returned, after arduous marching, his leg aching fiercely, to the camp. Then he requested private audience with the captain.

  “You want to tell me why you did that?” he asked quietly.

  The captain looked up at him through eyes fogged with fatigue. “I explained it to the men,” he said. “You know enough Vietnamese to understand. Why do you bother me? I must sleep.”

  “Not good enough. I know and you know that we could have carried the plan through. We could have snatched this guy.” Jim’s voice rose in anger. “Instead you don’t even try! You snuff him out like a candle. Goddamn you, we could have gotten all kinds of information out of him. We could have rolled up his entire organization. Now all we’ve got is a dead body, and nothing else to show for it. Why?”

  “What we had, Dai Uy, is a very high-ranking official of the Vietnamese Communist party. A man who had dedicated his life to the cause.” Vanh looked at the young American pityingly. This one was as naive as all the others. “We have a law that states that the PRU can only hold someone for twenty-four hours. Do you think we could have made him talk in that time?”

  Jim started to say something, was cut off by a wave of the hand.

  “Would you? In twenty-four hours? No matter what was done to you? No? And neither would I, Captain Jim. And neither would he. And after the twenty-four hours, what would happen? He would be released to the District Interrogation Center. Which has your people closely supervising to make sure there is no torture. We cannot have torture, your press would make too much of it, again we would be painted as the barbarians.

  “So he says nothing. And very quickly there is pressure from very high levels to release him. He has not confessed, they say. Perhaps we have the wrong man. The PRU was once again overzealous. There will be witnesses who come forward who will state that this is not the same man who was on the blacklist, that this is a terrible case of mistaken identity. Soon he will be released. It should be no secret to you that there are many in our government who are, as you Americans say, hedging their bets. They think that the war will be lost. They do not care to be labeled as ‘Enemies of the People’ under the new government.”

  The captain seemed to sag, to become smaller, as if he was pulling inside himself. “So the only answer is to exterminate our enemies. I have no illusions. I also know that the war is lost. I know that our American friends will someday tire of the fight. I know that we shall perish. My fight, Captain Jim, is the fight of a trapped rat, biting anyone who comes close. Perhaps you can understand. Perhaps not. I know that I shall die. I know that I shall make many of them accompany me. I understand futility. Do you?”

  Jim wanted to come up with an argument that would refute what the captain was saying. The only problem was, he could not.

  “Now I must sleep. Goodnight, Captain. If you wish to report this to the province chief, you should do so no later than ten hundred hours. He will be flying to the beaches at Vung Tau at eleven.”

  The province chief called for him the next day. This time he did not have to wait so long to be ushered into the presence. The colonel still had his aviator sunglasses on. Jim wondered if he ever took them off. He noticed that the man’s uniform was perfectly creased, the qualification badges and ribbons placed with excruciating care at precisely the proper places. Among the badges, Jim noticed, were U.S. Army parachutist wings and the “Follow Me!” crest of the Infantry School at Fort Benning. He also had several awards of the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. This was handed out to senior officers on the basis, not of bravery, but of how important you were.

  Upon seeing Jim the colonel smiled. There was no emotion in it. “Captain,” he said, “please sit down. Would you like coffee? I apologize for the early hour, but must go away later today. Tell me, Captain, how do you like your new job? Do you get on well with Captain Vanh? We have had problems with him in the past, you know. I hope that he is causing you no difficulties. Sometimes it is difficult to convince some of the people that the old methods are no longer acceptable.”

  Jim, who had been conducting an internal debate about what had happened, held his silence. He didn’t know why. It would have been easy to cause the replacement of the captain. Perhaps the next man would have been more amenable to his methods. He understood Vanh’s point, but still, if one really wanted to do the job properly these people would have to be brought in. Perhaps there would be some way to forestall the scenario Vanh had painted. But in the end he decided against it. The colonel was entirely too smooth, too pat, too perfect. He was the very model of a Western politician’s idea of a perfect Vietnamese officer.

  He became aware that the colonel was waiting for his response. Waiting with only faintly disguised eagerness. And an underlying amusement.

  “Captain Vanh is a real pleasure to work with,” he said, putting on his best stupid American act. “A very fine soldier. Rough around the edges, maybe, but who isn’t?” He chuckled. “Of course, I’m just getting to know him.”

  The Vietnamese took another tack. “How went the operation last night?” he asked. “I have not yet received a written report.” He was lying. Captain Vanh’s report had been waiting for him when he arrived at the office.

  “Fairly smoothly,” Jim replied. How much did the man know? “We weren’t able to capture the man. Too much danger. The decision was made to terminate him instead.” Jim carefully avoided telling a lie. “Too bad it had to be that way. Always better if you can bring them in and talk to them.”

  “Indeed,” said the colonel. “Killing serves very little purpose. Still, sometimes it is unavoidable. Perhaps next time you will have more success. I am, however, glad that the PRU is back in action. They have been waiting for too long, as I had known. The president will be very happy to hear, when I talk to him later today, that one of the most brutal of our enemies is no more. We will speak again, Captain, but know for now that I am happy to have you working with us.”

  Jim, astounded at the depth of the man’s hypocrisy, made his excuses and left. He found the nearest bar and had two stiff drinks of black-market whisky.

  The bar owner, pleased to have one of the free-spending Americans as a customer, started a tape on his stolen stereo. All the crazy Western music sounded the same to him, not like the delicate plucking and wailing of Vietnamese ballads. But they seemed to like it, and he was willing to endure the cacophony as long as it brought in money. He motioned for one of the girls to go over. Lazy sluts! They would sit around and play cards all day long if he let them. Surely the big American savage would at least buy a couple of Saigon Teas.

  Jim, lost in his thoughts, felt someone tugging at his sleeve. A Vietnamese girl of indeterminate age with a face badly pocked by smallpox scars was trying to get his attention. Her short dress was impossibly tight, accentuating birdlike legs and fleshless ribs. She reminded him of a mongrel dog he had tried to adopt when he had been seven. His father had shot it, claiming it was harassing the livestock.

  “I love you too much, GI,” she said. “You buy me Saigon Tea?” She rubbed her tiny pubis against his leg.

  “Choi manh oi, Anh nhieu em nheu wa,” he replied, stressing the syllable that indicated that he loved her too much, too. “You buy your own Saigon Tea.”

  “Goddamn numbah-ten cheap charlie fucking GI,” she spat, going back to her card game. She shot the bar owner a look that said that she had tried, and couldn’t be blamed if the accursed American was stingy. Secretly she was relieved. She didn’t like going with the Americans. They scared her.

  Jim watched her go, amused. Fuck it, he thought. The sun was still shining, he was still alive, and things could be fixed. He left money on the bar, enough for a tip for the girl, though he suspected she would never see it, and went back to the Embassy House.

  The POIC had left word that he wanted to see Jim as quickly as possible. “I read your report,” he said. “And sent a copy to the regional officer in charge in
Danang. He wants to see you, as soon as possible.” The little man was agitated. “I was afraid of this. The first operation of the PRU, and the target is killed. Couldn’t you have prevented it? I don’t know if you’ve heard of Roger McMurdock, the ROIC, but he’s a tough man. And he’s very interested in seeing that this program works. There’s an Air America flight out at two o’clock. Someone will meet you at Danang airfield. I suggest that you plan on staying at least overnight.”

  Shit! Jim thought. He had, of course, heard of Roger McMurdock. Slim Feltrie had given him a thorough briefing on the man while in Saigon. McMurdock was a well-known clandestine services operative. He had performed hair-raising missions all over the world, starting in the old Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA, back in World War II. He had been one of the officers parachuted into Indochina during the last days of the war, and had met Ho Chi Minh. Jim had looked forward to meeting him. But not under these circumstances.

  He packed more than enough to stay overnight. Slipped the nine-millimeter into the waistband of his trousers. Already it felt natural there, like a comforting extra hand, cold at first, then slowly warming to match his heat. He debated on the CAR-15, then decided that no matter what happened, if he was fired and shipped somewhere else, if he was sent back to Saigon, whatever, he would need it. The rest of his gear could follow on afterward but he would go nowhere without weapons he trusted.

  There was more than enough time to think on the ride to Danang. The patched-up DC-3 droned through the air, cooling wind whipping through the open pilot windows and cargo door. The ground slipped by underneath at a steady rate. They were flying just high enough to discourage ground fire. They paralleled Highway One, the “Street Without Joy” of the French Indochina War. The French would not have recognized it now. No more did the jungle come right up to the roadway. Rome plows and Agent Orange had taken care of that. The ground was red, raw, and ugly; a hundred-mile scar. No beauty here, but also less danger of ambush. The enemy was reduced to firing at convoys from hundreds of yards away, and except for the occasional sniper seldom bothered. Trucks filled with supplies roared north, were passed by empties heading south. The war machine took up millions of tons of material. It was a case of the logistical tail wagging the tactical dog. Few people in the United States were aware that of the half-million troops in Vietnam, only about fifty thousand were actually fighting. The rest were in support. It was a natural result of the tactic of dependence on massive firepower.

  Away from the road the terrain was terribly scarred. He couldn’t even guess how many tons of bombs and how many thousands of artillery shells had been dropped in this area. In some places there were pockmarks scattered haphazardly across the terrain. In other areas the orderly march of craters spoke of B-52 raids. Little of this ordnance, he knew, had been expended at targets. Most had been fired or dropped on vague reports, or as so-called harassing and interdictory fire. Scaring the monkeys, he always thought derisively. From the ground he knew it would look different. Almost impossible to move through, the trees tossed around like toothpicks, the jungle vines intertwining throughout. You didn’t walk through such areas, you crawled, snaking your way through the obstacles like playing in a jungle gym designed by a madman. The enemy would have taken the time to clear good fields of fire, and would be hidden so well you probably wouldn’t see the muzzle flashes of the guns sending the bullets to crack around you. Advance would be suicidal. So you backed off and called in yet more fire, and hoped they went away.

  He remembered his first ride in a DC-3 across terrain such as this, back in 1963. There had been no bomb craters then, no scarred earth. The jungle had stretched in smooth green as far as the eye could see, broken only occasionally by the orderly rows of rubber plantations. Here and there would be a town, few very large, just collections of tin-roofed huts. He had thought it very beautiful. But that had been when he was young, and much more innocent.

  A Filipino driver in a new civilian jeep met him at the airport. He was a cheerful man, chattering away about Danang, and the Philippines, and any other subject he could come up with on the thirty-minute drive to the Danang Embassy House. Jim nodded in the appropriate places, and smiled when he thought he should, and largely kept his thoughts to himself. He was miserable. He realized that he wanted this job, and the thought of losing it so soon filled him with anger and despair. He wondered what to tell the ROIC. Should he stick to the original story, that it had been simply too dangerous to try to capture the district chief? Should he embellish it by talking about the great number of bodyguards in the village? Or should he give up Captain Vanh, and feel the sense of betrayal he knew would come?

  In the end, Roger McMurdock saved him the trouble.

  His voice fitted the image of the man. No meek, self-effacing spy this. “Come in here, Jim,” he boomed, after the young captain had presented himself at his office. “Have a seat. No, here, close to the desk. I want to have a look at our newest star. Killed old Nguyen van Thuong, did you? Ah, hell, I know you didn’t actually do the deed,” he said, waving off Jim’s attempt at protest. “Vanh did it. But he sure as hell wouldn’t have got that close if it hadn’t been for you. Vanh is a hi-diddle-diddle, straight-through-the-middle type. Only problem I have with him. Otherwise he’s a helluva good man.

  “You’re surprised I know that much? Hell, boy, I was doing shit like this when you were a gleam in your daddy’s eye. I know how to set up intelligence nets. Even better than the one you have with the Indian. Don’t trust that cocksucker, by the way. Use him, don’t blame you for that, he’s good enough for the mission you have for him. When he stops being that, we’ll see. Now, if you don’t have any questions, as far as I can see the sun is past the yardarm and I’ve got Al Dougherty up here, and I’m sure he already has a jump start on us in the bar. Come on! Let’s shake up some of these old farts around here.”

  Jim, quite overwhelmed by the nonstop monologue, and very glad that he was not going to be fired, followed the ROIC out of the office. He hadn’t appreciated, until the man stood up, how big he was. He was Jim’s height, but weighed at least fifty pounds more. Little of it looked to be fat. He walked quickly and surely, balancing each step on the ball of the foot. An old fighter’s trick. He greeted people in the halls with a familiar growl, obviously enjoying himself. I like him, Jim decided.

  Al was holding forth to the bartender when they arrived. His face broke into a broad smile. “Goddamn, reinforcements,” he said. “I think I chased everybody else off. Bartender probably wants to go, too, but I told him I’d shoot him if he even tries to take a piss. Rog tells me you got a good one, Jimmy. Barkeep!” he yelled. “Give the boss and Jimmy a drink. Quick. Elsewise they may cut your balls off.”

  Jim, who was not yet to the stage where he felt he could refer to the ROIC as “Rog,” accepted his drink in silence from an obviously terrified bartender. No one else was in the club. Once again, the place testified to the Agency’s ability to take care of itself. The furnishings were lush. The ubiquitous air-conditioners kept it as cold as the tomb. Plush chairs were scattered about. The bar itself was of carved teak.

  “Al, here, scored a good one too,” the ROIC said. “First PRU operation in Quang Nam Province since Tet, just like yours was the first one in Thua Thien. You guys have done good. Wouldn’t have expected it that quick.”

  “Which means,” Al said, winking at Jim, “that we could have fucked off for a while before getting started. We ain’t too goddamn smart, are we?”

  “Hell, buddy,” Jim said, breaking his silence, “nobody ever accused us of that.”

  “Well, I’m damn pleased, boys,” said Roger. “Within a week we get a VC district chief and a sapper squad that’s been giving us fits for years. Same folks, we figure,” he said, addressing himself to Jim, “who captured the German medical team during Tet. Found most of ’em later. Wasn’t pretty. They took special care with the women. Really fucked them up. And your guy, Nguyen Van Thuong, had a habit of disembow
eling the people he caught, nailing their guts to a tree, and leaving them. Sometimes it would take them days to die. So the world is marginally better off today than it was yesterday. How do you feel about it?”

  “I came here afraid I was going to be fired. Since you obviously know everything that happened, and you haven’t fired me yet, you must approve of it.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Not as if I don’t approve. Shit, I’m no fucking fool. What Captain Vanh said made a lot of sense. I’m sure as hell hoping he’s got it wrong, though. He told me that there was a good possibility that if we’d turned in Thuong, he would have been released. Is that true?”

  “All too true, I’m afraid. It’s sure as hell happened before. Including with Thuong, back in ’66. Makes no sense to you, does it? Not to me either. But that’s what we have to deal with. That’s why we pay you so fucking much money,” he joked, knowing that with jump pay and demolitions pay and combat pay the captain made barely nine hundred dollars per month, “to ride herd on these guys, and to take all that into account, and to try your goddamned best to take as many as you can alive. Don’t expect it to be all of them. You guys are good, but you aren’t miracle workers. How does it feel, by the way, to be working for the most misunderstood, one of the most feared, and one of the most incompetent fucking organizations in the world? Only hope we’ve got is the KGB has even worse bureaucrats than we do. Used to be a good outfit, once. Al, tell him about your ambush!”

  “Not all that big a deal,” Dougherty said. “Found out where these cocksuckers were going to be. Province chief wouldn’t let me take out the PRU. So the captain and I decided we’d go out ourselves. Carried a whole shitload of Claymores. Set ’em up alongside a trail, hooked ’em up in series. Squad came along, just like they were supposed to, we touched the mines off. Blew ’em to shit. Had a hell of a time getting documents off ’em, they were in pieces. They were on their way in to hit the ARVN hospital again. One of their favorite targets, evidently.”