South China Sea

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The moment the massive tires of the Hercules touched and screeched on the runway at the Gia Lam airfield southeast of Hanoi’s center, the plane came under sniper fire, several rounds penetrating the fuselage, a ricochet striking and zinging off an EMREF trooper’s helmet. “How rude!” Doolittle said.

“Jesus Christ,” D’Lupo said, ducking. “Thought this friggin’ place was supposed to be secure.”

“Settle down,” Freeman intoned coolly over the PA system, not showing his own surprise. “Bound to be a few Chinese insurgents — take a potshot in hopes of shaking us up, then trot off home to bed. Right?”

“Fucking shakes me up,” D’Lupo told Martinez, the latter agreeing, gripping his rifle tightly. Doolittle meanwhile watched the photojournalism Marte Price, quickly jotting down notes, stopping for a moment to push away a wisp of hair beneath her helmet.

“General,” she asked Freeman, “how about a shot of the EMREF spearhead just before they deplane?”

Freeman nodded. “All right, boys, Ms. Price wants a photo of you heroes. Smile — and that’s an order.”

Marte Price was annoyed. What she didn’t want was a photograph of 126 troops grinning from ear to ear. The flash seemed to illuminate the whole plane. One soldier asleep — the tension having already drained him — suddenly sat up. “What the—”

It was good for a laugh, and Marte Price was satisfied. A startled soldier was a good pic for the next edition of the Des Moines Register. But already, even as the huge plane was coming to a standstill, she was feeling dishonest, somehow corrupted, knowing full well that the Register’s editor, unless told otherwise, would run the picture as one of a soldier in a moment of high combat stress. As such it would be taken off the wire by most major papers in America, particularly given the fact that apart from CNN, Freeman had excluded any major media network.

Two of the aircraft’s crew stood by as the massive rear door/ramp was lowered and two Humvee “scouts,” each armed with a TOW missile launcher and.50 caliber machine gun, rolled off onto the tarmac. They were followed by the two lines of troops, none of whom were below the level of E-7 Sergeant First Class when they volunteered for EMREF duty. The sniping had stopped.

“You figure this is worth fifty-five bucks a month?” D’Lupo said, referring to the Airborne’s hazardous duty pay.

“No way,” Martinez responded.

Freeman saw two Vietnamese, one a cadre — a political officer — coming toward him dressed in traditional black pajamas and lion-tamer hat, the other a senior military officer dressed in the camouflage green khaki of the new Vietnam uniform.

“General Freeman,” the cadre said, smiling. “We welcome you and your troops to Vietnam.”

“Cam on,” Freeman said, extending his hand first, though he didn’t like it, to the political officer and then to General Vinh.

“What’d he say?” D’Lupo whispered. “ ‘C’mon!’?”

“No, you fucking wop,” Martinez said. “It’s gook for ‘thank you.’ “

“You speak it too?” a surprised D’Lupo pressed.

“Yeah. Me and the general do our homework, see?”

“Oh yeah,” D’Lupo challenged. “All right then, what’s ‘fuck off’ in Vietnamese?”

“Easy,” Martinez said. “Chuc ngu ngon!”

“All right, smartass, so you know gook.”

In the penumbra of light about the ramp, D’Lupo saw a woman in Vietnamese uniform, then another carrying baskets toward the plane. D’Lupo couldn’t take his eyes off the woman. It seemed as if her whole leg was showing. She was walking toward Freeman, who was politely but firmly telling his Vietnamese host, through an interpreter now, that he was given ample assurances by Hanoi via the Pentagon that the Hanoi airfields were secure and that if there were sniping around Gia Lam Field, why the hell didn’t Hanoi tower divert the American Hercules thirteen miles north of the city proper to Noi Bai Airport?

Through his interpreter the cadre assured the general that the Gia Lam Airport was secure. There had been only one sniper, an ex-NVA regular who, the cadre explained, was mentally unstable, so that when he saw an American plane, and a huge one at that, as big as one of the B-52 bombers that had attacked Hanoi in the Vietnam War, he had had a false memory — the cadre meant “flashback”—and shot at the big plane.

“I believe,” the cadre added, “that you have similar problems with veterans in the United States?”

“Yes,” Freeman replied, tempted to say that as he understood it, Marxist-Leninism would make a balanced personality impossible, but realizing the cadre’s explanation was an olive branch being extended. Freeman accepted it. “Yes, we shot up one another quite a bit, didn’t we?” After the interpreter had finished, the cadre smiled, shaking Freeman’s hand again.

By now almost every one of Freeman’s 127-man spearhead had been given a lei of welcome by one of the female V.A. regulars, CNN already bouncing it off a satellite, beaming it back to the States, and Marte Price busily taking shots of the cadre and the two generals meeting, each handshake a polite but not overly warm gesture of willing cooperation. Once he realized the CNN camera was rolling, Freeman — the first note of anxiety present in his voice since he’d left Hawaii — called his aide over. “Bob, for God’s sake make sure CNN gets a shot of the British SAS boys. Emphasize that this is a U.S.-led U.N., I repeat U.N., action, and that other countries will be making their contributions to the U.N. force within a matter of days. And make sure those—” He stopped, unable to think of the right word for a second.

“Gurkhas,” Cline said.

“Exactly,” Freeman said, slapping him on the shoulder. “And mention the Aussies, New Zealanders, South Koreans…” He steered Cline away from the Vietnamese general and cadre and toward his heavily loaded troops, his voice subdued. “But Bob, for Chrissake don’t say anything about the Japanese support — not even logistical support. These jokers in Hanoi, like much of Asia, hate the Japanese — figure the Japs still haven’t made amends for atrocities.”

“How about our My Lai?” Cline asked, reminding Freeman of the massacre of a whole Vietnamese village by U.S. troops.

“Bad as it was, Bob, it doesn’t start to compare with the widespread rape and pillage perpetrated by the sons of Nippon — sons of bitches traumatized the whole of Southeast Asia. And Bob…?”

“Sir?”

Freeman’s voice was friendly enough as he smiled back at the Vietnamese general and cadre before saying quietly to his aide, “Bob, coming down the ramp I heard some joker use the word ‘gook.’” Now Freeman was smiling broadly. “You tell ‘em if I hear any disparaging remarks about our U.N. allies, I will personally cut the offender’s prick off. You got that?”

“Yes, General.”

General Vinh asked in heavily accented English how long Freeman wanted to rest his troops before moving up to the snake — the name given by the Vietnamese Army to the winding front line that snaked its way up, down, and at times around the base of the hills north of Hanoi.

“Rest?” Freeman responded. “General, we didn’t come here to rest. Vietnamese people are being attacked by China, the U.N. sent us to help, and that means now. We can move out the moment my boys finish relieving themselves. Main body of Second Army in—” He almost said Japan. “—is already assembling for airlift. First planeload’ll be here in a matter of days.”

General Vinh understood most of it, except for the part about “relieving” themselves.

“Gia ve sinh,” the interpreter explained.

“Yes,” Freeman cut in. “Gia ve sinh,” adding, “Thunder box!”

When this was explained to General Vinh, he uttered an “Ah…” of recognition, smiling broadly. “Toi—Come,” he said, motioning to a line of ten three-ton trucks — all American made — looking the worse for wear, their engines spitting and coughing in two lines beyond four portable toilets that had been rolled into the apron of light about the Hercules.

As the trucks, their “blackout” headlights mere slits of light in the enormous darkness, rolled north from the Gia Lam airfield, Freeman’s spearhead troops, whose main function now was to carry out a recon in force for the benefit of Second Army, heard the sound of clapping in the darkness. Through their infrared goggles, against a soupy green background, they could see lines of Vietnamese civilians clapping here and there and waving tiny U.S.