While the men waited for the Hueys to extract them from Laos, the unit’s medic patched the wounded while the others searched the rest of the valley and found more opium drop sites. Each one was blown up, along with its contents. Streamers of smoke rising into the sky must have made easy landmarks for the chopper pilots.
Lincoln’s wounds had been minimal, so he had gone with the search party. Heading back to the camp from the last drop, Lincoln felt a nudge on his shoulder. He turned to see the CIA agent there, one eyebrow raised in a quizzical expression. “Take a walk with me?” the man said.
“Sure.” Lincoln stepped off the path and let Spearman and Blair go on without him. When the rest of the line had passed—some tossing questioning glances at them—Lincoln and the agent brought up the rear, far enough back that their conversation wouldn’t be overheard.
“Did that get your panties in a twist?” the agent asked. “What I did back there?”
“Hell yeah,” Lincoln said. “When you explained, it kinda made sense. But at the moment, it sure took me by surprise.”
“I figured it would,” the man said. “That was the point. One of them, anyway. I had to do what I did, but if I’d told you guys beforehand what I planned, someone might have objected.”
Lincoln couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he simply nodded.
“Sometimes, sacrifices have to be made for the greater good,” the agent continued. “This was one of those cases. Rivers should have fucking well stayed with the unit he was assigned to and covered the war he came to Vietnam to report on. As soon as he crossed into Laos, he signed his own death warrant.”
“No real loss, the way I see it,” Lincoln said.
The agent chuckled. “Exactly. The guy was a scumbag, through and through. He would have handed Laos to the communists. I’m not naïve enough to think our country never makes mistakes—hell, we made a huge one with your people, and we’re still trying to fix it. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let some rich, pampered TV star playing soldier put real fighting men at risk and endanger American interests in the bargain.”
“You’ll get no argument from me.”
The agent stopped, so Lincoln did, too. “My name’s John Donovan,” the man said. “You’ve probably already figured out who I work for.”
“That’s pretty clear,” Lincoln admitted.
Donovan took a cigarette pack from his breast pocket, tapped out a smoke, and offered one to Lincoln. Lincoln took it, and by the time he had it in his mouth, Donovan had flicked open a lighter. He lit Lincoln’s cigarette, then his own, inhaled, and blew out a long ribbon of smoke.
“I have to say, I’m impressed with the way you handled yourself on this op, Corporal Clay. You know, I asked to have you included on the task force. And goddamn, you’re everything they said, and then some.”
Lincoln was astonished that he had come to this man’s attention, but he tried not to show it. “That so?”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Donovan said. He started walking again. Lincoln took another drag from his smoke, then hurried to catch up.
“I understand Tom Franklin talked to you about Laos,” Donovan continued. “About the kind of men we need here.”
Lincoln tried to remember exactly what Franklin had said. Men who were self-sufficient, he recalled, who didn’t need to be told what to do but could figure out what needed to be done and do it. He wasn’t sure how much of that applied to him, but he was glad Franklin thought it did.
“Yeah.”
“He told me you’re that kind of man. A born warrior. He said you could be counted on. And he said you could follow orders, but you’re better when left to make your own decisions.”
“Guess that’s true,” Lincoln said.
“Listen, Lincoln. You know we’re not supposed to have troops in Laos. But we’re not just letting the country fall to the Pathet Lao and their friends from China and the Soviet Union. That would be a goddamn shit-storm for Vietnam, Southeast Asia, and the rest of the free world. We need to protect Laos’s freedom and stop the NVA from using it as a funnel into South Vietnam.”
“Makes sense,” Lincoln said. Left unspoken was the corollary: as much as politics ever made sense.
“We can’t do it with overwhelming American force,” Donovan said. “Not with the fucking Geneva Accords in place. If it was up to me, I’d just carpet-bomb the north into oblivion, but they don’t let me set war policy. In Vietnam, we’re going to see the burden of the war shifting much more to American shoulders than to South Vietnamese ones. Those ARVN pussies can’t be counted on to defend their own country. But it would be a bigger stretch to do that in Laos, and I don’t see it. Instead, we’re going to have to rely on the locals. You’ve heard of the Montagnards, right? The people who do the real fighting back in ’Nam?”
Lincoln nodded. They were a tribe from a mountainous region of Vietnam who fought gallantly alongside the Americans—and sometimes put their ARVN counterparts to shame—against the NVA and Vietcong. Stories of their prowess in combat were already legendary. “Sure.”
“Well, we don’t have Montagnards in Laos, but we have something just as good. Maybe even better. They’re called the Hmong. They mostly live in the mountains that rim the Plain of Jars. They’re not ethnic Laos or Vietnamese but an entirely different race. And for historical reasons of their own, they hate those commie pricks almost as much as I do.”
“So they’re on our side?”
“The ones who know about us are. The rest will be, as soon as we can make contact. And with some help from their new American friends—mostly in the way of training and supplies—they can become a major impediment to the Pathet Lao.”
They had reached the camp. Flies were swarming over the VC bodies, buzzing around in black clouds. Lincoln hoped the copters arrived soon, to take away the American dead and wounded and to get him away from these corpses.
“I still don’t see what all this has to do with me,” Lincoln said.
“We’re obviously keeping a low profile here in Laos. Rivers said he had footage of American troops here, but I think he was full of shit. He knew the film had been destroyed, so nobody could disprove him. He probably didn’t even know where the border was. Personally, I think we should have a major force here, but the desk jockeys in the Pentagon have their own ideas. Instead of a major presence, we’re positioning a single man—a good man—in each of several Hmong villages. Those men will recruit the natives, win their trust, train them, and deploy them on missions against the Pathet Lao and any VC or NVA troops dumb enough to cross into Laos.
“We’re looking at Special Forces soldiers particularly, because they’ve demonstrated the skills our guys will need. They’ll remain with their current service, but they’ll be on loan to the Agency. As such, they’ll be paid a bonus on top of their military salary. And of course, they’ll work largely without supervision, making decisions for themselves, out in the field.”
Lincoln thought he understood where this was heading, but he wanted the man to say it. He kept quiet. Finally, Donovan added, “There’s going to be a lot of commie ass to kick. And I want you to be the one doing the kicking. So how about it?”
“Do I have to tell you right now?”
Donovan grinned. “No. No, of course not. Take all the time you need, buddy.” He sucked in one last drag of his cigarette and flipped the butt onto a bullet-riddled North Vietnamese corpse. “Just as long as you give me your answer by tomorrow morning.”