Page 149 of Cry Havoc
“Follow me, son.”
The colonel crossed the small hooch, his dog immediately by his side at a heel.
“Please, Colonel,” Tom pleaded, his strength waning.
Colonel Backhaus opened the door and walked onto the small deck. Two short steps led down to the red dirt below.
Tom stepped out after him and was about to offer one last plea when he stopped dead in his tracks.
Every Recon Team at Phu Bai had assembled outside. The American Special Forces soldiers stood with their Montagnard teammates. The two MPs who had accompanied Tom from the front gate stood next to their jeep, looking nervous.
“Word travels fast,” Backhaus said to Tom before turning to address his men. “All One-Zeros—in with me for a briefing. One-Ones—prep your teams for an in-extremis POW rescue mission.”
The colonel turned back to Tom. “Get to medical. Have them patch you up. Then go to supply and draw new gear. After that, you come back and see me.” The grizzled CO looked at his watch. “You launch just after midnight.”
CHAPTER 53
Laos
TOM SAT IN THEdoor of the H-34 Kingbee next to the Vietnamese crew chief, who manned a .30 caliber machine gun, as they raced over the dark jungle below. The throaty growl of the engine reminded Tom of the motorcycle gang that passed through Gunnison, Colorado, when he was a kid—the rumble of Harleys and Indians as their riders twisted throttles, drowning out any competing sounds. The crew chief was the communications conduit to the pilots, and, with Tom’s passable Vietnamese, he was responsible for passing information to the cockpit. Communicating with the rest of the team would be via hand signals.
He turned his head to the left and looked inside the spacious compartment at the two American SF soldiers and eight Montagnards, then up toward the front where he could see the pilot’s and co-pilot’s feet in the raised cockpit. Without his team, Tom was a straphanger on this op. RT Idaho had volunteered to be the lead assault element. Both the One-Zero, Robert J. “Spider” Parks, and the One-One, John Stryker “Tilt” Meyer, had operated with and respected Quinn. They wanted to be the first team on the ground. They had been joined by Mang and Tuan of RT Havoc. In the three trailing helos were Doug “The Frenchman” LeTourneau, Pat Watkins, Lynne M. Black Jr., John Plaster, Larry Trimble, Eldon Bargewell, GenePugh, and Dick Thompson along with their ’Yard teammates. Jerry “Mad Dog” Shriver and Bob Howard had jumped in as well even though they had just returned from missions across the fence and were on stand-down. No one wanted to be left out of a mission where the lives of American POWs were on the line.
Tom always relished the flight to a target. Southeast Asia appeared so tranquil when looking down from a helicopter. He often found himself wondering if he would come back after the war to explore the mountains, jungles, and rivers without a rifle in hand. He marveled at the contrast. From the air, the lush, green rainforest seemed so peaceful, but once on the ground, under the triple canopy, the darkness hid insects, snakes, spiders, centipedes, tigers, and an enemy armed with AKs and RPGs. Death lurked beneath the peaceful façade. Tonight, that façade was softly illuminated by the glow of a crescent moon, making the craters left in the wake of B-52 bombing campaigns all the more prominent.
Hours earlier, Tom had broken free from medical on a steady diet of penicillin. He had six stitches in his arm, and his ribs were wrapped in an ACE bandage that didn’t seem like it did much. An IV in the medical tent and a meal at the Green Beret Lounge, where he answered a constant stream of questions from his SOG brethren, had reinvigorated him. His next stop had been supply followed by the armory. Drawing gear and weapons helped keep his mind off Quinn.
He assembled his new gear, including a CAR-15, which he immediately broke down, lubricated, and sighted in at the nearby range. He then assembled his op gear, which included a BAR web harness, canteens, gas mask, URC-10 emergency radio, rope for his Swiss seat, claymore mines, fragmentation grenades, smoke grenades, compass, morphine, signal flares, map, VS17 panel, sawed-off M79, and Browning Hi-Power. Lastly, he was issued a SOG Recon Knife to replace his Randall.
Rucks, usually weighed down with a hundred pounds of gear, were left behind for this op. This was a quick in-and-out POW rescue mission,not a recon mission where they would expect to spend days on the ground without support. This was different. They needed to move fast.
The Kingbees out of Da Nang and Hueys out of Nha Trang landed at Phu Bai for a premission briefing just before dusk. The Kingbee pilots wore distinctive black flight suits and baseball caps. Leather belts and holsters with revolvers hung low on their thighs like gunslingers of the American West. Their American Air Force counterparts flying the Huey gunships wore green fatigues with Smith & Wesson revolvers and 1911s in shoulder rigs.
Colonel Backhaus began the briefing with an introduction and broad intelligence overview before giving everyone involved a chance to back out; flying into Laos at night on an unauthorized POW rescue mission could end the careers of everyone involved. Not one person blinked an eye. Most thought they were not making it home from ’Nam anyway, so rescuing American POWs was as good a way to go out as any. He then turned the briefing over to Tom for a more detailed assessment of the mission objectives and tactical picture. The Frogman used a hastily constructed sand table with beer cans as guard towers, web belts as fence lines, bottle caps as vehicles, and cigarette packs as hooches to walk the assault force through the target area. Forty-millimeter rounds represented the known AA site, and smoke grenades represented suspected AA sites. Next up were the RT One-Zeros, who talked through their actions on the objective for their specific teams.
A fake Prairie Fire Emergency would be called in when the helos were twenty minutes from the target. Timing was essential. If a fast mover with napalm could not get to them for forty minutes, the helos would loiter for twenty minutes before continuing. The idea was for the Huey gunships to be just behind the jets or Skyraiders that would blanket all four sides of the valley with napalm, taking out any hidden AA sites just before the gunships hit the guard towers. Those Hueys would go into a pattern to provide close air support for the teams on the ground. The Kingbees would then drop into the center of the compound and insert their assaultersbefore immediately moving off to loiter nearby where they would await the call for extract.
Following a round of questions, it was time for team gear inspections. They would launch just after midnight for a time on target, air cover dependent, of around 0200, when it was thought the camp would be at its least alert.
Before boarding the birds, every team member test-fired a single round into a fifty-five-gallon drum filled with sandbags at the edge of the helo pad and placed tape over their muzzles to prevent mud and dirt from obstructing the barrels.
Tom felt something drip onto his neck, bringing him back to the present. He reached back, his gloved fingers returning stained with drops of fluid from a hose above.
Good. The bird had not run dry.
Even at altitude screaming toward their target, Tom could smell the hydraulic fluid. It mixed with the hot exhaust fumes emanating from the nine-cylinder radial engine in the odd-looking bulbous nose. The crew carried cases of the pink liquid with them, knowing that if they fed the machine, she would get them home.
The crew chief leaned over and let Tom know they were twenty minutes from target. The two Hueys leading them in banked to the left and radioed Colonel Backhaus that it was time to call in a Prairie Fire Emergency. The helos circled for five minutes and then continued farther into Laos, the crew chief giving Tom a thumbs-up and a big smile that highlighted his missing teeth.
It was a go.
Tom turned and flashed a thumbs-up to Spider Parks in the compartment behind him. The One-Zero returned the hand signal.
Tom looked down. Just days prior, he was on the ground traversing the terrain over which he now flew.
He had failed Quinn. Failed his brother-in-arms.
He tried in vain to push visions of Quinn and the Soviet advisor from his mind.
