Three Musketeers - A Character Study

Rating: FR-18 for war violence and language.

Summary: After the events of Apocalypse NCIS Ben Willard finishes at FLETC and starts his first day of work on the Navy Yard, reflecting on both old friends and making new ones. This takes place directly before the events of Marine Down.

Character Study for Ben Willard, Caitlin Todd, and Anthony DiNozzo and thanks to IMSLES and Briwd for providing advice in writing this one.

NCIS, Washington Navy Yard
0730, 15 December 2003
Washington, D.C.
United States

Ben Willard set up the old black and white photograph onto his desk, across and to the left of Caitlin Todd's and to the left of Anthony DiNozzo's, the new desk with the creaky chair that Gibbs had ordered brought up. He glanced at the photo of three young men in olive drab jungle fatigues and black boots. The man to the extreme left was him, the tall, lanky fellow in the center with his long arms around the shoulders of the other two was First Lieutenant Joel Kaskey and the short, somewhat squat fellow with the easy, almost DiNozzo-esque, smile was First Lieutenant Henri Clerval.

We were young and full of promise in that photo, our first day in country. Ben thought to himself as he fine tuned its location to the right of his computer monitor.
"Old buddies, Probie Orange." DiNozzo remarked from behind him.

"Yeah." Ben remarked.

"So they're what, sixty? Seventy now? Gonna look them up for a drink at the VFW?" DiNozzo quipped.

Ben turned his chair around and glared at DiNozzo, "A dead man can't drink, pretty boy."

Kate walked over and looked over at the picture Ben had set up on his desk, before elbowing Tony in the ribs for that comment, "Tony, did you consider one of those two might've been casualties?"

Ben silently took two pieces of paper, each of them a penciling from the names engraved on the Vietnam War Memorial. Below the tall lanky man he put the name Joel Kaskey and the short squat fellow he put the name Henri Clerval.

"Both of them were casualties, actually." Ben said softly, "We were friends, going through Special Forces training together before we shipped out. When we finished we felt like we could take on the world, The Three Musketeers we called ourselves."

DiNozzo breathed a near silent, "I'm sorry, Probie."

In his own mind he remembered what it had been like to finish his Baltimore Police Academy training, feeling like he and his classmates could conquer the world, or at least the jurisdiction of the Baltimore PD. He had his own friends who had died in the line of duty over the years.

For her part, Kate felt similarly, after all Tim had that same confidence about him, even after a tour of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan before that. In Tim's case he had been murdered by an Al Qaeda plot. She felt herself getting choked up and rapidly blinked her eyes, hoping there weren't tears in them. It hadn't even been three months since Tim had died.

Kate turned her attention back to the picture, and asked Ben, "So why the Three Musketeers?"

Ben smiled slightly, "I'm sure you know Special Forces training is no walk in the park. Like the old song goes, 'One hundred men will test today, but only three win the Green Beret'. We were the three most junior officers in the Special Forces Officer Course. After twelve weeks at Fort Bragg we were the best of friends and afterward we were shipped to Vietnam."

Tan Son Nut Airbase
0955, 6 May 1967
Saigon, Republic of Vietnam

The air stank of jet fuel, smoke, and old refuse burning in trash burning pits as three men stood around waiting after landing in the large US Air Force base in South Vietnam.

"Well, we're back, gentlemen." Ben remarked solemnly as his eyes looked around the airbase and he walked with his two friends towards the signs for the 90th Replacement Battalion, the organization responsible for assigning new soldiers to their units when they arrived in Vietnam.

"Only this time we're with Special Forces, those guys are actually, how you say, 'putting a hurting down on Charlie out in the bad bush'." Henri Clerval remarked, his clipped Franco-German accent reflecting his original homeland in Alsace-Lorraine on the Franco-Geman border.

"Better than the French did, that's for damn sure." Joel Kaskey quipped.

"Oh shut up." Clerval said, and grinned saying, "Did not some wise man say you cannot spell wimp without MP?"

Ben laughed along with Henri at Joel's expense, knowing Joel had been a military policeman before volunteering for Special Forces.

Joel jokingly in turn punched each man on the arm, "If anything is orderly in the military it's because MPs made it that way."

The three men stopped by the large sign for the 90th Replacement Battalion and from his bag Joel Kaskey withdrew a camera before waving over a passing soldier, "Hey Sergeant."

The portly man stopped and saluted, "Yes sir?"

"Mind taking a picture for us?" Joel asked.

"Shutterbug." Ben quipped as he stood next to Joel and Henri headed over.

"What are you calling this masterpiece?" Henri asked.

"Easy, Three Musketeers Arrive in Country. Smile..." Joel said and then the camera shutter clicked.

The sergeant handed the camera back to Joel and the lanky Oklahoma native smiled and said, "Thank you, Sergeant."

"Gentlemen, I would like to submit something we can do one year from now when it's time to rotate back to the real world." Ben replied with a smile.

"And what's that?" Henri replied.

"One year from now, we all get together here and drink a cold beer before we fly back on the freedom bird to the world." Ben replied.

"If you're buying, you're on." Joel replied with a toothy grin.

"Yes, Ben, if you are buying. After all you're the one whose probably gonna promote to captain soon." Henri replied.

"Provided I don't do anything stupid, yes." Ben replied, "And definitely, I'll buy a beer for the three of us this time next year."

NCIS, Washington Navy Yard
0730, 15 December 2003
Washington, D.C.
United States

"I should have known better than to make a promise like that." Ben replied, "There was no guarantee any of us were gonna be alive a year from that point."
Kate walked over past DiNozzo to look over the photo and she asked, "What happened to them?"

"Within a year of this photo being taken one was dead and the other missing in action." Ben replied, slowly taking a deep breath as he remembered.

"I'm sorry." Kate said.

"You couldn't have known, neither of you couldn't have known. Nothing to be sorry about." Ben replied, "Anyway, Joel Kaskey was the first one of us to buy it out there."

Unable to rein in her curiosity Kate asked, "What happened to him?"

"Tet." Ben replied.

"What's Tet, Probie?" DiNozzo said, "Not all of us are familiar with Vietnam lingo in the audience."

"On the holiday of Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year came the Tet Offensive of 1968. Charlie decided after a lot of planning that he wasn't gonna just hit us and slink off into the jungle. He was gonna go on the offensive and start taking and holding cities all over South Vietnam." Ben replied, "We did drive him off, Hell we just about destroyed the Vietcong as a combat force for at least a year, but he sure managed to make the country into a killing field..."

Quang Tri Province
0213, 31 January 1968
Quang Tri, Republic of Vietnam

The ringing in his ears after the blast had abated and Ben Willard could just now make out a shouting voice to the right and slightly behind the partially destroyed brick wall he was crouched behind as he reloaded his compact CAR-15 rifle.

"Captain Willard! Captain Willard! Captain Willard!" Master Sergeant Mike Horvath, a burly near six footer shouted from behind a fallen statue of Buddha.

"Sergeant Horvath!" Willard shouted. That explosion had been close. One of the South Vietnamese soldiers that had been fighting alongside the mixed unit of SOG men lay blown in half where the mortar round had exploded right in front of him.

"Move the men forward!" Willard shouted, "The cemetery 150 meters to the right!"

"Alright!" Horvath bellowed, "Get on my ass and follow me!"

Ben ran with the formation, the decidedly mixed bag of SOG men from the Reconnaissance and Hatchet companies as more mortar bombs exploded behind and to the right of them.

With seconds to spare the men dove to safety behind tombstones and near the shattered ruin of a mausoleum shattered by an artillery round.

"Shit that was close!" Horvath grunted as Willard knelt down behind the mausoleum's remains.

"That mortar team's gotta be close and..." Willard said only to throw himself flat as bullets zippered by over his head.

"Machine gun, from the church ahead!" Sergeant First Class Jim Lyman shouted from a recently dug grave he had taken cover in."

"Sergeant Lyman," Willard shouted, "Put suppressive fire on that church. Sergeant Horvath, with me, we're taking that church back."

Ben waited until he heard the two M60 machine guns that Lyman had under his command before he started moving his combined American and Vietnamese unit along the bottom of the hilltop the church was occupying.

The sound of the North Vietnamese machine gun chattering could still be heard, even with the SOG M60s firing into the church. Running uphill. Feeling rounds zipping by him, dropping to the ground. Providing covering fire for the other part of his team as they dropped to the ground shooting as well.

Finally getting up close to the building. Pulling a pin from the grenade and lobbing it into the building. One, then two more grenades thrown inside by other men. Kicking the door down with another of his teammates, Sergeant Dave Shapiro, close behind.

A North Vietnamese Army soldier popped up from behind one of the pews. Firing his CAR-15, emptying damn near a magazine into the man. The rest of the platoon flooding into the church, fighting the surviving North Vietnamese. Grabbing the radio and calling on the rest of the unit to regroup around the church.

"Sergeant Horvath, do an ammo check." Ben ordered before his radio operator, Specialist 4 John Provo ran over to him.

"Hey boss. We've got trouble. Got a distress call from Spike Team Honolulu. They're pinned down heading to camp A-374." Provo replied.

Camp A-374 interdicted the roads to the south of the town of Quang Tri and had radioed that it was under attack at around the same time the combined North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong offensive hit the town itself.

Spike Team Honolulu, lead by Lieutenant Henri Clerval, and a small force from the town had headed towards Camp A-374 only to be pinned down by an NVA ambush.

"Sergeant Horvath, let's get Honolulu out of that ambush and push onto Camp A-374" Ben replied.

NCIS, Washington Navy Yard
0810, 15 December 2003
Washington, D.C.
United States

"So what happened after you guys retook that church?" DiNozzo asked.

"We got that radio report that our attempt to reach one of our CIDG outposts, Camp A-374, had run right into an ambush Charlie had laid out." Ben replied, "We redistributed what ammo we had and hauled ass. It took us calling in artillery fire pretty close to their positions but we were able to break that ambush and push towards the camp."

"CIDG?" Kate asked.

"Civilian Irregular Defense Group." Ben replied, "They were a militia force raised from Vietnam's ethnic minorities, mostly Montagnards, basically what the French called mountain people. A dozen or so Americans training and fighting alongside hundreds of locally raised militiamen. Joel Kaskey got assigned to work with that program, he was the second in command of Camp A-374 just outside the city of Quang Tri, twelve Americans and 150 'Yard, Nung, and Vietnamese CIDG."

"I take it the North Vietnamese hit them hard?" Tony asked.

Ben nodded and continued, "Joel's team had been making a lot of trouble for Charlie around Quang Tri, and thus the Quang Tri Camp was a target for him."

Quang Tri Province
0419, 31 January 1968
Quang Tri, Republic of Vietnam

"Need some help here." Ben could hear the shooting and the explosions of mortar bombs in the background as Joel Kaskey spoke tersely over the radio.

"We're on our way, buddy." Ben replied, "I've got two Spike Teams and a reinforced platoon from the Hatchet Company headed your way."

"When're you getting here?" Joel said, and then a burst of gunfire could be heard from his side of the radio.

"Joel, you alright?" Ben replied.

"Yeah, I'm here. Charlie got a little close for comfort just now." Joel said.

"We should be there in about half an hour. We keep running into Charlie's blocking positions trying to get to you guys." Ben replied.

"We may not be here in half an hour." Joel replied.

"What's your status?" Ben asked.

"I think you can hear my status in the background, buddy." Joel cracked back as the sounds of gunfire punctuated with various explosions could be heard.

Joel regained his composure as he spoke again, "I've got my Southern and Eastern perimeters breached. They've overrun the machine gun posts at those sites. We've got them contained for now but I'm not sure how long it's gonna stay that way."

Ben stood at the recently destroyed enemy position. Several hand grenades had made short work of the Vietcong that were manning the machine gun that had slowed them up. Intermittent shooting to the front and right of his position told him Sergeant Lyman's team was mopping up some last ditch Vietcong holdouts.

"Lyman's guys are in position." Provo reported.

"Sergeant Horvath, let's get this movable clusterfuck underway." Ben ordered.

NCIS, Washington Navy Yard
0817, 15 December 2003
Washington, D.C.
United States

"How long did it take you guys to get to the camp?" Kate asked.

"We spent just over two hours fighting our way through multiple NVA and VC positions to get closer to the camp." Ben replied.

"Ben, you mentioned that Camp A-374 was manned by 12 Americans and something like 150 Vietnamese. How did they hold out with barely over a company and some change against a battalion plus of Vietcong and NVA?" DiNozzo asked.

Ben, despite himself couldn't help the small bit of pride that accompanied his next words, "These were special forces men, remember? Well trained soldiers and capable teachers. Joel's team was able to teach that militia just about everything they knew and one hundred and sixty-two entrenched defenders at Camp A-374 were able to make Charlie pay for every inch of the camp they were able to overrun."

Camp A-374
Quang Tri Province
0615, 31 January 1968
Quang Tri, Republic of Vietnam

The jungle erupted in flames near the camp perimeter as a flight of A1 Skyraider fighter-bombers flew overhead, dropping napalm canisters into the jungle. Flames consumed the brush and anything else the jellied gasoline touched.

Thanks to the airstrike the last attack on Camp A-374 had been drive back. Willard gestured with his left hand, moving the unit towards the camp. As he approached the camp with the rest of the force he still kept on the alert, some enemy survivors could still be controlling sectors of the camp.

With explosive filled metal tubes called Bangalore Torpedoes the Vietcong had blasted paths through the barbed wire around the camp. They clearly hadn't been unopposed as the several dead bodies outside of the wire and inside the path their comrades had blasted through it.

Ben moved around the log and earth semicircular berm that he knew would usually have two thirty-caliber machine guns overlooking the outskirts of the camp and a 60mm mortar tube behind it.

He noticed only one machine gun of the two was at the overrun position and as he walked around the berm he saw the mix of bodies, CIDG and North Vietnamese alike. There was a groan from underneath the stack of dead bodies.

Ben stepped around, aiming his rifle and nodding to Shapiro who turned over one of the dead Vietcong. Underneath the dead Vietcong was Sergeant Jeff Gossard.

"Medic!" Ben shouted, confirming one of the medics was on the way before he headed over to the inner compound, the part that housed the Special Forces soldiers. The part Ben knew was nicknamed the Alamo for obvious reasons. Near one of the trench line he happened across Staff Sergeant David Falk's corpse. He had grabbed one of the .30 caliber machine guns from the position behind him and had surprised quite a few now deceased NVA charging for the Alamo before he was gunned down himself.

Ben headed over to the central bunker where the five surviving Americans were holed up. He saw the stocky Sergeant First Class Frank Brutto emerge from the bunker, most of his head wrapped in bandages.

Sergeant Richard "Doc" LaCroix was helping lead the injured Brutto towards a stack of sandbags, to help the wounded man sit down.

"Doc," Willard asked, "Who's in command here?"

"Sergeant Brutto." Doc said, "Near as I can tell."

"Have you seen Captain Johnson or Lieutenant Kaskey?" Ben asked the medic.

"Captain Johnson took a round through the head right when this all started. As for the LT, no one's seen him since he lead that counterattack on the Eastern Breach." Doc replied, "He saved a lot of our lives, covering our retreat to the Alamo like that."

"Thanks, Doc. I appreciate it." Ben replied.

"Hey, Ben…" Henri said, running over, quietly saying, "I found him."

Ben followed his friend, among a scene of the surviving CIDG and SOG men manning the perimeter and moving wounded to the Alamo where Doc had set up a casualty collection point.

It was near another semicircular earth and log position where First Lieutenant Joel Kaskey lay. His radioman, Specialist 4 Robert Higgins lay perforated with grenade fragments as well as with an execution style gunshot wound to the head.

Joel lay about six feet away, almost sitting up the way he had fallen against the earth and wood wall behind him. His M16A1 rifle lay empty at his side and he was holding a 60mm mortar round in his hand, the safety pin pulled out. Several scorch marks and small holes were blown into the ground near several North Vietnamese bodies.

"Looks like Joel was throwing mortar rounds at Charlie when had run out of ammo…" Henri remarked.

"...and also out of time." Ben replied, looking into his friend's dead gray eyes. Hunching down over Joel and with his index and middle finger closing the man's eyelids.

With a gulp Ben solemnly said, "Joel, all your wounds are in front buddy. You didn't go out like a coward like you feared."

And it was a hell of a lot of wounds too. Almost all of Joel Kaskey's chest was riddled with holes, as if an AK magazine was emptied into it and the single hole in the center of his forehead was a coup de grace from whoever the hell the NVA executioner was.

NCIS, Washington Navy Yard
0833, 15 December 2003
Washington, D.C.
United States

"That was the thing Joel didn't ever want, to be branded a coward. None of us did. But I remember of the three of us he was the most scared of going back to Nam a second time." Ben replied.

"Why was that?" Kate asked.

"Two reasons: Sara and Brandon." Ben replied, "Wife and newborn son. His boy was born right after we finished the Special Forces Officer Course."

"I'm sorry." Kate replied, softly.

Ben reached into his pocket, taking out a cigarette and his lighter. "I'll be back in a few."

DiNozzo remarked, "Those will kill you, probie."

"Only if I live, pretty boy." Ben remarked as he walked towards the elevator.

DiNozzo waited till Ben was out of earshot before remarking, "That was rough."

"For once, DiNozzo," Kate replied, "I agree with you."

"Don't tell Probie Orange when he's done with his cancer stick but I can relate. Hell I think we both can relate." DiNozzo remarked.

"Do I need a hearing test?" Kate quipped.

"I don't know, Kate, I don't have access to your annual physical, but I'm sure that could be arranged and...ow!" DiNozzo remarked before Kate elbowed him in the ribcage.

"Before you just now reverted to the DiNozzo we all know and don't love did I just hear you say something that approached empathy with Willard?" Kate asked, "After all ever since you two met all you've done is antagonize one another."

"I'm just saying, Kate, when we finished out at our academies remember how we felt like we were unstoppable?" DiNozzo said, "When he was talking about how he and his pals were the Three Musketeers it got me thinking about the end of my police academy days."

Kate ruefully smiled, "I felt the same way after I finished up my training with the Secret Service, I almost felt like Wonder Woman at that point, and Tony, don't even go there…"

"What?" Tony protested,"I wasn't gonna say anything. Although I do think you'd look great dressed in a costume patterned after Old Glory…"

"Tony, you are definitely a sign that there is no hope for the human race sometimes." Kate grumbled as she headed back to her desk and began composing an e-mail at her keyboard.

Kate's email was addressed to Agent Timothy McGee in Norfolk which read:

Tim,

Do you think you could look up any records on a First Lieutenant Henri Clerval and a First Lieutenant Joel Kaskey, both of them in the US Army?

Thanks,

Kate.

FINIS