Southeast Asia. Late 60’s.

The slick dipped down, causing my stomach to fly up. Luckily for me I had a strong stomach and kept my breakfast inside of it. I heard retching but didn’t look to see who it was. I already knew. Eagle Eyes would puke in a rocking chair. No big deal. He’d be fine.

A quick up motion of the chopper put my stomach back where it should be. The Huey flared and dropped a few feet then floated in ground effect just above the clearing floor.

We exited the bird quickly spread out and dropped to the  ground. The slick pilot waved a hand in salute and the chopper lifted, turning and tracking off to its right.  Total time on the ground was fifteen seconds.

Thirty seconds later, the chopper now out of our hearing, we got up and moved away from the LZ quickly but quietly and moved into the jungle. We hadn’t been shot or mortared so we figured we were good to go. We all knew that had we been seen, or worse, expected, we would pretty much be dead by this time.

I glanced at my watch and saw we had hit the LZ about ten minutes ahead of schedule. Good deal. If Charlie was coming after us we might get away from him before he got there. Or not. It’s worked both ways for us. This wasn’t our first time into Indian country.

Eagle Eyes took point and we let him get a lead of about a minute before the rest of the team moved out. It was his job to break trail, scout ahead and meet up with our local guides.

 Little Hoss (6ft 6inces 220 lbs. of him) led the rest of the team, his M60 looking like a toy in his arms. I was next, carrying my XM-21 carefully. Billy Joe followed me, and Max and Jack brought up the rear.

We had a long day ahead of us. Old man Sol, hidden by the jungle, was just raising his head over the landscape and it was already hot as hell. I’m from Las Vegas but we don’t have heat there like they did in the jungles of ….where we were. (Can’t say, even to this day it’s classified.) The sweat was pouring off us minutes after we hit ground and our targets were some 10 klicks from our LZ. A long hike, but we had plenty of time. Our target wasn’t expected to be at the outpost that was our goal, and his, until late afternoon. Even so, we needed to cover two klicks an hour.

Like me, Max carried the XM-21 rifle. Jack was his spotter, as Eagle Eyes was mine. Hoss and Billy Joe were our shooters. Basically, our guardian Angels. This was our fortieth mission as a team, so I would say our Angels had earned their money. We were all still alive in spite of everything the VC had done to kill us.

The team, all of us, were not military in the true sense. But we had all had some military training, to some degree or another.

Big Hoss was a former Green Beret that had been dismissed the service under ‘interesting circumstances’ as he put it. He’d been on an A Team in Nam. The Team was supporting a platoon of infantry in a fire fight when the CO of the platoon decided to make a unilateral advance to the rear. This left his platoon kind of in the lurch and Hoss, understandably, took umbrage with the coward. Hoss fragged him.

It was the right thing to do at the time, the gutless LT almost cost the lives of his entire platoon. But the Army didn’t see it exactly that way. On the other hand, Hoss’ actions during the rest of the fight could have earned him a Silver Star, at the least.. A quandary for the brass. They finally decided to kick him out, but ‘for the good of the service’ not quite a dishonorable discharge. Not an honorable one either.

Anyway, Hoss was soon approached by a man with a plan. Hoss listened, nodded his head and went to a farm somewhere in Virginia for more training.

Billy Joe and Max were former Army. Both had done tours in Viet Nam, seen action, been decorated and decided not to re-enlist when the time came. They, too, were approached by a man with a plan, and they too liked his proposition. Off to the same farm big Hoss was going to, they went.

Jack wasn’t really military. In fact he had trained to be a CIA covert operator. And he had done well in training. So well he was made a trainer himself. This was not what Jack wanted, and he made his unhappiness known. Often and loudly. Somewhere along the line, his beefing was heard. A man with a plan contacted Jack and soon enough he was our trainer, then team leader. Jack was the ‘Old Man’ of our team. Because of his previous training of course. But also because he was the oldest of us all. He was 22 years old.

Henry Eagle Eyes and I had been Marines. We had all but grown up together as boys. Henry was a Chiricahua Apache. I am one quarter Mescalero Apache. My father’s mother was a full blooded Mescalero.

My dad, with marvelous foresight, made arrangements with Federal idiots aka bureaucrats, and tribal leaders for me to spend summers on Apache lands near Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I was accepted by the Bidánku band, and at age four was taken by my father and ‘dropped off’. It was a very scary thing for me. Hell, I had NO idea what was going on.

The elders of the band knew how scared I would be and had arranged for a boy slightly older than me as a sort of teacher, guide and leader. Thus I met Henry Eagle Eyes. Years later he told me that he had fought the idea of being a teacher to an outsider. That changed as soon as we met. He knew I was scared, but he saw no fear in my eyes. And there is a difference. He also saw I was excited to be there. And scared. Did I mention that?

From day one, until I had to quit coming at age fifteen, Henry and I spent every minute of every summer together. He, and the warriors of the band, taught me so many things I can’t list them all. How to hunt, make and use a bow and arrows. Skin a kill properly so every last vestige of the pray could be used. How to build a wickiup. Start a fire with stones. Stalk prey silently. Make and use a spear. The many ways to use a knife. How to ride Apache style. About music. How to make a play a flute and drums. Life the Apache way.

But it wasn’t all a one way street. I had skills, as I got older, that I passed on to Henry. How to read, for instance. Oh, he could read, but not really. I showed him how to really read. And to enjoy it. To this day, Henry is a voracious reader. He has more mail order degrees than you can shake a stick at.  He can read in six languages including Latin. In this case the pupil exceeded the teacher by a long way.

I hit fifteen years old. The band decided it was time for me to become a man, in their eyes. Late for an Apache, but I had only spent summers there. I went through the rite of passage and became a full member of the Bidánku band of Chiricahua Apache. It was a great day for me. One of the best of my life.

Sometime during that last summer, Henry and I became blood brothers.  Real blood brothers. I think one of the best examples of how that is done is actually from a movie, The Outlaw Josie Wales. If you don’t know what I mean, watch it.

Henry and I stayed in touch between summers. Rare phone calls, a lot of letters. And he was allowed to visit my Dad and I a few times during holidays. During these visits I taught Henry how to swim. Shoot a gun. Eat pizza. (Okay, not exactly a hard subject to teach.) How to cook white man style. Chase girls. A great many things. We were never bored.

The Viet Nam war was at its height in the 60’s. Being a lover of my country, the son of a former Marine, I heard the bugle call and responded by charging for the sound of the guns as soon as I graduated High School.  Pop was not a happy camper. The thought of having his only child killed in a war he thought was crazy didn’t appeal to him. On the other hand, Dad, a former Marine, knew what it meant to run towards the sound of the guns. And…to see the elephant. He still didn’t like the idea though.

But he knew how stubborn I can be. It’s the Irish in me. Mom, may she be revered and rest in peace forever, was a redheaded Irish lass that Dad totally adored. And dad is Irish too, thus my name, Patrick McCullough (yes, I know that McCullough is Scottish also. We’re the Irish part.)

Coincidentally, Henry called me to congratulate me on graduation. I told him my plans and he said wait until he got to Vegas and he was going with me. Before I could answer he’d hung up. Phone calls were very expensive for him so he couldn’t stay on long.

Two days later I got a call. Henry was at the Union Pacific station waiting for me to pick him up. So I did. Thus did Henry and I join the Marines together that same day.  Two weeks later we found ourselves in a new hell called Paris Island. A place where recruits were known as sand fleas. Wonder why.

Henry and I quickly discovered we were in much better shape than the rest of our training platoon. Henry more so than I. The training, while not easy, wasn’t all that difficult either. Running was a treat, as we had done a lot of running in Oklahoma. It was just something we did. But with full packs, a lot harder but doable.

My blood brother and I actually enjoyed it. Well, parts of it. Sort of. The rifle range for instance was our favorite. Henry and I had both been good with rifles as kids. Dad insisted that I know how to shoot and Henry grew up with a bow in his hand. And a rifle. Needless to say we excelled on the range, which impressed our Drill Instructor and the Range officer no end.

The Recruits trained with the M-14 battle rifle. The M-16 wasn’t being issued to the Corps then, the plastic POS would come later. I fell in love with that M-14 rifle. From the first time I fired it, I loved it. And I think it fell in love with me. Even my D.I. said it was uncanny the way I could shoot that piece.

The accident happened on a long distance hike. We had just been told to take five. I kept my pack on, but sat down, then laid down. Another member of my training platoon, not watching around him, dropped his pack. It hit me between my neck and shoulder. I could hear something pop. There was no pain at first. But when I tried to stand up I thought someone had stabbed me with a bayonet.

To make a long story short, the broken bone healed. But if left me with nerve damage. I couldn’t move my head fully from side to side and I no longer could pull myself up, as in a chin up. My Marine Corps days were over. I fought it, to no avail. Henry and I parted in the Apache fashion. Which is about the same as anyone else. Just less shown emotion.

I was waiting in special quarters for transients for my paperwork to get processed with my medical discharge. A man with a plan showed up. We chatted about my injury, my background and a lot of other not important things.

The man then gave me his proposition. My first reaction? “Oh hell yeah”. Hell, I was young, impressionable, and loved my country. I probably should have thought about it more but… I didn’t.  So I was in, and the man explained some things in more detail. 

I listened and realized that the man might want more recruits. I asked. He said yes he did. I mentioned Henry. The man nodded. A few minutes later he left.

Two hours after the man with the plan departed, Henry strolled through the door of my quarters, a big smile on his face. But he had NO idea why he was there, and didn’t give a damn. We were back together. Nuff said.

Two days later we found ourselves on some kind of training grounds somewhere in the Eastern U.S. And there we met the guys that would make up the rest of our team.

The training at the farm made Parris Island seem like Disneyland. I won’t, can’t, go into detail. But some of the stuff was really esoteric. I mean, why would I need, or want, to know how to build a bomb out of household chemicals? Or pick a lock? Or crack a safe? Or sabotage a vehicle? Or kill a man with my hands in six different ways? Or read a code, let alone make one? And a bunch of other stuff. Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane seemed rather silly to me, but Henry loved it.

It was an intense six weeks of training, both field and classroom. And on the range. It was there that I was introduced to the XM-21 rifle. It was fairly new. It was specially designed. It was still more or less experimental, thus the X part of the name. But basically it was an M-14 with enhancements.  It had a Leatherwood designed Redfield 3x9 Adjustable Ranging Telescope. With a National Match Grade barrel.  It had some wonderful trigger adjustments. It had a free floating barrel. It could shoot the eye out of gnat at 700 yards. And it was all mine.

I spent hours and hours on the range, learning how to use the ART sight. It had certain peculiarities that I needed to know, and I soon mastered them. As did all of the team. Some better than others. For instance, I was the best. Not by far, but far enough. Max, (Cornelius Hawthorne Maxwell, thus Max) was second. Henry was a close third and Hoss only a point behind Henry. The other two were a few points below Hoss.

After school we were sent to an Air Force base in Florida. From there we were flown to San Francisco. Then to Hawaii and Guam. Then Manila and to Saigon and then finally to our destination, Bangkok Thailand. The only time we got off the plane was to get on another. Food, such as it was, was provided. We could use the restrooms wherever we landed otherwise we use a honey bucket on the transports we flew. Mostly C-130s which meant that even honey buckets were at a premium.

We arrived. We were met at the airport by two guys dressed in white suits with white fedoras. I looked around to see if the French were still in charge but no. And these guys had American accents. Which wasn’t really all that reassuring to any of us.

After gathering up our bags, clearing customs and immigration, we piled into a van with no windows. And as became instantly apparent, no air conditioning. Just what we needed after having flown half-way around the world the last two days or so. I’m not even sure what day it was that we landed. And didn’t much care. None of us that made that trip were really bright eyed and bushy tailed. Hell, it was so bad none of us even discussed getting laid. Now that’s tired.

Two hours later we got to where we were going. A large house in the middle of some kind of planted fields. Obviously a plantation of some sort but I had no idea what was grown there and none of us cared much either. (In the entire 18 months I was there, I never did find out what was grown on that plantation. After I got home, I heard it might have been poppies.) We were shown to rooms, two to a room, and told dinner would be at six p.m. local. And that it was now ten a.m.

Henry and I dropped our stuff in the middle of the room, took off our boots and fell into our beds. We had said nothing and it took us zero time to fall asleep.

And thus started our little adventure working for the Company. As mercenaries targeting bigwig North Vietnamese officials, High ranking North Vietnamese Army officers and any Viet Cong that come into our sights. We got paid a small stipend for living expenses, plus room and board in the plantation house. Which we quickly dubbed The Farm in honor of our training ground that was roundly hated by all of us.

We also got head money. Yeah, we were bounty hunters. Dead or alive like the old west. Well except for the Alive part. A target we serviced earned everyone on the team some money. The Shooter earns $5000, his spotter $3500, the backup shooters $2500 each and the Angels $1500 each.  If we had outside help, such as montagnard scouts, we would each chip in some money to give to them. It was smart business, they kept us alive so why not thank them? (Side note: at the present time I have over 200 montagnard aka Degar aka Highlander people working for me at the hotel. I trust each of them with my life, and they return that trust. They enjoy good jobs, benefits and lives. They love me, and I them. Nuff said).

There was more. Sometimes the South Vietnamese government would have a reward for some of our targets. We would collect the reward and split it amongst ourselves, evenly. So if we serviced a company target and he had, say an $18000 reward on his head, we would each make another $3000.

We’d been in country for two weeks before we got our first mission. And found out there were other teams operation just as we were. Six of them to be exact. Now that was a lot of people going into field and meant there were a lot of targets.  And a lot of competition. What we didn’t know is that our ‘employer’ had a LOT of targets for us.

So mission number one came and went. Max was the designated shooter for that mission. He nailed his target. A Viet Cong Colonel that was wanted in Saigon for murder, rape, torture, genocide and other offenses of that type. An all-around nice guy.

Time passed. Missions came and went. All were lucrative. Some went very well. Some went kind of poorly. And some went right in the shitter.

My guys and I had been on about six missions when we heard that one of the teams had been caught in country by bad guys. Mainly, NVA. Guys had been wounded, a few badly, before this, but there had been no deaths. The particular team had just reached their target area when it stumbled into a VC patrol. Normally they would have cut contact with the enemy and gone to their designated LZ for pickup. Instead, for whatever reason that we never discovered, they chose to fight it out. One member of the team survived to reach the pickup point. We all hoped the others died fighting. What the VC would do to any of us they caught made all of us shudder to think about.

That was the worst. Another team was picked to go after the same very high priority target. The two shooters and one spotter were killed. The target was never reached. None of us had a clue who the target was and really didn’t want to know. We did know he was a high ranking NVA general. Not Giap but someone close to him.

It fell to our team to go after this POS general. I don’t know why we were picked. Other than the fact we had the best kill record of all the teams that were in country at the time. Which was bad luck for us, I suppose.