Lucky’s Bridge (Vietnam Air War Book 2)

by Tom Wilson

  A couple of times during the increasingly loud conversation, Billy fished the captain's bars from his pocket and looked at them. He was still awed by them and impressed about what Lucky had done.

  Then Tiny Bechler, the huge lieutenant from the clit-licker squadron, moved out to the middle of the room with a couple of friends and started to sing about the mouse.

  Oh, the likker was spilled on the barroom floor,

  And the place was closed for the night,

  When out of his hole crept a little brown mouse,

  And he sat in the pale moonlight. . . .

  A circle of men were gathering, adding their voices to the song. Manny and Henry Horn joined them.

  Then he lapped up the likker on the barroom floor,

  And back on his haunches he sat,

  And all night long you could hear him roarrrr . . .

  BRING ON YOUR GODDAM CAT!

  Hic . . . cat,

  Hic . . . cat.

  Then they sang the ballad of the young pilot who lay dying by a Laotian waterfall. The song had first been sung in World War I clubs, but then it had been a Belgian waterfall. In World War II it had become a New Guinea waterfall, and a few years later a Korean one.

  Billy had another Scotch and rocks and was mellowing nicely when Tiny Bechler came over and joined him in his corner of the long bar.

  "Congratulations on making your tracks," said Tiny, shaking Billy's hand in his ham-sized one.

  "Thanks."

  Tiny peered closer, and Billy realized he had more on his mind than congratulations.

  "You know I'm an Academy grad?" said Tiny.

  "I heard that."

  "Well there's four of us here now, and once in a while we get together to talk. Just sit down and shoot the shit about what's going on here."

  Billy wondered what Tiny was about.

  "Henry Horn thinks you're okay, and so does Joe Walker, but Henry told us something that concerns me."

  Billy finished his drink and tried to get Jimmy the bartender's attention. "Two more," he called.

  "Henry says he saved your ass the other day."

  "I don't doubt it," said Billy. "We fly together a lot."

  "This was different. Lieutenant DeWalt in intell was going through your strike-camera film, and when he looked close, it was apparent you'd set up on the wrong target."

  Billy remained silent.

  "Seems you were lining up on a warehouse that wasn't the target, and the film showed it wasn't a mistake at all that you'd bombed it."

  Billy remembered that the Thud he'd flown that day had a KA-71 strike camera mounted under its chin. Only a few of the aircraft were so equipped. Periodically the strike cameras were loaded and used to get target photos. He hadn't realized it was operating.

  "DeWalt wanted to turn the film over to Colonel Lyons."

  Billy felt a lump grow in his stomach. "Yeah?"

  "He showed the pictures to Henry first, to get his opinion, and Henry had to talk fast to convince him it was a mistake."

  Billy took the two new drinks from Jimmy and paid for them.

  "Henry wasn't sure how to tell you."

  Billy looked at Tiny squarely. "Henry's a good man," he said.

  "But he doesn't like to cheat."

  "I wouldn't ask him to."

  "I'm leaving pretty soon," said Tiny. "I've got eighty-two missions now. I've been here long enough to know one thing, Billy. No matter how fucked up the political restraints, there isn't room for a private war. You'll end up dragging other guys into it and fucking them over. We all have to depend on each other here."

  Billy dwelled on that thought.

  "Just passing on advice. Henry felt it was best left alone, but I thought different."

  A moment of silence passed before Billy finally said, "I called my cousin David today. He's a sergeant first class in Special Forces based in Nam."

  Tiny Bechler furrowed his brow, probably wondering whether Billy was leading up to something or just crawfishing and changing the subject.

  Billy continued. "Back when I was a kid, my two cousins, David and Mal, they helped me a lot. Now Mal's dead."

  "Bear Stewart, you mean?"

  "Yeah. I talked to David about that, then we talked about how my kid brother died. You remember, the one I told you about that was killed when his chopper went down?"

  "I remember you saying he'd been killed."

  "He was an assistant crew chief and door gunner. A rescue patrol found his body. When they brought him back, the only way they could identify him was by his dental work."

  Tiny looked uneasy. "The chopper burn when it went down?" he asked.

  "No. The NVA captured him and skinned him."

  Tiny Bechler grimaced.

  "Strung him up like an animal, skinned him alive, and left him hanging in the sun. My cousin found out from the guys who brought him in."

  "Jesus."

  Billy regarded his drink, feeling very sober. "My family's been fucked over by the gomers, Tiny, and the way things are going with all the restrictions, I'm worried about the way this bastard war's going."

  "They'll wake up and turn us loose."

  "I sure hope so. I'd sure as hell like to even the score a little."

  Tiny shook his head. "You keep it up and someone's going to get hurt, Billy, and it won't just be the gomers."

  Bowes tried to joke. "Captain Billy now, Lieutenant."

  As he left him, Tiny didn't smile.

  The mood of the bar remained downbeat. At midnight the pilots on the morning schedule began to trickle out and return to their hootches to get their four hours of sleep. The others continued to sip their drinks, commiserate the losses of their buddies, and talk about how from now on they were going to check their six o'clock positions more often.

  0925 Local—Tactical Fighter Weapons Center (TFWC), Nellis AFB, Nevada

  Captain Benny Lewis

  He'd signed into the Nellis Hospital after the med-evac flight dropped him off the previous day, just as the doctors at Travis had ordered him to. Then he'd immediately called an old buddy, a flight surgeon he knew there, and pleaded to be changed to out-patient status. Now that he was wearing the back brace, he told him, he felt just great.

  The ploy had worked only after Benny had promised to spend all of his nights and most of the daylight hours in the rigid hospital bed, and most of his up time in a wheelchair. He'd also agreed to toe the line on certain other restrictions.

  Promise them anything, the inner voice advised him.

  The metal brace they'd strapped him into held his back perfectly rigid and made it difficult to get around, and he'd promised neither to remove it nor to try to adjust it. They would continue to run periodic tests on his back, and he agreed to show up promptly for each. Miss just one appointment and the deal was off. He was to take muscle-relaxant pills religiously every four hours, day and night, take pain pills as required, and advise them whenever the pain increased, however slightly.

  He'd told his flight-surgeon friend that his back seemed to trouble him less every day. No kidding, he'd said when his friend shook his head and said he was full of shit.

  You fuck it up bad enough, said his friend, and you'll never get hack on flying status. That got Benny's attention. He vowed, no matter what, never to tell them if he felt pain.

  But the flight-surgeon friend had agreed that Benny could check into his new office and spend a couple of hours a day working at a desk, so long as he stayed off his feet most of the time and hotfooted it back to the hospital whenever his back acted up.

  The Fighter Weapons Center building was only a block from the hospital, and that helped him get his compromise. He'd take a wheelchair both ways, he said.

  As soon as he was released on Tuesday morning, he broke the agreement and walked, ever so slowly, to the Fighter Weapons Center building to report for duty to the colonel. Then Moods Diller came up from the basement and took him down to his office.

  The basement was a huge classi
fied vault, with heavy-gauge steel doors that locked at each end to seal off the men and their classified projects. The small offices were not posh. The three men of his air-to-ground team shared a single room, and their gray metal desks were crowded together. Their secretary was in a separate room, her services shared by the two other liaison teams.

  Benny sat at his desk, and his back relaxed a little. It had been hurting more than normal, even though he was taking double doses of relaxant pills. He huffed a breath.

  Moods shook his head. "Sure you're okay?"

  Moods spoke so rapidly that his sentence-burst phrases often sounded like single words.

  Benny nodded. "Fill me in on what's happening."

  "Nothin' good."

  "How'd the combat test go on the Doumer bridge?" Benny asked.

  "Three Bullpups hit th' thing 'n' did some damage . . . not much. . . . Lost three Thuds. . . . Lions three, Christians zip."

  Moods went over it in more detail, describing the run-ins and the releases, and the concentrations of flak. Then he listed the names of the downed pilots.

  Benny knew them all. "That's got to be a top priority, helping them with the bridge campaign."

  "I agree. . . . Last night I talked on the scrambler phone . . . lieutenant colonel at Seventh Air Force named Gates."

  "We've met."

  "He said we'll get another chance in a few weeks. . . . Gave him a rundown on my smart bombs . . . told him you'd be here this week, and he passes his regards."

  Benny nodded. "Who's he working with in the flying units over there?"

  "Lucky Anderson . . . said that's what General Moss wanted."

  "Good choice," said Benny. "What can we do to help?"

  "Lucky may want some tests run on th' ranges." Moods paused a heartbeat. "You gonna take the project, now you're here?"

  Benny thought about it. He wanted to, but . . ."You ready to give it up?"

  "Hell no," said Moods. "Fits in with other things I'm doing."

  "Then you stay with it. I'll only be working a few hours a day."

  Moods nodded happily.

  "How's your smart-bomb project doing?"

  "Workin' away on it, Benny."

  Moods showed him pen-and-ink diagrams. The concepts for the guidance modules were interesting. One type used a sensitive television camera.

  "Idea's to get it to lock on and track th' contrast." Moods explained in more scientific detail, but the explanation was beyond Benny's comprehension. The essence was that the camera in the bomb's nose could be made to track man-made objects.

  "So you need sunlight?"

  "But not too much. . . . Cameras we've been using become distracted if th' background glare's too great."

  "How do you keep the thing concentrating on that particular shadow?"

  "Alter the field of view. . . . Backseater searches for the target using wide angle. . . . Once he finds what he wants, he slews the camera till it's centered, and narrows the field of view till th' target presents th' most contrast in the picture." He grinned. "Pilot pickles off the bomb and it steers to the contrast. Boom."

  "Sounds impressive." Benny tried to keep skepticism from his voice.

  "I'm setting up a model in a room at th' squadron. . . . Circuitry for th' guidance module fills th' room . . . California team's gotta reduce it to fit the module."

  "Interesting, but will it work?" asked Benny.

  Moods drew back and gave him a look of astonishment. "Of course it will."

  "Might be different, once you load it onto a fighter that's vibrating and pulling g's."

  Moods looked wounded that his project was being questioned. "It'll work."

  "Tell me about the other concept."

  "It's a light sensor. . . . Steers toward a bright dot of light on th' ground. . . . Guy in one airplane flashes a bright dot on th' target . . . the bomb on th' other airplane sees the light and steers to it."

  "What's your release altitude?"

  "Eight or ten thousand feet . . . that's slant range."

  "How're you going to get the dot that small and bright? That'd take some spotlight."

  Moods aha'ed. "You discovered it, Benny. Needed something to give us a bright, focused dot of light. . . . So happens we've got just th' thing . . . called a laser."

  "How big is this . . . laser?"

  Moods sighed. "Laser itself's not big, but the power supply and electronics take too much room. . . . I've got the Texas team working on making 'em smaller."

  Benny very slowly shook his head. "You can go ahead and play with these things, Moods, but you're going to have to concentrate on tactics for the CROSSFIRE ZULU project."

  Moods's feelings were hurt. "Benny, my smart bombs are precisely what they need. . . . Told Colonel Gates about 'em . . . he thinks they'd be just the thing."

  "You're mixing oranges and apples. They can't wait for you to develop something."

  Before Moods could respond, the civilian analyst came in. After the initial introductions they began reviewing the various projects they expected to be assigned.

  As he listened, a spasm clenched Benny's back, making him stiffen and grunt with pain. The others stared at his face, for it was contorted and spotted with beads of sweat. After a moment it eased, and he stopped Moods from dialing for an ambulance.

  "Don't ever do that unless I tell you to," Benny snapped, still catching his breath.

  Moods appeared hurt.

  "I'll wait a few more minutes, then go on back to the hospital," said Benny Lewis, "and crawl back on my torture bed. You guys go ahead and get back to what you were doing."

  The two launched into a discussion about the blast criteria required to knock down a large concrete structure such as the Doumer bridge.

  The inner voice reminded him about something.

  He'd called Julie the night before, to tell her he'd made it okay and give her his new phone numbers. She'd still received no new word about the Bear.

  As Benny waited for the spasm to relax further, he penned another letter to Colonel Mack, asking about his request to have Malcom Stewart's status changed to KIA. On his way out, he dropped the letter by the secretary to be typed and was gratified to find that she was friendly and seemed efficient. As he started to leave, she called after him.

  "I received a phone call this morning from the lady you mention in this letter," she said with a smile.

  He peered at her. "Mrs. Stewart?"

  "She said you shouldn't be here, but if you did show up, she didn't want you to overdo it. She asked if I'd make sure you do everything the doctors say."

  He grimaced.

  "I told her I'd do just that, Captain Lewis, so I called over to the hospital and they gave me the lowdown. One or two hours a day at work and that's all, and you're supposed to be in a wheelchair both coming and going. I'd appreciate it if you'd cooperate."

  He nodded, but before he turned to go, he noticed that she'd grown a vague resemblance to Lady Dracula, the nurse at the Travis Hospital who'd given him a hard time. He wondered if Julie Stewart hadn't given the nurse and the secretary the same request.

  Damn, grumbled the inner voice.

  He left the Fighter Weapons Center building and walked back toward the hospital.

  BOOK II

  45° Dive Bomb Maneuver

  HQ Seventh Air Force, Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Saigon, South Vietnam

  Peacemaker was concerned. Agents from the OSI, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, had been going through the headquarters questioning everyone who had access to the target locations. They said it was just a routine security exercise. When they'd talked to him, he'd remained calm, but something inside him told him it wasn't routine at all.

  When he'd passed word at the Blue Pheasant bar that he would have to cool it for a while, the API newsman sent back a note telling him to meet him at his apartment. Peacemaker had ignored the note, and the next day he'd told his buddy Gino he didn't feel like going to the Blue Pheasant, as they'd been doing every Mon
day and Friday night like clockwork. Gino had grumbled about having to go alone, and when he'd gotten in that night, he'd bitched that he'd had to buy the girls drinks and then pay full price to take one to bed.

  The next time Gino had gone off to the Blue Pheasant, he hadn't returned at all.

  The security cops had come to their barracks and questioned Gino's friends, and Peacemaker had been truthful with them except he hadn't dared to mention the Blue Pheasant . . . and he certainly hadn't told them the reason for going there.

  A full week passed, and still no Gino. Finally Peacemaker decided that one trip downtown, to visit the Blue Pheasant and ask about his friend, would be okay.

  He walked through the doors into the darkness and loud music, and when his eyes had adjusted properly, took his old seat in the corner near the band. Cindee was performing, removing the last scraps of clothing and trying to make her plastic smile look sensuous. As he was ordering a Pepsi from a waitress, the API newsman came in and sat at the bar. This time he was not discreet, for he just sat there staring at him. Peacemaker tried to ignore him.

  When the waitress arrived with his cola, Peacemaker asked if she'd seen Gino lately. She gave him a blank stare, as if she didn't understand English, and hurried away.

  A pair of well-dressed Asian businessmen came in and took an adjacent table, looking odd in the sleazy bar among the American servicemen and Vietnamese whores. Peacemaker glanced at them and found one was staring in his direction.

  The newsman came over to his table and sat, which annoyed Peacemaker, and asked when he would resume with his reports.

  Peacemaker asked if he knew what had happened to his friend Gino, and the newsman said he had no idea what he was talking about. He just wanted more of the target information for his news releases. Peacemaker said the OSI agents were thick in the headquarters building, asking a lot of questions, and he didn't want to press his luck.

  The newsman laughed at the mention of the OSI and told him not to worry. He motioned at the next table and said both of the gentlemen were regular informants to the OSI and were thought to be highly reliable sources. He said the gentlemen were also founts of information for his own uses.