Conspiracy

shoulder, saw Dean, then turned back and stared at the other men.

“Oh, whoa, it’s the evil eye,” cracked one of the Force Recon trainees. “I’m feeling weak. Weak.” He fell to the floor. The others convulsed in laughter.

For a moment, Dean wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Or rather, he was sure Longbow was going to kick the Marine on the ground in the face and after that wasn’t sure what would happen. Dean figured, though, that he would be backing up his fellow platoon member.

Instead, Longbow stared for a second longer, then turned away. It was a good thing, too — a captain had seen what was going on from the far side of the mess hall and was on his way over. Had there been a fight, all of the men would undoubtedly have been kicked out of their respective schools.

Dean and Longbow ate together in silence. They never spoke of the incident again. But from that point on, Longbow helped Dean whenever he could, offering him different bits of advice on the range and helping him master some of the finer points of the shooting art, such as compensating for winds above 10 miles an hour.

They were assigned to the same unit in Vietnam — not much of a surprise, since about two-thirds of the school’s graduates were sent there. After requalification at Da Nang, Dean, Longbow, and four other men they’d trained with joined a unit in an area known as “Arizona Territory.” Their assignments varied, taking them to the Laos border and back, generally to work with Marine companies on sweeps or at forward camps where at night the enemy was so close you could smell the fish he’d had for dinner.

The origin of the nickname Arizona was in some doubt.

Some Marines thought it was an apt comparison of the highly dangerous area to the Arizona of the lawless Old West. Others thought it came from the parched pieces of landscape, scorched by Agent Orange. In any event, the nickname was not a compliment.

Usually the snipers went out in two-man teams, especially when they were working alongside other Marine units conducting patrols or attacking an enemy-held area. At first, the new men were teamed up with more experienced snipers; before long, they were the experienced hands and others the newbies. Dean and Longbow only worked together on CID missions, and then only very important ones for which they were hand-selected by their CO.

“CID” stood for “Counter Intelligence Department”; the organization was actually a CIA group that ran special operations in the area, often using Marine snipers to get things done. A CID mission could involve gathering intelligence, or it could target a special VC soldier or official for assassination. The mission against Phuc Dinh was the latter.

* * *

“Phuc Dinh lives in a village about three miles from the border,” John Rogers told Dean and Longbow. The CIA officer had commandeered their commander’s tent to brief the mission. Rogers had only been in the region for a few months, but that must have seemed like forever to him; he bucked up his facade of courage with gin, and the stink sat heavy on him even at 0800.

“There’s a series of tunnels in this canyon here,” said Rogers, pointing at the map. He sat in a canvas-backed field chair; Dean and Longbow were across from him on the captain’s rack. “They used to hole up in them on their way south until we got wise to them. Now they go much further west, over the border.”

Dean stared at the grid map. Experience had shown the relationship between such maps and the real world was often tenuous. Villages were often misnamed and in some cases a considerable distance from where they were supposed to be.

More important, maps could never tell you the most important thing— where the enemy was.

“Phuc Dinh goes across the valley into Laos every week to ten days to make contact with units on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He travels at night. Your best bet at catching him alone is on one of those nights.

“Dinh is your target, to the exclusion of any others.” Dean glanced over at Longbow. The sniper was staring intently at the back of the captain’s tent, zoning in the distance. Dean guessed Longbow was thinking of the mission.

Rogers rose to leave.

“Can we go into Laos to get him?” Dean asked Rogers.

“Technically, no.” Rogers picked up the small briefcase he’d brought with him. “Send a message back that the red hawk has died.”

* * *

The mission brief did not include the reason that Phuc Dinh was to be shot. It was obvious that he must be some sort of important VC official, though that alone probably wasn’t enough to arouse CID’s wrath. But reasons were irrelevant to Dean and Longbow; Phuc Dinh was the enemy, and that was all the reason they needed to kill anyone.

The two snipers rode with a Marine company making a sweep about ten miles south of Phuc Dinh’s village; the unit ran into trouble as soon as their he li cop ters landed and Dean and Longbow spent nearly five days with them, the first three within spitting distance of the landing zone. Dean and Longbow didn’t much mind the time itself, since they weren’t sure when Phuc Dinh would be moving, but the delay cost them valuable supplies, most notably about half of the ammo for Longbow’s bolt rifle, a Remington 700. Dean, acting as Longbow’s spotter, though ordinarily a team leader himself, carried an M14 with a starlight scope.

Finally, the unit managed to extricate itself and got under way. When Dean and Longbow split off from the others, they were just under six miles from Phuc Dinh’s village. The jungle was so thick there that it took a whole day to walk three miles toward it. Then, just as they were settling down for the night, they caught a strong odor of fish on the wind.

A VC unit was moving through the area, possibly stalking the Marines Dean and Longbow had just left. The smell came from the food the Vietcong ate and meant they were incredibly close, perhaps only a dozen feet away.

To the Vietcong, Americans smelled like soap, and probably the only thing that saved Dean and Longbow was the fact that they had been in the bush long enough for the grime to overwhelm any lingering Ivory scent. The Vietcong passed them right by.

There was only one problem. The enemy guerillas were moving in the direction of the unit Dean and Longbow had left.

The snipers didn’t have a radio. In those days, effective radios were bulky and had to be carried on your back. They were also in short supply. So there was no way of alerting the other unit short of sneaking back and telling them.

Dean and Longbow discussed what to do. Their orders had priority, clearly—“exclusion of any others” was supposed to cover a situation like this — but they couldn’t leave their fellow Marines to be blindsided. Dean and Longbow circled to the southwest, stalking the stalkers.

Four hours later, the Vietnamese unit reached the flank of the main unit. Dean, looking through the starlight scope of his M14, saw one of the Vietcong rise to throw hand grenades and begin the attack. He put a three-round burst into the man’s head. The grenade detonated, and the firefight was on.

The guerillas lost the element of surprise and quickly with-drew. Dean and Longbow had to retreat as well, barely escap-ing the crossfire. The detour had cost them not only several hours but also more ammo and water.

* * *

“Village has five huts,” said Dean, looking at it through his field glasses. “Five huts. Shit.”

“You sure this is the place? Supposed to be four or five times that.”

He pulled out his map again. While it could be difficult to correlate points, in this case the location seemed fairly obvious— the village was located at the mouth of a bend in a small creek, which corresponded with the map. There were other geographic marks as well, including the road and the valley three miles to the west.

* * *

Even so, they took another day making sure, circling across to the valley and back, even moving to the edge