To take down an organization, cut it off at the knees, Donovan had said. Lincoln had heard Sammy Robinson give similar advice. Lincoln hadn’t taken it to heart before, but his failures against the Pathet Lao had caused him to reconsider.
The post had grown extensively. That meant it relied more than ever on shipments from the north—of food, medical supplies, weapons and ammunition, uniforms, men—all the stuff that a modern army lived on. He needed to target those things, in order to make life hell for Colonel Sun.
That was where he would start. The convoys would be guarded, but they would also be far more vulnerable than the fort itself. And he had experience hitting trucks, from his New Bordeaux days. He and Ellis and a couple of the guys had once taken down a truck delivering TV sets, three weeks before the Super Bowl. They’d made a killing selling them on the streets.
This one would be a little more complicated, but the basic idea was similar. He sent Pos and a few other scouts down the mountain to determine whether trucks arrived on any regular schedule. While they were gone, he had Koob pull together a platoon of a hundred of their best men and they rehearsed the plan Lincoln had come up with, over and over until they had it down. He contacted Donovan for some additional supplies. By the time the scouts returned with their report, Lincoln felt fully prepared.
There was a schedule, it turned out. The next convoy would be arriving in twenty-two hours. That didn’t leave much time to get into position, but the men were ready to go. They double-timed it down the mountain, Lincoln knowing all the while that coming back up would be a considerably slower process. Bypassing the camp completely, they went to a spot Pos had identified a few kilometers up the main road.
Other than military traffic—units from the camp going up to patrol around the intersection and convoys coming from the north—virtually no one used the road. Lincoln had no way to guarantee that they wouldn’t be surprised from the south, which would turn into a much bigger fight than he was looking for. But if the scouts were right about the convoy schedule, they shouldn’t have to be here for long, mitigating the risk of surprise.
Lincoln liked the spot Pos had picked out. It was just after a blind curve in the road, with the forest pressing in on both sides. As soon as they arrived, they felled several large trees and positioned them across the road, about thirty yards down from the turn. The men in the convoy would recognize it as an ambush as soon as they reached it, but by then it would be too late.
While they waited for the trucks, Lincoln sat on the newly paved surface with Koob and Pos, smoking cigarettes and chatting. “You men have really made a big difference,” Lincoln said. “You’ve helped take us from a ragtag bunch of clowns into a real fighting force.”
“Clowns?” Pos asked. “What is that?”
Lincoln pondered ways to explain what clowns were but then shook his head. “Never mind,” he said. “Too complicated.”
“I understand,” Koob said. “Not clowns, but the rest.”
“I just want you both to know that I appreciate everything you’ve done. You and your friends, the other Hmong. They make me look good to my bosses.”
“You are the boss,” Koob said.
Lincoln laughed. “Not hardly. I’m just an enlisted schmuck.”
“Your boss is the president of US?” Koob asked.
“He’s one of them,” Lincoln said with a chuckle. “Most of them are officers with brass on their shoulders, but some of them wear suits. The president is one of those.”
“You know him?”
Lincoln shook his head and held out the backs of his hands. “In America, most people don’t get to know the president. People with my skin color don’t often spend time with people like that.”
“There are many colors there?” Pos asked him.
“A few. White, black, brown, yellow. No green yet, but maybe someday the Martians will come.”
“Yellow?” Koob asked. He pointed to some of the wildflowers that had sprouted along the road during the monsoon season. “That’s yellow, no?”
“Not yellow like those,” Lincoln explained. He touched the back of Koob’s hand. “Like you. This is what we call yellow skin.”
Koob and Pos both started laughing, lightly at first, then hysterically, spitting words in Hmong to each other when they could. Lincoln couldn’t catch what they were saying but assumed they were making fun of the concept of their nut-brown skin being called yellow. Then again, he had differentiated between black and brown, knowing full well that his own skin, and that of all the other black folks he had ever seen, was really brown. So was the skin of the Mexicans and Puerto Ricans he had known.
With that realization, he started laughing, too.
They were still at it when they heard the rumble of trucks, coming closer.
Instantly, everyone scrambled for their assigned positions. Weapons were checked. Lincoln took a last look before heading for cover in the trees and was pleased to note that he couldn’t see any of the men, even though he knew where to look for them. When it came to hiding in the brush, the Hmong were masters.
He took his position and waited.
The first truck rolled into the curve, then around it. The driver was intent on regaling his passengers with what must have been an entertaining story and didn’t even see the fallen trees until one of the passengers cried out. The driver slammed on his brakes and the truck shuddered to a sudden stop. It started to reverse, but the next truck was following closely, and by the time it stopped, there was no space. Only the fourth and last truck was able to try backing up, to get headed north again, but by the time it did, the Hmong had come out of the trees and blocked the road.
The front and rear trucks were filled with men, presumably to guard the convoy. They hopped down from the trucks, but gunfire from the trees cut them down before they could use their weapons. RPGs sliced through the air and disabled the trucks. Within five minutes, every man in the convoy was dead or close to it, and there hadn’t been a single Hmong casualty.
Knowing that the noise of battle could have been heard from the Pathet Lao post, Lincoln wrapped up the operation in a hurry. It didn’t matter what had been in the cargo trucks—whatever they might have held was in flames. Lincoln and his men melted into the woods and split up, knowing they would reunite at the jars before starting up the mountain again. Any would-be rescuers from the camp would find only burning trucks and corpses.