four, landed on the roof of the hotel, and made their way quickly to
pre-selected vantage points, M-16s and combat shotguns at the ready. For
the past several hours, government helicopters had been making low
passes over the area, in the hope that the defenders of the hotel’s
upper floors would become accustomed to the noise. Two bodies lay on
the roof, army mutineers on guard cut down by suppressed,
nightscope-directed fire from a neighboring rooftop seconds before the
Hueys made their final approach.
At the same time that the airmobile force landed on the roof, assault
teams entered on the ground level, securing the elevators and
stairwells.
As Master Chief Buckley had noted during his closed-circuit TV broadcast
the week before, officers in the That army were permitted to own their
own businesses completely apart from their military careers. A check of
government records by the That CIA showed that Colonel Kriangsak
Vajiravudh was the owner of record of the Americana Hotel in the
Yommarat district of Bangkok, as well as the unusual fact that the top
two floors of the twenty-story building and the entire basement level
below the parking garage had all been reserved for his personal use.
Operating under the tactical principle that it is always better to
attack down when clearing a building rather than up, the roof assault
teams moved in, splintering the access door with shotgun blasts and
bursting into the stairwells. Supported by teams moving up from the
eighteenth floor, they broke into the hotel corridors and began breaking
into the penthouse suites.
Gunfire stuttered and barked as Kriangsak’s bodyguards fought and died.
Stun grenades were tossed into hotel rooms seconds before black-garbed
Special Forces troops rolled through, M-16s and CAR-15s at the ready.
The defenders fought back, but they were disorganized and surprised. One
by one, they were cut down.
The survivors began surrendering less than three minutes after the first
shotgun blast, and soon the prisoners, disarmed, their wrists secured in
plastic restraints, were being led in groups of three to Hueys which
waited, hovering, just above the roof.
Fifteen prisoners were taken. Seven army mutineers were killed, at a
cost of one commando dead and two wounded. In the basement, the
attackers discovered an enormous cache of weapons, including over
fifteen hundred Chinese-manufactured AK-47s, thirty RPD machine guns,
dozens of RPG rocket launchers, case upon case of apple-green RGD-5 hand
grenades, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, arms and
ammo enough to start a small war … which, indeed, they already had. It
also provided confirmation that one Kriangsak Vajiravudh was indeed a
traitor.
In every way save one, then, Operation Dahm Baho, Black Light, was a
complete success.
Unfortunately, Colonel Kriangsak was not in the hotel when the attack
went down.
0520 hours, 21 January
New Phetchaburi Road, Bangkok
Colonel Kriangsak felt out of place in the commander’s hatch of the
Cadillac-Gage Stingray as it clattered up the four-lane highway toward
Bangkok’s central district. His place was on the staff of one of
Thailand’s senior generals, a world of desks and telephones, of briefing
rooms and paperwork, not the clash of steel tracks on pavement or the
stink of diesel fumes.
The Stingray light tank was one of six traveling in column toward the
cluster of government buildings and royal residences which comprised the
heart of the capital. Following the tanks were twenty trucks and over
three hundred soldiers loyal to him. Their target was nothing less than
the seat of government itself.
Seize the capital. Force the King to see the futility of continued
bloodshed within the sacred precincts of Krung Thep. Prove to the armed
forces of all Thailand that the army was strong, strong enough to stand
against the communists and their Burmese hosts.
And with the American battle group gone, it was possible now. Kriangsak
regretted his earlier doubts. General Hsiao had been right. The
American carrier was vulnerable. Kriangsak had been on the shore at
Sattahip two nights before, had seen the rocket attack and the volcanic
pillar of fire rising from the Jefferson’s flight deck. He’d watched as
the stricken carrier, still burning, had ignominiously slipped her
anchor chain and limped from the harbor, heading south.