Casca 14: The Phoenix (7 page)

It was time. Gomez took Casey to the chopper pad. One of the older Hueys stood throbbing on the perforated steel-plated deck. It only carried the pilot, a lieutenant, and a warrant officer co-pilot. Casey climbed inside and Gomez handed him up his gear, including a bag with his parachute inside. He'd harness up after they were airborne. He didn't want to give any eyes that weren't friendly any idea that he was going to make a jump somewhere. Having only the pilot and co-pilot on board was another false indicator that this was not a flight heading for any action. If it had been, there would have been two door gunners sitting behind M-60s.

Gomez moved away from the slow spinning blades and waved a hand in farewell. He had to cover his eyes as the blades picked up speed, for an instant turning the pad into a miniature tornado.

Casey fastened the seat belt holding him to the red canvas seats as the Huey tilted its nose slightly downward, lifted up from the ass end and moved away from the pad. The flight wouldn't take very long, less than an hour to the drop zone. As the chopper rose to a safer altitude, he leaned out of the open door to look down at the earth below. Terraced fields of rice lay in neat squares like those on a patchwork quilt. Song Be didn't even look clean from the air as they moved away from the warrens of tin roofs and shacks. They were following the sun. Here, where the land was low and flat, it took longer to set. The chopper sped on. It felt good in the sky, cleaner somehow. Maybe it was the wind blowing through the open side doors that made it seem so. Anyway it felt good. He could understand why pilots were so reluctant to do ground duty.

By the time they reached the Cambodian border the sun was nearly down. The fields below had given way to rubber plantations. Fields of sugarcane interspersed with heavy patches of tropical forest. The greens of the fields and jungle changed to strange mixtures of blood orange and emerald as the sun set at the edge of the world. Its light lingered on for a few minutes more,
then it was gone. The air grew chiller as Casey opened his bag and put on his chute, taking his time to adjust the straps snugly and still keep his family jewels out of the way. He had no reserve chute; he'd be jumping at five-hundred feet. At that altitude there wouldn't be time for a reserve to open anyway. The rest of his gear was strapped onto the D rings that normally held the reserve.

Spotted around on the dark earth below them were pricks of light from campfires, where villagers made their homes near their fields and orchards. Some of those fires probably belonged to Charlie, but now that they were in Cambodian airspace the Vietcong wouldn't be too concerned about being hit.

The pilot turned on the warning light and yelled back, "You've got five minutes to the drop zone. We're descending now, so get your ass ready." Casey hooked up his static line and moved to sit in the doorway, his feet dangling out over the darkness, ears deafened by the rush of wind and heavy throbbing of the chopper's blades.

Phang had his men spread out around the clearing. Some had been placed at ambush sites on the trails leading in to the DZ. Four of his men had flashlights. They formed a cross in the clearing. When they heard the Huey, they turned on the lights to guide it in.

Casey's other ally was on its way to join them. A typhoon, born in the Sulu Sea, had crossed over Palawan Island and was now off the coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea, bringing torrential rains and winds of a hundred and sixty miles an hour. There was nothing to slow it down before it hit land. On the coastal regions storm warnings had already been sent out. As for those further inland, many didn't even know the storm was on its way. The typhoon would lose much of its punch as it moved inland, but the winds should still be around eighty miles an hour when it reached Cambodia.

Casey's greatest concern was that the typhoon might change course. If it did then the job would be three times as tough to do.

The Huey flew with all of its lights off. The interior of the chopper was lit only by the dim red glow necessary to see the instrument panels. The pilot spoke to Casey for the second time. "There it is."

Leaning forward out of the door to look ahead, Casey saw the thin tubes of light forming a
cross on the black earth, marking the perimeter of the drop zone. He yelled back to the pilot. "Let's do it then!"

At five-hundred feet the Huey slowed to a crawl,
then hovered for ten seconds. It gave a sudden lurch upward as two-hundred pounds left it. Without waiting to see if Casey got down okay the pilot moved the Huey on. He'd go straight in for another twenty miles then make a circle, taking him back to Song Be.

To exit the Huey all Casey had to do was lean forward till he fell out of the door. Then he was jerked up as the static pulled the chute out of its bag. The opening shock was, as always, welcome. He didn't have time to think about it much. At five-hundred feet he'd only be in the air twenty seconds before hitting the deck. It was pitch black. Once he'd jumped, the flashlights on the ground went out. He went into the landing position, chin tucked against his chest, toes down, legs slightly bent. He tried to see the tree line as he fell to give him some idea of how far he was from the ground, but it was too dark to even do that. He just had to wait for it. He hit, automatically going into a toes, hip, thigh roll that brought him back on to his feet, his hands hitting the quick release on his chest to free him from the harness. His chute was already being collapsed by the willing hands of Phang's
Kamserai. They leaped on it to take the air out. Before he was out of his harness, his chute was already being rolled up and taken off the drop zone to be buried.

Phang rushed to help him with his gear. Casey checked the action on the M-3 .45 submachine gun. After making sure it worked, he responded to Phang's greetings.
"It's good to see you again, Old One. But I don't think we should stay here to visit." Phang grunted, a bit irritated at his friend's cursory welcome. But then all Big Noses were that way.

Leaving the drop zone behind, they faded into the dark traveling in single file, with flankers out a hundred meters to their right and left, and a point man another fifty up to the front. Casey stayed to the center with Phang in front of him. All of a sudden the night became very close, very heavy, after the coolness of the ride in the Huey. Following a narrow trail between fields and small groups of rubber trees and plantains, they marched three hours till they reached the area Phang had selected as their base camp.

Phang was a cautious old bird. He had chosen a site in a grove of wild plantains right next to a leper colony. The VC avoided the lepers as if they had the plague. It would be as safe here as anywhere.

Late that night, he and the Kamserai chieftain went over the plans. Phang had been concerned about their chances of success until he'd found out about the typhoon. He knew something was happening because of the stillness of the air. Like many of the jungle animals, Phang had many of the instincts common to the so-called primitive peoples of the world who lived closer to nature. He had known that a storm was coming; he just didn't know how big it was going to be. Once he knew that, it didn't take him long to figure out the rest. The hardest part of the operation would be getting in through the initial defenses surrounding the village. They had till the next night to wig that out. It was Phang who came up with part of the answer. He would get some of his people inside the village before nightfall.

Troung and Ho also knew that a storm was corning. They listened to the weather reports on Radio Saigon. Their own
Giai Phong
(Liberation Radio) weather information was not kept much up to date. The broadcasts from Saigon were much more accurate. As for storm damage, they weren't that concerned. Most of their important facilities and supply depots were underground. There would be a bit of flooding, naturally, and some temporary interruption of communication, but nothing they couldn't deal with. The storms were always much more damaging to the enemy than to them. What was the saying the Americans used? It is an ill wind that blows no good? If it was a good wind it would destroy many enemy aircraft while on the ground.

With dawn came the first light winds, a touch of rain riding with them.
Nothing threatening about them. Instead it made the day much cooler and pleasant, but Casey knew that would quickly change before night fell, when the winds would rise to an ear shattering crescendo that would bring death and destruction for hundreds of square miles.

Phang sent five of his men into the village. Dressed as peasants, they carried no weapons with them in their baskets filled with breadfruit, mangoes and plantains. Phang had met with some of the villagers who had come out to see that their goats and water buffaloes were taken care of. To the villagers he had said only that he wished for his men to be let into the village where they could get information on the Vietnamese there and report to the Cambodian government in Phnom Penh. The villagers figured they had nothing to lose if the government
was wanting information about the Vietcong. Perhaps that meant they were getting ready to do something to get rid of them. That was a situation to be desired.

The storm hit the Vietnamese coast, bringing tides fifteen
feet above normal and winds that tore apart straw and board houses as though they were made of paper. It rode across the delta behind a front of black clouds filled with moisture gathered up in the South China Sea.

Phang went over the layout of the village with Casey. It was a rectangle with a rim of trees running all the way around it. It was in the trees that the first line of defense waited. Hidden by the trees out of sight of the air were a line of bunkers and a single apron of barbed wire. In the wire were an unknown number of claymore mines and other booby traps, as well as a field of punji stakes. Not terribly formidable for a well
-armed and equipped American battalion to take, but it was enough that, if they weren't careful, it could mean the deaths of many of Phang's men.

In Casey's bag were what he hoped would be the easy way in now that Phang had some of his men inside the village. Once the main group of Kamserai made it inside, they'd head for entrances to the underground network. That was where the shit could get very heavy.

Vietcong and PAVN troops were preparing for the onslaught of the storm, taking shelter. They had experienced typhoons before and knew it would be a long night, a very wet and unpleasant night. The winds were increasing, now up to nearly fifty miles an hour as the VC tied down and got ready.

Casey and Phang used this time to move into assault positions, just out of sight of the first line of the village's defenses. There they would wait till the storm was at its peak.

The night came early; the skies darkened and rumbled. Lightning broke through the clouds to crack and thunder over the earth, drowning out all sounds. Lines began to go down between the different Vietcong posts. The Viets couldn't know that many of them were cut by the Kams. Radio and ground line communication was nearly nil throughout the entire Parrot's Beak. Even if a call for help got through it would take the enemy a long time to respond and for them to make their way through the winds to give any support.

Trees began to give way. The shallow roots of palms were being torn out of the earth to fall, and in some cases to be thrown, as much as a quarter of a mile before crashing into the sides of houses. Anyone that could took shelter. Facing the storm from their bunkers the Viets on duty kept their faces away from the firing apertures to avoid the cutting wind and rain. They hunched down to wait it out, wet and miserable as the waters began to fill the floor of the bunkers.

In the tunnels below water also came in. but not as much as might have been expected. All the entrances were well covered and protected. There were also conduits for drainage of the tunnels as the village sat on a small flat rise. It was drier underground than on the surface. Even the sounds of the thunder lessened to only distant rumbles. Troung and Ho felt secure.

Phang's men in the camp moved out. It was time. On their bellies they crawled to the bunker on the southeast corner. Nearly invisible under the sheet of rain and darkness, they
crawled face to foot. When they reached the opening to the machine gun bunkers they took out the weapons they had borrowed from the villagers,
cai kiem
, homemade sword-like machetes. They had nearly been born with one of these in their hands.

They waited till all five of them were at the entrance and ready. When the next roll of thunder came over the village, they moved. Sliding into the bunker entrance on their bellies, they slithered over the slick mud like serpents, one after the other. The three Vietnamese in the bunker raised their heads in the dark to see who it was that had joined them. They'd raised their heads just in time to meet the swinging blades of the
cai kiems
in the Kamserai warriors' hands. They died. Their screams, carried away by the wind, went unheard by anyone over ten feet away.

One of the Kamserai went back outside the bunker. In his hand he carried a round object. Climbing to the top of the bunker, he raised his arm, and fighting the wind threw the object over the wire to land in a drainage ditch. The object was picked up and brought to Phang by a smiling warrior. Grabbing it by the hair, Phang held the severed head of a Vietcong up for Casey to look at. They had the bunker!

Casey nodded. It was nearly useless to try and speak over the screaming of the winds. Taking his bag he moved to the wire, raised his arm and heaved as hard as he could. The wind aided him as it was coming from his rear. The bag flew over the bunker to land four feet behind it, where it was retrieved and taken inside.