Memorial Bridge (53 page)

"Sir, I—"

Dillon's eyes went to the rearview mirror, to Packard. "Get on to Freeman, Mike. Tell him we'll take him up on his offer. I want the meeting at OSI at Bien Hoa Air Base." He looked at Flynn, whose upper lip had broken out perspiring. "Nineteen hundred hours, Colonel."

Dillon paused before asking the question that President Johnson habitually put to Westmoreland. "Can you do it?"

Challenged in that way, Flynn answered promptly, as he was supposed to. "Yes, sir."

Dillon faced away from Flynn just as Packard followed the lead car through the air base gate, out onto the road that would take them into Saigon. Shacks and lean-tos with walls made of flat pounded beer cans were clustered like barnacles on the U.S. enclave. A stench hung in the air. Dillon's first experience of the people he too was at war to save was of the maimed half-naked men, the clacking boys with limbs missing, the dull-eyed girls pumping their hands, all rushing the line of sleek cars for the minute it took the drivers to accelerate away.

A moment later Dillon realized that without actually being threatened by the Vietnamese beggars and whores, he had automatically raised his hand—his palm wet now—as if to fend off a sudden swarm of crazed birds.

Display boards on a pair of easels dominated the front of the room. Colonel Flynn was standing between them with his pointer, winding up his presentation. Forty-one uniformed Americans, including Dillon, sat on metal folding chairs in front of Flynn. Packard was next to Dillon in the first row. Every man present wore DIA credentials pinned to his shirt. Mostly they were young, lieutenants, captains, a few majors.

One board was headed "Statistics, February 1,1966," and it outlined in comparative figures the troop strengths of the allies and the Communists, the numbers to date of battalion-sized attacks, of bomb tonnage dropped, of acres defoliated. At the bottom, side by side, were the
numbers of casualties suffered. The second board listed numbers also, under three headings: "Commando Hunt," "Market Garden" and "White Wing," which referred respectively to the interdiction efforts along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and along the coastal waterways, and to the big-unit winter offensive spearheaded by the 25th Infantry Division and the 101 st Airborne Division. This board listed numbers of enemy trucks and tonnage of ammunition, supplies and rice destroyed or captured. Particularly highlighted were the numbers of NVA regulars deployed to the South by all routes.

With a flourish, Colonel Flynn whipped one board off its easel to expose another, "Projections: VC-NVA." Not numbers arranged in columns, but a graph on which a rising curve had topped out and begun moving down. Flynn slapped the graph dramatically with his pointer, the practiced gesture of a professional briefer. "Here is the key," he said. "We have a kill ratio going of two-point-six. We have cut the Communists' ability to infiltrate reinforcements by sixty percent. Main force Vietcong and NVA regulars are dying or being wounded now faster than they can replace themselves. The same downturn applies to supplies and ammunition. Those are the hard numbers on which our estimates are based." Flynn put his pointer on the easel's ledge and faced his audience once more, bringing his eyes confidently to Dillon.

Dillon was staring at the graph. The numbers differed slightly from what he'd seen, but the thrust of Flynn's presentation matched what his own briefers in the Pentagon had been saying for two months. Westmoreland, the JCS, the secretary of defense and the CIA all seemed to agree that despite the high cost in American casualties, the commitment of U.S. ground forces had turned the tide. President Johnson had said as much on national television, describing as potentially decisive his recent order to increase U.S. troop levels one last time. Soon there would be three hundred thousand GIs in Vietnam.

"Very impressive, Colonel."

Dillon took a moment to light a cigarette, not because he particularly wanted one, but to avoid the air of a cross-examining attorney. "My hat's off to you and your men. It's easy to see why there's been a downturn also in the criticism we've been getting at DIA for being negative." He waved his match out.

Flynn let his weight fall onto one foot, relaxing. He acknowledged Dillon's compliment with a nod.

"I have a question or two," Dillon said, "but before I ask them, I'd
like you to open the discussion to the floor. Does anyone present have anything to add—or for that matter subtract?"

Flynn raised his eyes to the room. No one moved.

Dillon slowly turned in his chair. Every man was staring at him. Their faces were impossible to read. Only moments before they had looked so young to Dillon, a roomful of Richards. But now, with their concealing masks in place, they reminded him of the robot-bureaucrats in the Pentagon.

Dillon said, "Then you're all agreed." He swiveled back to Flynn. "Tell me, Colonel, how you arrive with such precision at the enemy casualty figures. Communists killed in action, 37,784. Where do you get that?"

"Body counts, General, taken after every engagement. Men present in this room supervise ARVN counterparts in keeping track. It's the area in which discipline has improved the most."

"So you consider the KIA figure hard, not estimate."

"Hard as numbers get, General. Margin of error five percent or less."

"I see no figure for civilian casualties."

"No, sir. You requested battle order."

"11,430 trucks destroyed. Where do you get that?"

"That's an air force number. 'Commando Hunt.' I would consider that figure less hard, sir."

"Aren't our people debriefing pilots?"

"Yes, sir, but they have their own formulas and adjustments. It's likely that at least occasionally more than one pilot claims the same hit."

Dillon smoked in silence for a moment, studying the graph, the downward curve. It was the perfect expression of the two-pronged American strategy. Seal off the battlefield with bombing. Then engage the enemy and attrit. Finally, he said, "The infiltration figure. NVA North to South. How is that exact?"

Flynn glanced at his board. "We have a variety of sources, sir."

Dillon waited.

"Electronic sensors seeded from the air along the Trail measure troop movement."

"Right."

"Observation posts at the DMZ, in the hills above Dakto, above Pleiku, above Banmethuot and above Tayninh. Those posts are staffed jointly by ARVN soldiers and our people. Again, some of them are here.
In the last year the web of jungle paths was transformed into a modern logistical system, as the Communists shifted from a mainly guerrilla force into a conventional army, but that means now they depend on roads and bridges, heavy trucks and storage facilities, all of which are vulnerable from the air, and more to our point, easier to observe."

"Electronic sensors and observation posts."

"Yes, sir."

"What else?"

Flynn hesitated, then said, "SOGs."

Study and Observation Groups was the innocuous name given to the highly secret teams of U.S. soldiers which operated along the Trail in Laos and Cambodia. Dillon knew that the talk of electronic sensors and observation posts was pure bullshit, what MACV put out for the press. The roving of teams of superstealth soldiers along the Trail were the main source for the key infiltration numbers on which everyone's recent optimism, from Flynn's to President Johnson's, depended. The essential evidence for that optimism could never be presented to the public because it involved illegal military incursions into two countries with which the United States was not at war. What made Dillon uneasy was the fact that, because of the operation's secrecy, that evidence could not be corroborated either, not even by him. SOGs were Special Forces units and they operated not out of DIA but directly out of MACV. Suddenly Dillon felt that he'd come all the way to Vietnam not for a breakthrough in measuring the reliability of the intelligence system over which he presided, but for a close-up view of the very wall that made him blind. The key facts on which the entire American prospect in Vietnam turned—could the battlefield be sealed off or not?—were compiled not by bureaucrats—finally, that's what he, and for that matter the President, were—but by adventurous men whose faces were smeared with black grease. Wall? Dillon was once more up against Aristotle's old divide between men of thought and men of action. Wars go wrong when that divide becomes absolute. Unless Sean Dillon could go on patrol with the stalkers himself, it seemed to him that he would never know what numbers to trust and what to reject as mere fantasy meant to please superiors. Go on patrol? Hell, he was fifty-six years old.

He was about to stand and thank Flynn, and give the men what they thought they'd come for, a short motivating talk about the importance of their mission, but then the door to Dillon's right opened and a two-star
army general walked into the room. It was a violation of protocol—they were already in the presence of an officer senior to the newcomer—but the men came to their feet at once. Flynn braced himself like a plebe.

Only Dillon and Packard remained seated. No one had to explain to them that this was MacAuliff, Westmoreland's intelligence chief. He drew himself up in front of Dillon, who only crossed his legs, continuing to smoke, waiting.

MacAuliff was a thick-necked, stocky man of medium height. In appearance he reminded Dillon of another Scot, Macauley, the air force bomber general who had at first opposed Dillon, then had become his strongest supporter.

MacAuliff said coldly, "This meeting is in violation of security, General. Whoever authorized it is out of order."

"I authorized it." Dillon stood up wearily.

Packard alone remained seated, wearing an air of, Fuck you all.

MacAuliff was shaking his reddened face. "No, General, not here, not in—"

But Dillon cut him off with a sharp order. "Get out." His arm shot toward the door, his cigarette steady between his fingers.

MacAuliff, despite himself, fell back a step.

"This is a closed briefing, General. DIA only. Now get out."

MacAuliff took another step back. "I'm speaking for General Westmoreland—"

"I gave you an explicit order. I expect to be obeyed."

MacAuliff's eyes brushed Dillon's left shoulder, as if to confirm that decisive third star. Then he executed an about-face and left.

Dillon calculated quickly. It would take MacAuliff twenty minutes to get to Westmoreland's headquarters. He had less than an hour. He faced the room. "Sit down, gentlemen."

The officers sat, bursting for a few seconds in expressions of surprise and interest, then falling completely silent and looking up at Dillon with an attention they had not given him before.

"I'm going to dismiss you now. I am grateful for this chance to meet you. I appreciate the diligence with which you have applied yourselves to your mission. The entire structure of the Defense Intelligence Agency stands behind you, but our ability to provide the President, the secretary of defense and, especially, front-line commanders here in the zone with
the intelligence needed to win this war depends absolutely on you.

"I have tried to think of what I might do to convey my personal appreciation, and here is what I came up with. I would be happy to make contact with your families for you when I return home. I will call them myself, any of you who'd like me to. I have asked Colonel Freeman for the loan of his office across the hall for the next few minutes, and I will be available there to meet you, to take any messages you might like me to convey. From my own selfish point of view, this is my chance to simply shake your hands and say thank you."

Dillon nodded, and the men stood as he turned and left the room.

The officers filed in to meet him one by one, a series of quick encounters. Dillon made a point to gesture at the door as each man entered, to have him close it. The small, tidy office—a desk, file cabinets, the OSI seal on the wall—had the feel to Dillon of a confessional. As warmly but also as efficiently as he could, he took each man's personal information, noting it on an index card. And then, before dismissing him, he asked each one the question "Do you have anything to add to the briefing we just had from Colonel Flynn?"

One after another, the officers answered promptly, "No, sir." Each time Dillon nodded, as if that were the response he wanted.

Then a young captain entered, perhaps the tenth DIA officer to present himself. He was blond but gaunt, a man who had lost his good looks. The stench of stale alcohol radiated from him, and when he turned from closing the door to shake hands, Dillon noted at once the bloodshot eyes, the slight tremor in his hand. His cheekbones protruded, making grottoes of his eye sockets.

"Thomas Bowers, sir."

"Nice to meet you, Captain. How long have you been here?"

"Eight months, sir. My cover is MAAG. I'm attached to the ARVN office that runs joint analysis teams in I Corps."

"So you're in a position to know...?"

"What we get from prisoners." Bowers dropped his eyes. "It is not nice work, sir."

"I understand that." Dillon remembered Richard that night at Boiling, the way the word "torture" had twisted his face. Dillon's own quick denial that intelligence men used torture, he knew now, had been much too facile. DIA men were not supposed to participate in sadistic ARVN interrogations, but they were expected to make full use of information,
however obtained. Dillon said, "Questions put directly to enemy soldiers give us the most important intelligence we have. What you do is crucial, Captain."

"Thank you, sir."

There was a long silence then, and once more Dillon thought of the confessional. When he'd dreamed years ago of being a priest, mainly what he'd hoped to be was kind.

This captain in front of him, obviously at a personal limit, an alcohol abuser, was the sort of man Dillon had ruthlessly eliminated from his operations for decades now. But Dillon's heart flowed toward Bowers, partly out of genuine compassion and partly out of the sense that this man could give him what he wanted. Dillon prodded quietly, "Something's bothering you."

"Yes, sir."