“We’re going to do this very quietly and very quickly,” Molineaux ordered before sending four men into the jungle to establish observation posts. Senders set up his M-79 grenade launcher near the plane. Carpenter climbed inside and Molineaux followed him. Carl and Senders watched the jungle.
Carl could hear Carpenter working inside the plane. He worried that anyone close by would also hear the electronics expert and he wondered how long it would take Carpenter to accomplish his task. Carl caught himself. He could not think about anything but the jungle. He had to concentrate-only he was so tired.
They had not yet encountered the enemy, so the mission was no different from the many exhausting training exercises. Carl hoped things would stay that way: fast in, fast out, and no casualties. Still, a part of him wanted to meet the enemy so he could test himself in combat. He knew that was stupid. Action was glamorous in the movies. In real life, men lost arms, legs, or their lives. The men on this team were combat veterans who had been involved in the personal combat peculiar to the Special Forces. They had killed hand to hand. Yet none of them had told a war story. Maybe their war was too grim and provided the stuff of deep, unsettling dreams instead of the romanticized war stories that a man might talk about stateside over a beer. Even so, a part of Carl wanted to know how he would stack up.
Fifteen minutes after Carpenter and Molineaux had entered the fuselage Settles whistled a prearranged signal and appeared in the clearing. Molineaux stepped down from the plane and conferred with Settles in whispers. Settles disappeared into the jungle, and Molineaux walked back to the plane and told Carpenter to speed it up. Then he began attaching booby traps and thermite grenades with timing devices to the plane. Moments before Carpenter jumped down from the fuselage, Settles reappeared with the other guards. Molineaux told them that there were enemy soldiers in the vicinity. They started double-timing toward the river.
The sun was setting, and Molineaux wanted to cover as much ground as he could before it got dark. Occasionally, Carl heard Vietnamese soldiers calling to each other in the jungle. That worried him. If he could hear the soldiers, they were close; and if they weren’t bothering to keep their presence hidden, the force was probably large.
An hour out, they heard a series of dull whumps. The dense forest had muffled the sound of the plane exploding. No one broke pace. The Vietnamese now knew that enemy soldiers were in the area. Once they found the plane, they would find the team’s trail.
The seventeen-year-old Vietnamese soldier was hungry and tired of tramping through the soggy jungle, and his bladder was bursting. When Carl rounded the bend, the boy was standing with one foot on the narrow game trail and the other still in the undergrowth. His fly was unbuttoned and he was holding his penis as he prepared to pee. Carl and the soldier stared at each other, eyes wide and openmouthed. It seemed that time had stopped in this ridiculous situation.
Carl knew that it was out of the question to let the soldier scream, but he couldn’t shoot the man without revealing their position, so he thrust the butt of his rifle into the soldier’s solar plexus, driving the air out of his lungs, then broke his windpipe. Settles rounded the bend and instantly figured out what had happened. He covered Carl while Morales raced by to tell Molineaux. Moments later, the team was grouped around the dead man. Molineaux ordered Carl and Settles to move the body off the trail.
“Empty your packs of everything except water and ammo,” Molineaux said as Carl and Settles concealed the soldier in the underbrush. “Morales, you hump the radio. McFee just told me that there are enemy troops between here and the river.
“This man will be missed soon. Then we’re in for it. We have to move through the enemy in the dark. It’s five now, and the first pickup is at midnight. You know the routine.”
No one said anything. No one even nodded. They knew what Molineaux meant by “the routine.” There would be no way they could take a wounded brother with them if he couldn’t keep up, and no one was to be taken alive. That was Molineaux’s job.
“Let’s go,” the captain said. The men emptied their packs of food, dry clothes, and first aid kits. Then they concealed the dead man in the undergrowth and took off.
The sniper got Carpenter just before twilight. Carl saw the electronics expert sag and stumble. If he had not seen the red stain on Carpenter’s neck he might have thought that Carpenter had tripped over a root. The red stain saved Carl’s life. He dived behind a tree and the bullet meant for him only grazed his side. Carl waited awhile before peeking from behind the tree to try to locate the sniper. As soon as he moved, a bullet chipped the bark inches from his eye. Carl knew that time was on the side of the Vietnamese. If the sniper stayed where he was, Carl would have to move back into the jungle and hope he wasn’t seen. Circling around the sniper without giving away his own position would take a long time. He might miss the pickup. But staying put was out of the question because the gunfire would draw the sniper’s troops. Carl might even run into them while he was trying to get away.
Several gunshots broke the silence.
“Rice,” Molineaux shouted. “Get your ass out here.”
Carl was back on the trail in an instant. Molineaux handed him Carpenter’s pack, which held the electronics gear Carpenter had taken from the plane. The sniper lay crumpled on the trail a few yards ahead of him.
“Go,” Molineaux said. As Carl sprinted ahead he heard voices shouting in Vietnamese behind them. The enemy knew where they were.
Darkness descended and the pursuit stopped. The Vietnamese were content to surround the Americans, putting a wall between them and the river until daybreak. The hours after sunset were filled with fear and confusion, and the team did not reach the river until four in the morning, well past the first pickup time. Molineaux pulled the men into a star perimeter as close to the river as he dared. All the men lay flat on their stomachs with their feet touching. Carl was exhausted, but he was too well trained and too keyed up to sleep.
Ten minutes before the gunboat was due Molineaux moved them out. A fog bank covered the river, and tendrils of mist curled through the jungle. Molineaux saw movement in front of them and called a halt. The Vietnamese were facing away from the river because they thought the team was deeper in the jungle. The sound of a motor brought the troops around. Molineaux raced into a clearing near the riverbank and opened fire just as the gunboat appeared. The boat crew laid down fifty-caliber covering fire. When he dived into the river, Carl saw a face flying away and a slender boy split in two. Strong hands jerked him onboard as bullets smacked into the side of the boat. As Carl flopped over the side of the boat he saw the other men clambering onboard. Then Settles jerked back and fell toward the water. Carl started for him but was pulled away from the rail just as Settles disappeared in the foaming wake. Someone pushed him down and he lay with his face pressed against the deck, smelling death and deafened by the firefight until the jungle muffled the noise and the gunfire faded away.
During his debriefing in Okinawa, Carl was ordered to discuss his mission with no one, not even his commanding officer. As far as anyone was concerned, the last few days had never happened. After the debriefing, Carl flew back to Fort Bragg, where he remained for a few weeks before being sent to Washington, D.C., on courier duty.
When Carl landed, Morris Wingate’s driver was waiting to take him to the Pentagon so he could drop off the documents he was carrying and then take him to meet the General. Carl’s orders had not mentioned Wingate, and he wondered how the General knew that he would be on assignment in D.C. Carl had not thought about Morris Wingate much during his time in the army, but he experienced childish feelings of insecurity at the thought of meeting him again.