And with the sun came the Phantoms.
The Phantoms came low, screaming in from the east, along the axis of the valley, their jet growls filling the air, almost splitting it. They dropped long tubes that rolled through the air into the valley beneath, and blossomed oranger than the sun, oranger and hotter than any sun, with the power of thousands of pounds of jellied gasoline.
“God!” screamed Bob. “Air! Air!”
They peeled off, almost in climbing victory rolls, and a second flight hammered down, filling the valley with its cleansing flame.
Then the gunships.
Cobras, not like snakes but like thrumming insects, thin and agile in the air: they roared in, their mini-guns screaming like chainsaws ripping through lumber, just eating up the valley.
“The radio,” Bob said.
Donny rolled over, thrust the PRC-77 at Bob, who swiftly got it on, searched for the preset band that was the air-ground freak.
“Hit eight, hit eight!” Donny was screaming, and Bob found it, turned it on to find people looking for him.
“—Bravo-Four, Sierra-Bravo-Four, come in, please, immediate. Where are you, Sierra-Bravo-Four? This is Yankee-Niner-Papa, Yankee-Niner-Papa. I am Army FAC at far end valley; I need your position immediate, over.”
“Yankee-Niner-Papa, this is Sierra-Bravo-Four. Goddamn, ain’t you boys a sight!”
“Where are you, Sierra-Bravo-Four, over?”
“I am on a hill approximately two klicks outside Arizona on the eastern side of the valley; uh, I don’t got no reading on it, I don’t got no map, I—”
“Drop smoke, Sierra-Bravo-Four, drop smoke.”
“Yankee-Niner-Papa, I drop smoke.”
Bob grabbed a smoke grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it. Whirls of angry yellow fog spurted from the spinning, hissing grenade, and fluttered high and ragged against the dawn.
“Sierra-Bravo-Four, I eyeball your yellow smoke, over.”
“Yankee-Niner-Papa, that is correct. Uh, I have beaucoup bad guys all around the farm. I need help immediate. Can you clean out the barnyard for me, Yankee-Niner-Papa, over?”
“Wilco, Sierra-Bravo. Y’all hang tight while I direct immediate. Stay by your smoke, out.”
In seconds, the Cobras diverted to the little hill upon which Bob and Donny cowered. The mini-guns howled, the rockets screamed; then the gunships fell back and a squadron of Phantoms flashed by low and fast, and directly in front of Bob and Donny, the napalm bloomed hot and bright in tumbling flame. The smell of gasoline reached their noses.
Soon enough, it was quiet.
“Sierra-Bravo-Four, this is Yankee-Zulu-Nineteen. I am coming in to get you.”
It was the bird, the Huey, Army OD, its rotors beating as if to force the devil down, as it settled over them, whipping up the dust and flattening the vegetation. Bob clapped Donny on the back of the neck and pushed him toward the bird; they ran the twenty-odd feet to the open hatch, where eager hands pulled them away from the Land of Bad Things. The chopper zoomed skyward, into the light.
“Hey,” Donny said over the roar, “it’s stopped raining.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ven in the hospital, Huu Co, Senior Colonel, was criticized. It was merciless. It was relentless. It went beyond cruelty. Each day, at 1000 hours, he was wheeled into the committee room, his burned left arm swaddled in bandages, his head dopey with painkillers, his brain ringing with revolutionary adages with which nurses and doctors alike pummeled him in all his waking hours.
He sat stiffly in the heat, waiting as the painkillers gradually diminished, facing faceless accusers from behind banks of lights.
“Senior Colonel, why did you not press on despite your casualties?”
“Senior Colonel, who advised you to halt your progress and send units to deal with the American sniper?”
“Senior Colonel, are you infected with the typhus of ego? Do you not trust the Fatherland and its vessel, the party?”
“Senior Colonel, why did you waste time setting up mortars, when a small unit could have kept the Americans pinned, and you might have made your attack on the Camp Arizona before dawn?”
“Senior Colonel, did Political Commissar Phuc Bo argue with you as to the best course of action before his heroic death, and if so, why did you discount his advice? Do you not know he spoke with the authority of the party?”
The questions were endless, as was his pain.
They were also right in their implication: he had behaved unprofessionally, egged on by the demon of Western ego, whose poison was evidently deep in his soul, unpurged by years of rigor and asceticism. He had allowed it to become a personal duel between himself and the American who so bedeviled him. He had given up the mission to kill the American, and failed at both, if intelligence reports could be believed.
He was in disgrace. No meaningful future loomed before him. He had failed because his heart was weak and his character flawed. Everything they said about him was true, and the criticism he received was not nearly enough punishment. They could not punish him more than he punished himself. He deserved the fury of hell; he deserved oblivion. He was a cockroach who had—
But then the strangest thing happened. Even as he endured yet another session, feeling the unbending wills of the political officers crushing against the fragility of his own pitiful identity, the doors were flung open and two men from the Politburo rushed in, handed an envelope to the senior inquisitioner, which the man tore open and read nervously.
Then his face broke into a huge smile of love and compassion. He looked at Huu Co as if he were looking at the savior of the people, the great Uncle Ho himself.
“Oh, Colonel,” he brayed in the voice of such sugary sweetness it seemed nearly indecent, “oh, Colonel, you look so uncomfortable in that chair. Surely you would like a glass of tea? Tran, quickly, run to the kitchen, get the colonel a glass of tea. And some nice candy? Sugar beet? American chocolate? Hershey’s, we have Hershey’s, probably, if I do say so myself, with … almonds.”
“Almonds?” said the colonel, who, yes, far down, did in fact enjoy Hershey’s with almonds.
Tran, who had an instant before been upbraiding the colonel for his stupidity, rushed out with the furious urgency of a lackey, and returned in seconds with treats and drinks and almond-studded Hershey bars for the new celebrity. In very short time, the committee had gathered around their new great friend and revolutionary hero, the colonel, and even old Tran himself pushed the colonel to the automobile in his wheelchair, inquiring warmly about the colonel’s beautiful wife and his six wonderful children.
The committee waved good-bye merrily as the colonel was driven away in a shiny Citreon by the two Politburo officers, who said nothing, but offered him cigarettes and a thermos of tea and did everything to assure his comfort.
“Why am I suddenly rehabilitated?” he asked. “I am a class traitor and coward. I am a wrecker, an obstructionist, a deviationist, a secret Western spy.”
“Oh, Colonel,” the senior of the men said, laughing uncomfortably, “you joke. You are so funny! Is he not a funny one? The colonel’s wit is legendary!”
And Huu Co saw that this man, too, was terrified.
What on earth could be happening?
And then he knew. Only one presence in the Republic of North Vietnam could explain such a sea change: the Russians.
t their military compound, Soviet experts from GRU — Chief Intelligence Directorate — grilled him intently, though no effort was made to assign guilt. The men were remote and intense at once, in black SPETSNAZ combat uniforms without rank, though subtle distinctions on the team could be recognized. They never once mentioned politics or the revolution. He understood clearly: this wasn’t preparation for a trial, it was an intelligence operation.