War indelibly brands the minds of its participants and victims. Nothing exorcises war's psychological residue. In that very real sense, there are no survivors. That's the devastating premise set forth by Mike Sutton who spent three tours of duty as part of the relatively unknown Military Assistant Command/Vietnam. No Survivors follows three infantry advisors: Hunter Morgan, a 3-tour vet fighting a war his country is fighting against; Army Medic Henry Small Deer, a full-blooded Sioux, who'd rather fight than stitch; Jesse Edwards, a naïve recruit with a hidden dark side and Samantha Crawford, an Army nurse working in primitive operating rooms and rural hospital wards. A spy has been planted in the advisors' team house and, as a result, the enemy is waiting at every turn. Only luck, skill and combat experience allow the advisors to survive the most inhuman ground assaults and bloody ambushes. Following an unthinkable climax, and in a brilliant piece of writing, the primary characters come to the bitter, painful realization that sometimes the life you give for your country . . . is not your own.
NO SURVIVORS
By MIKE SUTTONAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2004 MIKE SUTTON
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4184-4356-6 Chapter One
29 November 1969
A light shaft crawled across the Boeing's cabin floor, crept up the seat, and stopped on the soldier's sleeping face. His eyelids fluttered for an instant, then he turned away from the light, hovering just beneath sleep's surreal blanket.
The aircraft's flight leveled and the afternoon sunlight retreated toward the floor. Jesse Edwards swallowed. His ears popped. He opened his eyes slowly, blinking at the brightness, then kneaded them with balled fists and peered out the window.
To the north he could see lush green hills, blending into the mountains beyond. Along the coast, the dark blue sea faded to turquoise as it approached land. From twenty thousand feet the beach resembled a brown thread sandwiched between the jungle and water.
Large white clouds below the jet looked like huge cotton balls hung in the afternoon sky. Their shadows made dark bruises on the earth. The country beneath the clouds was bruised. The assault and battery of Vietnam occurred daily, though Edwards couldn't begin to imagine its ferocity.
The jet banked left. Now the window's view offered only blue sky.
Edwards' ears popped again.
The majority of the 707's other passengers, including Edwards, were "new meat." They peered out windows on both sides of the aircraft. The minority - returning "old meat" - seemed much more interested in snatching a few more moments of shuteye in the air-conditioned cabin than in Vietnam's postcard scenery. The only emotion common to both groups, whether they admitted it or not, was fear. The unknown cultivated anxiety in new meat. Old meat dreaded something worse ... the known.
No matter how the Vietnam virgins went home, none would take their naivet with them. War indelibly brands the minds of its participants and victims. No mental flak jacket or steel helmet exists to create immunity to combat's horror. Nothing exorcises war's psychological residue. In that sense, in any war, there are: no survivors.
* * *
Far south of the descending 707, a single engine L-19 "Bird-dog" droned incessantly, circling at a thousand feet, over the Mekong Delta.
A ragged line of soldiers moved north across the giant cobweb of cracks covering the paddies - a byproduct of the dry season's relentless heat. On this third day of another fruitless sweep operation, dust and heat were the only enemies they had engaged.
Hunter Morgan and his American partner, Staff Sergeant Small Deer, stayed a few paces behind the loose formation of tired, hot, sweaty South Vietnamese soldiers. For the moment, boredom, the foot soldier's natural enemy, represented their greatest danger.
Morgan's radio handset crackled, and Warrant Officer Wilbur Jackson's familiar voice came through from the Bird-dog above. "Dragon-Fire-Four-One, this is Shotgun-Two-One. Over."
He unhooked the radio handset from his field suspenders. "Four-One. Go," Morgan answered.
"Well, sports fans, looks like a slow day in the war from up here," Jackson said. "A highly sophisticated aircraft jockey like me could lose his edge after a few days of this. How long do you two plan to milk this R and R tour? Over."
"You're surprised we haven't seen anything?" Morgan returned grimly. "We planned this three weeks ago. We'll either see nothing or get our asses kicked royal because the VC have had so much time to set up for us." Morgan feared the latter; he had no direct proof yet, but the Vietcong seemed to be waiting for them around every tactical turn.
A few paces to Morgan's left, Small Deer lifted his own handset. He had a few choice words for Jackson, too. "Three-Eight here. I don't know what you're bitching about. At least you're sitting on your ass with a cool breeze in your face. Over." Small Deer looked in Morgan's direction; the handset only partially concealed his wide grin.
"Hey! Foxtrot-Uniform-ITLITLharlie-Kilo you, Sitting Bull, and that Pinto mare you wish you were riding. Now get off the air so I can talk to Four-One. At least he's a real grunt. Over."
Morgan smiled and pressed his talk switch. "Go easy on the pill pusher. You might need him one of these days. Over."
"You mean the Medicine Man is actually carrying medical supplies today? Over." Jackson's mock disbelief somewhat softened the sarcasm. Small Deer had been asking to become a "real grunt" for some time.
Morgan shrugged, and gave Small Deer an I tried look of surrender. "We're coming up on the last checkpoint. We'll swing back around and head southwest after that." He looked at his watch. "We ought to make the extraction point by 1700 if things stay this quiet. How much time do you have left on station? Over."
"I've got enough fuel for another half hour. After that, I'll have to head back to Bravo-Lima," Jackson said, referring to Bac Lieu, the provincial capital. "As soon as I clear the area, you folks will stumble across the bad guys, and I'll just have to fly back out here and save your gravel-agitating asses - like I always do. Over."
Morgan keyed his microphone. "We can rest easy, Medicine Man. The air farce has us covered."
"I heard that! You know I'm as army as you guys! Over."
"The only thing army about you is the 'Shotgun' in your call sign, and I doubt if you know one end of a real one from the other. Go on. Fly home to the rest of the REMFs," said Small Deer, pronouncing the term rimf. REMF stood for Rear Echelon Mother Fucker - a contemptuous term reserved for anyone involved in a non-combat mission. Joking aside, Small Deer and Morgan had seen Wil Jackson prove his courage too often to ever consider him a REMF.
"Thank God the army has something simple for people like you. I'm going to check out the rest of your route. Be back to you in a few minutes. Shotgun-Two-One. Out."
Small Deer shook his head. A thin smile creased his face. "Jackson's bored? That's a hoot! He should come down here and beat feet in this heat for three days. These daylight operations are bullshit! The VC work nights, we should too. Puts all the players on the same field. Sioux warriors don't like sunshine."
"Yeah," Morgan agreed. Like Small Deer, Morgan felt more comfortable on night operations, when his superior night vision game him an edge.
They continued across the field. With each step, the ground cracked and crunched like over-baked pie crust under their jungle boots. Morgan found the sound strangely reassuring, hypnotic, the audio equivalent of white stripes on a flat, deserted highway. Morgan's deliberate, regulated pace allowed him to scan the ground before him in wide arcs. The dry, sunbaked rice paddy resembled a piece of safety glass hit with a brick. The sea of fissures made finding signs of the Vietcong's passage difficult, but Morgan cared more about spotting and avoiding any deadly "seeds" the enemy might have planted on their way.
A hundred meters to their left, birds chirped in a line of trees separating what seemed like the infinite rice fields of the Mekong Delta. Their songs, like the earth crunching beneath dusty jungle boots, created a false sense of security, like lullabies for an abandoned baby.
The trees reminded Morgan of his father's farm in Indiana. The Indiana-front seemed a long way off at the moment. He was much more comfortable with this war than that one.
The death of...
