Page 133 of Cry Havoc

CHAPTER 47

DON’T MAKE RASH DECISIONS.

Fortuna Favet Fortibus.

His father had whispered that over cards one night as he examined his hand and sipped a whiskey.

Fortune Favors the Bold.

Tom pedaled onward. The Peugeot bike was awkward and certainly not built for speed, but it handled the trail surprisingly well. The trail reminded Tom of some of the fire roads he had explored on foot and horseback in the Rocky Mountains of his youth.

If he could just make up some time and not run into any enemy patrols or supply convoys. He needed to get closer to Quinn and Hiep. Then he would ditch the bike and parallel them on foot in the jungle.

And what happens when those two messengers don’t show up at their destination?

You really didn’t think this through.

Make up time and get off the trail.

What happens when you run into a patrol? No one is buying that you are Vietnamese even in this uniform.

It might cause confusion and give you an extra second or two.

And what then?

Just pedal.

Point men on Havoc and other SOG Recon Teams would sometimes wear NVA uniforms and carry Kalashnikov rifles. The thought being that the confusion caused by an NVA running into someone dressed in a similar uniform would give the point man that extra fraction of a second that might give him the edge. Tom was hoping that if he took a corner and pedaled headlong into an NVA convoy, he might be able to keep his head down and pass right by. Who would think that an American service member would be pedaling a bike up the Ho Chi Minh Trail toward Hanoi? That was too crazy to contemplate. He just might be able to pull it off.

He pedaled harder.

Even from the seat of the bicycle, he could track the two sets of bare feet heading north.

I’m coming, guys.

He heard the ominous sound of thunder. The southwest monsoon would soon wash away their tracks.

Then what?

The road began to widen, and the dirt became hardpack, making it more difficult to find spoor.

Were they doing construction? Construction that had stopped at the onset of monsoon season?

He scanned the trail ahead and turned to look behind him.

Still clear.

The hardpack led him to a T with the intersecting section of the trail now paved and wide enough for trucks. To his right the new trail led to the northeast. To his left it led to the southwest. Tom’s spirits plummeted as the footprints disappeared onto the crudely paved asphalt.

Tom had seen paved sections of the trail before. What he had not seen was a small pumping station consisting of pipes and pressure valves attached to a pipe that paralleled the paved road. Were the North Vietnamese pumping fuel into the South through Laos? That was new.

That also meant maintenance crews.

You are going to need to get off this road ASAP,he thought.

It started to rain. He was going to lose them.

Keep going, or get off the trail and make your way back to Phu Bai to report on their direction of travel and turn what you know over to the intel shop.