Free Profane Men by Rex Miller

this.” It is a strong transmission, a silky voice without accent, and at first I think he’s picked up a dee-jay on AFVN.
    â€œRisk taker wants short-term special job. Perfect if your situation requires fully trained female op. Her specialty areas: infiltration, intelligence gathering, and 35-mm photography. Prefer European assignment. Have also worked quote straight blackmail honey traps unquote. Female op is excellent with limited-access targets. Contact Occupant, Box 301, Kingsbury 2089, Victoria, Australia. And this is KILL Outlaw Radio!
    â€œYoung and well-built Vietnamese stud eager to please and promises to give full satisfaction. I am available for any action and I am bilingual, bisexual, and multiracial. Check me out with Frankie at the Vegas Bar. I swing quote like Tarzan unquote. And KILL swings just for you, with free commercials you won’t hear on tame Armed Forces Radio!”
    â€œYou got a fix on this sonofabitch?” our young lieutenant asks.
    â€œNegative, sir.”
    â€œPersonal to Ed the Head — phone Lotus right away at work . . . Ed the Head — phone Lotus right away at work.
    â€œCode Name Abracadabra asks: are you a top terrorist bounty hunter? Do you have at least ninety days’ field experience? Are you quote short unquote? We pay high hazard money offering per-job contracts with maximum cash fees and comp. Will deposit your Swiss bank or other in advance based on checkable private reference sources. We are the ultimate in discretion. We offer full in-country tactical support and intelligence gathering. All details of access and infiltration handled with dispatch. If you are the best at your craft, we can use you. Are you willing to quote whack out unquote a high hazard target if the money is right? You must assure all parties you will not go shy with personal leverage provided to principals. Cash is six figures, sanitized, and the comp is triple-a number one. We want professionals only; no Walter Mitty types, cowboys, or lunatic fringe wanted. If you can fill the bill contact ABRACADABRA, Alpha-Bravo-Romeo-Alpha, Box six-six-niner-one, APO, New York 09669. This is KILL Outlaw Radio!”
    KILL and Vietnam were perfect for each other. To be Viet meant many things, but when one generalized about the people, the by-product of a tribal melting pot of ancient traits, one conjured up the image of a diminutive, tough, strongly featured, proud, hardened, cunning race capable of gross crudities or the delicately subtle. War-torn and weather-beaten, the yin and yang met within their collective character to form a well-spring of national ambiguities: great strength and a fondness for deception, intestinal fortitude, and acquiescence to monumental greed and corruption. The clash of ambiguities puzzled the Western mentality. KILL belonged here in the Vietnamese Badlands, apotheosis of the gritty little outlaw. And this is why we were here. To silence the outlaw at all costs.
    Domestic experts in telecommunications from Bell Systems to Western Electric were imported. In-country pros like CIA ELINT, utilizing the vast resources of COMSEC on one hand to COMINCON on the other, were all uniformly unsuccessful in thwarting the highly sophisticated message-drop system. The landlines were utilized by means of what was described as “a kind of gigantic black box in reverse, as operated by genius computer hackers.”
    A caller would pick up a handset in, say, Saigon and dial the telephone number of the hour. Numbers were changed constantly. Faraway the complex system activated. Many kilometers from the caller’s city circuitry concerted the electrical signals into sound, and high-voltage bug killers began to sizzle. Multiline locators found their special “pair.” Touch tones bleeped their pleasant-sounding obbligato.
    Frequencies met, introduced, harmonized, were married. Out beyond the terminal, another device scrambled the circuitry as the call cooked along the