Programmed To Kill

By David J. Murray

This is a story about four Vietnam Veterans who though they have long since left the army remain close friends. During their army training they made a pact to support each other for life, promising to come to the aid of each should their lives or those of their families ever be in danger. Many years later one of their number asks the other three to honour that pact when his life is threatened and his family kidnapped by a crooked lawyer and his underworld associates.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483550916

David J. Murray

David J. Murray has published twelve books of poetry. Born in 1937 and raised in Manchester, England, he earned a doctorate at the University of Cambridge. Now emeritus professor of psychology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and a resident of Toronto, he has published scholarly books, articles and encyclopaedia entries.

Book preview

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1

The cyclist was caught completely by surprise. The van had suddenly veered to its left knocking him to the ground. It had been a deliberate act by the van driver. As he struggled to entangle himself from the bike, the cyclist was set upon by three men who had jumped out of the van the moment it had stopped, immediately after hitting him. A fourth man opened the vehicles side door and the other three bundled the somewhat dazed cyclist and his damaged bike, into the van. The whole incident was over in seconds and as there was no passers bye at the time, went completely unnoticed.

Once in the van, the protesting cyclist was flung onto a seat and ordered to stay put or be shot. Two of his assailants had Glock hand guns pointing directly at him. The cyclist, still a little dazed, the consequence of his head having struck the van’s front bumper bar during the collision, complied, all be it under protest. The third man hadn’t bothered drawing his hand gun from the holster that was visible and positioned under his left arm.

What the hell is going on, who are your guys? asked the bewildered cyclist.

You stirred up the wrong guy mate was the answer from one of the three.

What guy? What the fuck are you talking about?

Just shut up or we’ll do it here and now was the abrupt reply.

Do what? Pull the fucking trigger, now shut up.

The cyclist assessed the situation. One thing was certain, mistaken identity as was most certainly the case, or not, he knew he was in deep shit. These guys weren’t going to listen to anything he had to say. They were heading out towards West Head, a secluded area of rather dense bushland, where he was going to be shot and his body dumped. It would probably be weeks before a bushwalker stumbled across it. He estimated that they would reach their destination within the next fifteen or twenty minutes so there was precious little time to waste.

The driver wouldn’t be a problem so long as the vehicle was moving. Of real concern were the two men with pistols in their hands. The men themselves, though all big and well-muscled, obviously gym junkies in their younger days, weren’t the issue, it was the two guns, safeties off, that could prove tricky.

The van was configured so that two seats were positioned near the rear, one facing the front and the other the passenger’s side thus creating an L shape. On the seat facing the driver’s rear, sat the two men with weapons drawn. The third man sat directly behind the driver on the seat facing the left hand side of the vehicle with the cyclist beside him and close to the other two men.

As The vehicle made a left hand turn off the main road and headed down a dirt service track into the bush proper the cyclist decided it was time to act. Without the slightest warning, he grabbed the man sitting to his right and with a degree of strength that completely belied his appearance and so caught all in the vehicle by surprise, flung him at the man with the gun positioned immediately to his left. The man on the left responded by discharging two shots in quick succession killing, not the cyclist but the man whom the cyclist had so surprisingly wrenched from his seat. With the dead man now lying across the man to his left, the cyclist retrieved the revolver from the holster under the dead man’s left arm and shot the man to his right. He then shot the man immediately to his left who was still struggling to free himself from the man he had just shot. The driver, who had stopped the vehicle during the commotion and was in the process of drawing his weapon, was the next to go. The whole incident took less than a minute and in its aftermath the cyclist was aware of an eerie quiet that seemed to descend on the scene.

The vehicle had progressed about five hundred meters down the bush track, a service road which probably wasn’t used more than once a week, and then only by rangers when they needed to bring in supplies to one of their work huts. In the front of the vehicle on the passenger seat was a rather large brief case which when opened contained a significant sum of money, all in denominations of $50 notes. The cyclist picked up one bundle and quickly counted the number of notes. There were apparently fifty in each bundle and it appeared that there were twenty such bundles, $50,000 in all. That’ll come in handy he thought and a slight grin crossed his face. Beside the briefcase was a large brown envelope inside which was a photo of the cyclist and basic dossier on one David Mainwaring. The photo was a recent one, taken about a week ago, as he sat reading the Sydney Morning Herald over a coffee at Gloria Jeans in Narrabeen. So the four had been hired to kill him, but why? And who wanted him dead? David searched each of the dead men for clues, collected their wallets, weapons and spare ammunition all of which went into the brief case which he took with him on leaving the van.

Once outside the vehicle he lifted the bonnet broke the fuel line that ran from the petrol pump and let the leaking fluid soak a piece of shirt, which he had torn off one of the corpses. He then removed the petrol cap from the fuel tank and replaced it with the petrol soaked piece of cloth. A moment later he lit the rag with a cigarette lighter taken from one of the dead men and briefcase in hand, headed up the track at speed. He’d put about forty meters between himself and the van before the explosion occurred. Judging from its size and the intensity of the fire it generated, David figured the fuel tank must have been near full. He waited a few minutes before returning to the vehicle which was still burning furiously and looked like it would continue to do so for some time to come. The only way these bodies were going to be identified would be by their dental records. A crematorium would be battling to do a better job than this inferno. His bike, an alloy racer, had already been reduced to a compound of melted metal, rubber and little else, so there would be nothing to tie him to the incident when the police eventually found their way to the burnt out vehicle.

He had quite a walk ahead of him, one which would be slow going as he would need to keep away from the road. The last thing he wanted was for anyone to be able to place him at, or near the scene of the fire. He travelled parallel to the road about forty meters into the bush. To the average Joe the going would have been quite difficult as there was no track and the undergrowth was, on occasion, dense. But David was no ordinary Joe.

It had been forty years since his service in South Vietnam where officially he’d served as a gunner driver attached to 106 Battery, 4th Field Regiment. There had however been an unofficial side to his war service. One that only a handful of high ranking officers, to this day, knew about. For some reason this incident had brought memories of that period of his life, flooding back. Making his way through dense bushland, unnoticed, was a breeze for him, even so many years after his army service. In fact this whole incident was child’s play when he considered what he’d had to endure on numerous occasions back in 1967.

He’d been ‘called up’ after winning the now infamous National Service lottery. A system where by all the birth dates of twenty year olds were placed in a barrel and those whose dates were selected at random were forced to undergo two years military training. Failure to comply meant a prison term. It was a truly unfair system and of course highly discriminative.

David had been called up in what was known as the third intake and began basic training at Kapooka, an army base near the town of Wagga Wagga in early February of 1966. During basic training, which lasted ten weeks, he had been flagged as an exceptionally gifted recruit. His ability with weapons was amazing. Whether it was a submachine gun, a rifle or a machine gun it was as though he couldn’t miss his target. His strength and fitness levels were in another league when compared to his peers.

At the time the military hierarchy had been on the lookout for any exceptional recruits with a view to seconding them to a Special Forces unit specifically formed for the Vietnam campaign. This wasn’t anything new to the Australian Military. Special covert units had been formed during most of the conflicts Australian troops had been engaged in. In fact the elite Special Air Service had its origins in such units. So when the politicians decided to send conscripts to fight in Vietnam the army brass decided to form a special elite unit comprised of exceptionally gifted conscripts. Only four were chosen from David’s intake, three of whom had undergone training at Singleton. David had been the only recruit chosen from Kapooka. In point of fact the group comprising David Mainwaring, Peter Golding, John Sidler and Geoffrey Newberry, were the first to be selected and as it turned out they were also the last. As National Servicemen began dying in the jungles of Vietnam, the military brass, as a direct result of pressure from their political masters, had decided to return to the practice of training only regular soldiers for the highly dangerous covert missions behind enemy lines.

When offered the chance David had jumped at it. He had not volunteered to join the Army but he had to serve out his two years, so why not do so in an area he would enjoy. There had been one condition attached to the job. He had been sworn to secrecy and had signed a document that guaranteed he would never disclose to anyone, any aspect of his work as a Special Forces operative.

Immediately he had completed his ten weeks basic training he had been given a week’s leave after which he, along with the other three, had attended a six months intensive training course before being sent to Corps training for four weeks after which he had been posted to 106 gun battery.

The Special Forces training had been extremely tough, the twelve hour days draining but he’d revelled in the hard work, excelling in the armed, unarmed combat, jungle survival techniques and advanced weapons training. Learning to speak basic Vietnamese had proved quite a chore but he’d got there in the end. Working with explosives had not been one of his favourite past times but again perseverance had paid off and he was quite an expert in that field by the end of the course. The most enjoyable experience however had been the hours he and his three mates had spent learning to fly helicopters. As this had not been part of the course the four men would snatch an hour or more whenever they could, usually at some ungodly time like 4:00 am or into the evening after their official day had ended. Their supervisors had not really approved of this activity but had Okayed it provided it didn’t interfere with the men’s essential training.

Based at Amberley air base out of Brisbane, the four had, during their first week, been befriended by the officer in charge of training a group of regular army recruits who had been selected to fly choppers. David had jokingly asked if he could have a lesson or two and much to his surprise the next evening at dinner their officer mate said he’d be happy to give them as much hands on experience as they could fit in. All four had jumped at the opportunity and by the time their six months had concluded each man had well over a hundred flying hours under his belt. It had all been strictly hands on flying as they had no time to spend on any theory. They simply learnt what they could in the air. When they eventually left Amberley their flying instructor assured them they were as competent as any chopper pilots he’d trained to date.

If you boys want to stay on after your service in Vietnam I’d be happy to recommend you for a job flying these things full time. Had been his parting words to them?

As would be expected the four men became good friends and their posting to different corps at the completion of their course was cause for regret by each one of them. They had harboured a hope that they would be given their own unique unit but as this was not to be, they said their goodbyes expecting to at least team up once or twice during their tour in Vietnam, not dreaming that the next occasion they would meet would be on the trip home to Australia, a mere one week before their discharge date of the 2nd of February 1968.

From the time he had begun Corps training with his artillery gun battery at North Head in Sydney, until his eventual discharge some sixteen months later, no one other than a select few very senior officers knew of his, or the other three’s special status. This was mainly due to the fact that National servicemen were not by law supposed to have been recruited to Special Forces units of any kind. All records of their training and the operations they participated in, were buried somewhere in army archives soon after their discharge.

Mindful to keep his distance from the road and thus avoid being spotted by the occupants of the vehicles, that though not prolific in number, were passing at regular intervals, his mind travelled back some forty or so years to some of the really hair raising incidents he’d been involved in.

There had been those he had experienced with his mates in the gun battery such as the clearing patrols and the village searches, when his gun battery became an infantry company for the day and helped their crunchy mates search both friendly and hostile communities of locals; long nights in machine gun pits listening to the sounds of the enemy who, shielded by the blackness of night moved around only meters away, looking for a safe route into his camp; the mortar attacks; mates crying in pain from wounds sometimes so horrific he wondered how they could still be alive let alone cry. Then there was the ambush. He had indeed nearly ‘bought it’ on that occasion. That had been real close.

He’d been driving an officer from base camp at Nui Dat to the seaside town of Vung Tau. Well, that had been the assumption his fellow gunners had been led to believe. The truth however was that he was on his way to Vung Tau all right but once there he would be off on a mission that certainly didn’t resembling anything like his mates belief that he spent four days sitting around town drinking and fraternising with bar girls, whilst they sweated away at base camp.

The drive to Vung Tau entailed undergoing a journey of some sixty kilometres over an often rough road that provided numerous sites from which the enemy, if so inclined, could safely conduct an ambush on any vehicle passing bye. And on this particular day the enemy were so inclined. There were four of them on board the land rover. The officer was in the front seat with David whilst the other two gunners sat in the back of the open vehicle, guns at the ready, ever alert for an attack by the Viet Cong.

It had come without the slightest warning. Immediately the vehicles front wheel hit the cleverly concealed landmine the vehicle had reared like a wild stallion asserting its authority but unlike the stallion who returns to all fours after standing tall on its two rear legs, the land rover became airborne throwing its four occupants in all directions before coming to rest upside down. Seconds later it burst into flames.

David had been tossed at least fifty meters from the burning vehicle. He had landed on his back in a recently planted rice paddy, which lay about a meter below the road level. Apparently uninjured his first thoughts had been for his three companions. Ever so slowly he rolled onto his stomach before raising his head and chest as if doing a push up. Almost immediately two rifle shots rang out. The shooter was some sixty meters to David’s left however it wasn’t David he was shooting at but a figure close to the burning vehicle. There was a distinctive thud; thud as the bullets found their mark and one of the gunners drew his last breath. The shooter moved in on the vehicle and as he did he was joined by two men with rifles at the ready. They had obviously set the mine that had destroyed his vehicle and were now mopping up. Though his rifle had been lost during the ambush David was by no means unarmed. He always carried four hand grenades in the webbing attached to his belt. He also wore a holster which housed a revolver whenever he left base camp on a driving job. Revolvers were not issued to gunners but David had procured one during a five day leave in Vung Tau a few months earlier and to date no one had objected to his wearing it, when he was away from the task force area. If they had he probably would have told them to get fucked, officer or not. He was very fond of that pistol; it had come in handy on more than one occasion and accompanied him on his return home to Australia. In fact even today it occupied a prominent spot in David’s ‘special’ room located in the roof of his Narrabeen home.

He surveyed the scene carefully. He knew he could take the ambush patrol out, so long as he had a little luck on his side. He could make out three men, who by now had checked the vehicle and realised that all but one of its occupants could still be alive and were somewhere in the immediate vicinity. One man stayed by the vehicle whilst the other two began scanning each side of the road. One of the men was about fifty meters from where David lay when he suddenly moved off to his right before signalling to the fellow by the vehicle to join him. A brief argument followed after which a number of shots were fired. Too late, David realised what the argument was about. One of his group had obviously been alive when found and these guys weren’t taking prisoners.

Ever so slowly he retrieved two of the grenades from his belt. With care he then removed the pins that held the firing mechanism in place, all the while holding the mechanism which once released would detonate the device within seconds. He had earlier undone the clip on his holster and released the safety on his revolver. What happened next caught the two Viet Cong completely by surprise. David jumped to his feet and lobbed the two grenades in quick succession to within a couple of meters of where the two men were standing and before they had time to raise their weapons in his direction he had drawn his pistol and got three or four shots away before falling to the ground. There he retrieved another grenade which again he lobbed in the vicinity of the enemy. The third grenade proved unnecessary, only adding to the misery of the two men who lay writhing in agony, from quite dreadful wounds inflicted by the first two grenades.

Aware that every second was critical to his survival, the moment the third grenade exploded David was on his feet and running flat out towards the two dying men. Once there he seized the first weapon he saw and fell to the ground, just in time to escape a burst of fire from the third member of the ambush party, who when his accomplices had come under attack had immediately crossed the road to give them his support. David did not return fire. To do so would have been to give his exact position away. And he was low on ammunition; all he had was what was in the magazine of the rifle he had just picked up. In this situation his revolver was of little use. He also reasoned that if he waited long enough the enemy may presume his earlier burst of fire had struck home.

The two men were virtually in a stalemate situation. The man who made the first move was going to be at a distinct disadvantage. So they both resolved to hold their position and wait. An hour went by then another before David decided to make a move. He’d jump up, run a meter or two, and then dive back into the shallow water that covered the paddy field. That way at least he’d know exactly where the enemy was. Of course if his enemy was lucky, or an exceptional shot, David knew it probably would be the end of the game. He was about to make the move when he saw it. The Iroquoi was some three or four hundred meters up and less than a minute away. Seconds later he heard the comforting sound of the rotors and all at once it was overhead. He rolled over on his back and hoping that the two machine gunners on board the chopper had assessed the situation correctly, waved at one who looked down on him. At that point the third member of the ambush party stood up and ran towards the road. It was a futile act. No sooner had he jumped to his feet than he was cut down by a hail of bullets fired by the machine gunner nearest him. Slowly David stood up raised his hands above his head and waited for a sign that the crew of the chopper recognised him as a friendly.

By the time the chopper landed he had gathered two of his mate’s bodies. The third was retrieved by a crewman from the chopper and within seconds of landing the bird was back in the air and heading for Vung. Later that day he had again taken to the skies in another Iroquoy, from which thirty minutes later he alighted alone, in a clearing bordered by dense jungle, into which he disappeared for three days before being picked up by the same chopper crew, from a similar site, some thirty kilometres away.

Strange he thought, for the umpteenth time, how ‘the ambush’ had been the time he had come closest to meeting his maker and it hadn’t even been a Special Op. It had surely been sheer luck that he hadn’t been killed by the explosion or when tossed through the air for what must have been a good fifty meters.

There had of course also been those that he’d done alone, as a Special Forces operative. These missions were usually to seek out North Vietnamese troops, radio in their positions and call in artillery fire on them. He would bunker down as the shells landed around him, the presumption being that as one man he would in all likelihood escape being hit, where as a battalion of North Vietnamese soldiers were going to suffer considerable casualties as a consequence of several hundred shells landing in the vicinity of their camp.

And of course there had been the rescue missions. On four occasions he had been sent in to rescue men from Viet Cong bush prisons and lead them to positions where they would be evacuated by choppers, whilst he held off their pursuers, before melting into the jungle, to be picked up twenty or so kilometres away the next day. On such operations he moved like a phantom figure through the thick vegetation. Sometimes a hundred meters forward progress would take an hour or more. He recalled times he had stood frozen in the one spot for two or three hours observing an enemy only meters away. To move in such a circumstance would have meant discovery and certain death.

Yes it felt good to know that he still had it after all those years. He almost felt pity for the four bastards in the van. They’d made a mistake in underestimating their quarry and it was the last mistake any of them ever made. Even after forty years, he still had it and it was so easy. Never the less he was going to have to engage in a serious conversation with three very close mates after tomorrow morning’s game of golf at Bayview. A conversation the other three would no doubt more than relish if he was any judge of men and these men he knew very well.

Completely absorbed with his recollections of the past, David was suddenly surprised to find himself walking up the two steps that led to his front door.

2

The house had been in darkness on his arrival home. It was mid-May in Sydney and long gone were the glorious summer days when twilight hung around till 8:00 pm or even later. Though it was barely two hours earlier the sun was well below the western skyline and darkness had descended on Australia’s most picturesque city.

Quite fortuitous David thought that his wife, Rachel and his daughter Alice, who had recently returned to live at home after a relationship break up, had gone to the Blue Mountains for a few days. If they had been home he’d have had to make up an elaborate storey to explain his return home bike less and rather the worse for wear. Better they were kept in the dark and out of this affair and where it may lead.

Sitting back at the dining room table after a hurriedly put together dinner of fried fish and boiled vegies, David examined the contents of the suitcase he’d taken from the van some six hours earlier. The money was a nice bonus,