by Tom Wilson
"Watch out for him," whispered the general's secretary. "He's in one of his moods."
The big bombers had bombed in pack one twice during the past week. It was the farthest north they'd ever ventured and was understandably a very big deal to the B-52 people.
The bomber pilot left Moss's office frowning.
Pearly cautiously looked in.
"Come on in," Moss growled, "and close the door behind you."
Pearly did so.
Moss rubbed vigorously at his jaw while Pearly took his seat. "You got results yet?"
Pearly started to show him his map with the red and yellow marks, but Moss raised his hand and stopped him.
"Just tell me."
"Two bridges down and four damaged, sir."
Moss brooded, eyes narrowed and, Pearly knew, ready to strike out at someone. Then, very slowly, the general began to relax.
"Jesus," Moss finally said. "I'm starting to get wound up over bullshit."
"The B-52's?"
"PACAF's all excited because they dropped all that tonnage on the infiltration routes. No one gives a shit if they hit anything, just how many pounds of bombs they drop."
"I'd rather have them working on the truck parks than fighters," said Pearly defensively, for he'd been the one to request the missions. Since requests for B-52 utilization had to be approved by PACAF, and often Strategic Air Command and the Pentagon got into the picture, it hadn't been easy.
Moss ignored him, angrily shaking his head. "Send 'em up to the DMZ to knock out some truck parks and NVA temporary headquarters, and next thing you know, they're acting like they're winning the war single-handed."
"It's the first time they've bombed in North Vietnam," explained Pearly.
"Hell, they were flying at thirty thousand feet, and as far as I know, the NVA never fired a shot at 'em."
"Probably not, sir."
"Anyway, General Roman wanted the lead crews immediately put in for DFCs, so we said yes, sir, and did it. Made them sound too much like heroes, I guess, because we just got a message from the air staff asking us to reevaluate using them up there. They heard about the medals and said we're putting high-priority aircraft in jeopardy.''
"You want me to scrub their mission for tomorrow?"
"You think they're doing any good?"
"NVA prisoners say they're scared to death of them, General. One minute they're fat and happy around their camp fire, the next minute the world's erupting. The B-52's drop a lot of bombs, and right now we want to show as much damage as possible to the infiltration routes."
Moss pondered, then nodded. "One more time. Then have 'em back off. Many more missions up there, and we'll run out of medals."
"Yes, sir."
Moss eyed him and changed the subject. "Admiral Ryder called about an hour ago."
Pearly waited. It must have been something important. An hour before, it had been almost eleven P.M. in Hawaii, and few full admirals worked that late.
"He's nervous about the bridges campaign. I remembered some inputs from General Westy's intelligence people that the tonnage of war matériel coming south is dropping, so I told him that and about how we're starting to knock down bridges. I told him it'll get even better as the weather clears."
"Maybe that'll help."
Moss shook his head in disgust. "It's the rain slowing down the NVA supply line, Pearly. There hasn't been time for the action up north to slow things down here."
"I know, sir, but if we keep it up a little longer, the results will start to show."
Moss began to brood again. "You get on back to work. God knows someone around here has to. I'll spend my next hour answering the air staff's concerns, then I've got a meeting with a senator on another fact-finding tour, looking for truth from us lying, military monsters. And then I've got to have a midnight talk with General Roman about the possibility that our fucking cowboy fighter pilots might have bombed another unauthorized target."
Pearly stood to leave.
"Tell the guys out in the wings we'd better start knocking down more bridges, Pearly, or the politicians are going to call the whole thing off."
"Maybe that's what the guys'd like, sir. They're getting clobbered up there."
"Bullshit," said Moss. "For the first time in a while I think we just may be doing some good. And if I can feel it, I know the pilots out there feel it too."
Pearly braced himself. "I've got one more thing, General."
"Spit it out," Moss growled impatiently. "I've got work to do."
Pearly sucked a breath and told him about the compromised target list, then how he'd faked the tasking order and how the North Vietnamese had built up those defenses.
"It's one of my people, sir."
Moss sat stiffly, eyes locked forward sphinxlike. Pearly waited for the explosion.
Among the options Moss was undoubtedly considering was firing Pearly on the spot. Gates couldn't blame the general if he chose that route of action. American pilots had been killed or captured because of his reluctance to believe the leak could be coming from his branch. He had misplaced his trust. A leader was responsible for the actions of his men.
"You want me to call in the OSI, sir?"
Moss did not answer for a long while, just sat there staring. When he finally spoke, it was in a quiet voice, and the words were not at all what Pearly had expected.
"It's a strange war, Pearly. Back in the States we've got government officials releasing military secrets to the press, and the judicial system doesn't know how to handle it because there's no declared war. Schoolkids are rioting, and when the cops try to stop them, the press calls it police brutality. Politicians are scared of the press and refuse to help. We've got servicemen deserting to Canada and Sweden, and our so-called allies are sheltering them. A strange war, threatening to destroy the fabric of our democracy."
"Yes, sir, it is."
"If your man is found out by the OSI and legal charges are preferred, a hundred top-notch lawyers in the States will rush to come to his defense. The worst that will happen to him will be some jail time and a less-than-honorable discharge, and I'm not even sure of that. He'll become a celebrity with the peace movement. In any event, our headquarters will be disgraced, and the brush will likely extend to our fighting men."
Pearly shifted uneasily on his feet.
"There are a lot of heroic men here who deserve better."
"Yes, sir."
"I wonder how many pilots have been killed because of the leak?" Moss asked quietly. "You're a numbers man. How many?"
Pearly spoke haltingly. "As many as thirty airplanes went down because of . . . of the immediate defensive buildups in the past six months."
Moss shook his head slowly. "Thirty pilots."
"More like forty. Some were two-place F-4's and A-6's."
Moss leaned back in his chair.
"You say you've narrowed it down to two of your men?"
"Two are most likely suspects, sir."
"What are their names?"
"Sergeant Slye and Airman First Class O'Neil, sir. I still don't know which one's giving out the information. I can't believe it's O'Neil, but then it's hard to think it's either of them. Sergeant Slye is . . ."
"Just the names. I don't want to hear anything more."
"Slye and O'Neil, sir."
General Moss wrote the two names on a pad. "You've contained the damage for the future?"
"I've placed both men on a special project, cataloging outdated amendments and changes to contingency plans. Neither of them's happy about it, but nothing they're working on now would be harmful if it was leaked. Perhaps embarrassing, but not harmful."
Moss made up his mind. "I won't tell you what to do about it, Colonel. It's your shop, and your people."
Pearly was surprised. "Sir?"
Moss was measuring him closely. "Handle it. Do what's right."
"Yes, sir," said Pearly Gates, wondering what the right thing was, and how he would do it.
Day 14,
0200 Local—Red River Valley, North Vietnam
Major Lucky Anderson
He was lean, down to one-fifty pounds he thought, for he'd labored hard and eaten little for the past eight days. The worst of the hunger had left him. Now there were just the times during the night while he was traveling when his stomach would knot up to tell him something was wrong. He was growing weaker, but all of that was about to end.
He trotted through the field, carrying the dead chicken in his new hat, treasuring it and salivating whenever he thought of it.
Not a big chicken, just one of the scrawny kind the poor gomer farmers kept in their yards. They were never fed, just allowed to forage in the dirt and compete with every other living thing for food. This one had looked in the wrong place. The hen had clucked and probably wondered what the hell the thing was lying there covered in the mud, but it had not wondered long after it pecked at the hand he'd painstakingly positioned there.
Not a sound had it croaked when he'd grasped the neck and squeezed. A silent kill except for the wild flapping. He'd held on desperately for more than a minute, squeezing hard and hoping no one heard. Finally it had stopped flopping about, and he'd pulled it down into the muck with him. He'd lain there then, immersed among the reeds at the side of the canal not more than a hundred yards from a farmhouse.
He'd clutched the dead chicken for two more hours, until half an hour after sunset. Then he'd sneaked up to the unfortunate farmer's shack and taken a ratty-looking conical hat from his porch. The gomer and his family had been inside talking, six feet from him on the opposite side of the thatch wall, and he'd taken his hat and bird and crept away feeling like a million dollars.
He was partway across the valley, between the two wide rivers, the Lo and the Red, traveling very slowly because of all the people living in the valley.
Crossing the Lo had been difficult and cost him two days. The first time he tried, he'd come a hair's breadth from being discovered by a river boatman. He'd scurried back from the water's edge, burrowed into his rice paddy, and thought the next night's plan through more carefully. He'd made it across by kicking behind a small, decrepit boat he'd liberated.
His maps, matches, and the Phoenix Special were waterproofed, the maps by their plastic sheathing, the matches and ammo in the sealable plastic bag with the pistol. Everything else was soaked, as he was, for he'd found it was easiest to hide in mud and water. He preferred thickets of reeds found along a river or canal's bank, but he'd sometimes settle for an abandoned rice paddy. His skin was wrinkled and puckered when he emerged each evening, and he picked off leeches and dug fleas and nits from his hair until he tired of it, but he felt he was safest in the water.
Every other day he tried to contact the Thuds overhead to tell them he was still evading. Twice he'd missed them, but he had talked to them four times since leaving Thud Ridge. Once he was sure it was Colonel Mack he'd spoken to. The other discussions had been with strangers.
They all cheered him on, telling him things like "hang in there, buddy," but he knew they thought he had no chance of making it, because no one else had.
They don't know Lucky Anderson, he growled to himself, although the words were bravado. It was not his way to think about dismal alternatives until they were forced on him.
The survival radios were great, he'd thought at first, just as waterproof as they'd been briefed. He'd decided to write a letter to whoever the hell manufactured the things when he got out, to thank them for making a great product. Then, two days earlier, one of the damned things had quit on him when he was talking with Colonel Mack, and he cursed himself for leaving the third one behind on Thud Ridge. One radio left now, and he would need it for the pickup, so he planned to use it sparingly.
He found a small road going his direction, put on the gomer hat, and clutching the chicken, continued traveling west by southwest. With the moon down to a sliver there was little to illuminate his way, so he proceeded cautiously.
The headpiece inside the thatch hat was woven to fit a much smaller head, and he was having trouble balancing it in place. He stopped and carefully put the dead chicken down, then stretched the headpiece with his hands, keeping at it until he could wear it. It wasn't a great job, for he'd torn the woven mesh on one side, making the hat perch lopsided on his head, but at least it stayed in place.
Other than the hat he wore only the flight suit and boots. He'd discarded the g-suit on the ridge. His socks had deteriorated into ragged strips after the sixth day, so he wore the boots over bare feet. His few remaining belongings he carried in the pockets of the filthy flight suit.
He hurried down a long portion of the road, for he could see no one there in the dim light. It felt good to stretch out his legs and walk like that.
A voice barked out from the side of the road. He noticed a shadow there.
He kept walking, not knowing what else to do.
The voice called after him, but he continued on.
If it was an NVA soldier, he might be shot, he thought, but he sure as hell didn't know how to answer, so he just kept going, clutching the chicken to his chest. Maybe the guy was just commenting on having just seen the world's biggest gomer.
He heard no one following, so he continued the pace and felt better about things.
Then he heard the revving of diesel engines.
Coming his way? He slowed, still cradling the precious chicken in his arms, and continued down the center of the hole-pocked road.
He saw dim lights moving south to north, perpendicular to his route. A main road? He also heard a babble of distant voices and the sounds of more and more vehicles.
He continued walking for several more minutes, then stopped and stood very still. An intersection was less than a hundred yards ahead, and there were a hell of a lot of people there.
He edged off the road and into a dark field, wondering. There were hundreds of lights blinking and moving as far as he could see in both directions on the main road, humans carrying flashlights and lanterns.
A long line of traffic came from the south, paused at the intersection, then continued northward. Vehicles were also stopping half a mile farther down the road.
Highway 2. He'd remembered it from the map and had been looking for it, but he hadn't anticipated it would be this busy. And the checkpoints? He wondered what the hell they were looking for. After a few minutes of pondering he gave up and just thought about how he might get across the thing without being detected . . . and without losing his chicken.
The road he was traveling was a small one, running parallel to a larger one the map showed a mile or two to the south, which also intersected Highway 2. He didn't want to wander far from his present route, because it was the shortest way across the valley. But how the hell was he going to get across the road?
He cautiously made his way farther into the field, then sat and thought fuck it, he'd stay put for a bit while he thought over the thorny problem.
He started to pluck the chicken, which was a tough job without hot water to douse the thing in, and began to steel himself so he'd be able to eat raw bird. After he'd spent half an hour on the plucking job, he had an audacious idea.
There were a million fires flickering throughout the valley, maybe more, because many of the rice farmers kept a small fire going outside their thatch houses. What the hell would be suspicious about one more? Why not build a small fire, cook the bird, and dine in style?
He wandered about the field as silently as possible until he'd found several abandoned and drained rice paddies. He picked the one with the highest banks, to help shield a small fire from view, and went about collecting wood. When he'd built his small tepee of sticks and had another stack beside it, he used one of his precious matches. As soon as the fire was surely started, he held the chicken to it and singed off the remaining feathers.
Distant voices drifted over the field.
Fuck 'em, he joked, they could find their own chicken. As the skin crackled in the heat, he was unable to stop salivatin
g.
In the gloom of predawn, Lucky began to search for a place to hide for the day. He'd spent most of the night eating and celebrating his fortune, his way blocked by the horde of people on and near the road. He liked to wait for the half light of morning to pick his hiding places, because whenever he'd tried it in darkness, he'd selected poorly.
And as he looked around in the false dawn, it became apparent why he'd seen all the people on the road the previous evening. He was camped, had cooked and eaten the chicken, only a couple of hundred yards from an NVA SAM site. A loaded missile launcher was set up there, clearly visible, and he could see two more in the distance.
Jesus! They'd been setting up the things during the night, while he'd been eating his chicken and thinking how fucking smart he was. The lights immediately south of him hadn't been from the road, they'd been the gomers setting up and loading their launchers.
And then he saw that on either side of the highway, for as far as he could see in either direction, were series of artillery batteries, with the long snouts of big guns sticking up out of the six revetted positions of each battery.
There'd been no checkpoints, just gomers telling the trucks where to haul the guns.
He looked about slowly, counted maybe a hundred trucks parked helter-skelter everywhere. Including in the fucking field he was in. Over each truck was draped a camouflage net, and beside each was a slouching, bored, and well-armed guard.
When he'd recovered sufficiently from his shock to start thinking of a way to get the hell out of the area, a siren sounded in the distance. Then a Klaxon horn at the SAM site began making an awful racket.
They've seen me, was his first reaction, and he hunkered low to get out of their view before he started thinking more clearly.
It was time for the morning strike. That was what they were after, not a dumb-shit fighter jock they'd already shot down.
Lucky stuffed the legs, wings, and neck of the chicken—he'd saved those for today's feast—into the pockets of his flight suit. He double-checked that the Phoenix Special was ready for firing and slipped it into the left upper pocket, zipping it closed until only the butt was exposed.
