A story by William L. Smutko
The lieutenant walks slowly and silently in the half light as he and his team follow a game trail through the jungle. Millenia of decayed leaves and twigs make the ground slippery. His feet are splayed out to help his balance, and he slides them forward to detect booby traps. He gently pushes aside vines and underbrush as he slips through, careful not to catch his camouflage fatigues or gear on anything. This extreme caution makes for slow, tedious going.
We’ll all have to pay close attention to what we’re doing twenty-four hours a day for the next six weeks if we’re going to survive, he thinks.
Another man moves the same way thirty feet ahead of him, and four more follow at thirty-foot intervals. Each has a US Army rucksack on his back and a camouflage-covered helmet on his head. The guy in front of the lieutenant carries a twelve-gauge automatic shotgun with an external clip. All the others carry M-16 assault rifles. Almost like a precision drill team, they each slide four steps, then stop, study their surroundings, and listen intently before moving again. It’s as if they aren’t there. They produce no sound, and their camouflage clothing helps them blend into, almost become part of, the jungle they’re moving through.
About a half hour later, the smell of decomposing vegetation changes to decomposing human flesh and sets the hackles up on Specialist 4 Vince Haase, who is walking point. He gestures off to his right and works his way over. The decomposing body of a Vietnamese wearing an NVA uniform lies in a four-foot-deep pit, impaled on punji stakes. A mat of woven twigs and small branches rests under him.
That trap was set for us, thinks Haase.
An hour before dark, First Lieutenant Dean Marszalek, using hand signals, calls a halt to set up camp for the night. Staff Sergeant Willard Faulkner organizes the rest of the patrol. He sends specialists Tom Okamoto and Enrico Perez to set fishing line snares baited with corn meal to catch paddy rats and birds to supplement their freeze-dried rations. He has the medic, Sergeant Gary Thompson, set up the sun still to collect drinking water.
I’d give a hundred dollars for a cold beer right now, thinks Thompson.
Faulkner takes Haase with him to set up trip wires about one hundred yards out from camp to alert the group of anyone approaching. Their camp won’t be visible to anyone else, but they won’t see anyone walking up on their position either. The lieutenant shuffles his way to the edge of a nearby clearing and uses his compass to shoot an azimuth to two hills, then draws a back azimuth from them on his map to confirm their position. They are fifteen miles south of the Demilitarized Zone and only five miles from the Laotian border.
They take turns disassembling and oiling their weapons, then cook their meal of fire-roasted paddy rat and pheasant.
Just pretend it’s rabbit, thinks Haase.
They eat in silence. The sound of a voice carries here. Then they put out the fire before nightfall because they don’t want it catching anyone’s attention.
The three levels of tree canopies soak up the little light available in the night sky. It’s dark—can’t-see-your-finger-touching-your-nose dark. All six of them take their boots off and put rubber-soled canvas booties on. Five lie down on their hammocks and pull their ponchos and poncho liners over them and, after two weeks of exhausting travel and short nights, quickly fall into a combat sleep—asleep but attuned to every sound. They take one-hour watches.
Faulkner feels a snake slither over him during the night. It wakes him, but he shrugs it off. All six of them hear a tiger chuff nearby, their sleep interrupted for the sixth time.
The lieutenant has the last watch and wakes everyone with three hours of dark left. They all shake out their boots to get rid of anything that might have crawled or slithered into them during the night. They put their boots on, roll up and pack their bedding, and have a quick breakfast of D ration bars and water.
Sausage gravy and biscuits would have been good, especially with a couple over-easy eggs on top, the yellow yolks running through the gravy, thinks Marszalek.
They head north toward the small village where their target lives.
“Nguyen Ching Dai was denounced as a high-ranking Viet Cong by his own brother-in-law,” CIA field agent Robertson said to Marszalek before the mission started. “Capture Ching Dai and bring him in for questioning. There is good intel the target is living in a small village about sixty miles north of here, above the DMZ.”
The lieutenant and his team have come twenty miles. Two more weeks to get there.
Three hours after sunrise, the rain starts, and the lieutenant signals a shower halt. All six take off their boots and fatigues and use unscented soap to wash their rank bodies. Two hours later, they break for lunch, distill more water, and verify their location. They each in turn disassemble and oil their weapons. Perez pulls a whetstone from a pants pocket and begins running the blade of his K bar knife across it until the knife is sharp enough to shave hair off his arm. Then he takes off his belt and strops the blade across it to remove the wire edge formed by the whetstone.
Marszalek checks their position again and thinks, It’s November. I would much rather be playing hockey, the cold wind rushing by as I speed down the ice.
* * *
He and Thompson, adrenaline on high, silently follow their noses to the east one hundred fifty yards. It takes them forty-five minutes to find the source, an NVA bivouac of about sixty men. It appears to have been there several days. The two soldiers melt back into the jungle and return to the rest of the team, and Marszalek marks the location of the encampment on his map. The six of them continue north on high alert for enemy pickets and booby traps.
We need to stay clear of this area, Marszalek worries. They’ll have patrols out. We need to stay awake.
Thompson slides his right foot forward and the toe of his boot pushes up against something solid. He looks down and sees a sharpened bamboo stick protruding from the ground, a punji stick. One of these can penetrate the sole of a boot and leave a nasty wound that will become infected quickly. His left boot hits another punji stick. The floor of the jungle is covered with them. He signals the lieutenant up to him and points out the punji field.
“Take a step back,” Marszalek whispers to Thompson. “Keep the punji field in sight and work your way to the west ’til we’re beyond it. Then we’ll work our way back to our original course.”
About three in the afternoon, Okamoto has the point and motions the lieutenant to come to him. When Marszalek gets there, he finds a well-used trail that leads in the direction of the NVA camp. A hint of noise whispers through the jungle. Marszalek and Okamoto disappear into the bush along with the rest of the team but stay close enough to see what’s coming down the trail.
An NVA soldier appears on the trail, moving rapidly. He’s followed by another and another. An hour later a whole company has passed by, headed for the camp.
Don’t let them see us or smell us or hear us, Faulkner prays.
They wait a full thirty minutes after the last guy passes before Marszalek has them cross the trail and move into the jungle on a northeast heading.
That night noises wake them eight times. Rarely do they get more than four hours of light sleep each night.
* * *
Looking down Thompson sees footprints in an area free of leaves. It looks like several people headed north. He motions for Marszalek to come up.
“Let’s follow them for a while.” the lieutenant whispers. “I’d like to know who they are.”
The jungle is as quiet as ever when an hour later Thompson sees what appears to be a woman lying on the jungle floor one hundred yards ahead. He motions for the lieutenant to come up.
Marszalek fans the team out to search the jungle and makes sure it is clear of other people.
They meet back at the woman on the trail, her eyes full of terror and pain. She has a newborn clutched to her breast.
Okamoto whispers, “What’s wrong with her?”
“Vaginal prolapse” replies Marszalek. “When the baby was born her vagina came out with it. The people she was with left her to die. They didn’t want her to slow them down.”
“Let’s leave her,” says Okamoto. She’ll slow us down.”
“She’s just a gook,” chimes in Perez. “Let’s leave her.”
“We can’t carry her.” says Haase.
“She weighs maybe a hundred pounds.” says Marszalek. “If we leave her to die, we’re no better than they are.”
“L. T., she’s just a gook and she’ll slow us down. I say we leave her.” declares Faulkner.
“Do you really want this woman and baby on your conscience on top of all the others? You had no choice with the others. We do with this one. Okamoto, Perez make a litter with your M-16s and a poncho. We’re only a couple of days from the firebase.”
* * *
Three days later the team approaches an American firebase on the DMZ. Still two hundred yards out, Marszalek uses the radio to contact the firebase to let them know his team is outside their perimeter and headed toward them.
Inside the compound, Marszalek radios headquarters with the location of the NVA bivouac.
Twenty minutes later, a forward air controller flies over in a Cessna 150. Thirty minutes after that, an AC-47 flies over and starts firing on the NVA bivouac. They can see it in the distance raining six thousand rounds per minute from each of three miniguns mounted in its cargo bay. The one-in-six red tracers are three solid lines of red connecting the aircraft with the ground. A US infantry battalion will be sent in after to assess the damage.
The lieutenant and his team eat a hot meal. They launder their uniforms, shower, and bed down in one of the squad tents for the sleep of the dead. Deep and dreamless, it lasts twenty-four hours.
The morning following their sleep, the team leaves the firebase with a platoon-sized patrol. An hour into the jungle, the six of them slip away to continue their mission into North Vietnam.
* * *
A couple of days later, Haase is walking point and hears something that makes no sense. He motions for Marszalek to come to him. When the lieutenant gets to him, rock and roll music and the unmistakable voice of the Armed Forces Network disc jockey Adrian Cronauer drift through the jungle. He notes their location on the map, then the team heads for the noise. They approach the source of the music with extreme caution, worried it’s a trap to lure them in. They find a US Air Force team installing equipment of some sort.
“What are you guys doing here?” Masrzalek asks, no longer afraid to talk because of the music blasting.
“We’re putting up a radio communications tropospheric reflector,” says the master sergeant leading the team.
“North of the DMZ?”
“We’re still in South Vietnam,” says the sergeant.
“No, you’re not,” argues Marszalek, unfolding his map. “You’re right here,” he says, pointing to their position on the map.
“No, we’re not,” says the sergeant defiantly.
The lieutenant lays the map on the ground, orients it to true north, locates two hills identifiable on the map, then shoots an azimuth to each and uses a pencil to draw a reverse azimuth from each hill. The lines cross just where he told them they were.
“We’re sixty miles from where we’re supposed to be.”
“You better get out of here now. That music has been heard and the NVA will be coming to check it out,” says the lieutenant.
* * *
The game trail leads them to a stream running across it. They wade across, keeping their weapons and supplies out of the water. Marszalek indicates they’ll make camp here. They set out their snares for people, rats, and birds. All six strip off their clothes. They do laundry and bathe in the stream. They’re eight days out from the firebase.
Perez and Okamoto strip some of the fishing line off the spool, tie on a hook, and bait it with pieces of mushroom pried off the dead trees. That evening they skewer the fish like hot dogs and roast them over the fire. Twenty minutes later, they pick the meat off the fish.
Haase is on watch about the third hour of darkness. They all wake to the sound of something running through the jungle toward them. A muntjac deer bursts through the underbrush and runs through their camp. It’s the fourth interruption of sleep so far tonight.
* * *
Eight hundred yards of open rice paddies interrupt the protective cover of the jungle. The team is most of the way across the open paddies when Marszalek hears what sounds like many people approaching from the jungle into which they are headed. He signals for everyone to remove his helmet, put his poncho on, kneel down, and pretend to plant rice. A company of NVA soldiers emerges from the jungle and walks along the dike right past the rice planters. The patrol spends another thirty minutes playing at planting rice before feeling it’s safe enough to move into the bush.
The adrenaline rush brought on by the NVA has subsided. And the slow, careful movement through the jungle combined with sleep deprivation starts to take its toll. Marszalek finds himself dropping into micro sleeps. His mind goes blank for a few seconds, and he has to reorient himself to his surroundings. He’s sure it’s happening to the others as well. They are still three days walk from Nguyen Ching Dai’s village. When they stop for a lunch break, he gives each of them an amphetamine tablet from the bottle the brigade surgeon gave him.
* * *
The target village is a mile from here. They spent all day watching it. They’ll watch it for two more to learn their target’s habits. It’s been raining for a day and a half, so all the wood is wet, no cooking fire. The six use fuel cans to boil water for their freeze-dried rations, which they don’t like to cook because spaghetti and beef stew have a distinct non-Vietnam smell that might attract attention.
After their meal, they spend the night sleeping in their ponchos with their backs against trees.
* * *
Their observation of Ching Dai—the CIA field agent had given them aerial photos of the village with his hooch marked and a photograph of him—shows that he uses the communal latrine, a hole surrounded by a four-foot-high thatch screen, every day about an hour after he wakes up. The privy is about fifty yards from the collection of dwellings, so it is unlikely anyone would see them grab him.
The rain has stopped. The team has been waiting in the cover of the jungle for two hours for their target to show. They see a lone person walking up the path. When he’s about twenty yards out, they recognize him as their target.
Marszalek waits for Ching Dai to enter the latrine. Faulkner, Okamoto, Thompson, and Haase keep watch while the lieutenant and Perez approach the privy. They stand up and raise their rifles over the walls. They catch Ching Dai with his pants down and whisper to him in Vietnamese to keep silent, finish his business, and come out.
Ching Dai comes out with his hands up. Perez ties a length of parachute cord around Dai’s waist, then ties his hands to the parachute cord belt. Dai is put in the middle of the line, three in front and three in back. Perez, as the one right behind Dai, is in charge of watching the prisoner.
They follow their trail back to where they had camped the night before because they can do so quickly. At the campsite they head southeast, making a different trail back in case someone picked up on the old trail coming north and is following it or has set up an ambush.
The team and their prisoner slide through the jungle along game trails, pushing vines and underbrush aside. After six hours, the lieutenant decides they’re far enough ahead of any pursuit that they can break for a meal. Perez has Ching Dai sit down, then unties his right hand and gives him a D ration bar and a canteen.
There’s been no time to capture any rats or pheasants, so that evening when they camp for the night, they eat freeze-dried again. Perez ties their captive’s feet together and unties his right hand so he can eat. After the meal Perez reties Dai’s hands, then lays a hammock down for him to lie on and covers him with a poncho and poncho liner.
* * *
The team has been out of freeze-dried food for a week and has been unsuccessful at trapping any wild animals for three days, since crossing the DMZ. Okamoto is walking point and gestures Marszalek forward. A wild water buffalo stands about fifty yards upwind ahead of them. The lieutenant ponders a moment, then sneaks closer to the animal, shoulders his M-16, and fires a single shot to the buffalo’s head just back of the ear. The beast doesn’t go down. Marszalek fires another. It takes a total of ten bullets to kill the animal. Marszalek motions up the rest of the team. They butcher the water buffalo and divvy up the loin portions among the six of them to carry, about thirty pounds per man. Marszalek uses the last of their pepper to cover the meat to keep the flies off. They load up and head away from where the gunshots were fired. They want to get as far away from there as quickly as possible before anyone comes to investigate.
They are sliding through the jungle about an hour south and east of the water buffalo carcass with Perez bringing up the rear. He gets a whiff of nuoc mam, Vietnamese fermented fish sauce. He eases the K bar knife from its sheath, then stops, turns around, and stabs, all in one motion. He buries the knife in the chest of a Viet Cong who was sneaking up on them and apparently planning to take out the whole team one at a time with a machete. Their weapons all have sound suppressors on them, but he had probably heard what little sound there was and had come to investigate. They walk another two hours before stopping to cook some of the meat.
* * *
Two weeks later and fifteen pounds lighter than he was when he started the mission, Marszalek delivers Nguyen Ching Dai to CIA field agent Robertson and writes Perez up for a Bronze Star for Valor.
Captain Byrne, the ranger company CO, comes into the tent as Marszalek is finishing his after-action report and says, “Good patrol. None of you were killed or injured and you brought back the guy you were supposed to. Oh, by the way, Robertson found out about six weeks after you left that Nguyen Ching Dai is not Viet Cong after all. Ching Dai’s brother-in-law just wanted him eliminated. And that NVA encampment you called in, the battalion that went in after the air strike found an abandoned campsite. They must have left before we sent in the air strike.”
featured in issue #15a