Lucky’s Bridge (Vietnam Air War Book 2)

by Tom Wilson

  As he sat listening, Manny realized he was happy. Even if he couldn't fly with them, he enjoyed their company.

  Billy Bowes looked over at him. "When's all the crap going to end so you can get back to work?"

  Manny shrugged. "Got me."

  "Hell, it's been two weeks now, Manny. You'd think they'd tell you something."

  "Yeah, you'd think so."

  "What the hell have they got that makes 'em think you did anything?"

  "Today they showed me a copy of a page from Major Lucky's notebook."

  An incredulous look came over Billy's face. "You shitting me?" he asked.

  "Nope. It's his printing. The Bad Injin gave it to Lyons before he got killed, and Lyons gave it to the cops."

  "What's it say?" Billy didn't look convinced.

  "That I bombed an unauthorized target."

  "And your name's on it?"

  "It just says Captain D, but Lucky just used initials in his book, and I'm the only D in the flight."

  "Is the book marked 'private,' like they say to do?" Billy asked. "If it is, they're not supposed to use it."

  Manny shook his head. "This was just a single sheet. Supposedly Lucky gave it to Bad Injin in case he got shot down. Told him he wanted him to press charges if anything happened. That's what Lyons says, anyway."

  Billy snorted. "That's a goddam lie. Whenever Major Lucky got pissed off at you, he'd tell you right to your face. I oughta know. It's a setup, Manny."

  "Okay, let's say it is. Now you tell me how I prove it. It's a single sheet, so I can't tell if it's marked 'private' or anything. Major Lucky's writing was so lousy he usually printed everything, and it looks like his printing. The spelling's shitty, and you remember he couldn't spell worth a damn. And it says that I bombed an unauthorized target. And Bad Injin Encinos isn't around to explain how he got it."

  Billy glared out at the room, then looked back at him. "What's the date on the sheet?"

  "July twenty-ninth. That day I led a flight attacking a barracks west of Hanoi. The gomers said we bombed a hospital."

  "They always say we bombed a hospital, a school full of kids, or an old folks' home," growled Henry.

  Billy's eyes narrowed. "Could it have been June twenty-ninth? That was the day Lucky got pissed off at me for dropping on the wrong target at Thanh Hoa."

  Manny thought. "No, it says J-U-L for July."

  "You sure it wasn't changed from J-U-N? I don't trust Lyons."

  Manny reflected, then gave a shake of his head. "I guess the date could have been altered. I only saw a copy, not the original. But changing the date and the initials would be illegal as hell, and I don't think even Lyons would stoop so low as to pull that kind of shit."

  Billy Bowes smirked, as if Manny were being naive. Joe Walker was frowning and beginning to look troubled by what he heard.

  "That the only date they're pissed off about?" asked Billy.

  "They're investigating some others. Remember that time in late April when I threw my bombs toward Gia Lam airport?"

  "You missed the airport, for Christ's sake."

  "Doesn't matter. Some Aussie reporter claimed bombs went off in a residential area. I think I can beat that one. A lot of people were watching and saw me get hit as I released."

  "I remember," said Henry, "and by God I'll tell 'em that."

  Manny continued. "It's the note that's the problem. Who the hell's going to say Lucky Anderson lied?"

  "And with Bad Injin dead," Joe Walker said darkly, "it's Lyons's word against yours."

  Jackie Bell spoke up. "I told Manny we should go to Colonel Parker about what happened between Tom Lyons and him that night. I think it might help if he knew."

  Manny looked evenly at her. "Just stay out of it, and don't mention that night again."

  It was the dozenth time he'd told her that, and he'd made up his mind on the matter. Why let her foul her reputation by saying he'd spent the night in her trailer, especially when it would likely do him as much harm as Lyons?

  "What's the worst they can do to you?" asked Henry.

  "At first they said a general court-martial and possible jail time, but now the legal officer says it'll more likely be a summary court-martial and a fine if I'm found guilty."

  A summary court-martial involved only a single senior officer sitting in judgment.

  "That'd be enough to ruin your career," said Joe quietly. "Even if you were found innocent, people would just remember you were court-martialed and forget the rest."

  Manny nodded. "Yeah, but before it can go to court-martial, they've got to find cause during this inquiry, then make formal charges against me and hold a preliminary hearing, and then comes a court-martial."

  "It's like a bad dream," said Jackie bitterly.

  "It's stupid," Joe said. "They ought to drop the whole thing."

  "The legal officer thought that's what would happen once the initial noise settled down. Then he said someone at PACAF called and scared the shit out of the base commander, so he bucked it up to the wing commander, and now everyone's excited about it again."

  "That's where it should have been in the first place," Henry said. He nodded with conviction. "Colonel B.J. will have 'em drop it."

  Joe Walker was still in his worrying mood. "Don't be too sure," he said. "B.J.'s awfully ambitious, and if PACAF's determined, he just might bend over for them."

  But Manny felt better now that it was up to the wing commander. He'd known B.J. since Parker had been a squadron commander in Germany and brought his pilots down to Libya to practice on the El Uotia gunnery range. Manny had briefed him and his pilots dozens of times on weapons and range procedures, and B.J. had thought highly of him.

  "I'll still bet Lyons is involved up to his pretty blue eyeballs," said Billy Bowes. "Like calling people at PACAF headquarters when things started dying down and it didn't look like anyone here wanted to hang you high enough."

  "I wouldn't put it past the asshole," said Smitty; then he looked at Jackie and blushed. "Sorry," he muttered.

  "I couldn't agree more," said Jackie. "Colonel Tom Lyons is a pedigreed asshole." She didn't speak in a subdued voice, and several guys at adjacent tables turned to grin their agreement.

  Thursday, September 28th, 0745 Local—Route Pack Five, North Vietnam

  Captain Billy Bowes

  Five days after the dinner discussion, Billy talked to Major Lucky for the first time since he'd been shot down. The radio call on guard frequency was weak and hardly audible, and he would likely not have heard it at all if he hadn't been thinking about the pilot with the scarred face.

  ". . . cuda lead calling in the blind on guard. Barracuda lead . . . guard in the . . ."

  After a few seconds of digesting what he'd heard, Billy switched to the emergency channel.

  "This is Bison lead. Go ahead, Barracuda lead."

  "Roger, Bison . . . cuda lead. I'll be ready . . . out of. . . in . . . days."

  Billy tried to put the transmission together in his mind, but could not.

  "Your transmission is broken, Barracuda lead. Please repeat," called Billy.

  " . . . cuda . . . out."

  Although he tried to contact him twice more, Billy heard no more from the ground.

  "This is Bison lead. Anyone able to hear all of that transmission?"

  "Lead," called Henry Horn. "I think he said he was ready to be picked up."

  Billy had not made that connection, but he wondered if Horn had heard more than he had.

  "I think he said he'd be ready for rescue in a few days," called Major Max Foley, who was strike force commander.

  That was more in line with his own thinking. "Anyone hear how long before he'd be ready?"

  No one answered.

  "Maybe we should go back and try to raise him again," called Henry.

  "Negative, three," he radioed, wanting to do just that but knowing it wasn't the smartest thing to do. As he thought it over, a Fansong SAM radar rattled its strobe onto the CRT of his RHAW syste
m.

  "Bison lead's got a strong tracking SAM signal at ten o'clock."

  They were entering pack six, on their way to bomb the bridge at Bac Giang, a heavily defended target east of Hanoi.

  "Bison two's got an ACTIVITY light," called Smitty, which meant the SAM operator had turned on his missile-guidance beam.

  A few seconds later the LAUNCH light illuminated, and they watched for missiles from their left. As usual, Billy saw them first.

  "Bison lead's got three SAMs in sight at nine o'clock," he announced. "Everyone check they've got their music on?"

  He ensured that his own ECM pod was turned on, and the green light illuminated, then looked back at the missiles. They were coming on fast, darting directly toward them. He pushed the nose of his Thud slightly downward and fire-walled his throttle.

  "They're for us, Bison two. Prepare to maneuver."

  "Two." Smitty's voice was steady. He was very good, very reliable.

  The missiles were close . . . just a bit closer and . . .

  He pulled up hard, and after enduring eight seconds of heavy g-forces, eased up and slid off to the right.

  "Bison lead, the missiles are clear," called Henry.

  Billy reversed back toward the rest of the big formation. The others had pulled away to allow him and his wingman to maneuver. Within a few more seconds Smitty was back in formation, and the others were closing to proper intervals between aircraft.

  The formation proceeded across the south end of Thud Ridge and then ten miles farther before swinging right, toward Bac Giang and the bridge there.

  2350 Local—Western Mountains, Route Pack Five

  Sergeant Black

  "Twenty-one minutes to go," said the Air Force loadmaster, and Black nodded his thanks.

  He sipped at the paper cup of awful, lukewarm coffee. Then, when he remembered it would be more than two weeks before he'd get another, he savored it.

  He glanced back at his men sitting in the rearmost seats of the C-130 Hercules, which was painted flat black and flown by the Air Force Special Operations crew from Nha Trang. The team was barely distinguishable in the dim glow of red light used to preserve their night vision. All lights would be shut off when the big rear door was opened and they prepared to exit, to avoid being seen from the ground.

  He gave his team a thumbs-up signal and echoed the loadmaster's call. "Twenty-one minutes until we jump," he said in impeccable Vietnamese.

  "No threats," broadcast Cecil the Crow over the aircraft intercom. The Crow, a highly trained electronic-warfare officer, sat at a console immediately behind the aircraft's cockpit, hidden by a set of blackout curtains and monitoring his scopes and headset for signs of enemy radar or communications activity. They said Cecil was the best of the Crows. His sensitive receivers were pretuned to known radar and radio frequencies, and with them he vowed he could "tell what the gomers down there were eating for fucking dinner.

  If a threat of any kind appeared ahead, or if there was absolutely any indication the enemy knew they were coming, they would abort and sneak home via one of several preplanned routes. The Special Operations air war was quite different from others, for they avoided all confrontation with the enemy. To do their jobs appropriately was to successfully evade a fight. To be discovered would mean sudden, fiery death. The North Vietnamese Army could easily shoot them down with any of a thousand of their sophisticated antiaircraft weapons, or even with their million-odd unsophisticated ones.

  "Friday, I've got the Yen Bai Firecan on the air at our two o'clock. He doesn't see us." "Friday" was the aircraft commander's unlikely first name. "Firecan" was the code name of a fire-control radar for antiaircraft artillery.

  "Anything new, Cecil?" asked Friday. They knew where the threats were supposed to be and were most likely to move to, and those were planned for in advance and circumvented. They'd planned for the Yen Bai Firecan. He was asking if anything was out there that they'd not planned for.

  "Nope. Quiet as a mouse," said the Crow to the pilot. They didn't call out positions, like "pilot" or "navigator," because they knew one another's voices. Special Ops aircrews were the loosest and seemingly most ill-disciplined group in the military, but they were damned good at their jobs and were proud of it. Like the Air America CIA contractors, Special Forces, and the SEALS, they reported to MAC-SOG, and not through regular service channels.

  "Friday, come right ten degrees to zero-oner-fiver," called the navigator, and the pilot made an abrupt turn that made Sergeant Black want to puke. He didn't like airplanes or flying in the things, especially the kind of hot-rod flying some of the Special Ops pilots liked to do.

  Sergeant Black wore a blackout uniform, issue jungle fatigues dyed very dark, with subdued E-6 rank on the collar. The Geneva Convention called for proper uniforms or you could be executed as a spy, so for some stupid rationale his bosses required it, like if he was captured in uniform he would be invited for crumpets at Chez Ho Chi Minh. So he wore the fatigues and carried a Geneva Convention card that lied about his rank and name and even his serial number. As soon as they were established on the ground, he would remove the rank and destroy the card, as he always did, and become a shadow. He was good at it. And when required, he would put on an NVA sergeant's uniform, the various pieces of which were distributed among his men's packs. Fuck the brass and their ladies'-tea-group concepts of warfare. Until they were exfiltrated, he and his men must remain either invisible or indistinguishable from the sea of fish they operated in.

  His six-man team did not wear bogus uniforms. They'd deserted from the 321-B Division of the Vietnamese People's Army, and were willing to give their lives to rid the world of the Hanoi communists. A year before, they'd kidnapped an American sergeant, carefully convinced the shaken soldier that they wished to turn themselves over to the Americans, and came marching into a Special Forces A-Team camp near the DMZ with wide grins and their hands behind their heads. Fortunately the astonished Special Forces team had not immediately killed them.

  Other NVA troops had given themselves up, but as far as he knew, none had done so in such spectacular form. But the Special Forces brass hadn't trusted them and suspected they were plants from the NVA. Sergeant Black had been fifth in the line of interrogators to speak to them. Two months later, in a trial run, they'd been inserted by chopper to observe activity on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They went in unarmed with five Americans who had orders to kill them at the first sign of betrayal. Instead they'd saved the lives of the Americans. After their return they'd been joined up with Sergeant Black, his name and rank changed because the brass were still wary of the renegades and wanted them to have a minimum of hard information.

  Special Forces A-Teams normally consisted of twelve men, long-range recon teams of five men. Hotdog was a special seven-man insertion team. Not twelve, because twelve guys too often couldn't easily link up in a dark jungle after being dropped in. Not five, because Sergeant Black liked to have the extra eyes and firepower. But most of all he'd kept the six renegade NVA together because they were accustomed to working with one another and had built intense loyalties.

  Black reasoned that Hotdog would fight for the Americans, but it might be too much to ask that they do it wholeheartedly. He'd made a good decision, for Hotdog fought like demons, would fight to the last breath of life, to save one another and keep their team intact. Black had grown to admire and like the tough little renegades.

  This was Hotdog's fifth insertion, their third into North Vietnam. They'd done well, and he was damned proud of them. After another trip or two he'd follow up on his guarantee of a free ticket to the States, where he pledged to be their sponsor for citizenship. He'd advised them to avoid the mainland, because haoles ran things there and sometimes had trouble getting along with the different races. They needed good people like them in the islands. When he described his home in paradise, their eyes would drift and they'd grow slow grins.

  Their lieutenant motioned Sergeant Black closer, because it was difficult to hear over the
awful noise of the C-130's four engines.

  "Fifteen minutes to drop," came the navigator's announcement, and Black echoed it to the men in Vietnamese before leaning toward the lieutenant.

  "When are we going after Majah Lokee Anduh-sun?" asked the lieutenant.

  It was a valid question, for it hadn't been covered as a part of their briefings. Officially they were to reconnoiter supply routes, a barracks-and-training area, and a new prison camp being built west of Hanoi, as well as defenses throughout that area, but Sergeant Black had told the men that they were also going to try to find the pilot with the badly scarred face.

  The Special Forces brass didn't trust his ex-NVA and told him not to mention the pilot's name or description. Black thought that was ridiculous, because they'd be the ones searching for him. So he'd told them, but said to keep quiet about it because the brass would be pissed off if they knew he'd ignored their counsel.

  He confided, "We will look on our way in, and if we do not find him, we will make another search on our way to Point Zulu."

  They'd be inserted at Point Victor by parachute and in seventeen days be exfiltrated by chopper at Point Zulu. The exfiltration checkpoints were memorized by Black and never put on paper, in case one of the indigenous members was captured.

  "Hokay, Sarge," said the NVA lieutenant.

  "Quit that," he growled. He'd taught them a little English and some island pidgin, but he didn't like them speaking it when they were on a mission.

  "Hokay, Sarge," the lieutenant retorted impishly, and Sergeant Black glared.

  He showed the lieutenant the map he'd been studying, an old, well-detailed 1950 French road map. Newer roads and developments had been roughly inked in.

  He pointed to a location south of Yen Bai. "He crossed the Hong Song about here. That was two weeks ago, but he's been moving slowly. Last radio contact was here, ten kilometers from our drop point. I think he's following that mountain trail."

  "When was his last radio call?"

  "Oh-seven-forty-five this morning. His transmission was weak, and they were only able to get an approximate position."

  Accurate only within seven kilometers, his Monkey Mountain liaison had estimated.