Termite Hill (Vietnam Air War Book 1)

by Tom Wilson

  The tribesmen were puzzled about what had happened and why the Americans had selected this particular mountain—which seemed to be of little apparent use to anyone—to kill. Twice they had asked the people at Bac Yen, the farm village nearest the mountain.

  The villagers told them the American airplanes had dropped great numbers of bombs and sometimes would even shoot their guns at the mountain. There had been no buildings or soldiers on the hill, no supplies stored or hidden there. There was no reason at all, but the crazy Americans killed it anyway. The people from Bac Yen still avoided Dead Mountain, for it was dangerous and they heard strange sounds from there.

  Finally, in search of truth, one of the tribesmen searched out a cousin, a hunter who had lived not far from the mountain when the Americans had flown there and dropped their bombs, and after a while he brought up the subject.

  He said there were still live bombs there that had not gone off when they had hit. Scavengers sometimes went there to dig up metal and gather bullet casings to sell in Hanoi, for both were plentiful, but they had to be very careful. Sometimes they were killed when they detonated unexploded bombs and small bomblets by treading in the wrong places.

  He also said the villagers were wrong, that there had once been a listening post on the mountain and a small barracks on the opposite side. The soldiers had watched for aircraft flying overhead and reported them by radio to Hanoi. But one day there had been parachutes from an airplane, and then the Americans had come with helicopters and fighters. That day the Americans had killed the soldiers, and the outpost was never reoccupied.

  After that, the cousin said, the Americans had dropped their bombs on the mountain so often that the mountain seemed to change shape almost daily. He agreed that Dead Mountain was inhabited by spirits. He said sometimes, when the wind was right, you can hear a faint, angry voice calling from the mountain in what is surely the American language.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Thursday, January 19th—1945 Local, Takhli RTAFB, Thailand

  The morning's target had again been in the area immediately west of Hanoi. While one Thud had been lost to AAA, the pilot had been picked up near the Laotian border. The afternoon strike had been against another old target, the Yen Vien rail yard near Hanoi. Two strike aircraft, a Weasel bird, and an EB-66 had been downed in the afternoon. No crew members had been rescued.

  All day the defenses had been relentless, almost flawless. When the command post people had queried Korat and the F-4 wings, the story was the same. A couple of days before, the defenses had been mean as hell. Now, suddenly, the gomers were twice as good and things were twice as bad.

  The afternoon disaster had been a 354th squadron strike. They lost a newcomer captain to a MiG on the way in. The MiG appeared out of nowhere, picked off the only straggler, and disappeared. An old head, an experienced major, was shot down by AAA after diving to dodge a SAM over Yen Vien. The AAA had seemed to open up at just the right time, to shoot at just the right acre of airspace.

  Les Ries and Dan Janssen had been in the barrel to lead the Weasel flight on the afternoon mission. They'd lost their number three, one of the new Weasel crews.

  Inside the O'Club, the strike pilots drank quietly. Ries and Janssen sat together at the end of the bar, periodically staring about with moody looks. Through flying and working so closely together they'd developed similar personalities, as most good Weasel crews did. Matching scowls even made them look alike.

  EB-66 crews were at their customary tables at the far end of the barroom. They had lost six of their good men to, of all things, a SAM. Poor form for an EB-66 crew, with all those jammers aboard.

  Tiny Bechler was sitting at the bar talking to Sam Hall. On the other side of Sam, Swede Swendler played a dice game with Bear Stewart and Lyle Watson.

  "Sure getting hard to make up my mind about things anymore, Sam," said Tiny.

  "How's that?"

  "I got out of the Academy at Colorado Springs thinking anyone who hadn't graduated from one of the service academies couldn't be much of an officer. Then I got here and ran into guys like Max Foley and Benny who hadn't been anywhere near any of the academies, and you can't find better officers than they are."

  "The school doesn't matter. It's what you do after you get out of pilot training," agreed Sam.

  "How about you, Sam?"

  "Tuskegee Institute, class of '50," said Sam.

  "See what I mean. You're a good officer, and you didn't need West Point or Annapolis to become one."

  Sam drank from his glass, thinking Tiny was pretty smart for a lieutenant.

  "And there's Colonel Mack who didn't even finish college."

  "He's a good leader," Sam agreed.

  "So I realized I was wrong about the academies, but I knew there were plenty other people I was better than."

  Sam Hall nodded. "Likely you're right."

  "I said to myself that egotistical asshole Glenn Phillips isn't worth a damn, that he's all smoke and mirrors and bullshit. Then I flew on his wing a couple of times and he turned out to have bigger balls than anyone I'd ever known. He never boasted to anyone."

  "Glenn was cool."

  "Then I got to know a few of the Weasel backseaters, and they're okay and they're navigators. So I was wrong about navigators, or at least some of them."

  "What's your point?"

  Tiny shook his head. "I didn't think tanker crews were worth much, until I was coming out of pack six on fumes and my flight lead radioed ahead to say I couldn't make it to the tanker. A tanker crew put me on a free channel, told me to keep transmitting on my radio, and to stand by while they came and got me. They came all the way into North Vietnam, Sam. I met them just on this side of Na San, charging in like they were in a fighter, just to save my ugly ass. They had me plugged in and taking gas while they were still turning around to get out of there."

  "Colonel Parker put the whole tanker crew in for Distinguished Flying Crosses," said Sam. "Told SAC it was for some silly reason he thought they'd buy, like 'made all radio calls on time and passed a lot of gas,' because he knew they'd hemorrhage little bricks if they knew the crew took one of their tankers into North Vietnam."

  "Hey, that's great," said Tiny. "Anyway, I was wrong about the tanker crews. Those guys saved my ass, and you gotta admit they work like hell to get us refueled as smoothly as possible every day."

  "They're pros," muttered Hall. Sam was always happy to say complimentary things about those he felt deserved it, which was most people.

  Tiny looked at the rear of the room where the EB-66 aircrews drank together, sitting around their customary tables.

  "I used to make fun of those guys, tell 'em they oughta fly where we operate and get some real action. But hell, look at what happened today. Makes me feel shitty for what I said."

  Sam nodded, thinking he should feel shitty.

  Tiny looked sad. "I don't think there's anyone left I wanna be an asshole to."

  "You still giving Sergeant Perez in the personal equipment shop a hard time?"

  "Sometimes, but we've got a deal. He lets me blow off steam, and I make sure he gets to keep one of the squadron pickups for his shop. He's a good guy."

  Sam smiled. "Like I told you before, it's hard to hate much of anything except snakes, commies, hippies, queers, and Wallace."

  The Bear, seated at his customary barstool, was situated between Lyle Watson and Swede Swendler, playing liars dice and fending off the Thai bartender's pleas to get into the game.

  "Jimmy, I've got IOU's on everything you got and everything you're gonna get in the next ten years. Maybe in your whole life."

  "Dubble or nuthin!" demanded Jimmy.

  "Then I'd get everything your kids would ever own. Forget it. You oughta stop gambling." The Bear vowed to ignore him for the rest of the evening.

  The bar was quieter than normal, and his words carried.

  "Gloomy, isn't it," said Lyle Watson, looking out at the men in the bar.

  "You remember what it was
like up there this morning? Getting tough to make it back, Lyle," said the Bear. He rattled the dice cup and plopped it onto the bar.

  "No one's singing or anything. It's like they just want to get drunk and forget things."

  "What's that?" asked the Bear, motioning at Lyle's drink. "Your second or third in the last half hour?"

  "Yeah, guess so."

  The Bear peered under the cup. "Three fives," he said.

  "You're lying." Lyle lifted the cup and showed three sixes.

  The Bear raked in the nickels, leaving one. "Ante up," he said. The other two pushed a nickel from their meager stacks. The Bear was winning.

  Swede grumbled. "C'mon, give someone else a chance."

  "Get Watson to stop challenging me every time. Tell him I never lie unless I have to." The Bear clopped the dice cup down again and peered.

  Swendler turned to Lyle Watson. "He says he don't lie. Believe him, okay?"

  "Four twos," said the Bear.

  "Okay, I believe you." Watson took the cup and looked between his cupped hands. His face fell. "Jesus."

  "Dumb shit," said the Bear.

  Lyle showed a six and shook the rest inside the cup. He pushed the cup toward Swendler without looking. "Four threes," he said with obvious, false bravado.

  Swede lifted the cup and showed a pair of sixes. The game was now between him and the Bear.

  "You hear about the EB-66?" asked Lyle. "F-4 pilot that saw it said the missile speared it like a fish. Went halfway through and then exploded."

  "Where'd you hear that?" asked Swede.

  "Our command post called the command post at Ubon. A guy there said the F-4 pilot only saw three chutes. There were six guys on board."

  "Damn," said Swendler.

  "Shake the dice," said the Bear. He liked to hurry when he was winning, slow things down when he was behind. "What bugs me is, we've never seen SAM sites up there where the missile came from. Not ever."

  Swede slapped the dice cup down, looked, and grinned. "Pair of sixes."

  "Not ever?" asked Lyle.

  "Not so far as I know," said the Bear. He took the cup, looked, kept a pair of fours outside and shook the cup. He looked and grinned. "Four fours."

  "Liar." Swede lifted.

  "I told you I don't lie." The Bear raked in the nickels.

  "I wanna play," said Jimmy.

  Les Ries left the club, the pained look still on his face. He had drunk several beers but looked sober. The Bear watched him go.

  "Those two've sure been acting strange lately," said Lyle.

  "Assholes," said the Bear.

  "Maybe," said Swede, "but they're our assholes."

  "True. Ante up." The Bear shook.

  Lyle spoke. "It must be tough on 'em, losing their number three like that. You know that the pilot, Rick Taylor, was one of Ries's closest friends?"

  "Yeah, I heard."

  "Les doesn't take to failure," said Swede. "He thinks everything's his responsibility, like he's gotta carry it all on his own shoulders. He gives it his all and doesn't understand why sometimes things still go all to shit."

  "Three sixes," said the Bear, thinking it was time to try to talk to Ries and Janssen and end the silly feud.

  Half an hour later, the Bear made his way down the bar and confronted Janssen. He sucked in a breath, determined to try.

  "Dan, why don't you come on over and join us," he said.

  Janssen was intoxicated, stared at him with expressionless eyes.

  "Come on, for God's sake. I'm trying to make peace." He felt better after saying it.

  "Fuck off."

  "I was wrong, okay. I shouldn't have said some of the things I did."

  Janssen reached out and tried to shove him away, but the Bear sidestepped him. He went back to the other end of the bar.

  "I tried," he said.

  "I saw," said Lyle, who'd been saving his seat. The bar was filling with people, but the atmosphere was still downbeat.

  The Bear, as befitted the winner of the dice game, ordered drinks.

  "Chickenpluckers!" Pete Crawford yelled loudly as he entered the bar. He joined Sam Hall and the Bear.

  Sam was talking to the Bear. "Where'd Benny go? This morning he got a long distance call at the squadron and wouldn't tell me who it was from. Then about five I answered a call from a round-eye who said she was at the gate. When I saw him leave, he was with Tiny Bechler in the squadron van going about mach two."

  The Bear shrugged, feeling very unhappy as he thought about Benny and Liz together.

  "Where'd he go?" asked Sam. "Chickenplucker says Colonel Mack's looking for him."

  "The girl's up here visiting so I guess they're in town. I'll tell him about Colonel Mack when he gets in."

  "Who is she?" asked Chickenplucker.

  "A Pan Am stew he knows. Prettiest girl in Takhli town right now." He ought to know, he thought.

  Chickenplucker was about to ask more, but they were interrupted by Colonel Mack, who tapped the Bear on the shoulder.

  "Yes, sir?" asked the Bear, standing straighter and wondering how the squadron commander had slipped up on him.

  "You sober?" Mack was not smiling.

  "Sober enough, sir."

  "There's a classified message at the command post I want you to read over. Mentions some changes the North Vietnamese are suspected of making. Where's Captain Lewis?"

  "Downtown, sir."

  "Then you do it. I want a briefing at the command post in an hour."

  "I'll get over there right now."

  Colonel Mack left.

  "You want me to come along?" Lyle Watson asked the Bear.

  "Sure. You better sober up some, though. Go splash some water on your face or something." The Bear looked over and saw Janssen looking at him with a question on his face.

  An hour later, Mack MacLendon showed up at the small briefing room where the Bear and Watson had gone to review the message. He had both the major in charge of wing intelligence and Maj Max Foley, the wing weapons officer, in tow.

  Heavy stuff, thought the Bear.

  Mack leaned back against a table. "What do you think, Bear?"

  The Bear pointed to the message. "They've finally integrated their defenses."

  "What do you mean?"

  The Bear explained. "We've been expecting something like this, Colonel. That's why Les Ries's briefing at Saigon meant so much to us Weasels. The defenses have been building and building, and now they've got a choir director. There's a new long-range command-and-control radar called a Barlock that we've detected the last few times we've flown up there, and it's probably running the whole show. They'll tune the system a little here, tweak it a bit there, but it's already about as bad as it can get."

  "What can we expect next?"

  "Since I got here I've heard guys saying it can't get any worse. I keep telling them it could. Well, sir, I finally agree with them. The North Vietnamese are at the limits. They've got all the SAMs, MiG's, and guns they can cram up there, and now they've got good command-and-control. It can't get worse."

  There was a moment of quiet as the men digested the impact of his words.

  Mack broke the silence. "Can we locate this new radar?"

  The Bear thought hard. "Not with the Weasel gear. Our receivers are designed to go after tracking radars that lock onto us. The Barlock only paints its target every fifteen, twenty seconds." He brightened. "The EB-66's can triangulate it accurately with their receivers, but only if they get close enough."

  The intelligence officer shook his head. "After the one was shot down today, PACAF Headquarters sent a message saying EB-66's are not to fly anywhere close to pack six."

  "So much for that idea," mumbled the Bear.

  "Keep thinking, Bear," said Mack. "The wing commander says he wants something done. He wants it done fast, and he's picked us to do it."

  "You think headquarters might approve our campaign to kill defenses like Les Ries asked 'em?"

  "No, I don't. An all-out effor
t to eliminate defenses would take too many assets. We'd lose aircraft and pilots we could be using to knock out targets."

  "Two things come to mind, sir. First, it would have been a lot easier to eliminate the defenses before they were integrated. Second, knocking them out even now and taking our losses would still be a hell of a lot better than a slow hemorrhage while we keep flying up there."

  "Forget the campaign, because you're not going to get it. What else can we do?"

  The Bear paused, thinking hard, wishing he'd had fewer drinks and more time to think about it.

  "My guess is we should work on the basics. The strike pilots have ECM pods and good radar detection equipment. They should learn how to use them to get the best results."

  "Go on," said Mack.

  "We know how to dodge missiles, and we can handle the MiG's. We ought to make sure everyone knows how to do those things well. The guys ought to know what the Weasels are doing out there, and they can help us knock out SAM sites. We make as few mistakes as possible and take out as many MiG's and SAM sites as we can, maybe we can get ahead."

  Mack spoke up. "What about the new ECM pod formations they tested in the States?"

  The Bear had taken a long look at the briefing viewgraphs sent from Nellis Air Force Base. "If the ECM pods were better, maybe we could consider it, but they're weak powered and only work half the time."

  Max Foley added his agreement, "And if we fly in a king-size gaggle like that, there'll be less opportunity to maneuver against SAMs or take the offensive against MiG's."

  Mack played devil's advocate. "Korat is going for it. They're going to fly straight and level in a single, big formation, with their ECM pods turned on."

  The Bear shook his head. "Even if they get their pods working better, they'll lose the same numbers as we do. But it's probably good if they do things one way and we do it another, Colonel. It'll keep the gomers on their toes trying to figure us out."