Collateral Damage A Matt Royal Mystery - By H. Terrell Griffin Page 0,105
as honorable men. But we believed that by killing the Viet Cong leadership, we were shortening the war and saving American lives.”
Team Charlie had drawn from all the military special ops groups, Army Special Forces, Marine Force Recon, and Navy SEALs. There was a team leader and an assistant leader, both civilians, both Central Intelligence Agency operatives. The other ten men were military, and though they wore no rank insignia they were given the courtesies of noncommissioned officers.
The team had been operating for about six months without any losses. They’d hunted and killed Viet Cong leaders targeted by intelligence operatives sitting in Saigon. On the night when it all fell apart, they were sent to the village of Ban Touk near the Laotian border. The word came down that there was a meeting of high-level Viet Cong cadre and the commanders of North Vietnamese Army units hidden just across the border.
“It was the treasure trove,” said Doc. “The plan was that we’d take out a lot of the enemy leadership, maybe wounding them so deeply that they’d head back north. But it didn’t go that way.”
The names of the CIA personnel assigned to Thanatos were kept secret. The operatives were known only by a nom de guerre, each one a gemstone. The Team Charlie leader, known to the men as Opal, issued the orders just before the operation began. The team was to surround the village and open fire on his order and then move in and set the huts on fire. Nobody was to leave there alive. That was important, he’d said. One hundred percent casualties. All dead. No exceptions.
The men crept through the dark. They were in heavily forested mountainous terrain, moving quietly, staying away from the trails that traversed the area, humping it through the woods, silent as the night. They came to the village, if you could call it that. It was just a cleared area with five or six huts, formed into a tight circle. An area of flat ground served as the centerpiece of the community. There were four black-pajama clad men standing around in front of the huts, shifting nervously from foot to foot, their rifles slung over their shoulders. Team Charlie fanned out, surrounding the small assemblage of huts and setting up intersecting lines of fire.
Opal, the team leader, ordered the men to open fire. The soldiers in the clearing were cut down immediately and the rifle and machine gun bullets began to cut into the huts, chopping them to splinters. No fire was returned. Not a single round.
“Get in there and fire those huts,” Opal ordered.
The men moved in, one carrying a blowtorch. “What about documents?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we check that out before we burn the place down?”
“No. Fire the fucking huts,” said the leader. “Now.”
The man with the torch, a Marine named Brewster, stopped over a dead VC soldier, shined a flashlight into his face. He shrugged and moved toward the second hut, blowtorch in one hand, rifle in the other, pointing ahead. He went to the door of the hut, used his rifle barrel to push aside a curtain, shined a flashlight inside. A foolhardy move, and one that surely would get him killed. Nothing happened.
“Doc,” Brewster said, “look at this.”
Desmond moved swiftly up behind the man, looked over his shoulder. Inside were women and children and two babies, all dead. He went to the shattered bodies to see if his medical skills could save any of them. They were all dead, killed by American bullets. The worst part was that they were gagged and tied to stakes driven into the ground. They could not have ducked had they tried. They were set up.
Brewster said, “Those guys out there in the black pajamas were about twelve years old. I don’t think they were VC.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” shouted Opal. He was standing in the door of the hut. “I told you to burn this fucking place.”
“Look here, sir,” said Doc, “these aren’t VC or NVA. They’re women and children. I’m going to check the other huts.”
“No, you’re not,” said the leader. He was pointing his rifle at Doc.
“I’ll blow your fucking head off if you don’t follow orders.”
“Sir,” said Doc, “do you hear what I’m telling you? There are no bad guys. We just killed a bunch of innocent people.”
“They’re fucking gooks, Desmond. It doesn’t matter.”
“You knew, didn’t you?” asked Doc.
“This is war, Desmond. Sometimes there’s collateral damage.”