Casca 14: The Phoenix (6 page)

After his own near assassination, Colonel Ho had decided to move his center of operations further south. He knew that even though he was technically in an area that was off limits for the Americans they had, on occasion and when they thought the circumstances warranted it, made invasions. He was certain that they would consider him an important enough target to justify such an incursion. Besides which most of his important targets were to be found in what the South Vietnamese called Military Area III, which consisted of Saigon, Tay Ninh, Bien Hoa, Xuan Loc, Ben Cat, Vung Tau, Phouc Vinh, and Niu Bara, also known as Song Be.

He had another more personal reason for the move. From his agents he had learned that the scar-faced man was there. His pride demanded that he must punish him. Once they had made their move he would send Troung into Song Be. Troung, like himself, had good reason for wanting the American dead.

They were not three hours out of their camp and on the road south when a flight of ten Cobra helicopters struck their old camp, turning on it with miniguns and rockets. In less than five minutes Ho's former headquarters was a smoking grave-yard. He saw the smoke and could hear the attack from where he and Troung sat in their American jeep at the base of a mountain junction.

Ho nudged Troung in the side, pleased that his judgment had once more been proven correct. The lives lost in the attack were of no real value. There had been only a few men in the huts, who were too ill to move and some of them worthless peasants. All those of value had already been sent out on their missions. Leaning back in his seat beside the driver, he looked back at Troung sitting in the rear. "We fooled them again, didn't we?" Troung agreed, but worry ticked at the edge
of his eyes. He had an uneasy feeling about the future.

Ho was in good spirits for the trip south to his new
Bo-chi-huy
, his new headquarters, in the place called the Parrot's Beak near Rieng in Cambodia. The region, though claimed by Cambodia, was totally controlled by the Vietcong who were the de facto masters of the region.

Colonel Tomlin was not pleased at the report forwarded to him from the Cobra flight leader. He grumbled to Gomez, "It appears that our protagonist anticipated our gambit and has already moved out."

Gomez requested permission to smoke, was given it and after lighting up asked, "Why do you say that, sir?"

Tomlin showed him the after action report. "Because there was not enough resistance to indicate any kind of a main force installation there. The Cobras only received a small amount of return fire, and it was all small arms. On the ground they saw very few of the enemy. If Colonel Ho had still been in residence, the enemy response would certainly have been much more violent. No! The son of a bitch has taken off and he's not going back. Pass the word on to Sergeant Romain and his Kamserai. It is my opinion that Ho is moving south to be closer to the center of things. He'll probably set up shop in the Parrot's Beak. It's the most secure area for him. I would if I were in his place."

It made sense to Gomez and he did as he was ordered. He had a regular time set for Phang to check in and would pass on the information he'd received from Tomlin to him.

Phang immediately sent out several groups of his men to the Parrots Beak. They had to travel on foot and it would take at least four days for them to get there. If Ho had moved in, his men should be able to find out from the local peasants. In Cambodia the situation would be reversed for the Vietcong. They were the enemy and the population was not in sympathy with their foreign masters.

It was ten days before Phang reported back to Gomez.

Gomez located Casey at the "Club New York" in town. Pulling a chair over to where he could share the breeze from a roof fan, he ordered a Bamiba beer and waited till the bar girl was out of earshot before talking.

"Phang checked in. His people have located our boy. He's in the Parrot's Beak, a little east of Rieng and not twenty minutes by chopper from Tay Ninh. He has a one-handed man with him. That's probably your friend, Captain Troung. If they're that close you can bet your ass that things are going to start getting hot around here."

Casey sipped his own beer and nodded, brushing away a bothersome fly. "All right! So Phang has him located. I want you to arrange a reconnaissance flight over the site and get me some pictures. But don't be too obvious about it. We don't want to spook them again."

Gomez finished his beer and was getting up to leave when Casey stopped him with one more request. "Captain, I think that we should consider going in after him. Tell Phang to get ready. I want him to take his men and move as close as he can to Ho's camp without being spotted. Depending on what the reconnaissance flight shows, we may be able to go in and take him. I prefer that to letting him make all the moves."

Gomez looked down at Casey. "You do know that if you go into Cambodia you'll be on your own and we can do nothing to help you if you get caught. It's one thing to send in some choppers to shoot the place up, but if you're on the ground you'll have to take care of yourself. Our leaders, in their infinite wisdom, do not yet let us cross into privileged sanctuaries, especially the Parrot's Beak. At my last briefing we learned that there are at least four full hard-core PAVN and Vietcong regiments in permanent residence there, and probably a lot more that we don't know about. If we were to try and get in there it'd take a major ground force operation and that is not likely to be approved in the foreseeable future."

Casey looked up, straight into Gomez's eyes, "I don't care!" He went back to his beer.

Gomez gave a shudder. He didn't envy Ho having this man on his ass. He had the distinct impression that Casey would go after Ho if he was in the presidential palace in Hanoi. Well, his was not to reason why. Tomlin had told him to give Casey what he wanted and that's what he would do.

During the next few days, Casey had Gomez bring him every map he could get his hands on showing the area around Rieng, It was mostly flat, with plantations of rubber trees and palms covering a good portion of the region. Rice fields and heavy patches of woods made up the rest. It took three days for a reconnaissance flight to be made by a Thai civilian DC-4 airline flying the regular route from Saigon to Phnom Penh. The plane was rerouted a few miles off of its normal flight path in order to pass over the target area. It had been equipped with special cameras which could show the size of a zit on a Charlie's nose at ten thousand feet.

Studying the photographs with the aid of a magnifying glass Casey and Gomez mapped it out. The new site of Comrade Ho's operation was located in a Cambodian village where the civilians were kept in residence, probably to keep the Americans from making an air strike on it if they got too pissed off. They'd have to kill neutrals to get to the VC, something the American politicians were not likely to sanction. Under the magnifying glass they located several places that looked like tunnel openings.
Charlie was so confident of his safety that he'd gotten a little careless. One shot showed two men lowering a crate into a hole by a hayrick. That probably meant that Ho had his headquarters underground, with the village directly overhead. From what they could tell it looked as if there were at least two full companies assigned to the village's defense. Under normal circumstances that would probably have been sufficient, as any American ground force would have to advance through at least a full regiment to get there, giving Ho plenty of time in which to move out again.

Phang radioed that he was one night's march from Ho, and was ready to move on an instant's notice. He had eighty men with him, all good fighters, who had proven themselves more than once. Casey told Gomez to tell Phang to stay put. He had to come up with a way to get in and out. If they stayed in the village too long, they'd be cut off by the other VC units in the area. They'd have to get in and get out fast.

He and Gomez went over a dozen different options, none of them acceptable. Casey needed an ally, and it was given to him by the meteorology people on Formosa and Luzon. He had a friend coming in and he would be here in three days.

Gomez wasn't terribly fond of the idea Casey finally brought to him, but he had to admit he had nothing better to offer. If that was what he wanted, then that's what he'd get.

Captain Troung was pleased. Ho had given him permission to send two of his men into Song Be with a new target, the scar-faced one. He had been positively identified. When they'd reached the new camp, photos of the man were waiting for him. Two of them showed him in the company of an American captain who worked for a Colonel Tomlin. The
KSN agents were already in Song Be, waiting for an opportunity to kill the man. They were perfectly ready to die in the process if it meant success.

Casey had done all that he could. He'd be ready to go in two days. All that he was waiting for was a special piece of gear that had to be sent up to him from Saigon, and the man who could okay it was on R&R in Hong Kong and wouldn't be back for another day. Casey went into town to get rid of some of the tension that had been building in him for the last couple of weeks. Idleness had always driven him crazy, but there wasn't anything he could do about it until he got in the equipment and information he needed.

Song Be was like most cities its size—houses with tin roofs, slums where families lived ten to a room and children played in drainage ditches that were overrun with filth. The more wealthy merchants had villas in the French style, where they lived behind whitewashed walls with broken glass cemented in on the tops of the walls to keep out their poorer, more desperate countrymen. One section of the town was set aside for Americans to party in and was patrolled by both US and South Vietnamese Military Police. That was where he was going, back to the "Club New York." Club New York? That was a laugh. The only thing that remotely resembled New York was the name. It wasn't too pretty, much the same as any of the others on the strip.
A bar with a tile floor, where GI's danced with attractive Vietnamese girls who would play five-hundred rummy for a drink or for love. A narrow porch ran along the front but it wasn't used much at night. It was too easy for a grenade to be tossed in, or a machine gun to spray the drinkers from the back of a motorcycle or cab. The rest of the bar front had a strong wire screen over the windows to protect the customers from their cousins.

Casey didn't notice the two pairs of eyes that watched him enter the bar. Ngo vinh Long and Pham Dong had been waiting patiently for him to come again to the bar. Ngo had a small pushcart from which he sold ice cream bars to the GIs and bar girls. Pham Dong worked for another bar across the street, the "Club Paradise," which was even seedier than the New York. He stood at the door to entice
drunk GIs in to sample the whiskey and the girls. He was quite good at it and made several large tips.

Both were eager to finish their assignment. They didn't know why their leaders wanted this lowly sergeant killed, but the importance of their succeeding had been emphasized to them. The scar- faced man must die, even if they had to give up their lives in the process. Ngo and Pham Doug had talked about just walking up to him, pulling the pins on a couple of hand grenades and holding on to him till they exploded. That plan was scrapped because the man looked to be very strong and he might be able to break loose from them.

After lengthy contemplation and analysis of their options they decided they would do their job in a more trustworthy manner, which would also give them a better chance at survival. They were ready to die, but not if they didn't have to.

Inside, the New York was the usual mixture: chopper pilots and their crews, tanker commanders and their crews, and even some of the Special Forces men from the B Team at Song
Be. They had their crew too. Segregation had reached a new level of meaning. Oriental girls wearing western makeup tried to look like what they thought American girls should. They carefully studied Cosmopolitan and Glamour magazines in their rooms and tried to mimic the open-mouthed expressions of high fashion models and actresses. To Casey's thinking they would have been much better off to have remained themselves rather than trying to become clones.

At midnight the club would be empty. Curfew was on. Casey stayed to himself; he was not part of any group and didn't want to be. This was not a night to drink and whore. He was just getting cabin fever from hanging around headquarters all day. A few beers then back to the transient barracks.

The atmosphere in the New York became too heavy with bullshit. He paid his tab, ignored the offer in the barmaid's eyes and left.

He checked his watch. It was only 2030 hours. On the mud and cobblestone streets GIs moved in twos and threes. Only a fool went out to drink or get laid by
himself. In most of the groups there was at least one man who stayed sober to watch over his friends. The next time out on the town someone else would do the job. That man probably had a pistol stuck in his belt or in a shoulder holster. Weapons were not supposed to be taken off post when on pass but the order was generally ignored and no one tried with any real effort to enforce it.

T
hrough habit, Casey scanned the street. Taking his time he watched the men and women, not really looking for anything but expecting everything. It was a good policy to always check for anything that was unnatural. The way a man or woman moved, the expression in the eyes of a street beggar or bartender. The night was fairly slow. Not too many on the streets. He thought for a moment about getting an ice cream from the man with the pushcart. But the Vietnamese liked theirs the same way the French did. Too sweet. He decided to pass. He lit up a smoke and headed back to camp.

Most of the lights on the streets came from the bars and shops that catered to the GIs. At intersections there were a few street lights to keep the streets from being in total darkness, but these only lit up the immediate area. Moths and flies gathered around the hazy globes of brilliance in humming swarms. Casey moved away from the strip. Passing into the darker streets, he didn't notice that he had an escort bringing up drag. Ngo and Pham Dong left their jobs and tailed after their target, one on each side of the street. Under their loose jackets each carried a pistol with a round in the chamber. Once out of sight of the strip with its wandering patrols of military police, they would pick a place, get their prey between them and cut him down.

They kept to the shadows on the sides of the streets, stopping to look in shop windows and each playing the role of one who was only out wandering the streets, perhaps because the night was too hot and heavy to get any sleep.

Casey stopped at a street vendor to buy a pack of American Winstons and looked over the other selections the turbaned Tonkinese had to offer. Cans of Folgers coffee, a Sony radio and cans of
evaporated milk were what he was building his future on. If it hadn't been for the black market supporting them, tens of thousands of Vietnamese would have had no jobs at all.

He moved on, this time turning off the main streets to a narrow alley where there were no lights at all. Here, between the main streets everything was in blackness. Only a few thin glows from kerosene lamps broke through dirty windows where men and women huddled on straw mats with their families to wait for the dawn. He could smell the humanity packed in close together. The odors of fish and charcoal mixed with the sourness of urine and honey buckets used to collect each
families' night soil.

He lit up a fresh smoke and made one more turn to the left, passing a chopping block where meat was prepared during the day and the entrails of slaughtered goats, hogs and dogs were tossed to the rats which ran the fences and alleys as cats do in western cities.

Ngo and Pham Dong wondered what he was doing. True, this route was a bit shorter, but it was off the path normally taken by Americans to get back to their installation. Had they been spotted? Or had he just taken a wrong turn? Now, in the dark, all they could see of him was the burning end of his cigarette. It was a beacon they had to follow. Once they reached the chopping block they had to come close together.

Where was he? He had disappeared. Pistols in their hands, they tried to see through the darkness. Pham Dong nudged Ngo and pointed with his pistol to a narrow passage between two houses. There they could see the red glow of a cigarette. So that was it! The American was trying to lure them in to where he could get at them. Pham Dong thought
Xin Loi, GI
. But he wasn't really sorry.

He and Ngo moved a bit away from each other, eyes straining to pierce the darkness. They could barely make out an outline with the lit end of the cigarette set head high
. Was the man a fool or was he drunk? He didn't seem to be drunk, but then who cared. They had him! The space between the houses went nowhere. He was in a cul-de-sac.

Both men raised their weapons. Fingers squeezed and the night exploded with the crack of their pistol shots as they pumped every round in the magazines into the shadowed outline. They were very cool, placing their shots just below the glow of the cigarette. The smell of cordite mingled with those of the street as they ceased firing.

What was going on? The shadow didn't move. It just stood there with the cigarette still burning. They were still trying to figure it out when Casey rose up from behind the chopping block. Not wasting any time he shot each of them once in the back of the head. The 9mm bullets from his P-38 were the exploding types with mercury cores. The two men's heads looked as if they were ripe grapes placed between the fingers of a strong man and then popped. Their skulls simply exploded; ruptured brains and bone fragments spewed out the front of their faces.

Stepping over the bodies, Casey went to the shadowy figure the VC had emptied their pistols into. He took his cigarette from between the fibers of the rolled up straw mat and took a deep drag. From a block away he could hear whistles starting to blow as MPs tried to figure out where the shots had come from. Quickly he checked the bodies for papers. There were none, only a few dollars
’ worth of piasters. He took these and the two pistols with him and left the corpses for the cat-sized street rats to nibble on.

He looked to the sky. Heat lightning flickered in the heavens.
A false promise of rain that wouldn't come this night. Casey was tired but also relieved. At last something had happened. He knew they were not just a couple of would-be thieves or part-time guerrillas who saw him as an easy mark. They had to have come from Comrade Ho, and that was good. The way it should be.

The MPs at the gate waved him in. They had been the same ones on duty when he'd left the camp. They wondered why he was back so early. Probably too broke to get any action.

It felt good that night to crawl between clean sheets and close his eyes. He'd get his special gear in the morning and be on his way to join Phang the next day. He wondered how well Ho and Troung were resting?

After a morning chow of powdered eggs and Australian bacon he returned to the transient barracks. He picked up the two pistols he'd taken off the dead Charlies and went to see Gomez, who was at his desk having his breakfast in the form of five cups of coffee. The captain hadn't been able to sleep, wondering what the events of the next few days would bring.

Tossing the two guns on Gomez's desk he asked, "I guess you've heard about the two Viets who were killed last night?"

Gomez picked the pieces up, checked the chambers and magazines on each of them, then placed them slowly back on his
desk. "Would you like to tell me about it? Or should I just pretend this never happened?"

Casey sat down in the metal straight-backed, gray-painted chair across from Gomez. "They were from our good friend, Comrade Ho. He knows who I am and where I am. I wouldn't be surprised if he knows about you too. If he's after me, then it's also possible that by our recent association you may be on his hit list now. If I were you, Captain, I think I would be very careful for
a while."

Gomez's response was drowned out by a flight of Cobras passing overhead, probably on their way to Vung Tau where they would be in support of an Air Cavalry, Search and Destroy operation in the "Special War Zone" near the Parrot's Beak.

Gomez looked up at the ceiling with ill-disguised irritation until the choppers faded away. "I said, you certainly have a way of making a day start off like shit!"

Casey grinned, the scar on his face folding into a wrinkle as he did. He liked the Mexican- American. A good man, as he'd thought earlier. He was tough, like the old Spaniards of Castile.

Pouring a cup of coffee for himself from Gomez's overworked coffee pot, he asked, "Have you heard from our man in Saigon? I need that gear and I need it today so I can check it over before taking off tomorrow. By the way, what time is the flight laid on for, and have you decided whether it would be best if we go in for a landing or do I jump?"

Gomez swallowed half a cup and grimaced. He was on the verge of
a caffeine high. "The items you requested will be here by noon and you'll be jumping. It will be harder that way for any Charlies to locate you than if the chopper set down somewhere. You've jumped from helicopters before haven't you?"

Casey nodded as he refused Gomez's offer to refill his cup. "Yeah, I've jumped from them a few times. No problem. Have you set up the drop zone with Phang?"

Gomez replied a bit testily, "Don't you think that anyone else can do their job? Of course it's set up and if I have any luck at all the wind will blow you right into the center of a VC staging area, where you'll finally have something else to do other than bug me!"

Casey smiled easily as he got up to leave. "I'll be in the barracks. Send someone to get me when my gear comes in. In the meantime you should lay off that poison you call coffee and take up something safe, like arsenic."

It was a little after 1300 hours when a PFC came to fetch Casey back to Gomez's office.

"Here's your gear. Check it over and see if it's everything you need."

Casey opened up the gray-blue flight bag, checked out each article and zipped it back up. "It's all there. I'll need to borrow a jeep to go out to where I can test them in private. We don't need any audience."

Gomez gave him his own jeep with a cautious warning. "You be careful with that damned thing. It took me six months to get one of my own, and don't you let anything happen to it."

While Casey was in the field testing his new acquisitions, Dai Uy Troung was meeting with his superior officer. Ducking his head to avoid a low beam, Troung passed several guards in the tunnel passage leading to Ho's subterranean office.

Announcing himself he forgot to lower his head and bumped it against a palm tree beam above the doorway as he entered the office. Without stopping work on the letter he was drafting to Hanoi, Ho laughed at his aide's accident. "If that gives you a headache I have some aspirin in my desk."

Troung rubbed his head with his one hand. "I think that we may both have a headache, sir."

Ho stopped what he was doing. "What do you mean?"

Troung took a paper from the pocket of his black cotton shirt. "This has just come in. It was received by radio this morning. The two men we sent to kill the one named Romain have failed. They are both dead. Their heads were blown off."

Ho's face developed a worried expression.

"Comrade Troung. I have just had a most strange feeling. It was as if the scar-faced one was watching us, looking at us as though we were dead. I must have him dead. There is something about him that means nothing but evil for us as long as he is alive. You know that some people's lives are intertwined from the moment they meet? That is what I feel has happened with him. The only way to break the connection is by death, either his or ours. Come to me with a new plan by the day after tomorrow."

Troung said nothing, only bowed in acceptance of his master's orders, orders he completely concurred with. He would find a way to put an end to their enemy.
An enemy that had become a very personal threat. Sergeant Romain had to die.