At that moment the first of the booby traps in the mechanical ambush went off. There was the detonation of a grenade and then the ripping blast of an AK. Silence fell and then the cacophony rose again as the enemy soldiers tried to return fire. First there was only a couple of their weapons, and then more as all the enemy began to return the fire until it sounded like a company was closing in on them.

  Around him, Gerber could hear the stray rounds ripping through the trees over his head, peeling bark from the trunks, and tearing leaves from the branches. He hesitated, watching the slope below, but nothing moved down there. Then, in the distance he heard the heavy pop of the rotor blades of the Sea Stallion. Jet engines roared, nearly drowning out the sounds of shooting.

  Gerber got to his feet and ran up the slope. He came to Fetterman and pointed. Fetterman and Tyme took up the rear guard position, their weapons ready, as Bocker and Wornell ran to the center of the LZ.

  Wornell dropped to the ground and pulled at the antenna of his radio. He pointed it straight up and said, “This is Baron One.”

  “Roger, Baron One. Can you pop smoke?”

  Bocker took a smoke grenade from his pack, pulled the pin and tossed it to the center of the LZ. A yellow cloud began to billow.

  Kit, Krung and Le Duc gathered near a tall tree. At first they watched Bocker and Wornell, and then turned to where Gerber, Fetterman and Tyme crouched. Krung moved closer to the Special Forces men, his weapon held ready. He heard Kit whisper at him, but waved a hand to silence her without turning around.

  Through the trees, Gerber caught movement. A shape flashed and then fell. He kept his eyes turned toward it, and saw it begin to crawl forward. Gerber aimed, but didn’t fire.

  A grenade exploded. Gerber saw the flash and then the drifting cloud of dust. More firing erupted as the enemy soldiers fired into the trees, as if they believed they had been surrounded. More grenades exploded, but these were duller, quiet pops. The NVA were throwing their own grenades, trying to break up the ambush.

  Behind the Special Forces men the roar of the jets came again and then the popping rotors became louder. Gerber looked over his shoulder, saw the yellow cloud drifting on the center of the LZ and knew that the chopper was inbound.

  “Let’s take them,” he said.

  With that, he let the front sight seek the enemy soldier. As soon as he saw the movement again, he pulled the trigger, felt the weapon slam back into his shoulder. The man took the round in the side of the head. For a moment he was frozen there, a gaping red wound between his eye and ear. Then he slowly collapsed.

  Both Fetterman and Tyme opened fire on full auto. They burned through the ammo as fast as they could, changing magazines without hesitation. Their rounds tore through the thin vegetation, shredding the trunks of the saplings and ripping the leaves from bushes.

  Return fire was sporadic and poorly aimed. The enemy was thoroughly confused, firing in all directions. They seemed to be pinned down by the mechanical ambush. Gerber watched the shooting, and tried to spot the muzzle flashes, but the rising sun washed them out.

  He began to crawl toward the rear until he found Fetterman. Gerber ordered the master sergeant to collect Tyme and follow. Then he located another good hiding position and dropped into it.

  Fetterman and Tyme rushed by. Fetterman halted, spun and emptied his weapon into the forest. He dropped to one knee, jerked his last grenade from his pistol belt and tossed it into the trees. Then he ran into the clearing.

  Gerber waited for the grenade to explode. When he saw the orange flash and the fountain of dirt and debris raining back to the ground, Gerber was on his feet, running.

  As he passed the last of the trees, he saw the chopper coming out of the sun, right at him. It was a gigantic machine, capable of carrying forty troops. Behind it were two jet fighters, patrolling, looking for the enemy, waiting for the Triple A to open fire.

  Gerber slipped to one knee and aimed his weapon at the trees. Fetterman and Tyme ran toward him, and fell next to him, but none of them fired.

  The noise increased until it was a roar that overpowered everything else. The rotor wash blew with the force of a small hurricane, trying to smash them to the ground. The swirling wind grabbed at them, ripping at them and tearing at the loose grass, leaves and debris in the LZ. It threw up a whirling cloud of dust, sucked the last of the yellow smoke in, and tossed it out.

  Behind him, Bocker and Wornell scrambled toward the open door on the right side of the chopper. Wornell leaped into the interior and rolled against the bulkhead. Kit dropped her rifle, stooped to pick it up and then fell to her knees. From the trees, to the right of where Gerber had been, an RPD opened fire, stitching the side of the chopper. Kit snatched her weapon from the grass, spun and emptied the magazine at the machine-gun nest.

  Firing around them increased. Gerber was on his feet, running. He saw Fetterman shooting. Duc was aiming into the trees where the RPD was concealed and Gerber yelled at him. “On the chopper! Get on the chopper!”

  As Duc turned to run, a round caught him in the shoulder, spinning him to the ground. His weapon flew from his hands and he screamed once. It was a sharp, piercing sound that was nearly lost in the roar of the jets and throbbing of the Sea Stallion’s rotor blades.

  Gerber grabbed Duc under the other arm and jerked him to his feet. Duc took a stumbling step, caught his balance and ran. At the chopper, Bocker grabbed him around the waist and threw him inside.

  Both Fetterman and Tyme were shooting now, pouring rounds into the forest, aiming at the RPD. It fell silent as the NVA gunners dived for cover. Then the two Americans were on their feet, running toward the Sea Stallion.

  Gerber reached the chopper but didn’t climb in. He stood, his rifle at his shoulder, and when two enemy soldiers appeared, he opened up. Both dived to the side. As they did, Fetterman and Tyme reached the helicopter. They scrambled up. Kit still had not entered. She was now next to Gerber, shooting at anything that moved.

  “Get in! Go!”

  She didn’t move. She kept pulling the trigger until the bolt locked back. She glared at Gerber as Bocker grabbed her under the arms, throwing her up into the chopper.

  At that moment Gerber tossed his weapon through the hatch. He reached out, grabbed the side and lifted. Bocker held a helping hand out and a crewman snatched at Gerber, dragging him partially inside.

  Before he could get fully on board, the chopper lifted off. It climbed straight up while Gerber held on, his feet waving in midair. He felt his hand slip and was sure that he was going to fall, but then others grabbed him, jerking him into the cabin. The chopper spun, dived at the trees to pick up speed.

  From below came the sound of the enemy weapons. An RPD, AKs and even SKS carbines. There were snaps and pops as rounds penetrated the thin metallic skin of the chopper. Then came a single, loud explosion as one of the covering jets began suppressing fire. Gerber looked back and saw the edge of the tree line engulfed in flames, black smoke billowing into the sky.

  “We get everyone?” shouted Gerber. He looked around, trying to make a head count.

  “Everyone’s out,” Bocker yelled, nodding with an exaggerated motion. “We got everyone out.”

  Gerber relaxed, leaning against the metal of a bulkhead. He looked at the dirty, sweating faces of the men around him and felt his stomach turn over. Those last, hectic minutes had done it. He could feel the excitement bubbling through him, coursing through his veins. He wanted to shout, to scream, but knew he was premature. They were still over North Vietnam.

  Then, through the door of the chopper he saw the tan sand of a beach and the blue green of the Gulf of Tonkin. The chopper continued to climb as two F-4 Phantoms shot by, one of them doing a barrel roll.

  At that moment, he knew they were clear.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE CARASEL HOTEL, SAIGON

  Mack Gerber sat at a table in the corner of the bar outside the hotel. A copy of Stars and Stripes lay in front of him. He had been back from North Vietnam for nearly a week, but because of all the briefings and debriefings, he hadn’t gotten to the hotel until earlier that morning. His first act was to take a long, hot shower and then to dress in the wildest civilian clothes he had. A Hawaiian shirt covered with blue birds and red flowers and purple volcanos. He wore bright yellow pants and frayed black tennis shoes without socks.

  Across the table from him, Robin Morrow sat quietly sipping the beer he had bought her. Her low-cut dress revealed the tops of her breasts, and the hemline came almost to mid-thigh. She was uncomfortable, the sweat beading on her forehead and upper lip, dampening her hair, but she said nothing about it. She was happy to be with Gerber without having to worry about the Vietnamese woman they all now called Kit, or Fetterman or George Krupp or even Jerry Maxwell and the rest of the CIA spooks.

  Gerber folded back the front page of the Stars and Stripes, punched in the gutter to flatten it, and was surprised to see a story by George Krupp and Robin Morrow that detailed illegal operations in North Vietnam by members of the U.S. Army’s Special Forces. He glanced over the top of the paper at Morrow, who was looking over the railing around the perimeter of the outside bar, staring into the streets of Saigon.

  He scanned the story quickly, wondering what asshole had leaked it. He figured it had to be Maxwell or one of the civilians in the embassy who refused to understand that the North Vietnamese routinely violated the supposed neutrality of Laos and Cambodia, and who had large numbers of troops fighting in the South.

  With that, the memories of the debriefings returned. Gerber, Fetterman, Tyme and Bocker, had sat in the cold conference rooms. An almost endless parade of military officers and civilian intelligence experts had filed through asking questions. They believed that Gerber and his men deserved no consideration and owed the debriefers something other than honest answers.

  First there had been the three men, Robert Cornett, General Thomas Christie and Tim Underwood. They had spent several hours going over every detail of the SAM missile site near Ke Sat. They had been appalled that Gerber had not explored the base at greater length, especially when the missiles on the launchers were found to be dummies but the radar and tracking vans had been real.

  Gerber had tried to explain that the North Vietnamese Army hadn’t been thrilled to have Gerber and his team running around on the site. Besides, the longer he thought about it, the more he was convinced that he had seen everything that needed to be seen. He had all the answers to the questions. It was only a case of analyzing the data to learn exactly what it all meant.

  Cornett had been interested in Fetterman’s find of SA-7s and as Gerber thought about it, everything began to make sense. It was what Gerber had suspected all along, but a suspicion that he had failed to voice.

  A jet pilot, seeing a missile launch in the dark from an SA-2 site, while flying below two or three hundred feet, would assume the missile launched was an SA-2. At night he would only have the rocket flame and site configuration to give him a missile ID. With less than two seconds to identify the missile and to evade it, the assumption would be that it was an SA-2. After all, one bright flash from a missile engine igniting looked pretty much like the next. The split second that the pilots had to react made their observations of flight characteristics of the missile less than perfect.

  “Then that’s it,” shouted Christie. “The SA-7 is an infrared guided missile. They use the Spoon Rest for early acquisition, get a flight heading and then shut it all down. No SAM warning lights for the aircraft as the North Vietnamese soldiers grab their weapons and suddenly the fucking missiles are coming up at our boys.”

  Underwood nodded slowly. “And we are led to believe they’ve added something new to their inventory. Something we can’t counter so we stop the bombing raids.” He clapped his hands. “A marvelously constructed plan.”

  Bocker looked confused and then asked, “What’s going on here?”

  Gerber waited but no one else spoke. “The new guidance system that everyone was so worried about doesn’t exist.” He stared Christie in the eyes and added, “General, I believe your pilots’ debriefings need to be a bit more detailed. The observable characteristics of the SA-7 vary significantly from the SA-2.”

  “That’s right, Captain,” said Christie. “We’ve done everything we can, but when you’re flying over an SA-2 site and you have a missile coming at you, you’re usually so busy trying to evade it, you don’t have time to study it. The assumption is that it was an SA-2.”

  “I understand that, General,” said Gerber. “But it was my butt hanging out in North Vietnam because your people misread the situation.”

  “Actually, Captain,” said Christie, stressing Gerber’s lower rank, “it was the CIA and Naval Intelligence people who leaped to the wrong conclusions. They followed their guidelines. Before we initiated the activity, that is, your mission into North Vietnam, we would have spent a little more time studying the situation.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Gerber. “But that didn’t keep my people out of the North, did it?”

  And when the Air Force and CIA had finished with them, Army Intelligence came in, asking for everything that they could get. Unit organizations, uniforms, training, equipment and morale they had seen of the North Vietnamese Army. Did it seem that the NVA was getting ragged, sloppy? Did it seem that discipline was about to break down? Gerber, Fetterman, Tyme and Bocker had told them everything they could remember. In the end the Army people went away very happy.

  Finally there was an Air Force contingent that wanted to know what happened to Barlett. This was the debriefing that Gerber had dreaded because no one had a good answer. Le Duc had reported that Barlett had been captured or killed before he had gotten very far off the LZ. Gerber speculated that Barlett, because he wasn’t used to the military chutes and all the ramifications of a combat HALO operation, had popped his chute early and drifted a long way from the rest of them. Separated in hostile territory, he had been either captured or killed. But Gerber, knowing that the Air Force would want to protect the memory of their own, told the Air Force investigators that Barlett had been a brave man and had gone down fighting. There was no point in telling them that Barlett had been a big pain in the butt and probably would have compromised the mission within hours.

  “And there was nothing you could do for him?” asked the Air Force officer when Gerber had finished his speculation about Barlett.

  “We had no idea where he was or if he was alive until we located Le Duc. We were on another mission, which had priority. Once we found Le Duc, it became obvious that Sergeant Barlett had been killed in action.”

  When the Air Force officer left, there was a final debriefing with the air rescue people about the procedures used. And finally, with a word of caution from Jerry Maxwell to keep their mouths shut about the mission to North Vietnam, they were released. No one asked why they didn’t try to break into the Hanoi Hilton or why they didn’t make more of an effort to find the downed aircrews. And no one wondered why they hadn’t tried to get to one of the other missile sites to examine the weapons there. Gerber assumed that it was because the requests were seen for what they had been. Pipe dreams at best and disasters at worst.

  Now, sitting across from Robin, the late afternoon sun beating down on him and making him squint, he felt the anger boil up inside him. They had gone through all that. Men had died for the information they had gotten, and Robin had tried to blow it all. If the story had appeared any earlier, it could have compromised the whole mission, jeopardizing all their lives.

  He folded the paper and tossed it across the table at her. “You really responsible for this piece of shit?”

  She glanced at the paper. “Not really.”

  “Your name is on it.”

  “Right. George thought he was doing me a favor by adding my name to the byline.”

  “You realize that this kind of irresponsible reporting can get men killed.”

  She felt the anger flare in her and then burst. After all she had gone through with Krupp, Maxwell and the others, she didn’t like his attitude. “I don’t need a lecture from you on the workings of the press.”

  “Somebody sure as hell does. Somebody needs to rein these guys in.”

  “Not me. I got the story held up for a week as it was. I told George all about responsible journalism and that in time of war some things had to be soft-pedaled. But do you give me credit for half a brain? Oh no. You immediately assume that I’ve done it again. You don’t even have the courtesy to ask. You just assume the worst. After all I’ve been through for you, after all the crap I’ve taken as you chase my sister or that Vietnamese whore, I still come back for more. I must be stupid.”

  Gerber rocked back in his chair and stared at her. The venom of her response surprised him. He had assumed that everything was fine between them when he had gone off on his merry way. Well, maybe not exactly fine. He realized that she wasn’t angry about his accusation. It was something more than that and he understood it now.

  He had the sense not to try to jolly her out of it. Instead he leaned closer and took hold of one of her unyielding hands. “I’m sorry Robin, I didn’t know…”

  “How could you not know?” she asked, her voice breaking. “After everything, how could you not know?”

  “Incredible stupidity on my part. It’s not much, but maybe you’ll be happy to know that Karen is madder than hell at me.” He stopped speaking, his mind running full speed. Suddenly it was important to him that she understand what was going on. “She found out that I sneaked into Vietnam behind her back. Claimed that it was just an excuse to dump her, and pretended that she didn’t know that it was coming. Said she never wanted to see me again. She was breaking it off.”

  Robin smiled weakly. “She was breaking it off? Is that what she said?”

  “Well, she was a tad late, but that was what she said.”

  “You won’t go crawling back to her?”

  “No, Robin, I won’t.” He felt her hand soften and then grip his.

 

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