“Perhaps,” the President said, “but there’s always the possibility that they might know about other MIAs — at least, that’s a recurring theme of many of the faxes I’m getting.”
“Exactly,” Noyer said. “If we’re seen as not doing anything about the MIAs, we look pretty hard and nasty. No matter where they are, we always try to get our people back.”
“We’re not talking here about one of your ‘company’ men,” Ellman told the CIA chief. “We’re talking about turncoats.”
“Yes, we are talking about one of the company’s men. His name is — correction,
“Who the hell are—” the Marine commander began.
“Salt and Pepper,” the President explained. “Apparently one’s white, the other black.”
“Oh.. ”
“Look,” the President said, “I’m going to tell Jorgensen to sit on his order to relieve Freeman — at least for twenty-four hours — before we decide. This will give me time to weigh all the facts.”
Ellman’s beeper sounded. He immediately clicked it off and excused himself. Two minutes later he was back, telling the President and assembled Chiefs of Staff that Larry King’s producer was on the line. “They want someone to interview about Freeman’s decision to cross over into Laos.”
No one volunteered.
The President gave Ellman the nod. “Tell them you’ll do it, Bruce. And before you go on, make sure we’ve monitored public reaction, not only the MIA business, but the public’s reaction to USVUN troops being in Laos, or anything else connected with this business.”
Noyer was appalled—
Ellman went to the fax office and started going through the piles of faxes with another aide. He shook his head disgustedly, commenting to the aide, “ ‘Course, Rush Limbaugh’s for it. He’d like Freeman to invade Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand as well. Might as well throw in Singapore and Malaysia while he’s at it too.”
“What are you going to tell them?” another aide asked. “On the ‘Larry King Show,’ I mean?”
“I don’t know,” Ellman replied curtly. “That other pile of faxes over there — what are they about?”
“They’re concerns about deforestation in Southeast Asia, applauding Freeman’s concern about the natural habitat. Greenpeace faxes, most of them.”
“Greenpeace!” Ellman said in a tone of disgust. “They’re more worried about animals and plants than they are people.” Ellman was still mumbling about Freeman and the “goddamn mess” he’d gotten them all into when more Greenpeace faxes arrived.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
One of Echo column’s two-man point security team was armed with a Winchester five-round 1200 riot shotgun, while his partner was sporting a Heckler & Koch MP5K submachine gun, a weapon of choice in the Special Forces, the fully automatic gun set for three-round bursts of 9mm Parabellum.
Nothing had moved for hours as they, the twenty-five-man attack team behind them, and the rear-end security pair from Foxtrot, waited. If “Audacity, audacity, always audacity” was Freeman’s motto, “Patience, patience, and more patience” would serve the three thirty-man Special Forces columns.
It had been an especially difficult lesson for some of the American and British Special Forces, who were more used to urgent rescue and fast, deadly antiterrorist actions. Even so, every man knew that a mistake, a premature move, a bush mistaken for an enemy soldier and fired upon, a fart, a cough, could cost his life and the lives of the other twenty-nine men in his column.
Approximately three miles to the south beneath the jungle canopy, Foxtrot column also lay in wait, while in the marshy area south of Dien Bien Phu, under Captain Roscoe, Delta column had taken over what high ground there was. Men’s bodies, particularly the chest, were bloodied by leeches and assailed by mosquitoes.
Of the three columns, it was Delta that craved, prayed, for action, just to be able to move, to deal with the goddamn leeches, to smack a mosquito stone fucking dead.
The men of Delta were not to be disappointed, for the PLA Airborne Regiment 7885, which meant it had been formed on August 7, 1985, en route to the valley around Dien Bien Phu, were on the red light — all standing, making final checks and adjustments before the jump into the low but heavy gray overcast.
Delta column’s thirty men, unlike the sixty in Echo and Foxtrot, were not strung out on one side of a trail behind a line of trip-wire claymore mines, but instead were dispersed in an oval-shaped perimeter, ten men on either side and five each at the oval’s ends. In this way they could watch forces either way, in the event that the Khmer-led guerrillas or PLA decided to outflank Echo and Foxtrot, now that they’d been told by a bird-dog Cessna message drop that, courtesy of La Prick Pierre LaSalle, the whole world had been alerted to the presence of Freeman’s USVUN Special Forces column in Laos.
Captain Roscoe, in charge of Delta, not wanting to break radio silence, sent four of his men ahead as runners, two for each column, to alert Echo and Foxtrot that their general, if not specific, position was known to the enemy and that they should return posthaste to Delta.
In the two pairs of runners, one man would cover while the other advanced in a tactical leapfrog until they reached their respective columns, all four messengers torn between the need for speed, quiet, and the fear of being mistaken by Echo or Foxtrot as an enemy scout sneaking up behind them.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
One of Larry King’s braces was twisted. He quickly readjusted it and was on air.
“Good evening. Tonight we have Mr. Bruce Ellman, special aide to the President, and we’re going to be talking about the controversy that has erupted over General Freeman’s action in the Chinese-United States- Vietnamese-U.N. conflict. Specifically, Freeman sending a strike force into Laos.”
“Ah, Larry,” Ellman interjected politely, “it isn’t a strike force. It’s a long-range reconnaissance patrol.”
“Yes, but it’s a military force, right? That’s crossed the border into Laos?”
“Well, we’re not a hundred percent sure of that, Larry.”
“C’mon, Bruce, Freeman’s troops have either crossed the Vietnamese border into Laos or they haven’t.”
“No, what I mean, Larry, is that the border areas around there—”
“Around where? What part of the border?”
“Around the area west of Dien Bien Phu. Often older maps show different border lines. It reflects the various national territorial claims.”
King hunched forward. “Then you’re saying they’re not in Laos.”
“No, I just, ah — I want people to know that often cross-border incidents are not always intentional.”
“But you’re not saying Freeman made a mistake, are you — or are you? Are you saying the White House denies we have troops in Laos at this moment?”
“No, I’m not denying it. But it’s a very complex issue, Larry.”
“How so? Our boys are in Laos or they aren’t, right?”
“Yes.”
“Right, they’re in Laos.”
Ellman agreed they were, adding, “They’re not all U.S. troops. Some are British.”
“Does the White House support Freeman’s incursion?”
“He’s the man in the field and he has to call the shots as he sees them.”
“So he has the President’s full support?”
