Ghost War (47 page)

The next thing Geraci knew, ZZ was right beside him, holding up one finger. The dogfight was over, the surviving MiGs pilots retreated and the pair of Tigersharks and the XL were pulling back into position alongside Ben. The combat engineer couldn’t believe it. It seemed as if an hour had gone by—in actuality, it had only been three minutes and change.

Finally the C-5 leveled off and went into a wide left bank—they were now at about 7,500 feet. Down below, through the clouds they could see the gaggle of railroad lines, looking from this height like an unruly, multiarmed octopus. Once again the red lights in the cargo hold began flashing.

“There’s the target!” ZZ yelled to them.

Sure enough they could see the middle of the octopus: the huge marshalling yard at Long Dik Ha directly below them.

“Ten seconds!” ZZ yelled.

Geraci looked up at his colleagues and took a deep breath.

“Five … four … three …”

They all secured their grips and got ready.

“Two … one …
Now!
”

With all their might, the six men pushed the 35,000-pound piece of iron and explosive. The brakes were no longer squealing as the huge bomb rolled out the back of the airplane, pallet and all. At that moment Geraci realized the true necessity of the restraining devices: his momentum very nearly carried him out of the airplane with the behemoth bomb. Only the straps, and a tight grip by Matus saved him from the long plunge down.

The Big Boy was floating right behind them for what seemed like a long time. Then its drag chute opened and it was jerked backwards. They watched it gradually start to sink into the cloud cover and towards the ground below.

The C-5 continued twisting to the left, its fighter escorts with it, thus giving those in the back of the big plane a distorted angle of the Big Boy’s descent. It took about a minute for it to break through the clouds. When they picked it up again, it was falling even faster than before, its seventeen tons of encased explosive winning the battle of gravity against its drag chute.

Then it hit.

There was no noise—not at first anyway. There was only an incredible flash of bright light, followed by what only could be described as an instant hurricane of smoke and dust. To Geraci’s amazement, a mushroom cloud began to rise up into the sky. He was stunned—they all were. It looked just like a nuclear explosion.

ZZ saw their expressions and laughed. “Scary, isn’t it?” he yelled.

The combat engineers could only nod in numb agreement. Even the pilots of the fighter planes behind them were looking back at the explosion in awe. As the mushroom cloud rose higher into the sky, they got a glimpse of the ground beneath it.

And this might have been the most startling thing of all.

There was nothing left. The railroad turnhouse, the railway lines, the moving gun cars, were all gone, swept up in the flame and smoke of Big Boy.

The C-5 jerked to the right, turning sharply to the south. ZZ pushed a button and the big doors of the C-5 began to close.

“Time to go home,” he yelled.

Da Nang Air Base

Eight hours later

H
UNTER WAS EATING A
candy bar as he took off from Da Nang. It was a MRE concoction, a chocolate and almond combination, with maybe a raisin or two thrown in—or at least he hoped they were raisins.

It was way too sweet for his tastes—but he hadn’t had time to eat anything in the past twenty-four hours, so the mushy confection would have to do.

He put the XL right on its ass and roared up to 20,000 feet. Leveling off, he did a surface radar scan of the perimeter around Da Nang. It was all clear—there was no indication of any enemy activity anywhere. Hunter let out a whistle of relief. There had been no Minx activity around the base for forty-eight hours.

He turned east, out to the sea. He checked the time. It was just 1400 hours. A fierce anticipation rose up in his bones. They were closing in on the final act of this play—he wanted to get it over with, and move onto other things. Specifically the pink jet’s black box and where it would eventually lead him.

He increased power to 700 knots and soon the water of the Gulf of Tonkin was below him. He owed a tip of his hat to both Roy from Troy and Ironman. Though their merger was rather frightening—like two enormous insurance companies coming together to squeeze even more money out of their victims—it had apparently paid off in spades for the First American Airborne Expeditionary Force. It was just two days before that he sent the germ of his idea to Jones in Washington, emphasizing the major parts that Roy and Ironman had to play. Now if the coded message he’d received from Jones just thirty minutes before was only half true, then Hunter knew that the two “businessmen” had pulled off nothing short of a small miracle.

Timing was everything though—and if this timetable got screwed up, even by a few minutes, then Hunter knew the whole plan could go down in flames, literally and figuratively. He shook away thoughts of such a disaster. What he was trying to accomplish here had never been tried before—not in real combat anyway. There was no room for any negativity at all then. Worrying was just praying for things you didn’t want.

Besides, the plan would be hard enough to pull off even if everything
did
go as scheduled.

He rose up to 55,000 feet and put his threat-warning radar to work. He had to make sure the airspace within 100 miles in all directions was clean. It took about five minutes to confirm this. He checked the time again. It was 1415 hours.

Time to get going.

He pushed the F-16XL up close to its maximum full military power; with thirty seconds he was topping 2,200 knots. The thin air at ten miles up provided little resistance as he streaked along at more than a half mile a second. The blur of the clouds were a comforting sight; the bright sun felt good on his face. He’d done a lot of flying lately, but he hadn’t been enjoying it very much.

But now he was, despite the circumstances. He was free. Literally, free as a bird.
This
was the exact opposite of the claustrophobia of Khe Sanh, the exact opposite of the horror masked as beauty in the Mekong Delta. In the end, Vietnam
was
the land of angry ghosts. The farther away he got from it, the better he felt.

He reached the rendezvous spot with two minutes to spare. Reducing his speed back down to 400 knots, he went into a wide orbit and waited.

Already, he could feel them coming.

He saw them ninety seconds later. There were twelve of them in all, just glints in the sun, trailing long streams of vapor and ice. He held his flight pattern and watched their approach. They got bigger by the second. Soon he could discern wings from fuselage, fronts from backs. At twenty miles out they looked like silver pencils with long thin wings. He could see the individual engines now, spewing contrails that instantly turned orange in the high sun.

Suddenly the radio was filled with chatter: altitude checks, fuel loads, position confirmations. Finally, someone raised him on the blower.

“Cowboy One, this Calvary One, do you read?”

Hunter keyed his lip mic. “Ten by ten,” he answered.

“Are we still on mission schedule, Cowboy One?”

“Roger, Calvary,” Hunter replied. “On schedule. On time.”

“Affirmative, Cowboy One,” came the reply. “We’ll follow your lead.”

By this time the dozen aircraft were just five miles away. They looked huge, fierce,
awesome.
They weren’t C-5s—this mission called for something more lethal than that. No, Roy and Ironman had certainly come through. They had secured the one aircraft that had been on this mission before. They had bought the services of twelve mighty B-52 Stratofortresses.

The
Second
United American Airborne Expeditionary Force had arrived.

Da Nang Air Base

J
T AND BEN WERE
sitting in their F-20s at the far northern end of the Da Nang runway, their engines running up to max power. Close behind them were two C-5s, the
Triple X
and
Football One.

They were waiting.

“They’re late,” JT radioed over to Ben, his voice typically anxious.

“Not yet,” Ben replied. “We’ve still got about a minute point five.”

They sat in silence for another minute or so, watching an isolated rainstorm sweep over the hills off to the west of them.

“OK, they’re late, now.” JT called over exactly ninety seconds later. “Something must have got fucked up.”

Ben just shook his head. “Listen, old buddy, you would think that after all this time, you would learn some patience,” he told his friend. “Just relax. Take deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.”

“If I start sucking on this pure O like that, I’ll be high as a kite,” JT replied, his tone a very model of unZenlike exasperation.

“That’s the idea,” Ben replied.

Suddenly their radios started crackling. “Mystery Ranch, this is Cowboy One. Calvary has arrived. Repeat, Calvary has arrived. Over …”

It was the unmistakable voice of Hunter, giving them the unmistakable go-code.

“That’s our wake-up call,” Ben called over to JT.
“Let’s go…”

Together the pair of red Tigersharks roared down the runway, lifting off in a burst of pure afterburner power, their wings heavy with smart bombs and Sidewinders. The C-5s
Triple X
and
Football One
took off right behind them.

The four airplanes quickly formed up and, as one, turned north.

The waiting was finally over.

The B-52s were picked up on radar about forty miles southeast of Hanoi.

They were first spotted at a SAM base located on the edge of the city, but because it had been attacked earlier in the day by enemy jet fighters, it had no means to launch any of its missiles. All its surviving operators could do was watch the Stratofortresses roar over head at 50,000 feet and radio the news to Hanoi.

This and about a dozen other desperate messages alerted the Minx High Command that a major bombing attack was coming. The High Command was concerned but prepared. Hanoi was covered with SAM sites close in, as well as battalions of AAA units. Most of these units had been recently paid, and were reporting up and operational. Plus, it was three in the afternoon—what enemy would dare a major attack on such a large, well-protected city in broad daylight?

It was at this point, the Minx High Command made a huge blunder. Once convinced that an attack was indeed coming, the Minx defense officials determined that its target would not be Hanoi, but the large Xa Ha Ho airbase just outside the city limits. This made sense to them as in the past day or so, the enemy aircraft had been attacking airfields and antiaircraft sites. Why would they change tactics now?

The Minx High Command ordered all available antiaircraft units to the area around Xa Ha Ho. If the enemy chose to attack the airbase with heavy bombers, then the Minx would make sure none of those bombers survived.

Xa Ha Ho Airbase

Colonel Nguyen Cao Li was angry.

“This is not the way to do business,” he was telling the officer standing next to his MiG-25. “My men and I cannot simply fly on a promise of payment. We
must
have cash in advance.”

The other officer, Major Sum Lu Buk, was nearly wetting his pants. It was his job to coordinate for air defense of the huge Xa Ha Ho air base.

“There is no time, Colonel,” he pleaded with Li. “The enemy is approaching—in great force. High Command predicts that this airbase is their target. You and your men
must
get airborne or all will be lost!”

Li simply shook his head no. His men were sitting in their Foxbats, seventeen of which were lined up on the air base’s main runway. Their engines idled down, their canopies up, they were watching with great interest the dispute between their commander and Buk, who was the base operations officer.

“I am certain,” Colonel Li was telling Buk, “that if you checked with CapCom, they would support my point of view. This is COD—cash on delivery. It’s a time-honored method of doing business. We cannot fly without being paid. It’s as simple as that.”

Buk was beside himself. He was sure he could already hear the low drone of the approaching enemy bombers.

“Colonel, I beg you,” he said, his voice losing strength with every syllable. “There is no time to contact CapCom. No time to argue. Our treasury is closed because of the pending air raid. It is impossible for me to get you payment in advance. Just impossible.”

Li turned and waved his hand once. This was the signal for his men to taxi their airplanes back to their hardened shelters.

“Then, it will be impossible for my men and I to take off,” he told Buk.

Buk was desperate. He reached into his pocket and came up with a handful of gold coins, stamped by the Royal Thai Empire.

“Colonel Li,” Buk said, thrusting the coins into the pilot’s hand. “This is my pay for the past month. Please …
take it.
Surely it is enough for at least three or four of your men to go aloft.”

Li counted the coins and quickly calculated their worth. Then he laughed. “Major, this is barely enough for one airplane to go aloft for ten minutes.”

Buk looked him straight in the eye. How could so many people get so greedy in such a short amount of time?

“Then do so, Colonel,” Buk told him. “Take the money and go up for ten minutes and at least try to do something to save us.”

Li stared back at him with some disbelief. Then he shrugged and pocketed the money.

“You must reimburse me for any ammunition expended,” he told Buk as he ascended the access ladder and climbed into his Foxbat’s cockpit. “And pay me a bonus for every enemy plane shot down.”

“Done!” Buk yelled up to him as he motioned the ground crew to remove the airplane’s wheel blocks. “Double for multiple kills.”

“Triple!”
Li yelled back over the increasing scream of his engines.

Then he closed his canopy and taxied away.

Buk watched him move to the end of the runway, the only sounds now were the MiG-25 engines and the air raid sirens wailing above the base.