<strong>Agent Samuel Mackenzie, CIA operative – Khe Sanh Combat Base - T – 13 hours 30 minutes</strong><br/><br/><strong>"Something isn't right here. Grass doesn't just dissolve when touched. Has anyone heard anything from command about this?"</strong>The Sergeant’s words continued to bother Agent Mackenzie all the way back to Khe Sanh. He hadn’t heard a damned thing by that point, and he had told Fields as much.<br/><br/>The chopper ride had been almost anticlimactic, given the tension that had filled the air.<br/><br/>He now stood in Khe Sanh’s command post, leaning over a table with a confused expression on his face. In front of him sat stacks upon stacks of papers. He’d pulled everything he could, aerial surveys, reconnaissance reports,  after action reports, geological surveys, just about anything he could think of that might offer him a clue as to what was going on.<br/><br/>Following the Telex notification, the military had gone into overdrive. Everybody, everywhere was mobilizing. Then, all of a sudden, seemingly out of the blue, Charlie had gone apeshit. Reports littered the table detailing attacks on allied targets all over the country. U.S., South Vietnamese, Australian, just about anybody who had a presence was taking fire.<br/><br/>Since then, he’d been doing his best to keep the intelligence flowing and offering what he could in the way of insight to the brass, but in truth there was little he could do.<br/><br/>The attacks were mystifying.<br/><br/>“The sheer scope of it,” He answered gruffly, speaking into the receiver of his radio when the voice on the other had had finished speaking. “They must have been planning this for months, years even.”<br/><br/>“Maybe,” Replied Scott Mayhew, Mac’s CIA contact in Saigon. “But how do you explain the sloppiness of it all? I mean I know we’re not dealing with rocket scientists here, but I’d have thought Charlie could have done a better job of it.”<br/><br/>Mac thought for a moment, before speaking again. “Maybe this wasn’t meant to happen now, maybe something pushed them to attack before they were ready. Properly executed, an attack like this could have be crippling to our forces.”<br/><br/>“Why attack now then?”<br/><br/>“Good question, too bad I haven’t any idea.”<br/><br/>“Fuck me,” Mayhew declared. “I’ve got the boys mounting up. They’ve got us shipping off somewhere, can’t say where though. They given you any orders yet?”<br/><br/>“Just to keep the flow of information going,” Mac replied, reaching down to pat the .45 calibre pistol holstered on his hip, looking for a sense of reassurance that just couldn’t come. “I gotta tell you, I don’t like this. Not one bit.”<br/><br/>“Me either, Sam. Me either.” Things had to be bad if Scott was calling him Sam. Nobody did that. Ever. But what was worse, Mac didn’t even notice.<br/>