Freeman turned to his press officer. “Boyd, sink that coffee you’ve got and come with me.”
Outside, the darkness seemed to be vibrating as F-14 Tomcats and F-18s flew in low, dropping their loads amid curtains of red and white tracer crisscrossing the sky. The AA tracer was coming from those Chinese who had made it through the tunnel system from the southern side of the hill to the northern slope of Disney Hill, only to find their exits blocked by the bombing. Even so, several of them managed to hastily man what triple A they had managed to hide in the northern complex.
Meanwhile those Vietnamese regulars and the American forces nearest the hill’s summit began “walking” their mortars across the PLA’s triple A positions at a nice, easy, murderous fire of ten to fifteen twelve-pound 82mm shells a minute. To an outsider, the fact that the Americans were using 82mm rounds instead of their standard 81mm rounds might have seemed inconsequential, but Freeman’s decision, indeed his insistence, that all U.S. front-line units from Second Army in the USVUN line trade their standard-issue 81mm mortars for North Vietnamese Army 82mm mortars proved to be a brilliant tactical move.
Freeman had always been a keen student of past battles and Benjamin Franklin, how for the want of a nail the horse wasn’t shod and for the want of a horse the battle was lost. He had also remembered the lessons of Korea and of ‘Nam when, with American GIs running out of their heavy 81mm mortar rounds, they overran enemy positions to discover piles of unused mortar shells, but shells that were useless to them because that extra 1mm diameter of Russian, Vietnamese, and Chinese 82mm rounds would not fit into the U.S. 81mm barrel.
Now the mortar positions the USVUN forces had managed to capture or overrun on their way up from the rice paddies to the southern slope of Disney Hill provided the Americans with lots of extra “help-yourself’ mortar rounds, courtesy of General Wang’s retreating units.
As Douglas Freeman set out back down the hill with Boyd, giving him a running commentary on what they must tell the media pack, which had now exploded in size due to Jorgensen’s “come one and all — nothing to hide” policy, the press officer suddenly fell in the darkness. Freeman, crossing over so he could use his right arm rather than his bandaged left to help, heard Boyd moaning and cussing — unusual for the press officer. As Freeman reached down to help him up, he felt a sodden, metallic-smelling warmth, with the consistency of a firm sponge — the brain’s pulse, like a thing breathing, not yet ended. Freeman kept moving, hearing bullets cracking past him as he crouched low, wondering why in hell the USVUN’s bandages were all white instead of khaki.
Boyd’s death told him something else, something he didn’t like at all, that some PLA sons of bitches were still in the tunnels on this the southern USVUN side of the hill. Not only were they there, but they had the balls not to sit quiet but pop up, God knows where, and were conducting sniper attacks using the momentary but brilliant light of white phosphorus and fuel air explosive against which to silhouette their USVUN targets.
When he reached the rear MUST area — Medical Unit Self-Contained and Transportable — where several reporters were stationed, most wanting to go up forward, Freeman immediately reported that Boyd had been killed.
“I’m sorry,” said Marte Price, who was in the MUST, her flesh wound well on the mend.
Freeman said nothing, sitting down on a box near the MUST’s long, snaking hoses that led from the refrigerator-sized gas turbine unit, unraveling his bandaged hand, now soaked in blood, the wound having opened up as he’d run down the hill, his adrenaline pumping. “Look,” he told Marte as a medical corpsman came toward him. “You’ve been in the thick of it on the road up to Lang Son. You deserve a break.” The corpsman took a pair of L scissors and cut the dressing from Freeman’s wrist to his fingertips.
“You’ve got this dirty again, General, sir. I’ll have to—”
“All right,” Freeman said. “Do what you have to, but if you repeat what you’re going to hear now, I’ll have your hide. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right.” The general waited for ten seconds or so to catch his breath, then told Marte Price that it had been reported there were American MIAs who’d been sighted in the south. She said nothing. She knew that there were still over two thousand MIAs unaccounted for. She took her notepad out.
“Rumor is,” Freeman told her, “that they’re yeller-bellies, crossed over, betrayed their country for preferential treatment.” Marte Price remembered reading about Korea, where dozens had gone over to the Chinese, so many that the government ordered an official inquiry. “How many?” she asked him.
“I don’t know. Two kingpins we know about and we want to get, but we’ve got a problem. Jorgensen.”
“Why’s he a problem?”
“You obviously don’t know Dangerous Dean Jorgensen. He’s a nice guy, but not too much in his top story. Career man. A yes-man. Pentagon sent him to Hanoi GHQ because he’ll do whatever Washington tells him, no matter how stupid it may be in the field. He won’t rock the boat.” Freeman paused for a moment. “I should tell him we have to go get these jokers, make an example of them. They’re supposedly helping the Khmer Rouge, trail finders on the Cambodian border, which means they were probably Special Forces, if they know the area’s trails that well. Might have been with the Montagnards — hill people — before they crossed over. I don’t know, but if we let ‘em lead those murdering Khmer bastards to hit our left flank, out of Laos, well, neither Vinh nor I want a two- front war. But if we stop them now before— Christ!”
The corpsman was dousing the punji stick wounds with iodine.
“Go on,” Freeman told him, then turned back to Marte Price. He could tell in the spill of light from the MUST hospital that she was excited by the story, her bosom rising and falling fast in the sweat-drenched khaki. He felt himself getting aroused.
“How many do you think there are, General — I mean MIAs?”
He grimaced as the iodine seeped deeper into the wounds. “I honestly don’t know. Two, two hundred, who knows for sure? But we have a definite sighting. A guy — liaison officer from Ho Chi Minh City — apparently picked up their trail in a place called Dalat — hill country a ways south of here.”
“General,” Marte said, “I appreciate the scoop — it’d get me on CNN — but I’m not some hick in from the sticks. You’re using me to bypass Jorgensen — and Washington.”
“Am I?” The corpsman was putting a new bandage on.
“You bet your sweet ass you are.”
“That’s no way to talk.”
“It’s what you understand.”
Freeman exhaled heavily. “All right, but it’s no game, Marte.” It was the first time he’d called her by her first name, and she didn’t need to make a note of it. “If we can get the green light,” he said, “to send a recon party to, say, the Laotian-Vietnamese border, we could kill two birds with one stone.”
Marte saw where he was going, a chance to actually find two MIAs while serving notice to the Khmer Rouge to stay in their own backyard. She also saw herself in her mind’s eye on the “Larry King Show” via special hookup with Hanoi. Just one MIA found would be one hell of a story amid the present inconclusive seesaw battle between the PLA and USVUN.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll run it if the networks okay it.”
“Think so?”
“I know so. And if you get the public demanding immediate action, our reconnaissance down there’ll send a strong message to Beijing, and the Khmer will hopefully stop a second front or at least prevent a fifth column from attacking us on our left flank.”
“One thing I don’t get, General. What’s in it for the Khmer Rouge?”
“What’s always in it for those psychos? More killing? Power? Those guys are on another planet.”
“Thanks,” she said quietly. “How’s the hand?”
“It’ll be fine. If I were you, I’d bounce your story from an unnamed source off the satellite right now.” She started walking away, and he caught a glimpse of her derriere in a residual stutter of flare light. He felt as hard as a rock.
She stopped, walked back to him, and spoke softly. “Is a dawn attack still on?”
He was hugely disappointed, for as she’d turned to come back, he would have sworn it was going to be to utter some term of endearment. “Yes,” he answered, “it’s on.”
“You think you’ll be able to push them back — all the way down the north slope?”
