Sweepers

PROLOGUE.

THE RUNG SAT SECRET ZONE, IV CORPS, VIETNAM, 1969.

Marcus Galantz tilted his head back, pushed his nose above the surface of the water, and took a silent breath. He bumped the top of his head against the underside of the mangrove trunk and then realized the airspace was getting bigger here in the root cage. Ebb tide, finally. He discarded the breathing reed, breathing normally for the first time in two hours. He didn’t bother to open his eyes, knowing that he would hear the boat long before he would ever be able to see it in the darkness of the river. He reached out to touch the mangrove roots, which felt like smooth, slippery bones extending from the tree above down into the alluvial muck of the riverbanks.

There was only one drawback to a mangrove root cage with a space large enough to admit a human, but so far he’d been lucky.

He submerged again and listened. The Swift boats -would go quiet and darken ship when they drifted back down the river for the pickup, their huge diesels silenced. But they always kept their radar on. Without the engine alternators, the radar drew power from its battery-operated motor generator, which emitted a high-pitched whine through the boat’s aluminum hull, a sound that could be heard for some distance underwater.

He listened. Still nothing. He surfaced silently, aware that there might be a VC patrol nearby, probing the banks for him. Nighttime in the Rung Sat belonged to Charlie, although there weren’t as many as there had been two nights ago.

He shifted his feet in the muck, making sure he hadn’t been sinking ankle into a root tangle. A few noxious bubbles percolated up through the black water and broke soundlessly near his face. With his right hand, he made a fingertip inventory of the root cage, feeling for the gap that occurred where two roots diverged, about thigh-high in the cage. To get out, he must submerge, turn sideways, and push down through the gap. He would then swim out underwater, homing on the bearing of the motor generator’s whine, until he reached the boat.

His hand encountered the opening. Right. There. Okay.

He settled back against the landward side of the cavity and concentrated on his breathing. At one point, he thought he detected soft footfalls above; faint vibrations stirring the mud banks, a rhythmic sense of pressure.

C’mon, boat.

With the two big Jimmies shut down, the only sounds in the cramped pilothouse where Tag Sherman sat came from the sweep motor grinding away inside the radar display unit.

It was one of those bottom-of-the-well, pitch-black nights on the Long Tao… The surface of the river itself was indistinguishable from the motionless curtain of sodden night air and the black line of steaming vegetation on the near banks. “Near banks, hell, Sherman thought. The Long Tao was only a hundred yards wide here just below the S-turn. The scale of the radar screen reproached him-he had it on the two-hundred-yard scale. Much too close to the bank. Ambush city.

He squirmed in the driver’s chair of the sixty-foot-long gunboat, his khaki trousers sticking to the seat. He had to sit almost sideways to keep his head hunched over the hood that shielded the amber radar screen to his right. His left hand rested loosely on the engine start buttons.

He could hear and feel the subtle movements of the rest of the Swift boat through the thin aluminum superstructure.

Above the pilothouse, just behind his head, he sensed Gunner’s Mate Second Kelly shifting around in the cage of the twin 50 machine-gun mount, training the heavy black barrels in a gentle sweeping motion from side to side, the roller path of the cage so heavily greased that it made little sucking sounds when the guns moved. Back down behind him in the cabin, Radioman Second Ryker would be kneeling on the starboard-side bench seat, hunched over an M60 machine gun stuck through . the little window, his headset wire stretching over to the HF radio set. Gunner Jarret, desperate for a cigarette, would have the port side covered with an M 16 set on full auto, a backup magazine taped to the bottom of the service clip. Engineman First Keene would be on one of the bunks down in the tiny, stuffy cabin beneath the pilothouse. As the off-duty driver, Keene technically was supposed to be sleeping, but more likely he was fully awake, sweating in his combat gear and cradling his beloved captured Kalashnikov.

Back on the fantail, Boatswain Second Yanckley would be sitting on an upended mortar crate, pointing the Hotchkiss gun to starboard, a full-pack white-phosphorous round loaded in. its 81-mm mortar tube and a prodigious chew stuck in the side of his mouth. Sherman grinned in the darkness. With the turretlike armor-plated jacket and a steel helmet big enough to accommodate both his sound-powered phones and his large, many-chinned, round bead, the bosun would look like a big armor-plated toad back there on his ammo crate. But with that mortar, Yaftk was the Man: He could hit a palm tree at a thousand yards, as a few Victor Charlies had learned just before they went to see Baby Jesus in a cloud of superheated white phosphorus. Or maybe over here it was Baby Buddha.

Sherman took a deep breath and let it out quietly. The stinking wet air gave his lungs little satisfaction, and there was a persistent metallic taste on his tongue. He screwed his ears on even harder, trying to sift out any human sounds coming through the pilothouse doors on either side from the nearby reed beds and palmetto grass. With the engines shut down, they were unable to maneuver, and they had drifted in much closer to the shoreline than was wise. He could smell the banks of the river now that the ebb tide had begun in earnest, the muddy, earthy smell of an ancient swamp, threaded now with the stink of Agent Orange and the sewery effluvium coming down from Saigon, some twenty miles upstream.

Ordinarily, they would keep themselves precisely out in the middle of the river, but not tonight. They were drifting on purpose, fully darkened, all electronics running on the batteries, while they slipped downstream at the whim of the Mekong tidal currents. Their mission tonight was a SEAL pickup. Three nights ago, they had come roaring up the Long Tao through this same area, making lots of noise, lights on, the big 39 boat throwing up a powerful wake, which chased the monkeys off the banks and caused the smaller crocodiles to grunt in irritation and slither into the water. One mile above the S-turn, they had slowed to idle speed and then, when darkness fell, shut her down, going dark and quiet, to begin the slow drift back toward the insertion point at the’top of the S-turn.

Tag could still conjure up an image of the SEAL sitting all the way at the back of the boat, perched on top of the mortar ammo locker in the familiar costume: an olive green floppy hat and T-shirt, khaki swim trunks, flip-flops, and a knife strapped to one ankle. No guns, radios, flippers, masks, or anything else. And no talk. And no face-just eyes.

The man’s facial features had been obscured by the floppy hat and heavy daubs of green and brown paint, but Tag remembered those eyes: bright, dark ‘ intense eyes, looking right back at you. Tag and his crew had done six SEAL insertions in the Rung Sat over the past year, and he had never heard one of them speak. more than about three words.

Sherman shifted his flak jacket and scratched his neck where some insect had just achieved a blood meal. He tried to remember if he’d taken his malaria pills. The interesting thing was how surprisingly normal these guys looked, as opposed to being huge, bandoliered macho monsters. Like this guy they were picking up tonight: He had been listed on the mission brief sheet as Hospital Corpsman First’class Galantz. He was not quite Sherman’s size: five eight, maybe five nine, 150 or 160 pounds.

Average-sized American military guy, maybe a little more muscle than most, but other than that, altogether unremarkable—except for the way he sat back there, still as a statue, totally self-contained.

The insertion drill was always the same: After making a big, noisy deal of transiting through the intended drop zone, they’d shut everything down and drift back with the current under the cover of darkness.

Sometime during the drift, they would feel the stem tip ever so slightly, indicating the SEAL had gone over the side. Sherman shuddered at the very thought of going into the black waters of the Long Tao, a venomous stew of toxic leeches, sea snakes, mangrove pythons, and, of course, the crocs. They must call these guys snake eaters for a reason.

Three, sometimes four nights later, they would execute the same maneuvers for the pickup. If the guy was a no show, they would try once more the following night. After that, he was on his own. Or dead. Or, worse, much worse, a prisoner. The VC were afraid of the SEALS, and reportedly, they would skin one alive and take a month to do it if they ever captured one.

Sherman expanded the radar display scale out to a half a mile and scanned the glowing details painted on the radar screen, orienting himself on the bank features leading into the S-turn at the top of the screen. The whine of the motor generator dipped -momentarily when he made the display adjustments. After eleven months, he knew the river pretty well, and he could tell where they were with one quick glance at the radar. There was no point in looking through the windows. As the driver, he had to sacrifice his night vision in favor of the Decca radar screen, like an airplane pilot flying on full instruments. He shifted the scale back to two hundred yards. The Decca was a beauty of a radar.

At this scale, he could make out individual logs as they bumped along the undercut banks.

Boss?” said Yank, speaking on the sound-powered intercom.

“Yeah?” Sherman pulled the mouthpiece up to his lips.

He kept his eyes on the radar screen and wiped a curtain of sweat off his lower face to keep from shorting out the phones.

“Ain’t we awfully close here? I can hear the freakin’ frogs.”

“Yeah, well, you wanta paddle? We do a drift ex, we go where the river takes us. Just let me know when our guy is back, and we’ll didi-mau the hell out of here.”

“I hear that,” Ryker chipped in. “Okay, knock it off, everybody,”

Sherman ordered.

“Only targets make noise in the Rung Sat at night.”

The circuit went quiet. Sherman knew everyone was tense, and the urge to talk was strong. But -sounds carried on the river. The radar showed that they were only fifty, sixty feet away from the right bank. He flipped on the Fathometer just to make sure. The orange water-depth marker flickered at thirty feet. About right. He shut off the Fathometer and wiped off some more sweat. Another thirty, forty minutes and he’d call it off, which was the decision Yank undoubtedly had been trying to provoke with his question.

But they had to give the snake eater a decent shot at getting back.

There was no telling where he would come out of the weeds, or in what condition.

After a year of operations, and despite what the Saigon propaganda boys said,’all the Swifties knew that the Rung Sat at night was Charlie’s country. It was an area of dense mangrove swamp, encompassing the bulk of the jungle twenty miles on either side of the Long Tao and extending from Saigon to the sea. It was mostly water, littered with small hummocks of semi-dry land.. By day, the American Army helos and the Navy’s Swift boats owned the Long Tao and the surrounding bayou channels. By night, however, it was all up for grabs. Charlie came out of his spider holes and island tunnel complexes to move his endless ant columns of guerrilla logistics. Precious rice and dried fish went north to the cadres fighting up-country. Ammunition, weapons, wounded, and replacements moved south. All movement in the Mekong Delta at large meant boats-usually small sampans powered by ancient FRENCH outboards, which the VC piloted in the darkness through the twisting network of side streams and mud flats. It was the American gunboats’ mission to prowl the rivers at night like big gray water spiders lurking out on the river, spiders with magic Decca eyes. Ordinarily, the Swift boats would skulk along the main channels, waiting with muffled engines until a sampan got itself smack out in the middle of the river. Then the gunboats would thunder to life and swoop down, searchlights stabbing out to transfix the small boat with its four or five occupants. The lights would be followed by the hellish roar of the-twin 50s tearing men, supplies, and the boat to pieces, until the wreckage disappeared under the bows of the gunboat. Then, searchlights off, reverse course, and tear up the banks on either side with the 50s and the big mortar to keep any support troops’ heads down. After a minute or so of suppression fire, slow down and retrieve some evidence of the kill-bits of boat, clothes, body parts, boxes of supplies bobbing in the water. Body parts were tough: This had been going on for long enough that the crocs now knew what all the noise meant. Body parts, you did with a boat hook, and there were times you relinquished the boat hook if a big-enough croc clamped onto it at a critical moment.

The crews of the Swift boat were not briefed on what the SEALS were doing out there in the Rung Sat, but everyone in the division had a pretty good idea. Word was that these uys would lay up in the trees for’a day and a night, watching the bad guys, identifying the officers, and then slip into the VC hideouts at night to knife the officers.

Sherman shuddered again. He could not imagine what kind of guy could do that. Yes, you can, he thought. Just remember those eyes.

Galantz submerged again, listening for the whine. And there it was-very faint, but definitely there. To the right, up stream of his tree. Now he had to wait until the whine drifted closer, because he’d be swimming underwater, and he didn’t want to misjudge the distance and have to surface like some noisy fish out there within Charlie’s AK-47 range. He pushed his face above the surface again, lots more room now, and began deep breathing. Then, just to be sure, he felt for the gap again, leaning down, his chin touching the surface of the water, reaching with his left hand for the top of the gap. There. Good. And then he felt something, a sensation of pressure from just outside the root cage, something moving in the water. In the split second of recognition, there came an excruciating clamp of pain on his left hand, pain so intense, he nearly blacked out with the effort to stifle his scream. And then the croc started tugging, trying to pull his meat prize out of the mangrove cage. Galantz pulled back, saw a white-hot flare of pain before his eyes, and got his head underwater just in time to release the scream, a horrible burbling sound that he hoped would be muffled under the water even as he set his legs and grabbed out at the slippery roots with ‘ his right hand for a purchase. But he knew what would happen next. The croc would start rolling to convert the clamping bite to a detached gobbet of meat.

Letting go with his right hand, he surfaced for a final breath, bent down, face underwater, and grabbed the croc’s muzzle.

Hooking desperate fingers into the fold of skin behind the jaw, he set his legs and pulled back, straining hard, trying to get enough of the croc’s head into the root cage so he could stand up, get another breath, and then force the croc’s head up against the opening, pin it, and get to his knife.

The croc pulled back, and he thought his left hand was going with it, but then he managed to grab one of the croc’s front legs and pull hard, leveraging the pull with his leg and thigh muscles, and this time he got the croc’s head through the bars. His left hand was numb, dead, along with his forearm, maybe almost gone even, except the croc was still there. He was a dead man unless he got this croc off his hand.

Keeping his left leg pinned against the cage, he used his right knee to jam the croc’s head tighter into the upside down Y-shaped top of the gap, fighting the instinctive urge to recoil when he felt the tip of the croc’s head push into his groin. He was just able to snatch a breath before the croc started to thrash, never releasing the bite but trying now to get its head out -of the mangrove. Galantz clamped even harder with his right knee while searching desperately for the knife strapped to his right ankle, his left leg a rigid, thrumming column of muscle and bone, his right leg cramping with the strain of keeping the croc’s head jammed, but then he had the knife and was stabbing, slabbing hard into that relatively soft hide beneath and behind the croc’s jaws, pushing with all his strength, feeling the steel tip bumping on bone and gristle, and feeling the croc’s thrashing tail beginning to pound the water outside, making noise. Die, goddamn it. I can’t stand noise; the VC will hear it. But then there came an enormous underwater roar and an almost overwhelming squeeze of pressure that made him forget the croc and his arm and his mortal struggle under the mangrove.

At that instant, Sherman felt the deck under his feet squeeze up toward his seat as if a great fist had punched up from the bottom of the river, jamming his knees against the console, and then his helmeted head was banging off the overhead and he was going ass over teakettle onto the deck as a huge red and roaring wall of water shot up just in front of the boat, accompanied by a bellowing blast out of the river.

“Mine!” he yelled. The boat was wallowing around like a drunken pig, no longer as light in the bow as she had been. Through the crash of the water plume on the bow, he heard the boom of the big mortar on the fantail and then night became blinding day as Yank’s white phosphorous round went off right in front of them on the banks, close enough that he could feel the heat through the open door.

The 81 was echoed by the stuttering blast of the after 50-cal as Yank went into action against the bank, joined almost immediately by the forwaro 50’s.

Tag groped for the console, punching hard at the engine start buttons as he struggled to get upright. The welcome rumble of the engines was drowned out by the forward 50’s getting seriously into it. The flash from the 50’s revealed enough of the bank to determine the boat’s position. The ebb tide had been building fast, and he could see mangrove roots that looked like half-submerged prison windows in the flash of the heavy machine guns. For a heart-stopping instant, he imagined he saw a white face in the water. Reflexively, he grabbed both engine control handles and pulled them all the way back, causing the boat to lurch astern as the 800 tip of General Motors’ finest dug in, extracting her from the lethal riverbank even as a second mine went off, but this time about thirty yards in front of them. Sherman saw the dull red glare underwater just before another thick column of water erupted, rising impossibly high. But the boat was going full astern now, and the bank had already receded into the darkness, visible only as the point from which the boat’s 50-cal tracer rounds were ricocheting up into the night sky. After nearly a year on the rivers, his guys knew exactly what to do-lay down a withering fire on both banks long enough for him to get them all out of the kill zone.

After fifteen seconds of backing out into the river, he yelled a cease-fire over the phones. He reduced the backing bell and then shifted to ahead, spinning the steering wheel full over, turning down river. The sudden silence was startling, and his eyes were stinging as he realized that the pilothouse was filled with gunsmoke. He kicked out to clear his feet from a couple of inches of hot powder casings that were rattling around on the deck and burning his ankles.

“Station check,” he barked into the phones. His throat was so dry that his voice cracked, and he felt his heart pounding and his hands shaking.

No matter how many times, it still scared the shit out of you.

“Fifty-one, no casualties,” Kelly called from up above.

“I think I got rounds in the chamber and I know I got a hot gun.

“Fifty-two, no casualties,” the bosun’s laconic voice announced. “Clear bore. I’m outta fifty and I’m reloading the eighty-one.” Nothing, not even mines, phased Yank.

“Radio’s okay,” Ryker squeaked in his high-pitched voice. He laughed nervously. “But I think Jarret crapped his pants.

There was a moment of silence on the circuit as Sherman gathered his thoughts while he continued to turn the boat.

“Fifty-one, clear ‘em through the muzzle,” he ordered.

“Radio, check on the snipe. He was down in the hole.” No more radar, so he was flying blind out here. He flipped on the Fathometer. He could keep her’m the middle using the compass and the Fathometer.

“Snipe’s okay,” Ryker called back immediately. “Says we got water coming in, though. He’s linin’ up the pumps.

We bookin’ outta here, boss, or what?”

Sherman thought for a moment. They had been very, very goddamn lucky.

Two mines, and they still had the engines and the props. If the hull was holed, it was up forward, away from the engine compartment. His right knee and his head hurt like hell, and he suspected everybody had some minor injuries. But there had been no machine gunners waiting to shoot his aluminum-hulled boat to ribbons from spider holes in the banks. Or if there had been, the Swift boat’s immediate response with the 50’s had kept the bastards down.

Two loud bangs overhead made him jump as he climbed sideways back into the twisted chair.

“Bores clear, Fifty-one. What about the snake eater?”

This from Kelly as he jacked -open the gun’s chambers to make sure they were, physically empty

“Screw the snake eater,” Ryker offered. “I think it was me shit his pants. That was too goddamn close.” He was trying to keep it light, but Sherman could detect the fear in his young voice. He realized his own hands were still trembling.

“And Fifty-two here,” said Yank. “The eighty-one has a willie peter, locked and loaded. Ready for bear. Tell Jarret to gimme some more fifty-cal.”

try Okay, girls, let’s get it together,” She, man snapped ing to get some strength and authority back into his own voice. The boat was definitely settling by the nose. “We’re gonna go down the river,” he said. “See if we can get this bitch to that sandbar at checkpoint Kilo.”

“What about the SEAL?” Kelly asked again. At that moment, the starboard diesel engine misfired and then started to run ragged. Sherman swore and punched the right-hand shutdown button, and the engine died with a grudging rattle.

Shit, he thought. Bet we busted a fuel line. He energized both engine compartment bilge pumps to keep fuel from pooling and starting a fire.

The port-side engine kept humning.

“The SEAL’s on his own for now,” Sherman replied.

“Right now, we’ve got our own probs. Yank, you stay at your gun. Watch behind us for shooters. Kelly, get inside and help the snipe with those pumps. Send Jarret back aft to open the engine compartment doors, tell me what we’ve got going back there. We need to get Baby here onto that sandbar before she sinks on us.”

Sherman pushed the useless radar display unit out of the way and tried to think. They would drift away from the ambush area even without engines because of the ebb. The compass showed he was pointed east, which was roughly down river. But it was still pitch-black, and he wanted to be out in the’middle and not about to bump up against one of the banks.

What about the SEAL? Kelly had wanted to know. Obviously, the enemy had known they were out there. And known they were drifting. Which meant they probably knew there was a pickup going down. Which might mean the SEAL had been discovered, and perhaps made to tell them. when the boat was coming back. Or maybe they just knew the pattern. Have to mention that in the debrief He turned the wheel to take them across the river, watching the depth gauge as he did so. He snaked the boat back and forth across the river until he found the deepest part, then pointed her back east on the compass. From where they had started, they should run aground on the sandbar at the dogleg sometime in the next hour, by which time another boat should be coming in to assist. What about the SEAL?

Well, the SEAL was probably dog meat by now. Sherman concentrated on the flickering red light of the Fathometer and saving his boat.

Too bad about the SEAL, but another boat would go back again tomorrow night and try again. That was the deal. You didn’t just leave a guy out there in the weeds.