Dateline: Viet Nam: A Military Thriller Double Read online

  Dateline: Viet Nam

  A Military Thriller Double

  Robert Vaughan

  Dateline: Viet Nam

  A Military Thriller Double

  Kindle Edition

  © Copyright 2020 (revised) Robert Vaughan

  Wolfpack Publishing

  6032 Wheat Penny Avenue

  Las Vegas, NV 89122

  wolfpackpublishing.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-64734-111-4

  Contents

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  Dateline: PHU LOI

  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

  Epilogue

  Dateline: AN LOI

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  Take A Look At: The Crocketts’: Western Saga Two

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  About the Author

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  Dateline: Viet Nam

  Dateline: PHU LOI

  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

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Washington Spring, 1986

  “You’re sure you don’t want a retirement banquet? The White House press secretary said he would be glad to be our dinner speaker.”

  Ernie Chapel was standing at the window of the Washington Bureau of Combined Press International, looking out toward the Jefferson Memorial. He brushed a hand through hair that he continued to describe as brindle, even though it was now white. His eyes were blue and his face was more weathered than wrinkled. He was wearing jeans and an old army field jacket.

  He turned away from the window to look at Carl Walters, the Washington bureau chief. In his younger days as an activist, Carl had stormed the barricades on college campuses, marched in the streets of New York and Washington, and smelled the tear gas in Chicago during the ’68 Democratic Convention. Now he was a clean-shaven, well-dressed, conservative, upwardly mobile pillar of society. The caterpillar had turned into a butterfly.

  “No doubt the press secretary would have a few well-chosen words about the nobleness of our profession, about how freedom of the press is one of the most fundamental rights we have, how we must guard it, that sort of thing?” Ernie asked.

  “They are words we live by,” Carl said. “You have been a professional journalist for over forty years. Surely they mean something to you?”

  Ernie chuckled. “Oh, yes, they’re important to me. But it has always been my impression that the louder the horn is tooted, the less meaning the words have.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Ernie pointed toward the Jefferson Memorial. “Did you know that Jefferson said, ‘Given the opportunity to live in a nation without a government, or a nation without a newspaper, I would choose a nation without a government’?”

  “Of course. Everyone knows that,” Carl said. “It’s on the masthead of hundreds of newspapers.”

  “Ah, yes, so it is. But this same champion of the press also said, ‘Truth itself is polluted when printed in a newspaper.’ How many mastheads will you find that on?”

  “Not many, I suppose,” Carl admitted.

  “No, I guess not,” Ernie said. He looked at the gold watch Carl had just given him.

  For 42 years of faithful service to the sacred fourth estate.

  Ernest R. Chapel journalist 1944-1986 Combined Press International

  “Pretty,” he said. He slipped it on his wrist. “Always wanted a Rolex.”

  “We’re going to miss you around here, Ernie,” Carl said.

  Ernie looked through the glass window of Carl’s office out onto the floor at the dozen desks of the Washington staff. Phones were ringing, computer printouts were tapping, monitors were blinking.

  “You won’t miss me,” Ernie said. “You have visual display terminals, telephone modems, and hardcopy printouts. What the hell do you need with a broken-down old pencil pusher?”

  “You know how to put heart in a story,” Carl said simply. “That’s something you can’t get from a VDT.”

  Ernie smiled. “Carl, my boy, there may be hope for you yet.” He started toward the door.

  “This is it? No ceremony of any kind?” Carl asked.

  Ernie tapped his gold watch. “This and my retirement check,” he said, “is all the ceremony I need.”

  “Where are you going now?”

  “Now?” Ernie replied. He stroked his jaw thoughtfully. “Now, I’m going to say good-bye to a lot of friends.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “No,” Ernie said. “I don’t think so.”

  Ernie Chapel stood at the head of the incline and stared down at the shining black granite memorial. The wall reflected the solemn faces of the veterans and of their families as they walked slowly along its length, stopping here and there to reach out and touch a name. The lips of some of the men moved softly and occasionally Ernie could overhear one of them.

  “Ole Terry, he always was good for a beer.”

  Or: “That dumb-assed Kincaid never did learn to keep his mouth shut. He was always talkin’ back to somebody, always in trouble.” A pause. “I guess it’s shut now, though.”

  The visitors talked only as they were going down or coming back up, the incline. While they were actually in front of the names, they listened with their hearts to the silent voices of the 58,022 who died in Vietnam.

  Ernie stood there for half an hour, trying to get up the nerve to go down...to descend into that valley of death and to commune with those whose stories he had told during the long, bitter war.

  Ernie had seen the war from the beginning to the end as a correspondent for CPI. He saw it all, from the bloody booby traps on the My Kahn Floating Restaurant in Saigon, to the human-wave attacks at Khesahn. He had drunk champagne with fat corrupt Vietnamese generals in the eighth-floor bar of the Hotel Caravel…and shared tepid canteen water with American grunts in the Iron Triangle. He had fondled the breasts of lovely young girls on the beaches at Vung Tau, and once he had held the hand of a black American soldier as he watched life leave his eyes.

  Ernie reported on what he saw in weekly—sometimes daily—dispatches for his news bureau. He had been there even before the American involvement when the great combat photographer, Bob Capa, was killed. He was ther
e with Pulitzer Prize-winner David Halberstam when the protesting monks were setting themselves on fire, and when Diem and his brother were killed. He had eaten dinner with the French writer Bernard Fall on the night before Fall took his final ride in the back seat of a fighter-bomber. His death hushed one of the Vietnam War’s most knowledgeable voices.

  Ernie had cried with his fellow journalists when the much-beloved woman reporter Dickie Chappelle was killed by a Claymore mine while doing the photo article of a marine patrol for National Geographic magazine.

  But Ernie was retired now, pensioned off with a gold watch and his memories. His time was his own. He could buy the boat he always wanted or finish the novel he had started twenty years ago.

  Or, he could write the stories, the real stories that, for one reason or another, had been left untold.

  Ernie put his hand on the shining black monument. “I owe all of you an apology,” he said quietly. “Sometimes deadlines, censors, and sensibilities got in the way of the truth and I didn’t always tell the whole story.”

  He took a deep breath and let out a sigh as he suddenly realized what he would do with all the free time that was now his. The boat and the novel could wait.

  “But, by God, I will write the story now,” he said softly.

  Chapter One

  AIR ASSAULT TROOPS IN ACTION IN VIETNAM AGAINST ENEMY

  by Ernie Chapel

  PHU LOI, March 15, 1968 (CPI) — The United States and South Vietnamese military commands have launched a major air assault in the rich rice-producing area of central Vietnam. The attack is an effort to trap and destroy units of enemy regiments who are operating there.

  The assault involves more than 10,000 American and South Vietnamese troops, including air force, artillery, and armor-support elements.

  The assault elements are transported to designated areas, known as “landing zones” or LZs, by UH-1 “Huey” helicopters. There, the troops leap off the helicopters, sometimes even before they touch the ground, as they rush into the attack.

  The transport helicopters are escorted by armed Hueys, officially called “UH-1C gunships,” though referred to by the troops as “hogs,” because the externally attached machine gun and rocket launchers which give the helicopters a deadly punch also make them slow and awkward.

  Just how slow and how awkward is best understood when riding inside a hog as you watch tracer rounds coming toward you. This reporter was recently afforded that opportunity.

  A large “V” of helicopters lifted off the perforated steel planking. Then, climbing and accelerating, they swung left. Their departure path took them over Tent City, several rows of neatly aligned tents. The angry growl of a dozen turbine engines and the popping of the whirling rotor blades caused a surf of sound to wash over the tents, then roll along the ground, following the Hueys as they headed north from the sprawling helicopter base.

  Ernie Chapel, a war correspondent for Combined Press International, had made arrangements to go along on this mission, but his Jeep ride up from Saigon was delayed by roadblocks. Now it was too late. The mission was under way and he was on the ground.

  The departing helicopters passed over the officers’ shower, where the lone occupant looked up. Chief Warrant Officer Mike Carmack had soap lather on his neck and shoulders, under his arms, and between his legs. He reached up to pull the rope that would open the valve to allow water to drain from the fifty-five-gallon drum. Instead of being rewarded with a steady gush of water, however, he received only a frustrating trickle.

  “Son of a bitch!” he shouted. He could feel the soap beginning to dry, and his skin, already blistered into a rash from half a dozen jungle maladies, started to itch.

  Mike stepped out from behind the canvas baffles of the jury-rigged shower and looked out over the company area for SP-5 Schuler, the NCOIC of the mama-san workers. It was Schuler’s responsibility to make certain that his women kept the water tanks over the showers full and the honey buckets under the latrines empty.

  “Schuler!” Mike bellowed, and a dozen busy mama-sans looked over at him and saw him standing there, nude except for the patches of lather that flocked his skin. They put their hands to their mouths and laughed. “Schuler, where the hell are you?” Mike called, totally oblivious to the reaction of the mama-sans.

  SP-5 Schuler came running around the comer of the C.P. tent to answer Mike’s call.

  “I’m right here, Mr. Carmack! What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Water, Schuler,” Mike said, pointing to the empty drums over the shower. “It’s very difficult to take a shower without water.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Colonel Todaro wanted his shower filled first.”

  “What the hell for? He wasn’t on duty all night. I was.”

  “I know, sir, but he’s the colonel.”

  “Did you fill his?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” Mike said. He stepped behind the canvas baffles of the officers’ shower, then reappeared a moment later holding his change of clothes and towel. Then, with his shower clogs flapping noisily, he walked across the quadrangle toward the small, one-man shower that the battalion commander had ordered built for himself.

  “Oh, no, Mr. Carmack, you can’t do that!” Schuler shouted when he saw where Mike was headed. “Mr. Carmack, you don’t want to use the colonel’s shower, sir! He’ll have your ass!”

  “At least it’ll be a clean ass,” Mike called back over his shoulder.

  Colonel Todaro’s shower was constructed of plywood, lined inside with shining sheets of aluminum. The aluminum was pilfered from maintenance. The fact that there were half a dozen bullet-punctured helicopters that needed the sheet metal for skin patches didn’t delay the construction.

  Colonel Todaro had spigots to control his water. The water came from two tanks, one painted black to allow the sun to heat the water and the other white, to keep the water cool. By mixing the water from the two tanks, one could have a shower of perfect temperature.

  Mike rinsed himself off. Then, because he was enjoying the colonel’s shower so much, he lathered up and rinsed again. As he was drying off, he noticed that the colonel had a bottle of men’s cologne, so he made generous use of it. Then, with a towel tied around his waist to restore some modesty, he strolled leisurely back to his tent. He didn’t have to report to work until 1400 and he intended to take maximum advantage of the morning off.

  Ernie had watched the entire exchange. He could smell the cologne as Mike passed close by. He chuckled.

  “Enjoy your shower, Chief?” he asked as Mike started toward his tent.

  “Who are you?”

  Ernie smiled and stuck out his hand. “Ernie Chapel, CPI.”

  “I’m Mike Carmack. CPI? You a newspaper reporter?”

  “Yes. Why? Are you against reporters?”

  “No, not if you’re with the newspapers,” Mike said. “It’s the TV guys who give me a pain in the ass. I’ve seen them fake enough stories to make a goddamned movie. What you doin’ here?”

  “I was supposed to go along on the lift this morning, but I didn’t make it up from Saigon in time. I was held up by a roadblock in Phu Cuong.”

  “You didn’t miss anything,” Mike said. “It’s a soft LZ this morning.”

  “Those are the kind I like,” Ernie said.

  Mike raised his eyebrows. “Oh? Where’s the old ‘into the heat of battle’ urge I thought all reporters had?”

  “The only urge I have is to stay alive,” Ernie said.

  Mike laughed. “You’re okay,” he said. “I’m sorry you were too late. Listen, you want a Coke? I’ve got some in here. They aren’t cold but they’re wet.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Ernie answered.

  Ernie didn’t know why he looked back at the lone, returning helicopter. There was really nothing different about the sound…and yet, there must have been, because even before he looked around, he had a feeling of apprehension.

  “Mike,” he said in a strained voice, �
�look.”

  The Huey was coming in low, no more than a hundred feet above the ground and it was flying at a severe crab to keep the fire out of the cockpit and cabin. Flames streamed away from the helicopter, blue and white in close to the fuselage, green a little farther out. From there it turned into a thick, black smoke. As Ernie and Mike watched the helicopter approach, they saw the door gunner crawling out onto the skid and they knew he was about to jump.

  “No!” Mike shouted, even though he knew it was impossible for the door gunner to hear him. “You’re too high!”

  The door gunner jumped despite Mike’s warning. He hadn’t disconnected his APH-5 helmet, and the long mike cord streamed out behind him like the static line on a parachute. When the gunner reached the end of the cord, the cord jerked his helmet off his head, while the door gunner, his arms flailing ineffectively at the air, fell nearly one hundred feet.

  Ernie saw a little puff of dust rise from where the gunner hit. He felt a sickening sensation in his stomach. Then he turned to watch the helicopter as it approached the airfield. The pilot managed to clear Tent City, but he didn’t even attempt to make it all the way over to the perforated steel planking. Instead, he set it down in the very first clearing beyond the tents.