Red Ice

“Now talk nice to ol’ Ackert, hear?” He whispered venomously. “Kind of touchy, aren’t we? Wait ’til old IV Corps hands you your head once he’s found out you led a deliberate rescue mission without letting him give the whiz kids a chance to take first bows.”

“And who’s going to tell him?”

“I don’t know…,” he said with his best year-book smile. “Maybe me.”

The jeep stopped with a jerk.

It would be a good fight: in this corner, the rawboned Quillon Frazer in the celebrated and foredoomed tradition of his Highland ancestors… and in the opposite corner, Thomas Alderson Ackert III, golden-haired tidewater Goliath, destined to insinuate himself to the mastheads of naval power.

But I had more important matters to concern me. In particular, two captive Americans dying slow deaths in forgotten places.

Ackert would have to wait.

The sampans glided forward beneath the interlocking talons of the unending mangroves. As if anticipating our intrusion, the jungle growth became more lush and more concealing.

With increased confidence the crew of the lead sampan took out the next sentry as quietly as it had the first.

My radioman, Puckins, looking like Huck Finn gone to war, turned in the bow of our sampan and gave me the three-ring okay signal for no particular reason. Puckins was just the SEAL you’d want in the bow on a cold-sweat jaunt like this one. Some men transmit waves of calm and well-being, like brandy on a cold night. It was like him to diffuse the aching tension with some insane pantomime.

He pointed to the sampan behind ours and made gestures indicating a “thick neck” until a strand of red hair fell out from under his hat. I knew he could only mean burly Wickersham. Then, with three quick gestures of a skilled mime, he conveyed that Wickersham’s Cholon girlfriend was generous with her favors. Heck of a statement for a circuit rider’s grandson to make—in the manner he made it.

I looked behind to Wickersham and then realized he couldn’t see any of this. I thanked the god of darkness for this one small favor. We didn’t need anyone riling up Wickersham. Fortunately, he was probably preoccupied with computing the fair market value of eight used, slightly bullet-ridden sampans. Yesterday I’d caught him trying to sell a bale of phony VC flags to a couple of PBR crews.

Along the banks the trees grew in ever more frantic postures as if trying to escape the parasite plants choking them.

We now approached the satellite camp and the final sentry. The river was not very deep here—often I’d feel my paddle brush bottom mud. Yet the water was still black and opaque like the blood of a night wound.

From our defector, or hoi chanh, we had learned that the satellite camp was one of several small outpost camps that surrounded the center encampment of a battalion or greater of Viet Cong. Nestled in triple-canopy swamp, the satellite camp was secure from air strikes and acted as part of the buffer against major U.S. or ARVN troop movements.

It was composed of eight huts in two parallel rows of four perpendicular to the river, which at that point was fifteen feet across. A drainage ditch ran between the two rows and intersected the river at a right angle. On either side of the ditch were wooden plank-ways connecting the huts.

The hoi chanh had indicated that the two American captives would be in one of three places: in the two huts farthest from the river, in the tiger cages outside the huts, or shackled to nearby trees outside those huts—if they were still alive.

It was all very simple, except for the three or four Viet Cong that occupied each of the eight huts, the two hundred or so more Viet Cong and NVA nearby at the main encampment, and the last sentry stationed just yards downstream from the satellite camp.

A small shelter loomed out of the darkness abreast of the sampan just ahead of us. This was the post of the last sentry. Its small roof had offered relief from the monsoon rains. We turned our boat into the riverbank and stepped gingerly into the mud. All the sampans were unloading now. Everyone was wobbling around on tension-weakened legs.

The elimination of the last sentry had been the smoothest, and the reason was clear. His body sprawled in relaxed lines on a plastic ground sheet; he had been asleep on watch. Now his dreams would no longer be rudely interrupted.

My hand signal brought the men silently to their positions. I counted eighteen sweat-glistening, green-painted faces. An M-60 machine gunner stood on either outboard side of the camp. Then the two grenadiers mounted the two inboard plank ways carrying haversacks stuffed with concussion grenades. Two men stayed with our sampans, watching for signs of the main force upstream and uneasily counting the beached sampans that weren’t ours. The rest of the platoon split into two files, one for each plank way. Puckins and I stood in the ditch between the plank ways.