The Vine Fraternity

Table of Contents

Introduction

A Note from the Author

Prologue

Chapter 1 – The Hit

Chapter 2 – The Tip

Chapter 3 – Strike One

Chapter 4 – Strike Two

Chapter 5 – Find Him

Chapter 6 – Leaving the Grid

Chapter 7 – Who’s to Blame?

Chapter 8 – An Old Rival

Chapter 9 – The Secret

Chapter 10 – Judgement Day

Chapter 11 – Houston, we have a problem

Chapter 12 – A little bit of cleanup

Epilogue

The Vine Fraternity

A Bruce Highland Novel by Alex Ryan

Third Edition - Smashwords

©2017 by Alex Ryan

All Rights Reserved

Edited by Catherine Stone

Other works by the author include

The Bruce Highland Series:

The Gatekeepers

The Man with Three Selves

Gauthier’s List

The Back Door Key

The Lambda Tribe

Leon’s Fire

The Rex Muse Series:

Rain unto Death

"At 300 meters, who gives a fuck? You can nail a target, even with a sixteen, in the blind, after drinking. At 1,200 meters, you need every edge you can get. At 2,000 meters, you gotta brief your projectiles on the exact trajectory and path they must take to reach their targets and hope they take notes." – Richard Holliday

"And it may not be innocent. In fact, I’m pretty sure it isn’t. I want to find out either way. Darcy, you come with me, as backup. You don’t need to say anything, you just need to look official and menacing, yet comforting." – Bruce Highland

"I don’t mind you watch. In fact, it turn me on. I don’t mind you get turned on. But I think it bad idea to introduce physical between all of us. He man. You just push button and he work. We are woman. We must deal with emotion and feeling he not even understand. I hope that acceptable to you." – Svetlana Petroya

"…. But, there we go. Britney Spears. Selena Gomez. Never mind that the Imams are secretly wanking it to their latest videos; that will get the point across." – Jaray Jericho Williams

"Fuckin’ pimp held a gun to my head, robbed me of all my money, forced me to do oral fellatio, and the most I can do to him is give him a bad review on Yelp." – Zachariah Forte

Introduction

The Vine Fraternity is the fourth book in a series of action novels featuring ace private investigator, Bruce Highland, whose military background and CIA connections help him solve high-level cases. This novel centers around two secret CIA backed programs that span a generation. Bruce Highland discovers a pattern of deceit, corruption, and murder; and works to bring justice to those involved. Other works by the author include, The Gatekeepers, The Man with Three Selves, and Gauthier’s List. All characters and events depicted are fictional, with the exception of certain historical references.

Staff Sergeant Richard Holliday’s family was brutally murdered while he was serving a tour during the Vietnam War. Years later, he learns who was responsible and takes revenge by killing two of the responsible people. Bruce Highland, a private investigator, is called in to investigate those revenge killings; uncovering and exposing a secret criminal quasi-governmental organization in the process.

A Note from the Author

From a historical perspective the Vietnam conflict has always fascinated me. I’m not old enough to have served during that period, but I was close to it, having come from a military family, and a generation later, every training scenario in the U.S. Army Infantry School was still centered around Vietnam; like, for example, radio procedures. Mekong Delta - I spell Mike, Echo, Kilo, Oscar, November, golf, over (the phonetic alphabet). Bayonet targets were dressed in Viet Cong uniforms. And then there were the commonly used military catch phrases, such as I have boo coo confidence in Corporal Smith (Boo coo is a bastardized form of the French beaucoup, which originated from Vietnam.) One of my favorite movies of all time is Apocalypse Now, and it actually inspired me to go in to the military as an Army Infantryman, for some odd reason; then I grew up.

Bruce Highland is an interesting character. People that know me ask, Bruce Highland is you, isn’t he? No, while there are certainly elements of myself that show up in Bruce Highland’s psyche, he’s a different animal. And he's no superhero either. He has to keep it real and work within his capabilities and means. That’s what makes stuff like this interesting. If he had Superman powers, the books would be pretty short. That’s why I never got in to superhero character comic books when I was a kid. Of course, then again, one doesn’t read superhero character comic books for the plot. One reads them thinking Gee, I wish I could do that kind of stuff. Sally would be hecka impressed.

A note on the grammar usage. These aren’t Oxford graduates with advanced degrees in the English language, these are real people speaking the way real people speak. There is a lot of dialogue. And a fair amount of creative monologue. Don’t confuse intentional grammar deviations for the purpose of style and dialect inflection with mistakes. People have done that, and it drives me nuts. Well, okay, the people in the book aren’t actually real people, but if they were… you get my point.

I’ve always wondered about Cambodia, Laos too, but Cambodia in particular. As a little kid, when you heard the word ‘Vietnam’, it conjured up images of men in combat uniforms scurrying over rice fields and through jungles, and myriads of other images sent back from scores of embedded news reporters who were great at using them to twist a story for whatever political bent they were on to at the time. But you never saw Cambodia. You never really knew about it, largely, because the interest in it left mostly with Frequent Wind, which to date was the largest airlift operation in the world, to evacuate the last American forces and refugees from Vietnam during the fall of Saigon.

Some of the facts are interesting. Norodom Sihanouk declared Cambodia as neutral in the Vietnam, French, and American conflict since 1955. After his deposition by Lon Nol in 1970, the Khmer Republic remained friendly to the United States government. Meanwhile, the communist opposition party, the Khmer Rouge, then led by Saloth Sar, otherwise known as Pol Pot, began to take over the Khmer Republic in a genocidal campaign. Unlike Sihanouk, who silently allowed North Vietnamese forces to accumulate in Southern Cambodia, Nol began the process of expelling them, whose efforts for which were countered by the Khmer Rouge. The United States, obviously, stood against the Khmer Rouge in the invasion of Cambodia late in the war, to counter North Vietnamese and Viet Cong buildup.

History books go into it, but the media didn’t really. After the Vietnam War, there was a switch in alliances to the Khmer Rouge. It isn’t widely understood that the Khmer Rouge began to distrust the Vietnamese, despite an otherwise ideological commonality, and started expelling them from their ranks. As a result of Vietnam’s alliance with the Soviet Union, and their long standing hatred of China, the United States, beginning under the Carter administration, actually backed and aided the Khmer Rouge, in order to pressure Vietnam and counter Soviet interests. Bizarre. At least that’s how the guy explained it; I was pretty drunk at the time. I think he’s right. More or less.

Prologue

Pleiku, Vietnam, 1970

It was May. Granted, Vietnam is on the northern hemisphere, but the seasons almost seem ass backward anyway. There are two seasons, wet and wetter; the winter is, in many ways, the hardest to deal with, it's blazing hot and humid. The reason it's blazing hot and humid is because it doesn't rain every single day in the winter, it's relatively dry and it doesn't flood. In contrast, the summer is the monsoon season. It rains every day, sometimes heavily. It floods. But, at least it's cooler. A lot cooler. The humidity is always the same. May is the month when Vietnam transitions from the really sweaty hot season to the less sweaty rainy season. Why do I keep coming back? Richard Holliday asked himself that question almost every day.

Maybe because it’s a tropical paradise. Maybe that’s so for the admin guys that rent, a little hooch off-post and have ‘maid service’, but not so much for the grunt in the field. It’s a little difficult to enjoy a tropical paradise when you’re the endangered tiger being hunted. Holliday, on the other hand, was the hunter. It makes a little bit of difference, he surmised.

Staff Sergeant Richard Holliday took a deep breath. Reporting to the Company Commander on a Sunday morning was never a good thing. He knocked on the green painted door.

Come in. Captain Hinkle said.

Holliday entered the small room and stood before Hinkle's desk with a salute. Holliday reporting as ordered, sir.

Hinkle returned his salute. Sit down, Holliday. There was a small stack of white forms on the left side of the desk and a sealed manila envelope on the right. Hinkle looked up and down at the Staff Sergeant, and shook his head. Holliday, sometimes I just don't know what to do with you.

Sir?

Can you tell me what that object is leaning on the wall behind me?

Well sir, I believe the nomenclature is, 'top cover, engine compartment, truck, utility, one quarter ton, M151.' But, then again, I'm not a mechanic.

Very good, Holliday, you qualify for 91 Bravo school. Is there anything that looks... abnormal, about the hood of Colonel Potts' Jeep?

Holliday strained his eyes, and studied the hood leaning against the wall. There was a quizzical look in his eyes. Not sure I follow, sir.

Very funny Holliday, I'm not in the mood right now. Let me rephrase the question, is there anything abnormal about the hood, in comparison to other items of the same part number?

It would appear that someone welded the words 'Head Twit' to it, sir.

Now how do you think that happened?

It would appear Charlie must have infiltrated our compound. Very sorry about that sir.

Riiiiiight. Charlie can't spell.

Scuttlebutt is that what he did to First Sergeant Maddox didn't go too well with the troops.

I realize First Sergeant Maddox was popular with the men, but rules are rules.

"There are rules, sir, and then there are the spirit of rules… I mean, I'm just sayin', sir."

"Holliday, I'm lecturing you, not the other way around."

Sorry, sir. But, it sounds like you've already made up your mind, about whatever it is that you are making up your mind about.

Not true. Look Holliday, I'm on your side, but forget for a moment disrespecting senior officers, you can't just go damaging government property. I mean I’ve got my own opinion of colonel Potts too, but I’m not at liberty to share it. Neither are you.

Holliday remained silent. He studied the stack of white papers on Hinkle's desk. He recognized the forms. It was a completed Article 15. In other words, Hinkle wanted to bust him back to an E5. Or maybe even an E4. I have no comment sir. Other than, judging by the paperwork sitting on your desk, the statement that you are on my side is of questionable accuracy.

Look Holliday, you're our most talented sniper, and a first rate LRRP operator. The fact of the matter is, I can't afford to lose you. But the colonel is pissed. Royally so. However, it just so happens, I may have an out for you. See the papers to your left, and the envelope to your right?

Yes sir.

You're leaving this office with one of those.

May I ask what the contents are of the envelope to your left?

That, Holliday, is the sixty four thousand dollar question.

I don't understand, sir.

"I'm serious. I actually don't know. The only thing I do know is I got an order, directly from MACV command, to send someone down to headquarters. That someone needs to be, and I'm quoting verbatim, 'A highly qualified sniper, experienced in long range reconnaissance missions in enemy territory, capable of independent operation.' I'm guessing that they want someone for some sort of special ops mission. You fit that bill perfectly. Plus, it would get you out of town for a while so the dust can settle."

Well sir, it doesn't sound like I have much of a choice. I guess I'll take the envelope.

Hinkle pushed the envelope towards Holliday. Good. You win the game show. You’re jumping on a chopper headed to Saigon leaving at ten hundred hours. These are your orders.

Holliday examined the manila envelope, with the words ‘Top Secret, Recipient's Eyes Only’ stamped across the seal.

Holliday returned to his cot, removed his jungle boots, and opened the envelope. It was an Operations Order, in standard Operations Order format at that. He swigged the last from a can of soda pop he grabbed from the rec area the night before, popped a wad of chewing snuff in to his mouth, and then laid back in his cot to read the order.

SITUATION

Friendly Forces

MACV Headquarters, Saigon, ARVN forces, based in Saigon, presence maintained to the Cambodian border.

Enemy Forces

Viet Cong insurgents scattered in the region within Vietnam. Viet Cong, NVA, PAVN, and Khmer Rouge militants staged at multiple locations across the Cambodian border. Recent activities have bolstered NVA and PAVN forces at strategic locations near southern Vietnam.

MISSION

Joint ARVN/US Intelligence has learned that there will be a meeting of top military officials from NVA, PAVN, and the Khmer Rouge, occurring in the town of Svay Rieng in Cambodia on Friday, May 15, at or about nineteen hundred hours local time. These individuals have been identified as high priority targets. The Selected Individual will enter Cambodia, and conduct a sniper mission with the objective of the termination of as many of the identified targets as possible. Details on the targets and objectives will be provided.

EXECUTION

No specific means and methods for executing the mission have been identified. The Selected Individual will report directly to the Commander, MACV, at headquarters in Saigon upon the receipt of these orders to receive a detailed briefing and an informational packet. It is expected that the Selected Individual will develop and detail a strategy for the successful execution of the mission.

It is further expected that the Selected Individual will incorporate a plan for the safe return to MACV headquarters, to the extent possible without compromising the basic mission.

COMMAND AND SIGNAL

This section is not applicable. No communications will be made with organizations or individuals outside of the staff of the Commander, MACV. It is not anticipated that radiotelephonic or other communications will be available during the execution of the mission.

SERVICE AND SUPPORT

The Selected Individual will be issued rations and billets during the length of stay. Limited material support during the planning phase will be provided. See Commander MACV for details. No support will be available during the execution of the mission.

Wow. Let's see, Holliday thought. Wandering though the mountainous region of northern Vietnam was one thing, but that whole Mekong Delta region was sapped out with unfriendlies on almost every square inch. It reads like a suicide mission. Maybe he should have taken the Article 15 instead.

The Huey's twin blades made an unmistakable and unique low-pitched thumping sound after the initial high pitched whine of the rotor spin-up as the helicopter lifted off the ground and gained flight speed. It was a First Cav bird. These fuckers are crazy; they literally just fly right over Charlie and take hits. The door gunner looked bored. He wore a blue bandana and chewed on some dried fruit.

Aren't you worried about VC outside? Holliday shouted over the noise of the helicopter.

Nah, not along this route. It's pretty mellow.

The right side pilot climbed back into the crew area, and plugged his mic cord into the gunner's station. Tell you what, why don't you get some stick time up front? I want to have a little fun.

Sure thing sir! The corporal eagerly climbed up into the right seat.

What's going on? Holliday asked warily.

The pilot was a Warrant Officer. Just getting a little target practice. He swung open the top feeder of the M60 machine gun, pulled the bolt back, placing the ammo belt in the track, and closed it again.

Sir? Holliday asked.

Yes?

If you don't want that thing to jam on the first round, I'd highly advise you to put an empty link on the leading round.

Oh?

Holliday opened the feeder, stripped off the first round and replaced the belt, leaving a leading link in place, and closed the feeder. There you go.

Thanks. Strap in, we're about to go for a ride.

The helicopter suddenly took a nose dive, and skimmed the river below at high speed a few feet above the water. The target was a skiff with a big tarp over it. They flew directly over it.

Damn he said. Didn't draw any fire.

Fuck, Holliday thought to himself. What the hell is he doing? The helicopter angled up, lost speed, rotated, and dove down again towards the skiff. This time there were AK47s aimed at it.

Hell yeah! The pilot screamed as the helicopter passed the skiff on the door gunner's side. He cut loose with the M60, showering the skiff as several VC dove off the boat. A large explosion shook the helicopter violently, as a round had apparently hit some explosives.

Holliday was beside himself. They send me on a suicide mission, and I'm going to die before I even get there!

Chapter 1 – The Hit

MACV Headquarters, Saigon, Vietnam, 1970

The room was barren. It had dingy, damp, unpainted concrete walls. It was probably originally some sort of officer’s quarters, but was sitting vacant right now. A high metal louvered window was cranked open, allowing the cool, wet air of the morning rain to circulate. The only items in the empty room were a warped wooden desk, a cot, a slowly rotating ceiling fan, and an exposed overhead light bulb. And a flickering black and white television. That was a nice score; the enlisted club would want it back at some point. If the door wasn’t locked from the inside and the fan wasn’t present, you might think it was some kind of prison cell. But it wasn’t. This was Staff Sergeant Richard Holliday’s ‘home’ for the next several days. Only the top senior officers of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam headquarters (or more simply, MACV), including the commanding General himself, knew why Holliday was there. To the rest, he was just somebody that was there and nobody else would really notice, and if you did, don’t ask, because you won’t get an answer.

Holliday’s tall, slender figure, sitting bolt upright in a creaky wooden chair, dressed in a set of pressed olive drab fatigues and jungle boots, looked right at home in the dungeon-like space, which he designated his ‘AO’ or ‘Area of Operation.’ In military jargon, an AO is any place where one is camping out or residing at any given point in time, more or less. The mission op spec called for Holliday to have a secure, private AO for planning and preparation. This was all very necessary, since Charlie has eyes and ears even within MACV’s secure compound itself. Charlie is usually aware of the big operations, that’s unavoidable; but Charlie can’t be aware of this one. The fewer people that know, the fewer failure modes there are. But it goes both ways. That means less support as well.

A mosquito buzzed overhead as Holliday reached for the empty steel soda can and pulled the tin of snuff chewing tobacco out of his shirt pocket. Something was bothering him. And it wasn’t the mosquito. He looked over at his issue M21 sniper rifle leaning on the wall next to his cot. That was the problem. It had bugged him since he drew the rifle from the armory at his unit in Pleiku. He shook it. God damn the armorers. There was play in the barrel assembly and the stock. He begged them and pleaded with them, but they still don’t get it. They never get it. Fine, make sure your M16’s and your .45’s are set exactly to issue standards. Whatever. They don’t have to shoot straight. At least they don’t have to shoot that straight. It really did take a decent amount of effort to get this weapon dialed in, but the goddamn armorers pulled out the metal shim, calling it an ‘unauthorized modification’ and threw it in the trash pile back at Pleiku. Fuck.

Holliday put the tin of snuff back in his pocket, and instead pulled the Kabar survival knife he scored in an equipment trade back in Danang with the Marines. What he really needed was tin snips, but the Kabar would pretty much cut through anything that wasn’t plate steel, or so it seemed anyway. It took some doing, but he converted the steel soda can into a shim, like he had previously fashioned, which incidentally was also made out of a steel soda can. After a quick disassembly, he formed the shim over the lower gas cylinder and refit it back into the stock. Perfect. Surely the sighting of the scope was off, but consistency and repeatability is more important. Maybe he’d have some time to dial it in again at the range. Maybe not. It can’t be that far off though. At 300 meters, who gives a fuck? You can nail a target, even with a sixteen, in the blind, after drinking. At 1,200 meters, you need every edge you can get. At 2,000 meters, you gotta brief your projectiles on the exact trajectory and path they must take to reach their targets and hope they take notes. At least there was enough left of the bottom of the can to use it as a spittoon. He pulled his can of snuff back out of his pocket and stuck a pinch behind his cheek. Nasty habit, but, at least it wasn’t smoking. He couldn’t count the number of targets he had eliminated solely due to the fact that their heads were marked by the glow of a lit cigarette. There was that one fat ass VC colonel that took a round right through the middle of his cigar, and out the back of his neck. You should have seen the expression frozen on his face.

This was a very different kind of mission for Holliday. Holliday was a LRRP operator. Long Range Recon Patrol. His home base was the 4th Infantry Division, which was located to the north of Saigon in Pleiku, which was not that far away from the North Vietnamese Army’s heavy forces. Close to the shit storms. Saigon was like a vacation spot in comparison. The typical mission Holliday was used to operating in consisted of four-man teams, which would be inserted by a group of five helicopters somewhere in the mountainous jungle region, to be extracted five days later by the same group of helicopters. In the meantime, they would have traversed dozens, if not hundreds, of kilometers to some remote command outpost, sniped some targets, or noted some activities, or both, and then returned. They usually did both. Can’t do one without the other. Can’t go deer hunting without bringing back some meat. But no, this was a lone operation, one that Holliday was charged with executing by himself.

Vietnam is a long, narrow strip of a country, spanning over 1,000 miles from the northern most to the southern most point. The north portion is controlled by NVA and People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) forces, headquartered in Hanoi. The south portion is largely controlled by the friendly Army of Vietnam (ARVN) forces, backed by U.S. forces, headquartered in Saigon. The north allied Viet Cong guerillas were more or less embedded throughout the ARVN/U.S. controlled territory. The confounding thing is that Cambodia, which borders Vietnam to the southwest, is being used as a staging area for NVA, PAVN, and VC forces, allowing them easy access to Saigon and points south. And the Cambodian government, destabilized by the Khmer, is facilitating this occupation. At least for the time being.

The big guys, the generals, the colonels, e.g. the MACV commanders, had decided that there was only one option, which the president authorized. That option was an invasion of Cambodia to attack key North Vietnamese salient targets near the border. That was a big job. Charlie would halfway expect that kind of thing to happen at some point, at some time, and you can’t entirely hide a planning operation that big.

Enter the Sandman. Holliday is the Sandman. Imagine if Charlie could put a sniper within a thousand meters of a collection of the top commanding officers of MACV and ARVN forces. That would be like a wet dream for them. Well, it turns out that intelligence has managed to find out that there would be a meeting between the local NVA commanders and the Khmer Rouge in the Cambodian city of Svay Rieng, at a local restaurant on the edge of Tonle Way Kou, which is a large, narrow lake cutting through the city. This was a unique opportunity to take out some of the high level opposition before the invasion. They considered some options. Airstrike? Generally not effective against individual targets. Bombing campaign? Napalm? Completely out of the question, at least at this stage. But, there was an opportunity to get one man, a sniper, within a reasonable range. Take one out? The mission would be a success. That would shake them up. Two? Gravy. More? That could constitute a deciding factor in the invasion. The mission was so secret that even MACV's own Special Operations Group wasn't involved, and for good reason. If Charlie even got a hint that SOG was on the move, then the meeting wouldn’t happen, and the commanders would all scurry like rats.

Holliday secured the M21 sniper rifle and went back to his map. It was just like a standard sectional topo map, except that it was labeled a ‘Joint Operations Graphic.’ So, legends and features were labeled in English, French, and Vietnamese. And, on the Cambodian side, place names and features were also in Cambodian. Reading Vietnamese is like reading a European language. You don’t understand it, but you can kind of pronounce it and you can remember it. Reading Cambodian is like looking at hieroglyphics; except, hieroglyphics are somewhat intuitive. To a westerner, Cambodian looks more like a doctor’s handwriting when he happens to also be experiencing an epileptic attack.

Planning wise, it was one of the more difficult missions Holliday had encountered, despite the relative close proximity to friendly forces. Distances weren’t particularly great. Svay Rieng is only five kilometers from the nearest border location, and the target area is only