The Five Fingers Read online

  "By highest authority," the American said. "The Supreme Commander."

  "I am sorry to persist, sir, but your Supreme Commander and mine are not the same. The photo top *

  left is of the highest-ranking military officer in North Vietnam. Most of the others are Chinese military and government officials of high office. Has my government given its blessing to their termination?"

  "You're not here under your government's blessing, Prather. You are here under its order."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Sir, there is no Vietnamese representation on the unit," said Morrosco.

  "It has been agreed that the United States will represent South Vietnamese interests."

  This was a polite way of saying that South Vietnamese security was so leaky the mission would be compromised by their inclusion.

  "Gentlemen, you are being presented the opportunity for an active role in one of the key moves in the entire physical arena. What you do, or fail to do, may determine whether we seal the envelope on Vietnam or go on to a global holocaust. I welcome your questions, when they concern mission detail. I am not interested in conjecture or speculation. If I may proceed . . . The prime targets have been meeting in twos and threes for the past six months, formulating plans for the opening of simultaneous military campaigns in Vietnam and Korea. These campaigns are to proceed under an umbrella of Chinese nuclear rockets. I can assure you, gentlemen, that the Chinese have the hardware to hit any spot in Southeast Asia from the Chinese mainland. In short, they have chosen a strategy to draw the entire world into Vietnam. If agreement is reached at the forthcoming conference, we've begun the rundown to World War III. The cards will come up on the table. Western withdrawal from Southeast Asia or nuclear holocaust. You know who these men are whose photos you see before you. You know the power they hold. And you know they are capable of making such a decision."

  I found it hard to accept that so clever a soldier as Giap would risk everything on one roll of the dice. But Teng Ping and Lin Piao—for I was sure I

  recognized them as two of the three Chinese prime I targets—were a different kettle of fish. They were politicians, communist theoreticians, above all, civil- i ians. And no longer young men. They might welcome^ the chance to see it all happen within their lifetime.

  The man hammered at us for another hour in his" : powerful, almost hypnotic way ... an expanded arena u ... a drive to involve the entire world in Vietnam ... nuclear war ... or surrender by the West to Chinese^ blackmail . . . every man at the conference a power unto himself . . . they would never meet again in one group . . . they must be eliminated, the threat terminated now. It was so convincing, the man so persuasive, we were all on the boil. My adrenals were racing, my heart pounding with excitement. Giap was the best soldier I would ever go up against. In the hierarchy of communist mythology, he ranked up there with Mao and Ho and Chou En Lai. He had been making the fighting in Vietnam for thirty years. And I was the one, out of all the men in Indochina, they had picked to^ hit him.

  The other targets were as important as Giap, one' rung down the ladder from running their countries, or marshals of their armies. We were going to change-the face of power for a billion people, this team of 1 ours, these Five Fingers.

  I sensed that the others were feeling the same. Each : one of us was a very powerful man on his own. TheyJ had brought us together to work us as a unit and make 4 us work as a unit. When that happened, we would be* more effective than a regiment, we could lay down more fire power than two hundred men firing in the bloody air. Nobody could stop us.

  I was surprised, when we broke for lunch and went? back to quarters, how quiet we all were. A certain deflation had set in, I think, because there was still so much they had not told us. We talked little during the meal. There was some discussion that the whole 1 thing might be a ploy, a devious way to get Giap,

  that I was the reason the mission had been mounted. I argued that there were too many easier ways to get him, too many times and places it could be done without this elaborate deception, without hitting the Chinese. I had been concerned by Prather's reaction at the briefing, but he made it clear over lunch that he was not troubled by the mission. What concerned him was getting involved in a political move that his government was not privy to.

  When we returned to the briefing room, the desks had been pushed against the walls to make room for a table on which rested a padlocked wooden box about six feet square. A larger table held what was obviously a topographical model of the route which was covered with a cloth. The moment I stepped into the room, the rush returned. The others looked as edgy and excited as I felt. The second American took charge now, hitting us just as hard and fast as his associate, with the same punch all the way through. We began to get DD—destination date: elapsed time, specific routings; zone briefings. A wall map was pulled down to show our route in Laos; the red line that was our route disappeared into the map roller at the North Vietnamese frontier. The American briefed us for another half hour on our route in, detailing our two caches in Laos; he hit us again and again with the discreetness of the mission. We were to avoid combat whenever possible. There would be an upsurge in Green Beret activity in Laos to camouflage our movement. Finally he gave us the date.

  "Seven June. At 0800 hours, all the principals will gather for the opening ceremony. You will hit at that exact moment. You have your date, gentlemen—0800 hours on seven June." He paused, almost like a man having second thoughts. "I think it is time for you to look at the impact area."

  He pulled down the map behind him. The route through Laos cut the North Vietnamese border and continued north by northeast toward the Red River

  border between North Vietnam and China. It pierced the Red River and thrust due north for several kilometers before ending in a red-shaded box. We were going to China.

  CHAPTER 3

  No one moved. The American grinned at us. Again Prather was the first to speak.

  "Sir," he said, "am I correct in understanding that the impact area is in China?" For some reason, Prather's question sounded funny. We all laughed and relaxed.

  "That is correct, Prather. The Five Fingers will be the first joint allied insurgency team to operate inside China. You will proceed to Ta shu tang township in Yunnan Province. There, gentlemen, you will forestall a nuclear confrontation. Let's take a look at your route and the red zone."

  The sheet went off the large table to reveal a three-dimensional model of our route all the way up. It had been made from aerial photos with extreme attention to detail. And it was rugged all the way, with a steady climb up to about five thousand feet, where Ta shu tang nestled on a fairly open plateau with its back against a mountain range. It was wild country. What

  was not mountain was jungle; often it was both. There was a bad patch of swamp in Laos and another in North Vietnam near the Chinese border. A lot of the route was sparsely populated, but mountains and rivers would make it hard to keep to schedule. There was no question of support after northern Laos; we would be on our own. But we were going somewhere nobody had ever been before, to do a job that only we could do. We knew the consequences of going into China. It was the end of the line. But I dismissed that thought immediately. We all would have fought communists from the tropics to the ice caps. I was in Vietnam to do that job. And what a way to finish.

  "Gentlemen, I am here to brief you on mission purpose and give you your routing to the impact area, which is the twenty-mile radius around Ta shu tang. I am not here to tell you how to carry out the mission. It will be your responsibility to work out the most suitable plan for hitting the conference site. If that had to be explained to you, you wouldn't be good enough to be on this team. You will receive detailed group and individual briefings on the conference site, projected security, and profiles on your targets. You have almost three weeks to work out your plan of attack and rehearse it down to the second. But, gentlemen, these men must be terminated. I don't have to tell you that you are expected to be as flexible as you are p
recise. Your prime objective is the impact area. Once there, you will be free to alter the hit in any way that corresponds to changing circumstances. If the parties are delayed by a blown bridge or wind of you in the area or whatever; if you have to change the lineup because some of you have been hit; whatever the reason, once in the impact zone, we expect the mission to be carried out. We will be monitoring your progress by the usual procedures—aerial reconnaissance, ground observation, the movement of enemy troops against you —but no units will be able to help you on the ground. Yours will be one of the key moves of the entire

  Southeast Asian campaign. That is why we picked you. And that is why we expect you to succeed.

  "For security reasons, you will be operating with the minimum backup. That means two caches in Laos. After that, you will be on your own. The communists don't know we are aware of the existence of this conference. Any sign of movement in that direction would bring instant cancellation. That is why you must maintain the lowest profile possible. Avoid all combat when possible. Any questions?"

  "Will you have a backup unit in the field if we don't make it?" Jackson asked.

  "You, gentlemen, are it. You'd only have to catch a snag somewhere, get slowed down and have a backup unit overtake you, and we would have confusion in the battle zone."

  "If this conference is that important, why risk having us get hit and not carrying out the job," Morrosco asked, "when B-52s can do it in an hour."

  "We're trying to stop a war, not start one," the American answered. "If we sent B-52s into China, we'd have buttons being pushed everywhere in five minutes. You do your job properly and the Chinese will never know, or be able to prove, who was there."

  "What about abort?" Wiley asked.

  "Lieutenant Tan will carry a crystal-locked receiver. That receiver is for one signal only. Abort. You will listen for it daily between 1515 hours and 1545 hours to allow for error in your watches. The signal will be broadcast one time only, at 1530 hours. The abort signal is ... v ... e. Repeated three times. Followed by three v's. Finally three e's. If your movement is plotted by the enemy, or if for any other reason it is no go, you will be broadcast your abort."

  We all began to shout at once.

  "You can't abort us in China!"

  "The radio monitors will pick us up!"

  "Calm down," the man said. "Under no circumstances will the mission be aborted in China. In fact,

  it won't be aborted after you have crossed into North Vietnam. You will have a mission-in time of twenty-four days. Seventeen of those will be in Laos. Once you have left Laos, the mission is on."

  "Then I can throw the receiver away after we cross into North Vietnam," said Tan.

  "You will listen for abort every day from the day you depart until six June. Under no circumstances will you fail to listen for abort."

  "Why, if it's not coming?"

  "To allow for all contingencies."

  "Apart from our discovery why would the mission be canceled?" asked Wiley.

  "Just cancellation. Your job is to complete the mission. Cancellation is the responsibility of higher authority. There is no place on this mission for conjecture, Wiley. That goes for you as well, Prather, and for all of you. Everything you need to know and don't learn in this briefing, you will learn in the training program. Don't concern yourself with what you don't need to know. Any more questions?"

  There were none.

  "Two more points. If you do your job right, with some luck you'll all get away. At the conference site, there will be nothing, I repeat nothing, left behind that will point a finger at you, or your countries, as being responsible for this mission. No personal items are to be taken with you. No photographs. No letters. No rings. No good luck charms. And especially no dog tags. The rest of the world can speculate all it wants, but nothing is to prove you were there. This is a two-edged sword. If the Chinese can't prove you were there, they may want to keep the whole thing quiet. It would be very embarrassing to have to announce that their friends weren't safe inside the Chinese borders. Some people may speculate with our help, that it was the result of a power struggle within China.

  "Point two. What I have just said is meaningless if one of you happens to be captured. You are seven men. You are too few to be carrying wounded. The

  Five Fingers Exercise is a mission of total unit closure. You are expected to establish your own protocol in that regard.

  "Finally, upon a successful conclusion to the mission, you can anticipate extraordinary benefits accruing from your various military commands. Good day, gentlemen. Good luck."

  Before we had time to catch our breaths, the two Americans were gone. We stayed in the briefing room. The major opened the wooden box and brought out a very precise scale model of Ta shu tang, with every house, garden shed, and tree reproduced to scale. The conference hall was the one large building in the town. We hit the models and maps with Toliver and the colonel. By the questions they asked, I could see that the others were as enthusiastic as I was. The more than slightly suicidal nature of the mission was ignored completely. We were all experiencing the excitement of knowing that we were the best. But what a challenge this one was, even for the best.

  We were jumping off from an airfield north of Chiang Khan, Thailand, a few kilometers from the Mekong River border with Laos. We would have one hidden cache at a riverhead in southern Laos and a second one in northern Laos at the safe village of M Ngoi. From M Ngoi we would have to take enough to get us to China and back. We would resupply again at M Ngoi on the return and strike from there for the Mekong. With luck we might contact a Green Beret unit in southern Laos which could get us hauled out by chopper. From Chiang Khan to Ta shu tang was just at 420 miles, all uphill.

  "Why didn't they pick an easier place for us to get to?" said Morrosco.

  "Yeah," said Jackson. "Why are they meeting in such a little bitty place as that?"

  "If you look at the map," said Toliver, "you'll see that Ta shu tang is about five kilometers north of the railroad line that runs from Hanoi to Kun Ming in China. They don't want the world knowing about the

  meeting, so Peking and so forth are out. They can't hold it in Vietnam for security reasons. Now Ta shu tang is the boondocks, even for China. Who's going to know they were 'there? The Koreans and Chinese can come there in complete safety, and the Vietnamese party can all go up together on one train. And when the meeting is over, in half an hour they're back in Vietnam. We tried to arrange it for New York, Morrosco, but the delegates didn't feel safe on the streets."

  "Damn right, Major. They better stay out of my old neighborhood."

  "Why do we have to start so far off the mark?" Wiley asked. "Choppers could take us up to central Laos and save ten days' walk."

  "The enemy doesn't know we know about the meeting. If we lift a unit way up in Laos, and they start walking toward China, the meeting will be off in five seconds."

  "We could do it with drag chutes at night," I said. We were all trained to jump from five hundred feet with small chutes. They brought you down fast, but it was the best way not to be seen.

  "We'd have to send too big a team to leave seven of us without broken legs. We'd have injured scattered all over the jungle. Then they would have to be picked up."

  "How do we make the hit?" Jackson asked.

  "We'll work that out ourselves." Toliver looked around. "Tan, you haven't asked a single question since you got here."

  "When can we leave?"

  "When we're ready."

  "I'm ready now."

  "Give the rest of us a few days."

  By the time we got back to barracks, Prather was ready to explode.

  "That last bloke was a right bastard," he said.

  "What's bugging you, Prather?" Jackson asked.

  "It was the bloody offhand way he talked about

  hinit closure.' How can he stand there so coolly and tell us to wipe ourselves out?"

  "Why not?" I said. This was Prather's lack of acclimatization showing th
rough. The rest of us had heard it more than once before. I could see Prather was confused by me. I knew he had found me to be a normal guy, with normal passions, human emotions. Yet I was accepting unit closure as casually as it had been presented.

  "Are you having doubts about your ability to carry out your role on the mission, Prather?" Toliver asked him.

  "You know I'm not, Vic," he replied. "I'm having doubts about whether I'm meant to be on the mission. You know, I was quite extensively briefed by my government before I came out here. There was no suggestion of a mission of this magnitude. I'm told to hit half the communist military command in Asia. I question that my government is party to this. I was seconded here as an observer. This is a suicide mission."

  "So what?" I said.

  "Don't you want to live, Gayle?" he asked.

  "Lew, I don't worry about dying at the best of times. I work to stay alive, but I don't worry. And these aren't exactly the best of times."

  Prather looked around, but he received sympathy from no quarter. "I for one am not going to wipe myself out," he said.

  "Don't worry, Lew," I said, "if need be, I'll do you in myself." There was a long silence.

  "What did that guy mean about 'extraordinary benefits,' Major?" Morrosco asked.

  "It means you'll get promoted."

  "Can he promote me all the way to civilian?" Morrosco said.

  "Think you'd make a good one, Morrosco?" Toliver asked.

  "I've made a few in the past, Major. I'd like to try some more."

  I had been watching Pete Morrosco very closely. He

  was impossible to dislike: good-humored, colorful, funny, a man with a relaxed outlook on life. And that was why I had watched him, to see if he was too relaxed. But at the briefings, he had listened intently, and I soon realized that Morrosco took pride in being a Green Beret and worked hard at being a good one.