ONE: RT LARIMER

December 25, 1969

Northern Laos

Dawn. The first light was only beginning to glimmer over the far ridgeline.  With it a light wind came shuddering quietly through the treetops. It gave the air an uncharacteristic chill against exposed skin. 

Otherwise, all was tranquil.

The team had weathered a fierce thunderstorm the previous night. A steady patter of droplets seeping through the leaves overhead, soaked the ground and their muddy black and drab green clothing. 

It was a dreary Christmas morning and RT Larimer, hungry, weary and sodden, knew that they were in seriously deep shit.

Staff Sergeant Paul Medved – better known to his team mates simply as “Bear” - was flattened next to the base of a tree. Strands of dirty blonde hair peaked from under an OD rag tied around his forehead. 

He was acutely aware of the competing odors of muddy vegetation and fresh gun oil as he kept his AK-47 sighted in on the most likely avenue of enemy approach. A slight tremor quivered through his left hand. Nerves.

Bear wiped a spatter of blood from above his eyes with the heel of his palm and craned his neck to peer at his team leader. The rivulets of camouflage paint streaking Sergeant First Class Casey’s face couldn’t hide his stress. He looked stressed. They all did.

They all were.

RT Larimer had been dropped into a mountainous area of northern Laos, a patch of land sandwiched between the borders of China and North Vietnam, late in the morning of the 24th via MACV-SOG helicopters.  The team consisted of three American Special Forces sergeants and eight Nung tribesmen. While some opinion leaders back in The World considered the Nungs to be mere mercenaries, the SF guys knew better. They saw the Nungs as some of their most reliable allies in a generally adverse environment.

Larimer had been covertly inserted as part of the Bright Light operation – a continuing effort to locate and retrieve American POWs being held in denied areas. They also sought American evadees - pilots who were on the run after being shot down over enemy territory.

According to the most current intelligence, the team was within several klicks of a temporary prison camp.  The POWs in the target holding camp were thought to include a handful of U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots who had been shot down in Laos and the Vietnamese border areas. The flyers were supposedly being held in the transit facility while en route to the more severe – and more secure – environs of Hanoi.

The mission of RT Larimer, a SOG recon element, was merely to get eyes on the target and verify the presence of the Americans. A larger contingency team was on standby to attempt the actual rescue.

MACV-SOG (Studies and Observation Group) was a conglomeration of volunteer military men – consisting mainly of Army Special Forces, but also composed of USAF Air Commandos and Navy SEALs – under the U.S. Military Assistance Command/Vietnam. It was the quintessential covert action group of the war, charged with a variety of raiding, intelligence and sabotage functions.

SOG was divided into three geographical sub-units: Command and Control North (CCN), with headquarters at Da Nang; Command and Control Central (CCC), at Kontum; and Command and Control South (CCS), at Ban Me Thuot.

Recon Team Larimer was part of CCN. Its cadre also occasionally referred to CCN, with typically dark humor, as Casket and Coffin – North. In part, it was merely recognition of reality, as a high proportion of its members did in fact return to the States in sealed metal coffins.

The team leader, also known as the One-Zero in SOG terminology, was SFC Luke Casey. Casey hailed from a small town in Larimer County, Colorado. It was he who christened his team with the name – an homage to his home in the Rockies.

Casey was on his third tour of duty in Vietnam, his second with SOG. An easy-going leader and skilled small unit tactician, Casey was, as the saying went, good in the woods.

Bear, who hailed from Pittsburgh, was the assistant team leader, or the One-One. The One-Two, or radio operator, was SGT Dominic Pastori, a native of Cleveland.  All were prematurely aged, combat veterans of the Army’s Special Forces – Green Berets.

The eight Nungs, like many of their fellow tribesmen, had volunteered to fight for the Americans in order to drive the Communists away from their ancestral lands. Although they were loyal and relatively well-paid combatants, they had definitely not signed on to defend their Vietnamese neighbors, whom they uniformly hated.

RT Larimer’s insertion point had been a clearing at the base of a supposedly deserted mountain.  As practice demanded, Casey was the first man to step off the chopper and set foot onto the ground. As the team members followed, they immediately dropped into a circular defensive position.

The Huey quickly lifted off, leaving them alone in hostile territory. The pilot wheeled the craft about to the left and proceeded to make a series of dummy insertions elsewhere – a maneuver designed to confound possible enemy watchers as to the true location of the team.

After twenty minutes of silent observation, Casey gave his men the signal to move out. The eleven men fell into their normal patrol formation, maintaining observation and fields of fire in all directions, and slipped into the thicket.

Progress had been slow, with the team frequently pausing to look and listen for signs of enemy activity.  The surrounding silence of the trees was broken only by the buzz of insects and magnified sounds of their own breathing.

Shortly after the mid-day meal break, the point man froze in his steps and dropped into a crouch, indicating he detected signs of life in the area. The team eased into defensive positions, listening for movement.

All was quiet except for the usual sounds of the local wildlife. 

Casey huddled with Bear, Pastori and the senior Nung to orient themselves on the map. The grid coordinates were double-checked and re-confirmed. It appeared they would approach the suspected location of the POW camp within the hour.

Pastori made a scheduled and hushed radio contact with the folks back at the launch site to report their status. Satisfied that everyone was in the loop and all was going according to the mission profile, they set off in the original direction of travel.

In a muted flash of light, the point man was abruptly pitched backward. His ragged feet were flung up and over his head as he was enveloped in a gray-brown cloud of dirt and smoke.  The sharp report of the explosion reverberated in Casey’s ears as the clatter of automatic weapons fire erupted from up ahead.

“Ambush, front!” he yelled.

Instantaneously, the team responded with an immediate action drill. The surviving team members hopped off the line of march, alternating to the left and right, in order to clear their fields of fire.  The first man still in position – Bear - instantly fired off a magazine on full automatic toward the unseen enemy.

Weapon empty, Bear simultaneously turned, reached into a pouch for a fresh magazine, and ran down the impromptu pathway formed by the right and left files of his Nung and American teammates.

The second man also sprayed a magazine to the front. When his firing pin clicked dry on an empty chamber, he turned to follow Bear. The third did likewise. The pattern was repeated by each member of the team.

The tactic, known as the Australian Peel, was designed to give the enemy the false impression that a much larger body of troops was laying down heavy suppressive fire against them.

As hoped, the enemy backed off momentarily, allowing RT Larimer to break contact and escape to the rear. 

It was obvious that the mission was canked. Nodding to Casey, Pastori cranked up the radio and advised their HQ that they were compromised and that an extraction would be needed on call.

Now on the run, RT Larimer spent the rest of the afternoon, and the greater part of the evening, playing cat and mouse with the pursuing North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regulars.  The NVA smelled blood and were trying to get an accurate fix on them.

The three Americans were well aware of the fact that the NVA offered a special bonus to any of its troops who could capture a living SOG soldier. Fearing capture far more than death, the three Americans had an informal, yet nonetheless binding, understanding – none of them would leave any of the others behind alive to face captivity and whatever else...