CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
The house was large and rambled over most of the little island. There was a tennis court on one side of the structure, a guesthouse on the other, and an infinity pool in the rear, the boat dock in the front. J.D. led us through the front door into a large entryway and on back to a great room overlooking the pool and Abaco Sound. The room was filled with middle-aged men. Doc was there and so was George Brewster, and to my astonishment, Paul Galis, a Key West detective I’d met the year before when I was trying to find my former wife’s stepdaughter. There were four other men whom I’d never seen. Doc introduced them to me as Don Lemuel from North Dakota, Conrad Dixson from California, Ben Wright of Kentucky, and Harrison Fleming.
I’d brought the duffel containing the weapons with me. I didn’t think leaving them on an open boat was a good idea. I set the bag on the floor.
“These are the remains of Team Charlie,” said Doc. He looked at the group arrayed in a semicircle of stuffed chairs and two sofas. “I used to work for Matt, back when he was a Special Forces shave tail running our A team out of Camp Connor. He’s tougher than he looks. He took a bullet in the leg and later a gut full of shrapnel while earning the Distinguished Service Cross, the army’s second highest award for valor. He’s also a lawyer, but he doesn’t take it too seriously.”
Doc pointed to Jock. “This has to be Jock Algren, a guy you don’t want to know much about, but I’ll vouch for him because Matt and J.D. do. I don’t know this other gentleman.”
“Logan Hamilton,” I said. “A Vietnam airborne Ranger grunt who did a second tour flying helicopters. Owns a Silver Star. He’s okay.” I looked at Galis. “Good to see you, Paul.”
“Same here, Matt.”
I could see a visible relaxation on the faces of the men in the room. We’d passed the first test. We were soldiers who’d tasted combat and acquitted ourselves well. That made us part of the brotherhood.
I’d met Paul Galis in Key West and was aware that he’d been a Special Forces trooper in Vietnam toward the end of the war. We hadn’t talked about his experiences there, because that’s not what old soldiers do. Still, it was a shock to see him with this group.
“What’s going on here, Doc?” I asked.
“This thing runs deep, Matt. It started coming to a head over the weekend, and I had to make some quick decisions. I left you out of the loop on purpose. You were part of my misdirection strategy.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” I said.
“Take a load off,” said Doc, pointing to four empty chairs. “I’ll rustle up some drinks. What do you want?”
We all ordered water and in a few minutes Doc returned with bottles for all of us. “Okay,” he said. “Let me start with Team Charlie’s last operation.”
The story was as old as war, and as necessary. There have always been bands of assassins tasked with taking out the leadership of the opposing forces. The theory was that if the leaders were killed, chaos would ensue and the killers’ side would have the advantage for at least a short time. Often that is all that’s needed in battle. It was a good theory and had been a part of the American war machine since the Colonial sniper Timothy Murphy killed British General Simon Fraser in 1777, a death that led directly to the American victory at Saratoga.
“We were a band of killers,” said Doc. “I don’t think any of us would ever have robbed a bank or stolen a loaf of bread, because we saw ourselves 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 f*cking 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 f*ck are you doing?” shouted Opal. He was standing in the door of the hut. “I told you to burn this f*cking 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 f*cking 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 f*cking gooks, Desmond. It doesn’t matter.”
“You knew, didn’t you?” asked Doc.
“This is war, Desmond. Sometimes there’s collateral damage.”
“When did you know?”
“All along. We think the men from the village are being held across the river. But if we hadn’t attacked, we’d have blown our source. If the VC knew that we knew about there being only women and children here, we’d have lost valuable intelligence.”
“And the VC guards?” asked Brewster.
“Kids from this village. They were told to act like guards. If they didn’t, their families would be killed.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to us?” asked Doc.
“If you’d known would you have come on the mission?”
“Hell, no.”
“There you have it, soldier,” said Opal, a hard edge to his voice, his rifle still pointing at Doc. “You follow your f*cking orders now and fire up this place.”
“I have a question,” said Brewster.
“What?”
“Did Topaz know about this?”
“Of course. He’s the assistant team leader. If I couldn’t have led tonight, he would have.”
Brewster shot the leader through the chest. “Oops. More collateral damage,” he said and walked out of the hut. Doc didn’t bother to check the leader’s pulse. If he wasn’t dead, he would be soon, and that was good enough for now. He followed Brewster out into the clearing. The other men had heard the exchange and were just standing there, numbed by what they’d learned. They were soldiers, not murderers.
“Where’s Opal?” asked the assistant leader.
“Dead,” said Doc.
“You killed him?” Panic rode his voice. “You murdering bastard.”
“You knew there was nothing here, just women and children waiting to be slaughtered,” said Doc. “We just committed a war crime. At your orders. With your full knowledge of what we were doing.”
“It was necessary,” said Topaz. “This is war.”
“No,” said Brewster, “this is murder.”
“Well, f*ck you, Brewster,” said Topaz. “Your ass will be in a sling when we get back.”
“You’re not going back,” said Doc.
“What?” a hint of fear brought a quiver to Topaz’s voice.
“I think you’re about to be killed in the line of duty.”
“Hey, wait a f*cking minute.” Topaz started backing up, hands in front of him. Doc looked at the other men, one at a time. Each one nodded. Once. Each raised his rifle. Pointed it at the assistant. Doc and Brewster joined them.
“No,” screamed Topaz. “You can’t do this.”
Doc nodded. The men fired one volley, killing the assistant team leader with ten bullets.
Doc sat quietly, drained by the story and the memory. “I’ve never told this tale to anyone. I could still be prosecuted for murder, I guess, but it was the right thing to do. At least that’s what I’ve always told myself.”
“What happened after you left the bush?” I asked.
“We all swore an oath of secrecy. Never tell anybody what happened. If one of us went down, we’d all go down. We got back to base camp and reported that we’d run into an unexpected firefight. Opal and Topaz were in the lead and were killed by the first shots fired from ambush. The brass didn’t believe us, and we were interrogated by CIA types, over and over for the next week. We all stuck to our story, so there was nothing they could do. They knew we were lying, because they knew what the operation was really about. But they couldn’t break any of us.”
“What happened to the bodies?” I asked.
“We put Opal and the Topaz in one of the huts with the other bodies. A night wind was blowing and it fueled the fire. They went up very quickly. We told the CIA that we’d been unable to recover their bodies after the firefight, but that we’d carried out our mission. None of those guys were about to hump back into the bush to check out that village. They knew, but they couldn’t prove a damn thing.”
Jock said, “My agency sent me a list of the team members the director got from somewhere in the bowels of our intelligence network. I didn’t bother to follow up on the dead team members. Doc, do you know who they were?” He handed the list to Doc.
“I knew the three who died after they came home. They were good men. The two you show as killed in Vietnam were obviously the team leaders, Opal and Topaz.”
“You never had any idea of who they really were?” Jock asked.
“No. We knew they were CIA. That’s all. When we weren’t in the field, they disappeared. I always assumed they went back to Saigon to report in and enjoy a little time at the officer’s club.”
“We need to find their names,” said Jock. “Once we know who they are, I may be able to backtrack and find out who their friends were and if any of those friends still work for the CIA. It’s a start, but it may take a while.”
“I don’t think we have that kind of time,” said Doc.
“What about the teams?” asked Logan. “What happened to them?”
“They were all disbanded, I think. Team Charlie sure was. We were sent home and discharged within a week of the operation. We had to sign a lot of paperwork swearing ourselves to secrecy about the whole Thanatos thing. As far as I know, not one of us ever talked about it, and not one of us has had any contact with any of the other team members. Not until last weekend, anyway.”