CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Kacey, now forced at gunpoint to lead the Khmer Rouge column away from the Foxtrot ambuscade out toward the valley of Dien Bien Phu, could hear the pat-pat-pat sound of the children walking behind him. He knew there was nothing he could do about the little girl who lay dead and discarded by Pepper by the trail, as if she were nothing more than refuse to be consumed by some carnivore during the night. In all his years in the Army, he’d never seen anything so wantonly cruel. But now he tried to put it out of his mind, knowing he had to stay alert.
Kacey had no way of knowing that radio silence had been broken and Foxtrot ordered to withdraw to boost the defense of Dien Bien Phu. But he did know that even if the prearranged signal spot on the trail told him the column had been ordered to withdraw, soon Pepper’s column would be leaving the jungle canopy and entering Delta’s fire zone in the valley. And, being the first man in the column, he had no desire to be the first blue on blue in Operation Homecoming.
Then they heard the faint rattle of machine guns and the louder
It meant that Delta and the PLA paratroops were already at it.
“Hey, Ranger!”—from the side of the trail. It was a scout from Delta. Pepper unleashed a burst. The scout dropped to the ground, and Kacey dived off the trail, the scout returning fire at Pepper. Kacey moved fast and low — fuck the bamboo, fuck the brambles, fuck the thorns, just run, man, run — as Pepper and the Delta scout continued the duel, the terrified children flat on the trail, Salt at the rear telling them to stay put or she’d do them. Somebody — Pepper maybe, or the Delta scout? — ran out of ammo, only one man firing, then the two were at it again. Jesus, could they even see one another, or was it all bullshit fire?
Then Kacey was yelling to his fellow Delta buddy, “Delta, he’s a turncoat! They’re Salt and Pepper Two — our MIAs— both gone bad! Heroin!”
The jungle reeked of cordite and decay. The Delta scout didn’t care who the fuck they were — Salt and Pepper, Oil and Vinegar — all he knew was that some fucker was trying to kill him.
“Back off!” Kacey yelled to his fellow Ranger. “We can pick ‘em up later.”
No one was moving now — no birds, nothing — except in the distance they could hear the
Kacey knew it had to be the PLA paratroopers harassing the Delta perimeter till they had time to set up heavy arty in the hills around the valley. The mist was thicker now, and ten minutes — an eternity — passed, and who was heading where? Kacey kept heading east, glancing at his watch compass in the gloom. Only once did he see the trail, a rust-red strip about a hundred feet off to his right, while to his front, a half mile off perhaps, he could hear the chatter of small-arms fire. Through it all he felt that something or someone was marking him, either his compadre from Delta or Pepper, who would now be eager to meet up with the PLA troopers.
“Jesus Christ!” Kacey stopped. He could be walking into his own — Delta Force’s — ambuscade. They were bound to have rigged one up as soon as he’d gone forward to try to warn Foxtrot. Shit a brick, it was getting all screwed up, as usual. Didn’t matter what plans you made, something always went — He froze. A drop of moisture on the trip wire, that’s all it was. He was in the middle of a claymore alley. “If anyone can hear me,” he said in funereal tones, “get me outta here!”
“ ‘Bout time, you fucker. We were gonna see how far you’d go!”
“Very funny.”
“Turn right, my man, and go straight ahead.”
In three minutes he was out on the trail. God, it felt good! “Where’re all the chinks?” he asked.
“Just north of us, Ranger man.” It was the Delta scout who’d been keeping parallel with him.
“How far north?” Kacey asked, his breathing short and fast.
“Not far enough,” the scout said as he passed his canteen to Kacey, “but they’re just probing now. Won’t do any major stuff till they get arty in around us — which they’re doing now.”
“Where’s our TACAIR?” Kacey asked.
“In this pea soup? Home, where you’d be. Back in Hanoi, waiting for it to lift. Only do so much with infrared, man.”
“Scout tells me,” said Delta’s CO., Roscoe, “that you ran into Salt and Pepper.”
“Yeah,” Kacey said.
“They’re probably headed north of us for PLA sanctuary. You get a good look at them?”
“Pepper, but not her.”
“A
“Yeah,” Kacey said. “Made a real nice couple. Moving dope.”
“A
Suddenly there was a horrendous rattle of machine-gun fire, both M-60 and Chinese-type 67 LMGs. Then more mortar rounds, but for the experienced men of Delta like Kacey, Roscoe, and Jonson, it all had the sound and feel of probing, no one really sure yet of exactly where the other side was.
“Wish we could get out of this fucking marsh,” Jonson said.
“I agree,” Roscoe said. “Trouble is, if we do that, we no longer have an LZ when the choppers arrive.”
“They’re not going to come in this weather,” Jonson said.
“They’ll come in any weather. But clear weather’d help.”
Jonson shrugged mischievously. “Then maybe we
“Yeah — incoming!”
They hit the marshy ground as a PLA 82mm mortar exploded twenty-five yards away, earth and water erupting in a high, dirty column. For Delta’s Roscoe there was something wrong — he felt it in his bones. Something peculiarly disconcerting about the almost laissez-faire way in which the PLA mortar squads were lobbing their mortar rounds, an almost lackadaisical attack, filling in time. But for what, to sucker Delta’s British and American forces into wasting precious ammunition in return fire? But return fire where?
Roscoe concluded it could mean only one thing — that the PLA paratroopers, having landed farther north near Dien Bien Phu, had not yet connected up with the PLA ground troops on the way to the valley. Once they connected, they’d no doubt ring the whole valley, sealing the Americans and their allies in the marsh, where they could cut them up piecemeal as Giap had done to the French in the very same valley in ‘54.
In fact it wasn’t as organized as that. Few battle plans are, the hand of chance always in play. Due to the unusually heavy rains, the PLA infantry columns — over a thousand strong — had round it much more difficult, much more time-consuming in the wet, to manhandle the bits and pieces of their heavy artillery south from Mengzi to Dien Bien Phu.
It was now 0230 hours, and the day before, Wang had ordered the elimination of Echo, Foxtrot, and Delta forces. But the weather and the apparent failure of Echo and Foxtrot to yet join Delta had fouled up the timetable. Colonel Cheng, the PLA military officer in charge of the destruction of Freeman’s Special Forces, had wanted to attack at 0230 hours, while Delta Force was still only thirty strong. The political officer, however, argued forcefully that it would be better to wait till all three Echo, Foxtrot, and Delta columns had rendezvoused in the valley, so that they might be wiped out to a man. Such a victory, he argued — the annihilation of an entire U.S.-led force — would be infinitely better from a political and international point of view than a piecemeal attack on only one section of it.
In fact, the new battle of Dien Bien Phu would not begin with all of Freeman’s Special Forces in an LZ position and the Chinese in position around the valley, but would start in earnest around 1630 with the sixty Echo and Foxtrot troops making their way back to Delta, and the Chinese having only half their artillery set up. In short, the situation was what Echo’s Leigh-Hastings would refer to as your usual run-of-the-mill cockup.
