Ian Slater - South China Sea

Chinese triple A was filling the air with hot metal and tracer, slicing the early-morning mist The question Roscoe was asking himself was, Would the Chinese go for the trap? Would they attack in me hope of “bear-hugging” the USVUN troops, getting so close in among the Americans mat the two remaining big guns beyond Dien Bien Phu would not fire for fear of hitting the DEF triangle, killing more Americans than Chinese?

Another Skyraider swooped by, dropping his “jelly beans” around the violet-smoking perimeter, the plane then suddenly going out of control, the pilot slumping in the seat, a dull bubble of light in the distant fog as it slammed into the eastern sides of the valley.

Suddenly, bugles sounded from beyond the perimeter and the attack en masse began.

“Grenades!” Roscoe shouted, his order repeated on the three sides of the DEF triangle, and the grenades falling mainly from the AGL gunners. The first Chinese had reached the wire when the first grenades exploded among the jelly, and suddenly, like scores of Christmas-tree lights coming alight — only there the similarity ended — the burning fuel air explosive ran like a wildfire through the masses of Chinese troops where the jelly tanks had burst, releasing an aerosoled fuel air explosive like a fine but dense spray all over the perimeter and the troops around it. They were afire. To make doubly sure that all the jelly spray was afire, the five remaining Skyraiders came in with rockets, a tongue of flame licking so close to Foxtrot’s position in the DEF triangle that three Americans and two Vietnamese caught fire and burned to death.

Anyone touching the victims suffered the same terrible fate because of the mixture’s sticky adhesive quality. Dozens of Chinese with either extraordinary bravery or madness kept running toward the DEF lines, only to be cut down by the concentrated cones of fire that issued forth from Freeman’s Special Forces, Gurkhas, and Airborne. So as not to waste ammunition, each sector of DEFs three lines had been assigned its own cone or field of fire for which each force alone would be responsible. Now the five Skyraiders came in, strafing the wire perimeter to sow further chaos among the PLA troops, another Skyraider downed in the process.

The sheer volume of fire from M-16s, M-60s, AK-47s, AK-74s, type 56s, AGLs, and the rest was of a kind Roscoe had never even imagined possible. The Chinese, most of them burning to some degree, were cut down as though some great arc of scythe had cut through a field of grain. The losses were now so high that neither Wei nor Wang, the latter already dispirited by the defeat at Disney, wanted to persist. And as if to underscore their decision, the forty-three remaining from Echo, Foxtrot, and Delta led a running counterattack charge. The Chinese lines broke and withdrew, their sudden panic not something the victors despised them for, but rather understood as fellow warriors. The combination of U.S. TACATR and the elite corps of commandos had simply held beyond the point the PLA had thought possible. Only now did Beijing decide to talk — not promise, but talk — about an armistice, a cease-fire to go into effect at noon.

Two hundred fifty miles eastward, where the early-morning light suffused the trees and tall grass in a golden hue, the point man now saw that all three were Caucasian. Not that this made them automatically risk-free, but everyone had heard about the PLA having taken a large number of oil rig workers and the like prisoner. “Freeze!” he shouted.

Within a few hours Mellin, Murphy, and Shirley Fortescue were the center of attention at a press conference, better described as a media feeding frenzy, that was making them famous via CNN. Had they arrived an hour later, the rushed news story of their heroism in breaking the PLA’s supply line would have been drowned or at least temporarily shunted aside by the reports coming out of the recently besieged but now victorious garrison at Dien Bien Phu. Among the reports of heavy losses on both sides there was a rumor of two American MIAs from ‘Nam having been found by either Captain Roscoe’s men and/or by the U.S. Airborne battalion. It was difficult to get any more information, and an exultant yet sober Freeman, the press, and Danny Mellin would have to wait until the victors of Dien Bien Phu returned to either Freeman’s HQ at Phu Lang Thuong or Jorgensen’s HQ in Hanoi.

As the choppers came in to pick up the body bags of the USVUN force — most of its dead being American and Vietnamese — Kacey was assigned by Roscoe to look after the partially burned and now dead white woman, the one they’d called Salt, and the big-mouth MIA, now POW, the black man called Pepper, his hands now locked behind his back with the serrated plastic zap straps that had replaced regular handcuffs in the Army.

Kacey was surprised by Pepper’s postdefeat mood. He thought that the death of the white woman would have plunged Pepper into the depths of despair. On the contrary, Pepper was elated, with the tremendous sense of release that surges through the body after the narrowest of escapes, the law of averages dictating that he should have perished with the rest of his PLA colleagues, as Salt had.

“I guess,” Kacey said, “you were right up front of the charge, huh?”

Pepper spat contemptuously.

“Nah,” Kacey continued, “you’re a shit bag. You were in the rear, right? I mean, some Charlie sticking a bayonet up your ass to keep you moving, otherwise you’d be back with your dope, right?”

Pepper smiled malevolently. “What were you doin’, motherfucker? Jerkin’ yourself off in a trench?” He spat again.

Kacey could still see the terrified look on the little girl with the grenade, her lying there like some discarded rag doll. “Get on the fuckin’ slick, man,” he ordered Pepper. But the chopper was so full of wounded, there was no room and they had to wait another half hour until there was a chopper with space for them.

The more Kacey thought about the girl, the more he felt like shooting Pepper right then and there—”accidental discharge.” The money and time they’d waste on this son of a bitch didn’t bear thinking about.

Finally there was a chopper free and Kacey, dumping Salt’s body bag in first, ordered Pepper into the chopper. He made him sit on the floor, gave the pilot the thumbs-up, and they were off the ground, quickly gaining altitude till they reached a thousand feet. Pepper was whining loudly about not being able to sit on a seat.

“Here!” Kacey yelled. “Turn around, you prick. I’ll undo the cord and you can sit up.”

Pepper turned his back to Kacey, who took his knife, cut the plastic cord, and kicked Pepper out. Prisoner trying to escape. Fuck ‘im.

When the chopper landed, Kacey saw a white guy coming over to him. “I hear you’ve got a—” He stopped and looked at the body bag. The rotors had not stopped turning. “A white woman,” he called out, “an MIA.”

Kacey nodded at the body bag.

“Can I—” Danny Mellin began, and Kacey zipped open the bag.

“Pretty badly burned…”

The khaki shirt looked as if it had melted into her — she smelled like burnt chicken — but there was enough of her face visible that, with his heart pounding, he knew it wasn’t her. “Oh Jesus!” he said, and walked away, tears in his eyes.

In another piece of identification in Hong Kong, there was considerably more difficulty because, while the people’s police were sure that the victim was the rich and powerful owner of the penthouse — Mr. Jonas Breem, head of Chical Enterprises and South Asia Industries — the killer, whoever he or she was, had used some new kind of bullet The victim was shot shortly after he’d ejaculated, and his face had been obliterated, so it was doubtful that a positive ID could be made by dental records.