Phantom Leader Part 40

"That guy Torpin was filming you all the time," LaNew said, and quickly took the picture back. His bluff had worked, and he didn't want Shawn to study the faked photo.

Shawn Bannister saw what he had forced himself to see himself, doing what he knew he had been doing.

"Okay, okay," Shawn croaked. "What do you want from me? Money. You want money? Is that it?"

"No, Shawn," LaNew said in a kindly voice. Once you broke them, you were nice to them to gain their confidence.

"All I want is a little information.

2000 HOURS LOCAL, SAt.u.r.dAY 17 FEBRUARY 1968.

8TH Tactical Fighter Wing UDORN ROYAL Air FORCE BASE KINGDOM OF THAILAND Court Bannister and Howie Joseph met in the Intelligence Briefing room at eight P.m., the time shown on the big military wall clock as 2000 hours. They sat down across from Major d.i.c.k Hostettler, one of the wing intelligence officers.

Hostettler was a powerful man, who worked out at the base gym each day.

He could bench-press 240 easily and run a mile in six and a half minutes. He had been a guard on the West Point team and a former a.s.sistant line coach at the Air Force Academy. He also had the extra duty as manager of the Udorn Officer's Club.

"Very little activity tonight, gentlemen. There was an Arc Light strike about twenty miles south of Mu Gia. No secondary fires or explosions counted. Some thirty-seven triple-A reported near Ban Karai by a Blindbat C-130 aircraft." Arc Light was code for B-52 strikes.

"No belches or farts tonight, d.i.c.k?" Court asked. Hostettler was known for his more-than-dynamic, positively scatological briefings for strike missions up in North Vietnam. He used belches to denote AAA; the louder and more sonorous the belch, the higher the caliber. And he used farts for MiGs.

"Only for the hairy ones up north, partner. Takes too much out of me."

He pointed to the Steel Tiger area. "We are getting much better intell from Special Forces teams on the ground as Trail watchers. Took them a while to get squared away, but now the info is accurate and fast. The guys are on what we call X-Ray teams. They get comm with some clandestine radio-relay stations in Laos and pa.s.s on what they have." He listed several coordinates in the WE (Whiskey Echo) grid and drew a red circle five nautical miles in diameter around the points. "These are NBLs No Bomb Lines. Between information from the X-Ray teams and recce photos, we think these are locations of POW holding sites."

"Think?" Joseph said. "Don't we know?"

"Good question. I don't think we know for sure. No one seems to be able to get close enough to actually see white faces in the caves at these points. All the photos depict are flight gear near the cave mouths, as if it had been washed and was laying out to dry. The photo interpreters definitely ID-ed flight suits and issue boots. Your guess is as good as mine. Is the gear worn by the North Vietnamese or Pathet Lao? Maybe some Russian Spetsnatz troops are running around up there.

Sometimes we've heard perfect American English spoken on the radio, but the talker never identifies himself properly. Or are there really POWs in the caves? We don't know, so we don't bomb around there." He looked at Phantom One, the flight card for Court and Howie Joseph.

"Speaking of bombing, what are you guys doing up there tonight? I don't see you fragged on any target."

"Just an orientation flight to exercise the system," Court said. "See if we have the right configuration of fuel tank and rockets, see if all the tankers are on station, see if we are taking on enough fuel for running around the Trail at low alt.i.tude, see if we can really see anything at night."

"See how badly we can scare ourselves and still do the job," Joseph said.

"And your job is to find trucks," Hostettler said.

"And guns," Court answered.

"Well, I bet you find a lot more guns than trucks," Hostettler said. "I think they've got gun sites up there we haven't even logged in yet because they won't come up until something big happens."

"What makes you think that?" Joseph asked.

"Part intuition, part hard intell. There are hundreds of big guns being towed down the Trail, but the AAA reports we get from the pilots don't seem to account for all of them.

Particularly every -millimeter gun I think is in t e Mu Gia area. I saw on a recce photo what looked like the gun being trucked south through the Pa.s.s into the area."

"Trucked in?" Joseph said. "I thought guns that big were mounted on wheels and towed."

"That's true," Hostettler said. "That's why n.o.body else thinks it's a gun. The powers that be in the Twelfth Ritz in Saigon say the tube I saw is just pipe for a gas line to refuel the trucks. Although it's never been done before, I think they might have dismantled the gun and are bringing it down in segments. Some parts of the Trail in the mountains in North Vietnam are too narrow in the switchbacks and sharp curves to tow a long tube through."

"So," Court said, "we have a phantom hundred-millimeter gun and suspected POW sites out there. What else do we have?"

"Big black karst all along the Trail that rises up over a mile in the black sky and will BITE YOU ON THE a.s.s,"

Hostettler said, waving his hands curled in claws like an attacking demon.

"Thanks a h.e.l.l of a lot, d.i.c.k," Joseph said. He and Court started picking up their flight gear. The two pilots started toward the door.

"Very f.u.c.king funny," Court said as they went out.

"Invert, Phantom One blackout at the fence," Joseph transmitted an hour later as they crossed from Thailand into Laos. He a the ont seat, Court sat in ack. They ew at 22,000 feet, full of fuel from the Cherry tanker.

"You're awful quiet back there," Joseph said to Court.

"Remember, you said you wanted the backseat. Said you had to see the Trail at night from the GIB's point of view.

Do you sleep on nails at night, too? Wear a hair shirt?"

"Nuts to you, Joseph. Since you're my ops officer, I'm really here to see if you can fly worth a s.h.i.t." Court checked his map and the INS against the Tacan. "So far you seem to be doing okay. That should be Mu Gia down there dead ahead at twelve o'clock for twenty. Isn't that right?"

"Is the Pope a Catholic?"

Faint starlight from the sky supplied just enough contrast with the pitch black of the ground to provide a barely perceptible horizon. Below and twenty miles ahead of them, running north and south, crossing from left to right, rose the ma.s.s of the Annarnite mountain chain. Court adjusted the radar set to paint the difference between the terrain and the few rivers that provided suitable contrast. The faint glow of the screen blossomed slightly as the nose-mounted antenna swept back and forth.

"Okay," he said, "that's Mu Gia. Let's start down.

Switches on, c.o.c.kpit lights off."

Joseph turned his weapons switches on, brought both throttles back to 85 percent RPM, lowered the nose, aimed the red lamp at his flight att.i.tude indicator, and cut the c.o.c.kpit lights off. In back, Court kept his instrument lights as dim as possible and monitored the navigation instruments and the flight instruments.

Court called out the alt.i.tude as they descended. His primary job was to keep his head in the c.o.c.kpit to monitor safety of flight by checking the gages. His secondary job was to look outside and help the frontseater find a target. Smart front- and backseaters coordinated who was looking where, and when.

"Level at seven point five," Court called as Joseph leveled off. Because the elevation of Mu Gia Pa.s.s was 5,300 feet, they had selected a 2,200-foot safety margin above the ground to get oriented. They had to make sure they were where they wanted to be, then they could let down farther, even lower than the surrounding karst. Unless the guns went wild. Then they would re-a.s.sess--upwards. Quickly, very quickly. Court checked his radar screen.

"Okay," he said. "We're coming up on the Bird's Head.

That's Mu Gia over there at eleven o'clock for five nautical.

The Bird's Head was a series of prominent bends in the river that looked like a bird's head, beak and all.

"Tally," Joseph said, using the shortened form of the ancient Tallyho that has never left the fighter pilot's lexicon since World War One.

"Taking it down." He pushed the throttles to 92 percent and lowered the nose. Trading 5,000 feet of alt.i.tude for airspeed put the black Phantom at 2,500 feet above the ground at an indicated airspeed of 500 knots (575 miles per hour). They were below the mountaintops now, and were south of the mile-high karst at Mu Gia.

"Let's cross the Bird's Head, cut across the mouth of the Pa.s.s west to east, pickle three flares, then pull up north and fly back over the Pa.s.s heading west," Court ordered. "We'll see what we can see."

Mu Gia Pa.s.s opened like a funnel from north to south.

The narrow end, a half-mile in width where the supply trucks entered, was in North Vietnam. The wide end, where they fanned out onto the Trail, was in Laos, and was three miles across. Under the current Rules of Engagement the fighters could fly only in Laos. They could not cross into North Vietnam unless specifically fragged to do so by the Secretary of Defense, Robert Strange McNamara. They could attack the trucks coming through the Pa.s.s, but not the trucks bunched up in North Vietnam waiting to enter the narrow end of Mu Gia Pa.s.s.

Joseph zoomed across the Bird's Head and punched the red b.u.t.ton on his control stick three times as he shot across the wide mouth of Mu Gia.

Then he pulled up sharply to the left and crossed the Pa.s.s from east to west. Court checked the gages, saw that Joseph had everything under control, and looked out of the left side of the canopy down at the Pa.s.s.

One by one, the parachutes popped out of the silver canister of each flare and opened. The tug on the shroud lines triggered the igniter inside the canisters, which set off the magnesium to burn so hot that the fierce white light registered at 200,000 candlepower. All three hung swaying in their chutes, dripping pieces of burning metal, etching white smoke trails against the black sky, broadcasting light like miniature suns.

Below, the Pa.s.s lit up in the intense white light like a two-dimensional photo negative. Narrow strips of dirt road hacked out of the mountainsides ran parallel along each side of the huge ravine. Three more strips meandered along the river in the Vee of the Pa.s.s. They saw black objects crawling along the strips like rectangular caterpillars.

"Hey, hey, hey," Court crowed in exultation. "Lookee what we have here.

I count ... ah, twelve, thirteen, fourteen of those beauties."

"Let's git 'em," Joseph yelled.

"Quick, before the flares burn out," Court said. "Never thought we'd be self-FACing ourselves. Too bad we don't have something a bit better than 48s."

Howie Joseph selected the CBU-48 on his weapons panel.

The -48 was the clamsh.e.l.l weapon that opened at a preset alt.i.tude and flung CBU bomblets in a wide circle. It was a fine weapon for flak suppression against gunners in gun pits, but not too effective against hard targets like trucks. Joseph slammed his throttles forward, pulled up and around to make his run south to north, perpendicular to the flares but parallel to the strips of road.

"Twelve thousand feet, three-fifty knots," Court read from the instrument panel to let Joseph know where he was relative to his bomb run. The flares were close to the ground, near the end of their illumination time.

"Rolling in," Joseph said. He started down the chute of a 45-degree bomb run heading north.

"Ninety-five, eighty-five, ready, ready . . . PICKLE," Court said as they pa.s.sed through 7,500 feet. He felt and heard the "chung-chung" as Joseph punched off two CBUs.

He grunted as Joseph pulled up and jinked left, right, then left again.

By then each flare had hit the ground. All was pitch dark.

Suddenly the sky lit up above them as an explosive fireball blossomed over their heads, then two more, than a fourth, then a fifth.

"Oh Christ, that's 37 and they got our track," Joseph said with effort against the G-forces.

"Not for long," Court said. They looked down in the blackness from the turning plane as the bomblets of the first CBU began sparkling in a multibanded circle like a ring of fiery diamonds. Then the second batch hit the ground, overlapping the first. Immediately, several medium red fires sprang up, then scores of small, quick secondary explosions that flashed red and orange, then winked out. The red fires grew larger.

"We got a gun pit," Court said, "and some, ah ... three trucks." He recognized the rectangular red fires as trucks, and the quick, sharp, yellow explosions within the red as ammunition cooking off.

Joseph pulled up to orbit west of the target at 15,000.

"Too bad we don't have a way to take a picture at night," he said.

"n.o.body will believe ... My G.o.d," he said in an awed voice as a huge orange-and-yellow explosion lit up the sky in front and just below them.

They heard the boom in the c.o.c.kpit.

"Break left, break left!" Court yelled as they buffeted in the concussion of the huge antiaircraft sh.e.l.l. He thought he heard tings as pieces of metal banged against their Phantom.

Another fireball exploded behind the first and to the right.

"Tighter, pull it tighter," Court said, A third exploded farther to the right, exactly where they had been.

"How 'bout that s.h.i.t," Howie Joseph said. A think we just found that hundred-millimeter gun."

"All contraire. They just found us," Court replied.

1630 HOURS LOCAL, TUESDAY 20 FEBRUARY 1968.

Koji Lo PRISON, HANOI DEmocRATic REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM Flak heard tapping on the wall from Ted Frederick's cell. He lay flat on the floor to look under the door and check the pa.s.sageway outside.

When he saw nothing, he moved to put his ear to the wall.

h.e.l.lO, h.e.l.lO, he heard in the tap code. He didn't answer.

h.e.l.lO, h.e.l.lO, was repeated louder. Flak quickly lay back on his cot, hands behind his head. He listened for noise at his door.

h.e.l.lO, AL, LETS TALC. h.e.l.lO. Flak heard faint noise outside his door.

He didn't move.

h.e.l.lO, h.e.l.lO. After a while he heard soft footsteps going away from his door and no more tapping on the wall.

The trick to catch him communicating hadn't worked. The guards had never learned that all POWs signed on with the "shave-and-a-haircut"

taps. No POW communicated without that secret challenge and response ever since one man had been caught tapping back when called up by a communist official who had learned the tap code.

He dozed, taking advantage of his sudden lenient treatment put into effect by Ceballos. Normally the POWs were not allowed to be on their sleeping devices until bedtime was announced around nine P.m. by a guard banging a metal rod on a piece of resonant metal hanging from a tree in the courtyard. Someone who rapped it was called a tocsin. The gonglike sounds controlled the life of the POWs in Hoa Lo: get up, eat, sleep. In between were the propaganda broadcasts from the loudspeakers hanging all around the camp, some hanging in cells.

Flak arose and slowly began his exercises. He had to ease through the pain layers. First he walked 300 round trips from the cell door to the rear of the cell and back. From the door to the wall took three strides, which Flak estimated at nine feet. Three hundred round trips at eighteen feet each meant at least one mile had been covered. He had gotten his mind to the point where it could automatically count paces and round trips and still be thinking of another subject. The only problem he had was turning around. He wanted to alternate turning left and right, but frequently forgot and kept turning one direction until a warning bell went off in his mind. The bell was getting less frequent, he noted, which meant he would soon be alternating exactly as planned.

After his mile, which he estimated required twenty minutes, he performed sixty sit-ups. He had been increasing them at the rate of two more each day.

Then he rolled over for push-ups. They were extremely difficult.

Without medical attention, his left arm had healed crookedly and had a bulge where the bone had been broken' He had to rely almost entirely on his right arm, and so far was able to do only twelve push-ups. When he finished, he flexed his fingers from full out, then back to a fist as fast as he could. His left fist would not completely close. He could manage 175 before his hands locked up.

Then he ran in place for 420 steps. That, too, was increasing-about thirty paces a day. As he ran, he performed isometrics with his fists and palms.

When he was finished, he paced his cell slowly to cool down and prevent stiffening. He was proud of himself. This was his second set of exercises for the day. He had eased into the exercises as soon as he wasn't locked in the stocks all day.

He realized he had to do something constructive each day to make the time pa.s.s and to feel good about himself.

Then it was afternoon matinee time, as Flak called it. He climbed up on his concrete sleeping slab facing the rear wall.

He leaned forward to rest on his hands and peer out the bottom of the boarded-over tiny window at the top of the wall. Through a crack, he gazed around a small section of the courtyard. Sometimes he saw POWs walking alone to and from the stone bathhouse, other times he saw POWs escorted for a quiz, as they called interrogations. Today he saw a lone man sweeping the yard. He was young, very thin, and swept with a peculiar rhythm. He coughed and cleared his throat so much Flak thought him to be ill. Then Flak caught on. This was the famed sailor who had fallen off his cruiser one night in the Gulf of Tonkin. Frederick had tapped about him. His name was Hegdahl and he was considered stupid by his captors. So much so, in fact, they had him frequently outside performing menial tasks. Flak listened carefully. Hegdahl was quietly whistling "G.o.d Bless America" while pa.s.sing camp news with signals from his broom and throat. So many sweeps and a hack, more sweeps and a cough, then more sweeps, and Flak and all the rest who heard this amazing young seaman apprentice got a good portion of the news of the day.