Blue Darker Than Black

by Mike Jenne

  “No earlier than Mission Six, and even that’s contingent on a lot of technical issues being resolved in time,” said Tew. “So it’s at least a year out.”

  “Disappointing,” replied Kittredge, pouring a glass of water. “Your next mission is in March?”

  “Affirmative, sir. Mission Four,” answered Tew. “The hardware is already stacked and waiting in San Diego, ready to fly.”

  “And the crew?”

  “Hugh, I’ll have to defer to Mr. Heydrich, who is our chief of operations and training. He has the most contact with the flight crew and can best lend you a feel for their readiness. Gunter?”

  Heydrich cleared his throat and answered, “I am relatively optimistic that this crew will be ready to fly in March.”

  “Relatively optimistic?” asked Kittredge. “Heydrich, I appreciate your honesty, but you need to qualify why you’re just relatively optimistic.”

  “It’s a complicated mission, General,” replied Heydrich. “Crew Three—Jackson and Sigler—is assigned to this mission, and while they’re good, I’m concerned with their ability to respond to potential changes once they arrive on orbit. That’s why I’m relatively optimistic, General.”

  “How about your other two guys, your big heroes? Carson and Ourecky?” asked Kittredge. “Can they hack this one? Couldn’t you fly them again?”

  “We’re really trying to give them a break,” answered Tew. “Additionally, we don’t want to become overly reliant on them.”

  “Okay, that’s understandable. But theoretically, if you determine that the prime crew isn’t ready, how long is it going to take to spin up Carson and Ourecky?”

  Tew nodded towards Heydrich, who confidently answered, “They could probably launch tomorrow, but I would be a lot more confident if they trained for at least two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?” Kittredge sipped his water and said, “Mark, Virgil, I don’t want to climb into your sandbox, but I will say this, and I want to be as emphatic as possible—you need to make this crew decision in a timely manner. If the primary crew can’t cut the mustard, then yank them out of the line-up and put your big guns in.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement, Hugh,” replied Tew. “But at this juncture, we’re sticking with our plan. Crew Three will continue to train. They will fly the mission in March.”

  “Fine. It’s your call.” Kittredge looked at a clock on the wall and added, “This is an opportune moment to grab a smoke break, so be back in here in fifteen minutes. I want to discuss contingency recovery plans for polar missions. I’ll be down in my office, making a secure call, and I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

  As the participants filtered out of the room, Wolcott drew his Zippo, lit a cigarette, and inhaled deeply. “Gunter, are you familiar with the layout of this place?”

  “The Pentagon? Not really, Virgil. I’ve never been here, but I did help draw up plans to destroy it with antipodal rocket bombers.” Heydrich sighed plaintively, shrugged, and added, “We just never had time to finish the prototype and move into production.”

  “That’s tragic, hoss. I weep for you,” replied Wolcott, loosening his tie and undoing the top button of his shirt. “Look, there’s no reason for you to sit in on this next session. There’s a little coffee shop located smack in the center of the complex. All you have to do is walk inwards on a spoke corridor. Why don’t you go there, relax, and we’ll gather you up when we’re done?”

  “But, Virgil, if you don’t mind, I really would like to sit in and listen to the rest of this. No one has ever mentioned the possibility of polar orbit missions before, and I …”

  “Maybe you’re not listening, Gunter. There ain’t any reason for you to sit in on this next session. That’s a polite way of saying that you need to make yourself scarce. Just go wrangle yourself a cup of hot arbuckle and a couple of fresh sinkers, and we’ll herd you up shortly. Fair enough, pard?”

  “Fair enough,” replied Heydrich.

  “And Gunter, the next time we ask you to speak with candor, please try to restrain yourself.”

  Tri-Border Region, South Vietnam

  6:30 a.m., Friday, October 17, 1969

  As the sun crept over the horizon, gradually dispelling darkness with light, Nestor Glades watched as the earth slowly took form. At this point, he wanted nothing more than to just sleep, but slumber was a luxury he could not afford. He and his five teammates hadn’t slept a wink in the past four days, primarily because they were fleeing from the greater part of a North Vietnamese Army battalion decidedly intent on killing them. To the NVAs’ credit, their ire was sincere and entirely understandable; Glades and his little crew were responsible for the deaths of over a hundred of their companions.

  Crouching in the scant shelter of a bomb crater, he unbuttoned his left chest pocket and extracted his pill kit. He flipped open the cloth cover and quickly selected two APC tablets and two Dexedrine capsules. The APC tablets—a mixture of acetaminophen, phenacetin, and caffeine—would hopefully alleviate the pounding headache that accompanied his severe dehydration. The speed was to keep him awake and focused. He crammed the four pills in his mouth and choked them down, wishing that he still had some water to help him swallow, but their canteens had run dry two days ago.

  As an afterthought, he gulped down a tetracycline pill as well. He hoped that the antibiotic would help stave off the infection in his throbbing left foot, the result of minor frag wounds he had sustained from an exploding B-40 rocket three days ago.

  The swollen foot has caused his boot to balloon so grotesquely that it looked like something out of a cartoon his kids would watch on Saturday morning. Thick greenish-yellow pus and blood oozed from the brass vent holes in his instep, as well as from several perforations where jagged shards of shrapnel had ripped through the leather. He sniffed the air; the foot was rank, but at least it didn’t have the unmistakably putrid stench of gangrene. Not yet, anyway.

  His recon team consisted of four tough little Montganard mercenaries and one other American. He normally ventured out with five more “Yards” and a third American, but the others were incapacitated with severe dysentery when this mission was handed to him. Rather than augment with attachments from other recon MACV-SOG teams, Glades preferred to go with a small and stealthy team of men long conditioned to working with one another.

  Inserted by helicopter six days ago, their mission was to locate the headquarters of an NVA regiment. They had successfully pinpointed the headquarters on the second day; in the process, Glades had initiated an impromptu raid that had killed the NVA regimental commander and several key members of his staff.

  Their action quickly resonated all the way to Hanoi, resulting in their pursuit by the five-hundred-man NVA battalion ordered to annihilate the recon team at all costs. Now, it seemed as if the battalion had ceased to be an amalgamation of men, but became more like a massive predator, lurking in the wilderness, vindictively eager to snuff them out.

  Glades had done this job long enough to clearly know the dire prospects of their survival. By his reckoning, they had less than an hour left; they would either be long gone from here, or they would be dead, left to rot in this stinking jungle.

  If they were killed, Glades would prefer that they be abandoned to decay, but he knew full well that was not to be; other SOG recon men would come here to recover their remains. They would come at great risk to their lives, without the slightest reluctance, and the NVA knew it and would be lying in wait. Many more men would die, but the corpses of Glades and his team would not be left in the field. Despite this, he had given his team strict instructions to leave him if recovering his body meant placing themselves at risk, and he had long ago convinced Deirdre to be ready to bury an empty casket.

  He looked up to study the faces of the men who jammed into the crater beside him; they shared the blank, callous expression of men who had long since abandoned fear as they had accepted the certainty of death. He pointed at the gray magazine of his CAR-15 carbine and shrugged his
shoulders.

  Two of the men shook their heads, and two others indicated that they had less than a magazine left. The fifth man—one of his longtime Yard stalwarts—was unconscious, mercifully rendered so by a potent dose of morphine. Missing both arms below the elbows, the warrior was barely alive; if Glades and the others had an hour yet to draw breath, he had less so.

  Glades heard a faint drone of a prop-driven aircraft. It was the Covey Rider, an OV-10 Bronco bearing an Air Force pilot and a SOG recon man who would coordinate the effort to extract the team. Cupping a tiny signal mirror in one hand, he carefully lined it up with the sun while using his other thumb as an aiming sight. He wagged the mirror twice.

  Immediately, the Covey Rider’s SOG man spoke over the radio, “Cottonmouth One-Zero, this is Covey Rider, I have your position, I have an extraction package stooging five minutes to the west, and two F-4s standing by for a run-in. What is your plan? Over.”

  Glades tucked the mirror back in his shirt and whispered into the microphone of his radio handset, “Covey Rider, there is a small clearing two hundred meters north of my position. Request tac air expend all ordnance between my pos and that clearing. Request STABO extraction immediately after ordnance drop. Over.”

  There was a long pause before the Covey Rider responded. “That’s mighty close, One-Zero. Are you sure? Over.”

  “Covey, Cottonmouth One-Zero. I am sure. Over.”

  “One-Zero, Covey Rider. Good copy. How many do you have for extraction?”

  “Six to string. Request extraction birds drop four and two,” whispered Glades, describing his plan for the helicopters to drop ropes and yank out the men by the STABO extraction method.

  “Cottonmouth One-Zero, Covey Rider, I copy you have six to string out. Any wounded?”

  Glades was tempted to laugh. Any wounded? Let me see—is anyone NOT wounded? If you’re not wounded, raise your hand. Uh, belay that last command, Do Cao—you seem to have lost your hands.

  “Covey Rider, One-Zero, five wounded. Over.” Glades didn’t include himself in the count; by his standards, his Fearless Fosdick flesh wound didn’t merit reporting.

  “One-Zero, I copy five wounded. Any KIA? Over.”

  “Not yet. Over,” replied Glades.

  “One-Zero, good copy. Six to string. Good luck to you, brother. Hold tight. I’m setting up the orchestra now … break break … Voodoo Child, what do you have?”

  “Covey Rider, this is Voodoo Child, bearing gifts of snake and nape,” answered an F-4 Phantom driver, miles away and thousands of feet overhead. His cool, disembodied voice sounded more like a radio station DJ’s than an Air Force pilot’s. “On orbit one minute from communications checkpoint, ninety seconds from target on your call.”

  “Voodoo Child, copy snake and nape, stand by for high pass and further instructions … break break … Argyle Flight leader, this is Covey Rider, stand by to run-in on my call. Six to string. One-Zero requests you drop four lines on first stick and two lines on second stick. Heavy enemy presence in immediate area. Over.”

  “Covey Rider, Argyle Flight leader. I am bringing two slicks and two gunships to the fight. Copy six pax for extraction. Will drop four and two. Setting up for run-in. Over.”

  As Glades and his men burrowed deeper into the crater, striving to bury themselves in the shattered black earth and reeking muck, he heard hushed voices all around them. The wary NVA knew where they were, and were approaching cautiously. He heard the unified roar of two F-4’s making a high pass overhead as the Covey Rider oriented them to the terrain and the recon team’s location.

  He passed the leg straps of his STABO harness between his legs and quietly clicked the snap hooks into the V-rings in the front of the rig. He gestured for the others to do the same, and made sure that his One-One—the American assistant team leader—took care of Do Cao’s harness. Integrated into their load-bearing gear, the STABO rigs were like parachute harnesses; with the leg straps fastened, they were awkward to run in, but Glades figured they wouldn’t be that much of a hindrance at this point.

  There was nothing to do now but wait. Listening to the muted radio handset pressed against his ear, Glades heard that the F-4s were cleared hot for the run. Cradling his CAR-15 in his forearms, he covered his ears and opened his mouth, and the others followed his lead.

  Seconds later the earth became flame, smoke, and noise. Hard clods of dirt rained down, and shattered trees pin-wheeled through the air. One flaming trunk landed square on their crater, missing Glades by a fraction of an inch. Each successive detonation jammed him further into the gummy black mud. He half-expected his guts to come spewing out his mouth and nose from the invisible waves of concussive force.

  When the debris stopped falling, Glades rose to his knees to quickly take stock of the situation. He yelled for the others to run. He and the One-One grabbed the badly wounded Do Cao by the STABO harness; they half-carried and half-dragged him at a dead sprint through the smoldering underbrush.

  Unburdened, the three Yards could have easily run twice as fast as Glades and the One-One, but they obediently stayed close by, protecting the two Americans and their wounded comrade. Incinerated bodies were strewn everywhere. The morning air was saturated with the sweet stench of partially burned napalm and barbecued human flesh. Now more liquid than meat and bone, Glades’ festering left foot squished with every painful step.

  Two horribly burned but still resistant NVA soldiers blocked the route to the clearing; they screamed in agony as they emptied their AK-47s at the fleeing recon team. Firing his CAR-15 left-handed from the hip, Glades slayed each with a single bullet to the chest.

  Momentarily distracted, he tripped over the charred body of another NVA soldier. The sudden fall twisted his grip from the Do Cao’s harness. In a single motion, an almost superhuman gesture for someone so debilitated by dehydration and exhaustion, Glades’s One-One swung the wounded Montagnard onto his shoulders and kept running.

  Elated, they made it to the clearing. This spot had sustained the brunt of the airstrike. A few deafened and bewildered NVA soldiers were still alive, but they were all but ineffective. Firing carefully aimed single shots, Glades and one of the Yards made short work of any that offered even the slightest resistance.

  He heard the Huey slicks approaching. To the west, he saw a clump of NVA fighters running towards them; they had been outside the zone of devastation wrought by the bombs and napalm, and were not the least bit inclined to let the recon team slip out of their grasp.

  Glades started to speak into the radio, but saw that the Covey Rider was clearly aware of the NVA’s last-ditch assault. The twin-engine OV-10 was working much closer to the ground now, firing white phosphorus rockets to mark the enemy formation for the pair of helicopter gunships that would cover the extraction. Incandescent ropes of green tracers danced and arced up into the air as the NVA desperately tried to knock down the persistent observation plane.

  The chattering slicks came on station overhead, hovering just above the treetops. The pilot of the first extraction bird centered it on the clearing. Glades looked up momentarily and saw the four rope bundles fall out of the back of the helicopter.

  The ropes, encased in weighted canvas sleeves, deployed cleanly as they tumbled to the ground. As the gunships fell into place, laying down withering fire on the remnants of NVA still trying to fight their way to the pick-up zone, Glades snatched a set of ropes and connected them to the STABO harness of the unconscious Do Cao.

  The three less wounded Montagnards clicked their oval-shaped snaplinks onto the other liftlines. With two holding Do Cao upright between them, the fourth stretched his arms out to his sides, signaling that they were ready for pick-up.

  Immediately the four men were snatched into the air, in a scene reminiscent of some ghastly surreal version of Peter Pan. Jet black with a coating of soot and smudge, dripping blood, they slowly rose through the smoldering remains of what had been a peaceful forest just hours before. The extraction bird lifted them almost
free of the trees before transitioning to level flight. Glades hoped that the pilots didn’t drag them too far; it wasn’t unheard of for recon men to have their spines snapped by branches if the aircrew got too hasty to ascend clear of danger.

  The other slick flared to a hover over the clearing. Two more rope bags were kicked out. One caught into the branches about fifty feet above the ground; the men in the back of the helicopter immediately chopped the rope free and hurled out a replacement.

  To his dismay, Glades saw that three NVA soldiers had leaked through the gunships’ rain of fire and were screaming through the woods. Lacking other options, he and his One-One charged them. Bellowing as if possessed by demons, with flames licking his calves, Glades fired his last round, killing one of the NVA. His One-One tackled another; straddling the man, he bludgeoned him into submission with the flimsy buttstock of his CAR-15. The third NVA elected to turn and run, apparently deciding that he was meant for a longer life and higher purposes.

  With the PZ temporarily secure, Glades and the One-One scrambled back to the ropes and swiftly snapped in. Glades gave the signal for pick-up, and they levitated into the air, as if swept up by an invisible hand. The helicopter pilot was kind to them, or at least patient enough not to be rushed; the two recon men weren’t pulled through the trees.

  As the helicopter accelerated into level flight, catching up to the other slick stringing the four Yards, Glades relaxed his body and spun around momentarily to look to the rear. He glimpsed the black tear-shaped scar in the otherwise lush verdant forest, and watched as the two gunships broke off from the fight and joined the two slicks for the twenty-minute ride back to the launch site. He glanced at his One-One to see if he was still intact. The One-One grinned like a crazed possum and then immediately went limp; drained beyond the point of exhaustion, dangling from a skinny rope hundreds of feet in the air, he simply fell fast asleep.

  Glades arched his back and spread his arms; doing so caused his body to turn so that he faced in the direction of flight. He enjoyed this sensation; it felt like free-falling sideways through the sky. He thought of the days ahead. For Glades and his teammates not immediately hospitalized, this afternoon and tomorrow would be taken up with mission debriefings.