Alternate Generals III

The 'Yards wore black pajamas and Cong hats, enough to fool any enemy we encountered for hopefully one magazine blast.

We assembled in midafternoon of the third day, ready to go.

Simons's briefing was fairly short.

He showed us the target, and there were mutters of dismay. It was, indeed, just on the Vietnam-China border, and was called Hang Pac Bo. In peacetime, if there was ever going to be anything such in this part of the world, it might have been a tourist attraction.

Flanking the map were huge aerial photo blowups.

"Don't fuck up and wiggle north," Simons said. "We don't need to be meeting any Chinese." He smiled as much as he ever did, nodded at Meadows. "Dick's already made enough enemies on that side of the border."

The contour lines on the big map were close together. We were going to be humping some steep mountains, as predicted.

Simons issued every man a map, and we studied them as he went on.

"We'll insert here," Simons said, tapping the big map. "Just on the far side of this little village called Tra Linh. It looks like there's some kind of secondary east-west road here, that leads close to the caves. We'll keep south of that road… if it even exists… and move to the far side of this road, here that goes into this other little village, Ha Quang.

"Call it two days march.

"Assuming, which is a big assumption, we aren't blown by then, we'll then slide our way to the caves and look for trouble.

"We chanced an overflight of the caves with a drone a week ago, and it looks like there's at least two companies of NVA Regulars on guard. We'll try to move through them, or, failing that, beat the shit out of them hard, then go after Uncle Ho."

Mad Dog Shriver snorted.

"They'll hear us coming, boss. There's no way we'll be able to sneak into Ho Chi Minh's bedroom without somebody blowin' reveille. Best we just think about kicking their ass out of the way from the get-go."

"You're probably right," Simons said.

"But you gotta have dreams, Jerry," somebody said, and everyone laughed.

"If we go in the shitter," Simons said, "I mean really in the shitter, we'll try to break contact and reassemble somewhere down here, around Na Giang, although that might not be possible, and we'll pick an alternate Romeo Pappa en route.

"If we absolutely go in the shitter, and have to run like hell, we'll break up and exfiltrate, and then there'll be a pickup over here, in Cao Bang. If things go that bad, there'll be a couple of companies of Marines go in and take the airstrip there, and wait for survivors.

"Or maybe not. We'll play things by ear, depending on how they go.

"Again, don't exfiltrate into China unless you have to. The Agency isn't worth shit getting people out of there, like we all know. I think there's still a few OSS guys stuck in Yu

Again, there was laughter.

"That's it," Simons said. "Everything else is SOP, like we rehearsed it. We'll know more, have more on the ground.

"You've got the rest of the day to look at these photos. I've outlined what I think the route maybe should be. Anybody with better ideas… see me in my office.

"Oh yeah. Some romantic damned fool gave the operation the code name of Eastern Sunrise."

A few people groaned.

We spent the rest of the day memorizing the photos. It looked steep, unoccupied, and grim.

But that was the sort of thing we were paid to do.

Nobody had any better ideas than the Bull, so the next day, we assembled our gear, made final checks as three Jolly Green Giants came in, and boarded.

The flight down the Red River to the sea was quiet. None of us were brooding, but rather intent on what we'd do on the ground, how we'd move, and such.

We landed on the carriers off Haiphong, and Air Force service people swarmed the Jolly Green Giants, giving them final servicing. There were four more already aboard ship, our backups and cover.

The ships steamed north for a few hours.

The ship's PA system went off: "All Sunrise raiders… all Sunrise raiders… man your birds for takeoff. Man your birds for takeoff. And… good luck and God go with you."

I didn't think God spent much time on the battlefield, but there were those who went over to one of the waiting chaplains for prayer or confession.

And then we were in the air, and headed back toward land and Uncle Ho.

Some of us pretended unconcern, and faked dozing.

The cover for the Jollies was they were making a border flight, keeping well enough away from the line to prevent diplomatic complaints. If all went well, they'd follow the border to its intersection with the Red River, well to the west of our pla

The first bird aborted after only twenty minutes of flight, turning back toward the carriers.

All this I found out after the mission was over.

Just after we lost the Giant, we fueled from a pair of specially modified C130s.

Then the Giant's loadmaster went down the line, signaling five minutes to go.

The three HH53s carrying our raiders dipped toward the ground, and the loadmaster slid the door open.

Outside reared heavily jungled mountains, with a few narrow valleys with tiny rivers ru

Then we were going in, and over the wind rush and the roar of the engines I could hear weapons being loaded.

The LZ was an abandoned rice paddy, just ahead.

The pilots flared their ships, without bringing them down to leave marks that could be seen later.

We were on our feet, packed as closely together as any jump formation, shuffling forward, and then out the door.

I bent my knees, squelched into mud, and then was moving, staggering under almost eighty pounds of pack and weapons, away from the 53, and going down on one knee into a perimeter.

The three helicopters lifted away, to rejoin the others. With any luck the dropoff wouldn't have been seen by any Viet watchers, nor the slight change in engine noise noticed.

The birds were gone, and my ears stopped ringing, and again I was caught up in the silence of the jungle.

We waited for another few minutes, and then we could hear bird noises, monkey chatter.

Nobody started shitting, shouting, or shooting, so we'd evidently inserted without being seen.

Without needing any words, we formed up in two columns, and started north, following a creek that tumbled, chuckling, through a wide ravine.

It was deadly hot, the height of the dry season. Everyone managed to «slip» into the creek as we climbed, and some even to fill their canteens.

At the front were our Montagnards. With them were Shriver and Davidson, unquestionably the best point men we had.

The columns went up the ravine to a high pass. We could see, to our right, Tra Linh, so our pilots had put us down where they should've.

We went down the mountain's far side, and on through jungle until the word… hand signals, not even whispers… came back to where I was at the head of my reaction force that we'd found the road.

We moved away from it half a klick back into jungle, found a deer trail, and headed west.

It's almost impossible to describe jungle movement to someone who hasn't seen and done it.

The pace is incredibly careful-as slow as two hundred meters a day, slower if you're anticipating contact. That's a step a minute.

If you're on point, you're watching ahead of you, your eyes flickering to the side, then in front and down, looking for boobytraps.

You make sure there's no wait-a-bit vines with their thorns to hold you back, no red ants lurking in those bright green trees to cascade down the back of your neck or, worse, into your moustache if you're vain enough to wear one.