Ghost War (27 page)

Dong couldn’t believe it. “What?” he whispered. “How … how do you know?”

The man retrieved a piece of yellow paper from his pocket. “All four MiGs were shot down,” he said, reading from the paper. “The enemy base was unharmed.”

Dong was aghast. “Shot down?” he gasped. “How? By whom?”

The man just shrugged. “Apparently, the enemy had an airplane hidden from you all this time,” he said sardonically. “A small
propeller
airplane. My intelligence men witnessed the action. They said it was an A-1D Skyraider. An ancient machine. Must have been quite a pilot at the controls.”

Dong was speechless. Where the hell could the enemy have hidden an airplane?

“That… that was the last of my money,” he was finally able to blurt out. “It’s all gone …”

“Exactly,” the man told him. “And that’s why I am here. You’re being foreclosed, Dong. Shutdown. You’re bankrupt. CapCom can no longer consider you part of the Minx Command. As of this moment, myself and my army are responsible for this sector.”

Dong looked around at his palatial headquarters.

“This is all mine now too,” the man said. “We’re taking it against any bad debts that you may have incurred during this rather misguided campaign.”

The man motioned for two of his soldiers to come forward. They did, and proceeded to strip all Minx insignia from Dong’s uniform.

“Formalities,” the man told him, already admiring the fine workmanship of Dong’s desk.

“What do you plan to do?” Dong asked him humbly.

The man laughed. “My army had been waiting to the west of you for days,” he told Dong. “Now that it is our responsibility to secure this sector, it is then our responsibility to finally eradicate the enemy at Khe Sanh, and thus remove one of the last impediments in our drive to the south.”

The two soldiers then yanked Dong out of his chair, pushed Him towards the office door and out into the morning sunlight.

Standing in the harsh early morning sun, he was surprised to find the vast majority of his troops were assembled and waiting for him outside his mobile headquarters.

There were about 1200 troops lined up in five ranks in the large cleared field next to the hill where his mobile HQ_ had been placed, beyond was the valley of the Khe Sanh itself. His men did not look like an army. They were beyond ragged, beyond shabby, beyond dishonorable. They were nothing but a rabble of the injured, the thieves and the cowards—and a barely armed rabble at that. Some were using tree stumps as crutches, others were being led by their comrades because they were either blind or shell-shocked. Still others were missing hands or entire arms. But there were also many who looked well-fed and were wearing almost new uniforms. These were the shirkers.

Dong was immediately sick to his stomach.
This
was his army?

He suddenly heard the sharp bleat of bugle. Then there was a tremendous roar of truck engines. Within seconds, a long line of black troop trucks came rumbling into the camp. Their rear compartments were filled with well-armed, apparently elite troops, all of whom were wearing the same jet black combat uniform as their mysterious commander.

The parade of trucks continued for five full minutes, the awe-inspiring visual display intentionally reducing Dong to tears. He was being disgraced in the grandest of fashions by this officer in black.

With the last bit of dignity, he turned to the officer and asked: “Just who are you, sir?”

The man smiled, revealing a set of cracked and gaped teeth. “My name, sir, is Commander Abdul Assass.”

Dong looked back out on the assembly grounds and counted more than 1.00 troop trucks. On a sharp order from Assass, the troops inside the trucks began jumping out and lining up in their own ranks. Once again the visual message was quite clear. Compared to Dong’s pathetic ranks, the black army looked like supermen.

“What happens now?” he asked Assass.

“Your men will be fed and cared for,” he told Dong. “Those that we deem recoverable will be given noncombat jobs. Those that aren’t… well, why address any more unpleasantness on this day?”

“And I?” Dong asked. “What happens to me?”

Assass stared at him for a long moment—the combined assembly of his troops and those belonging to Dong looked on in anxious attention.

Assass smiled. “You?” he asked. “Why, you, sir, still have a role to play in the Minx conquest, of course.”

Dong’s eyes grew wide. His spirits suddenly soared.

“You mean, I will be allowed to stay?”

Assass never stopped smiling. “But of course,” he said. “We have a special mission, just for you.”

Dong straightened up to his full height. “And I will perform it to the upmost of my ability,” he declared.

“Oh, that you will,” Assass told him.

At that point the officer reached into his pocket and came out with a single key. He handed it to Dong and then pointed at the long line of parked troop trucks.

“Your’s is number seventeen,” he told Dong. “It is one of our waste disposal vehicles. And be careful, they tell me the brakes are a little worn.”

Khe Sanh

L
IEUTENANT TWANG WAS DEAD.

He was sure of it now. His legs weren’t working, his head was split and still bleeding, and at times he was sure he could reach up and actually touch his brain.

Not only was Twang sure that he was dead, he was convinced that he was in hell, the place the westerners were always talking about. Why else would he be surrounded by more and more dead bodies every time he woke up?

Now they were even dropping out of the sky.

Not fifty feet from his spider hole was a wrecked Minx MiG-25, its fuselage burning, its pilot horribly impacted on its canopy, his face but a bloody smear against the shattered glass.

The airplane had come down about two hours before, falling out of the morning mist like a mighty eagle that had been killed by something bigger and more powerful on the wing. It had hit the ground so violently, it shook him out of his comalike unconsciousness. Dozens of rotting Minx bodies were thrown into Twang’s spider hole as a result of the impact. Many of these corpses had landed right on top of Twang, and for ten terrifying minutes he found himself fighting them—literally
fighting
them—to push them out of his hole. During this time, he thought he might have heard the sounds of an airplane—maybe an older airplane, flying close to the ground overhead, and possibly even landing at the base. But Twang wasn’t sure. So great was his terror in his battle with the dead, he wasn’t interested in whether another airplane was landing at the base.

About 125 feet in the other direction, another Minx airplane had crashed. Like the first one, it had simply dropped out of the sky, its fuselage aflame, the bombs under its wings exploding as it came down. Probably 500 feet from that wreckage—out where the enemy once held many gun positions—was a third burning MiG, its wings ripped from its fuselage, the shredded body of its pilot, hanging from the cockpit by the strands of his unopened parachute.

Twang took a series of short breaths and then dropped back down into his hole. Yes, he was certain he was dead now—but amidst the horror, he realized that there were some benefits to being deceased.

Because of his demise, he no longer considered himself a soldier. Why should he? He had no more duty to fulfill. He had been sent here by Commander Dong to report on the activities of the Americans “even as we are destroying them.” But the Americans were still here—and it was the Minx that were all gone. Their grotesque screaming bodies were his partners here in hell.

Because he was no longer a soldier, he had thrown away his gun and his radio. He had no use for them anymore. If he could get his legs to work, he would have climbed out of the spider hole long ago, and walked back to Go Ling, his village in the north. And once he got there, he would become a holy man, a Buddhist priest, perhaps. And he would preach nothing but peace, and love for fellow men. He was convinced that was the only real way to live—an ironic conclusion, now that he was dead.

But his legs didn’t work anymore. He knew it as soon as he began fighting the corpses; he tried to move them but they didn’t respond. They were cold to the touch, and it felt like his toes had fallen off.

It made little difference to him. He didn’t need his legs or his toes here in the afterlife. All he needed were eyes to gaze upon the dead as they gazed back at him.

That was another good thing about hell: there didn’t seem to be any war here. There were no more mortar shells falling on the base, no more sniper fire either. He could see no enemy soldiers around the battered airplane, which was now so full of holes, the sunlight was streaming through them like a thousand points of light.

In fact, he couldn’t imagine it being so quiet. Only the crackling of flames from the three crashed airplanes broke the stillness in the air. That, and the fluttering of the tattered American flag flying from the top of the crashed airplane.

Twang knew now that the Americans were actually magicians. If he had found the need to report back to Commander Dong, this is what he would have said: The Americans were sorcerers, they could do unearthly things. They fight and never lose a man. They have weapons that never seem to run out of ammunition. They make Minx fighters fall out of the sky.

And soon, he would find out they could make airplanes just disappear.

He reached up and felt his brain and was surprised it was so gooey. Then he leaned back and stared at the rising sun. Someone, a long time ago, had told him that the man behind the Minx, the
real
power behind the screens, had lived for a while in Japan, the land of the rising sun. But then he moved to Siberia. Or someplace like that.

Twang wiped some slime from his eyes and leaned further back. The skies looked so peaceful this morning in hell. They were bright blue, shaded by the last reds of the sunrise. And there were still some stars visible—or at least he thought they were stars. They too were peaceful looking.

He put his hands behind his cracked head and took a long deep breath of the rotting air. If hell was this peaceful, this free of combat and killing, then he thought he might even enjoy his stay here.

The huge artillery shell came crashing down a few seconds later.

Twang felt it before he heard it. The ground was shaking—a sensation he was used to by now—and he was suddenly spitting dirt from his mouth and fighting dead bodies again. There was smoke and flame everywhere again, blotting out the rising sun and the peaceful blue skies and the twinkling stars.

Twang screamed at the top of his lungs. He had so convinced himself that he would never see war again.

Suddenly there was more crashing, five, six, seven in a row. Twang heaved out two more bodies, and balanced himself on a third in order to look out over the lip of the spider hole.

He couldn’t believe what he saw.

There were soldiers running everywhere. They were coming across the muddy fields, swarming over the old enemy trenches, stepping on and over the bodies of the dead Minx. They were coming down from the hills to the south and east. They were even coming around the small mountain at the end of the runway and charging down the runway itself.

Huge explosions were going off all around them, and it was these that were shaking the very earth. They were not mortar rounds. These explosions were caused by high-explosive artillery shells being fired from the hills; he could clearly see the puffs of white discharge smoke rising into the morning sky above the long snouts of dozens of 120-mm guns that had been placed along the high ridges.

What was happening?
Twang’s head was spinning; the glare of fire and explosions stinging his dilating eyes. These soldiers were not from
his
Minx divisions. These men were dressed in jet-black uniforms, not combat pajamas, and they were wearing combat boots, not rubber-tire sandals. Their weapons were different too. They were not carrying AK-47s or sniper rifles, but rather a variety of weapons, including combat Uzis. Others were carrying RPG launchers, a rare item in his unit. Some even had TOW launchers, a weapon Twang had never even seen before.

Twang shook his head. It was like a dream. There were at least 15,000 soldiers charging into the base, running full tilt, firing their weapons, screaming at the top of their lungs.

And they were all heading for the same place: the crashed American jet.

Twang watched with a mixture of horror and fascination as the first wave of black uniformed soldiers reached the enormous, strangely painted and blackened airplane. They were swarming all over it instantly, like ants hungry for a meal. Some were prying open its many hatchways and doors with their bare hands. Others were hurling hand grenades directly into the battered airplane through its hundreds of shell holes.

Two more waves reached the airplane, then three more, then four. There were now thousands of soldiers covering the plane’s fuselage and wings. It was so congested around the aircraft, the soldiers were elbow-to-elbow, trying to get in. All the while the huge artillery explosions were going off everywhere, some so close to the attacking soldiers they were causing casualties.

Twang could hear screaming, shouting, maybe even cries of pain coming from the American airplane, and he suddenly felt some pain, too. He had come to gain a certain respect for the Americans—they had fought so long, so hard, in a war that they apparently stumbled into by mistake. Now they were being slaughtered by a mystery army.

Or were they?

It quickly became apparent to Twang that something was amiss around the American airplane. Just about all the firing had stopped, including the artillery, and now the thousands of soldiers were milling around, apparently confused about what to do next.

He could see officers running up from the rear lines, and dozens of people pointing this way and that, mostly to the inside of the airplane and then to the hills beyond. What was happening? Twang couldn’t figure it out.

Then it hit him. Was it possible that there
were
no Americans inside the airplane? Or anyone else for that matter?