But if President Rockefeller had ordered Ho Chi Minh's assassination, which was very definitely against presidential policy (in spite of Kennedy's obsession with Fidel Castro), that would make good fodder for the Republican Right.
Especially if it failed.
"Not me, boss," I said, getting only a little pissed. That sort of directness was just Simons's way.
"No shiteedah, Richardson," the Bull snarled. "I just wanted you to know what's going on… and not tell anyone, and I mean anyone. We got enough to worry about.
"We'll be going in in seventy-two hours. The operations order'll be available tomorrow morning.
"We're under a complete security hold. No MARS calls, no in-country phone calls, no visits, no visitors, and any last letters will be censored and not in the mail until we're in the boonies."
I left, wondering what kind of war it was where the commander of all in-country troops wasn't told about an operation. All wars are political, of course. But this one was too damned much like that for my liking.
But it was the only one I had.
We cleaned already spotless weaponry, sharpened already razor-edged knives, and wrote those last letters.
The basic weapon we carried was the CAR15, the stubby-barreled version of the M16. There'd been argument, finally settled by the Bull, on whether we should carry CARs or AK47s. The issues were reliability, lightness, ease of resupply, and so on and so forth. Simons had said we'd go for the CARs, because when somebody popped a cap, everyone would know whether it was a black or white hat.
I didn't get involved in the argument. I knew better than to try to lug my Schmeisser. It was a good weapon, but it did fire 9mm pistol rounds, which are pissing in the wind in a real firefight.
Other basic weapons were the M79 grenade launcher and cut-down Chinese RPD machineguns (called by them the Type 56). We went with the RPD because it could be lightened far more than the standard M60, and was more reliable than the SEAL's favorite Stoner.
The three snipers on the team carried accurized, semiauto scoped M14s, less accurate than the normal M70 Winchester bolt-action rifles, but capable of delivering a higher rate of fire, which Simons considered important, since he hoped to gun down Viet bigwigs in clumps.
Other than that, we carried a grabbag of 12-gauge pump shotguns, personal handguns, grenades, and explosives. Plus everyone carried at least one LAW.
I was carrying enough crap already, but added an old-fashioned suppressed High Standard.22 automatic to my pack. Other people, especially Jerry Shriver, also carried silenced pieces.
Our commo was one AN/PRC-77 per team, but the radios would only be used when we were closing in, or if we ran into trouble or on extraction. The US didn't believe those little brown bastards in the jungle could intercept, let alone read, transmissions, and ignored ambushes that proved things different.
But we knew better, having learned that the hard way. So we'd keep radio silence as long as we could.
For an emergency, we also carried search and recovery radios, small transistorized units used to bring in pickup.
Our weaponry may have varied, but the rest of our equipment was standard. For ammo pouches, we used canteen carriers, which would lug more magazines than the issue items. In our rucks, we carried changes of socks, and standard patrol rations, which was a pack of Minute rice, coupled with yummy add-ons like pilchards, Hong Kong crabs, strange-looking canned meat, and other items you had to be a while in the jungle to appreciate.
Instead of wearing any sort of camouflage fatigues, we wore standard fatigues we'd blotch-sprayed with flat black paint, a standard SOG modification. On our feet were normal jungle boots, and we wore floppy hats.
The 'Yards wore black pajamas and Cong hats, enough to fool any enemy we encountered for hopefully one magazine blast.
We assembled in midafternoon of the third day, ready to go.
Simons's briefing was fairly short.
He showed us the target, and there were mutters of dismay. It was, indeed, just on the Vietnam-China border, and was called Hang Pac Bo. In peacetime, if there was ever going to be anything such in this part of the world, it might have been a tourist attraction.
Flanking the map were huge aerial photo blowups.
"Don't fuck up and wiggle north," Simons said. "We don't need to be meeting any Chinese." He smiled as much as he ever did, nodded at Meadows. "Dick's already made enough enemies on that side of the border."
The contour lines on the big map were close together. We were going to be humping some steep mountains, as predicted.
Simons issued every man a map, and we studied them as he went on.
"We'll insert here," Simons said, tapping the big map. "Just on the far side of this little village called Tra Linh. It looks like there's some kind of secondary east-west road here, that leads close to the caves. We'll keep south of that road… if it even exists… and move to the far side of this road, here that goes into this other little village, Ha Quang.
"Call it two days march.
"Assuming, which is a big assumption, we aren't blown by then, we'll then slide our way to the caves and look for trouble.
"We chanced an overflight of the caves with a drone a week ago, and it looks like there's at least two companies of NVA Regulars on guard. We'll try to move through them, or, failing that, beat the shit out of them hard, then go after Uncle Ho."
Mad Dog Shriver snorted.
"They'll hear us coming, boss. There's no way we'll be able to sneak into Ho Chi Minh's bedroom without somebody blowin' reveille. Best we just think about kicking their ass out of the way from the get-go."
"You're probably right," Simons said.
"But you gotta have dreams, Jerry," somebody said, and everyone laughed.
"If we go in the shitter," Simons said, "I mean really in the shitter, we'll try to break contact and reassemble somewhere down here, around Na Giang, although that might not be possible, and we'll pick an alternate Romeo Pappa en route.
"If we absolutely go in the shitter, and have to run like hell, we'll break up and exfiltrate, and then there'll be a pickup over here, in Cao Bang. If things go that bad, there'll be a couple of companies of Marines go in and take the airstrip there, and wait for survivors.
"Or maybe not. We'll play things by ear, depending on how they go.
"Again, don't exfiltrate into China unless you have to. The Agency isn't worth shit getting people out of there, like we all know. I think there's still a few OSS guys stuck in Yunnan somewhere."
Again, there was laughter.
"That's it," Simons said. "Everything else is SOP, like we rehearsed it. We'll know more, have more on the ground.
"You've got the rest of the day to look at these photos. I've outlined what I think the route maybe should be. Anybody with better ideas… see me in my office.
"Oh yeah. Some romantic damned fool gave the operation the code name of Eastern Sunrise."
A few people groaned.
We spent the rest of the day memorizing the photos. It looked steep, unoccupied, and grim.
But that was the sort of thing we were paid to do.
Nobody had any better ideas than the Bull, so the next day, we assembled our gear, made final checks as three Jolly Green Giants came in, and boarded.
The flight down the Red River to the sea was quiet. None of us were brooding, but rather intent on what we'd do on the ground, how we'd move, and such.
We landed on the carriers off Haiphong, and Air Force service people swarmed the Jolly Green Giants, giving them final servicing. There were four more already aboard ship, our backups and cover.