"Дон Пендлтон. Doomsday Disciples ("Палач" #49) " - читать интересную книгу автора

all, he would get it when he kept his next appointment.
With a mole.

5

From childhood, Nguyen Van Minh existed in a state of war.
Born on the eve of global conflict, his first memories revolved around
the Japanese invasion of his native Indochina. Minh lost a brother in that
war, but the greater price of freedom was a restoration of the hated French
colonial regime in 1945. Ho Chi Minh, leader of the underground resistance,
turned his own Vietminh guerillas on the French without breaking stride,
waging a relentless "war of the flea" against the imperial giant.
Minh was thirteen when the French army was beaten at Dien Bien Phu. He
was already looking toward the priestly career that devout Buddhist parents
selected for him. As a youth in Saigon, he was preoccupied with learning the
ritual paths to Nirvana, but he was not entirely ignorant of politics. He
noted: the Geneva conference and its call for partition of Vietnam, with
reunion under nationwide elections in 1945; betrayal of the conference
accords by the southern government of Ngo Dinh Diem and his puppet, Emperor
Bao Dai; the steady drift of Ho Chi Minh's northern clique into an orthodox
Soviet orbit.
A leader of the nation's Catholic minority, Diem persecuted Buddhists -
and anyone else objecting to his venal, nepotistic rule. In 1957, the
countryside rose in revolt, and Diem retaliated by escalating tactics of
oppression. Firing squads worked overtime, and guillotines mounted on the
back of military trucks made the rounds of rural villages, killing real and
suspected rebels.
In 1958, Minh's family was caught in a sweep of Binh Hoah province and
each member was slain "attempting to escape." At graveside, Minh renounced
the priesthood in favor of a personal quest for revenge. He traveled north,
across the DMZ, seeking those who possessed the necessary skill and
knowledge. He returned in 1960, with others, to organize a fledgling
National Liberation Front - the Vietcong.
During his absence, American advisers replaced the French, shoring up
Diem's regime with money, medicine, munitions. To Minh, they were all the
same - running dogs of Western imperialism, feeding like leeches on the
lifeblood of his people.
He swore a private oath to destroy them all.
On his twenty-first birthday, Minh killed his first American.
Standing in the darkness, filled with the righteous anger of his race,
he tossed two grenades through the window of a Saigon nightclub and watched
the place erupt in flames. Seven people died, but it was the American - a
Special Forces captain, he read later - Minh remembered. It was a birthday
present to himself.
There were other killings, Americans and Vietnamese alike, every one an
enemy of his people. With time, Minh came to appreciate violence for its own
sake, an end in itself. He tenaciously pursued his enemies, and found them
everywhere.
Finally, there was victory. The Americans withdrew, and in time the
southern traitors were defeated, but it brought no end to war. The push