The Generals (30 page)

Felter nudged him, pointed to the rope. Lowell picked it up, put it in the D ring, and stood in the door, wondering how hard he was going to have to jump to get over the skid.

The crew chief, now standing in the center of the passenger compartment, legs spread, one hand flat on the roof, looked to see that Lowell and the master sergeant were ready to go. He held his balled fist in front of him and then extended the thumb upward. Then he made a sudden up-ending motion. The thumb was now pointed down.

“Shit!” Lowell said, aloud, and pushed himself backward out of the helicopter. The skid passed in front of his nose, and he saw that some of the OD paint had flaked off, exposing the reddish primer paint beneath. Then he applied friction, and his descent ended in an elastic jerk. He started to swing from side to side under the helicopter, and at the same time began to spin around on the rope.

He saw that the master sergeant was far beneath him. Lowell let loose and felt himself dropping. When he stopped the slide, he was oscillating worse than ever. He remembered that he had been told to start his descents only when he was in the middle of the oscillations. He hadn’t done that. He would the next time.

He let go, and the next thing he knew, he had crashed into the roof. Damn it! His leg and knee hurt.
Stupid!

He remembered to unsnap the rope from the D ring. MacMillan looked over to see if he needed help.

He forced a smile and gave a little wave, then looked up to watch Sandy come sliding down the line as if he had been doing it all his life.

This whole fucking thing is a facade, Lowell thought as he painfully flexed his knee. I’m not going to be sliding down a goddamned rope, and Sandy isn’t even going to be there. Sandy will be on the aircraft carrier drinking coffee. Sandy was too much walking-around information to risk having him captured. Commanders are too valuable to risk sliding down ropes.

He was surprised MacMillan hadn’t figured out yet that he was not going to get the actual command, time in grade or no time in grade. There was a sop to his ego on the final operations order. He was to be “commander of ground troops.”

But the Commander of Air Landing, Consolidation, and Air Evacuation—in other words, the whole show once they took off from the carrier—was Colonel Craig W. Lowell.

Sandy unhooked himself and ran over with concern on his face.

For me? No way. For the operation?

“You OK? You landed with a bang.”

“I’m all right. I just need a little practice is all. This is hardly my line of work.”

Lowell forced himself to his feet. It hurt like hell, but nothing seemed to be broken.

He noticed that the Huey was on the ground. The pilot must have made one hell of a skillful autorotation. Lowell made a note to make sure that the landing plan was changed. The Huey was right in front of the main door to the building. There would certainly be guards there, even if most of them were trying to see what the hell had happened in the courtyard.

“What are you thinking?” Sandy asked.

“We shouldn’t land Number Three right in front of the door,” Lowell said. Sandy picked up on it immediately. His nod showed understanding; and you could take it to the bank that the plan would be corrected. Sandy was a master of detail.

“You all right, Colonel?” the master sergeant asked.

“Nothing that a stiff drink won’t fix,” Lowell said. “And some Sloane’s Liniment.”

“The drink I can arrange,” the master sergeant said. He handed Lowell his canteen. It was full of bourbon.

He got Sloane’s Liniment in the drug store in the shopping center. He also bought epsom salts and an Ace bandage. Jesus Christ, he hoped that nothing was broken or badly sprained. He really wanted to make this operation.

He had just filled the bathtub with hot water when the telephone rang.

He hobbled over to it. It had to be either Felter or Bellmon. He had given the number that was ringing only to them. MacMillan and Hanrahan and the others had the second number.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello, yourself,” Dorothy Sims said.

“Oh,” he said, astonishingly glad to hear her voice. “How are you?”

“How are
you?
” she countered.

“Would you believe I sprained my knee?”

“I was about to go out to the drug store,” she said. “Is there anything I could get for you?”

“Nothing you can buy in a drug store,” he said.

“All right,” she said. “I’d be happy to. But I can’t stay but just a minute. I have to pick up Tommy after Scouts.”

Somebody, Lowell deduced, could hear her talking.

She hung up without saying anything else.

He hobbled back into the bath and lowered himself into the steaming epsom-salted water. In a few minutes, he heard the key in the door, and then the door slamming against the intruder chain. Damn, he’d forgotten about that.

He heaved himself out of the tub and hobbled, dripping, to the door, with a towel wrapped around his middle.

She saw him favoring the leg.

“You really did hurt it, didn’t you?” she asked. “Let me have a look at it.”

He got on the bed, propping his back against the plastic-covered headboard.

She probed the leg knowledgeably, made him flex it.

“It’s going to swell,” she said. “I should have gone to the drug store and gotten you an Ace bandage. What did you do to it, anyway?”

“I fell off a rope,” he said. “There’s an Ace bandage in the bathroom.”

“Have you got some kind of liniment?”

“A bottle of Sloane’s,” he said.

She went back into the bathroom and returned with the liniment and the bandage. She rubbed the liniment in, and then wrapped the knee with the bandage.

“If it’s badly swollen in the morning, you’d better see a doctor,” she said.

“How much time did you say you had?” he asked.

“I was afraid you’d never ask,” she said. With her eyes meeting his, she stood up and pulled her sweater off over her head.

(One)
Headquarters, JFK Center for Special Warfare
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
1440 Hours, 21 June 1969

The conference table was stacked high with paper, and four desks with IBM typewriters had been set up. They were manned by muscular young Green Berets who looked as if they would be far happier throwing the typewriters around like basketballs.

“May I have your attention, gentlemen?” Colonel Craig Lowell called out.

The others at the conference table—the senior of whom was General Hanrahan—looked up from the stacks of paper with a mixture of annoyance and curiosity.

“I have a military profundity to utter,” Lowell announced solemnly. “Napoleon was wrong. Armies don’t travel on their stomachs. They slide along on paper.”

It was a bad joke in any circumstances. It was not appreciated now.

“Jesus Christ, Duke!” General Hanrahan said, impatiently.

“I little stir crazy, Craig?” Sandy Felter said.

“An understatement,” Lowell said. “I have been here seven long, long hours.”

“Jesus,” General Hanrahan said. “Has it been that long?”

“You will recall, General, I’m sure,” Lowell said, “from the foggy recesses of fond memory, that we fought a whole goddamned Greek division with less paper than this.”

“We weren’t moving three-quarters of the way around the world in secret,” Hanrahan said. He took off his glasses—shaped and colored like aviator’s glasses—and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Do I hear a motion to adjourn?” Lowell asked.

“Why don’t we knock off?” General Hanrahan said. “Hanrahan’s Law holds that the more you look at figures, the more they lie.”

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Lowell said, “but I’m finished. I only say that because the general says we can have the weekend off. Otherwise, Colonel Felter, I’m sure, would find something to keep me busy.”

“You’ve got plans for the weekend?” Sandy Felter asked.

“All work and no play, and so on,” Lowell said.

“The troops have been at it hot and heavy, General,” MacMillan said. So they had, Lowell realized. He had just about forgotten about the troops. But they had been rehearsing all week. Despite their reputation for being able to fight anywhere any time, they had not been trained in large-strength helicopter assaults. In other words, while they were highly skilled at rappelling down from a helicopter, and in being extracted from beneath a jungle canopy more or less the same way, they had not been trained (as ordinary troops were) to make a heli-landing from a fleet of helicopters. So they had been practicing that all week, and they had also been practicing loading and unloading “the basic load” into Chinooks
*
and Jolly Green Giants.
**

On Friday of next week, the troops would make their first practice assault on the mock-up. Once that happened, they would be locked up. After the practice assault, the risk that they would have a couple of drinks and talk about what they were doing was too great.

Some of the troops were of course already privy to many of the details of the “high-risk-factor” mission for which they had volunteered. Since most of the Berets were not only very bright, but very experienced, they would have figured it out for themselves. So it had been Felter’s decision (opposed by MacMillan and General Bellmon, supported by Lowell) to tell the ones who would actually assault the Hanoi Hilton. Lowell’s support as well as MacMillan’s and Bellmon’s objections had been pissing in the wind. Sandy Felter was the action officer, and it was his decision to make.

If it were my decision to make, Lowell thought, watching Felter, I would knock off for the weekend. Working through weekends caused interest. Interest caused speculation, and not a hell of a lot of speculation would be required before some bright young Green Beret trooper put everything together and concluded that what they were going to do with their helicopters and five full colonels running around in ripstops playing John Wayne was go grab the guys in the Hanoi Hilton and bring them home.

“Yes, sir,” Sandy Felter said, “I think you’re right. I think we ought to knock off right now, this minute, right where we are, and pick up again at oh six hundred Monday morning.”

“Sergeant Major!” Hanrahan said.

“Sir?” the sergeant major replied.

“Seal the place. Nobody gets in but you and the senior officers,” Hanrahan said.

“Consider it sealed, sir. Sir?”

“You’ve got something?”

“I thought Colonel Mac was going to mention it, sir,” the sergeant major said.

“Yeah, Jesus Christ,” MacMillan said. “I guess I’m a little foggy, too. General, what about TOWs
*
?”

“What about them?” Hanrahan asked, confused.

“There’s twenty of them on the post,” MacMillan said.

“And that’s supposed to be Secret,” Hanrahan said. “Or is it Top Secret?”

“Top Secret, sir,” MacMillan said.

“And you found out about them, huh?”

“Some of the troops have been watching the tests, sir,” MacMillan said. “And they have asked me—”

“Some of the troops have been watching the tests? And apparently counting the stock?” Hanrahan asked. He seemed more resigned than disturbed. Certainly not surprised.

“They ran it as an infiltration problem, sir,” MacMillan said, uneasily.

“And they figure what the hell, let’s get some?” Hanrahan said. “No way, Mac.”

“What’s your reasoning, Mac?” Felter asked, quietly.

“The first thing the bad guys are going to do, once they know we’re there, is send T-34s from Nnon Pac,” MacMillan said. “There are eighteen of them there, sixteen apparently operable.”

“How did your guys find that out?” Hanrahan asked.

“They don’t know it,” MacMillan said. “Sir, I didn’t say—”

“Go on, Mac,” Felter interrupted him.

“Mouse, they just figured it out. Shit, I could figure it out. What’s the best way to deal with a prisoner situation? With tanks. The only way to deal with tanks is with other tanks. Against tanks, there’s not a hell of a lot you can do, and a T-34 is a sonofabitch to knock out with a rocket launcher. If the bad guys sent a column of tanks to the Hilton, and one of them got blown off the road, they would stop and reconsider their position, that’s for sure. It would buy us some time.”

“The way to deal with those tanks,” Tex Williams said, “is to take them out with a bombing raid the night before.”

“We’ve decided against that,” Felter said. “For one thing, we can’t count on results. If they aren’t taken out, all we’re going to do is draw attention to the area. And if they are taken out, we’ve still drawn attention to the area. Why those tanks, and not T-34s elsewhere? Christ, Tex! You don’t give up, do you?”

The icy tone was back in Felter’s voice. And the profanity. The Mouse has a hard-on, Lowell thought, smiling.

“The current plan is to take out the roads,” Felter said, thinking aloud. “There are three roads. One demolition team cannot support another, the distances are too great. We are proceeding on the assumption that the demolitions teams will be successful. That is a shaky assumption. On the other hand, we would be risking the premature disclosure of our TOW development status. That would make a number of people very uncomfortable. I don’t even like to think about having a TOW fall into Russian hands.”

There was a long pause.

“We could rig them with a quarter pound of C-4
*
,” MacMillan said.

“If we are to believe the initial test reports,” Felter went on, still thinking aloud, his voice very much like the voice of a computer in a science fiction movie, “the TOW has a seventy-five percent kill rate at two hundred yards or less. Let’s cut that in half. A thirty-seven decimal five kill rate at two hundred yards. In the hands of a skilled operator. How hard are they to use? Unknown. The figures come out this way. Three TOWs on each road would give us a one decimal one two five kill rate. One hundred twelve decimal five. Cut
that
in half. Fifty-six decimal five.

“We have previously calculated the odds of tank reinforcement at eighty decimal zero. Four chances out of five. We have calculated successful demolition of the roads at sixty-six decimal six. Two out of three. What that boils down to is that they will
probably
send tank reinforcement, and that we have presently only two chances out of three of stopping them via road demolition.

“The question is thus whether it is best to insure the success of the mission against tank reinforcement at the cost of prematurely disclosing a Top Secret weapon.”

“You better pass that one upstairs, Sandy,” General Hanrahan said. “If you’re seriously considering this.”

That was the reaction to be expected of a general officer in Hanrahan’s position, Felter thought. When you believe a decision is too important for you to make yourself, ask the next higher echelon of command. It was normally a reasonable practice. But it wasn’t going to work here. The President had meant it when he used the phrase “Under my personal direction.” The command of Monte Cristo was his, delegated to Felter. Felter knew if he asked for a decision whether or not to use the TOWs, he would have to ask the President. And that meant he would first have to explain to the President (and probably as well to Kissinger and Colonel Al Haig, Kissinger’s Chief of Staff) what a TOW was, and why he thought it should be used, and what the ramifications of its capture by the North Vietnamese might be.

And one of two things would most likely happen. Al Haig (who had more or less tactfully suggested that he had more command experience than Felter, and Q.E.D. should have been given Monte Cristo) was liable to say, “Why don’t we run it past the Joint Chiefs?”

Or, more likely, the President—probably annoyed at being bothered with what he considered a minor operational detail—would say “Do what you think is best, Felter.”

“Upstairs to whom, General?” Felter asked softly.

Hanrahan’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t reply.

Felter sat for a moment, shoulders hunched, and with his fingers rigidly extended, he slapped his hands together.

“General,” he said, finally, “would you please get in touch with General Bellmon? Tell him it has come to your attention that the security of the TOW testing program has been compromised. And tell him that until the matter is resolved, testing will be suspended, and that he will place the stock of TOWs under your protection.”

“I don’t think I have the authority to do that, Sandy,” Hanrahan said. “They don’t even belong to him. They belong to the Airborne Board.”

“Not any more they don’t,” Felter said. “They belong to Monte Cristo. We will fire ten of them over the weekend. We will take ten with us. See to it that the project officer, who presumably knows how these things work, comes with them, and see to it that he is informed that if it ever comes out that he has opened his mouth to anyone about anything he sees, or suspects, or
thinks
, he can expect to spend the rest of his career in his permanent rank counting snowflakes in Alaska.”

“Yes, sir,” General Hanrahan said. He knew that for all practical purposes it was the President of the United States who was giving that order.

Felter looked at Lowell.

“You want to keep an eye on this, Craig?” he asked.

“I think that General Hanrahan would be the best one to do that,” Lowell said. “I don’t want to draw attention to Monte Cristo through me.”

“And you also want to play this weekend, right?” Felter said.

“Guilty,” Lowell said.

“I’ll take it over, Sandy,” MacMillan volunteered, glowering at Lowell.

“That would draw attention to us through you,” Lowell said. “Let Hanrahan do it. There’s a hundred reasons he would be legitimately interested in them.”

“The Duke’s right, sir,” Felter said to Hanrahan. “Sorry to take your weekend.”

“Hell, I don’t mind,” General Hanrahan said. “I haven’t even seen one of them.”

Felter leaned forward and pulled a red dialless telephone to him. He picked it up. “Please engage your scrambler,” he said. He paused. “This is Outfielder. Let me speak to the secretary of the general staff.” There was another pause. “This is Outfielder,” he said again. He ran his finger down a line of words and numbers before him in a folder, and then glanced at his watch. The signal operating instructions had a code for each hour of the day. He said: “Victoria three three nine. Confirm.”

“Wisconsin four two seven,” the Secretary of the General Staff of the U.S. Army replied.

“I want a teletype message sent to the President of the Airborne Board, Fort Bragg,” Felter said. “I want it sent
Priority
, and I want it backdated, but I want it hand-carried and dispatched immediately. The message—classified Top Secret—is ‘TOW compromised. You will cooperate fully with General Hanrahan. More follows. End message.’ Send it out over the Chairman’s personal signature. Will you read that back, please?” There was a pause. “Thank you very much,” Felter said. He dropped the red handset back in its cradle.

He smiled shyly around the table.

“I was really a little worried about those damned roads,” he said. “Thank you, Mac. Thank
you
, Sergeant Major.”

“From what I hear, Colonel,” the sergeant major said, “you can send out a PFC with one of those things and he’ll bring you back a tank.”

“They are not to be used unless the demolitions team fails,” Felter said. “I’ll leave it up to you, Sergeant Major, to make that point with the demolitions people. There may be a time when he can use them against Russian armor, but I devoutly hope this is not it. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant major said.

“We are not going where we are going to bring back tanks,” Felter said.

“Is that it, Sandy?” Lowell asked.

“I presume you’re leaving the area,” Felter said. “Check in every three hours, please Duke.”

“Including three
A.M.
?” Lowell said, getting to his feet.

“Including three
A.M.
, Duke,” Felter said.

(Two)
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
21 June 1969

Dorothy Sims sat at the counter of the coffee shop, an untouched cup of coffee cold in front of her, an unread magazine under a package of cigarettes, a makeup kit and a small overnight bag on the polished aggregate floor beside her.