Chapter One
Never take both boots off at the same time.
—POI 7658 Special Forces Combat Manual ROV 1970
VIETNAM—JANUARY 1973
NO ONE WANTED TO BE OUT here. Not the six U.S. Special Forces soldiers or their Vietnamese guide, Mr. Pham. Not the NVA or the Viet Cong or the Cambodians they were trying to evade. Even the jungle animals were restless that night, as they sensed there was no point to roaming underthat jungle canopy at midnight. Not that night.
The tiger that padded noiselessly across the jungle floor one hundred yards from the Americans did not feel good about the night. Mr. Pham sensed the tiger, but said nothing to the Americans.
Most Americans did not understand the tiger, so Mr. Pham was silent. He did not know that he was not alone in sensing the tiger's presence.
The end of the war was coming, the war machine slowing down. Everyone knew that, and no one wanted to be the one who took the final bullet a day before it all ended.
The Christmas Bombings had brought the North Vietnamese running back to the peace table in Paris. The message was clear from the White House, and there are few things as convincing as a few tons of well-placed Arc Light. Nixon had hammered the enemy with everything he had for twelve days. Hanoi got the message and returned to the talks. The war would finally grind to a stop, but before that there were loose ends to clean up. Missions were still being assigned.
Grade A intel had come through to Saigon. Grade A meant that it came from Americans in the field. There was a POW camp about thirty klicks on the other side of the Cambodian border. That was definite bandit territory in a land where bad things happened.
The intel said that there were Americans being held there, and Saigon wanted, for once, to free some POWs—a redemption of all the bad with at least one good mission. Everyone wanted a clean wash in cool, clear water to purge his soul, if only for a moment, of this rotten war. No one wanted to go home a total loser.
The intel came into Saigon, and reports were written and sent up the line. Generals conferred and sent definite orders back down. If this was real, find the camp. They wanted confirmation. If it checked out, they would launch a rescue mission and free those men. So REMF majors and palace-dog colonels in air-conditioned offices formed the data into orders. This was a strange art form using typed words instead of clay or paint. The canvas was the grasslands and jungles in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Those orders became moving flesh, steel, and lead. Pointless battles were fought and lives were lost, but orders were orders, so someone had to go. Men were chosen. The generals asked for the best A-Team Special Forces had in-country, and they got Captain Fred Custer and his men.
CUSTER WAS SITTING IN HIS command post at Firebase Nancy, next to the tiny hamlet of Dok Hon in the Kontum district, when a Huey came in with the orders. He was planning a minor operation into Laos "just to fuck with" the VC supply lines. It was something to do, and he was tired of the constant flow of RPGs and AKs that generally made his life more difficult and certainly more dangerous. He wanted a little breathing room. Since the B-52s were all assigned up north or taking a rest, he figured it was time to take a little initiative. Old Victor Charlie was getting a little too confident in Custer's area. It was Custer's area as long as he was stationed here. He, his men, and their Montagnards would keep it that way. The "Yards," a nickname the Green Berets gave the mountain tribal soldiers, were fine troops.
Custer had joined the army in 1962, after John F. Kennedy's famous speech at Fort Bragg that brought attention to the then unknown Special Forces Green Beret units. Inspired by JFK's Camelot and the Special Forces, Custer worked hard and became one of those elite men. He was one of the first advisers into the mountains of Vietnam, and he was in his third tour in a country he had come to love.
In the field, Custer carried the CAR-15 as his main rifle. He liked the shorter barrel length and lighter weight of the carbine better than that of the AR-15. He had the division gunsmith burr the chamber and ramp it down until the weapon did not jam. With his rifle and the usual hand grenades and claymores they all carried, Fred toted the ever trusty Colt .45 pistol on his hip for backup.
Custer barely even heard the chopper blades cutting through the air when the Huey arrived with his new orders. Chopper noise had become second nature to him long ago. It wasn't a threat, so his mind set it aside. After a few minutes Mac, the firebase Top, entered Custer's command post. This was really just four walls of sandbags with a tin roof, one desk, one chair, and military maps pinned on the walls. Mac stood in front of the desk, silent.
Fred Custer liked Mac. He was a good sergeant and a better soldier, having started in the frozen hell of Korea. Mac had worked his way up the line from buck private to first sergeant. It may have been a captain's official role as base commander, but everyone knew that it was Top Mac who really ran the camp.
His last name was MacDonald, but everyone just called him Mac. The troops all liked him. He was as tough as they came, but he had seen the shit and they knew it, and he had never forgotten his buck private days. He knew what it was like to throw lead and have it thrown back at you. Mac took care of his men.
Custer leaned back, pushing his gold-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose, and pulled a Marlboro from its pack and lit it with his 82nd Airborne Zippo.
"What do we have going on, Mac?" he asked, blowing smoke out like a dragon testing his breath. He knew that if Mac came to him something was up.
"Not we, Fred. You. You and your little Boy Scout troop are going on a field trip." Mac tossed the orders across the top of the desk where Custer was plotting out his route into Laos. "Hell, you guys must have impressed some Scout leader at national headquarters. Or you really pissed someone off. You're going deep into Cambodia."
Custer crushed his cigarette out and picked up the orders to read them.
"Yeah, sorry to say your little trip to Laos is postponed. That's a good idea," Mac said, as he picked up Custer's cigarette pack and lit one. The only time Mac smoked was when he was out of his HQ, and that was not often. Mac rotated the map around on the desktop so that it faced him. "Who knows, I just may take a few men and go out there myself. I sit behind that desk too much. Maybe time to kick a little NVA ass in person. Maybe I'll catch General Giap himself."
Custer read through the pages a second time before speaking.
"Why us? There have to be teams down there in Quang Duc who know the territory better."
"Ours is not to question why," Mac answered. "But this is ASAP. And it comes from top brass. The chopper that brought the orders is waiting for you and your team. You have thirty minutes. Good luck. Write if you can, and don't forget to pack a lunch."
Mac smiled, dropped his cigarette to the ground, and crushed it under the heel of his boot. He turned to leave, then thought a second and faced Custer again.
"I'll send some smoke signals down the lines. I still know a couple of old bastards like me down in that area. I'll get you frequencies to some 155s that you can call in if the Girl Scouts over there get too mean." Mac turned and walked out, his final words coming as he stooped under the sandbagged entrance.
"I hear they have some mean Girl Scouts in Cambodia. Watch your ass, Custer. Don't be like your namesake."
Like all Special Forces men, Custer could be ready to go in five minutes tops. The thirty minutes Mac had given his team was a luxury. He was out of his CP in a flash and over to Sergeant Ted Hickman of the team. Hickman was young, far too young, but then so were a lot of the boys over here. However, Hickman was good. He was a natural soldier who had gravitated to Special Forces as many did—from rebellion.
Hickman stood like some bronzed Norse god at six foot three and weighed a lean, muscled 210 pounds. His blond hair was cut close with a flat top above his blue eyes and his hawk nose. Beads of sweat rolled across his bare chest. He sat checking a run of 7.62 mm ammo fresh from an ammo box, one round at a time. It was his ass on the line, and he liked to double-check things.
Born in a tough part of a borough of New York City in 1953, by eighteen he was a rough kid of the streets, where he honed his skills. A natural leader, he led a gang. The summer after he graduated from high school, he had gone too far one night when he took down an off-duty cop. The cop had hit on Hickman's girlfriend, and Hickey—a nickname of the streets that had stuck—had beaten the man badly.
The cop even had the first punch in the row, but Hickey was a savage street fighter: The officer would be finishing his years on the force behind a desk, after his new teeth came in and his back healed. The judge had given Hickey a choice—jail or the military. His mother had cried, and his father, who had long since lost any control over Hickey, hoped the army would straighten the boy out.
Once in boot camp, his rebel side hardly conquered, Hickey saw other renegades watching from afar as he ran and did push-ups for the drill instructors. These men all seemed to wear Ray-Ban sunglasses, and even in their army uniforms they looked to Hickey like James Dean. They stood alone or in small groups, watching with amusement as the new men did their drills. Hickey studied these men with envy and found out that they were Special Forces—they had all earned the coveted Green Beret.
Hickey talked to his drill sergeant, who told him that any soldier could try out for the Special Forces after he completed his basic training. Since it was 1971, it was uncertain whether Hickey would be going to Vietnam. If he was going to the land of bad things, Hickey didn't want to go with just the six weeks of training that boot camp gave. He wanted to survive. The best way to do that was through training, and the best training in the army was the Special Forces. That, plus the naturally rebellious nature of many of the Special Forces men, drew Hickey to them.
After boot camp he applied and got his chance to earn the coveted Green Beret. He went off to Advanced Infantry Training and jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, in the sweltering southern heat. There he earned his jump wings. Then he was off to the home of the Green Berets, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where the tests really began.
The physical tasks never even slowed him down. He was a natural athlete and liked a challenge, but for an underschooled boy of eighteen, the massive book work was a chore, so Hickey pushed himself and plowed through the material. He barely passed, but he did pass. He earned that beret. Then it was time for the real training.
The once standard one year of training for the Green Berets had been cut to six months by the time Hickey went through it. The Vietnam War was still demanding bodies. At Bragg they trained in weapons, explosives, counterinsurgency, jungle warfare, jungle survival, platoon tactics, radios, medical and first aid, lessons in Vietnamese, and more. The old-timers knew that it was not enough training or time, but was there ever enough before a war?
They were up at 5:00 A.M. every morning to start the day with a ten-mile run, humping a field pack full of rocks. He and his fellow freshmen were pushed and pushed hard until well past midnight. This was a further weeding out process, and in the end, those who remained were the best that the U.S. Army produced. These best were then sent to a five-week course nicknamed "Tiger Land" at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Tiger Land had been built and was run by men who had survived Vietnam, and these men were trying their best to make sure the young freshmen would also return home. After graduating, the young troops were shipped off to Vietnam to be tested against a fine fighting army.
The Viet Cong—Victor Charles—had begun their fight with the Japanese in World War II. Then they took it to the French for another decade. In 1954, the VC had won after General Giap cornered and destroyed the French on a little mountain in northwest Vietnam called Dien Bien Phu.
That had brought the Americans rolling in. Some of the Viet Cong were twenty-year veterans by that time, and all were to be respected as fighters. The Viet Cong played defense by taunting, evading, and teasing the American forces until 1968. That year, during the New Year Tet holidays, Victor Charlie surprised everyone with a massive offensive across all of Vietnam. The VC were beaten back, but not without major casualities on both sides. Both had suffered deep losses in men and in politics.
After the '68 Tet offensive, the American home front was never the same; the tide had turned. This was the beginning of the end for the American forces in Vietnam, but the VC had also destroyed itself in that attack. They were decimated, and the Communist leaders in Hanoi and China took full advantage. The North Vietnamese Army took over the war. Born much more out of Communist Chinese ideology than the freedom fighter base of the VC, the NVA were professional, well armed, and well equipped. They trained hard, and they upped the ante on the U.S. forces. So men like Hickey were sent to do battle. Ted Hickman loved a fight.
Custer kicked the dry red dust of the Vietnamese countryside up into the air as he walked over to Hickey. Hickey would get the rest of the team together. Although the sergeant had been only eighteen when he arrived, Custer had become impressed with his natural skills as a leader and as a soldier. Custer didn't like Hickey's desire to get into a fight, but Custer figured that would be beaten out of him one firefight at a time. Custer thought it was better to let the kid work that out of himself.
"Hickey. We have twenty minutes to be on that chopper." Custer pointed to the waiting green taxi. "I'll brief everyone once we are in the air. Go get the team moving."
"You got it, chief," Hickey replied, sliding the cool linked ammo back into its green metal canister with bright yellow letters painted on the side. He slammed the top down and resealed it by clamping down the latch, locking it into place. He grabbed the handle on top and another twenty-pound canister of 7.62mm ammo for his M-60 and humped them toward the other men, who were resting in the shade of a tent. Hickey ran through the tent entrance and announced himself.
Excerpted from Bringing Back the Dead by Joe Domenici.
Copyright © 2008 by Joe Domenici.
Published in 2008 by St. Martin's Press
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.
