ridge that slanted up from the wet, muddy fields, over which thick, white smoke was now pooling, having been blown away from the PLA positions. But neither the advancing U.S. infantry battalion nor the FAC or Tomcat pilots could see any Chinese on the far side of the ridge.
Freeman grasped the field phone and coughed roughly to rid his throat of “smoke scrape.”
“Now listen, Colonel, I want your boys to do two things simultaneously. First I want Alpha Company to get up to the ridgeline facing Loc Binh — watch for booby traps and dig in. Then I want rats from Bravo Company to go down after the PLA, and Charlie Company to stay in reserve so when those tunnel maggots come up for air after we smoke ‘em out, we’ll have reception for them. You got that? Over.”
“Roger. Alpha top of the ridge, Bravo farther down, and Charlie covers the rear. Over.”
“How many tunnelers you got there, Colonel? Over.”
“Half a dozen trained, General. Over.”
“Not enough. You grab anyone — Vietnamese or U.S. — under five-four and weighing under 145 and send ‘em down. Over.”
“I’ll do my best, General. Over.”
“No you won’t. You’ll flush those chinks outta there for us to shoot or I’ll have your ass. Out!”
LaSalle had made a special note of Freeman’s use of the word “chinks.”
He waited till he heard the next Medevac chopper come in, its prop wash dispersing the smoke as several medics loaded two badly wounded men on its side litters. The sergeant told the Frenchman he couldn’t ride this one out. They had several walking wounded with serious enough “bleeds” that he’d have to wait.
“No sweat,” he answered loudly as Alpha Company’s mortars pounded the top of the Loc Binh ridge. LaSalle waited. He didn’t care if they thought him a coward, bolting from the battle. Not if he could get time to really do a cinema verite, as it were, of the great American general, Freeman. LaSalle didn’t like Americans, never had. If the French were too proud, the Yankees were much too cocky. He planned to take them down a peg or two. He could see his prizewinning article now: “Pierre LaSalle at the Front! Exclusive!” LaSalle had never forgotten Freeman’s comments about the French unwillingness to let the USAF overfly French airspace during the bombing attack on Khadafy in Libya. “The frogs only care about the frogs. Their idea of collective security is to have a multinational force protect France, and to hell with quid pro quo!” The only American LaSalle liked was Jerry Lewis.
Battalion leader Colonel Melbaine had Alpha Company atop the ridge, as Freeman had ordered, and Charlie Company was spread west to east at the base of the slope, forming a backup line about three hundred yards long.
Several of the tunnel rats from Bravo Company, stripped to the waist, were preparing themselves with field- phone transmitting throat mikes and transmitter packs that nowadays obviated the need of spool wire trailing behind. In addition to the mike and 7-shaped flashlight, each rat went down with a .45, spare clips in side pockets.
Colonel Melbaine said he had only five qualified rats ready to go. He needed more to go down, but guys he’d thought were around five feet four and around 145 pounds had suddenly grown fatter — said they’d “love” to go down but, fuck it, they were too wide.
General Freeman turned to Major Cline. “Bob, get me a kit I’m going down.”
“General, Jesus, sir — pardon me — but you’ll get stuck down there.”
“Don’t be so goddamn rude. I’m in top physical shape.”
“But sir—”
“C’mon, Bob, don’t give me dance. Get me a flashlight, a .45, and a mike/transmitter unit.”
With the five other rats ready, he signaled the six of them to go down. A second later each man was down a hole in the fire-ravaged earth.
In the darkness, Freeman found the arched runnel, dug by the PLA for the PLA, as much a squeeze as Bob Cline had predicted, his heart thumping so hard that he felt sure the whole of Bravo Company must now be privy to his fear. He felt carefully in front of him, using his knuckles to rap the damp, cool earth, the PLA known to set punji sticks, razor-sharp angled bamboo that would go right through a man’s boot, the earthen top of such traps often built to support the lighter PLA troops but not the generally heavier-built Americans.
His flashlight fell on a Z-shaped corner, constructed to prevent grenade shrapnel or concussion from wiping out a whole length of tunnel rather than just a portion of it. “Twenty feet in,” came Freeman’s subdued voice, “passed a Z, going toward a U bend.” Like a bomb squad member or test pilot, he was recording everything for them. Should he get killed, the next rat down would know how far to go before he could expect anything new. He heard a crack like a stick breaking. One of his tunnel rats had made a contact, the shot echoing through the tunnel complex, but whether left or right of him, he couldn’t say. He was halfway around the U bend when he came across something he had never seen or heard about in the tunnels before — a saloonlike bamboo door.
Breathing hard, sweat breaking out on his neck, he took a moment to compose himself. Then he noticed another tunnel veering off to the right, so that he had a choice, either straight ahead into the tunnel or to veer off to the right. He heard a noise, the scurrying of some animal, and felt the wet rush of a huge gray rat along his side that caused his whole body to shiver. “Am at a bamboo door,” he reported to those topside. “Have probably gone in eighty feet. Another section of tunnel goes off to the right.”
Which way to go? Bamboo door looked fishy, as if it was inviting him to come in. Perhaps it was a PLA sign that beyond lay a dead-end storage area. Was that where the rat or whatever had scurried past him had come from? He turned the flashlight on and off just long enough for him to see that below the door there was some spilled rice. “Huh,” Freeman said gruffly, desperately fighting a growing sense of claustrophobia and the stench of rotten air. “Door definitely looks wrong. Ten to one you touch it and you trip a grenade.”
His throat was bone dry, despite the cool dampness of the fetid tunnel. “Will use white smoke to make vertical shafts visible if I find any. Am resting awhile before I move. Out.” It also gave Freeman time to listen for a few minutes to hear, despite the steady thunder and staccato of battle overhead, if there was any movement coming his way.
The door drew him toward it, but he resisted the temptation — it was a sucker’s trap if ever there was one. He took the right tunnel instead.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The move of prisoners from Upshut Island to the mainland was as abrupt as it was unexpected. The South Chinese Intelligence Bureau had suddenly been apprised of the disposition of American naval forces in the South China Sea. It was impressive, with at least six Hunter/Killer Los Angeles subs within range of the island, which was merely another way of saying that if any PLA aircraft took off from the island against the U.S. Seventh Fleet, they would immediately be brought down by the Seventh Fleet’s surface-to-air missiles.
And so, in one report by the Chengdu Intelligence Bureau, the reason for keeping U.N. POWs on the island as hostages against the U.S. air attack no longer made any sense. What was the use of having allied hostages on Upshut Island to protect the runway from U.S. bombs if the PLA planes on the airstrip were rendered unusable because of the Seventh Fleet’s missiles? Much better, it was decided by Beijing, to move the POW hostages to a location where they could be of more use as hostages and/or coolies.
And so, in a stench of sweat and kerosene fumes, and as quickly as they’d been brought to Upshut Island, the American, Australian, Vietnamese, and other U.N. POWs were placed aboard PLA transports clearly marked with a red cross, blindfolded and handcuffed to the inside lugs on the plane’s fuselage, and flown north from the Paracel Islands, then east into Chengdu province. They were then taken to yet another airfield in the making, one not invulnerable to missiles such as the Tomahawk, but a field in China proper, not in the disputed islands of the South China Sea.
It was thought that though the Americans might drop bombs on their own if strategic considerations deemed it imperative to do so, the U.S. would not sacrifice the other POWs — the Australians, Vietnamese, and British. It
