Bian Mountain, he’d head back to Saigon and turn his attention to some other problem that was more satisfying, maybe helping with the American Vietnamese adoption agency.
When the clerk arrived, he came in beaming. He had everything Bac Baker needed, and was especially proud of the rental. It was a jeep, either U.S. Army surplus, or as the Vietnamese had done with all the helos the U.S. had left behind, it was made up by cannibalizing the wrecks of several jeeps. The fact that he was now hiring a U.S.- made jeep to look for U.S. MIAs and POWs captured by the Vietnamese who were now allies with Americans struck Baker as an irony that only Vietnam vets would fully appreciate.
“Four-wheel drive!” the clerk announced proudly.
Baker nodded. “So I hear.”
“Good luck.”
Baker thanked him, then immediately wondered what the clerk had meant. Good luck for what? Did Ha Ha know more about his reason for going to Lak village, or had he, Baker, let it slip somehow? Then again, there wasn’t anything particularly secretive about an American official investigating a report about U.S. MIAs and POWs. In fact, maybe Ha Ha could help him. “You know anything about American MIAs and POWs?”
“No, no, nothing,” Ha Ha said.
“I’d pay good money.” Baker held up a twenty, and could have sworn he saw the clerk salivating at the prospect of more American dollars, but the Vietnamese’s answer was still no.
It was odd, Baker thought, because the clerk could have made up any old story and taken the twenty.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“It’s about time we got a break,” Freeman told his HQ staff. He was referring to an intelligence report from one of General Vinh’s reconnaissance patrols that had revealed the reason so many Chinese had so suddenly appeared at the beginning of the war around Dong Dang and Lang Son. Vinh’s patrols, most of which were badly mauled, returning with only half their strength, were reporting that the exits of an elaborate tunnel complex had been found just south of Dong Dang and that Chinese regulars apparently moving at night through the tunnels had holed up in the caves around Lang Son, ready for the massive attack on the Vietnamese Army. And the same had apparently happened eastward near Loc Binh.
“ ‘Course, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to Vinh’s boys,” Freeman pointed out. “They’re probably the best damn tunnelers in the world.” He reminded his staff of the vast tunnel complexes, not only the maze of over a hundred miles at Chu Chi in old Saigon, but those that the NVA had dug in the north, tunnels that not even the bombs of the B-52s could penetrate or uproot, and the tunnels that honeycombed the earth beneath Beijing since the time when China had feared nuclear attack from the Soviet Union.
“We’ve been hit,” Freeman told Vinh, “with the old ‘one slow, four quick’ strategy.”
Vinh agreed, leaving it to the interpreter to explain the technique to Freeman’s HQ staff. “The method is simple, very slow at first and extremely effective. One slow means take time to plan logistical needs to the smallest detail, the amount of rice for each soldier, the number of rounds, amount of bandages, morphine, dried fish — everything needed for an offensive from battalion to divisional level. And practice, practice, practice for the attack — all the tunnels ending up in areas directly beneath the target. Once all is set, then the Chinese carry out the four quicks: mobility, attack, tactics, and withdrawal. It is a massive hit and run.”
“Only this time,” Freeman interjected, “there was no ‘run.’ They caught the Viet—” He stopped. “They caught the Vietnamese and U.S. with our pants down while we were trying to defend the Lang Son road. Coming up all around us. For all we know, gentlemen, our blue on blue with General Vinh’s force might have begun with legitimate fire from PLA gophers. They pop up here and there in the jungle long enough to draw our fire, confuse us with the possibility of an ambush, then disappear down their warrens while we’re still firing at anything that moves.”
Freeman stepped back to the Play-Doh mock-up of the area between Dong Dang and Loc Binh in the north down to the airfield at Kep. “One thing’s for certain, gentlemen. We’re going to have to retake what we’ve lost, but first we have to stop the advance, and then we’re going to have to engage the sons of bitches in the tunnels as we—” He almost said, “As we did in ‘Nam,” but with Vinh present, he thought it was more diplomatic not to say it. Major Cline couldn’t help a wry smile. Perhaps they’d make a diplomat of Freeman after all.
General Vinh said something, but the interpreter balked. Vinh, a chain-smoker, gestured to the interpreter to tell Freeman exactly what he’d said. The interpreter faced Freeman. “General Vinh said you are correct — that sooner or later you will have to rid the tunnels of the PLA, the same as you tried to do with the Viet Cong sons of bitches.”
Freeman looked at Vinh, the latter’s face in a cloud of smoke, nodded and, smiling broadly, extended his hand to Vinh. As they shook hands in the camaraderie of soldiers, both men’s HQ staffs clapped appreciatively. It was a rare moment in which old animosities were forgotten and only the task at hand mattered: to defeat the enemy.
Freeman circled the low country east of Ban Re and southwest of Loc Binh. “I propose sending in elements of First Division Air Cavalry along these ridges above the valley — a battalion westward to sever the Ban Re-Lang Son railroad and get enough artillery in there—” He bracketed the valley area between Loc Binh and Ban Re. “—to pour down fire into the valley. Give Wang and Wei something to think about in the north besides their main force advance. Meanwhile, General, your divisions can go in with my Second Division east of Kep. That way we’ll hit ‘em back and front.”
Vinh looked unconvinced and ventured a few words in English on the subject. “You like high ground, Americans?”
“We do,” Freeman responded.
“I remember.”
“So do I, General.”
Vinh now told Freeman through his interpreter that he thought the plan was sound and simple and he endorsed it, but he wondered if his battalions might be landed along with the Americans to deal with the tunnels. Otherwise what the Americans would win by day would be lost by night, the PLA using the tried-and-true method of Mao — of not attacking until one had overwhelming strength and retreating if one didn’t, a tactic that might tie down the Americans for weeks, particularly if the PLA, as the general was sure they would, retreated en masse to the labyrinth of tunnels. Why not leave the artillery and the lower, wetter regions of the valleys to the Americans and leave the infantry fighting at night to the Vietnamese?
Freeman was mulling it over. Vinh said something else to the interpreter, the latter telling Freeman with a tone of apology, “General Vinh intends no insult to the American forces who have so generously come to help stop the Chinese aggression, but in the unfortunate war between the Republic of Vietnam and the United States, many of the Viet Cong spent their lives in the tunnels, where there were first aid stations, ammunition dumps, kitchens, dormitories, wells — that these men lived in and operated from the tunnels.”
“Cu Chi,” said Freeman, and Vinh and his staff immediately showed pleasure in the recognition of Freeman’s knowledge of the Vietnam War, Major Cline explaining to the much younger Captain Boyd that the huge American base at Cu Chi had unknowingly been built on an extensive Viet Cong tunnel complex from which VC would emerge at night, kill, steal, and generally create chaos, then disappear back down the tunnels, leaving the Americans demoralized and their commanders puzzled as to how in hell the VC were getting through the base’s extensive razor wire and machine-gun-defended perimeter.
“Of course,” Freeman said, “don’t forget that our boys went down after — them.” He had almost said “after you.”
Vinh acknowledged the bravery of the U.S. “tunnel rats” but pointed out that the unfortunate war was now long ago, and he wondered whether the skill of tunnel clearance was still with the Americans. The Vietnamese, on the other hand, had been using the tunnel complexes almost continuously since that war against China’s aggressive forays into the Republic of Vietnam. Again Vinh explained that General Freeman must not take this as an insult, for the American tunnel rats had shown great bravery and were fearless despite the booby traps.
Freeman thanked the general for his suggestions, saying that he, Freeman, would welcome all the help he could get from Vinh’s tunnel clearers but that he thought it important that wherever possible, Americans and
