The Cover of War (17 page)

34

The
South China Sea
, 0455

3 nautical miles
South of Callou Bank

9°18'37.26"N
107°42'29.70"E

T
he US Navy destroyer reversed its engines on a 345° heading, and
rumbled to a stop.

In the ship's
command center, the radar display showed six vessels within a ten nautical mile
circle.

The SEAL Team
leader, a W-4 Chief Warrant Officer, watched the Captain's clean finger track
to the target: a green blip on the circular screen. They re-confirmed the
junk's position - 3 nautical miles off port - where it had been at anchor for
the last three hours.

The destroyer's
Captain said: 'Why don't we just blow it outta the goddamn water?'

'MI want
prisoners to interrogate,' the SEAL lied. MI knew nothing of the operation.

'We could just
bring the ship alongside.'

The SEAL was
annoyed. 'Element of surprise,' he said. 'We don't want them destroying
evidence.'

'What's their
crime?'

'Classified.'

'On a United
States Warship,
nothing
happens without the Captain's knowledge.'

'It does
tonight,' The SEAL said. Then he left the bridge.

On the main-deck,
his strike-team waited, crouching like bullfrogs in the Zodiac assault boat.
The SEAL climbed into the black rubber craft and signaled the crane operator.
The winch jerked the RIB up, swung it out over the rail, and began lowering it
toward the sloshing sea.

They hit the
water. Twin outboard engines growled into life and the Zodiac accelerated out
into the chop, its engines over-revving as it crested each inky swell.

They covered the
distance to the junk fast.

The moon behind
had not quite set, and ahead the sun had not yet risen. Out of the dark, the
stationary junk materialized like a pirate-ship: its hull curving down to the
waterline amidships, and its sail hanging from the mast like the leathery wings
of a sleeping bat.

The SEAL thumbed
off his MP-5's safety; he felt on edge.

Alongside, he
gave the signal to cut the outboards, and they glided silently over the last
few feet. He looked back and grimaced; a light from the junk's mast betrayed
the Zodiac's presence, turning its wake into gleaming hoops on the black water.

The rubber
pontoon bumped against the timber hull. The SEAL scanned the deck and saw no
other lights. No activity. He had expected a panicked attempt by the crew to
destroy evidence. It was the evidence that he wanted - and the Soviet made
device that she was towing from her stern. With the hint of alarm, the SEAL
thought that he might be alongside the wrong vessel, and risked shining a
flashlight onto its bow. The numbers matched. It
was
the target vessel.

Strange,
he thought.
They'll probably try to talk their way out of it.
Too bad they're all going to die.
 

A hook ladder
went up at the junk's low-point and the strike-team climbed aboard.

When they were
all aboard, the junk exploded.

35

Bien Hoa, 0530

D
anny crawled out from behind the dumpsters and looked up and down
the military lane.

He wanted to
crawl back behind the bins.
Come on,
he thought.
Get moving.

He hugged the
buildings as he moved down the lane. At the first intersection he could see the
airfield to his left, and to his right, a gate. The gate opened to the civilian
side of the fence.

The gate opened
and a group of drunken airmen, dressed in civvies, staggered in. Danny watched
from the shadows. The MP came out from his box and laughed at the men. 'You get
some pussy?' Danny heard him say.

'Fucked
ourselves stupid.'

Danny pulled
back between two huts. The airmen went past.

This is it,
he thought.
Now or never.

Danny jogged up
to the MP's box and put on his best drunken stagger.

The MP came out.
'What you lost son?'

'My fuckin'
wallet,' Danny tried to slur his speech. 'Must've dropped the fucker on the
road.'

The MP opened
the gate and Danny went out.

When Danny was
out of the MP's sight, he started to run. 

Danny made the
main road and saw a bus-stop. He walked over to it, disappointed to find no
timetable. He detected movement in the shadows, and tensed.

A young nurse
walked out of the morning gloom and sat at the bus-stop.

Danny said: 'Do
you know what time it arrives?'

She pointed
behind him and Danny spun round. A yellow bus was crawling down the road toward
him. He let out his breath. On the bus' display were the words:
Saigon
via Go Vap.

36

N
ash jogged to the interrogation room. The ecstasy of success
anesthetized the pain in his leg, and focused his mind

He had the Viet
Cong Commander. He had The Ghost.

He imagined
uncovering the Viet Cong plans and weapons - the proof of a foiled operation.
The 'I-told-you-so' would feel as good as kicking Hitchcock straight in the
balls. The anticipation made Nash tingle.  

Nash also had
Major Johnson. He was holding Johnson in a hotel room to avoid friction with
Hitchcock, but to Nash's frustration, he had been unable to get anything useful
out of the Major. Amai had drugged him so heavily that he couldn't even
remember leaving The Continental - he couldn't even remember what he'd eaten
for dinner. 

Nash approached
the pit's metal door, where Mancini stood looking baffled. Mancini saluted Nash
- which he didn't usually do in the compound.

'Do we have the
man?' Nash said.

'He's in the
pit. But-'

'But what for
Christ's sake?'

Mancini looked
down. 'We're not sure if he's the right guy.'

'What the fuck?'

Mancini shuffled
from foot-to-foot. 'Claims to be Nguyen Tray Cung,' he said. 'Which checks out
on the property lease of the building we raided. Claims to be a fisherman -
which checks out on the ownership of a small fishing boat at Ba Son. When we
found him, he stunk of fish and had hooks-n-crap all over him.'

They fish
with nets,
Nash thought. 'We find anything in the
building?'

'Just the radio
- Soviet model.'

Nash tapped his
chin. 'What about the firefight?'

'Eight dead
gooks. Eight AKs recovered.'

'What'd he say
about the radio?'

'Who?'

'The fucking
prisoner, numb-nuts.'

'Said he didn't
know nothin' about it. Said he had a boarder who had been actin' strange. Said
the boarder went by the name of Triet.'

Nash felt a
pinch of nervousness. 'He won't fool me with that crap,' he said. 'Let's put
him on the machine.'

'He's on it now,
Sir-'

Nash went hot.
'Who's interrogating him for Christ's sake?'

'Colonel
Hitchcock.'

* * *

Colonel Hitchcock turned away from the
prisoner fuming.

Nash had failed
him again; and seriously this time. It had gone to the top. The Defense
Secretary wanted blood.

Foolishly, Nash
had apprehended the wrong man in Phu Tho; and the blunder had snowballed into
an avalanche - the kind that buried careers. Nash had let the real
terrorist
escape. But worse than that, Hitchcock had just learned that Nash's
incompetence had led to the killing of an entire SEAL Team, while executing a
top-secret mission in the
South China Sea
.

It was worse
than total disaster.

The forewarned
Viet Cong had set a trap, rigging an old fishing junk with ammonium nitrate
before abandoning ship. But it didn't end there: the junk had somehow learned
the location of a top-secret
US
vessel operating in the area, and had laid mines in her path. The American
vessel hit the mines and went to the bottom, killing all crew and destroying
hundreds-of-thousands of dollars worth of technical equipment.

Hitchcock had
seen all too often how juvenile oversight could lead to wartime catastrophe.
But Nash's display of ineptitude only continued: Nash had disobeyed a direct
order.
His
direct order.

Hitchcock
clenched his fists.
That snot-nosed little prick went for Johnson.

After informing
Hitchcock of Nash's disobedience, the Defense Secretary had ordered him to,
one: immediately release Major Johnson to medical treatment. Two: pursue no
further questioning. And three: scrub all documentation relating to any-and-all
of the above incidents.

The Defense
Secretary had made it explicitly clear to Hitchcock - failure to comply
would
result in his Military career and benefits ceasing to exist.

When Hitchcock
found Nash, he was going to tear a strip off him. He didn't expect to find him
standing in the pit doorway, looking lost. 

* * *

The tallest of the five men, dressed in
civilian clothes, handed ID cards to the other four. 'We have been guaranteed
all-access.'

They all checked
their Glock side-arms, loading a 9mm round into their chambers and switching to
safety, as per protocol.

'Johnson is
missing,' the tallest said. 'Our mission is to find Amai Nguyen - and kill
her.'

The others
nodded.

'Contact me when
it's done.'

* * *

Nash saw the raw fury in Hitchcock's face
and felt a hot fizzing inside his gut
.

Hitchcock
pointed back into the pit, and spoke through clenched teeth: 'Release this man
immediately
.'

Nash looked in
and saw the prisoner. Tied to a chair, he was scrawny, pathetic, and cringing
like a beaten dog.

Is it him?
Nash thought.
Is this The Ghost?

The man didn't
look like a ruthless Viet Cong Commander - he looked like a fisherman.

Nash wanted to
find out. He mustered as much nerve as he could, and said to Hitchcock: 'I'd
like a word with him first.'

'Don't you dare
talk back you snot-nosed little prick.' Hitchcock's face reddened to the point
of aneurism. 'Release him
now
. And release Major Johnson
now
or
you'll await your courts-martial in Long Binh Jail. Is that
clear
?'

Nash wilted.

Hitchcock thrust
a finger into his face. 'And you . . . you got the wrong man. Now I have to
clean up your mess.'

Nash's bowels
felt weak. 'What mess?'

'No you don't
know, do you.' Hitchcock snarled. 'Because of
you,
an entire SEAL Team
has been wiped out, and one of our ships sunk.'

'Sir-'

'And you went
for Major Johnson despite my explicit order to stop. I've just had my ass
chewed by the goddamn Defense Secretary. Johnson was
not
to be touched.
Are you trying to flush us
both
down the can?'

'If I had Amai-'

'But you
couldn't even get her could you-'

'I can-'

'You will, Nash.
And when you do - kill her on sight.'

Mancini yelled
from the orderly room: 'I've got him.'

'Got who?' Nash
yelled, his voice, in his own mind, that of a naughty school boy.

'The reporter -
Danny Thorn,' Mancini yelled back. 'He's walking down
Thong
Nhut Boulevard
.'

'What the fuck?
He's been banned from the country.' Nash ran to the jeep, grabbed the
windscreen rail, and slung himself into the passenger's seat. Mancini got
behind the wheel.

Nash yelled with
unnecessary volume: 'Get goddamn going.'

* * *

Triet was inwardly seething.

Strapped to a
hard wooden chair in the concrete dungeon, which smelled of urine and human
excrement, hate boiled his blood.

Triet felt hate
for the Americans: how dare they arrest and humiliate him in his own country.
He felt hate for Ho Chi Minh: how dare he promise oil rights to a foreign power
that were never his to give; how dare he bring the American war-machine to
Vietnam
.

Ho Chi Minh
and General Giap are fools,
he thought.

He felt hate for
Danny: how dare he take Amai from him. He felt hate for Amai: how dare she
betray
Vietnam
.

How dare she
betray
me!
 

Colonel
Hitchcock left the dungeon and Triet heard him start arguing with someone just
outside the door. Triet arched back and saw that it was Captain Nash. Nash
looked in and Triet did his best to look pathetic and weak - as a lowly
fisherman would under interrogation.   

Then Triet heard
Hitchcock order Nash to release him. Triet suppressed a grin.  
Hitchcock had been easy to fool. Skills learned in
Moscow
after the French war had helped Triet to beat the lie-detector. To
upset the machine's calibration, he had bitten down on his tongue when telling
the truth; this raised his stress profile when relaxed. On the other hand, when
lying he thought of Amai giving him oral sex. The technique had just saved his
life.

The two men's
voices became muffled, but Triet picked up that last night's operation in the
South China Sea
had been a success: the
towed array sonar would be installed on another junk, and the snooping of the
American oil survey continued.

Then Nash went
away and Hitchcock kicked the door.

Triet waited.
The Mexican-looking Corporal came in and untied him.

Triet felt a
deep satisfaction at being freed, but his focus was on Amai and Danny. Being
tied up in the dungeon had given him time to think. His biggest fear was coming
true - Amai and Danny were planning to runaway together - to
America
.

After all
I've done for her,
he thought.
The traitorous
bitch.

Acid hate burned
in his blood and Triet knew what he would do
.

Laos
.

Triet was due in
Laos
- at a very secret tunnel
complex, north of Saravane. He was to meet with General Giap; and health
permitting, Ho Chi Minh himself. They would discus strategy, Tet, oil, and
political issues. General Giap would
not
go to Khe Sanh, as Thi would
have told her American interrogators; Khe Sanh was Tet's last deception - the
final device for luring US Forces away from
Saigon
. Meeting in Cu Chi was too dangerous for the supreme commanders of
The People's Army of North Vietnam;
Laos
was a safe mid-point between
Hanoi
and
Saigon
. Triet
would return to
Saigon
after
the initial Tet attacks were over, and the Southern capital was under Viet Cong
control.
 

Amai and
Danny will come to Laos,
he thought.
But they
won't return.

Triet wanted to
see the lovers' faces as he tortured them; he wanted to wallow in their
screams; their pain; their deaths.