Guidelines (Vietnam Ground Zero Military Thrillers Book 8), page 4
In the dim light filtering through the window, he had studied her face. There was a glint of brightness at her eyes, as if they had filled with tears. Gerber sat on the bed, held one of her hands and told her not to worry about it. Everyone got drunk once in a while.
She pulled her hand free and rolled over, her back to him. As she closed her eyes she said, quietly, “I didn’t think you’d understand.”
Now it was morning. Gerber looked at his watch. It was nearly seven. He padded into the bathroom and shut the door. Quickly he shaved, brushed his teeth and combed his hair. Back in his room, he put on his jungle fatigues, and picked up his socks and boots. From the wardrobe shoved into a corner, he retrieved his rifle. He left the room and finished dressing in the hall, ignoring the amused stares of a couple of Air Force sergeants and their whores.
Fully dressed now, he took the elevator down to the lobby and then dropped into one of the chairs to lace up his boots. He had almost finished when a shadow fell across him.
“Morning, Captain,” said Fetterman. “How is Miss Morrow?”
“How would I know?” asked Gerber.
“The two of you left together fairly early and neither of you reappeared. The conclusion is obvious.”
“Okay, Sergeant Obvious,” said Gerber, “Miss Morrow is asleep in my room where she passed out soon after we got there last night. She was out all night, except for the hours when she was sick.”
“And she’s there now?” asked Fetterman.
“Still asleep. She’s going to wake with a big head. She was bombed out of her tree.”
“Well, it’s just as well,” said Fetterman. “We’re due over to MACV Headquarters in about an hour.”
“Shit! What the hell for?”
“I don’t know. Talked to Maxwell and he has to see us right now. Wouldn’t give me a clue, but said it was important.”
“Just great.” Gerber sat up, looked at his fingernails.
“We’ve time to eat breakfast first, if you want,” said Fetterman.
“Let’s just go see Maxwell. Maybe he’ll have some doughnuts for us. If not, we can grab something in the cafeteria over there.” Gerber grinned. “Besides, with Westmoreland running around MACV, the food should be good. They won’t want to offend the general.”
“It’s still a mess hall, Captain.”
“How could I forget?”
Outside the hotel they found a taxi, an old Chevy that was a riot of color, having been partially repainted half a dozen times. The interior smelled of cigarette smoke and vomit. The seats were stained in a dozen places and the floor littered with crushed cigarettes, candy wrappers and a used condom.
The driver was a burly South Vietnamese who sported a stubble and understood almost no English. He grinned at them, showing a gap where his front teeth should have been and nodded vigorously when Fetterman mentioned the MACV compound. Gerber instinctively knew that the man would have a Kamikaze complex.
They roared off, scattering a couple of pedestrians and barely missing a young woman carrying an armload of packages. They weaved in and out of the traffic, sliding into gaps that were almost too small for the car. Once he had the destination in mind, the driver kept both hands on the wheel, using the horn more often than the turn signal or brake.
They raced up wide boulevards, past palm-lined lawns of government buildings, then down narrow streets jammed on each side with squalid hovels. The cardboard and plywood structures were taped and nailed together haphazardly, unable to withstand the first of the coming monsoons; low, dirty buildings with wires strung between them or dangling from poles that looked ready to fall. The streets were muddy and lined with garbage. The open sewers reeked of refuse.
Then they burst onto a wide street, fell in behind a convoy of U.S. Army trucks, driving in the diesel stench of the engines until their driver got impatient. Leaning on the horn, he roared around them, causing a Vietnamese traffic cop to seek refuge behind the middle-of-the-road traffic light.
Finally they slid to a halt in a cloud of gravel dust in front of the MACV complex. The driver turned, one arm on the back of his seat, grinning as if he had won the Indianapolis 500.
“You pay me now!” he said. “One thousand P.”
“No good. Numbah Ten Thou,” said Fetterman. “One hundred P at most.”
“You GI dinky dau. You pay me now. One thousand P. Good drive. You like.”
Gerber couldn’t help laughing over Fetterman’s haggling. The driver wanted less than ten dollars for the trip for the two of them. If he had been a ride at an amusement park, he would have been worth the money.
“I give you two hundred. No more.” Fetterman looked grim. Determined.
“Eight hundred,” said the driver, his face becoming a tight mask.
“Too much. Too much. I give you three hundred and a tip of fifty P.”
“Six hundred,” said the driver, looking as if he had lost his best friend.
“Five,” said Fetterman.
“Five!” said the driver, shouting. “Five hundred P and tip.”
Fetterman took out his wallet and counted out the money. He handed it over to the driver who was happy again.
As he got out of the cab, the driver called, “Hey, GI. You numbah one! Good Joe.”
Gerber, who was standing on the sidewalk that led to the building, had a smirk on his face. “Come on, Joe. We don’t have all day.”
“Be right with you, Captain.” He watched the taxi rocket off, nearly crippling a couple of MPs who flipped him the bird. Then the vehicle disappeared in a cloud of dust around a corner.
“The man was phenomenal,” said Fetterman. He turned, squinted in the bright morning sun and added, “That was a fine piece of driving.”
“Then why argue the price down?” asked Gerber as they started toward the building.
“Because the price was too high for here. I pay it and the next guy then has to pay it and we have runaway inflation. Everyone thinks he should have more money. I argue him down to a more reasonable price, then prices remain low and everyone is happy.”
They reached the first set of large glass doors. “Nice of you to worry about the Vietnamese economy that way, Tony,” said Gerber, bowing slightly and ushering Fetterman through with a sweep of his arm.
Fetterman grabbed the inner door and did likewise for Gerber. The air-conditioned air hit them like a hard November wind. Gerber shivered as he stepped into the building.
“Just doing my bit, Captain,” Fetterman said. “If we’d provide our troops with a little cultural training, perhaps teach them a little about the Vietnamese people before they got over here, we could avoid some of the problems we run into. Wouldn’t have our soldiers trampling on Vietnamese beliefs and traditions without realizing they were doing it.”
“I don’t need a lecture on Vietnamese culture, Tony,” said Gerber.
“Yes, sir.”
They walked along the tiled hallway, looking at the posters on the bulletin boards, the photos of the presidents of the United States and of Vietnam. Pictures of the military chain of command, from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, down to the local men. They didn’t speak to any of the men or women who were hurrying along the hall, all looking grimly determined while clutching bundles of paper as they rushed from one office to the next. Some wore starched jungle fatigues, others were dressed in civilian clothing and a couple in Class A uniforms.
They reached a stairway that led down to a lower floor. There, they were barred by a floor-to-ceiling iron gate, which was guarded by an MP who wore a shiny black helmet liner and a .45 on his hip. They stopped outside of the gate, Gerber produced his ID card and told the man that he was expected inside. The guard used a field phone to confirm Gerber’s clearance into the restricted area, checked Fetterman’s ID and watched while both men signed in. Then he opened the gate and directed them to the proper office. He carefully locked the gate behind them.
Gerber and Fetterman turned down a corridor lined with cinderblock walls that were damp with condensation. Rust spots, where metal furniture or file cabinets had been and later moved, stained the green tile floor. Finally they stopped in front of a wooden door that had no markings other than a small, black number at eye level. When Gerber knocked, the door was opened.
Jerry Maxwell stood there, looking as if he had been up all night. He stepped back and waved them into the office. Inside was a disaster area. One wall was lined with file cabinets, the tops covered with file folders, loose papers and boxes of material. A massive cabinet squatted in a corner, a combination lock on the second drawer. A battleship-gray desk, the top littered with more papers, documents and file folders, was pushed into another corner. One side was lined with a wall of Coke cans nearly two feet high. A small chair sat in front of the desk and a larger one next to it. A single picture with its glass broken hung on the wall. Under it was a stack of framed pictures showing U.S. Cavalry men fighting the Cheyenne Indians in the Hayfield Fight.
The subterranean office had no windows and was therefore lit with fluorescent lights. The air, super-cooled by the massive air-conditioning system on the roof of the building, threatened to freeze everything solid.
Maxwell closed the door and gestured at the chairs. “Please. Sit down.” Then he leaped in front of Gerber and plucked his wrinkled suit coat off the chair reserved for visitors.
“Excuse the mess, but I ’ve been up all night trying to get this thing coordinated. We don’t have a lot of spare time.”
“Jerry,” said Gerber patiently. “I’ve told you this before. First you ask us how things are. We chat for a moment and then you chop us up with your impossible request.”
Maxwell leaned a hip against the desk and then shoved some of the paper out of the way so he could sit down. “I’m in no mood for your lectures on manners, Captain.”
“Sorry, Jerry,” said Gerber, taking the chair vacated for him.
“I told you I’ve been up all night working on this. We don’t have a lot of time to fuck around on it. You’ve got to have your team ready to go by zero three hundred tomorrow.”
“Well, Jerry, I was up most of the night, too, so I’m not impressed with that.” Gerber smiled. “Of course, my reason was probably more pleasant than yours.”
Maxwell pinched the bridge of his nose. “If you’re done, I’d like to get down to business.”
Fetterman picked a folder with a bright red Secret stamp on it from the desk. He flipped it open and began to read it. Maxwell grabbed it out of his hands and slammed it onto a pile of other secret material.
“You guys through clowning around?”
Gerber shrugged and looked at Fetterman. “You done clowning around Master Sergeant?”
“I don’t know. You?”
“Yeah, I think I am. Okay, Jerry, fill us in on the big project that kept you up all night.”
“Are you gentlemen familiar with the air war being flown over North Vietnam?”
“Only that we’ve got bombers and fighters going in there day after day and that our Secretary of Defense is doing all he can to make sure that the bombing does no grave injury to the enemy,” Gerber said glibly.
“Now what in the hell does that mean?” Maxwell appeared to be momentarily distracted.
“It means that the Secretary of Defense has ordered that our pilots avoid certain targets like the manufacturing centers in Hanoi, small though they may be, and the harbor at Haiphong. Heaven forbid we might sink a Russian ship offloading war supplies for the communist forces.”
Maxwell shook his head. When he spoke again his voice sounded tired. “There are good political reasons for those orders. Reasons that the men in the field might not be fully cognizant of.”
“Fine, Jerry,” said Fetterman. “I’ll tell the men who are being shot at with those weapons and ammunition that there are reasons for it that they aren’t folly cognizant of. I’m sure it will make them feel better.”
“Can we get on with this?” Maxwell was beginning to get testy. “Or are you two planning to play Mutt and Jeff for the rest of the morning?”
“Look, Jerry,” said Gerber, “it’s very hard for us to sit here and listen to this bullshit. That we can’t do something because it might violate some stupid guideline some ignorant politician thinks is a good idea. Not when there are people out there shooting real bullets at us.”
“Okay, okay,” said Maxwell. He stood and shuffled over to the file cabinets. He turned, leaning back on them and said, “I have a mission for you two. You’ll have to move quickly, and given what you’ve said, I think you’ll go for it.”
“Tell us, Jerry,” said Gerber.
“First you have to agree that everything you hear in this room from this point on goes no further than this room. That’s the guideline on this.”
“You know that we don’t talk out of school,” said Gerber. “Go ahead.”
“Okay,” he said, and then launched into a tale about the Wild Weasels, the air war being fought over North Vietnam and the sudden development of a missile system that seemed to use something other than radar for acquisition and guidance. He explained the prevailing feeling that because of this new development the balance had been tipped in the enemy’s favor and that U.S. involvement in the air war was at a disadvantage.
“The most worrisome thing,” continued Maxwell, “is that all indications are the missiles are being launched from SA-2 Guideline sites.”
“Guideline?” said Gerber.
“The NATO name for the SAM missile. SA-2 Guideline. Anyway, prior to a couple of days ago, all these missiles used radar for target acquisition and guidance. We could counter that, but now they seem to be launching missiles that don’t use radar and that negate our Wild Weasels.”
“The missiles are coming from the SA-2 sites?” A frown appeared on Fetterman’s face.
“Yeah. That’s the problem. No indications from the launch site that they’re even tracking and suddenly our fighters have a missile flying up their tailpipes.”
“So the assumption,” said Gerber, “is the Soviets have developed a new tracking and guidance system and given it to the North Vietnamese.”
“Yeah.”
“And to defeat this system,” said Fetterman, “you need a guidance system to study.”
“Exactly.”
Gerber took over again. “And since all these missiles are deployed north of the UMZ, you want someone to go north to get you one.”
“UMZ?” Maxwell looked confused.
“That’s what the grunts call the Demilitarized Zone. UMZ for Ultramilitarized Zone, because of all the heavy ordnance both sides have stacked up there.”
“Oh, of course. And yes, we want someone to go north and get a guidance system. But it’s not quite the hit-and-miss proposition that you might think. We have identified the sites where the new missiles are deployed so that we put you down close to one.”
“Why not just bomb the shit out of them?” asked Fetterman. “End of problem.”
“Not really,” said Maxwell. “That takes out the site, but doesn’t prevent them from using the missiles on a different site or reequipping the old one. If we divert everything to Triple A suppression, then we have nothing left to hit the primary targets, the railroad yards, the bridges, the roads.”
“For the little good it will do,” said Gerber.
“The point is,” said Maxwell, “we need to know what the new guidance system is like. Once we have that data, we can design a countermeasure that will allow us to carry on the air war.”
“Okay,” said Gerber, passing a hand through his hair. “When does this boondoggle begin and who do we take with us?”
“The composition of your team will be left to you, unless you wish for me to pull in some people. Tomorrow morning you’ll take off for Ubon Air Force Base in Thailand, board a B-52 for a HALO into North Vietnam—”
“Now wait a fucking minute.” Fetterman’s voice cut through like a knife. “You want us to bail out of a bomber?”
“Perfect cover,” said Maxwell. “The NVA won’t expect something like that. They’ll spot the planes, sure, but they’ll know they’re bombers that will have a real mission. You’ll be jumping from thirty-five or forty thousand feet so they won’t know you’re on the ground.”
“Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick.” Gerber was incredulous. “The air temperature at that altitude will be thirty or forty below. We hit any kind of upper air winds, we could be scattered all over fucking North Vietnam.”
“Admittedly there are a few details that need to be worked out. However, you’ll have to use the bombers. Just makes good sense. Puts you into the North with no one knowing it.”
“Any more little surprises?” asked Gerber.
Now Maxwell smiled. It was an evil smile that said things were going to get worse. “Just one,” he said. “You’ll have to take a Kit Carson scout. One who grew up in the area.”
Gerber shook his head. “You don’t mean…?”
“Of course. Brouchard Bien Soo Ta Emilie. You’ve worked with her before,” he said.
“She’s not from the North,” said Gerber.
“Oh, but she is,” countered Maxwell. He moved back to his desk and dug through the files piled there. When he found the one he wanted, he waved it like a banner. “Says right here that she was born in the North. Debriefing was completed by the CIA, so this is the good stuff.”
“Jerry,” said Gerber, “do you have any idea of how many different stories she’s told?”
“Doesn’t matter what’s she said to the others,” Maxwell said. “This was an interrogation conducted by our people…”
“Oh, well,” said Fetterman sarcastically, “then it’s got to be right. No one would lie to the CIA.”
Maxwell ignored the comment. “Okay. You have until five this afternoon to get your team together and get over to Tan Son Nhut. I’ll meet you over there at Hotel Three and escort you around to the Air America pad. Once there, we’ll get you on a flight to Ubon.”
“Are there restrictions on the makeup of the team?” asked Gerber.
