Into Vietnam

Into Vietnam
Shaun Clarke

Ultimate soldier. Ultimate mission. But will the SAS survive a nightmare journey into the tunnel lair of the Viet Cong?June 1966: 3 Squadron SAS (Australian Special Air Service) set up a Forward Operating Base in Vietnam’s Phuoc Tuy province, a swampy hell of jungle and paddy-fields forty-five miles east of Saigon in the heart of enemy territory. The Viet Cong have bases throughout the jungle, and the Australians soon find themselves under constant attack.Enter three members of the legendary 22 SAS, to assist in a major assault against the Viet Cong: Sergeant Jimmy ‘Jimbo’ Ashman, founding member of the Regiment; Sergeant Richard ‘Dead-eye Dick’ Parker, veteran of previous SAS operations in Malaya, Borneo and Aden; and Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick ‘Paddy’ Callaghan, pulled out of administration specially for this secret mission.Working under appalling conditions, Brits and Aussies must try to forge themselves into a potent fighting machine, as they have been tasked with the fearsome job of rooting the Viet Cong out of their labyrinthine tunnel system. It will be a journey into hell, and some will never return.

Into Vietnam

SHAUN CLARKE

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by 22 Books/Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1995

Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1995

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Cover photographs © MILpictures/Tom Weber/Getty Images (soldier); Shutterstock.com (textures)

Shaun Clarke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008155421

Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780008155438

Version: 2015-11-02

Contents

Cover (#ud8f23448-1cd9-5f8d-81e2-aacf57cf032a)

Title Page (#u38196660-fb26-589a-80e0-f8b6eca32ec5)

Copyright (#u79282fa2-0f65-5e2d-adf9-3ffcf1b377b3)

Prelude (#u29926aea-fb78-5f91-9c9c-5576c0b805e2)

Chapter 1 (#u09b8c1f8-1392-595f-a1a4-128115d9b25d)

Chapter 2 (#ua6f32adf-86dc-5895-8967-6634946001c2)

Chapter 3 (#u0907df35-d7fa-53ef-9d41-4083be86c423)

Chapter 4 (#u367bb942-f3fa-5aff-859c-7e49daf0466a)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

OTHER TITLES IN THE SAS OPERATION SERIES (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Prelude (#u4d4a014a-9c1c-5d1a-98ac-07c92de41476)

The Viet Cong guerrillas emerged from the forest at dawn, with the mist drifting eerily about their heads. There were nearly fifty men, most dressed like coolies in black, pyjama-style combat gear and black felt hats, with sandals or rubber-soled boots on their feet. Nearly all of them were small and frail from lack of nourishment and years of fighting. Their weapons were varied: Soviet-made Kalashnikov AK47 machine-fed 7.62mm assault rifles; 7.62mm RPD light machine-guns with hundred-round link-belt drum magazines; 7.62mm PPS43 sub-machine-guns with a folding metal butt stock and thirty-five-round magazine; Soviet RPG7V short-range, anti-armour, rocket-propelled grenade launchers; and, for the officers only, Soviet Tokarev T33 7.62mm pistols, recoil-operated, semi-automatic and with an eight-round magazine.

As the VC left the forest behind them and crossed the paddy-field, wading ankle deep in water, the officers quietly slid their Tokarevs from their holsters and cocked them.

The Vietnamese hamlet was spread over a broad expanse of dusty earth surrounded by trees and its edge was about fifty yards beyond the paddy-field. With thatched huts, communal latrines, some cultivated plots, a regular supply of food from the nearby paddy-field, and a total of no more than fifty souls, it was exactly what the guerrillas were looking for.

Though this was an agricultural hamlet, the VC had been informed that the peasants had been trained by the CIA’s Combined Studies Division and Australian Special Air Service (SAS) teams in hamlet defence, including weapon training, moat and palisade construction, ambushing and setting booby-traps. The peasants were being armed and trained by the Americans in the hope that they would protect themselves against guerrilla attacks. What had been happening in practice, however, is that the VC, more experienced and in much greater numbers, had been destroying such hamlets and using the captured American arms and supplies against American and South Vietnamese forces elsewhere.

This was about to happen again.

The first to spot the VC were two peasants working at the far edge of the paddy-field. One of them glanced up, saw the raiding party and hastily waded out of the paddy-field and ran back to the hamlet. The second man was just about to flee when one of the VC officers fired at the first with his Tokarev.

The sound of that single shot was shockingly loud in the morning’s silence, making birds scatter from the trees to the sky, chickens squawk in panic, and dogs bark with the false courage of fear.