The Generals (38 page)

“You bastards!” he said.

Fingernails scraped at the tape holding the field dressing over his eyes, loosened the end. It was jerked off. His eyes hurt at the sudden light. He heard the footsteps going away and twisted his head to look. His eyes focused on the back of a man in a green beret walking away from him. Where the hell was he going?

He twisted his head back. He was in the middle of a field somewhere. There were two thirty-foot-tall poles stuck in the ground, guyed with nylon cord. At first, he thought they were antennae, but then he was sure they weren’t. There was a rope stretched between the poles, which curved loosely to the ground and finally snaked over to him. He twisted around and saw that it came directly to him.

What the hell was that?

And then he heard, then saw, the Bell Huey making an approach to the field. Its nose was up, and something was hanging ten feet down underneath it—a hook, or something like a hook.

The helicopter appeared to be heading straight for him. But it didn’t seem to be slowing down.

It was low, no more than fifty feet off the ground, and then it dropped even lower. His neck painful from straining to look, he saw the hook approaching the rope stretching between the poles. He saw the hook catch the rope and drag it off the poles. He saw the rope straighten.

He screamed as the rope snapped taut and he was snatched suddenly into the air, spinning and twisting violently as the helicopter rose. Something slashed viciously at his face, and he knew his cheek was cut. He spun around again, and saw that he had been dragged through the tops of the pine trees on the edge of the field.

He screamed again in fear and rage.

The helicopter picked up speed; and the force of the wind against him became painful. He was growing dizzy. Without warning, he threw up. The wind blew the vomitus over his face, up his nostrils, into his eyes. He vomited again, spasmodically.

He was still spinning, but not as far as before. He became aware that they were climbing, and while there was still wind lashing at him, he no longer had a sense of speed.

He became aware of a jerking motion, as if he were on the end of a stretched rubber band. The belly of the Huey appeared over him, and he could see that the rope that held him was connected to a winch mounted above the cabin door.

A foot came down and pushed his body, so that it would pass between the skids of the helicopter and the fuselage. When he was even with the door, he was pulled inside.

Geoff Craig, Mr. Jefferson, and the Green Berets who had taped him were in the cabin, all wearing safety harnesses.

As Mr. Jefferson and another Green Beret held him erect, Geoff Craig stood next to him, supporting himself with a hand on the cabin roof.

“Have you got anything to say to me, cousin?” Geoff asked.

“Fuck you,” Peter-Paul said. He tried to spit in Craig’s face, but could find no saliva.

Geoff shrugged. “Throw him out,” he ordered.

Peter-Paul was pushed to the door of the helicopter and shoved out. Again he was tumbling through the air. He screamed again, the sound lost in the roar of the wind. He fell thirty feet, then was suddenly snapped up short. The harness between his legs jerked painfully tight against his scrotum. He screamed again and tried to pull his legs up.

They flew him that way for a couple of minutes. He became sure he was about to lose consciousness from the spinning. Then he was hauled back into the helicopter. Mr. Jefferson and another Beret held him erect.

“We could keep this aerial reconnaissance up, Peter-Paul,” Geoff said, “until you either tell me what I want to know, or you bleed to death through the ears and asshole. But I’m tired of it. Last, last, chance. You either tell me where the film is, or we terminate you.”

“You can’t kill me,” Peter-Paul said. “How would you explain my death?”

“No sweat,” Geoff said. “You and your father were watching our training. There was a tragic accident.”

“You think my father wouldn’t turn you all in?” Peter-Paul said.

“I don’t know if he will or not,” Geoff said. “If he did, who would believe him?”

“You’ve done your little thing, and it’s failed,” Peter-Paul said. “I’m not going to give the film.”

“Take the harness off,” Geoff ordered. “Cut him free. Throw him out.”

Mr. Jefferson pulled a Fairbairn
*
knife from a scabbard strapped to his leather-and-nylon jungle boots. He cut Peter-Paul’s arms loose first, slicing the tape where it crossed between his elbows and his stomach, then ripped it off. A hand grasped his wrist, directed it to the upper part of the door. He would have expected his blood to have been cut off, his hands and arms to be asleep. But they weren’t. These bastards knew exactly what they were doing. His hands and arms felt perfectly natural. His fingers closed on the doorframe.

Fingers and hands disconnected the harness straps, and it was pulled off him, the buckles dragged roughly past his scrotum. Then Jefferson knelt and cut and tore loose the tape binding his ankles together, throwing the discarded tape out the door.

And finally, he cut loose the tape from around his knees.

Peter-Paul spread his feet to give himself a better stance, and then spread them again.

The huge black warrant officer had moved out of his sight. Peter-Paul was standing in the open door of the helicopter. He could see the pine stands below. Something caused him to snap his head around. What he saw horrified him. Jefferson was getting a grip with both hands on an overhead structural member of the cabin.

What he was going to do was kick Peter-Paul out the door with both feet.

Peter lost control of his sphincter muscles. There was a spasm in his anus.

“The film’s in a locker in the men’s shower at the Pinehurst,” Peter screamed. “In the clubhouse of the golf course.”

Geoff Craig picked up a crew chief’s headset and spoke into it.

Peter closed his eyes, and then opened them quickly when he felt dizzy.

A moment later, he felt hands around his waist and saw that he was being strapped into a safety harness.

He looked into the eyes of the huge black warrant officer.

“Most people,” the warrant officer said, “would have given up sooner.”

There was admiration in his voice.

(Two)

The door to the Quonset hut opened two inches, then—as whoever it was remembered there were women inside—it stopped, and there was a knock.

“Come in,” the captain who had identified herself to Dorothy Sims as Phyllis Donahue called.

Colonel Craig Lowell stepped into the room.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes,” Dorothy replied.

“I’m sorry about this,” he said.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Your face looks terrible.”

“My son is next door,” he said.

Her face asked questions, but she said nothing.

“I don’t know what those bastards did to him,” Lowell said. “But when they finished, they sedated him. After a while, would you tell him I’m sorry?”

“You’re going?” Dorothy asked.

“Tell him,” Lowell said, “that there was no other way.”

“You are going,” she said, and now it was a statement of fact.

“They’ll see you have whatever you need,” he said.

“Colonel,” Captain Phyllis Donahue said, “I don’t think you’re supposed to be in here.”

Craig Lowell looked at her, and then turned around and walked out of the Quonset hut.

Dorothy went to the door, and started to pull it open. Captain Donahue leaned her back against it, her palms pressing on it.

“Please, Mrs. Sims,” she said, gently but with determination. Dorothy looked out the narrow crack and saw Craig walk to a GI station wagon. Colonel Felter was in the front seat. There were two men, a young captain and a tall skinny black major, in the back. Craig got in the back seat, and a large Green Beret with a submachine gun hanging from a canvas strap around his shoulder got in beside him.

She let go of the doorknob. Captain Donahue’s pressure against it made it slam closed.

(Three)

It was dark when the carryall brought Felter, Lowell, Franklin, and Craig to the Special Warfare Center Headquarters Building. The door was locked, and it took a moment for the guard to open it. MacMillan, who had apparently been waiting for them in the lobby, walked up to them.

“I’ve got to take a leak,” Sandy Felter announced. “You get all the officers and key noncoms in the conference room. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“What about these two?” Mac asked, nodding at Geoff and Bill Franklin.

“Them too, Mac,” Felter said. He went down a corridor in the opposite direction, while Lowell—still trailed by a master sergeant with an Uzi—walked to Conference Room II. Mac opened the locked door.

“Colonel Felter wants the brass and the key noncoms,” MacMillan said to General Hanrahan. “He has an announcement to make.”

“How’s your face?” Hanrahan asked Lowell. Lowell put his hand to it. It was tender. He remembered banging it against the desk when Bellmon had gone for him.

“I’ll survive,” he said.

MacMillan picked up a telephone, dialed a number, and spoke briefly into it. Perhaps thirty-five people in all, most of them in ripstops, quickly began to file into the conference room. They tried not to look at Lowell’s bruised face, but it was hard not to. The rumors had already started to make their rounds.

Felter squeezed his way through the crowd.

“Let me have your attention,” he said, when he was standing beside General Bellmon at the table. “I’m sorry you have all had to wait around all day. It couldn’t be helped. There have been some problems, all now resolved. And I have an announcement to make.”

That brought a hushed silence, marred by one cigarette hack.

“You may consider Phase Three of Operation Monte Cristo completed,” Felter said. “As of…” He looked at the clock, read it. “Nineteen-thirty-six hours, we are in Phase Four. We’re going. From this point onward, the tactical commander is in charge.”

Bellmon was surprised that they were going. He looked at MacMillan to see what Mac was up to. But it wasn’t MacMillan who spoke, it was Lowell.

“I have been appointed tactical commander, gentlemen,” he said. “The buses will be at the barracks at twenty-one-hundred for the troops. By twenty-thirty, I want the C5As loaded. After the loads are checked, I want the loadmaster to report that fact to me. If there’s anyone drunk, take his ammo away and bring him along. He can sober up en route. It’ll be a long flight.”

(Four)

The C5As took off one after the other to the north. They made slow, sweeping turns to the left, and quite by coincidence flew over Camp McCall.

Dorothy Sims saw them silhouetted against the moon-bright sky. She ground out her cigarette under her shoe and walked to the Quonset hut next to hers. Captain Donahue trailed behind her.

“He’s asleep, lady,” the Green Beret on guard said.

“It’s all right, Sergeant,” Captain Donahue said.

Dorothy Sims walked past him to the cot and shook Peter-Paul Lowell’s shoulder gently. When he didn’t wake, she shook him much harder. There were bandages all over his face and neck. His lower lip was scabbed and badly swollen.

He opened his eyes finally and looked at her.

“You hear that noise? The airplane engines?” Dorothy asked.

He listened and nodded his head.

“I think that’s your father,” she said. “And your cousin Geoff. I’m not sure, but I think it is, and I thought you should hear it.”

He nodded, and they listened together until the sound of the engines had so faded that the only sound was the steady roar of the diesel generator.

“Who are you?” Peter-Paul asked.

“We’ll be here a while still,” Dorothy said. “There will be time to tell you.” She put her hand out and touched his face, and then she walked out of the Quonset hut.

(One)
The Gulf of Tonkin
1 July 1969

COMNASFSEA had his flag aboard the USS
Forrestal
. When the Marine orderly—crisp in starched khakis, a white cover on his cap, his shoes and the holster of his .45 Colt glistening—appeared at the entrance of the admiral’s cabin, the Commander, Naval Air Support Forces, Southeast Asia, was sitting on a green leather couch with his feet on a coffee table watching the Pittsburgh Steelers play the Green Bay Packers on the
Forrestal’s
closed-circuit TV. The film of the game had been flown aboard four hours before. It would be shown three times. The admiral, having nothing better to do for the moment, was watching it on the first run.

His aide-de-camp got up and went to the Marine, his hand extended for the message in the Marine’s hand.

“Sir, it’s an
Eyes Only
for the admiral,” the Marine said.

The aide turned to look at the admiral. The admiral had heard. He beckoned for the Marine orderly to come in. The Marine walked to the admiral, with the clipboard extended so the admiral could sign the receipt. After he signed it and took the message form, the Marine stood at attention in case there would be a reply. The admiral unfolded and read the sheet of paper.

COMNASFSEA folded the message in half, and then again. He tucked it in the breast pocket of his khaki short-sleeved shirt.

“Son,” he said to the Marine orderly, “would you ask the captain to come see me, please?”

“Admiral,” the aide-de-camp said. “I believe we’re recovering aircraft.” The captain, like the admiral, was a naval aviator and hated to leave the bridge when aircraft were being recovered. Some of them came back with holes in them.

“You’d better ask the steward to get us some coffee,” the admiral said. “And turn off the TV.”

The admiral’s sea cabin and the admiral’s bridge were one deck below the bridge of the
Forrestal
. All the captain had to do was go down one ladder. He went down it quickly. Though he was reluctant to leave his bridge, he told himself that the admiral had something on his mind beside the Steelers-Packers game.

“Admiral?” he asked, walking through the door.

“First things first, Tony,” the admiral said. “Nobody goes ashore, from this moment. And hold the mail. You’d better put a lid on any messages ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship. Clear them through me,” the admiral said.

The captain picked up the telephone and spoke to the bridge, relaying the admiral’s orders. And then he looked at the admiral.

“Are you scheduled to receive any visitors?” the admiral asked.

The captain thought a moment before replying.

“I got a message from COMNALOMACV about three hours ago, ordering me to have a Grumman at Da Nang to pick up two passengers from DOD, Admiral,” the captain said.

“Did they?” the admiral asked. COMNALOMACV was Commander, Naval Liaison Office, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, the senior naval officer present at what was universally known as the Pentagon, East.

“I sent a Grumman, sir,” the captain said.

“Top off the tin cans, Tony,” the admiral said. “And as soon as the people from the Department of Defense are aboard, bring them up here. Two, you said?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the minute they’re aboard, delay launching aircraft,” the admiral said.

“Yes, sir,” the captain said. He waited for an explanation. He got none.

After he had gone, the admiral sat back down on his couch and turned the Steelers-Packers game back on the TV. When it was over, he got up and climbed the ladder to the
Forrestal
’s bridge.

“The admiral is on the bridge,” a Marine guard at the door sang out. The captain was surprised. The admiral rarely came to his bridge, thereby scrupulously avoiding any suggestion that he was in any way taking part in the operation of the
Forrestal
. The captain, who had been sitting in a high, leather-upholstered stool welded to the port side of the bridge, slid off his perch and walked to the admiral.

“We’re about to recover the Da Nang Grumman, Admiral,” he said.

“Very well,” the admiral said. He walked to the port side of the bridge, from which it was possible to look aft down the flight deck. The captain followed him.

“Won’t you sit down, sir?”

“I’ll stand, thank you, Tony,” the admiral said. “I could use some coffee.”

“Coffee for the admiral!” the Marine guard sang out. A white-jacketed steward appeared almost immediately with a tray holding a silver pot, two cups and saucers, silver cream and sugar vessels, and spoons, all on a crisp white cloth.

“All vessels have better than three-quarters fuel, Admiral,” the captain said.

“How far out is the Grumman?” the admiral asked.

“About five minutes, Admiral,” the captain answered.

“You better get him off the catapult,” the admiral said, pointing down to a jet fighter being maneuvered into place over the steam catapult. The catapult would literally throw the fighter into the air.

“You want the flight deck cleared, sir?” the captain asked.

“No. I just want to knock off launching for a while,” the admiral said. The captain picked up the telephone and issued the necessary orders.

Two minutes later, a lieutenant commander, earphones and a microphone clamped to his head, asked: “Permission to recover the Grumman, sir?”

“Recover the Grumman,” the captain said. The admiral looked out through the thick glass. The Grumman transport, a twin-prop-jet transport aircraft designed to operate from the deck of aircraft carriers, was making its approach.

“Sir,” the lieutenant commander said, “the Grumman reports two Code Six aboard.”

“Inform the officer of the flight deck,” the captain ordered.

“Only Code Six?” the admiral said. Code Six indicated officers in the grade of Naval captain, or Marine, Army, and Air Force colonel. No one replied.

The Grumman came in, a little long, and touched down. The hook caught the second arresting cable, and the Grumman lurched to a stop. Crewmen in hearing protectors and varicolored shirts ran to the aircraft. They disconnected the hook from the cable. With practiced skill a tractor quickly backed up to the nose-wheel and hooked up, while crewmen opened the hatch in the Grumman. As the officer of the flight deck trotted to the side of the plane, two army officers in jungle fatigues climbed out of the plane. Both wore green berets. The wind caught the green beret of the taller of the two officers, tore it from his head, and sailed it down the flight deck. There were chuckles and laughter from the captain and the admiral.

“Ask those officers to join me in my cabin,” the admiral said, turning from the window. “See if you can recover his hat for him.” Then he walked toward the ladder to his cabin. He stopped. “Tony, I’ll probably send for you,” he said, and then he left the bridge.

The captain looked out the window again and saw a sailor run out to the flight deck officer apparently with the message to bring the army officer’s green beret to the admiral’s cabin. The flight deck officer gestured to one of the sailors, who reached inside the Grumman and came out with two sets of web harness.

The admiral rose to his feet as the two officers entered his cabin. The first thing he thought was that they were not very military looking. They both needed shaves, and their uniforms were mussed. The little one had a .45 in a shoulder holster. The big one had what was unmistakably the butt of a German Luger sticking out of a nonstandard holster on his web belt. A brass plaque had been welded to the GI buckle. It read
GOTT MIT UNS
. Both had the eagle of a colonel, embroidered in black, on their collar points, and both, incongruously, carried attaché cases. The admiral saw the cases were attached to stainless steel cords running up their sleeves.

“Welcome aboard the
Forrestal
, gentlemen,” the admiral said.

They both saluted, somewhat discomfiting the admiral. The Naval service does not render the hand salute indoors.

“Thank you very much, Admiral,” the little one said. “My name is Felter. This is Colonel Lowell.”

Without being invited to do so, Felter sat down on the couch, laid the attaché case on the coffee table, and worked its combination lock. He took out a sealed envelope and handed it to the admiral.

“My orders, Admiral,” he said.

The admiral tore it open. There was a single sheet of paper inside, crisp white paper on which was imprinted
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON
. The admiral read it.

“I’m at your orders, sir,” he said. “May I suggest that I send for the captain?”

“I think that would be a good idea, sir,” Felter said.

“Admiral,” the taller one said. “Do you suppose I could have some of that coffee?”

“By all means, Colonel. Forgive me,” the admiral said. He picked up the silver pot and poured the coffee himself.

A Marine guard appeared with the lost green beret. On his heels came the captain. The admiral first handed the captain the original message (the one he had folded and put in his pocket) and then the letter bearing the signature of the President of the United States.

“May I inquire, Colonel,” the captain asked, “the nature of Operation Monte Cristo?”

“We’re going to go get the guys out of the Hanoi Hilton, Captain,” Craig Lowell said.

“I heard that was going to be a Marine landing,” the admiral said.

“Let’s hope,” Felter said, “that Hanoi thinks the same thing.”

(Two)

Fifty minutes after the Grumman was jerked to a stop on the deck of the
Forrestal
, two Army Vertol Chinook helicopters appeared off her stern no more than three hundred feet off the sea. Flying no further than one hundred feet apart, they approached the flight deck cautiously, creeping over the trailing edge. Their airspeed indicators showed thirty-five knots. But since the
Forrestal
was headed into a ten-knot wind while she made twenty knots, the helicopters were actually making five knots relative to her landing deck.

Almost at the same time, they flared and touched down. Immediately, crewmen rushed to them, and a half dozen Marines in khakis ran out from a hatch in the superstructure and formed a curved rank at the rear doors of the machines. The scream of the rotor brake could be heard over the dying whine of the engines.

A line of soldiers—all identically attired in jungle fatigues and green berets—came smoothly but not hastily down the lowered rear doors of the large, twin-rotored Chinooks. In the lowered position the doors formed ramps. The Marines guided the soldiers toward a hatch in the
Forrestal’s
superstructure.

Before the last Green Beret’s were out of the Chinooks, a crew chief, kicking his toe into spring-loaded step covers, climbed on top of each machine, went to rotor heads, applied a wrench, and caused the blade to fold back against the top of the fuselage. Then he turned the rotor head so as to reach the other blades.

A cluster of twenty sailors pushed each helicopter forward to the elevator, while the crew chiefs carefully made their way back on top of the fuselage to fold the rear rotor blades.

By the time both helicopters were on the elevator, two more Chinooks were landing.

The process was repeated four times. After the eight Chinooks had reached the hangar deck, a ninth helicopter appeared, an Air Force Sikorsky, the one known as the Jolly Green Giant. When she touched down, the ground handling crew pushed her immediately behind the superstructure, and lashed her to the deck.

Inside the superstructure, the Green Berets descended into the bowels of the
Forrestal—
down an escalator, then stairwells and through passageways until they reached an area bearing a legend:
CHIEF PETTY OFFICERS’ QUARTERS—EMERGENCY TRANSIT ONLY
.

There was some confusion here and some crowding. The word had been passed to all chief petty officers billeted there to immediately report to their quarters. The master at arms, the senior chief petty officer aboard, was there to inform a generally outraged Chief Petty Officer Corps that they were to go to their staterooms, get a fresh uniform and a change of linen, and report to the Petty Officers’ Mess, where their overnight billeting would be arranged. The Green Berets would be quartered in their billets.

“Because the fucking captain says so, Chief. Any other question?”

An Army full bull colonel was waiting for the Berets in the chiefs’ quarters. He was now dressed in Navy officer’s khakis, but he was still wearing the green beret.

He had the same message for all of them.

“There’s a supply room at the end of this hall. Draw a set of Navy fatigues and underwear. Then change into it. Take your dirty clothes back to the storeroom. The Navy’s going to wash everything. As soon as that’s done and you’ve had a shower, we’ll get you something to eat.”

The chiefs and the Green Berets examined one another as if looking at creatures from an alien stellar system.

“Where’d you guys come from?”

“The good fairy brought us.”

“Jesus, will you look at this? They’ve got fucking
television
.”

“I see you men have all been issued live ammunition.”

“Only the ones we’re sure are on our side, Chief.”

“Where the fuck is our gear?”

“On the C-5As. If you don’t get killed, they’ll get it for you.”

“When do we eat?”

“What the hell are you guys up to? How long are you going to be here?”