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I think the Kerry account says that Kerry returned through 5000 meters of fire.

1. Does that mean that that for the 5000 meters (5km) going out he wasn't under fire?

2. If not, does that mean that the enemy was able to spread out along the riverbank for 5km in the same amount of time it took Kerry to travel 5km in his boat so that when he turned around they'd be there strung out along the 5km between him and the scene of the mine explosion? These would have to be really, really swift VC or there would have to have already been an extremely dense VC population along that riverbank for 5km.

3. If Kerry had traveled a total of 10km (6.2 miles) at the top speed of the boat (about 32mph) assuming no wait on the turnaround (Oh, crap, Rassmann fell off! Should we go back to get him? Someone will pick him up. But that'll look really bad that we left him in the water when we took off. Oh, crap, I guess we'll have to go back.), it would have taken them at least 11.6 minutes to cover the distance. If Kerry had been traveling at a uniform speed along a river and was taking fire throughout the 5km and managed to make it back to pick up Rassmann, hang around for the time it took to hook up his boat to the damaged craft, and for Kerry to transfer to the ship carrying the wounded without his craft showing a bullet hole, then what did they have to be worried about? The VC had to have been totally lousy shots. You'd think that by luck, at least, they would have hit them. After all, they got one boat with a mine.

4. If Kerry returned through constant fire along 5km of river to the scene of the mine explosion, then those working the scene would have been hearing constant fire throughout that time. But they only reported that they opened up after the explosion to suppress enemy fire and that, after seeing none, ceased firing.