by Tom Wilson
Buster quelled an angry response that he didn't want guesses.
"We better make it sixty," Trimble said. "More if we can get 'em."
"How the hell did we get ourselves in a corner like this?" Buster asked, not politely. "Didn't someone advise us about the surface shipment being slowed down? Hell, if we'd started the airlift a few days earlier, we wouldn't be in this fix."
Manny said something vague about maybe he'd screwed up. Buster shook his head morosely, trying to pin Manny's eyes, but DeVera wouldn't look at him directly. Something was definitely wrong.
Jerry Trimble motioned to Manny. "Get with logistics and tell them we need an emergency airlift of sixty Shrikes, and we'll need 'em as soon as they can get 'em here. Then have 'em call Korat and see if we can borrow a few until the airlift arrives."
"Tell the loggies that I'll sign the requests," Buster growled angrily.
"Yes, sir." DeVera quickly left the room.
"Something wrong with him?" Buster asked when DeVera had gone. "He doesn't seem his old self."
"Probably working too hard. But you're right. He's nervous and he's looking bad."
"Maybe he's flying too much."
"I'll check into it."
"Do that. Now, you said you had something else you wanted to talk over?"
Jerry Trimble hesitated for a moment. "More of a generalization than a real problem, but I thought you should know before it gets worse."
"Shoot."
"It's George Armaugh and his people. The overall status of our aircraft is going downhill fast. My pilots are starting to raise hell about all the maintenance problems, and I've got to agree."
Buster's brows knitted. "What do you mean?"
"Well, some days we're barely getting enough aircraft to meet the frags. We go out there and get our asses shot off, and the fucking maintenance people—"
Buster rose angrily from his chair. "I don't want you ever saying those words together again. They aren't fucking maintenance people. They're guys trying like hell to give you the aircraft you need." He had a flash of déjà vu . . . he'd heard the recording before.
Jerry Trimble flashed an agreeable expression. "Yes, sir. Sorry about the word. It's just that I don't think Armaugh understands our needs."
Buster Leska worked hard to maintain an even tone. "Colonel Armaugh and his people are doing their damnedest."
"Maybe it's because he's new to maintenance, but—"
"Stop!" Leska roared.
It was more of the same crap—the continuing argument between maintenance and operations that slowed things down and created unnecessary antagonism.
"Jerry, go on out there and do your job, and stay the hell off George's back."
"I just thought you should—"
"Damn it!"
Trimble's resolve melted. "Yes, sir." He left.
After a moment of smoldering inwardly over the return of the infighting, Buster pulled out of his top drawer the message he'd received just before the meeting.
A JACKPOT message from General Moss. General McManus was still in the hospital, having suffered yet another in a series of minor heart attacks, but he'd dictated a back-channel message through his aide to Moss. President Johnson was having a bad time in the polls. Strident outcries from the media about communist successes during Tet, however contrived, were creating a backlash. There were unconfirmed speculations by the press that Westmoreland wanted massive numbers of additional troops sent to the war zone—which provided fodder for the end-the-war people. The public was growing weary of the conflict half the way around the world.
An obscure antiwar senator named McCarthy was running against L.B.J. in the New Hampshire primary, and his numbers in the polls were rising daily. It was conceivable that Johnson, a serving president, might lose his own party's nomination.
The UN secretary-general had called for a unilateral halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, saying the North Vietnamese would surely respond with meaningful talks. Although intelligence sources revealed that U Thant was not the unaligned figure he purported to be—he'd been raised in a Red Chinese family in Burma and was a communist sympathizer—numerous members of Congress said they'd like to give his plan a try.
All of those things combined to make McManus believe L.B.J. would very shortly call for the LINE BACKER JACKPOT campaign to be initiated. It was his only real option to end the war quickly and get out of the quagmire. The CSAF said he'd be out of the hospital and back on the job in another week to facilitate things. He'd press to begin deploying air combat forces as soon as possible.
General Moss wanted a report from his contacts at the bases: a final, thorough review of their ability to fly the sustained sortie rate required in the LINE BACKER JACKPOT OPlan and a complete list of resources they'd require when they were augmented by the units from the States. Since Lieutenant Colonel P S. Gates was away on temporary duty to PACAF Headquarters, all responses were to be forwarded directly to Moss himself.
Buster pondered the last paragraph. That report would require a dedicated effort from the contacts at each of the bases. He wanted to put Manny DeVera in charge of the project, but was hesitant. Something was troubling about the way the Supersonic Wetback was acting, at a time he needed him most. He decided on Lucky Anderson, who seemed to be emerging from his grief.
Buster took a call from Jerry Trimble. He spoke in a humble voice following the ass-chewing. "Boss, I checked with the 333rd where they keep track of Captain DeVera's sorties. He's not flying much at all . . . down to a flight every four or five days."
"Thanks."
Buster decided to deal with Manny's problem directly. Before he could pursue it, he received a phone call from George Armaugh, who argued that Jerry Trimble was working his crew chiefs unduly because of unreasonable requests to have the Gatling guns aligned better.
Captain Manny DeVera was mentally shuffled to the bottom of the list of priorities.
1255L—Over Channel 97, Laos
Lieutenant Colonel Lucky Anderson
The TACAN was back on the air, and its presence was reassuring as they approached.
The join-up was done in silence—an easy one, just as they'd been before the nav station had been overrun. When the TACAN needle swung about, showing station passage, the strike force was already tucked into position.
No surprises or tardy flight members. He liked the feeling.
He'd been growing accustomed to the fact that he'd never see Linda again except in the stack of photos. With time the sharpness of his anguish had lessened as the likelihood that she was dead had grown. There had been no further word from Sergeant Black at Nakhon Phanom, and his latest discussions with Richard at the Bangkok embassy had been gloomy.
"I don't think we can be optimistic any longer," Richard had told him flatly. That had been two weeks ago, and nothing had changed in later conversations.
Lucky had trouble accepting it, but there was no alternative. To continue hoping would mean to continue life in a turmoil, and the men who served beneath him deserved better.
He checked his flight instruments carefully, then began to set up his switches as the strike force approached the Ma River, which, from 20,000 feet, looked like a tiny dark ribbon. He paused, eyes drawn to the river so far below them.
An uneasy feeling settled over Lucky as he continued staring, and he couldn't dispel the feeling that something was wrong. Ridiculous, he told himself, and dragged his attention back inside the cockpit.
"Scotch force, let's green 'em up and turn on the music," he announced. But he couldn't keep an odd sadness from his voice.
1500L— Ma River, Laos
GS-15 Linda Lopes
She'd made it to a freshet and then followed that for a hundred yards to a gentle river whose banks were green and lush. In her previous life Linda had enjoyed plants and had developed a knack for gardening, but her mind was now too filled by constant agony, too clouded and numbed by malnourishment, to comprehend anything beyond the fact that it was a more pl
easant surrounding than she had known for a long while.
A much better, almost gentle place to die.
As the days and nights passed, she huddled in a tiny copse of trees beside the river, awaiting death and experimenting with the vegetation. Each morning at sunrise she'd crawl to the river and wash herself. She would scrub and carefully attend each scab, wound, and tiny pore. Her skin was a profusion of welts and open abscesses, created by the abuses of the past months and the fact that since shed left the Pathet Lao's care, she'd not been provided with a sleeping net to ward off the constant swarms of insects. Her hair came out in bunches at the slightest tug. Her nose, broken and rebroken so many times by Sergeant Gross, had healed some in the time since her last beating, but she knew it must be an unsightly thing. She could breath only through her mouth, and the sounds of her respiration were harsh and ragged. Her rib cage, where they'd beaten her so thoroughly, felt as if it might collapse, and she could feel bones protruding unnaturally there.
She ached in so many places. Her left arm, where she'd struck the back of the truck when she'd tumbled out, presented the newest constant pain, but there was much more. Her left foot had been agonizingly tender since the sergeant had beaten there, and she could take no more than a few steps before crawling. Both breasts were misshapen by knots of scar tissue and ached continuously.
She was ready to accept death and knew only it could release her from the constant agony.
Although long past hunger, Linda tried eating the various vegetation she found in the area. If you're unsure, place a tiny amount in your mouth to see if they're edible, Paul had cautioned her.
She'd found juicy bright-red berries growing on a bush in her dying place, and after cautiously mouthing one, retched and spat it out. They were obviously poisonous. Next she tried delicate yellow shoots from young plants growing beside the water. When there was no reaction, she ate them by the handful, ignoring the sharp pain from teeth broken off at the gum line. Half an hour afterward her stomach began to grumble. She didn't know if it was a sign of rejection or the simple fact that she'd been starved for so long, but she ate more of them. She couldn't take many at once, but as she ate and her stomach gurgled, she became even more famished, as if her body finally realized that it must have nourishment.
There was a sort of lily pad floating on a small pond fed by the stream, and she pulled out a few and tried their tender roots.
Shoots and roots.
Paul had told her that young shoots and tender roots were lifesavers in wilderness camping, which was his hobby. The roots were tasty, sort of like eggplant. She ate as many as she could keep down and again developed a stomachache, but that time it hadn't been nearly as bad.
The fourth day at her dying place was the first that she heard and saw soldiers making their way along the riverbank. There were not many, but by the next day their numbers had grown. They were unkempt and appeared dazed and dispirited. Some were wounded and bloody. They moved quietly, periodically casting fearful gazes at the sky. She remained in her dying place and looked out upon them with dispassion.
It was on the sixth day that she realized that dying might not be as easy as she'd anticipated. Her body was broken and sick, but simply refused to stop functioning. She awoke early and bathed, attended to her wounds and sores and new profusions of insect bites she'd collected during the night. Then she smeared mud over her wet nakedness to keep away at least some of the mosquitoes and gnats, and crawled back toward her dying place. Two straggling soldiers passed nearby, but they ignored her.
Perhaps, she thought, there was nothing to fear from them now that they had problems of their own. She ate more of the tender water-lily roots, carefully because of her throbbing mouth, and contemplated the disturbing fact that she was gaining strength, which was sure to prolong her existence.
What would Paul do? Linda wondered, then realized she knew the answer. He'd cling to life. His enemy was death. Paul was the ultimate survivor. She pondered the question and thought of him fondly as she ate more shoots and roots.
At noon she looked up for some inexplicable reason and tried to focus in the distant sky. She saw fuzzy specks and shortly heard the rumble of aircraft engines. It was awful to know that Americans were so close, yet were oblivious of her. As she stared, a sure thought possessed her. Paul was there. Strong and wonderful as ever.
A trill passed through her. Another distant formation passed over, but somehow she knew that he'd been in the other, first one.
She slept for a while, and then awoke. She could feel someone's presence.
Four men were hunkered and watching her closely. A captain and three soldiers had invaded her dying place . . . contaminating it.
"Go . . . away," she whispered angrily.
When the captain reached forward and grasped her by the left arm, pain shot through her so intensely that she cried out. He pulled her roughly to her feet by the broken arm, and she squealed louder.
The soldiers chattered among themselves, calmer and better disciplined than others she'd seen previously.
The captain motioned toward the river with the muzzle of his rifle.
She shook her head. She wasn't going.
The captain shrugged and aimed the rifle at her head.
Linda took a breath and calmly looked about her dying place. She would go no farther. It would end here.
A shot sounded and she stiffened, trembled, waiting for the pain, then heard a dull sound and looked to see that the captain had crumpled. She heard a shout.
The soldiers fled.
A Vietnamese lieutenant came into her dying place, looking about carefully before regarding her. He was followed closely by several squat and tattooed men in loincloths, one of whom picked up the dead captain's assault rifle.
Linda sighed, then sucked in another breath and held it pensively as the lieutenant examined her with his eyes. He looked vaguely familiar. It didn't matter who killed her, she was going no farther.
"Missy Lopes?" he said.
She was startled by the words.
"You hokay now, sistah." The lieutenant's voice was gentle, and she felt she'd heard it before. He motioned to one of the tribesmen, who brought forth a swatch of dark material.
"You make . . ." He searched for a word, but could think only of a Vietnamese one. Finally he pointed to his clothing. Linda stood her ground firmly. Her nakedness no longer bothered her, and she was going absolutely nowhere.
The lieutenant came closer, fumbling in his pack, and came up with a small ball of rice, which he cautiously offered.
She paused, then took it with her good right hand. He nodded. She ate.
"You hokay now," the lieutenant repeated. "Go see Kunnel Lokee."
What had he said?
"Kunnel Lokee ver' worry." He nodded again and formed a shy smile.
"You mean Lucky?" she croaked incredulously.
"Kunnel Lokee Anduhson."
"Oh, God!' she wailed, and could take no more. She crumpled, sobbing.
The lieutenant knelt and patted her shoulder. She winced, and he hastily pulled the hand back. Regardless of how she tried, she couldn't stop crying for a long while.
"We bettah ged gone, sistah," he finally said, gently draping the cloth about her nakedness. She didn't fight him, and let him tuck it into place.
When they finally left the dying place, the dark cloth draped about her like an Indian sari, she hobbled so badly on the broken foot that the lieutenant held up for a while longer and fashioned a huge bandage, which he tied about her foot. Then they went very cautiously, a tiny, barrel-chested tribesman supporting her good, right arm, another with his arm about her midriff. The lieutenant led the way and looked very professional about it. He peered back periodically to observe her. His look was sad and kind, but it also held a glimmer of triumph.
2130L—TraiIer 5B, Takhli RTAFB, Thailand
Captain Manny DeVera
"I'm not doing my job well," he told her.
They were naked. He was
sitting upright on the bed, and Penny was rubbing his back with gentle hands, providing the peace Manny could experience only in her trailer. He'd been tense, and she was trying to soothe him as she did every night now.
"I feel bad . . . like I'm letting the guys down."
"I feel wonderful because I know you're going to live. We're going to have a good life together. I know we will." She said it almost fiercely.
"I dunno, Penny." He shook his head. "I don't think I can stay in the Air Force."
"That's up to you. I'll follow you wherever you go, Manny DeVera."
"I don't think it's up to me, staying in the Air Force, I mean. I took an oath to protect and defend. I take that sort of thing seriously." He almost added, At least I used to.
"You've given all that a man should ever have to. You've done your share and more. Look at all the draft dodgers and peace marchers back in the States. They refuse to give anything."
Manny had thought of them a lot the past few days. It hadn't made him feel better at all. He'd decided it was only fair to go to Colonel Leska and let him know what he was doing. Maybe tell him he wanted to quit flying altogether, as Penny wanted.
There were times when he felt he was going nuts . . . others when he thought he was doing the right thing . . . and sometimes he told himself to quit being a cowardly jerk and letting his buddies down—that if someone took his place on the schedule and got killed, it would be his doing. And just perhaps, if he went back to flying the tough missions, there would be no more terror. Maybe . . .
But it had already gone too far . . . hadn't it?
"Penny . . .," he started, but she was nuzzling his back with soft lips, and her arms were moving gently on his chest.
She leaned her face against him and whispered. "God, I love you, Manny."
The peace she offered slowly returned, and he could feel the wetness of tears on his skin.
He pulled her around and caressed her.
As they made gentle love, he forgot about the promise, about flying, about everything except his feeling for this woman.
