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Will Kane finds a body underneath Hell Gate Bridge. Where this gruesome discovery leads him is a world even he, a New York native, never dreamed existed. Not even in his worst nightmare...
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"Fucking flying monkeys," Captain William Kane mutters.
"Dai Yu?" Thao asks, his shout barely heard above the sound of the turbine engine overhead along with the helicopter blades cutting air. The doors on the Huey are open.
"Nothing," Kane yells back to the Montagnard sergeant sitting next to him.
Kane, Thao and the others on board are wearing tiger stripe fatigues. Their faces are darkened with camouflage paint. Their LBE, load-bearing-equipment, is full of ammunition, water, grenades, a knife, a strobe light, and an extraction rig. Everything is taped down tight; Kane had made everyone jump up and down at the camp's LZ prior to getting on board the chopper.
They are all experienced at cross-border ops and this one seems like all the rest, except all the American Special Forces on the team, and Thao, know the real reason. The lone Vietnamese on board, who was left out of that secret, is the true purpose. Ngo is on the other side of Thao and Kane forces himself not to look at the man, afraid he might disclose his true feelings despite the camouflage paint.
They crossed the Cambodian border a few minutes ago, technically a violation of national sovereignty, as if anyone gives a shit about that. The NVA and VC never had, running the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos and Cambodia, just over the border from Vietnam, in order to supply their war effort.
The chopper banks and flares, touching down briefly in an open field.
No one gets off.
It lifts and moves on from the false insertion.
The crew chief holds up one finger. Kane taps Thao and does the same. Thao passes it to Ngo, who gives the one-minute signal to the Special Forces man next to him.
There are three other members of Gamma on the other side of the chopper, facing outward on the canvas seats. The four Gamma members aren't part of Kane's regular A-Team. Nor is Ngo. They're stationed at his base camp and have been running their own covert missions for a long time. Kane isn't thrilled about being roped into this, but he understands the need for deniability by Gamma. It's a secret organization under Detachment B-57 of the Fifth Special Forces Group (Airborne) that has the mission of intelligence collection in Cambodia and gets its orders from the CIA.
The crew chief mans an M-60 machinegun as does the gunner on the side. The dark jungle canopy flashes by just below the skids as the pilots fly NOE, nap-of-the-earth.
The helicopter flares and lands. Kane jumps off along with Thao and Ngo. The four Gamma men don't move. The chopper lifts.
Ngo whirls about, watching the helicopter with his team-mates fly away into the dark. Kane flicks off the safety on his CAR-15, a shortened version of the M-16.
"Come on!" Kane ordersed, sprinting for the treeline.
Thao immediately follows. Ngo hesitates, then does the same.
They get in the cover of the trees and wait as the jungle returns to normal. If they were spotted and there are NVA close by, they'll know.
But nothing.
"What is happening?" Ngo asks.
His English is very good, one of the reasons Gamma recruited him. His loyalty is very bad and the reason they left him here with Kane and Thao.
"Change in plans," Kane says. Before he can say anything further, Ngo points his M-16 at Kane and pulls the trigger. He's already shifting it toward Thao when the realization it didn't fire sinks in.
At the moment when Thao butt strokes Ngo on the side of the head with his own weapon.
The Vietnamese drops unconscious to the jungle floor.
Kane draws the silenced High Standard .22 from the holster on his LBE. "No doubt about it after that," he says to Thao.
"No doubt," Thao agrees.
Thao picks up Ngo's M-16 which is missing its firing pin. He slings it over his shoulder.
Kane stands over Ngo's body in the pale light of the quarter-moon, pointing the stubby barrel of the pistol at the man's head. His finger curls over the trigger.
