The Aviators Read online

"In that case, Sir, with respect, not only no, but hell no."

  "Because you're getting short?"

  "That too, but those Green Berets are nuts," Oliver said, and then asked, "Is my saying no going to put you on a spot? They wouldn't tell you what they have in mind?"

  "I gave you what I have," Hightower said. "And all he said was that I was to ask you. . . . He didn't say anything about encouraging you?."

  "Then, hell, no, Sir," Oliver said.

  Hightower looked at his watch.

  "I'm to relay your reply to a Colonel Augustus," he said.

  "Polar Bear Six. You know who he is?"

  "Oh, yeah. He's a real lunatic. The Berets in the camps are crazy enough, but Augustus runs an outfit called Special Operations Group. They make the other Berets seem almost normal by comparison. They go intoLaos and I've heardNorth Vietnam , too - for two, three weeks at a time. The Old Man used to say they have a terminal case of death wish."

  "Well, I wish you'd wait around until I see if I can get Polar Bear Six on the horn and tell him what you said. Walk up to the commo bunker with me."

  "Yes, Sir," Oliver said.

  The commo bunker was a small, sturdily constructed wooden building covered with sandbags. Ten feet away, in a similar but smaller bunker, one of the two available diesel generators gave off a steady roar and sent a thin stream of diesel exhaust into the air.

  "There's some Cokes in the fridge, boss," the master sergeant who was the NCOIC-Noncommissioned Officer in Charge-said. "Help yourself." in a moment he added, "You, too, Sir," to Major Hightower.

  "Thank you," Oliver said, asking with a raised eyebrow if Major Hightower wanted something to drink. Hightower nodded, then turned to the sergeant.

  "Are you in contact with Dak To?" he asked. "If so, will you see if you can raise Polar Bear Six for me?"

  "Checked it just a couple of minutes ago," the sergeant replied. "It should be up."

  The link was in, and surprisingly clear.

  "You want 'phones,' Major? Or should I put it on a speaker?"

  "Speaker, please," Major Hightower said as he took the microphone the sergeant extended to him.

  The voice of Green Beret Colonel Augustus came through the scrambler with unusual clarity. "This is Polar Bear Six, go ahead."

  "Polar Bear Six, this is Sparrow Six. I have spoken to Oliver. He declines, I say again, he declines to volunteer. Over." The response from Polar Bear Six was not what Major Hightower expected. The unmistakable sound of an amused chuckle came over the air.

  "Well, Father said he was smart," Polar Bear Six said, not paying much attention at all to proper radio procedure. "Tell you what, you tell that young man to get in his flying machine and get his ass up here. I want to talk at him. Over."

  "Polar Bear Six, Sparrow Six. You mean now?"

  "Yeah, I mean now. Is there some reason he can't?"

  "Negative."

  "Polar Bear Six, clear," the speaker said.

  Major Warren H. Hightower looked at Lieutenant John S. Oliver, Jr.

  "Oh, shit," Lieutenant Oliver said.

  "You better take the other ship with you, Johnny," Major Hightower said.

  [TWO]

  Dak To Special ForcesCampRepubllc ofSouth Vietnam 1410 Hours 15 August 1963

  As the two Huey gunships approached Dak To, a DeHavilland of Canada Caribou roared off the runway. The Caribou, a large twin-engine, high-tailed, short-field-capable transport, was obviously empty now, for it required very little runway to get off the ground; it seemed to leap into the air.

  Oliver and his wingman turned on final, flared out, and a foot or So off the ground, moved the gunships into sandbag revetments. Oliver turned the machine off and climbed out. He reached behind the pilot's seat and picked up what had arrived inVietnam in a package marked "Tennis Racquet Handle With Care." The return address on the package was false. The sender, a classmate of Lieutenant Oliver's atNorwichUniversity , had done aVietnam tour and was aware that the REMFs inSaigon took seriously their prohibition of nonauthorized weaponry. They were liable to cause trouble if they detected a shotgun for lethal use near the Laotian border rather than a sports implement for use on one ofSaigon 's many well-tended tennis courts.

  The sender was confident, however, that nine of ten REMFs in Saigon probably thought that everybody inNam got a chance to play tennis and would pass the package without questions. It passed.

  Once Lieutenant John S. Oliver, had received his tennis racquet, he removed and threw away the magazine plug which limited magazine capacity to a sporting three rounds. The magazine now held five 00-buckshot shotshells, plus one in the chamber. He then neatly sawed off the barrel just above the magazine tube, sawed off the stock immediately behind the cavity for the action spring, and had his houseboy fasten to the barrel and stock a web sling formed from an old U.S. Carbine Caliber .30 sling.

  Each of the O-buckshot shotshells contained twelve pellets. Each pellet was more or less ballistically equal to the bullet fired from a .32 Colt Automatic Pistol [ACP]. It was thus a very efficient people killer, which Lieutenant John S. Oliver had twice so far had occasion to demonstrate.

  He now slung the shotgun casually over his shoulder and spoke to Warrant Officer Junior Grade Billy-Joe Daniels, ofSalt Spring,Oklahoma , his copilot. Daniels was six feet two, weighed 195 pounds, and was nineteen years old.

  "If this base comes under attack while. we are here, the SOP" -Standing Operating Procedure- "requires that you get the ship in the air as soon. as possible. If you do that, and leave me on the ground, Mr. Daniels, I will find you, no matter where in the wild world you may hide, slice off your balls, .and feed them to you."

  Daniels chuckled.

  "No sweat, boss," he said. "I'll wait for you. What the fuck is going on, anyway?"

  "I don't really know," Oliver said, "but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm not going to like it." A stocky black man wearing master sergeant's stripes and a green beret walked over to them.

  "You Lieutenant Oliver?" he asked. When Oliver nodded, he went on: "Father and the Colonel are in the mess bunker. I'll show you."

  "Your name, no doubt, is Judas?" Oliver said, as they walked across the runway toward a large sandbag bunker half buried in the earth. "As in Judas Sheep?"

  "No, Sir. Thomas, as in doubting," the sergeant replied with a smile. "I like your shotgun. Does it work?"

  "It has so far," Oliver said. "Who the hell is 'Father'?"

  "He says he knows you," the sergeant said. "I think that's why you're here."

  "Then he's no friend of mine," Oliver said.

  Colonel Joseph J. Augustus and a black Green Beret captain were sitting at one of the tables in the mess bunker eating. Steak and eggs, Oliver saw, and concluded that the makings had come in on the Caribou that had taken off as they approached.. ." Oliver saluted. "Lieutenant Oliver reporting as ordered, Sir," he said.

  Colonel Augustus, chewing, laid his knife down, and still chewing, returned the salute. Oliver sensed that Augustus was examining him critically. Finally he finished chewing.

  "Sit down, Lieutenant," Colonel Augustus said. "Have something to eat. You know Father, of course." He inclined his head toward the Captain.

  Oliver looked more intently at the Captain. "No, Sir, I don't," he said.

  "I was at Dak Sut," the Captain said evenly, not smiling.

  "You took me out of Dak Sut." Flying an HU-ID into Dak Sut, Oliver had run into a Viet Cong attack. Both he and the slick had been dinged. And for a while it looked as if he wasn't going to make it. This black Beret Captain had apparently been one of the wounded he had hauled out. But he could not remember having seen him before.

  "Father tried to get you a Silver Star to go with your DFC for that," Colonel Augustus said. "Predictably, I suppose, some sonofabitch inSaigon down graded it to the Bronze."

  "Sorry, I don't remember you," he said.

  The Captain shrugged.

  "Father says you have large balls, Lieutenant," Colonel Augustus sai
d.

  "The Captain errs, Sir. What I have is a highly developed sense for covering my own ass." Colonel Augustus laughed. "How do you like your steak?"

  "Sir, is there enough to go around? I've got seven other people with me."

  "That's what you smell cooking," Augustus said, jerking his head toward the stoves in the kitchen. "They'll run it out to the revetments."

  "In that case, Sir, medium rare," Oliver said, then added, "Quoted the condemned man as he sat down to what he's sure is the standard hearty last meal." Colonel Augustus laughed. The Captain did not.

  "You don't trust me, Lieutenant, do you?" Colonel Augustus asked.

  "I'm at sixty-three days and counting, Sir," Oliver said.

  "And you've heard about Special Operations, right?" Colonel Augustus went on. "And at sixty-three days and counting, and possessed of a highly developed sense for covering your ass, you want nothing to do with it, or us, right?"

  "Yes, Sir, that's about it," Oliver said.

  "Well, let me tell you our problem anyway," Augustus said. "And Father's suggestions for solving it. Brainstorm it, in other words. Pick holes in his theory. Nothing dangerous in that, is there?" A plate with a T-bone steak and two fried eggs was set before Oliver.

  "No, Sir, I suppose not," Olivet: said, reaching for the salt and pepper.

  "Napoleon was right," Colonel Augustus said.

  "Sir?" Oliver asked, confused, as he seasoned the eggs.

  "An army travels on its stomach". Augustus said.

  "Even Ho Chi Minh's army. Interdiction of his lines of supply over here, since they're not going to let us march onHanoi , is pretty important."

  "Yes, Sir," Oliver agreed, wondering if he was going to get a long lecture on the philosophy of warfare before Augustus got to the point. "We have the means to interdict his supply lines," Augustus went on, "multimillion-dollar airplanes and other weaponry that can, I am told-and believe-drop a round on the speaker's lectern in the Great Hall of the People" in Moscow with a 99.9 percent chance of hitting it. But our problem here is that we're not shooting at a target precisely located on a map. We're shooting at moving targets-ranging from a truck convoy to a couple of guys pushing 'three hundred pounds of rice on a bicycle. You still with me?"

  "Yes, Sir," Oliver said.

  "The problem is compounded by Charlie's discovery of the tunnel. Spy planes and satellites may be able to read license plates in Havana from sixty-five thousand feet, but nobody has yet come up with a gizmo that can find a target-even an ammo dump with tons of ammunition-that's six or eight feet under the ground. All these Buck Rogers sensing devices, as a matter of fact, have trouble finding a half dozen trucks in the woods-no matter what you might have heard."

  "Yes, Sir," Oliver said.

  "So when technology fails, you go back to basics. You send in a guy on foot. And he walks around until he finds what he's looking for. Then he sends the coordinates of the target. . . . You get the picture."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "There is one small problem with this," Augustus said.

  "You lose a lot of people that way. Too many." Oliver met Colonel Augustus's eyes, but did not respond.

  "The current technique is for a long-range patrol to take a walk in the woods for a week, two weeks, as long as is necessary to get where they are going to see what they can see, and then get out. Father Lunsford has what he thinks is a better idea. I want to hear what you think about it."

  "Why do they call you "Father?" Oliver asked. "Or is that one of those questions I'm not supposed to ask?"

  "My name is George W. for Washington-Lunsford," Father said, not very pleasantly. "Clear?"

  "Yes, Sir," Oliver said.

  "We have been losing too many people lately," Father said. "Very highly trained, very valuable people, damned hard to replace. I have decided their getting blown away is a function of exposure. The longer they are running a risk of being detected, the greater the possibility they will get blown away. Reasonable?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Therefore, it follows that the way to reduce losses is to reduce the length of exposure. That seems very logical, wouldn't you say?"

  "How are you going to do that?"

  Father Lunsford did not respond directly.

  "If, say, it is a four-day walk from the border to a suspected tunnel area, where a patrol might finger for say twenty-four hours, and then walk back out, we have a total of nine days' exposure. But let us say that a patrol has to walk through the woods for just one day before reaching the area of interest, spends the same twenty-four hours there, and then has just one more day of walking through the woods to get out. I don't happen to have my slide rule with me, but just off the top of my head it seems that we would be reducing the total exposure by two thirds, and we would thus reduce their risk by the same sixty-six point six six six ad fucking infinitum percentum . . . wouldn't you say, Slats?"

  "You want to put these people in by chopper?" Oliver asked, but it was actually a statement, an incredulous accusation, more than a question.

  "You see, Colonel?" Father Lunsford said brightly. "I told you he was considerably brighter than your average run-of the-mill airplane driver. Oliver, who'd just registered that he'd been called Slats and didn't like it, and didn't like Captain George Washington Lupsford's tolerant sarcasm either, said nothing.

  "Ignoring for the moment your disrespectful attitude toward Army Aviators, of whom my beloved little brother is one, Father," Colonel Augustus said, "I somehow get the idea that Lieutenant Oliver does not share your unrestrained enthusiasm for this notion of yours." Father Lunsford shrugged.

  "Let's try it this way, Lieutenant," Colonel Augustus went on. "Purely for the sake of theoretical argument. We have these givens. We will insert and extract a twelve-man, lightly armed team into-purely for the sake of argument-Laos, in an area through which the Ho Chi Minh trails pass. Their - mission is to locate suspected dumps of materiel- most of which are believed to be underground-and movements of transport convoys-say, trucks and people pushing overloaded bicycles. Once these targets are identified and reported, our brothers in the Air Force and Navy will make them disappear.

  "The teams inserted are quite valuable, so extracting them safely is nearly as important as putting them in undetected. Consequently, for the sake of argument, let us say you have your choice of equipment-anything in the inventory, or anything that can be purchased off-the-shelf in the States and flown over here, cost be damned. Now you tell me how you would insert and extract our teams." Oliver was chilled. He knew Augustus was dead serious.

  When he didn't reply immediately, Colonel Augustus went on. "The highest priority is to get them onto the ground undetected. Failing that, we want them in such a place that bad guys looking for them will have difficulty finding them. You understand that their mission is not to engage the enemy, but to locate targets?"

  "Yes, Sir," Oliver said, and then without thinking, added, Jesus H. Christ!"

  "What is the first problem you see?" Augustus said.

  "Sir, you could put choppers down any number of places, any place four feet wider than the rotor cone," Oliver said.

  "But Charlie knows that, too. And taking out long-range patrols is one of his high priorities. So you start with the risk of trying to sit down on a spot where there's a machine gun trained. The way around that would be to use suppressive fire on the landing zone, but that would sure tell him where you were landing. Even if that LZ wasn't already defended, scratch that helicopter. "