“On foot?”
“On foot.” Tyreen’s eyes were dark and bleak. “You’ve got another option if you prefer. You can head out to sea after you drop us. If you’re lucky you may be able to find some elements of the Seventh Fleet cruising the Gulf of Tonkin. You can ditch in the Gulf and be picked up by the Navy.”
“I can’t swim.”
“You’ve got life jackets and parachutes. You won’t have to swim.”
“And what if we cruise out over the Gulf and don’t happen across any Navy ships? What then, Colonel, sir?”
“Then you run out of gas,” Tyreen said. “You yell for help, Lieutenant, and then you float around and maybe pray a little.”
“I wish I had enough gas to fly around until that typhoon went away. But we’re pretty close to the fuel limit just getting you to your drop zone and then going home. Only there isn’t any home left to go back to.”
“Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir?”
“What happened to your Irish accent?”
McKuen flushed. “Sometimes I tend to forget it. You’ll be understandin’, sir?”
Tyreen gave him a grin with his teeth. “It’s your choice,” he said.
“For which I’m greatly obliged to you,” said McKuen sourly. He turned around and went forward.
Theodore Saville said, “The poor kid. I’m glad I ain’t in his shoes.”
J. D. Hooker snapped an irritable glance at him. “You think we better off jumpin’ into North Vietnam, Captain? Me, I’d sooner take my chances with the Lieutenant.”
McKuen was coming back from the cockpit. He said, “I forgot to ask you something.”
“Go ahead,” said Tyreen.
“Suppose I drop you people and then head out to sea. Once I’m away from your position, I can break radio silence and get in touch with the Seventh Fleet. They can tell me where to find them.”
Tyreen said, “If that’s what you want to do, go ahead.”
McKuen frowned. “What’s the catch?”
“The minute you open up on that radio, Lieutenant, the Reds will know this isn’t one of their planes. They’ll let you have it with everything they’ve got. The Chinese have got a whole wing of MIGs stationed at Sama. They’d shoot you down before you got within miles of a Navy ship.”
“Well, and thanks again to you,” McKuen said, and went forward again.
Saville said, “In a way, this may be a break for us. That storm could play hell with Ho Chi Minh’s radar.”
The plane bucked with turbulence. Tyreen sat braced against the fuselage and let his attention rove among the four soldiers. Each of them had been selected, screened, culled, and filed. He had used Hooker before, and he knew Saville. He did not know either one of the two Vietnamese sergeants, but their records were impressive. Nhu Van Sun was an ex-farmer, brawny and evidently childlike, but the record said he liked gadgets and knew how to rig booby traps and handle any kind of communications equipment ever made. He was expert in the many forms of deadly hand-to-hand combat; and while he had never been to America, he spoke passable English, which was sometimes important in a team where the American members might speak uncertain Vietnamese at best. Tyreen spoke good Vietnamese; Saville, who was a diligent, deliberate student, spoke not only Vietnamese, but French and one dialect of Chinese as well. Sergeant Hooker spoke a few common words of Vietnamese, and bad English. Sergeant Khang had been in the States long enough to be comfortable with barracks slang. The record stated that Khang was a good guerrilla soldier, and that was a valuable quality; it took a special kind of mind to make a man a good guerrilla fighter, and Khang had that talent. But his greatest usefulness of the moment was his intimate knowledge of the terrain around Chutrang and the Sang Chu gorge; he had been born and raised there.
And then there was J. D. Hooker — a brutal man, small of eyes and small of brain. But Hooker’s eyes could see twice as far as any other man’s, and Hooker’s ears could pick up the tiniest of sounds, and if a man wanted a bridge blown up properly, he sent for J. D. Hooker.
Theodore Saville drank his third cup of coffee and did not smile when he discovered Tyreen’s eyes on him. Saville was an inveterate beer drinker; he had the constitution of a truck horse. In his twenty-four years of service he had lugged himself up to a captaincy from the ranks, mainly by sheer brawn and doggedness. If there was a more reliable man in the Army, Tyreen had not yet met him. Still holding Saville’s eyes, Tyreen smiled and nodded briefly. Saville held out the coffee jug, and Tyreen accepted it. He had been awake twenty-four hours now, and it would be at least another day before he would have a chance to sleep.
Tyreen knew better than to slow down long enough to give himself a chance to think. It would do no good to consider his position. He was sick, and he had no business being here; he was a tired man, jaded and worn out. But he would keep up with the rest of them — more than that, he would stay ahead of them. He did not allow himself to wonder how.
He was dangerously close to a self-inspection. He had the need to act. He stood up and said, “We’ve got about fifteen minutes. Better start getting the gear together.”
Chapter Eleven
0600 Hours
Tyreen’s tongue played with one of his back teeth. It was a false tooth, hollowed out. The Army had inserted a cyanide pill inside it. It was no hard task to work the tooth loose with the tongue and swallow the poison. It could be done without once opening the mouth. A man had been known to kill himself with the cyanide pill in his sleep.
He had sheet metal in the soles of his jump boots and a load of equipment on his back that would stagger a mule: he had his submachine gun, his tools, his rations, his ammunition, and the tank of an underwater breathing apparatus. His parachute hung down below the seat of his pants. Canteen and pistol and bayonet rattled against his thighs, hung on his ammunition belt. He glanced at Saville, who carried all the same equipment, plus a sackful of radio gear, and at J. D. Hooker, who carried a wickedly heavy sack of explosives and demolition equipment, and at Sergeant Sun, who carried a Czech light machine gun with a bipod mount, and at Nguyen Khang, who carried the boxed ammunition belts for the machine gun.
Theodore Saville picked up a knapsack full of Communist-made grenades and hooked it to the front of his harness above his chest chute. He drained the last of the coffee into his mouth and tossed the jug aside. He took a last pull on his cigarette and ground it out underfoot. Carrying two hundred pounds of metal and fabric, he moved effortlessly.
Tyreen said, “Hook up.” He made his way forward to the cockpit.
McKuen was struggling with the controls. He glanced around briefly. “We’re flying on a wing and a swear, Colonel. Number two engine’s making plenty of trouble. How far is it to that emergency strip in the mountains?”
“About forty miles from the drop zone.”
“I wish I had me four-leaf clover,” said McKuen. “You’ve got about three minutes. Do I keep her on twelve hundred feet?”
“Dead level,” Tyreen said.
“That might be easier if I didn’t have to talk to the altimeter through interpreters. I’ll be givin’ you a red warning light now. The light will flash green when it’s time for you gentlemen to do the Geronimo act. That is, presuming the green light bulb ain’t burned out. I tested it back at Nha Trang, and it worked then. But this aeroplane didn’t come with a written guarantee, you’ll be understandin’.”
“Sing out when you flash the light, just to be sure.”
“Sure and I will. And, Colonel...?”
“What?”
“Good hunting.”
“Thanks, McKuen. I’ll see you back in Saigon.”