Part 40 (1/2)
”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 s.h.i.+rt?”
”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.