by Tom Wilson
Snider had just returned from Offutt and had brought a copy of SAC's Linebacker Alpha, their Top Secret plan to bombard North Vietnam with B-52's, to Saigon. He'd carried it with the classification unmarked so he'd have no trouble transporting it, and told Pearly he'd sweated bullets every mile of the way, worrying it might somehow be lost and fall into the wrong hands.
They were in Pearly's office, going over the first draft of his OPlan.
Snider glanced through the pages. "This is a damned good start, Pearly—very complete, at least from the tactical end."
"I'm starting to blend in the Linebacker Alpha strategic side. It's slow work."
"How many pages so far?"
"Seventy-nine. When it's done, it'll be five times that big, and that's without addenda. I tend to be too wordy, but I don't dare leave anything out."
"You need a good wordsmith to help, someone who can write a technical paragraph in less than a thousand words." Snider leafed through the plan and set it down.
"We're going to have a big-time problem with that last annex," Pearly said. "Where are we going to get figures to let them know what it'll cost?"
"Forget 'em," Wes Snider suggested.
"Colonel Leska said they have to know what the bombing campaign's going to cost."
"That's the sort of thing you're going to have to leave to General McManus's people. They've got access to figures you don't. You'd just get bogged down. I'll tell them when I'm back there next week."
Since he didn't dare log the draft JACKPOT plan as an official document, Pearly handled the hand-printed pages as "classified notes" and marked the pages "Secret—Working Papers." That allowed him to keep the folder unaccounted for and in his own safe.
Wes Snider eyed the package. "You got a title for it?"
"Just the JACKPOT OPlan."
"When you get your safe inspected, they're going to think you sure as hell keep a lot of working notes." Their safes were checked monthly.
"I've got all kinds of half-finished projects. Security inspectors look at 'em like they're written in Swahili."
Wes pointed at the document. "I think it's time to send what you've got, so the chief's people can see where you're heading."
"I agree."
"I also believe we should assign it a new nickname. Maybe just a number, but something."
"How about Project X."
"How many Project X's you already got here?"
"About a dozen. Stuff the general wanted that didn't go anywhere."
"Then how about Draft Plan X-13. Sound innocuous enough?"
"Let's run it by General Moss."
"You ready?"
Their appointment was for 1345 hours. As Pearly stuffed the plan into its folder, he called out to his admin sergeant to see if the general was available. Sometimes Moss's other meetings ran long, and checking with his secretary was a good idea. The WAF told them the general would be ten minutes late.
"No harm in getting there early," Pearly told Wes.
Two women now worked in Plans and Programs: the sergeant who ran the admin functions, did the typing, and answered the telephones, and the new OIC of his Documentation section. Second Lieutenant Lucille Dortmeier waited just outside the door as he and Snider walked out. She was short and skinny and couldn't weigh a hundred pounds—a diminutive beanpole with flaming red hair, a profusion of freckles, and only a hint of breast.
"I need to speak with you, sir," she said to Pearly. She appeared upset.
"Go ahead, but I don't have much time."
She looked hesitantly at Wes Snider.
Pearly sighed. "C'mon in." He held the door for her and motioned for Wes to wait outside for him. "I'll just be a minute, Colonel."
"No sweat."
He shut the door. "Relax," he said, for she looked tense. Lucille Dortmeier had just arrived, fresh from admin school at Scott AFB, Illinois. Tan Son Nhut was her first assignment, and she took her commission and her job seriously. Beyond that he knew little about her. Since her arrival he'd been preoccupied with JACKPOT.
She remained at attention. He glanced at his watch.
"It's Master Sergeant Turner, sir," she finally said.
Turner had run the Documentation section and the five NCOs and airmen assigned there before Dortmeier's arrival. Pearly considered him to be good at his job, which was why he'd placed the green lieutenant in that office.
"What about him?" he asked.
"We've got differences in the way we run things. He resists everything I try to do."
"Such as?"
"The Top Secret vault, for instance. He insists that he personally inventory every document, every night. I feel the duty should be rotated between everyone working in the vault. I published a schedule, but he told the people there that regardless of what any schedule says, it's his responsibility and he'll continue making the checks until you tell him different"
Pearly sighed and glanced at his watch. "Look, Dortmeier. I've got important things to worry about, and I simply don't have time for this."
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. "I understand, sir," she finally mumbled.
"Sergeant Turner has eighteen years in the Air Force. Rely on him. Ask him questions. But for Christ's sake don't try to change everything he's got set up during your second week here."
Her face flushed brightly but she remained silent.
He walked to the door. "Come to see me in a few weeks, after you get your feet on the ground. If you still feel the same way, we'll call Turner in and the three of us will hash it over."
"Yes, sir."
He decided to add one of his philosophies. "When you get to a new assignment, Dortmeier, don't try to make changes until you know what's going on. Just keep your ears open and listen for a while."
"Sir, I studied . . ." She stopped herself, brows knit seriously. "Yes, sir," she said quietly.
Pearly left her standing in his office. He didn't notice the welling of moisture in her eyes, for his mind had returned to the upcoming meeting with the general.
They went into Moss's office together, an incongruous pair, Pearly thought sadly. Snider was perfectly groomed and, despite the heat, looked like a recruiting poster. Pearly knew he wasn't an attractive man with his wire beard, bulbous nose, and kinky hair that was impossible to comb into place. The hair was okay, because he wore it cropped short. He avoided heavy beard shadow by keeping a second razor at work and taking time to shave before lunch and dinner. Pearly dieted constantly, but regardless of how he starved, he remained a few pounds overweight. Now, although he'd carefully tucked it in before leaving his office, his shirt threatened to come out of one side of his pants. He sometimes wore elastic garters that connected the sides of his shirt to his socks, but they were uncomfortable and easy to forget when he dressed in the morning.
Wes Snider looked at ease as they waited for the general to finish his telephone conversation. Pearly felt self-conscious and carefully stuffed his shirt into his trousers.
Moss continued talking on the telephone as he waved them forward into chairs.
"I don't care if God himself gave you a direct order. I want 'em painted."
Pearly knew what the conversation was about. A few weeks earlier Moss had visited the Navy base at Subic Bay in the Philippines, and noticed something he liked about the place. Upon his return to Tan Son Nhut, he'd immediately called the base civil engineer and given him a task. During General Roman's visit two days earlier, one of his colonels questioned why the trees on base were whitewashed to a height of precisely five feet and surrounded by a neat circle of white stones. The base commander had taken the question as criticism, and this morning Pearly had noticed Vietnamese workers all over Tan Son Nhut, busily scrubbing paint off the trees.
General Moss obviously liked them white, and he was upset that the base commander had taken it upon himself to change things. "Right now," Moss was saying. "Today! No, I don't care about your goddam priorities. When I leave this headquarters at six o'clock, I want
my trees looking proper, and I mean every one of 'em." He hung up, brooded for a moment about the conversation, then regarded Pearly. He still hadn't accepted Wes Snider into his circle of trusted staff officers, so he tended to ignore him.
Pearly placed the draft OPlan on his desk. "The JACKPOT draft OPlan, sir."
Wes Snider spoke up. "I feel we should rename the plan, sir, in case one of us has a slip of the tongue."
"Like what?" Moss growled, still grumpy about the trees.
"We came up with Project X-13."
Moss snorted. "I don't like it. Sounds like some kind of test airplane." He accepted few of Snider's suggestions.
"Yes, sir," Wes said.
The general thumbed through the pages, stopping periodically to scan.
"I also think we should send what we've got to General McManus, so he and his people can see what Colonel Gates is coming up with."
Moss didn't look up. "What do you think, Pearly?"
"I like the idea. And maybe they could send us anything they've got. Sort of level the playing field so we'll both be going the same direction."
Moss nodded abstractly as he read. "I'll let Gentleman Jim know this is coming and ask for whatever they've got." He frowned. "You show two more fighter wings and two more bomber wings from the States."
"As well as another carrier group."
"Not taking any chances, are we?"
"That's my initial estimate of what it'll take to accomplish the job in two to three weeks, bombing around the clock."
Moss read, "Initial attrition losses at four percent, dropping to one percent by the end of the sixth day."
"Unless they really conserve them, the enemy will start running out of missiles and artillery ammo on the fourth day. If we prevent their resupply, we'll have little opposition by day eight."
Moss peered harder. "These figures seem high. Eighteen B-52's lost?"
"Yes, sir. I upgraded it from the SAC estimates."
"It's a more realistic number," Wes Snider agreed.
Moss grunted. "General Roman's going to shit when he sees that." Thus far Roman was not included in the planning, but at some date he would have to be.
"He'll realize it will take those kinds of losses if we go all out, sir," Pearly said. He'd briefed Roman on previous occasions about other plans.
Moss slowly replaced the top cover. "Run a copy. Then seal it and send it out in a classified embassy pouch. General McManus's eyes only."
Snider smiled. "I'll be traveling next week, sir. I can act as courier."
Pearly stood to retrieve the draft OPlan.
Moss regarded Wes Snider, who was also on his feet. "I'd feel better if we used the embassy run."
"Yes, sir."
"We've got a hell of a task. It's important to us." "Us" meaning the real people, the fighter pilots . . . and Pearly Gates, whom he'd never accepted was really a navigator with 20/100 vision. He grouped him with his mafia fighter jocks. Snider was the outsider.
"Yes, sir," said Snider. "I believe it's important to America. We should have done something like this three years ago."
Moss stared, still measuring Snider. "Put your brain to work and think up a nickname for Pearly's OPlan. Since Gentleman Jim's trying to massage the President's ego, perhaps you can come up with something that'll make him know it's his baby."
It was Moss's way, to seize on ideas of subordinates and give them just enough twist to make them appear his own. Wes Snider knew the game. "I'll put thought to it right away," he said.
"Now if you don't mind, I'd like to talk to Pearly for a few minutes."
Snider quietly left the general with his more trusted advisor.
When the door closed, Moss reached into a lower desk drawer and pulled out a packet, then tossed it onto his desk. "Take a look at those."
Pearly pulled out three developed 70mm film strips, each numbered with felt-tip marker. He started with number one, peered hard, and nodded. He looked at the second, then the third with mounting excitement.
"Hanoi?"
"The southern suburbs."
"When were they taken, sir?"
"About a week and a half ago. On the sixth. I got 'em the next day."
"Looks like strike camera film."
Moss didn't respond. It was apparent that he didn't wish to discuss the film's origin.
Pearly examined them again. "It's the largest buildup we've seen to date. They're taking a big chance, piling so much into a single area."
"I'd like to bomb the hell out of 'em. That's why I wanted to talk to you."
"It would be impossible to get authorization, General. It's all residential area there."
"I thought Ho Chi Minh ordered the evacuation of civilians from Hanoi."
"More than a year ago. But that was for the northern quartier of Hanoi, not the suburbs."
Moss peered sadly at one of the photos. "So it's densely populated?"
Pearly didn't have to look again. He knew the area, even some of the street names. "Those were taken about five nautical miles south of the center of Hanoi," he said.
He walked to a large wall map of Vietnam and touched Hanoi, located in a large curl of the Red River. "The city's divided into three parts," he said. "Here in the core of Hanoi, the French called it the quartier du nord, you find the old villas, a couple of hotels for foreign visitors, the embassies, the Citadel or People's Army headquarters, an underground auxiliary headquarters they're still building, Ba Dinh Square, and most of the government administration buildings."
Moss stared at all the wonderful, however restricted, targets.
"Hanoi's sort of like downtown Saigon, with wide streets and old French buildings. To the north, around Ho Tay Lake and up along the river here, there's housing and slums. Right here, in fact, is where they're building the underground facility. We think they're going to move some of the headquarters facilities there, and MAC-V intell's asking the Joint Targeting Office at the Pentagon for permission to add it to our target list."
"Think they'll go for it?"
"It's a possibility. While they've never let us go after the targets in the city proper, they've turned us loose on overpasses, the Doumer bridge, and a power plant—all in that area around the northern suburbs."
"Go on."
"But here . . . south of the city core, there's huts built of thatch, like rice farmers live in, and narrow streets and alleyways. That's what we're looking at in the photo strips. There's more than two hundred thousand people living there."
Moss looked on grimly. "I'd still like to take out the supplies. It's like they're thumbing their noses at us. They're the ones putting their people in jeopardy."
"They know we're not really at war, sir."
A thoughtful moment passed. While their enemy was fighting all out, they most definitely were not. Finally Moss nodded toward the photo strips. "I mentioned to General Westmoreland that we had reports of massive supplies on their way south, including tanks. The supplies didn't surprise him, because they expected a buildup during the dry months. The mention of tanks got him excited, but not like you might expect. He said it's about damned time they brought in armor. MAC-V intell predicts a big spring offensive, probably somewhere in the delta or an all-out attack at our highlands bases. But the presence of tanks tells them the NVA just might be preparing to come out in the open and fight."
"I hope MAC-V knows what they're doing."
Moss snorted. "General Westy may be political and a showman, and he sure as hell doesn't understand air operations, but he knows as much about fighting a ground war as any man alive."
Pearly was surprised. Moss said few nice things about Westmoreland. He often complained because Westy, like the SecDef, seemed enamored with big numbers and good press.
"His XO explained their attitude. The NVA and the Cong talk big and have a reputation for being tough, but they won't come out and fight to prove it. Once it becomes an open battle, he says our troops will kick the diddley out of 'em. He says Westy doesn't like t
he fact that he's continually asking for more troops . . . I think probably because it's hurting him politically and he's got ideas of being another general-president like Ike. His XO said if the NVA come out to fight, it won't take half the people it will if they just keep sneaking around playing terrorist games. The Army'd love nothing more than an old-fashioned tank battle up in the highlands, and they're aching to prove the air-cavalry concept in a maneuvering fight."
"I hope they're right."
"That's their job, and they know what they're doing. One of our jobs is to interdict supplies, like we see in these photos. Problem is, like always, getting permission to do our job."
Pearly was back at Moss's desk, handling the photos. "Have you advised PACAF about the buildup?"
"Roman would want evidence, and if I sent him the photos, he'd start a witch-hunt to find out who took an armed aircraft into a restricted area. I called for recce flights up there, but one of the birds was shot down, and all the other one got was pictures of nets. The pilot who took these had to get right down in the dirt so the camera could see under the camouflage."
Pearly nodded.
"So what do we do about it all?"
Pearly stared at the lines of heavily laden vehicles, wishing he had an answer.
Five minutes later Lieutenant Colonel Pearly Gates returned to his office, his mind aswirl with thoughts of the massive buildup, of all the vehicles, including tanks, poised to come southward. He hoped to hell the Army could handle it. He knew the Air Force wouldn't get permission to bomb Hanoi.
He nodded and mumbled a greeting to Lieutenant Lucille Dortmeier and didn't notice the pained expression and anger in her eyes. He had bigger things to worry about.
1630L—VPA Headquarters, Hanoi, DRV
Colonel Xuan Nha
Mee pilots had been attacking bridges, airfields, and a variety of targets near both Hanoi and Haiphong, and Xuan Nha's VPAND had been preoccupied with trying to shoot down as many as possible with the few defenses they'd not moved south of Hanoi. It was increasingly difficult. They'd begun to shuffle defenses according to Xuan's intuitions, for more and more often the targets were surprising ones that People's Army intelligence had not forecast.
