"Sunrise Control, sir."
Simons took the handpiece, listened.
"Sunrise Six, this is Sunrise Control," the tinny voice said. "No skinny for you. Report, over."
Simons used squelch code, clicking his handset button twice. That meant "Received, over." Three would have meant "In contact, shut up, they're close."
"Sunrise Control, out."
Neat and clean, the way things are supposed to be.
It was getting dark when I found my way back to my position.
I unhooked my harness, put on mosquito lotion, wistfully thought of being able to take off my boots, and set my M16 in front of me.
Then I mixed my Minute rice with water in the pouch, opened a can of something by feel, dumped it in the rice. I dosed everything with Tabasco, unquestionably one of the few secret weapons the US had in that war.
It turned out to be the famous mystery meat.
Men who'd gone through the Royal Tracking School in Malaysia swore it was orangutan. But there weren't any of the big apes in Vietnam.
Others said it was local monkey.
Cynics thought it was the infamous "monkey meat" the Foreign Legion ate in the 50s that some cost-conscious quartermaster had gotten his hands on.
I knew it wasn't water buffalo, since I ate that fairly regularly.
Gourmets had no place in the Green Berets.
I ate without thinking about what I was doing, leaned back against my pack, and went to sleep.
My team was within hand's reach of me.
Simons, feeling confident, had ordered only a one-third alert, which gave everyone a good night's sleep, off and on.
I stood last watch, together with Staff Sergeant Jenkins. Before dawn, we tapped everyone awake, took quiet shits if we had to, packed anything we'd taken out of our rucks, ate more rice and whatever, brushed our teeth, and were ready to rock and roll.
By daylight, we were moving off the hill.
Simons's estimate was right. Around midday, we reached the north-south road. It was a little too well tended to make anyone happy. Point elements went across, then everyone went down and tried to think like a bush, as a squealing noise and rumble approached.
It was a Russian PT76 tank, with its hatches unbuttoned, but its crew looking very, very alert.
It went on past, and came back fifteen minutes later.
It was just then the thought came: America, like France, had been accused, quite correctly, of taking these «gooks» less than seriously. That was one of the biggest complaints Special Forces had about the regular Army.
Yet here we were, attempting to assassinate a head of state, with nothing more than fifty crazies with machine guns. Would we have tried to kill Stalin, Hitler, de Gaulle with such a pissant force? Of course not. We would've dropped the entire 82nd Airborne in their laps.
Talk about contempt for the enemy…
I forced the thought away. We were too close, too hot, to allow any negatives. And besides, it was far too late.
We crossed the road, then crept north.
The jungle was thick, uncut, and the land was rough, mountainous.
My map said we were close, very very close, when the signal came back down the line: "Richardson up."
I moved past my crouched men to the Montagnards, who were on line along a ridge crest.
Babysan Davidson beckoned to me, and I slid up beside him.
He pointed, and I used a bush to peer downslope.
Below me were the caves.
And what looked like the entire Vietnamese Communist party leadership.
Here and there were the entrances to the caves. Hidden under trees or carefully camouflaged were low huts. The grounds were as immaculate as the White House, yet still clearly jungle. No overflight using conventional visuals would have seen anything.
There were guards here and there and, in front of one cave, another parked tank.
There were Soviet jeeps, and several antiaircraft guns.
The day was hot and still.
I chanced binoculars and saw, below me, dignified men walking about. It could have been the steps of the Capitol Building on a sleepy summer day, with senators and representatives digesting their lunch, and planning speeches.
And now we would kill them all.
I slid back in line, brought my troops up, and chanced using my radio.
"Sunrise Six Actual Up."
Simons crawled up a few minutes later, his bodyguard and radiomen behind him.
Babysan waved him to the crestline, showed him what I'd seen.
Simons came back, with one of the few smiles on his face I ever saw.
His plan was going perfectly.
He picked up the handset, whispered commands into it.
Behind me, men started moving toward the flank.
Then Babysan started waving furiously at me. I crawled up, Simons behind me. He was pointing, miming binoculars.
I found my bush, looked through it in the direction Davidson was pointing.
I saw Satan, or anyway the man most Americans thought was his embodiment.
It was a frail old man with a long, wispy beard, being helped by an aide, in deep conversation with two much younger men. Trailing the three were a host of aides.
Ho Chi Minh.
Our target was right there in front of us, no more than two hundred meters away.
Simons was beside me, hissing into his radio, "Snipers up! Goddammit, snipers up!"
And then the shit hit the fan.
Bull Simons's other radio, on command net, crackled, "Sunrise Six, Sunrise Six, this is Charlie Golf. Approaching your area. Request sitrep, over."
Watching Bull Simons try to keep from exploding in all directions might have been funny.
Somewhere else, not here.
"Who in the roaring blazing fuck is Charlie Fucking Golf?" he managed.
I had no idea, and then we heard the roar of a helicopter.
A HH53 blazed overhead. Not one of the dirty, flat green Giants that we had, but a finely waxed, gleaming machine that was fit to carry presidents.
I knew the bird. I'd seen it in Saigon.
It was General William C. Westmoreland, Commanding General, MAC–V's own chopper. And now I knew who Charlie Golf was. Commanding General. Someone must've picked it as a call sign we might recognize.
Simons ran off a string of obscenities. The radio droned back, blithely.
"Sunrise Six, this is Charlie Golf. Pop smoke at your location, and prepare a Lima Zulu. Over."
We were about to kill Ho Chi Minh, and this stupid frigging Westmoreland wanted to do a white-glove inspection or something.
It actually wasn't quite as stupid as it sounds, as I found out, years later. It took that long for things to be declassified, because of what a disaster that day was.
Even the declassified data is spotty, but it seems that someone in Washington talked about some kind of supersecret, ultraclassified mission being planned.
Richard Nixon and John Connolly, who I correctly thought were planning a run at the presidency in 1972, decided now was the occasion to get in on the act, either critically if it failed, or in bed with it if we succeeded.
Evidently they did not know exactly what President Rockefeller had ordered. By the time I investigated it was clear the mission had been planned by the CIA, and ordered directly by Rockefeller, bypassing all conventional lines of command.
Westmoreland, not knowing what was going on up north, and getting angrier by the minute at being bypassed, flew to Hanoi with the two politicians and, by relentless grilling, found out where our team was headed and its mission.
I don't know if he would have ordered us to stop, or what made him fly north from Hanoi, especially with Connolly and Nixon. Evidently he didn't know exactly where Ho Chi Minh was supposed to be, or anything more than the area we were moving in.
No one knows, even, who ordered smoke, and a landing zone cut. It might have been an overzealous staff officer, listening to, most likely, Connolly.