Men in Green Faces (2 page)

Gene took the sheet of paper. “Okay. Thanks.”

Door secured again, Gene scanned the report, then walked it up to Jim.

“Flash report from intel,” Jim explained, then relayed the contents. “Information is needed on an NVA advisor, a Colonel Nguyen. It is believed that Colonel Nguyen was previously a double agent, known as Lieutenant Dong—a former Vietnamese SEAL who infiltrated the LDNN program about three years ago, and who disappeared before he could be apprehended.”

Shit, Gene thought, a Vietnamese SEAL! No damned wonder nobody can catch him—trained like us, thinks like us, operates like us, knows what we do, how we do it. He’d be dangerous as hell.

“So,” Jim went on, “interrogate all POWs concerning the whereabouts and the movements of this individual. The colonel is recruiting throughout the Mekong Delta. Information reports that if he gets any resistance from the local villagers, the villages and indigenous are being eliminated.” He looked around the room. “Just keep in mind that we want this guy.”

Whole villages and all the villagers? A butcher. Yeah, Gene thought, we want him. Colonel Nguyen. He’d make it a point to remember the name.

“The mission objective,” Jim began, “is a North Vietnamese Rest and Recovery Center. We’re going in to collect information, take a hostage, search and destroy the rest.”

Gene watched the helo crews and the boat people throw quick glances at one another. The five other SEALs, sprawled in their chairs, were still, focused on Jim. No mission was ever the same. They needed to know exactly who would be doing what, and what they’d be carrying.

“Okay,” Jim said. “We take no water, no food. Brian, you’re point man. Take a Stoner with eight hundred rounds of ammo, a nine-millimeter with a Hush Puppy, two magazines of fourteen rounds each. ‘X’ the nose of the bullets. One m the chamber. Four grenades—two fragmentation and two concussion—one claymore mine with a thirty-second delay fuse, two pop flares—one red, one green. Two smokes—one green, one violet. Pick up an area map at the platoon leader’s office. You’ll also need a Lensatic compass and a flashlight with green lens.”

From the back of the room, Gene saw the seaman nod. Brian Norwood usually drew point position because, at five foot three, 135 pounds, he was the smallest man in the squad, able to go into tight places in heavy brush and find them a path through the jungle—their eyes and ears up front. Good at spotting booby traps, good at navigation. And the Hush Puppy, with two magazines plus one round in the chamber, would give him the capability of fifteen silent kills.

Jim told each man what to take, following the same order they would patrol in. He named himself next. “I’ll be the PL. I’ll be carrying a Stoner, eight hundred rounds, two LAAWS rockets, Hush Puppy with two magazines, two smokes—one red, one green—and two pop flares, map, compass, and flashlight with red lens.”

Gene watched Jim take a careful drag of his cigarette. The ash was about three-quarters of an inch long. Maybe the PL would, one day, be able to smoke one to the end without the ash dropping off.

“Roland, you’re radioman. M-16, four grenades—two fragmentation, two white phosphorus—four pop flares—two red, two green—an extra battery for the PRC-77 radio, ten pounds of C-4 in two five-block charges with five-minute delay fuses.”

Stretching out his legs, he glanced over. Garson, the second-class radioman, was a good communications specialist. Lousy poker player, though. His face gave him away every time. His favorite phrase fit any and all situations: Everything’s all fucked up. Made Gene laugh, so it became a private joke between them, and Roland muttered it each time they met. It was the way Roland said it.

Clearing his throat, Jim went on. “Assistant PL and automatic weapons man is Gene. Take eight hundred rounds for your M-60 and a few grenades, map and compass, flashlight with green lens.” He took a careful puff and the ash fell off.

Gene kept a straight face and nodded that he understood. Jim ground the cigarette out.

“Grenadier is Alex. XM-203, four hundred rounds of 5.56 ammo, thirty rounds of 40 Mike-Mike, two claymores, twenty rounds of high explosive, five rounds of white phosphorus, and five flechettes.”

Third Class Alex Stochek was their real loner. Strange, silent guy. Woke up with a hard-on every morning. Must be tough on his women, Gene decided. The only one of the squad with a full beard, he was hot with the XM-203, an over-and-under weapon with an M-16 on top and a grenade launcher underneath, but the flechette seemed somehow more evil. Its pattern was like a shotgun’s, only each load was a cluster of barbed darts about half an inch long. Ugly. Strange guy. Yearned to make a knife kill. Really strange.

“Stoner man, Cruz Bertino. Take the Stoner, eight hundred rounds, four grenades, two LAAWS rockets, two claymores—one with a thirty-second delay fuse, one with a one-minute delay—and two pop flares—one red, one green,” Jim continued.

Cruz, the original cumshaw man. First words out of his mouth, most times, were “You owe…” Half the time they called him You-O, and if Gene remembered correctly, Jim owed Cruz first choice of his next box of cookies from The World—back home—in exchange for the case of Pepsi You-O produced out of nowhere two nights past.

“Rear security is Doc Murphy. M-16, six hundred rounds, medical kit to include emergency surgery kit, chloroform pack, two hand grenades, and two five-pound charges of C-4 with five-minute delay fuses.”

Gene’s grin flashed. The second-class corpsman hated operations where enemy contact was likely. Doc was a SEAL but hadn’t gone through training. He’d had Basic Land Warfare, SEAL Basic Indoctrination, and diving school. He hadn’t gone through Hell Week. Assigned to SEAL Team’s Lima Platoon, he had no choice over going. He constantly protested, “Goddammit, I’m not a SEAL. I’m a corpsman. You can count on me to treat you, but don’t count on me for battle.” He’d fire his weapon, but as soon as somebody got wounded, he’d quit firing to care for the man. He hated to operate. Just despised it, because he wasn’t a SEAL. Still, if Gene ever had to operate with just himself and one other man, Doc would be the other.

Jim turned his attention to the Sea Wolf crews, the two pilots, two copilots, and four gunners who would man the two helicopter gunships. “We need two helos. Fully loaded rocket pods, two M-60s on each gunship, with as much ammo as you can carry.”

Hottest pilots in the world, Gene thought. They’d go anywhere, do anything, to get the SEALs out alive.

He watched Jim pace, glance down at the paper in his hand, then look at the boat personnel, the eight men from Mobile SEAL Support Team unit assigned to Lima Platoon. “We need two MSSCs, Medium SEAL Support Crafts. I want two .50-calibers with five thousand rounds each on each boat, as well as two M-60s with five thousand rounds, per weapon, per boat.”

“Uniforms.” Jim announced the second half of the briefing, as was SOP—standard operating procedure—for the Warning Order. “Everyone in the patrol will have cami tops, pants—Levi’s 501s or cami bottoms—jungle boots, insect repellent, first-aid kits, UDT SEAL life jackets, knife, UDT emergency flare, and green and black face paint.”

Behind them, Gene stood up and stretched. UDT, he thought. Underwater Demolition Team. Frogmen, they were called, and they were good at what they did. Had some aboard Seafloat, but in spite of what people thought, UDT people weren’t SEALs, and SEALs sure as hell weren’t UDT. The UDTs hadn’t had the massive amounts of advanced training SEALs got.

“Inspections are set at 1530 hours, ready for patrol. Help each other out. Jump up and down and make sure nothing rattles, and that everyone has all the equipment and ammo brought up. Patrol Leader’s Order is at 1600 hours,” Jim finished. “Eat early. See you at 1600. In uniform. Ready to go.”

Gene unlocked the door, stepped out onto Seafloat’s deck and into steaming heat. The rest of the details he and Jim had worked out for the op would come later, during the PLO. It was his time now. He needed it to stay alive, stay sane…go quiet and read from his little pocket Bible. At least he still had his faith, but he’d given up a long time ago his high school dream of becoming a missionary. Becoming a SEAL had changed him too much. Now the jungle and the enemy were waiting…and so was he.

The Viet Cong, partly because of Gene Michaels, came to believe the Navy SEALs could fly, could breathe underwater, and could not be killed. Other military people who encountered them believed they were individually and collectively crazy. Nobody, not even other Special Forces, messed with the SEALs, one of the deadliest and most elite intelligence-combat entities in the world, a status shared only by Britain’s Special Air Services.

The SEALs of Lima Platoon, legendary for their fierceness in combat, were base-camped in mid-river on Seafloat, one of the hottest AOs—areas of operation—in Vietnam. Lima numbered fourteen SEALs, divided into two seven-man squads. Though assigned to Lima’s first squad, Gene operated not only with both squads but with other squads on Seafloat and with the Kit Carson Scouts, the Montagnards, and any other unit that wanted him and his 60. They all did. He was the most lethal of all the SEALs, and he loved to operate.

The men swore his big M-60 sang in combat, with a firing rhythm that was his alone. SEALs who’d operated with him insisted they’d recognize the
da-da-da, da-da-da, dut, dut, da-da-da, da-da-da, dut, dut
rapid-fire music of his 60 forever after.

He stood six feet tall, weighed two hundred pounds. When his laughter died and he went off alone, his features icy, his eyes gone from brown to black, not even Willie dared approach. But the squads considered Gene their lucky element. No SEAL on patrol with him had ever died. Nor had any ever been seriously wounded or captured.

Gene had caught some shrapnel, and he carried flecks of it still, inside his left wrist and arm. He refused to report such minor injuries, knowing a report would cause a Purple Heart to be forthcoming. Having seen the savage wounds others sustained, he had his own ideas about when a Purple Heart was called for.

Carrying a pack of Marlboro cigarettes in the left pocket of his cami shirt, and in the right pocket a small Bible, read before and after every mission, he ignored his squad’s comments about luck, the kidding about his praying. He just counted, like beads on a rosary, the number of times he should have been dead—they should all have been dead—and was silent.

B
Y 1600 HOURS, THE
ten-by-twenty-foot briefing room on Seafloat had been secured and the Patrol Leader’s Order was under way. Tarps, rolled down over the three-foot-wide screened windows, muffled the voices inside. Outside, two armed SEALs stood security on opposite corners of the building, able from their positions to take all four sides of the structure under fire. Only those involved were allowed to know anything about the upcoming operation.

Inside, the Sea Wolf and Mobile SEAL Support Team crews, along with six of one of Lima Platoon’s seven-man SEAL squads, settled into green or gray metal folding chairs. The SEALs lounged in them, some tilted back against the plywood walls. They looked completely relaxed. Gene Michaels, at the rear, had his head propped on one hand, his other arm across the back of an empty chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him, and his M-60 slung, hanging at his side, but his concentration was total, focused on the seventh SEAL, Jim Henshaw, patrol leader for this operation.

Nobody took notes. Everything pertaining to the operation, their parts and the other men’s parts, had to be committed to memory. Except for the sound of Jim’s voice and an occasional shift in someone’s position, the room was silent.

Jim paced in front of the blackboard and situation map, both permanently attached to the wall behind him. The situation map showed all past operations run in any particular area; the locations were marked by colored pins. Red meant heavy enemy contact at that coordinate. Yellow signified light contact. Green, no contact. There were very few green pins among the fields of red and yellow.

Gene, scanning the map, focused on a particular green pin, thought of Doc, and couldn’t help but grin. That op had been a honey.

They’d inserted in early afternoon, and the seven of them were about an hour into the jungle with another hour and a half to their objective, a tiny Viet Cong village. Intelligence had it that the village hosted an NVA encampment. The SEAL squad headed in to check the situation out. If the NVA had indeed moved in, the SEALs would call in the coordinates, their helo gunships would bear down, and the whole area would disappear.

As always, Gene remembered the heat. Patrolling through dense foliage beneath the three ascending heights of trees, the tallest hidden from sight by the two levels below, they’d sweltered in the dim light under the triple-canopy jungle. The heat joined with the deep, stinking mud and the insects to make the squad truly miserable. None more so than Doc, walking rear security, whose face made plain that he was one unhappy corpsman. He purely hated to operate.

The Mekong Delta ran water everywhere in the form of rivers, streams, creeks, and canals. Shit ditches, the SEALs called them, due to the people’s habit of using them as toilets. Nobody wanted to fall into one. Not even the villagers. And especially not Doc, who saw them as writhing with bacteria, fungus, and God knew what else. And here they were, Gene thought, with a narrow canal to cross and no bridge.

Jim had signaled that the squad should improvise a monkey bridge. As silently as possible, they foraged for dead and fallen palm branches and layered them across. With their boots caked with mud, they crossed one at a time.

Gene remembered Brian, on point as usual, walking carefully out on the narrow monkey bridge, the branches giving slightly under his weight. Jim crossed next, followed by Roland. They immediately stood security for the rest.

Carrying the 60, and loaded with ammo belts, Gene had weighed the most. He stepped on the bridge and felt it bend under him, but it held. The fronds were slippery, but his balance was good. Once he was back on solid ground, he sighed with relief and took his security position.