Hwang Sok-Yong - The Shadow of Arms

A sidewalk ran from this lawn straight across in front of the hotel, and there were sentry posts on either end of this walkway. Cars entered the hotel’s front parking lot after circling from the rear of the hotel and the exit then passed by the other sentry post at the left corner of the front and then back out to the main street. Two Vietnamese police were on guard duty at that post, which had been fortified with sandbags. The van, after slowly circling around, came up to the sentry post at the entrance to the parking lot. As the policeman stepped forward, the van dimmed its lights and waited with the interior lamps switched on.

“What’s this?”

“Sir, we’re making a delivery for the Philco manager on the third floor.”

The policeman looked inside the van. “Is that a refrigerator?

“I guess it is.”

As if he didn’t want to be bothered, the policeman waved them on with his flashlight. The car passed the checkpoint and drove straight by the front door of the hotel and into the parking lot. A guard on duty in the parking lot came over to the van.

“What is this? Are you Vietnamese?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t park here.”

“We’re not parking. This is a Philco vehicle. We have to make a delivery.”

“A refrigerator?”

“That’s right.”

The guard took a peek inside, and then said in an annoyed voice, “Leave the car here and take it on over.”

The two men lifted the refrigerator crate and walked around toward the corner leading to the beach guardhouse. The searchlight shone brightly. A barricade had been erected with an iron grating. The freight entrance was at the rear corner of the parking lot, and an elevator had been set up on the outside of the hotel. A hotel clerk waved to them.

“Leave it over there.” Then he picked up the telephone and asked, “What’s the room number?”

“It’s for a Philco manager on the third floor.”

“You don’t know the room number?”

The two men looked at each other and one said, scratching his head, “Well, how are we supposed to know? You know, the gentleman just told us to bring it here, so here we are. He’s now at the company office. He’s an American, you want to check with him on the phone?”

“Ah, don’t bother. Just leave it there.”

The two men set the crate down against the wall where other boxes were heaped up. Then they walked slowly back to the parking lot and got into the van. Upon leaving they followed a different route than that by which they had come, and turned right from the looping drive and then into an alley. They made a U-turn and then halted back near the mouth of the walled alley next to a private house. They switched off the headlights but left the engine running. It was late and the neighborhood was still.

“Time allowed?”

“Five minutes.”

The cell leader, seated next to the driver, reached behind the back seat and pulled out a submachine gun. Then he got into the back seat and opened the window on the left side. He put a clip in and readied the gun to fire. He picked up a hand grenade and handed it to the driver.

“Take this. Roll it on the street later.”

“And you?”

“I’ve got three.”

They closed all the windows. All of a sudden there was an explosion, so loud and heavy that the ground kept shaking for seconds after. There was a flash of light, and shards of glass could be seen flying through the air like tracers.

“Let’s go!”

The van sped out and into the hotel driveway. A pillar of flames was rising from the building and they could see off-duty troops pouring out of the hotel’s front entrance. The van rushed around toward the front hotel, firing the submachine gun. The sentries were hit and a hand grenade tossed into the parking lot blew up in a dense cluster of vehicles. Over on the green, tree-lined lawn, three guerrillas were on the ground, shooting toward the entrance. As it drove away, the van let loose more grenades and blew up the sentry box near the exit. Then, its brakes screeched as it stopped to pick up the three team members who had been providing covering fire from the grassy promenade. They all got safely inside and the van sped away down Doc Lap Boulevard then turned over through a back alley to Puohung Street and a little way on stopped behind a row of parked cars. All five of them got out of the car and disappeared into the darkness.

At the same time, ten o’clock sharp, other units of the 434th Special Action Group also executed their missions. The first unit attacked oil storage facilities near China Beach, the second unit hit the barracks at a detachment of the ARVN First Division, and the third unit bombed the main gate at MAC headquarters.

The first unit had assembled in the slums of Somdomeh and from there penetrated into the vicinity of the navy hospital overlooking the oil terminal at China Beach. They each carried a revolver or a carbine and the team was equipped with a 107mm Chinese-made short-barreled rocket launcher. Each carried over his shoulder a canvas bag containing two rocket projectiles, making a total of ten. At the appointed time, they launched five rockets from a range of about three thousand feet, three of which hit the target. Immediately afterwards, they launched three of the remaining rockets toward the heliport on the other side of the navy hospital, then withdrew as quickly as they could. If they were not gone within ten minutes the launching point would be traced by US radar, and gunships would be sent after them while ground forces sought to encircle their position to foreclose escape. As it exploded, one of the oil reservoir tanks shot lumps of flame in all directions, causing the fire to spread to other tanks nearby.

The third unit set off a bomb at the main gate of the MAC headquarters. Instead of using blasting caps, they detonated the bomb using an electrical switch wired from the site to a hiding place in the campside slums nearby. The guard station at the gate was blown up and the wall and the barricades left were broken into rubble.

Charged with the mission of hitting the barracks of an ARVN battalion, the second unit mobilized two vehicles and made a frontal assault on the sentry box at the main gate of the barracks, mowing down the guards with AK-47s. Then they torched the main barracks, tossing hand grenades in and spattering the building with automatic rifle fire, while the backup force lobbed smoke shells into other parts of the compound to sow confusion. The soldiers inside tried to mount a counterattack, but they were in disarray after being awakened and the guerrillas inflicted more casualties and then slipped away under cover of the smoke.

The separate operations by the four units were all executed concurrently and took less than ten minutes from beginning to end. In one instance, the whole attack was over in less than five minutes.

The charge exploded at the Grand Hotel had been an anti-tank mine. The streets shook when it went off, and many houses along Doc Lap Boulevard had all of their windows shattered by the shock. At the sound of the blast, Colonel Cao, who had a woman in his arms as he sat with Frank in the glass room at the Sports Club, had a dazed look. Losa from Sri Lanka, who had been necking with Frank, let out a piercing shriek. Water began to pour down from the cracked glass walls, and suddenly the water burst out of the aquariums and there were live fish squirming around on the carpet amidst the broken glass. Cao and Frank, being men familiar with the battlefield, kicked open the door and ran outside. The customers who had been drinking in the outer room were all cowering down on the floor with the waiters. Cao dashed to the door. His driver and bodyguard rushed up, breathless.

“What’s going on?”

“We have no idea, sir.”