Chapter 9

Thanks to Sean’s bargaining ability, Jerry was able to send enough bonus money home that his Mother could put a big chunk aside for college for his sisters Ruth and Rachael. And the monthly stipend from OP Fund 66 grew to the point he could keep some for himself. Jerry was promoted to Sergeant the next month, a bone he was thrown by Colonel Meyers.

So suddenly, he was a man of means and Sean was, too. That’s when his teammate had the brilliant idea to become the Aussie Arbitrage King of Saigon. His idea was fairly ingenious. He would send his mother three one-hundred American dollars in money orders, and she would send him back three US one-hundred-dollar bills. Sean then traded the greenbacks to a Star Light bartender for MPCs at the rate of two for one. He kept the amount at three hundred a month to fly below the radar of the MACV Currency Control Board.

American currency was highly coveted by the Vietnamese because it was a stable currency that held its value while the Vietnamese Dong was constantly being devalued. MPC was stable too, but it was subject to being changed overnight with no notice. MPC was issued by series which were different colors. When series changed old series or colors became worthless. Soldiers had twenty-four hours to trade one for the other, civilians were out of luck. It was much better to pay double to get a commodity that didn’t devalue or expire overnight. Jerry put one hundred a month into the scheme and got back two hundred.

Suddenly, when Jerry and Sean strolled down Tu Do Street it was with money in their pocket as well as tax free cigarettes in a laundry bag. Jerry used some of his money to make life better for Van Vo and her family, and Van rewarded him handsomely.

Life was even better for Scout/Sniper Team Mountaineer because now they were only receiving a mission every four weeks. They were spending less time in the field because they spent ten days a month training ARVN Rangers into Scout/Sniper teams. They put a lot of effort into providing good training, but JTF-17 still lost ARVN teams almost as fast as they trained them. It seemed that the VC had found a way to discover and eliminate the teams. Very few lasted more than one or two missions.

Then it was May and right on time the monsoons arrived. With the monsoons’ daily torrential rainfall came a new mission and it was a doozie.

Jerry and Sean were at the JTF-17 TOC bright and early on a Tuesday morning for a mission brief. The mission was much more involved, and light years more dangerous than any of its predecessors.

The target this time was across the border in North Vietnam and the mission was to eliminate North Vietnamese Army General Vo Nguyen Giap. Giap wasn’t just any random general, he was the Commander of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN).

According to the S-2, intelligence gathered from intercepted radio traffic indicated that in ten days Giap was meeting with some of the top leadership from the Viet Cong and the NVA. They were meeting at a former French rubber plantation 40 kilometers North of the border between the two Vietnams. According to sources, The PAVN decided the location and timing of the meeting was safe because the US had called a moratorium on bombing of the North while peace talks were in progress. Giap was a major target for the Agency because he was the mastermind of the PAVN’s success.

The Operations Section (S-3) of the TOC came up with what they thought was a brilliant plan for the infiltration of the team. Jerry and Sean were less than thrilled with it but had to admit it was viable. They went back to their team room and started to plan.

The pilot of the C-130E Combat Talon was totally focused on controlling his bucking aircraft as it plunged through the monsoon rainstorm at only 500 feet AGL (Above Ground Level). The Talon was a specially equipped version of the C-130 cargo plane equipped to support Special Forces Operations. The front half of the cargo area was screened off with heavy black out curtains. Classified communication and electric warfare stations resided in that area.

The co-pilot of call sign Blackbird Six was as focused as the pilot on the newly installed ground avoidance radar that had once belonged to an F-111 Fighter/Bomber, when the Navigator spoke over the internal radio net.

“Okay, Boss we just crossed the fence into North Vietnam. It is exactly 2359 and we are on time to the minute. We are ten minutes from the target. Next up is check point X-ray in three minutes and we turn to a heading of 092,” said the Navigator.

The navigator spoke nonchalantly but he’d spent hours plotting their course. He had designed a course that took them over the border then one turn and out of the country heading East. Total time over North Vietnam, 18 minutes.

“Roger, keep us on track, I can’t see shit up here,” the pilot said.

Blackbird Six was flying nap of the Earth now using an instrument system called the Adverse Weather Aerial Delivery System. All the pilots could see was rain and thick clouds.

After a few seconds the pilot spoke again. “Hey, Tex, how are our guests doing back there?”

Tex was SSgt Wiley (Tex) Lawson, a laconic Texan with a serious drawl. Lawson was the loadmaster of Blackbird Six, everything on the cargo deck to the rear of the curtained off area was his domain. Wiley glanced over at the duo sitting on the troop seat against the right side of the aircraft and turned his head away to talk on his boom mike.

“They’re just peachy, Sir. Jesus, I see these guys in the mess hall all the time. Never thought in a million years I’d see them like this.”

Like this, was in sterile black jungle fatigues with a parachute strapped to their back and a rucksack hanging between their legs. The smaller man, the one with the accent, had an M-16 strapped upside down on his left side. The bigger guy, the country sounding one, had a big rifle strapped diagonally across his chest, also upside down. Neither man was wearing a reserve parachute because they were jumping from an altitude too low for a reserve to open. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out they were snipers.

“I hear you, Tex, me either. Anyway, give them a ten minute warning. Six minutes will be when I turn on the red lights back there.”

The Combat Talon was slicing through the pea soup clouds and rain at a steady 175 knots and they were down to an altitude of 250 feet. They had to stay low to avoid the sophisticated North Vietnamese’ Russian supplied Surface to Air Missile (SAM) System. Between the low altitude, the course thru unoccupied areas, and the Electronic Warfare gurus Blackbird Six was practically invisible.

At a signal from the navigator, the pilot turned on the red light. Sean, who was an experienced jumpmaster, tapped Jerry on the shoulder. When Jerry looked his way, he held up six fingers. Jerry gulped nervously and nodded his head. Jerry was nervous to the extreme because this was his sixth jump and his first since jump school a year and a half ago.

Sean went through the jump commands even though he only had one paratrooper. He thought that Jerry’s training would kick in. It did, and Jerry settled down into the practiced routine of standing up, hooking up and checking equipment.

At a hand signal from Sean, the loadmaster lowered the ramp and Sean led the way onto it. Sean didn’t bother to look out and forward as a jumpmaster normally would because it was so dark and foggy, he couldn’t see squat. At two minutes out the pilot dropped his speed to 150 knots and climbed to 600 feet.

Normally he would be dropping paratroopers from 1200 feet and 125 knots. The extra speed was to help their chutes open quicker because of the low altitude. When the minute hand on instrument panel chronometer hit the designated minute, he turned on the green light in the cargo compartment. And then he said a little prayer that he was dropping the paratroopers near where they should be.

When the ramp indicator light lit green that it was up and locked, the pilot dove back down to 250 feet and pushed the throttles full forward.

“Time to get the hell out of Dodge,” he muttered.

Six voices replied, “Amen!”

The flight plan for Blackbird Six flew them straight out to the Gulf of Tonkin. It would be a harrowing ten-minute flight. But every man on the plane was happy it wasn’t them taking a terrifying plunge through the rain into an enemy country. Once over the waters they would climb to 20,000 feet, make a wide looping 180 degree turn and hustle back to their base in Thailand.

Jerry and Sean landed far enough apart that they couldn’t see each other. Sean had anticipated that and pulled out a World War Two era Cricket Clicker. He pressed the clicker every 30 seconds until Jerry found him. Thankfully they landed within a couple hundred meters from each other. They both survived the jump and managed to not break themselves or any of their equipment.

The Air Force guys had dropped them in the right place. It was a series of terraced rice paddies, populated with a few bamboo huts, five klicks from the nearest village and twenty klicks South of the town of Dong Hoi. Best of all the thick jungle was only a klick away. They had plenty of time to reach cover before first light. Jerry dug his lensatic compass out of his shirt pocket and got them pointed West. They put both parachutes in one aviator’s kit bag and slung their rucks onto their backs. Each of them grabbed a handle of the kit bag and they moved out smartly. Jerry took a compass reading every hundred paces to keep them headed in the right direction.

It took them over an hour of slogging through the flooded rice paddies to reach the jungle.

When the two men reached the relative safety of the thick foliage, they dropped down to rest. The adrenalin from the jump was wearing off and they were tired. After a fifteen-minute break, Sean got them up and moving again. Their first priority was finding a place to hide the parachutes, their second was to move further to the West and find a hide site for the rest of the night.

They accomplished both by four in the morning. They had found a semi dry spot under some dead fall. After making sure they weren’t sharing the spot with something unpleasant, they snapped their ponchos together and made a two-man hooch. They changed into dry socks and then fell into an exhausted sleep.

Mid-morning of the next day found Team Mountaineer gliding through the heavy jungle. They were on a ridgeline above the valley that led to the Rubber Plantation. The area was calm and peaceful as the rice farmers went about their daily work. These farmers didn’t have night jobs as Guerrilla Fighters.

They moved a couple of kilometers to the West until they reached a road that cut through the jungle and wound down to the plantation. The road was their first check point; the plan was to set up their first hide here and keep eyes on the road for two days. After two days they were going to cross the road and move into position overlooking the villa and wait for a shot. They set up about three hundred meters above the road and got comfortable.

They had a good plan, and it might have worked ... except the operation was a sham. It was a setup to lure Team Mountaineer into a trap.

Jerry and Sean realized that when trucks started arriving during the late afternoon monsoon and started disgorging soldiers. The soldiers formed up in a file and spread out. Sean knew exactly what they were doing: they were forming a skirmish line and were about to search the woods.

“Shit, Mate, we’re compromised, we need to bugger off,” Sean whispered.

So that’s what they did. They made their way up the mountain as quiet and fast as they could to put some distance between them and their soon to be pursuers. When they had moved five hundred meters, they started to evade. They moved slowly with Jerry leading and Sean eliminating their tracks. Jerry took them South along the ridgeline and when he reached a small stream Jerry stepped into it and turned back downhill towards the road. He went fifty meters, exited the stream, and turned back the way they came. Jerry looped them in and out of the stream once more on each side. Then he headed South again.