Death in the Jungle Gary Smith (mobi reader txt) 📖

of my teammates was going to bring me a beer from the bar, all seven of them approached me.

Funkhouser handed me a bottle of beer and said, “We’re gettin’ outta here.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, taking the beer. Everyone began piling into the truck.

“We don’t like the atmosphere,” McCollum told me. “There’s some questionable characters in that bar, and we don’t feel secure.”

As I jumped into the box, Moses continued, “We’ve only got three weapons, just pistols. I got a feeling that in another twenty minutes we’ll need a lot more firepower than that!”

“Besides,” added Funkhouser, “there’s no striptease show until tonight.” He grinned at me as Pearson cranked up the engine.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Mission Twenty-one

“They are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who, having the clearest sense of both the pains and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from danger.”

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War

DATE: 24, 25, 26 November 1967

TIME: 240615H to 260600H

UNITS INVOLVED: Foxtrot 1, 2, MST-3

TASK: Recon patrol, two overnight ambushes

METHOD OF INSERTION: LCPL MK-4

METHOD OF EXTRACTION: Boston Whalers

TERRAIN: Nipa palm, very thick undergrowth

MOON: 3/4

WEATHER: Cloudy, then clear

SEAL TEAM PERSONNEL:

Lt. Meston, Patrol Leader/Rifleman, M-16

Lt. (jg) Schrader, Ass’t Patrol Leader/Rifleman, M-16

PR1 Pearson, Point/Rifleman, M-16

RM2 Smith, Ass’t Point/Rifleman, M-16/XM-148

BT2 McCollum, Ordnance/Grenadier, M-79

BT2 Moses, Grenadier, M-79

ADJ2 Markel, Radioman/Rifleman, M-16

ADJ3 Flynn, Automatic Weapons, M-60

SN Dicey, Automatic Weapons, Stoner

AZIMUTHS: 100 degrees-600m, 075 degrees-200m

ESCAPE: 225 degrees

CODE WORDS: Insert-Tijuana, Ambush Site-San Diego, Second Ambush Site-Los Angeles, Extraction-Bakersfield, Challenge and Reply—Two numbers total 10

We arrived back at the base at 1515 hours. Funkhouser and I walked together to the barracks and found a Vietnamese woman sweeping up the dried mud in front of our cubicle. Her presence was not a surprise, as she cleaned for us almost every day. We addressed her as mamma-san, and each man who resided in our barracks chipped in and we paid her four hundred piaster per day.

As Funky and I tarried for a few moments short of our cubicle entrance, allowing mamma-san time to finish sweeping the area, I noticed her little boy and girl staring at me from the other side of the aisle, just ten feet away. They were but four and five years old and were always very clean. I smiled and winked at them. The girl smiled back, but the boy lowered his eyes and turned away in an obvious display of shyness.

I felt around inside my pants pockets, looking for gum, but I’d already given my pack away. When mamma-san’s cleaning removed her from our doorway, I stepped inside our living quarters and grabbed two sticks of gum from my footlocker.

“Gum,” I announced as I walked back into the aisle. The girl saw the sticks in my hand and stepped forward with her hand outstretched. The boy hesitated, but when he watched his sister take a piece, he raced to me and grabbed his own. Then both ran away to the other end of the barracks.

“Follow me, Smitty!” said Dicey with some urgency as he headed for the barracks door.

“What’s up?” I asked, not willing to move until I knew. I’d watched too many of my gullible teammates walk into traps, ending up the butt of a prank, for me to blindly follow Dicey.

“One of the support personnel guys has a nine-foot python outside,” Dicey told me over his shoulder, then he stepped through the open door and was gone.

I called my roommate. Funkhouser stepped out of our cubicle and gave me a look.

“Let’s go see a nine-foot python,” I suggested, pointing to the door. I allowed Funky to walk outside first, just in case there was a setup, then I followed. Lucky for Funkhouser, no one was waiting with a bucket of water or anything like that; instead, around the corner of the barracks, we found a group of men surrounding a sailor who was holding a large snake. Funkhouser and I joined the swelling crowd of gawkers, some of whom had cameras and were taking photographs.

“He’s as docile as can be,” stated the owner as he cradled the middle of the reticulated python’s body in his arms. “Somebody grab the two ends.” There was a moment of hesitation among the onlookers, so I took advantage and hoisted the tail off the ground. Someone else could fool with the head, I thought, and someone soon did.

As I held the thick, ropelike body of the snake, Funkhouser jogged back to our cubicle to get his camera. He returned a minute later and snapped a couple pictures of his roomie and the python. Then we traded places and I took two of him.

When Moses assumed Funkhouser’s position with the snake, Funky and I thanked the owner for the chance to take some pictures, then we walked back to our cubicle.

“It’s a good thing Bolivar isn’t that big,” Funkhouser told me in the privacy of our abode. “I’d quit being your roommate in an instant.”

I laughed. “Didn’t you like holding that python?”

“Not a bit.”

“But,” I reminded him, “you sure were grinning for the camera!”

Funkhouser grinned again. “Gotta keep up my image for the ladies back home in the States!”

Pearson stuck his head inside our cubicle and reminded us we were to be in the briefing room at 1630 hours. We were going on a forty-eight-hour mission early in the morning deep in the T-10 area of the Rung Sat Special Zone. The specific op area contained two large enemy base camps, a hospital, and from two to six hundred VC.

For the next forty minutes, Funkhouser and I prepared some of our gear for the next day’s operation while listening to my radio. Then we reported to the upstairs briefing room where Lieutenant Meston awaited us. When all nine SEALs from Foxtrot Platoon and eight members of the LCPL and Boston Whaler crews were assembled, the room was sealed off.

Mr. Meston began the briefing, explaining the mission step by step. Insertion off the Dong Tranh River would be at 0615 hours, followed by a 750-meter patrol through thick nipa palm and brush. The patrol would take most