Hannibal had gone ahead of the team to Kham Duc. But having been called away – back to Nha Trang on account of Face and Murdock - they were really flying blind. Before they could do anything, they needed a feel for the area. They'd only been in the camp for twenty minutes when the surveillance recon team had set out. At Hannibal's order, both Face and Cruiser had gone with them, to get a clearer layout of the area from the ground. BA would go with Murdock and fly over, and Hannibal would talk to the camp's soldiers and choose his men from among the Yards. It seemed a decent plan, all the way around.
"So that the hell happened back there?" Cruiser asked as they trudged through the jungle overgrowth. Recon in South Vietnam – especially so close to an American camp – was very different from recon in Cambodia. It was still dangerous; the VC carried AK-47s no matter where they patrolled. But it was suicide to approach an A-camp in small numbers. This wasn't "their" territory.
"What happened back where?" Face asked. He was still very much aware of his surroundings. But with a cigarette in one hand – an American cigarette, not the Asian ones they took with them across the border - and his CAR-15 in the other, he was about as relaxed as he could get under the circumstances.
"Back where?" Cruiser repeated with a laugh. "You got arrested, man. Remember that?"
"It was nothing."
"Nothing, my ass. You go so far out of your way to stay out of fights –"
"I don't want them on my record," Face interrupted. He cast a sideways glance at the man walking beside him. "I was drunk; I wasn't thinking."
Cruiser raised a brow. "So it ain't true?"
Face frowned. "What isn't?"
Cruiser smirked as he faced forward again, eyes doing a routine sweep before they settled on the Vietnamese team leader in front of them. "Apparently, Murdock used to spend a lot of time in Nha Trang," he said. "Don't ask me why, but a lot of the guys over there know him. You sure got 'em talking."
Face sighed deeply. Shit… "No," he answered firmly. "It's not true."
Cruiser nodded, but didn't say anything more.
"Truong Uy?"
Face looked up at the Vietnamese designation of his rank and stepped closer to him as the team came to a stop. The man pointed through the trees at the huts just visible over the ridge. "That moi village," he informed him.
Face ignored the derogatory term for the Yards. The animosity between the two classes was mutual, he knew. "Is it still occupied?"
"Yes. They come one time," he held up his finger, "to camp. Medicine. They not come back. Not stay."
Face studied the huts for a long moment, and noticed the dark-skinned people walking between them. It was no surprise that the Yards were uninterested in the camp. They felt no allegiance to the South Vietnamese government, and certainly not to such an abstract entity as "America." But they were valuable – more valuable than ARVN would ever care to admit. They were mercenaries, and they were damn good at it. Their natural inclination was to fight the Vietnamese – with only slightly more disdain for the northern variety.
However, one did not simply waltz into a Montagnard village and recruit soldiers. There was an etiquette, an art to it. Face happened to be very good at it.
"Do you mind if we stop?" he asked. He glanced at the team of LLDB soldiers, and Cruiser. "Is there anyone who can translate?"
Only blank stares answered him. "Ah, nevermind." He pointed to the team leader before starting toward the huts. "You come with me. Cruiser, you comin'?"
Cruiser followed, and the Vietnamese lieutenant. The rest of the LLDB followed only as far as the edge of the jungle clearing, then sat down to wait. "Maybe they've got someone who can speak Vietnamese," Cruiser mused quietly. "You never know."
"Or French," Face added.
Cruiser shrugged. "That's true, too."
They attracted attention immediately. Wide-eyed stares and frightened glances alike. They'd only made it a few steps into the village, past scurrying ducks and chickens, when they were met by several men who looked less than thrilled to see them. Face smiled.
"Hi," he greeted casually. "We're Americans. You've been to our camp once. Quelqu'un ici parle-t-il français? "
The men stared at him, and at the weapon on his shoulder. Then they stepped aside, and one of them pointed. "Ah, thank you."
While one of them led the way, the others followed as they were escorted to a communal longhouse on stilts. A shriveled man sat on the steps, eyeing them carefully as they came closer. He was sizing them up. Face could feel it, almost like a physical sensation. He didn't let it unnerve him. This was the village chief, sitting with an old pipe resting in the gap where he was missing a tooth. For a long moment, he said nothing, just puffed on the pipe. Then, finally, he gestured for them to come closer.
"Parlez-vous français? " Face asked hopefully.
"I English," the man answered firmly.
"Oh, even better," Face chuckled, surprised. He gestured his introductions quickly. "I'm Lieutenant Peck, this is Sergeant Harrison, and Lieutenant Vuong."
"Why you here?"
Face could sense the animosity, but he couldn't put his finger on why. It wasn't the guns; they weren't afraid. It was more personal. "Well, see, Sergeant Harrison and I are visiting the camp that's just a little ways from here. I do a lot of trading, buying, selling… I was wondering if you would be interested in doing business, and what kinds of things you might be interested in dealing. Anything you'd like, I can get it."
"You American?"
Face nodded. "That's right."
The chief scoffed. "American come here," he said distastefully. "Dig water."
"A well," Face corrected with a smile. It must have been some kind of civic action team.
"Trade new pipe," the chief continued, taking the pipe from his mouth. "No come back. Bad trade."
"Oh!" Cruiser interrupted. Face turned to stare at him. Cruiser thought quickly on his feet. This time, he was quicker than Face, who was still trying to make sense of the fragmented English when Cruiser stepped forward. "So you're the chief we've been looking for!" He laughed. "We've got your pipe. We don't have it with us right now; it's back at the camp. But we didn't forget. Because of the war – and you, being a chief, surely understand - these things just take time. We'll bring it to you tomorrow. Is that okay?"
The chief eyed him warily. Face smiled, and gave a slight laugh as he played along. Nothing like a deadline, out here in the middle of nowhere. "Tomorrow," the chief nodded.
"Great," Face answered. "We'll see you then."
As he turned to leave, Cruiser and the LLDB lieutenant on either side of him, he chuckled quietly. "Nice, Cruiser. Almost as good as the Russian routine when they didn't realize we were Americans."
Cruiser snickered. "Nothing was as good as that," he replied. "And you'd just better be able to get this guy his pipe before tomorrow afternoon."
"I'll get it," Face assured him. "I'm more worried about finding the time tomorrow to come back out here."
Face set three pipes and two cans of Prince Albert tobacco on top of the bar as he sat down. Murdock stared at it curiously. "In the mood to feel dignified?" he guessed.
Cruiser leaned forward to look around him. "Oh, hey, you got it!"
"Yeah." Face poured a shot of whiskey, pushing the items aside. "The Arc Light is set for noon, and we'll be going up with them. If we're going back to the village, we'll need to go early."
"What do you think about this job?" Cruiser asked.
Face threw the shot back. "I think it's dangerous as all hell."
Murdock frowned. "How so?" he asked. "You're dropping into an area that's been leveled by B-52s shortly before you got there."
"Yeah, and think about it," Cruiser chuckled. "Just prior to you showing up, that target was thought to be so full of enemy soldiers to actually justify hitting it with an Arc Light strike. Now the dust has just settled and everyone's coming out of their holes - and here you are landing right there in the middle of hundreds, maybe thousands, of royally pissed off enemy troops."
"I don't like it," Face said firmly. "I'll do it, but I hate it. I think it's stupid and pointless."
Cruiser laughed. "Tell it to Hannibal."
"Oh, Hannibal loves it," Face answered. "But even he won't disagree with me that the risk outweighs the reward. It's stupid."
Murdock raised a brow. "Why?"
Face glanced sideways at him. "You ever see an Arc Light strike?"
Murdock smirked. "Hey, those are my guys you're talkin' about, remember?"
"Okay. So when you drop two thousand bombs on a five square mile area, you're going to kill everything that's on the ground. You don't need to send a team down there to pull triggers."
"Except the enemy is under the ground," Cruiser sighed. "And they come out like hornets that just got their nest whacked."
"Or there's nothing even there because the intelligence was old or just plain wrong." Face sighed deeply. "So either there's no point in you being there – because they're all dead or they weren't there to begin with - or you go in and start shooting it out with a really pissed off enemy that vastly outnumbers you."
Murdock raised a brow. "Well if that's the case – if they're not there or they're all safe underground - why call the strike in the first place?" he challenged. "Why even bother?"
"Oh, I'm all for air strikes," Face said. "Hell, I've called them. By all means, bomb the hell out of anything that moves – especially if it's by the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It clears the jungle so we can see the damn thing, and makes it harder for them to get around. Just don't set me down in the goddamn craters. It'll almost always lead to a Prairie Fire, and wounded or dead soldiers."
"Because unless by some magnificent stroke of luck," Cruiser continued, "we happen to hit them at a time when they're casually wandering around the surface, an Arc Light only makes things more dangerous – not less so."
Again, Face sighed. Then he went back to the bottle.
"You know what I've been thinkin'?" Cruiser mused quietly.
Face poured his glass, then Murdock's. Cruiser's was too far to reach. "What?" he asked, only mildly interested.
"I should really think about goin' back to the States and doin' OCS."
Face paused, mid-drink, and shook his head at the sudden change of topic. He finished his gulp before answering. "Good luck with that," he said dryly.
Cruiser laughed. "Oh, come on. It couldn't be any worse than basic."
Murdock and Face exchanged glances. Cruiser frowned. "Or Phase One?" he tried.
Face gave a slight nod. "Not worse than Phase One," he granted.
"Phase One?" Murdock asked, curious.
"It's where they try to weed out the people who don't really want to be Special Forces," Face explained, finishing the last of his drink and setting the glass on the counter. "They do a pretty good job, too."
"Man, I will never forget," Cruiser reminisced, "the first time they handed me a live chicken and said, 'You got one hour to kill, cook, and eat.'"
Murdock raised a brow, amused. "Seriously?"
"Oh, yeah," Face chuckled. "That got to be sort of second nature by the end of it all."
"Sort of like survival training with a twist?" Murdock grinned.
"Well, for our survival training," Cruiser said, "they dropped us in the middle of a fuckin' swamp with next to nothin' for gear, and gave us a deadline."
Face laughed. "Yeah. Twelve hours of hiking to the spot they picked for helicopter extraction."
"And then lo, and behold…"
"No helicopters."
"Yeah," Cruiser smirked. "Your helicopters have been shot down. It's 0200, black as hell, in a fuckin' swamp, and you got 'til 1200 hours to make it back to the rendezvous point 25 miles away."
Murdock whistled low. "Shit…"
"And if you made it there one minute late, you were disqualified from the program."
"Did they force a lot of guys out?"
"My class started with fifty," Face recalled. "Ended with seven."
"We had fifteen," Cruiser recalled. He glanced at Face. "How'd you get seven? That's a weird number."
Face took another drink. "At the end of that hike, one team made it back and one team made it back five minutes over." He held his glass loosely between his fingers as he glanced at Cruiser and Murdock. "They had a guy wounded on the twenty-first mile. He compound fractured his leg. They stopped to dress it. Then they carried him the rest of the way."
"They didn't pull him out for that?" Murdock asked, stunned.
"They didn't pull us out for nothin'," Cruiser answered. "We didn't even have contact half the time."
"Anyways, when the team made it back, they were five minutes late. So the Sergeant looked at them and said, 'Well, the base is twenty miles,'" he pointed, "'that way. Anyone who really wants to wear that beret, get walking.' Two of them gave up right then and there. Two days no sleep, no food, minimal water, hiking through the swamp for fifty miles - they knew they couldn't make it another twenty." He lowered his head, staring at the amber liquid as he swirled it in his glass. "The other two started walking. About a mile down the road, the Sergeant pulls up in a Jeep and says, 'Congratulations, Green Berets.'"
Murdock smirked, noting the almost wistful tone in Face's voice. "That was you," he guessed.
Face glanced at him and smiled. "Yeah, that was me."
"So why'd you do it, man?" Murdock asked, curious. "What made you keep walkin'?"
"Easy," Face answered, tipping up the glass and draining the rest of it. He set it back down on the bar top with a loud clack and stood to his feet. "I had nowhere else to go."
He walked past without another word, clapping Murdock's shoulder as he passed. He was outside the club by the time he realized Cruiser was following. "You think he gets it?" Cruiser asked, hands in the pockets of his fatigues as he flopped lazily down the steps.
"Hey, you were the one who brought it up," Face reminded, reaching for a cigarette. "OCS isn't a cakewalk either. They just don't force as many of their people out. Especially when they're hurting for officers over here."
"I never figured it'd be fun," Cruiser shrugged. "But compared to this shit? Sounds like a fuckin' thirteen week vacation."
Face hunched over his cigarette as he lit it, shielding the flame from the breeze. "Like Phase One?" he smirked as he flipped the lighter closed.
"We never got shot at in Phase One," Cruiser pointed out with a grin.
Face took a long drag. "So go to OCS, Cruiser. What's stopping you? Hannibal would let you go. He wouldn't like it, but he'd sign your papers."
"Yeah…" Cruiser sighed wistfully, letting his voice trail off as he studied the night sky. "You know, it's funny. I think I'm actually gonna miss this place."
Face laughed. "That's assuming you live long enough."
"Oh, come on. Haven't you heard, Face?" Cruiser turned to look at him, and smirked as he reached for his own cigarettes. "The war's over. We lost."
