Tango Uniform (Vietnam Air War Book 3)

by Tom Wilson

  Dumb animal! she thought as she sipped and watched the girl flee. Most powerful males, she'd long realized, were dictated by their penises. Some lived for the satisfaction of the sex act, others for boasting about conquests. Remove their capability and they felt threatened, for they must constantly prove their manhood.

  Her husband drew little real satisfaction from sexual acts, yet she'd known he'd have to prove his masculinity after his release from the hospital. Since he functioned best when the female was terrified or he was inflicting pain, Li Binh had thoughtfully added the young girl to the household staff. She certainly wanted no part of his experimenting. Their marriage bed had never been joyful, for neither of them felt coitus with the other was more than a rare necessity. The party and their careers had been important, not fumbling, halfhearted sex acts. And now, with his deformities . . . She shuddered at the thought.

  Women, even powerful ones such as she, were different. It was seldom the satisfaction of their glands that drove them. More often they were compelled by warm thoughts, promises of satisfaction, sometimes even by the chase. Or so she'd believed until . . . Her mind clouded as she thought of her nephew Nguyen Wu, who had given her such pleasure. She missed their daily rendezvous. . . . She missed him.

  Stop it! As she'd done many times before, she berated herself for her weakness. Her nephew preferred male companions. Still . . .

  Xuan Nha entered from his room in the south wing, freshly bathed and smiling, a caricature with one arm and an eye patch. The flesh of his neck and lower half of his face, where the skin had been burned away, was pink and knotted with grisly scar tissue. He lurched and made pained expressions as he walked. Hideous, she decided for the hundredth time. She didn't rise, just examined him curiously and sipped hot tea. He took his seat gingerly, smiling like a fool.

  "I heard you were praised today before Le Duc Tho," she said to massage his vanity.

  He slapped his chair arm. "Tea," he rasped when the frightened maid scurried in. She noted the way he looked at the girl . . . like a victor. Finally, she thought, he'd succeeded.

  "There is talk of reward for you, husband," Li Binh said quietly.

  He pursed his lips. Before he'd been caught in the American bombing attack, Xuan had kept himself in strict control, seldom displaying emotions. He was like that again. Success and praise were rejuvenating him, she supposed.

  "But there are those who say it is much too early for reward," she added. "They do not say it in my presence, of course, but I hear of such things."

  He was looking at her.

  "I am proud of your achievements," Li Binh said quietly.

  The girl returned with the tea and, Li Binh noted again, regarded Xuan Nha fearfully, yet with an entirely new demeanor—the utterly vanquished. She watched her hurry out and wondered. Li Binh disposed of help when she felt they'd seen or heard too much. If sufficiently discreet, the girl and her family might last several months at the villa. But Xuan Nha had sadistic passions—which also jeopardized the girl's tenure. It would be interesting to see how long she remained alive. If he destroyed the girl and still displayed interest in rutting, Li Binh would provide another plaything. They were plentiful enough.

  Xuan Nha broke into her thoughts by telling her of General Tho's visit, his talk about Quon, and his suggestion that the reeducation be ended. Xuan asked pointedly if the suggestion could have come from Le Duc Tho.

  "Shall I mention this to the appropriate offices?" he asked.

  Li Binh was quiet for a short pause, then said she'd relay General Tho's words. A flutter of emotion stirred in her breast.

  Xuan pulled on reading glasses and began to pore over a report. She picked up papers of her own, but had trouble discerning the words, for warmer thoughts were in her mind. She decided to contrive a personal meeting between herself and Nguyen Wu . . . to tell him about the suggestion passed from Le Duc Tho.

  The tingling sensation grew as she remembered other secret meetings with her nephew.

  Saturday, November 4th, 1020 Local—Command Post

  Colonel Buster Leska

  The morning mission had been to a military barracks complex located just south and west of Hanoi. The pilots had liked the target, even though the area was heavily defended, because they'd be bombing enemy combat troops who were likely preparing to fight Americans in South Vietnam. But it hadn't been troops they'd found at the installation.

  Bombs from the second airplane in the gaggle had hit one of the barracks buildings squarely and set off a tremendous explosion, lifting debris several hundred feet into the air. That explosion had set off another. The next flight, led by Captain DeVera, had bombed another part of the complex, and one of those buildings had gone up just as spectacularly.

  Buster listened to the debriefings, then spoke with the intelligence officers preparing the message to be forwarded to higher headquarters. The pilots were exuberant about the mission's results, saying how they were in greater danger from the secondary explosions than from enemy gunfire. The intelligence officers were not as happy. Intell at Takhli, as everywhere, didn't like to make errors. If they briefed that the pilots would find troops at the barracks, they wanted them to find troops there. He got the impression they were still not totally convinced that there weren't troops at the complex, regardless of what the pilots thought they saw.

  He was reading the synopsis put together by the intell major when Captain DeVera came over, sipping coffee and looking as if he wanted to say something.

  "You got something, Manny?"

  "Wondering if I could get into your office to see you for a few minutes later today, sir?"

  "Is it important?" Buster had a busy schedule, an important meeting with the base commander and the civil engineer, a lunch date with his deputies, and in the afternoon a two-star was visiting from PACAF headquarters in Hawaii.

  "I think so," said Manny.

  "I'll be heading back to my office as soon as I'm done here. We can walk and talk."

  Manny stepped back then as George Armaugh, the Deputy for Operations, came in and made a beeline for Leska.

  Buster returned the draft report to the intell officer. "Beef it up. Make sure the headquarters pukes understand our guys hit a major ammo-storage site. You've gotta remember who you're talking to and spell it out that it was something damned big stored in there. Include the colors of the explosions and the height of the fireballs. That's so they can estimate the type and tonnage of explosives that went up."

  "Yes, sir." The intelligence major went away wearing a forced, neutral expression.

  Armaugh was peeved. "We've got a problem with sortie generation again. We have a big mission coming up this afternoon, forty birds on an alpha strike, and we don't even have enough flyable airplanes to put two spares on standby."

  "Talk it over with Jerry." Colonel Jerry Trimble was Deputy for Maintenance, and increasingly the brunt of Armaugh's unhappiness.

  "I already got his fucking excuses. Hell, he's not even sure he can give me the forty birds."

  "I've heard from Jerry. You two have to quit squabbling, George."

  "Goddammit, he's got to remember there's a war going on, and we . . ." Armaugh paused when he saw the stern look that invaded Buster's face. This was not the proper place for bickering among the senior staff.

  "I've got to get back to the office," said Buster, motioning for George to follow.

  "I'm going to have to send out a message saying we've gotta stand down from the mission because Trimble can't generate the sorties."

  They went out the door into bright sunlight.

  George was tight-jawed. "The airplanes we get are shitty half the time, and my guys have to bet their asses they can get them home. Dammit, the SAMs and triple-A ought to be enough. Instead, we've got to face a goddam . . ."

  "George!"

  Armaugh glared around as they began to walk, seeing only Manny DeVera, who came out and trailed a dozen paces behind them.

  "Fly this afternoon's mission with what w
e've got, George. Just like we do every day."

  "Well, dammit, it isn't right. We're flying combat up there, betting our asses, and we ought to be able to expect better. It's just downright shitty maintenance."

  "You ever work in maintenance, George?"

  "Jesus, no."

  "Try putting yourself in their shoes. They work all night to get the birds ready. Then they get a big mission like this morning, with airplanes overstressed, some of 'em shot up, others needing routine maintenance, and they're pressed just trying to turn them around."

  "Trimble blames everything on my pilots."

  "With reason. Our pilots put the birds through abuse like nothing they've ever seen before. No airplanes, not even Thuds, can stand up under such stress. Every time they dodge a SAM, that's seven or eight sustained g's. Some of the guys pull seven g's coming off a target. They use afterburner a lot more than in peacetime, and fly at military power. We're aging the airplanes at ten or fifteen times the normal rate. Every morning we tear 'em up, then Jerry Trimble's people, who've half of them worked all night, try to put them together for an afternoon mission."

  "That's just the way combat is."

  "I know that. So does Jerry. He's a fighter jock. But it doesn't change the fact."

  "They've got to keep up. My pilots have to."

  "You may have pilots with big balls, George, but they don't work a tenth as hard as the maintenance people."

  "Maintenance isn't facing the SAMs and . . ."

  "Listen. I don't want to hear another word about how tough your pilots have it. They're paid to fly and fight. Your job is to see they do it. Jerry Trimble's people try to give you the tools to do it with. Normally they can, but then we get something like this, two big alpha strikes in a single day, and they have trouble keeping up."

  "Then I'll have to send out a message telling higher headquarters we can't . . ."

  Buster stopped cold and turned slowly to face Armaugh. "You're not sending out a message, George. You may talk it over with me, and if I agree that such a message should go out, then you can send it, but I'm not saying that, and I just told you something entirely different. I told you to have your pilots fly the mission with what they've got."

  Armaugh stared back.

  Buster softened his tone. "Go on back to work, George. You and your people are under a lot of strain. We've all got to keep doing the best we can."

  After a long pause Armaugh's anger withered. "Yeah," he mumbled. The previous day the wing had lost two more pilots. George Armaugh was feeling the strain, but he was a good man, and Buster knew he'd come through.

  George gave a quick salute and started to leave.

  "How's Donovan holding up?" One of the downed pilots had come from Donovan's 354th squadron, and Buster had been with him when he'd been told about it. He'd become so angry that he'd developed a stutter, and his egotism level had become unbearable.

  Armaugh seemed to be of a different mind. "Maybe I was wrong about him," he said. "He's doing a good job with his squadron."

  "I get the feeling he's undergoing a personality change of some kind."

  "We all do, Buster. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping nights after a bad one."

  Buster nodded and watched him leave, still wondering about Yank Donovan.

  "You need something?" George snapped at Manny DeVera, who still trailed along behind.

  Buster called out, "I wanted to ask Manny about the ECM pod situation, George. He thinks we're having too many failures."

  Armaugh gave him a "see, I told you maintenance was fucked up" look and headed back toward the command post.

  As Manny hurried to join him, Leska glanced toward his office and noticed the base commander's blue sedan was already parked there. He hated to keep Mike Hough waiting again. He'd put the meeting off several times.

  "I only have a couple of minutes," he said too brusquely.

  "I'll try to make it quick, sir."

  Buster continued to walk as he listened.

  Manny, leading the second flight to bomb the barracks complex, had delayed his roll-in so the first fireballs and smoke could drift some and he could get a better picture of what might be left to bomb, taking his four birds in a wide turn around the target area and dodging two groups of SAMs as they ventured south of the city. They'd completed half the circle when he saw a building that hadn't been destroyed in the complex, and rolled in. After he'd dropped his bombs, he'd pulled off over Hanoi, and then, while he'd been very low, he'd seen something odd in the southern suburbs. The building his number three bombed contained ammo too, and when his bombs hit it, the explosion rocked Manny's bird. Getting the flight back together and joined up with the departing gaggle had taken the rest of his attention and skills.

  At the debriefing Manny had held his tongue about what he'd seen, because it would be too obvious they'd ventured deep into the restricted zone during their recovery, and he sure as hell didn't want to tell that to the world.

  Buster wasn't impressed with what DeVera reported. "There've always been trucks lining the streets on the south side of Hanoi, Manny. The convoys form up there and wait for nightfall. They know we can't bomb them while they're still in residential suburbs."

  "Yes, sir, and I've seen them before, but never anything like this, Colonel. I saw two or three times as many trucks, carts, trailers, you name it, and they're all stacked high."

  "Hard to see that much from the air."

  "I've got good eyes and I was close to the ground. There were a large number of 'em right out in the open, but there was a lot of camouflage netting, and a bunch more were parked underneath. Down low like that you can see under it."

  Leska looked evenly at him. "You were in the area we were told not to overfly?"

  "There wasn't any way to avoid it, unless we'd bombed blind. There was a lot of smoke, and the direction we had to set up our dive gave us the only good visibility."

  "Okay," Leska said, "now forget you told me."

  "Yes, sir, but before I forget, they're also protecting that area like never before. They must've doubled the number of SAMs, we were bounced by MiGs, and there's a hell of lot more large-caliber triple-A."

  Leska nodded. "Thanks for telling me, Manny."

  "I thought you should know, sir." Manny saluted, then turned away toward his office.

  Buster continued walking. He wondered if he should forward a JACKPOT message about Manny's discovery. He doubted that the convoys were really any different from normal, and the fact that the gomers had moved more defenses there wasn't unusual. The enemy often shifted SAMs and guns around.

  He decided to take a look for himself.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sunday, November 5th, 1414 Local—Channel 97 TACAN, Eastern Laos

  Captain Manny DeVera

  It was to be another strike at Phuc Yen, the large MiG base across the Red River, north of Hanoi. Lieutenant Colonel Yank Donovan was Scotch Force leader. Manny DeVera led Marlin, the second flight in the formation. Captain Animal Hamlin was his number three.

  The only standing military structure on the big base was a large hangar at the northwest side of the runway. That was the target. Numerous guns had been noted in the prestrike photos a mile north of the hangar, so Manny had briefed his flight that those were to be avoided.

  The navigation instrument needle swung about, showing they were passing over TACAN at Channel 97. Manny reached up and wiped a smudge off the "whiskey compass" with his glove. This was what they called the small instrument attached to the top of the canopy bow, because its small glass reservoir was filled with amber liquid. A magnetic compass floated freely in the reservoir. If everything else failed, the whiskey compass could provide a rough heading so you could head for home.

  After crossing the "fence," which was what the pilots called the border of North Vietnam, Colonel Donovan told the force to "green 'em up" and "turn on the music": to set their armament switches and turn the ECM pod switches from STANDBY to ON. They flew eastward over the high gre
en mountains at 20,000 feet, settling into proper spacing, separated by 1,000 to 1,500 feet within the sixteen-ship formation. A few miles ahead of them ranged the Wild Weasels, call sign Red Dog, to help shield them from SAMs and call out threats to the force. Flying above and slightly right of Scotch Force were four F-4 Phantoms from Ubon airbase, the MiG-CAP, to help keep enemy interceptors off their back. Their call sign was Honda.

  Manny heard a brp-brp, brp-brp sound, then a periodic ticka-ticka in his helmet earphones. He frowned and listened, and was not surprised when the Wild Weasel leader radioed and confirmed his discovery.

  "Scotch Force, this is Red Dog," called the calm Wild Weasel leader. "We're getting a lot of GCI activity. Be on the lookout for MiGs."

  The ticka-ticka sound heard over the headset each thirty seconds was made by a ground-control intercept radar called a Barlock. The brp-brp, brp-brp came from a height-finder radar. The enemy would know their altitude and position in the airspace. Not accurately enough to shoot them down with SAMs or guns—those systems had their own precision radars—but sufficiently close to send MiGs after them. The ECM pods did not jam the GCI radar frequencies.

  It was not a fearful thing, knowing MiGs would be active, just another piece of knowledge so they'd understand what to expect. Forewarned, they could prepare for any confrontation. It was the unexpected that they disliked.

  As they continued over the high mountains west of Hanoi, Scotch Force slowly descended through 18,000, then 15,000 feet. By the time they approached the Black River, they were flying at 12,000 feet. Ahead they could see the Red River Valley . . . flat as a plate, spotted with cities, checkerboarded with rice paddies. Thousands of small reservoirs, irrigation ditches, and streamlets glittered in the morning sun.

  The force crossed the Red River twelve miles south of Yen Bai. Manny's mind began to chant its aggressive litany. Remain calm—stay on the offensive—what's the best next move?