Ghost War (17 page)

But then in a voice that seemed to cut through the raging battle, Hunter heard the Marine clearly and forcefully say, “Don’t let what happened to us happen to you.”

Hunter hastily fed yet another ammo belt into the big M-60. “Yeah? What the hell happened to you?”

“They made us go about this thing the wrong way,” the Marine answered evenly. “They never let us ever get to the heart of the matter. Never let us fight it on our own. Just don’t make that same mistake again.”

Hunter stopped for a moment and stared into the man’s eyes. They were almost entirely white.

“What the hell outfit you with, anyway?” he asked him. “I haven’t seen anyone in Marine uniforms around here.”

“Charlie Company, First Battalion, Twenty-sixth Marines,” the man answered. “Oh, and another thing, get your head down.”

Hunter had already ducked on his own. An instant later, an RPG round exploded not five feet behind him. Hunter never heard the sound, he only saw the flash. If he hadn’t ducked, he would have been decapitated. Still, the concussion had been powerful. A heavy blackness enveloped him. He was floating … floating … floating away….

The next thing he knew, Ben was shaking him violently.

“
Hawk;
Hawk!” he was yelling into Hunter’s face. “
Wake up
, buddy …”

“I’m all right,” Hunter groaned slowly. He reached up to his throbbing head and found that it was sticky with blood. He had been wounded.

“It’s OK,” Ben told him, “looks a lot worse than it really is.”

Hunter glanced around. He didn’t know how long he’d been out. Could have been seconds—maybe minutes—maybe longer. But the rain had stopped and the attack was over. Hundreds of enemy bodies littered the ground around the gun post and up and down the entire base perimeter. He heard a sizzling sound and looked down to see that the barrel of the M-60 he had been using was still red hot and evaporating the mist hanging in the air around it. Only then did he remember exactly what had happened. The gun, the ammo boxes … the Marine. His blood suddenly went cold. He looked up at Ben, his face as white as a sheet.

“Jeeez, Hawk, you look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

Hunter froze for a second.

“I think I just did,” he replied.

L
IEUTENANT TWANG WAS WET
, angry, and more than a little depressed.

This was not the kind of mission he usually pulled. After all, he was a highly decorated soldier of the Third Squad, Second Cadre, of the elite Minx Peasta Corps. He had seen combat all around Vietnam in the past two years and had received CapCom’s highest decoration—the gold-planted Leaf of Glory—three times for valor under fire. But now, by direct orders from Commander Dong himself, he was performing a different mission.

Twang had used that morning’s human wave assault as a cover to get to the small underground observation post located not twenty-five yards from the southeastern perimeter of the enemy base at Khe Sanh. And now he was stuck in this stinking pit—appropriately nicknamed a “spider hole”—with water up to his ass and bugs eating his extremities. His orders: to report any and all unusual activity inside the enemy base and especially around the two crashed airplanes directly to the High Command itself, via his radio. In other words, he, the three-time recipient of the highest honor possible, had been reduced to the lowly position of being a spy.

But maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

He was, at last, away from the Minx High Command, an institution that, medals aside, treated their soldiers as little more than disposable products. The trip out to the hole, through the bloody carnage all around, had opened his eyes to that.

Because he was an officer, Twang had been spared duty in the body-churning human wave assaults; coordinating sniper squads had been his previous mission. That morning had been the first time he’d seen one of the suicidal attacks up close. He was astounded not only by the ferociousness of the assault and the crazed intensity of his fellow Viet Minx, but also by the resoluteness of the defenders. Hundreds of his comrades had charged right by his little spider hole and into the guns of the Caucasian enemy. And now most of them were dead. Their bodies lay all around him, twisted in bloody grotesque poses. He could still hear the screams of the wounded and dying, but he dared not risk his hiding place to go to their assistance. It was against his orders, and besides, there wasn’t anything he could do for them.

So between the cries and the blood and the mud and the water in his hole, Lieutenant Twang was very uncomfortable. And tired. And scared.

But at least he was still alive.

H
UNTER GINGERLY TOUCHED THE
wound on his right forehead and winced slightly.

Night had fallen, and he was sitting in the pilot’s seat of
Bozo
, amid the remains of the smashed cockpit. Frayed wires hung like vines all around him. The glass from busted readout screens and the shattered windshield littered the flight deck floor. The wind was whistling through the hundreds of perforations in the skin of the C-5, the smaller ones caused by the MiG attack over the Gulf of Tonkin, the larger ones from the two battles they’d fought since dropping into this little piece of hell.

He rubbed the wound again; the swelling had gone down considerably and his self-diagnosis techniques confirmed that he didn’t have a concussion. Only his crash helmet had prevented a serious head injury.

But the fact he was on the mend didn’t raise his spirits a notch. Just the opposite. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so low. Where was his vaunted luck now? Where the hell did this whole pipe dream come from? A great air fleet to free the oppressed on the opposite side of the globe? Some idea. Some great thinking. What they’ve got for their troubles was the near-tragic encounter with the pack of MiGs, the scattering of the air fleet, a crash landing in the middle of a very one-sided battle, and a close call in the next. There was no chance for rescue; no chance to even send out a SOS. And the only thing they had to look forward to was another murderous assault from the fanatical enemy hidden in the hills.

He leaned back on the ripped and tattered pilot’s seat, knowing it would be impossible to even relax for one second. Geraci’s men had begun their nocturnal relocation just an hour before, and now much of their equipment was locked inside
Bozo.
It made for a stronger defense, but also tighter quarters. Everyone on the crowded gunship had carved out a space for themselves, and Hunter had chosen this place, the battered flight deck. Now the irony of it was slugging him in the stomach.

What cruel fate would sentence him to sit in the pilot’s seat of an airplane that would never fly again?

But there was something more. Something that was gnawing at him even more deeply than the present dire situation. Something that challenged his very sanity. If the cosmos was going to dictate that he was to die, here and now, in the muck and mud and blood of a foreign land, then he deserved from them the answer to one last big question.

And the only one who could provide that answer was a crazy man.

He stood up, and had to steady himself for a moment. He was off-balance, a state that terrified him. He slipped his crash helmet gently over his head wound and strapped it loosely around his neck. Then he picked up his M-16, checked its full clip and slid down the access ladder and out into the steamy jungle night.

There were mortar rounds dropping all over the encampment, but there was little doubt that they were being fired randomly, more for harassment purposes than against any one target. There was also the constant
zip
-zinging of sniper’s bullets, but the old battlefield maxim of “if you hear it, it ain’t going to hit you” usually held true.

Still, he leaped from one of
Bozo
’s battered landing gear struts directly into a nearby ditch, just as a hail of enemy bullets zipped overhead. Running in a low crouch, he made the length of the ditch, and then scrambled over to one of the Legionnaires’ near trenches, diving in headfirst just as a pair of mortar rounds came crashing down twenty-five feet away.

He picked himself up and brushed some mud from his eyes. When his vision cleared he found himself staring right into the empty eye sockets of two skeletal faces, Legionnaires who had died weeks ago. Both still clutched their weapons in hand, their mouths were wide open as if caught in a scream.

Hunter moved on.

He ran through two trench intersections, once coming upon a mercenary machine-gun crew who were firing tracer rounds randomly into the nearby hills. Their gun pit was littered with piles of empty shell casings and five skeletons, all in some state of dismemberment. They did not acknowledge his presence in any way as he passed by—he could have been a Minx sapper for all they knew. They simply kept firing, one on the trigger of the big .50 caliber, one feeding the belt, eyes staring straight ahead, partners in a combined madness.

A particularly intense mortar barrage held him up near another trench crossover; sheer frustration caused him to unleash a stream of tracer rounds back towards the general area where he calculated the enemy rounds were coming from. The barrage stopped—temporarily. But it was just long enough to allow him to continue his journey.

He finally reached the main entrance to the Legion’s headquarters bunker. As before, there were no guards posted outside, no security measures in place at all. Out of habit, he checked his gun clip and found it three quarters full. Then he paused for a breath and made the last dash to the bunker entrance.

This time he had no idea what he’d find inside.

What he did see chilled him to the bone.

There was the crazed Colonel LaFeete, in his dress uniform, standing on a chair placed in the middle of the otherwise empty bunker. One end of a rope was tied around the center roof beam. The other end was fashioned into a hangman’s noose and wrapped around LaFeete’s neck.

“Stay where you are, American!” LaFeete shouted to Hunter in his raspy, heavy accent. “Do not come a step closer.”

Hunter froze.

Just then a mortar round dropped outside the bunker and the entire place shook. The chair rocked back and forth beneath LaFeete’s feet, but he managed to stay upright.

“It’s all over for me, my career is finished,” LaFeete declared in a maddeningly matter-of-fact voice. “I have failed my men. I have failed France.” He reached up and gently tightened the noose around his neck.

Hunter began to slowly edge towards the deranged officer.

“Colonel,” he began, “I think you ought to reconsider. You’re needed here. Your men need you.”

“Nonsense!”
LaFeete shouted back with steely determination. “When I first came here, things were much clearer. We knew who the enemy was, and for the most part, we knew
where
he was. We came here to free these poor people. To do the job we failed to do in 1954. We came here to be heroes—finally. But it is different now. Now the enemy is everywhere. I hear them inside the wire, inside my bunker, and sometimes, I hear them inside my head.”

“We all do, at sometime or other, Colonel,” Hunter replied, moving even closer to the distraught officer. “What you’ve been through would take a toll on anyone. But it’s not over, sir—not yet. There’s still time….”

“Yes, time,” LaFeete sighed, once again nearly losing his balance. “Time is something we all have—some just more than others.”

A burst of 7.62-mm bullets raked across the front of the bunker, thudding into the sandbags outside.

But LaFeete didn’t hear them. Instead, he began to stroke the noose around his neck. “I am, in the end, a grand failure.”

Hunter took a deep breath. For a brief moment he wondered if it was just as better to let this man go. For such a tortured soul, death might seem a reprieve. But in the next moment, he knew he couldn’t. It was a human life hanging in the balance here. Nothing on Earth was so precious—crazy or not. Besides, he needed to know something from the man.

He took another deep breath.

“Sir,” Hunter began. “Are there any U.S. Marines stationed here? Or soldiers in your command wearing old U.S. Marine uniforms?”

“Marines?” LaFeete laughed, nearly losing his balance a third time. “The only American Marines I saw here, my friend, were dead. And they had been dead for a long, long time.”

At that moment the mad Legionnaire officer looked sharply into Hunter’s eyes. And then he chuckled. Suddenly the color returned to his face. His eyes took on a more rational look. His whole body seemed to relax.

“I’m really just a foolish old man,” he told Hunter with a grin. “I really should have retired years ago. These little episodes are simply cries for help. But I’m feeling much better now.”

The tension in the bunker eased with LaFeete’s sudden lucidity. Hunter let out a long breath in relief. LaFeete looked at him and somehow managed to combine a smile and a frown.

“Well, then, help me down from here,” he said. “We both have a lot of work to do.” He started to bend over to grab the back of the chair.

But then he suddenly lost his balance for real.

Hunter watched in horror as the chair accidently kicked out from underneath the Colonel. He dove towards the officer, but it was too late. LaFeete dropped the three feet to the floor and the noose cleanly snapped his neck. He was dead an instant later.

Midnight

The officers and men of the battered Legion outpost gathered together just three hours after Colonel LaFeete’s untimely death.

They had come to pay their respects to the man who had been their leader. And though emaciated and in tatters, they managed to present an image of proper military pomp.

Hunter, Frost and Geraci were in attendance as well—but more out of respect for all those Legionnaires and mercenaries who had died as well as a courtesy to those who were still alive.

Wrapped in a French flag—hastily sewn together from scraps of filthy red, blue, and white cloth—LaFeete’s body rested on top of a pile of shattered timbers soaked in oil and gasoline. It was a funeral pyre—the classic send-off for a warrior of greatness. But the method of LaFeete’s bodily departure from the world of the living had been chosen for less heroic reasons. Simply put, cremation was much more efficient than an interment into the ground at Khe Sanh these days.