Chapter 1

The following characters are seen in the first two chapters:

Sgt. Bill Baker

Radio Operator, 5’-10” tall, 170 pounds, 24 years old, Auburn hair, Hazel eyes

MSG Sawyer

Team Sergeant, 6’-6” tall, 265 pounds, 42 years old, black hair, brown eyes

Suenee Sa

Bill’s girlfriend, 5’-2” tall, 108 pounds, 34C-23-35, 21 years old, brown eyes, long black hair, oval face, very cute

Sophie

MSG Sawyer’s girlfriend, 5’-10” tall, 140 pounds, 38C-25-37, 25 years old, brown eyes, long black hair

The Beginning

“Baker,” I heard a loud voice calling, “Sergeant Baker.”

“Have any of you people seen Sergeant Baker?” I heard the voice ask next. The voice had wakened me. I tried to set up, but my head wasn’t cooperating very well, and it took me a while.

“He’s in the room down the end, Top,” I heard next, and redoubled my efforts to get up. Damn, someone should have warned me about the local booze. My head was all fucked up, and I wasn’t very steady either this morning.

“You Sergeant William Baker?” a voice boomed from the doorway behind me, and it set my head to buzzing again.

I turned and looked up to see the biggest black man that I had seen in a long time. He must have been at least 6’-6” tall, and was built like a tank. He probably weighed 265 pounds at least. Plus it wasn’t just that he was big, he had a presence about him, almost like royalty. You definitely wanted to hop to when he spoke, well shouted, as he was very loud.

He was also in a uniform that I didn’t recognize, but would learn later was called tiger stripes. The one thing that I did recognize, however, was the Green Beret that he wore at a rakish angle across his head and down almost to his right eye.

“That’s me,” I managed to get out, after a bit. “What can I do for you, Top?” I definitely recognized the six subdued stripes on his uniform, three up and three down.

“You’ve been assigned to my team. Get your shit and follow me. We have to catch a chopper in an hour or so,” he told me.

“Hold up there a minute, Top. I’m supposed to be assigned to some secret radio research outfit,” I told him.

“You’re orders have been changed,” he simply stated.

“Not again!!” I uttered, shocked.

“What do you mean, again?” he demanded, sternly.

“I started out eighteen months ago to come overseas to go to the 999th Signal Battalion. Well, I see the triple nine here, but every time I stopped in route someplace on the way here, my orders got changed.

“I went on leave from my last unit and then reported into Oakland. My orders got changed, and they sent me to this big high tech radio repair school out there in California. There were a bunch of us that started there, but not as many graduated, as it was a pretty intense school.

“All of the ones who graduated were sent to another school. It dealt with a ‘New Super Top Secret’ radio. Those aren’t my words by the way. That was the way it was described to us the first day there.

“It too was a pretty complicated course, also intense. They taught us to operate it, and how to maintain it. I mean all the way up to depot level maintenance. Again, not everyone who started graduated. Those who did were issued one of the radios. There were twelve of us in my class who graduated, and we were all headed for Southeast Asia.

“I’m pretty sure there were other classes there, too, as we would see other guys who weren’t in our class, but we never got to talk to them. That place really took ‘Top Secret’ to heart,” I finished.

“Yes, I can believe that,” the Sergeant said. “I’ve never seen a security clearance as high as yours when I picked up your orders.”

“When I left the school, I was issued one of the radios in a large locked shipping container. You have to have a hand truck to move it, the box is that heavy. It has everything but the kitchen sink in it, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find a sink in there somewhere,” I told him.

“Well, get your shit together, we leave in an hour,” he said. “Oh by the way, I’m Master Sergeant Sawyer,” he added, shaking his head at my condition.

“They let you go to town last night, didn’t they?” he asked, nearly laughing.

“Yes, they did. I wasn’t prepared for the local boozes,” I told him.

“You were drinking ‘Mekhong’ then?” he asked, holding back the laugh.

“Yes, I think that’s what they called it. Tasted like grain alcohol cut with kerosene. I mixed it with Coke to make it drinkable,” I told him, and now he was laughing.

“Newbies” was all that he could say, he was laughing so hard. Finally he quieted down except for an occasional chuckle.

“Boy, don’t ever drink Mekhong with cola of any kind,” he admonished me. “It will leave you with an awful hangover as well as the shakes. In the Teams, we drink Bourbon, a respectable man’s liquor.”

I had managed to put on my fatigue shirt by now, and was tucking it in out of habit.

“You can leave the shirt tail out here. It’s the heat,” he told me. I had been resting with my pants and boots on. Sawyer’s eyes went wide when he saw the patches on my shirt.

“So you’ve been to Ranger School!” he stated, surprised.

“Yes, that and both Pathfinder and the Jungle Warfare Schools in Panama,” I told him, pointing to the patch on my right shirt pocket. He could also see my wings from Airborne training.

“How the hell does a radio operator get to go to all of those schools?” he wanted to know.

“I was always the new guy in the outfits that I was in, and they didn’t want to lose their regular people for several months at a time, so they would send the new guys to those schools when the commitment came down,” I told him.

“Well, I might have found the right man after all,” he said very quietly, almost to himself.

I finished packing my duffel bag, and we left the hooch in a few minutes. All of the transit personnel were bunked in the old original ‘Hooch’ buildings from when the camp was first built in 1962. They were wood buildings built with the floor three feet above the ground. There was siding for the first four feet above the floor, and then screen wire the rest of the way up all around. There were horizontal hinged shutters that could be opened out for ventilation that covered the screens. They had tin roofs, and it was really noisy when it rained, which it did a lot in Korat, Thailand in the summer of 1966.

MSG Sawyer had a jeep outside, and I tossed my duffel bag and other stuff in the back.

“You eat yet?” he asked.

“Yes, if you can call that stuff food,” I told him.

“We’ll stop at the Airbase mess-hall and get some chow,” he told me, as he fired up the jeep.

We made a stop at Finance on the way. Based on previous experience, I didn’t think it would be very quick, as he had assured me it would be. MSG Sawyer gave them a copy of my new orders and told them that I needed the usual advance pay. What advance pay, I wondered?

Apparently finance had been through this drill before, as the clerk typed up some paperwork with my orders attached; I signed it and took it over to the pay window. They gave me half a months pay in Baht. It seemed like a lot of money, but I remembered it was the local currency.

When we left Finance, MSG Sawyer was ready to head for the Airbase.

“I have to pick up the radio before we leave,” I informed him.

“What Radio?” he asked.

“The ‘Super Top Secret’ radio that I have been saddled with since I graduated from that last school,” I answered.

“I thought that was going to your previous assignment!” he told me.

“No, it’s not assigned to a unit. They are issued to the operators personally. It was assigned to me, and it goes where I go. Wherever that is,” I finished.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“It’s at USARSUPTHAI Headquarters. The G-2 has it locked in his vault.”

“Just damn!” was all that MSG Sawyer said, but I could see that he was pissed. We went directly to the G-2 section when we got to USARSUPTHAI Headquarters.

“Hi, Evan,” MSG Sawyer said to the Master Sergeant in charge of G-2, when we entered.

“Sawyer, what the hell are you doing around here?”

“You got something that belongs to my new man here,” he replied.

“What!” MSG Evans replied, shocked. “How the hell did you get a hold of him. He was supposed to be going to the 83rd RRSOU up in Udon.”

“Not any more. I received these orders this morning,” MSG Sawyer said, and showed both of us the orders. It was the first time that I had a good chance to study them.

“Damn, these are straight out of USARPAC,” MSG Evans said. “I thought you might have pulled some strings, but I don’t think even you have strings that long.”

“Nope,” MSG Sawyer replied, “I was just here looking for a radio operator. The guy that I had accidentally stepped on a punji stick last week. Went right through his boot, the foot, and into his ankle. Nasty - very nasty. They had to Medevac him,” he finished, and shivered at the memory.