Avenger by Frederick Forsyth Read Free Book Online Page B

years, the only unit whose Purple Heart (wounded in action) ratio was 100 per cent.
    The commanding officer of the moment was known as Rat Six. Everyone else had a different number. Once joined, they kept themselves to themselves and everyone regarded them with a kind of awe, as men will be awkward in the company of one sentenced to die.
    Rat Six had been right in his gut guess. The tough little kid from the construction "sites of New Jersey, with his deadly fists and feet, Paul Newman eyes and no nerves, was a natural.
    He took him down into the Tunnels of Cu Chi and within an hour realized that the recruit was the better fighter. They became partners underground where there were no ranks and no 'sirs' and for nearly two tours they fought and killed down in the darkness until Henry Kissinger met Le Due Tho and agreed America would quit Vietnam. After that there was no point.
    To the rest of Big Red One the pair became a legend, spoken of in whispers. The officer was "The Badger' and the newly promoted sergeant was "The Mole'.

    Chapter FIVE
    The Tunnel Rat
    IN THE ARMY, A MERE SIX YEARS IN AGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TWO young men can seem like a generation. The older man appears almost a father figure. Thus it was with the Badger and the Mole. At twenty-five, the officer was six years older. More, he came from a different social background with a far better education.
    His parents were professional people. After high school he had spent a year touring Europe, seeing ancient Greece and Rome, historical Italy, Germany, France and Britain.
    He had spent four years at college for his degree in civil and mechanical engineering, before facing the draft. He, too, had opted for the three-year commission and gone straight to officer school at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
    Fort Belvoir was then churning out junior officers at a hundred a month. Nine months after entering, the Badger had emerged as a Second Lieutenant, rising to First when he shipped to Vietnam to join the 1st Engineer Battalion of Big Red One. He, too, had been head hunted for the Tunnel Rats, and in view of his rank quickly became Rat Six when his predecessor left for home. He had nine months of his required one-year Vietnam posting to complete, two months less than Dexter did.
    But within a month it was clear that once the two men went into the tunnels, the roles were reversed. The Badger deferred to the Mole, accepting 'that the young man, with years on the streets and building sites of New Jersey, had a kind of sense for danger, the silent menace round the next corner, the smell of a booby trap, that no college degree could match, and which might keep them alive.
    Before either man had reached Vietnam the US High Command had realized that trying to blow the tunnel system to smithereens was a waste of time. The dried laterite was too hard, the complex too extensive. The continuous switching of tunnel direction meant explosive forces could only reach so far, and not far enough.
    Attempts had been made to flood the tunnels but the water just soaked away through the tunnel floors. Due to the water-seals, gas failed as well. The decision was made that the only way to bring the enemy to battle was to go down there and try to find the headquarters network of the entire Vietcong War Zone C. This, it was believed, was down there somewhere, between the southern tip of the Iron Triangle at the junction of the Saigon and Thi Tinh rivers and the Boi Loi woods at the Cambodian end. To find that HQ, to wipe out the senior cadres, to grab the huge harvest of intelligence that must be down there that was the aim and, if it could be achieved, was a price beyond rubies.
    In fact the HQ was under the Ho Bo woods, upcountry by the bank of the Saigon river, and was never found. But every time the tank dozers or the Rome Plows uncovered another tunnel entrance, the Rats went down into hell to keep looking.
    The entrances were always vertical and that created the first danger. To go down feet