Page 4 of Cry Havoc (Tom Reece #1)

Tom let the RPD hang on its leather sling, transitioned to the cut-down M79, broke open the action, switched the flechette for a high-explosive round, closed the action, thumbed the safety forward, aimed, and depressed the trigger.

He was rewarded with the distinctive low-pressure thump of the projectile operating precisely as designed, a sound that resulted in the M79’s nickname: Thumper.

He reloaded and fired another 40mm grenade into the flanking enemy.

He was joined by the team’s dedicated Montagnard M79 gunner who carried the full-size weapon.

The ’Yard sent three HE projectiles before reloading with a flechette round, ducking and falling into the line of march.

The team had practiced this immediate action drill time and time again at their Monkey Mountain training area to either break contact, continue mission, or as in this case, break contact, move to extract.

Keep moving. To stop is to die.

They could move faster now, with the rain and the confusion caused by the first set of claymores.

Tom pivoted his head toward the smoke that still lingered after the linked claymore detonation to see figures moving through the haze.

That’s a lot of NVA.

This is more than just a simple patrol.

His eyes met those of an NVA soldier. As the enemy combatant pivoted his AK toward the SOG man, Tom brought up his M79 just as Quinn’s three-minute time fuse detonated the five linked stay-behind mines.

A thunderous explosion shook the jungle, as 3,500 steel ball bearings ripped through the bodies of the NVA point element.

Move.

The SOG Team opted to sacrifice security for speed to take advantage of the chaos. Though they didn’t know if weather would ground air assets, their top priority was making it to extract before darkness set in.

Tom heard Quinn calling “Prairie Fire Emergency” through the handset. Now someone just had to receive the transmission.

Nothing.

Need to get somewhere we can make comms.

A smaller explosion reverberated to their rear; one of their toe poppers or grenades on trip wires. Whether it killed or maimed, those devices should cause the NVA to think twice before they took another step.

Havoc continued to put as much distance between their element and the NVA as possible. Even in the gloom of triple canopy rainforest, they could tell it was getting darker. They were on the clock, compromised, across the fence in Laos, being hunted by an unknown number of NVA.

Just another day in SOG.

Quinn passed back the hand signal for a hasty perimeter at the edge of a small clearing of elephant grass and keyed his handset.

“Covey, this is Havoc. Troops in contact! I say again troops in heavy contact!”

Still nothing.

“Prairie Fire Emergency! I say again, Prairie Fire Emergency!” he transmitted.

Radio silence, when extraction was a team’s only means of survival, had a way of infecting the psyche of even the most hardened of warriors.

Quinn and Tom shared a glance.

As Quinn gave the signal to move out, the radio, turned to its lowest volume, broke squelch.

“Havoc, this is Covey, say again your last, over.”

The voice from the heavens, heavy with an American southern accent, was a lifeline. A chance to survive.

“Prairie Fire Emergency! I say again, Prairie Fire Emergency! We’ve been compromised and are in heavy contact! Request extract ASAP!” Quinn said, throwing a VS17 orange panel at the edge of the small clearing.

As Quinn relayed their coordinates Tom scanned the jungle to their rear.

Pretty fucking convenient that the NVA just happened upon us.

Happens frequently.

Yeah, too frequently.

Later. Keep your head in the game.

Game. It’s no fucking game.

I need a cigarette.

When you get back to Phu Bai.

The buzz of the Covey aircraft caught their attention.

“I’ve got you, Havoc. I identify an orange panel. Tough to see through the clouds. You have a company-sized element moving in your direction, two hundred yards to your November.”

Company sized? That’s anywhere from three hundred to five hundred soldiers.

“Kingbees and CAS inbound but I need you to move…”

The FAC came off the radio as the NVA element caught sight of the aircraft through the clouds and began firing.

Though it could be hard to tell in the jungle, they seemed closer than 200 yards.

“Havoc, I need you to move about a klick and a half to your Sierra,” the FAC said, using the military terms for kilometer and south. “Hit a creek and follow that another klick downstream to a clearing for extract. Get there. I’ll keep an eye on your six.”

“Roger, Covey. We’re moving.”

Quinn gave the hand signal to move out, his squad in the lead with Tom’s trailing.

Air support changed the equation. If weather grounded them, Tom knew that with a company-sized element in pursuit, the odds of surviving this mission were not in Havoc’s favor.

Fuck the odds.

As Quinn’s squad disappeared into the thick vegetation, Tom removed a claymore from his tail gunner’s pack and primed a ten-minute time fuse.

That should slow them down.

Tom felt the humidity fall as evening shifted toward night.

If they had to RON—or remain overnight—the NVA would not be their only enemy.

The rain soaking their cotton fatigues paired with the wind off the mountains would chill them to the bone.

They would survive the elements, but the cold would make them far less combat effective.

Tom knew all these concerns were on the mind of his One-Zero.

Quinn would get them out. He always did.

Tom would never know if he heard movement over the ringing in his ears or if a gut instinct caused him to turn to his left. When he did, he found himself less than 15 feet from a man in a loincloth carrying an AK. Pathet Lao? Had it been an NVA soldier Tom knew he would already be dead.

The Pathet Lao in Laos were the equivalent of the Viet Cong in Vietnam. Not highly skilled or trained like professional soldiers of the NVA, both the Pathet Lao and Viet Cong were expendable insurgents, bodies to throw against the Americans.

There was no time to throw a grenade and sink back into the protection of the thick brush. It was time to go to the gun.

The RPD had two settings—safe and fire—and was designed so a shooter’s finger could sweep seamlessly from the selector to the trigger, which was what Tom Reece did.

The man swung his AK toward the American.

He never made it.

Tom’s five-round burst stitched him up from his pelvis to his heart. Another five rounds tore through what was left of his chest. As he crumpled to the ground his head caught in the Y of a teak tree, which arrested his fall, leaving his soulless body upright; a human scarecrow hung in effigy.

AK fire exploded from the jungle, only muzzle flashes visible through the dense vegetation. Havoc had already turned toward the contact and was sending rounds into anything that moved.

Another loinclothed figure was cut to shreds as he charged toward the SOG Team, screaming and holding a ChiCom stick grenade that dropped to his feet as Havoc’s 5.56 and 7.62 rounds sent him to the afterlife.

The grenade detonated and propelled one of his dismembered legs past Tom’s head.

Are the NVA using Pathet Lao as some sort of shock troop force or suicide bombers?

They sacrificed the VC during the Tet attacks. Maybe they are doing the same in Laos?

The jungle behind them came alive with gunfire.

That’s NVA.

How did they counter us so fast?

Not now, Tom.

Now it’s time to kill your way to extract.

He pulled a grenade from a pouch and slid his RPD back under his arm just far enough to allow him to hook the ring of the safety pin on his front sight, a trick he had learned in the Mekong Delta.

This allowed him to stay on the gun and more efficiently make use of his grenades in a firefight.

He then made sure that the ball of death wouldn’t careen back on them after bouncing off a nearby tree.

The path was clear, so he sent it flying.

Tom lay down another burst from his RPD into an NVA soldier as he heard the grenade detonate. The accompanying screams told him he had hit his mark.

We’ve got to move.

As he turned, he saw Sau, his tail gunner, writhing on the ground.

“Phe—cover!” he yelled to the Montagnard who was next in the line of march.

Phe turned back and took a knee next to his wounded comrade as Tom pulled a claymore from the ’Yard’s pack and attached a two-minute time fuse.

He then threw Sau over his shoulder and slapped Phe on the back before turning to follow Quinn into the depths of the jungle.

Phe sprayed an eighteen-round magazine on full-auto toward the enemy to the rear, changed magazines, and then threw a grenade before following his squad leader.

Tom charged ahead, following the ’Yard in front of him.

Move, Tom.

A little over a klick to the river, then south another klick to a possible LZ. Then home to Phu Bai.

You need to get there before darkness falls or you will disappear just like so many other SOG Teams have recently.

Imprisonment, torture, and death awaited at a prison camp in Laos or North Vietnam if he or any of his teammates were captured.

No fucking way.

His legs and lungs burned with an intensity that had become the norm on missions across the fence.

Sau was only nineteen years old. And now he was bleeding out on Tom’s back.

At least their “little people” were, for the most part, just that; little—shorter and thinner than most of their American teammates—which allowed the larger SEAL to make good time even with the extra weight on his shoulders.

Tom heard the explosion as the stay-behind claymore’s time fuse reached its terminus. He kept moving.

Always keep moving.

They would have to stop to treat Sau before long or Tom would be carrying a dead man to extract.

The SEAL almost tripped over Hoahn, the tail gunner of Quinn’s squad.