Macv, p.1
MACV, page 1
MACV
Vietnam: Ground Zero Series
Book Nineteen
Eric Helm
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
GLOSSARY
AFTER A FEW MINUTES FETTERMAN HALTED.
“They stayed here quite a while,” he whispered. He pointed to the spots where the vegetation was crushed and the jungle carpet disturbed. “Not much evidence, but enough.”
Gerber glanced up at the canopy, but couldn’t see the sky. “About seven hours to sunset.”
Fetterman started off again. He skirted the huge trunk of a teak tree, then slipped between two palms. He walked slowly, eyes to the ground, the trees, then the canopy. He now knew that he only had to follow a compass course. The other squad hadn’t varied from a straight path once they had left the LZ. Now he could look for signs that they had been followed. But the indication was that no one else had been in there for at least two weeks. The jungle quickly hid any signs.
For two hours they continued on, stopping and starting. Finally Fetterman called a halt. He waved Gerber forward.
“What’s the problem?”
“We’re there,” Fetterman stated flatly.
“How do you know?”
“Captain, can’t you smell it? We’ve found the missing men.”
PROLOGUE
BERKELEY CAMPUS, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DECEMBER 1967
The young man in the dirty blue jeans and the ragged, faded work shirt moved among the knot of students, handing out rocks. He was bearded, with long brown hair clumped together by dirt and tied in a ponytail with a leather thong. He carried a rucksack filled with rocks, chunks of concrete and broken brick. Without approaching anyone from the front, he moved up behind them, slipped a stone into a hand and then moved on until he emptied his bag. Finished, he eased his way toward the rear of the crowd so that he could watch the confrontation.
A rank of police, dressed in dark blue uniforms and wearing white crash helmets, advanced across the open park, shoulder to shoulder. They held shields to protect their legs, stomachs and chests. As they entered the park, stomping the small bushes and flower beds flat, they stopped.
A police sergeant, moving behind his charges, raised a bullhorn to his mouth. “This is an unlawful assembly. You are requested to disperse immediately.”
“Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!” chanted the crowd in response.
“This an unlawful assembly,” repeated the police officer. “If you do not peacefully disperse, you will be placed under arrest.”
The crowd seemed to surge forward, and the man in the dirty clothes grinned. The cry of “Bullshit!” rang out again, almost drowning out the amplified voice of the police officer.
But neither side was moving far. The police had blocked the end of the park and now stood in the shadow of the trees, protecting the business district. They were content to remain there. The students, a surging, milling crowd of foul-mouthed children defying authority for the first time, were happy with the situation.
And then the first rock arced its way over the top of the crowd to slam into the police lines. It bounced from the gleaming shield and fell to the dirt of a ruined flower bed. For a moment nothing happened. It was as if both sides were surprised by the rock. A couple of police officers took unconscious steps to the rear and the line shrank toward the center.
There was a scream from a student as he ran forward, putting his body behind the throw. His stone hit another shield and bounced off.
“You are under arrest,” yelled the sergeant with the bullhorn.
But before anyone could move, the student whirled and disappeared into the crowd, which opened ranks, let him in and reformed the line to protect him.
The police phalanx surged forward, pushing deeper into the park, moving around a huge tree and over picnic tables. The students began to scream. Rocks filled the air. A policeman was struck on the shoulder and slipped. Another tripped, falling to his knees. That seemed to spark the crowd. They edged forward toward the police line.
“You are ordered to disperse,” shouted the sergeant with the bullhorn. He repeated the message over and over.
Behind him the streets were filled with police sirens as more officers rushed to the scene of the growing riot. Open ground, now littered with rocks and bottles, separated the two groups, but the gap between them was getting smaller. The uneasy peace had been shattered by the first rock. Now each side wanted to hurt the other, and the police officers forgot their first duty — to maintain order.
The man in the dirty clothes moved among the crowd, urging them to throw their rocks. “Come on, don’t let the pigs push you around. This is a free country. You have the right to assemble. They’re trying to suspend the Bill of Rights. Next you’ll find yourselves in a rice paddy in Vietnam.”
“Yeah,” yelled a young man. “Hell no, we won’t go.”
“You will disperse now!” ordered the police sergeant.
“Fascist!”
“Pig!”
“Asshole!”
The two sides then came together with an audible sound like that of breakers against a seawall. There was a wail, but not from police sirens. Students, young men and women, pushed against the police barricade of gleaming shields. Officers fell back, stumbled. Rocks hit their heads, bouncing off the shiny white helmets. An officer turned his head as a stone hit, cutting him badly. Blood stained his uniform.
At a signal from the sergeant, the police reacted with force, using their nightsticks on the crowd, swinging indiscriminately. A long-haired girl screamed and fell, her face bloodied. A police officer had his shield jerked from his hands. He punched with his fist, missed and stumbled. One protester jerked at his helmet and another hit him with a rock.
In the rear, the man in dirty clothes began gathering rocks and handing them to those around him. “Hit the pigs. Hit the pigs.”
“You will disperse or be arrested,” screamed the officer with the bullhorn.
As the police pushed past the wounded, three officers in regular uniforms and soft caps moved in, handcuffing the students caught behind the line. Those who offered any resistance were beaten.
The riot was in full swing now. Police officers waved their clubs, beating bloodied and arrested students into submission. The man in the dirty clothes eased his way to the rear of the crowd. He climbed a slight incline and looked down on the scene. A news photographer stood fifty yards away, taking pictures of the riot, and a film crew scrambled to get into position to shoot as the police pushed the students into the open. The filmmakers backed into a softball diamond and crushed the fence around the outfield.
“Yeah,” said the man. He turned and ran down the hill and out of the park. He moved along the narrow street and up a hill toward an old brick building. He stopped for a moment and listened. More police sirens came, and he could hear noise from the swelling and echoing riot.
He opened the door that had long ago been painted blue. The paint was blistered and peeling. The man entered and moved down the dimly lighted hallway that smelled of mildew, vomit and urine, to a set of steps. He descended, entered another corridor that was darker than the one above it. The tile on the floor might once have been light gray, but was now dark, dirty and stained.
When the instigator came to another door, he used a key to open it. The lock was bright and new and would have resisted defeat if it had been necessary to break into the office.
As he stepped inside, another man looked up. “How’d it go?”
The room was brightly lighted, fluorescent tubes glowing overhead. There were three windows in one wall, but those had been covered with newspapers, and little sunlight penetrated. Along another wall were three four-drawer file cabinets, with a desk next to them. A kitchen table with five unmatched chairs stood opposite the desk. Two chairs had a floral design and might have belonged to the table, while the other three were metal folding chairs, one stenciled with YMCA. A camping table sat in the center of the room, set up as a conference table and surrounded by more stolen chairs. A green curtain partitioning one side of the room stood open, revealing a cot with a blanket and a mimeograph machine.
The dirty man sat on a folding chair and wiped the sweat from his face. He reached over the camp table and picked up a bottle of Coke, then drank deeply and replied, “Couldn’t have gone better, Thom. Police overreacted and then the students went berserk. Going to be hundreds injured before it’s all over.”
Thom, a young man in faded blue jeans and a sweatshirt from the University of Colorado, sat down and leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. His hair was long, but trimmed and washed, and he was clean shaven.
“Got the riot going, then?”
“Wasn’t hard.” The disheveled man nodded. “I just hand out the rocks. Give someone a rock and he’s going to throw it. Rocks hit the police and they’re going to retaliate. Simple. Almost too simple. Maddening in that respect.”
“Well, that’s something, anyway.”
“Not a hell of a lot, Thom. This really is too simple. News cameras there to record the event and all the dummies sit in their homes shaking their heads and asking themselves just w
“We’re doing fine.”
“We’re not doing enough.” The man got up and paced, touched a stack of fliers sitting on the table that listed American atrocities in Vietnam — the bombing of hospitals and the destruction of schools. He knew they were lies put out by Hanoi, but that made no difference. There were sources available, and to many that meant they were the truth.
“What more can we do? We alert the people to the war in Vietnam, turn their opinion against it. We help stage rallies, putting people in the street. The Students for a Safe Society are out in force raising money.”
“Kids’ games. It’s all kids’ games. We’re not accomplishing much of anything here. Some news footage that isn’t going to sway opinion, except to convince people that the students should all be locked up.” He moved around the table and looked up at the newspaper-covered windows as if he could see through them into the street.
“Social change moves slowly.”
“But war changes things overnight.”
Thom shrugged. “It’s the way of the world.”
“Those riots —” he turned to face Thom and pointed “— aren’t the answer. All we’re doing is spinning our wheels. People are getting hurt out there.”
“Not seriously. Students aren’t being killed. A little violence, a little trauma, is good for the soul.”
“Says who?”
“Now who’s playing the kids’ games.”
The man sat down again and leaned forward, elbows on the table. “It’s not enough. We’re not making a significant change. If I thought we were, maybe I could work up a little more enthusiasm for our task.”
“That’s all we can do. Inform the people. Let them know what’s happening in Southeast Asia. Convince them we have to act together to get our soldiers out of Asia.”
“No. Sitting here and writing our pamphlets and stories is not the answer.”
“These were the things that fired the American Revolution,” Thom replied. “Men discussing ideas and ways of resisting those ideas. Civil disobedience to convince our leaders that we have opinions. Political action. Voting out the candidates who keep American soldiers in Vietnam, and voting in those who are opposed to the war.”
The man laughed. “That’s not the way social change is accomplished. It’s done by brave men with vision who have the courage to put their plans into play. Sitting on the sidelines just isn’t the answer.”
Thom stood and moved to the table where the Coke sat. After emptying the bottle he said, “You did a nice job on the sidelines today.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly,” Thom said. “Social change is accomplished by men of vision who can manipulate the media and public sentiment to their cause.”
“No. Social change is accomplished by men who act decisively. We’re leaving the change up to others. All we’re doing is acting as catalysts. We make a move in one direction and hope that a change is initiated in another direction. That’s just not the way it’s done.”
“I know you,” Thom said. “You’ve got something in mind now.”
“Yes, I do.” He grinned. “But you’re not going to like it. First, I must shed this image. Cut my hair and shave. Clean up my act.”
“And give up all the free pussy you’ve been getting. Those college girls are only too willing to peel out of their clothes and spread their legs for you.”
“Some things transcend the easy sex.”
“I think you’re beginning to talk heresy. No college man would say that.”
“I’m serious here.”
“So am I.”
“Thom, I want you to understand that I haven’t abandoned our cause, our beliefs. It’s just that I don’t think what we’re doing here is going to accomplish our goals. I’ve got to do something more than hand out rocks to start riots.”
“You’re quitting. That’s what you’re saying.”
“I’m afraid so. I have an idea that might advance our cause faster than anything we could ever hope to do here. A plan that should be easy to implement, one that has a real chance of working. Power, real power, isn’t in the hands of the poor students.”
Thom shook his head. “I’ve heard all this before. It sounds exactly like the speech made by the man who is about to sell out.”
“And it’s going to look that way. I’ve got to get myself settled into the power structure. Once I’ve found a good position, I’ll be better able to effect the changes we want.”
“All right. I believe you. All I can do is wish you the best of luck.”
“And with it, you’ll hear from me again.”
The two men shook hands. As Thom stood there in the center of the tiny office-apartment, his comrade turned and left, never to return. But Thom would hear from him again.
CHAPTER 1
MACV HEADQUARTERS, SAIGON, REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM, MAY 1968
The resident agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, Jerry Maxwell, stood at the head of the table in the small conference room and wished he could get the hell out. The room was hot and seemed to be closing in on him. The walls, made of plywood and painted light green, were not restful. They made him sick. The conference table, an old wooden thing that might once have been expensive, was warped by the humidity, stained by too many glasses left sitting on it for too long and discolored by the years in the tropics. But it was good enough for its purpose.
Maxwell was a short, slender man who dressed in wrinkled and stained white suits, white shirts, and normally wore a skinny black tie, loosened. He had dark hair and eyes and, after nearly two years in Saigon, had finally acquired a tan. He had lost his perpetual sunburn, though his nose was still red.
Pulling a handkerchief from his back pocket, he wiped the sweat from his face. It was so hot in the room that his hair was soaked and his armpits damp. He moved to a small podium that stood in one corner, and glanced at the screen across the room. His new assistant sat behind the slide projector, running it by hand since someone had recently lost the remote control device.
“All right, Sergeant,” said Maxwell, “we have a photo here of the market area of Kampong Trach, which is maybe twelve klicks over the border in Cambodia.”
Army Staff Sergeant Perry Kinson sat at the conference table. He wore clean jungle fatigues, but they were old, faded to gray-green. His stripes, name tag and U.S. Army tag were all in black thread. The pockets were all buttoned, his jungle boots were shined, and although his uniform wasn’t starched, it had been pressed. His sandy-colored hair was cropped short, with white side walls. Light blue eyes made him look older than he was. A young man, he had shaved closely just before the meeting, had fine features, small ears and a long nose. Like Maxwell he was deeply tanned, but whereas Maxwell seemed almost fleshy from the massive Saigon meals, Kinson was gaunt. C-rations and meals at the fire support bases did that. If someone could have thought of a way to export the stuff to the World for weight-loss clinics, he would have been rich.
Kinson shifted uneasily in his chair, glanced at the unidentified civilian running the projector and said, “Cross-border operations are…”
“Run every day,” Maxwell finished. “Granted, they’re covert, but we’ve got to keep track of what the enemy is doing across the border. Rumors about their operations must be checked and double-checked.”
“Yes, sir.”
Maxwell nodded and the picture changed, showing a map of the region. “As you can see, there’s some swampy area both north and south of the target zone, but the region itself is moderate to heavy jungle. Plenty of cover for you. Not much of a hike into Cambodia.”
Kinson rubbed a hand over his chin. “I don’t understand why you’re using the regular Army for this.”
Maxwell took a deep breath and exhaled audibly. “Sergeant, there are only so many resources available here. You happen to be one of them.”
“Yes, sir,” said Kinson. “I understand that. What I’m worried about is this cross-border operation. We’ve been told over and over that we’re not to cross into Cambodia. It’s neutral territory. Period.”
“Sergeant,” Maxwell responded, “I can provide you with written orders detailing your responsibilities. Although it won’t spell out the mission across the border, it will state that you are to obey my instructions.”
