A squad of ARVN Rangers closed in around them, and they squeezed down the staircase to the basement. Rushed inside, and an ARVN NCO closed and locked the armored, bullet and bomb-proof door. Thieu looked ashen. His wife looked like she wanted blood. Anyone’s blood. Probably working out who could be responsible for this failure of security, and how to punish them in the most painful way imaginable. Abrams was still calm, looking at the array of communications equipment. Occasionally glancing upward. Despite the thickness of the ceiling dividing them from the ceremonial rooms upstairs, they could hear shooting and loud explosions. They’d be grenades, and it wasn’t difficult to work out how much carnage the enemy was wreaking. There was nothing they could do but wait for the South Vietnamese forces to regain control. It was a long wait, but eventually, the shooting started to die.

  * * *

  The glittering reception room was a sea of bodies. The dead, the dying, the badly wounded, and those who pretended and prayed they wouldn’t be the next victim. They’d grabbed Nguyen Huy Quan, but they didn’t kill him. He would be a valuable prisoner, a hostage they could use to bargain with the South. He was the only valuable prisoner they’d captured, Major Thuan reflected bitterly. The security forces had managed to spirit away the main targets into the basement, and although they found the staircase and rushed down, they’d come up against an armored door, impossible to get through.

  The surviving ARVN Rangers had acquitted themselves well, engaged both the NVA and the Vietcong, and inflicted major losses. He’d lost more than half of his men, a bitter blow. With no chance of achieving more, he decided to cut his losses and get away. He put a whistle to his lips and blew three long, loud blasts. The signal to pull back. They rushed Quan away, climbed over the Palace wall and into a waiting, innocuous-looking truck bearing the livery of the well-known and popular ‘33’ beer, locally brewed in Saigon.

  The driver had the engine running. The moment the rear door closed, he sped away to begin the long, arduous journey to the North.

  * * *

  They waited until a man banged on the door, shouted the attack was over and it was all clear. He gave the correct password. Men unfastened the heavy bolts, pushed it open and they started back up the stairs. They emerged on a scene of astonishing devastation. Vietnamese VIPS and their wives chatted excitedly as if they were watching the aftermath of some major sporting event. Abrams, surrounded by his staff officers still looked calm, unfazed. Staring around thoughtfully. It wasn’t hard to work out what he was thinking. How had the enemy bested two companies of ARVN Rangers guarding the grounds, as well as more Rangers inside the Palace?

  Heller was close enough to overhear. The General said to no one in particular, “How the hell did they get past them? There must’ve been more than two hundred soldiers out there. They should’ve stopped them. They failed.”

  He looked about to say a whole lot more and in more bitter, forceful terms, but he wasn’t a man given to strong language. He closed his mouth before he said too much within earshot of the touchy Vietnamese.

  No man could fail to look at the bodies, at the shocking slaughter that’d decimated many of Saigon’s richest and most powerful people. Riches and power didn’t interest Heller. He was fascinated by the colorful bodies of the women. Unmoving, their silken ao dais splashed with bright, red blood. Whatever their allegiance, they were noncombatants. Pretty, vivacious, and mostly young women cut down in the prime of their lives. Earlier, he’d compared them to butterflies. Now they resembled dead, lifeless butterflies pinned to a board, placed on display for all eternity.

  The odor of expensive perfume had all but vanished. The room stank of battle. The all too familiar metallic stink of blood. The stench of expended ordnance, explosives, and burned propellant. The floor was littered with empty brass cartridge cases, so a man had to be careful where he trod so as not to trip and fall on a body. It was sheer carnage, sickening. The pain of losing his fiancée resurfaced in his mind, and something else. What the fuck was America doing here? Where was this going? When would it end? If there was an answer, he’d like to hear it. But he heard nothing.

  General Creighton Abrams walked toward him. Cruz tried to approach him, but he brushed past him and stood before Heller.

  “Master Sergeant.” He looked at his name tag, “Master Sergeant Heller, how are things looking? The Viets tell me it’s all over, but I’d like to hear it from you. Can we be sure they’ve cleared out every hostile?”

  “General, I haven’t personally checked, but the shooting has stopped, which is a good sign. If the enemy was still here, you can bet they’d be spraying bullets. So yeah, I’d say we’re good.” A pause, “General.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, Sergeant Heller. It looks like the ARVN failed to do their job, and they’ve let us down again. Thank God you Recon soldiers were here, and thank God you kept us alive.”

  Heller swept his gaze over the bloody carnage that lay everywhere. “Did we, General? Is that what we did? Kept us alive?”

  Abrams just nodded and walked away. He stayed. He couldn’t tear himself away from the scene of appalling slaughter. From the memories that flooded back. From the certainty that in the future when somebody asked him what it was like in Vietnam, this was what he’d describe. Sheer, bloody murder.

  Chapter Two

  They remained inside the Palace for the rest of the night, in case the enemy brought up reserves with the harebrained idea of renewing the attack. By dawn, the area inside and outside the gate was flooded with ARVN troops. Heller’s outfit remained inside the building. General Abrams and President Thieu returned to the Bunker, this time to use the communications facilities to streamline the hunt for the enemy that’d carried out the attack and murdered so many non-combatants. They still didn’t know how many had died. Men were still counting the bodies, searching for any remaining and badly wounded survivors.

  Just before midday, a messenger arrived and looked for Cruz. “Lieutenant, they want you downstairs.” He gazed at Heller, Ripley, Collins, Akulov, McGuigan, and Lynch. “All of you.”

  They followed him down the staircase and entered a world of urgent, raised voices, shouted orders, men running, and soldiers hunched over communications equipment. Some transmitted and received in voice, others used Morse code. No explanation was necessary. The whole of South Vietnam was being mobilized. Every ARVN unit, every police station, and the entire resources of MACV were being instructed to stand by for a further major enemy incursion. Heller heard somebody murmur something about, “This could be Tet II.”

  President Thieu’s voice was the loudest, screaming in anger at a cluster of senior ARVN and American officers. Spittle flew from his mouth as he raged at the most senior man present, General Creighton Abrams.

  “How could this have happened, General? With all your resources, your CIA, USAF spy planes, B-52s, and carrier-launched aircraft flying endless reconnaissance missions. Electronic sensors that’re supposed to warn us of impending attacks. Billions of dollars of equipment, all of it useless. And now they have my nephew, Nguyen Huy Quan. What do you have to say?”

  Tactfully, Abrams made no mention of the failure of the South Vietnamese military, or the success of a few American soldiers who’d protected the VIPs and hustled them to safety when the Communists crashed the reception.

  “Sir, we’re doing everything we can to locate your nephew. I’ve spoken with the CIA Head of Station in our Saigon Embassy, and he said they’re following up every lead in an effort to find where they’ve taken him.” He paused while Thieu interrupted with a torrent of abuse. Waited until he’d finished and carried on speaking, “The opinion of the CIA is he’s already on his way to North Vietnam. The most likely route is via the Ho Chi Minh Trail, up through Cambodia and Laos, and into North Vietnam. Of course, we’ll continue to do everything we can to…”

  “I want him back!” he screamed, “You must know I’ve nominated Quan as my successor when my term of office ends. Next to me, he’s the most important man in the Republic of South Vietnam, and now he’s gone.”

  Madame Thieu, the Dragon Lady, took over the tirade. “You have to get him back, General. Until then, America can forget any further cooperation with South Vietnam.”

  McGuigan made a grating noise. It could’ve been a chuckle, or it could’ve been a growl. Several men’s lips twitched. Men were under the impression it was South Vietnam that needed American troops and American dollars, not vice versa. If Thieu’s basket case of a government booted MACV out of the country, most wouldn’t shed too many tears. It wasn’t likely to happen. Too much American prestige rested on defeating the Communists and stopping the relentless red tide sweeping down from the Soviet Union across Southeast Asia. North Vietnam had fallen to the Communists. Laos and Cambodia were heading that way, and there was no question the Reds had Thailand fixed firmly in their sights. The sole obstacle in their way was South Vietnam. Right now, it was a very shaky obstacle.

  He listened to Abrams trying to placate the Thieus. He managed to say the right things, for after several minutes they quietened down. The MACV commander beckoned Cruz to join him, along with his Team.

  “Lieutenant, we were lucky you and your men were here. You were in the right place at the right time to prevent a total disaster, and you’re to be commended, all of you.” Cruz mumbled something about just doing their job. Abrams wasn’t listening, “As it happens, I have another mission for you. One that requires men of the highest caliber, the best. In my opinion, that means Recon.”

  “Yessir. What kind of a mission?”

  “I want you to find him.”

  “Excuse me?” Cruz muttered, “Find who?”

  “Nguyen Huy Quan. The nephew of the President.”

  Cruz looked flustered. “Sir, that could be difficult, if not impossible. I’m not even sure where we could start looking. He could be anywhere. They could even have flown him up there from a temporary airstrip in Cambodia. They have a few Soviet-supplied light aircraft able to make the trip. If he’s inside North Vietnam, he’s lost. We’d never find him, let alone get him back.”

  “Have you ever operated north of the DMZ, Lieutenant?”

  “No, General.”

  He looked at Heller. “What about you, Master Sergeant?”

  “I’ve been there, along with these two men.” He nodded toward McGuigan and Lynch.

  “How did you make out?” He paused, “Wait, weren’t you the men who located and freed the prisoners from the camp at Dien Bien Phu?”

  “We had something to do with it, yes.” He didn’t mention the North Vietnamese defector, the female officer that’d given them the heads up about the camp. Nor did he mention how he’d fallen for her. Nor that she was dead. Another female acquaintance, another death. Another casualty of the never-ending war.

  Abrams nodded slowly. “Good.” He looked at Cruz. “As of now, Lieutenant, I’m making it your sole mission to locate and recover Nguyen Huy Quan. You’ll have whatever you need. I’ll place every MACV resource at your disposal. Bring him back, Lieutenant, no matter what. The entire American effort in South Vietnam may depend on it. On you.”

  Heller didn’t say it out loud, but he thought it.

  Fuck!

  As they left the Palace, Abrams reminded Cruz what was at stake. Cruz’s normal demeanor had changed since the attack. The brashness, the gung-ho, ‘go get ‘em,’ attitude has dissipated, like a pricked balloon. Replaced by a more somber man. As if the shock of the attack had knocked the spark out of him. On the ride back to Tan Son Nhut, following Abrams’ jeep at the rear of a convoy of escort vehicles, he never said a word.

  Heller opined he had to be thinking seriously about what they were up against. He was a newly commissioned officer who’d been handed an assignment that must’ve weighed on him like an unexploded bomb. An assignment that would likely crush him if he got it wrong. A mission from hell. Not that there was a mission, not yet. Despite the General’s assurances to President Thieu, the truth was Quan could be anywhere. Or nowhere, if they’d decided to save themselves the risk and danger of getting him back to the North and put a bullet in him. The Communists had a reputation with their prisoners, and it didn’t bode well for their VIP captive.

  Tan Son Nhut had gone to full alert. Even though General Abrams was the man in command, the sentries at the gate still flagged down his jeep and insisted he produce his ID. American and South Vietnamese troops were everywhere, patrolling the perimeter wire in strength, inside and outside the fence. Heavily armed squads were checking every building to make sure no gooks were hiding inside, waiting to pop out and spray bullets from their AK-47s. Outside the gates, Saigon police cruisers continually drove past, making their presence known. Inside, the teleprinter wires were running hot, sending messages across the country, demands for men to get their asses into gear. Circulating fuzzy images of Quan for every soldier and every cop to carry on their person. To check every vehicle and shakedown every hooch.

  All for nothing. Heller knew, they all knew, that Quan would be on the way to North Vietnam. Their best bet was to wait for intelligence on his whereabouts before they got him out of the country. A whisper from an informant or a radio intercept. Until then, no rescue mission could get off the ground. He managed to grab a few hours of restless sleep, but at dawn the next day he was up early to join Cruz and report to the Senior Intelligence Officer, Colonel Franklin D. Monaghan. He’d have preferred to stay in bed a while longer.

  He’d bumped into the intelligence officer before and found him to be an unpleasant jerk. A man who’d risen through the ranks through fraternity connections, the old pals act. Of all the posts he could’ve held, one with the title ‘intelligence’ seemed as far removed from his abilities as possible. It didn’t help that he was lazy. A slob, complete with the beginnings of a paunch and the dark-veined face of a heavy drinker. To make matters worse, he was short, a little over five feet two. They said Napoleon was short, but if one thing was certain in this life, Monaghan was no Napoleon.

  He had no news, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Slouching in an upholstered office chair behind his desk, hands linked behind his head as he gazed at Cruz and Heller.

  “If I were you men, I’d go back to bed and get some more sleep. We’re not likely to get anything for several days, if at all. If you ask me, we should draw a line under this. The guy’s gone for good.” He shrugged, “What’s one more gook?”

  The Lieutenant had recovered his familiar drive and energy, and he leaned toward the Colonel, who jerked backward in alarm when Cruz banged a fist on his desk.

  “Colonel, this isn’t one more gook. You know who he is, and you know the importance General Abrams puts on getting him back.”

  Monaghan raised his eyebrows at the way Cruz spoke to him, but he let it go. The junior officer was under orders from Abrams. “Well, uh, I guess so. I’ll get my clerk to check through everything we have and see if there’s anything we’ve missed. If he comes up with anything, I’ll get back to you.”

  “You do that, Colonel.”

  They left his office and hung around for the rest of the day, making a nuisance of themselves, checking in every hour with Intelligence and getting nowhere. Monaghan had nothing, and Heller doubted he’d get anything. By late evening, after two nights without proper rest, they turned in. Heller climbed into his cot, so exhausted he fell into a deep sleep. But not for long. His unconscious brain registered a noise, and he instantly came awake. Someone was banging on his door, and he glanced at the clock. 03.00.

  Shit! Another enemy attack?

  He shouted, “The door’s open.”

  An enlisted man pushed inside.

  “Master Sergeant Heller, you’re ordered to report to the communication center. They’re waiting for you.”

  Which meant they must’ve found out something. He was already half-dressed, and he pulled on his boots, jacket, and helmet, strapped on his belt with the holstered Colt M1911, and picked up his XM-177 rifle. Ran outside, across the base and into the building that housed the most powerful radio transmitter in Southeast Asia, as well as teleprinters and a range of ancillary equipment like wire recorders and encoding machines.

  Cruz was already there. Watching Abrams, seated before the radio, talking into a microphone. He wore a headset, so it was impossible to hear the other end of the conversation, but when he ended it and he spun around, his eyes were bright with enthusiasm.

  “We have something. One of our surveillance aircraft picked up an exchange of radio messages from someplace close to Saigon. We believe the call was made to a transmitter in Hanoi, and they were discussing Quan. Lieutenant Cruz, this means he’s alive. In the event a rescue is on the cards, make sure your men are ready to leave at a moment’s notice. It’s still possible Saigon will make a deal, although by no means certain. Whichever way it goes, I want you ready to go.”

  “Yessir,” he snapped in his familiar ‘can do’ tone.

  It looked like he was about to say more, but the door opened abruptly, and a young Vietnamese woman entered. A civilian, accompanied by four ARVN soldiers, dressed in tiger stripe camos bearing the flash of the ARVN Rangers. She marched straight up to the General and shot him a challenging stare from inches away.

  “Have you made any progress? Have you found him?”

  “I…uh…” He looked nonplussed, a rare occurrence for Abrams, “We picked up something, a radio exchange, and right now we’re analyzing it. I promise you we’re doing everything we can. As soon as we know, I’ll inform you.”

  “We thought you’d say that. General, I don’t believe you’re making any progress, which is why we sent a messenger into the Iron Triangle under a white flag of truce. We’re offering to exchange Quan for five high-ranking North Vietnamese prisoners. If they agree we’ll let you know.”