Page 39 of Cry Havoc (Tom Reece #1)

Saigon, Vietnam

AT FIRST IT SOUNDED like fireworks. It was Tet after all, and Serrano had told them celebrations were going to get loud.

A minute later, Tom was sure it wasn’t fireworks. He threw his feet from his bed and checked his watch. It was just after midnight.

Serrano had put them up in a safe house on the west side of the Khánh H?i Bridge that connected districts one and four. It was a three-story building that blended in with the rest of the neighborhood. It was stocked with food and varying sizes of clothing for both men and women.

He put on his jeans and was pulling a black polo over his head when he heard two taps at his bedroom door.

“Tom.”

Quinn was already dressed. His new 1911 holstered at his side.

They were both set to leave the next morning to escort Amiuh to Kontum and then chopper to his village in the highlands.

Tom nodded at the .45 caliber pistol in his friend’s hand. The tomahawk was on his belt. “What do you do, sleep with those things?”

“I would, if I slept.”

Tom picked up the Mini-Browning Hi-Power from his bedside table, ensured there was a round in the chamber, and holstered it. He then sat back down on the bed and slid into his Converse high-tops before joining Quinn in the main living space.

They kept the lights off and stayed back from the windows.

“I tried to call Serrano. Phones are down,” Quinn said.

“Terrific.”

“Something big is happening.”

Tracers lit up the sky while explosions reverberated across the city.

“That’s not a Vietnamese New Year’s celebration. What do you think? A coup?” Tom speculated.

“Another one?”

“Can’t be NVA in Saigon, can it?”

“I don’t know.”

“VC?”

“Looks too big for them, but who knows?”

If the RPG had been shot from a little farther out to change the angle, or had Quinn and Tom been standing closer to the windows, they would certainly be dead.

As it was, the ceiling absorbed most of the impact, showering them with debris.

The overpressure of the explosion stole their hearing and replaced it with a painful ringing.

“You good?” Quinn yelled, pushing himself back to his feet.

“Yeah,” Tom shouted back, coughing to clear his lungs of the smoke that now filled the room. “RPG?”

“It sure felt like it. Let’s di di mau.”

Another explosion rocked the building at ground level.

“Hold on,” Tom said, inching toward the shattered window. “We have four men in civies with rifles entering the building. No one else is here, are they?”

“Serrano said it was just us.”

“Roof.”

“Let’s go.”

They had scouted the building as soon as they arrived and noted the doorway at the end of the hallway that opened into a small utility room with a metal ladder that led to the roof.

They shut the door just before hearing footsteps and hushed voices speaking in Vietnamese.

The two operators hurried to the roof and closed the access hatch behind them. They had identified an external pipe fitting on the building’s east side as a way of emergency egress.

Tom ran across the rooftop in a crouch. The ringing in his ears had subsided enough for him to hear the explosions rocking Saigon. They were punctuated by streams of tracer fire that continued to light up the night.

Quinn scanned the alley below as Tom drew his pistol and took a knee, holding down on the access hatch.

“Down we go,” Quinn whispered, throwing his legs over the edge of the roof and using the pipes to steadily lower himself to the alley.

Tom gave him a good forty-five seconds before holstering the Browning and following him over.

When his feet touched the dirt alley, he immediately drew his pistol and pressed himself against the wall in the shadows next to Quinn.

Without looking directly at Tom, Quinn brought two fingers to his eyes and pointed to the end of the passageway. He then moved his hand to the side displaying a peace sign indicating that he had seen two probable enemy fighters.

Tom knew it was decision time. Were they to make the safe call and fade into the darkness, or were they to go head-to-head with a numerically superior enemy force?

Tom leaned out, peering around Quinn to increase his situational awareness.

The two men Quinn had seen were across the street behind a vehicle. Their attention was on the front of the building.

Without a word, Quinn turned and ran in the opposite direction, staying in the shadows. Tom knew exactly what he had in mind.

They paused at the far end of the alley and surveyed the street.

Multiple cars inundated with bullet holes were stalled in the road.

Two were burning, the flames illuminating the dead bodies in the others.

The door of one was ajar, and a man’s body was sprawled half in and half out of the vehicle.

His head was contorted in an unnatural position on the pavement.

Glass littered the street. The element responsible seemed to have moved on to their next targets. The scene was devoid of the living.

Quinn sprinted up the street along the dirt sidewalk with Tom close behind.

One block up, they stopped at a corner and pressed themselves to the side of a store that housed a fish market.

The next block up looked deserted.

They continued onward, circling around until they were behind the two men with rifles they had observed earlier.

Tom and Quinn crept forward through the dark alley that opened onto their street. As they got closer, they could hear voices speaking in Vietnamese.

At the edge of the alley, Quinn stopped again, slowly taking an angle that allowed him to see their targets.

He held up the peace sign again, confirming there were only two.

He carefully holstered his 1911 and drew the tomahawk.

Tom did the same, holstering his Hi-Power and drawing the EK fixed blade at the back of his belt.

Quinn nodded, signaling it was time.

Tom thought the beating of his heart was loud enough to give them both away.

As Tom and Quinn stepped from the shadows, it was only three quick steps to their adversaries, whose attention remained focused on the safe house.

Quinn led with the larger weapon. Driving the tomahawk down into his target’s brachial plexus between the neck and shoulder, he severed the nerves and arteries responsible for upper body motor function, forcing the man to his knees.

Tom leapt the moment Quinn’s tomahawk put the enemy to the ground.

The SEAL slid his hand over the nose and mouth of the second sentry, pulling him back and off balance and twisting his head to the left, exposing the right side of his head.

He inserted the narrow blade into the wind gate at the base of the skull to the right of the spine, driving it up into the brain.

He twisted the sharp blade violently, feeling his enemy spasm, then let the body sink to the ground.

He turned to Quinn, who had delivered a coup de grace to the man’s skull and was pulling the edged weapon from where it had become wedged in bone fragments and brain matter.

“I need to get one of those,” Tom said.

“Everyone needs a tomahawk.”

Tom sheathed his blade and dropped to a knee, taking cover behind the vehicle and picking up the sentry’s SKS rifle. He checked to ensure there was a round in the chamber.

Though the SKS was simple and reliable, Tom would have much preferred to be holding an AK.

The wooden-stocked SKS had a ten-round fixed internal magazine top-loaded using stripper clips that made reloading less than ideal.

Tom found himself wondering if the limited magazine capacity was the reason for the bayonet that folded under the forestock.

He reached down and removed the Chinese Type 56 chest rig from the dead man.

It consisted of ten canvas pouches that held two stripper clips each.

If it was full, that would give Tom an additional two hundred rounds of 7. 62 x 39mm ammunition.

Quinn had sheathed his tomahawk and now had an SKS in hand and a Chinese chest rig over his shirt. He was looking through the car’s windows at the front of the safe house.

How many had gone inside?

From the blown-out window in their apartment, they had seen at least four enter.

Was it better to wait and ambush them from across the street or move inside the building and hit them as they descended the stairs?

As the One-Zero, Quinn made the decision for them, sprinting across the street with Tom just feet behind.

This was going to happen fast.

An RPG had destroyed the entrance, and whatever was left had been pulled away to facilitate entry.

They both knew a small foyer was just behind the doors with a staircase to the left and a hallway straight ahead.

Tom and Quinn both unfolded their rifles’ long bayonets forward and locked them into place on the muzzles of the twenty-inch barrels. They then moved to the sides of the entrance against the doorjambs, which were still relatively intact.

They heard voices on the stairs.

It was almost time.

The two MACV-SOG operators waited until the voices indicated the enemy were close to the bottom before pivoting into place against the sides of the door and bringing the rifles up to firing position.

In the darkness it was next to impossible to find the front sights, so they relied on the semiautomatic rifles being positioned correctly into the pockets of their shoulders as they depressed the triggers, sending round after round into the darkness.

They heard combatants tumbling down the stairs.

As their rifles ran dry, they charged into the building leading with their bayonets, thrusting them into the piles of bodies on the floor of the foyer until nothing moved.

Breathing heavily, Tom reached into his pocket and flipped open his Zippo, extending his arm over the carnage at their feet. They were surrounded by death.

Quinn dropped his empty rifle and picked up a new one from a dead man. Tom extinguished his Zippo and did the same.

“Now what?” Tom asked.

Their answer came in the form of the sound of an engine.

They moved back to the sides of the door frame, this time on the inside, and looked into the street.

The vehicle drew closer, and both men prepared to engage.

A dark American sedan screeched to a stop in front of the building.

The men held their fire as Nick Serrano opened the driver’s side door.

“You guys okay?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said, stepping from behind cover, “but the safe house ended up being not so safe.”

“I got here as soon as I could. What happened?” Serrano asked.

“Six assholes decided to pay us a visit,” Quinn said. “We were targeted, again.”

“I’m beginning to think it’s safer in Laos,” Tom added.

“That may be. We’ll figure this out,” Serrano said. “In the meantime, there are large-scale attacks going down across the country. Looks like NVA and VC. The embassy is under attack.”

“Well, let’s go,” Quinn said, moving toward the CIA man’s car.

“Reinforcements are headed there now. We have another issue.”

“What’s that?” Tom asked.

“I need your help.”

“With what?”

“Gaston and Ella DuBois. You met them today. He’s important to our work here. They were hosting a Lunar New Year’s party at the Majestic Hotel. They called me before the phones went dead. Hotel was under attack.”

“They might already be dead,” Quinn said.

“They might,” Serrano acknowledged. “What do you say?”

“I say we should stop by the annex and get some additional firepower,” Tom said, indicating the SKS in his grip.

“I’m way ahead of you,” Serrano said, opening the rear passenger door of his Ford Zephyr.

On the back seat were the Harrington & Richardson T223 rifle that Tom had noticed on the wall of the annex arms room along with a Beretta M12 submachine gun. He spotted a Thompson submachine gun in the front passenger seat.

Tom looked at Quinn.

“Let’s load up.”