Red Ice

My first had occurred many years ago in Vietnam…

CHAPTER 7

The procession of eight sampans snaked silently through the choked and twisted mangrove swamp, tracing the barely discernible bed of the core river. The air tasted of steam and smelled of wet, rotting vegetation. We were on a fool’s sojourn into a damp green labyrinth.

Each crew could just make out the sampan ahead of it, for little of the quarter moon penetrated the gloom of the triple-canopy foliage. Swathed in mosquito netting like unworldly beekeepers, it was hard to resist the tooth-gritting urge to swat the insects that choked the air around us.

I gave the signal for the lead sampan to put more distance between it and the main body. Smooth, orderly movement to the objective was imperative if we were to succeed.

Soon we would have to eliminate the series of sentries on the next quarter mile of riverbank between here and where the two American POWs were held.

The lead sampan surged ahead, nearly capsizing. Two of the boat’s Vietnamese scouts paddled steadying strokes, the third lay low in the waist section.

“Lai day.”

The lead boat was being challenged from somewhere up ahead. The procession, now bristling with flat-black steel, halted, and only the lead boat continued.

“Lai day, lai day.”

The command was casual, and though I could not see the sentry, I knew he was waving the sampan over to the bank. “Come over here,” the Viet Cong soldier had demanded.

Fortunately, the soldier did not expect any resistance, for his experience did not include the discipline of more conventional sentry duty. Like most VC sentries, he planned to assess a “tax” on anything of value in the sampan.

“Ratchet-chet, ratchet-chet, ratchet-chet.”

The muffled chatter from the nine-millimeter submachine gun carried faintly over the noises of the swamp. A short groan followed.

Offhandedly, the scout in the waist of the lead boat had fired a burst from a silenced Model 76 into the careless sentry as the sampan had touched the bank. The rounds, well grouped, penetrated cleanly, fatally.

The procession began anew, and as each boat drifted by him, the sentry bobbed and nodded in the tepid water. His gold-toothed smile whispered the forfeiture of failure.

On we paddled, with tensed, weary backs, gripping our paddles too tightly. Disturbed by the lead boat, a great white swamp bird fluttered, then screeched off into the darkness.

That previous afternoon, the jeep’s wheels slid well to the right in the axle-deep mud as I had turned to clear the MACV compound gate. As I slowed for a second, Ackert vaulted uninvited into the shotgun seat. I was on my way to the tactical operations center to clear an area of operation with the local Army people. We were Navy but they had overall supervisory authority for this AO.

“Whoo-eee, I think you’ve really gone off the deep end this time, Fraze.”

The air was heavy with humidity and my camouflage shirt stuck uncomfortably to the seat back.

“Glad I’m not part of this one. If the VC don’t ventilate your bod’, the regional general will fry it. Maybe leave it out in the hot sun ’til it gets nice and crispy-like,” he said, nudging me in the ribs with more force than necessary.

Thomas Alderson Ackert III, a big blond-headed charmer and natural athlete, had graduated from the Academy, a first-class ticket puncher and had ever since been collecting career-enhancing billets. With Ackert’s tight, winning, and even-toothed smile it was inevitable people were more impressed than they ought to have been. As a onetime starting lineman for the Academy, he found the rigors of basic training for the Navy’s elite Sea/Air/Land (SEAL) Teams trying and occasionally an inconvenience. But the prestige that accompanied the role of frogman-commando would surely ease along his career. Shrewd and capable, he got his ticket punched at all the right stops. What he did at each stop didn’t matter as long as he didn’t make waves.

Someone had once described him as that thoroughly treacherous golden bastard who knew all the rules of the game, had mastered them with great fanfare, but hadn’t the remotest idea why the game was played in the first place. He was fond of all the current buzz words like “systems supportive” and “middle-tier management,” which he sprinkled generously into a honeyed “good ol’ boy” pap. First to “get on board” questionable programs of high origin, he sported an array of staff awards, which he had cleverly harvested as a “bombproof” in rear areas. Each of these attributes viewed individually might seem fairly harmless, but examined in concert they were the unmistakable symptoms of a deep and dangerous pathology. And he himself was a symptom of a still greater pathology.

It began to rain in warm, heavy sheets. Ackert smiled to himself with the satisfaction drawn from the prospect of someone else’s risk taking and probable doom. I kept my eyes straight ahead.