Ghost War (25 page)

But he could not do that now. Khe Sanh was still in enemy hands. He could not present CapCom with a bill. And that was the crux of his present problem. If he couldn’t charge CapCom for the campaign, then he would not be reimbursed. No reimbursement meant that he was practically broke and out of the running when it came time to divide up the spoils of South Vietnam once the major campaigns began.

Thus, Dong felt himself in a position familiar to many a businessman through the ages. He had made two large mistakes. He had foregone direct contact with his troops, preferring to look upon them as product, and he had cut corners at crucial times, thinking that saving money during the operation would mean more money once the operation was completed.

In a word, he had been greedy. And now he was forced to pay the price.

He had but one chance left to save his sinking fortunes. It would be a one-shot effort, something he should have tried long ago. If it worked, then he still had a chance to recoup some of his fortune. If it failed, then he would be completely broke again, left with no army, no prestige, no power.

He shuddered at the thought.

Draining the last drops from his cognac snifter, he punched a button on his radio phone, spoke briefly to a Minx communications unit approximately twenty miles away, who then patched him through to his intended party.

The radiophone on the other end rang three times before it was picked up.

Song Ly Air Base

Captain Lo Ky answered the radiophone.

It was just a coincidence, of course. He happened to be passing by the base operations desk, on his way to the mess for another jug of rice wine, when he heard the device started beeping and picked it up.

The voice on the other end sounded panicky, almost as if his location was under attack. That was not unusual: the majority of people seeking help from the MiGs based at Song Ly were usually being shot at, or mortared, or bombed or shelled at the time of the call. That was, after all, the basis of the business of the MiGs at the base. They were purely damage control, called in to perform air strikes for various Minx commanders who for whatever reason found their balls in a vice and needed some untightening quick.

But this voice that Ky was listening to sounded different—it was both anxious
and
depressed. As if the battle was already over, and the caller was simply going through the motions of calling in an air strike, just so he could, in the end, know that he had expended all his options before running up the white flag.

Technically, Ky should have summoned one of the logistics officers at the base to take the call, get the coordinates of the potential customer, discuss price and method of payment. But Ky took down all the information himself—this way the logistics officer would not have to be cut in on the job, meaning more money for Ky and his three comrade pilots.

The caller was one Long Dong Tru, commander of the Minx forces fighting at nearby Khe Sanh. Ky almost burst out laughing when the man finally identified himself. He and the other pilots at Song Li had been hearing about Dong’s troubles at Khe Sanh for days—it was, after all, just over the hill from them. On still nights Ky and his men could hear the massive fighting going on in the bloody mudhole just six miles away, while they lay in comfortable duck-down beds, drinking rice wine and
fricking
the local whores.

Dong in fact had become a kind of laughing stock among the various Minx military units. While they were preparing for the massive offensives in the south, Dong, reputed to be a lowly truck driver who suddenly got rich, was having trouble defeating a small bunch of white men, who had holed up at Khe Sanh with few weapons, little ammo and practically no hope of survival.

He was also reportedly running out of funds, so Ky made it quite clear to Dong that any services from him and his fellow MiG pilots would have to be paid for in advance. Dong did not put up a fight—he even admitted that he was down to his last money reserves. He agreed to dispatch a convoy to Song Li carrying the 120 bags of gold the MiG pilots required to attack the enemy at Khe Sanh. The money would arrive within five hours. Ky agreed that the air strike would take place at dawn the next day.

He hung up on Dong and proceeded to get yet another jug of rice wine from the base fridge.

“Stupid fool,” he thought, laughing again over Dong’s pathetic request for last-minute air cover. “‘Penny smart and pound foolish.’”

Aboard Bozo

B
EN WAS EXHAUSTED.

He was sitting on the mid-flight deck of
Bozo
, trying to get the most out of a cold cup of instant coffee.

He’d gone so long without sleep, he had lost his sense of time. He had no idea if it was day or night. Only a glance through bleary eyes at the cracked windshield in the forward compartment told him it was indeed nighttime, probably a few hours before sunrise.

He could hear activity going on below him, the gun crews doing their best to patch up the weapons hold of
Bozo.
But it was a tall order. There wasn’t much left of the airplane. After the last great battle—the one in which Hunter saved them all by literally calling in a missile strike on their position—the fuselage had more holes in it than not. The wings were just about completely severed from the body, and the tailplane had collapsed. Many of the firing positions had to be readjusted because there was so much debris scattered around the battered C-5, it interfered with weapons aiming.

But lack of firing angles weren’t the only problems.
Bozo
was low on ammunition, low on fuel for the generators, and therefore low on electrical power. The crew members were simply beat. Exhaustion was showing in all the faces, and though valiant, everyone seemed to be moving at half speed, or even slower.

It was sad to say, but there was also a crisis of spirit rising among them all. Though the day had passed without a follow-up Minx assault, everyone realized they couldn’t withstand another large-scale attack. And even if they did, the one after that would surely be the death blow.

Ben found himself staring out of the shattered cockpit window towards Magic Mountain. While conditions were bad on
Bozo
, he knew things were even worse inside the artificial cave. Eighty of Geraci’s guys had been locked up inside the mountain for what seemed like days on end. The task before them was so enormous, even Ben had doubts they could pull it off, no matter how much guidance they received from Hunter.

The problem was time. Even the most skilled of engineers needed time in which to do their work. But it was clear that the clock was running out very quickly for them all.

He turned back to Willy Rucker’s Jason Transponder Module. His present duty was monitoring the JTM, just in case it picked up any unusual activity around Khe Sanh.

Ben didn’t know just how Hunter had figured it all out so quickly, but now the grid highlighted by the JTM’s orange light was clearly showing the area surrounding Khe Sanh. It represented a perimeter stretching about twenty kilometers or so out from the center of the battered base.

Ben had been staring at the grid off and on for the past few hours, with absolutely nothing to report. Hunter—who was also holed up inside Magic working with Geraci and his engineers—had told him that any unusual troop movements would show up as bursts of static on the nine-inch grid; any unusual mechanical activity would appear as moving vertical lines. Should either one of those things happen, Ben could use the JTM’s abundance of tuning dials to triangulate the precise location on the grid. Then by consulting the maps given to them by Willy Rucker pinpoint the activity in the area surrounding them.

And then? Then, Ben thought, they would have advanced warning of what would probably be their last day.

He leaned back and tried to stretch, his muscles aching from lack of sleep. Though tired, he wished
he
was working inside Magic instead of watching the JTM’s orange screen. Though the conditions were undoubtedly worse inside the mountain, he would have preferred to pitch in on the really hard work, just to keep his mind off of what he considered to be the inevitable.

But they all had their duty to do. So Ben rubbed his eyes, let them refocus, and then turned back to the screen.

And that’s when he saw them.

There were four distinct vertical lines literally buzzing off the grid. Ben froze for a moment.
Does this damn thing actually work?
he wondered. Vertical lines indicated a lot of electromechanical activity—anything from tanks to troop trucks to airplanes warming their engines. He immediately began turning the tuning dials, attempting to shrink the verticals until they were just dots blinking on the grid.

After sixty seconds of frantic twisting he had successfully isolated four blinking dots on the screen’s grid. He hastily pulled out Rucker’s maps and began going through them, looking for the correct layout which matched the appropriate part of the grid. Suddenly he found it—it was the northern exposure map. The indications were originating about six miles north of the base.

Damn …
Ben whispered. The activity had to be coming from the MiG base he and Hunter had discovered with the help of Rucker’s maps.

He was quickly up to his feet. He had to get this news to Hunter immediately.

But at that moment, the JTM started buzzing again. Ben sat back down to find a series of static bursts beckoning from another quadrant of the orange screen. Once again, he began twirling the tuning knobs; forty-five seconds later he was stunned to realize he’d isolated a large ground force moving towards Khe Sanh from the west.

He was back up in an instant, intent on running to the front of the flight deck, sliding down the access ladder in order to summon Hunter.

But when he turned around, he was startled to see The Wingman was already there. His face was a mask of concern. His hands shaking with barely controlled rage.

“
Jessuzz, Hawk
… I was coming to get you,” Ben said gasped.

“I know,” Hunter told him.

“The transponder … was blinking and …” Ben stuttered, trying to get everything out in one hurried sentence.

“I know,” Hunter repeated.

“You know?” Ben was finally able to ask him. “You know about the MiGs, the troops? You know what’s coming?”

Hunter nodded grimly. “Yeah,” he said, soberly. “I always do.”

He leaned over and studied the JTM’s grid. Quick calculation told him that Ben had calibrated the device’s position finders perfectly. There were at least four MiGs warming up at the base north of them, and a large mobile force—probably troop trucks—was heading in from the highlands to the west.

Whether the two forces were acting in concert, Hunter didn’t know. And it didn’t really make much difference. An attack from either one would do in the defenders and end the last stand at Khe Sanh. No wonder his inner psyche had been vibrating so intensely, compelling him to leave Magic and get to the JTM device.

So it had come down to this, he thought, eyeing the JTM screen. All the fighting and work and sacrifice and death had come down to one last engagement, two at the most. And then horrible deaths for all involved.

His fists tightened and his teeth were clenched. Deep down inside his very being, he couldn’t help but feel that this was exactly what Victor, or his successors, had intended it to be: a slow painful, descent into hell.

But at that moment Hunter vowed there was no way he was going to let that happen.

In a flash he was gone—out of the flight deck, down the access ladder and running back towards Magic.

Once again, a secret within held the key to their immediate survival.

T
HE FOUR MIG-25S LIFTED
off cleanly from Song Li air base, quickly gained altitude, and turned south.

Each Foxbat was lugging a single 2,205-pound GP bomb, two, 1,102-pound GP bombs, and one AS-7 Kerry air-to-surface high-explosive missile. These made for quite a load for a ’Bat which was originally designed as a high flying, Mach-3 interceptor whose role it was to shoot down enemy bombers and fighters with long-range air-to-air missiles, thus avoiding dogfights.

For these airplanes to be adapted for ground attacks their wings had to be strengthened considerably, adding extra weight and drag which decreased their top-speed. Additionally, rudimentary targeting devices had to be installed on the airplanes, further reducing their performance. But still, the Foxbats could kick in at 1600 mph, fully loaded, and after all the bombs were dropped, they could easily pump it up to 2200 mph or more.

Major Ky and his associates were not anticipating any high speed flying for this job. Just the opposite. As the target was but a minute away from their base, and had no useable antiaircraft weapons according to Dong, they were not even carrying a full complement of fuel. They fully expected to come in on the target flat, do one blind pass with their big “22s,” turn back, drop their 1102-pounders, turn again, deliver the Kerrys, and scoot.

In fact, they expected the attack would last but a minute, and was so elementary, Ky and his pilots didn’t even bother to hold a premission briefing. They were old hands at this sort of thing—premission bullshitting was for pussies.

The four MiG-25s leveled off at 15,000 feet, overflying Khe Sanh just fifty-five seconds after takeoff. The sun was coming up, and in the early light, the MiG pilots could clearly see at least a dozen fires burning out of control at the besieged base below. In the center of these fires was their target, the gigantic, but battered American airplane which had had the misfortune of landing at Khe Sanh about a week before.

During his phone conversation with Ky, Dong had babbled something about the huge weapons load this plane was carrying, but Ky dismissed it then and now as the nonsensical ranting of a man about to lose a major campaign. The huge American airplane was obviously a cargo craft of some sort, so it was hardly armed.

Ky and the others went into a sloppy orbit above Khe Sanh and hastily worked out an attack pattern. Ky and his wingman would go in first, followed by the third Foxbat—piloted by Ky’s brother-in-law, Ngyuen Ming—and finally, his wingman, Dop Soo.