beat me at anything. I would have caught up with you by the fourth deck, if Handlebar hadn’t stopped it.”
Marder thought this was probably not true but said nothing.
* * *
He did recall the actual event fairly well. Handlebar was the lieutenant commanding the detachment of Special Forces and their montagnard allies and was so called because of his remarkable mustache, grown, Marder assumed, so that he would not be carded in bars. Not a bad officer, for an officer, was the scuttlebutt, and a man always up for morale-boosting activities. When the contest was explained to him, he arranged to have two sets of bamboo posts erected in the cleared ground that surrounded the village, between which some lines were nailed, and upon these were hung with wire hooks two complete decks of playing cards. At a range of ten meters, Marder and Skelly were to shoot all the pips out of the cards with their .45s and finish by shooting out the heads of the face cards. This made 244 targets per deck. The rules were that a shooter couldn’t go on to the next card until he’d shot out all the pips (or heads) of the previous card, and the man who finished first won, except that Skelly insisted that the winner had to be at least four cards ahead to win. Marder stayed two or three cards ahead through four whole packs of cards.
Everyone in the village—soldiers and tribespeople—was out watching this, the soldiers drinking “33” beer and the Hmong drinking their horrible rnoom rice brew through straws. It got dark, in the usual lights-out fashion of the tropics, and Lieutenant Handlebar called the match, declaring Marder the winner, with Skelly insisting they shoot by the light of flares and the lieutenant explaining in an intoxicated way that this was a good way to silhouette the entire population for the VC, who would in any case have been drawn to the area in droves by the shooting. Some of the other sergeants, laughing like maniacs, had to physically pick Skelly up and haul him away. The VC were in fact drawn, the base got rocketed for a brief time, and there was a nice little firefight, but that was a normal evening in Moon River.
Marder had thought that he was in deep shit, that Skelly would come down hard on him, but such was not the case. Skelly became if anything almost friendly, no more yelling or nasty remarks, or fewer than before. In any event, training, such as it had been, was over. The air force team had to earn their hazard pay now, by mounting helicopters, flying to various predetermined parts of Laos and Vietnam, and burying the repeaters so as to cover the whole broad delta of supply routes that made up the trail. The long repeater aerials, disguised as vines with fabric sheaths the men called “sweaters,” had to be hung just so from the nearest trees. Then they planted a few voodoos on the trail proper, to see if the system worked.
After that, back at the village, the airmen made sure the machines were alive and transmitting and that they could pick up the voodoo signals. Which they could: the voodoos talked to the repeaters; the repeaters talked to the planes overhead. All they had left to do was to actually bury the little spheres in a dense belt across the entirety of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, or at least that portion that fell within their area of operations. This was the hard part, which no one on the team had really thought about during this preparation period but now had to. During this phase, Marder had been impressed by the skills of Skelly and his SOG team, by the helicopter crews from the 21st Special Operations Squadron that ferried them to and fro, and by the enormous effort being made to ensure the success of their operation. The air force staged diversionary raids; the Spectre gunships hovered overhead; each mission was accompanied by flame and explosions and the racket of miniguns establishing a zone of death around their working areas.
Several times they had experienced ground fire, or so
Marder thought this was probably not true but said nothing.
* * *
He did recall the actual event fairly well. Handlebar was the lieutenant commanding the detachment of Special Forces and their montagnard allies and was so called because of his remarkable mustache, grown, Marder assumed, so that he would not be carded in bars. Not a bad officer, for an officer, was the scuttlebutt, and a man always up for morale-boosting activities. When the contest was explained to him, he arranged to have two sets of bamboo posts erected in the cleared ground that surrounded the village, between which some lines were nailed, and upon these were hung with wire hooks two complete decks of playing cards. At a range of ten meters, Marder and Skelly were to shoot all the pips out of the cards with their .45s and finish by shooting out the heads of the face cards. This made 244 targets per deck. The rules were that a shooter couldn’t go on to the next card until he’d shot out all the pips (or heads) of the previous card, and the man who finished first won, except that Skelly insisted that the winner had to be at least four cards ahead to win. Marder stayed two or three cards ahead through four whole packs of cards.
Everyone in the village—soldiers and tribespeople—was out watching this, the soldiers drinking “33” beer and the Hmong drinking their horrible rnoom rice brew through straws. It got dark, in the usual lights-out fashion of the tropics, and Lieutenant Handlebar called the match, declaring Marder the winner, with Skelly insisting they shoot by the light of flares and the lieutenant explaining in an intoxicated way that this was a good way to silhouette the entire population for the VC, who would in any case have been drawn to the area in droves by the shooting. Some of the other sergeants, laughing like maniacs, had to physically pick Skelly up and haul him away. The VC were in fact drawn, the base got rocketed for a brief time, and there was a nice little firefight, but that was a normal evening in Moon River.
Marder had thought that he was in deep shit, that Skelly would come down hard on him, but such was not the case. Skelly became if anything almost friendly, no more yelling or nasty remarks, or fewer than before. In any event, training, such as it had been, was over. The air force team had to earn their hazard pay now, by mounting helicopters, flying to various predetermined parts of Laos and Vietnam, and burying the repeaters so as to cover the whole broad delta of supply routes that made up the trail. The long repeater aerials, disguised as vines with fabric sheaths the men called “sweaters,” had to be hung just so from the nearest trees. Then they planted a few voodoos on the trail proper, to see if the system worked.
After that, back at the village, the airmen made sure the machines were alive and transmitting and that they could pick up the voodoo signals. Which they could: the voodoos talked to the repeaters; the repeaters talked to the planes overhead. All they had left to do was to actually bury the little spheres in a dense belt across the entirety of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, or at least that portion that fell within their area of operations. This was the hard part, which no one on the team had really thought about during this preparation period but now had to. During this phase, Marder had been impressed by the skills of Skelly and his SOG team, by the helicopter crews from the 21st Special Operations Squadron that ferried them to and fro, and by the enormous effort being made to ensure the success of their operation. The air force staged diversionary raids; the Spectre gunships hovered overhead; each mission was accompanied by flame and explosions and the racket of miniguns establishing a zone of death around their working areas.
Several times they had experienced ground fire, or so
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