Chapter 11

Jerry slept late the morning after dealing with Colonel Tran and Major Nguyen, unaware that the discovery of their bodies put an end to a CIA operation targeting the two men. The mess hall was abuzz with the news when Jerry joined Brian Swisher for lunch. Brian was up to date with the latest gossip.

“Someone blew away those two ARVN officers that strutted around here all the time. Some guy over at the S-2 said they were spies about to be caught, so Charlie took them out,” Swisher said.

Before Jerry could reply, Bill Jones slid his tray onto the table and sat down.

“Hear the news?” he asked without preamble.

Jerry nodded but the loquacious Brian said, “I was just filling Jerry in about it. Anything new?”

Jones shrugged, “Rumor has it someone did them execution style. They think it was a professional. I hear they were both under loose surveillance by some counter intelligence types but no one saw or heard anything. Supposedly the CI guys are at Tran’s villa now tearing the place apart.”

The Tran-Nguyen murders would not go away. It seemed as if a new rumor started almost daily. Jerry let them swirl around him and even passed some of them along until, thankfully they drew a mission. Between the furor over Tran and Nguyen and the disturbing dreams Jerry was having he needed to get away.

Two weeks later, Team Mountaineer was extracted by UH-1 Huey helicopter after a successful mission near Black Virgin Mountain, or Nui Ba Den to the Vietnamese. Nui Ba Den was about a hundred klicks Northwest of Saigon. The mountain was near the terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and was honeycombed with caves. The VC exploited the mountain as a safe haven and rearming station. Conventional units swept the area often, but the Viet Cong just disappeared when Americans showed up. Bombing and artillery had no effect on the extensive cave system. There was a US Army signal unit on the mountain top, but Charlie controlled the rest of the mountain and the foothills around it.

S/S Mountaineer had tagged along with a battalion of the 101^st Airborne but had remained behind when the frustrated battalion exfiltrated. The battalion had made contact twice, but Charlie faded away both times. The Americans suffered three wounded without seeing or firing a shot at an enemy soldier. Jerry and Brian aimed to rectify that indignity.

After the second contact, Jerry and Brian found a hide site and watched the battalion move away. They stayed put all day sleeping and resting up. As soon as it was full dark, they cautiously moved toward the direction that Charlie had disappeared. They had only moved a few hundred meters when they heard voices straight ahead. Jerry signaled Brian down and they inched their way toward the voices. The VC soldiers were surprisingly far away, their voices carrying in the stillness that seemed to wrap around the mountain. Finally, they found the owners of the voices in a camouflaged bunker system in the middle of an almost impassable stand of bamboo. Besides being nearly impenetrable, the bamboo was also resistant to Agent Orange and other defoliants. Jerry backed them up four hundred meters so they could figure out what to do.

After some back and forth they came up with a plan and Jerry got on the radio. It took intervention by some MACV big shot but by 0900 the next morning Jerry got what he wanted and P Company, 75^th Rangers, received a warning order for the following day.

Later that day an OV-10 Bronco Forward Air Controller (FAC) flew over the mountain and made radio contact with S/S Mountaineer.

“Mountaineer 1-0 this Covey Three how copy?”

Jerry responded, “Covey Three this is Mountaineer 1-0. I copy Lima Charlie, over.” (Loud and Clear)

After a brief status report, Jerry radioed the pilot his grid coordinates. The pilot made a series of random loops until he passed over Jerry’s position. When the plane flew closest to overhead Jerry radioed, “Mark ... three o’clock... 50 meters.”

The pilot checked the map in the knee pocket of his flight suit and radioed back, “Roger 1-0 that’s how far you are off on your position. Not bad for a grunt, see you in the morning.”

After acknowledging the last transmission Jerry and Brian settled in for the day. Time passed with Mercurial slowness but finally it was dark enough for Jerry to move them fifty meters to a spot with a better field of fire. Jerry didn’t figure they’d have any targets but if someone burst out of the bamboo barrier, they would be ready

Jerry and Brian were too excited to sleep so they were up when the sun rose around 0550 the next morning. The Forward Air Controller was buzzing overhead at 0730 and filled them in on what was happening.

“Mountaineer 1-0, Covey Three you still here?” the pilot asked.

Jerry allowed that they were still there but had moved a little to the West.

Covey Three replied, “No sweat, GI, you won’t be in the way. Helos are inbound from Cu Chi and are fifteen minutes out. Throw me a smoke on my mark and give me an azimuth and distance to the target.”

Brian and Jerry squirmed forward far enough to locate a small clearing and Brian pulled the pin on a red smoke grenade.

The pilot said, “Mark.”

Brian threw the smoke and Jerry said, “Heading niner zero degrees, 400 meters, big bamboo patch, can’t miss it.”

The pilot acknowledged Jerry, flew in from their six o’clock and fired a couple of white phosphorus rockets into the bamboo thicket.

The OV-10 peeled off to the left after firing the rockets and the pilot said, “Keep your head down boys, you have inbound.”

A minute later two F-105s streaked in from left to right and each one dropped two, one-thousand-pound Napalm Bombs. Jerry and Brian felt the whoosh of the air being sucked into the flames from a half kilometer away.

As the jungle was being consumed by flames, Jerry heard the beat of rotor blades approaching from the east. Ten UH-1 Huey Helicopters landed one at a time in a clearing a kilometer up the mountain and disgorged two platoons from Papa Company (Ranger), 75^th Ranger Regiment, attached to the 101^st Airborne Division. Three AH-1 Cobras were buzzing around the Landing Zone like angry dragonflies. After the troops had secured the LZ, Jerry’s radio crackled to life.

‘Mountaineer 1-0 this is Papa 2-6, over.” Papa 2-6 was the Platoon Leader of the 2^nd Platoon of Company P.

“Papa 2-6 this is Mountaineer 2-0, go ahead,” Brian Swisher answered.

“What do you see Mountaineer, we can only see smoke.”

Before Brian could answer there was a secondary explosion inside the smoking bamboo. The napalm was burning along with some of the underbrush, but the bamboo wasn’t. Jerry put down his rifle and took the radio handset.

“Papa 2-6 this is Mountaineer 1-0, nothing is moving down here, and we can’t see anything moving between you and the target, over.”

Jerry and Swisher kept their eyes on the area between them and the smoldering bamboo. A slight breeze was slowly blowing the smoke left to right in front of him. Nothing happened for fifteen minutes then gun fire erupted up the mountain. The Rangers made contact with Viet Cong soldiers boiling out of spider holes and tunnels amid more secondary explosions. Now smoke was seeping out of the ground in small columns. The smoke was coming from even more hidden spider holes and air shafts from the tunnels honeycombing the mountain.

The Rangers were fully engaged now, and the Cobras were making gun runs one behind the other, miniguns and 40MM grenade launchers chewing up the hillside. A few minutes later the first spider hole opened on the downhill side of the bunkers. As the VC sought to escape, Brian called in the gun ships and Jerry grimly and unfeelingly gunned down the escaping Charlies with his M-14.

By nightfall the Rangers had secured the hillside down to the Team Mountaineer’s position. The two units linked up and departed the next day by helicopter. The Rangers suffered a few walking wounded but no serious casualties and accounted for over a hundred VC and NVA soldiers. The two platoon leaders were ecstatic, as was JTF-17.

The days and nights in the field gave Jerry a lot of time to think. He was certain that Tran and Nguyen were involved in the team’s betrayal and Sean’s death, but he began to think they had help. Yes, they were slightly involved in to the mission’s preparation, but they could not have known as much detail as they did unless someone else told them That left the five TOC staff and the two CIA guys.

After the mission on Nui Ba Den, Team Mountaineer stood down for two weeks as a reward for the mission’s success.

During the down time Brian took a free weeks R&R to Taipei, while Jerry sat down and made a time line that listed the dates, as best he could remember, that the ARVN teams disappeared. Four of the TOC staff were not assigned when the first team disappeared. Using some casual questions based on his time line he winnowed the list down to the two CIA Analysts and Captain Collins.

As much as Jerry disliked Collins, he couldn’t see him as a traitor. He would check out the CIA guys first and, if necessary, circle back to Collins. It wouldn’t bother him to put a few rounds in Collin’s brain housing group.

Jerry started his research by talking with Bill Jones. Bill took the loss of Sean almost as hard as Jerry. Jerry caught up with Bill at breakfast in the chow hall. Jerry dropped his overloaded tray onto the table and dug in. As he ate, he quizzed Jones about the latest on the murdered officers.

“Whoever shot those two, botched an investigation that had been ongoing for months. We were within a couple of weeks from rolling those two up and squeezing them for what they knew. That said, they probably only knew two or three others in their cell, so whoever offed them saved us disposing of them. The CI spooks think the NVA took them out because we were getting close to them,”

Bill said and shrugged. “I’m not so sure but anyway doesn’t matter now.”

Jerry allowed as how it probably didn’t and turned the conversation to recreation.

“I betcha Brian is giving them hell in Taiwan. I might take a week there next stand down. How about you Bill? I never see you guys except for work.”

Bill replied, “Bradley (one of the analysts) has a place downtown and a beautiful half French wife. He has been here for four years and will probably never leave. The rest of us prefer to recreate away from prying eyes. Lasher (the second analyst) has a special friend in Thailand he sees every couple of weeks. I’m married and I get home for a week or two every few months so I can’t afford to catch something downtown. My tour ends in five months, just like yours.”