Chapter 36Manfred, I, and the rest of our little team arrived at the Difranco plantation in Tay Ninh province five hours later. A quick inspection revealed that despite being battered, the main gate had held. As with all the gates at the entrances of the Difranco plantations, we had reinforced it with teakwood girded with heavy iron bands. We’d also constructed heavily protected guard towers on either side with mounted Lewis guns.
Around the rectangular perimeter of the central administrative zone of the plantation, with its managerial buildings, houses, hospital, storage areas, armory, fuel dump, garages, and rubber processing works, we had cleared an open swath of barren land some one hundred feet deep and littered with booby traps. Anybody attempting to cross that no-man’s-land would b
