Shock of War (27 page)

“I would be grateful for additional insights. Captain Thieu will be your pilot.”

Thieu had taken Zeus west to scout the Chinese advance in a jet trainer a few days before. He was an excellent pilot. His plane, though, was a little shaky.

“I'd be happy to fly with him,” said Zeus.

“It will be arranged for first light,” said Trung.

19

Hanoi

Harland Perry was too young
to have fought in Vietnam; his introduction to combat came as a very green lieutenant in the Kuwait War conducted by the first President Bush. But the Army that he joined had been molded by men who had been through Vietnam and the dreadful years immediately afterward. Many of their lessons stayed with him, including one about how easy it was to get sucked into a conflict you had no intention of fighting.

Like this one.

Perry's original mission of fact-finding made enormous sense; by offering advice to the Vietnamese, he had in turn been granted an inside look at the country's military situation. What he had seen firsthand pretty much jibed with the intelligence reports he'd read and viewed before coming: Vietnam had an earnest and courageous force that was thoroughly outnumbered and ill-prepared to fight in the twenty-first century.

If there was a surprise, it had come from the Chinese. Their equipment was better in many respects than had been predicted, but their leadership was much worse. The generals running the war had been more timid than Perry expected, shutting down drives when dealt the slightest setback.

On the one hand, this was a valuable psychological insight: it told Perry that the Chinese army had quite a distance to go before it would truly achieve its potential. On the other hand, it was the sort of flaw that might be reversed quickly, if the right general were found to lead the charge and then clean house. But whether a Chinese Ulysses S. Grant emerged or not, the advantages the Chinese held over the Vietnamese were so extensive that even a McClellan would win this war in a matter of weeks.

Which brought Perry to the question of what the U.S. should do.

The United States could defeat China in a head-to-head battle. No war was easy; Perry knew from his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan that even a lopsided battle brought heartache and pain to the victor. But defeating China in Southeast Asia was possible. The key was acting quickly and decisively, with massive amounts of force.

A-10As and Apaches were only the tip of the spear as Perry saw it. He needed a lot more force. And he'd asked for it.

The idea wasn't simply to stop the Chinese and get them out of Vietnam. They had to be soundly defeated—a strong punch in the nose that sent them to the mat. Such a strike would convince their army that the Americans weren't to be messed with. Better, it would undermine China's premier. And that was the key to a peaceful future: ousting Cho Lai from power.

The Chinese had seen decades of wise leaders. While they certainly hadn't always acted in America's best interests, they had recognized the importance of peace to their, and the world's, prosperity. Cho Lai was a different character entirely, a throwback to times when brutality ruled. That approach would eventually be disastrous for everyone; the sooner he was removed, the better.

So, massive involvement by the U.S. now made a lot of sense … but what if that wasn't possible? What if the best the U.S. could do were wing-and-a-prayer operations along the lines that Major Murphy had undertaken against Hainan?

By conventional measures, the operation there had been a success—the Chinese had completely overreacted, apparently scrapping all plans for a seaborne assault, at least in the near term. But that had had minimal impact on the longer term. The war continued and would continue, as the new assault proved.

While certainly valuable from the Vietnamese perspective, such small tactical victories would not change the overall outcome of the war if the U.S. stayed out of it.

They were poisoned victories from the American perspective. For one thing, the longer the war went on, the more likely a Chinese Grant would emerge. The longer the Chinese army fought, the more experience their “middle managers”—the NCOs and junior officers—would gain for the future.

If the U.S. was eventually going to have to fight China, and couldn't (or wouldn't) do it now, then it was definitely in America's best interest to have the PLA as inexperienced and even overconfident as possible. In that sense, small setbacks aided them immensely.

Perry also feared that any revelation that the U.S. was involved would provoke a severe reaction among the American public. Everyone he spoke to at the Pentagon made it clear that public sentiment was against intervention. Throw in a congressional investigation and a bunch of headlines about dead Americans in Vietnam, and they might turn against the Army itself.

The longer the war in Vietnam continued, the more tempting it would be for the president—
any
president—to continue adding troops and support on a piecemeal basis. Perry could frame the argument himself: Look at what Zeus Murphy had accomplished with a handful of men, most supplied by Vietnam. What might an entire SEAL team and an attachment of Rangers, a few Delta boys, and some clandestinely inserted CIA paramilitaries accomplish?

And once they were there, the logic for more would be inescapable.

Incrementalism killed you: put a full force in at the very beginning, and you could win. Play into battle piecemeal and watch yourself get ground down. That was a basic lesson of just above every battle in history.

Harland Perry stood at a crossroads. The President—who happened to be a personal friend—had sent him here for advice.

He had made a suggestion for extreme force, and been rejected. Not yet in so many words, but the delays showed Greene lacked enough public support to commit troops.

So now Harland Perry had to make another recommendation. His advice would be to withdraw completely and quickly—to simply stand aside.

It was almost certainly not what the President wanted to hear. And while it was extremely logical, it went against Perry's own wishes and emotions—his instinct was to fight, and much better sooner rather than later.

But emotions didn't win battles; logic did. And it was his duty and responsibility as an officer to present the President, most especially this President, with the best recommendation he could make.

20

Hanoi

It had been about a week
since Zeus had seen Captain Thieu and his Aereo L-39C, a small jet trainer used by the Vietnamese for a variety of tasks. In the interim, Thieu had flown several sorties a day, and the plane bore the scars. The little warbird had been hit by nearly a hundred rounds of ground fire, including a few from Vietnamese guns. Fortunately, the bullets had been both small and unlucky, missing the Aereo's vitals. The majority of holes had been patched, though there seemed to be a few perforations in its rear belly from the most recent mission—a quick hop north to check on the Chinese formations a few hours earlier.

If the rings under his eyes were any indication, Thieu had had less sleep in the past twenty-four hours than Zeus. Yet he seemed energetic as he walked Zeus around the aircraft prior to their takeoff. A quartet of small bombs had been fastened to the wings; they supplemented the 23 mm twin-cannon mounted beneath the fuselage. Aircraft were so precious that even his recce mission would be combined with an attack sortie.

“Think those holes will be a problem?” Zeus asked, pointing to a few fresh notches in the belly.

Thieu laughed. “Ha-ha, Major Zeus, always making jokes.”

“Those are holes,” said Zeus.

“No worry. Board now.”

The Albatros was a two-seater, and Zeus sat in the rear. He had a flight stick and throttle, and Thieu insisted on giving him a quick orientation on how to use the controls if something happened.

“This way, if I am shot, you will land,” said Thieu over the plane's interphone circuit. “Plane is very valuable.”

“What makes you think they'd get you and not me?” said Zeus.

“Ha! You are very lucky man, Major Zeus. The captain is very lucky to be flying with you today.”

“Oh yeah. I'm just oozing luck.”

The oxygen pumped into his mask gave Zeus a jolt of energy. Having flown with Thieu before, he had skipped breakfast—a decision vindicated by the roller-coaster takeoff that buried his stomach somewhere behind the tailplane.

“See—we miss all potholes!” said Thieu triumphantly as they climbed out.

The sun wouldn't rise for another half hour. The dim sky and darker ground made it hard for Zeus to orient himself. The course Thieu laid out was due east to the sea, then north along Route 18 in the direction of Tien Yen.

Zeus strained to see out the sides of the cockpit, looking for lights or other signs of life. But there was nothing, just shades of gray.

“Do you prepare for bombing?” Thieu asked.

“I'm sorry?”

“We will drop our bombs first, then make our observations,” said the pilot.

“Are we that close to the lines already?” Zeus glanced at the compass for the heading. They were still going east.

“We turn and be prepared,” answered Thieu. “Ready?”

“Anytime.”

The plane took a slow bank. They were traveling just under seven hundred kilometers an hour by the plane's gauges—in the area of 375 knots, or nautical miles an hour. That put them a little more than five minutes from the front line, by Zeus's calculation.

Something red sparked in the distance. Zeus stared at it, unsure what it could be. It looked like a splash of paint on a photograph, something that didn't belong.

More red appeared, a line of splashes.

Tracers!

They were a lot closer to the front than he'd thought. The Chinese were at Tien Yen already.

“Gunfire ahead,” said Thieu.

“Ours or theirs?”

“No matter.”

Zeus heard Thieu speaking to someone over the radio. The aircraft took a sharp bank to the left, then swung its nose back northward. The altimeter indicated they were at five thousand feet above ground level—well within the reach of whatever was firing ahead.

Probably Vietnamese antiair, thought Zeus. But what were they shooting at? Not them.

Zeus saw the answer in a string of black dots behind the flashes.

Chinese helicopters. Two of the dots were flying to the right, the others were slightly behind in echelon.

The dots at the right glowed red. They were firing rockets or something at the ground.

The antiaircraft fire intensified. Yellow-red streams leapt from the ground, bullets hosing the air. One stream turned black; another died. The ground flashed. A fire erupted.

“Hold on, Major,” said Thieu. “Our fun begins.”

The jet suddenly twisted on its wing, pushing down to Zeus's left. The nose angled down, gently at first, but then in a flick of the pilot's wrist almost ninety degrees. The plane became a dagger aimed at the earth. Zeus felt his stomach push toward his spine.

The left wing lifted; the nose swung hard to Zeus's right. He strained to see, raising his head over the side of the cockpit, but gravity pushed him back down into his seat. The plane shot upward—straight up it seemed, though by this time Zeus was so dizzy he had no real idea of the direction they were going. His head slammed back against the rest. The engines surged behind him.

“I think we got him!” yelled Thieu. He could have been at a baseball game, cheering a grand slam.

“What?”

“The tank,” said Thieu. “You see it?”

Zeus struggled to look out the canopy. The ground was dark. If there was smoke or fire from the explosion it was lost in a blur of shadows as they zoomed away.

“I don't know,” said Zeus.

“Look on next run. Will be to your left.”

“You didn't drop all the bombs?” Zeus asked, but his words were swallowed by the engines as the pilot coaxed more power for another plunge toward the battlefield.

Everything outside the canopy blurred. The Albatros was not a particularly fast aircraft as jet fighters went, yet it seemed to be flying at the speed of thought.

Fingers of red fire appeared at the side, uncurling from black fists. Angry hands grabbed at the plane. The jet bucked ferociously as the pilot neared his target.

Crap,
thought Zeus.
Let's get this over with.

He glanced at the handle he was supposed to pull if they needed to bail out. They were so low here … Would he even survive to be captured?

Hoo-rah.

They pulled up sharply, the aircraft gaining several hundred feet as the bombs were dropped. Zeus strained to keep his head where he could see outside the cockpit. There were black boxes on the ground—armored personnel carriers, he guessed, not tanks.

Or maybe they were tanks, or armored cars, or infantry fighting vehicles, or just trucks—it was too dark and they flitted by so quickly, who could tell?

Something hit the right wing. Zeus heard a screeching sound, something like metal being torn in two. The plane bucked for a moment, then righted itself. He pushed himself up against the restraints, craning his neck to see the wing, but he couldn't quite see anything.

“Close one, Major,” said the pilot.

“Were we hit?” asked Zeus.

“Two bullets, maybe. Nothing. It would take many to harm us.”

Zeus doubted that. Just one bullet in the right place would surely be enough.

“Now we ready look on your mission,” said Thieu. His English got shakier as he became more excited, and he was clearly in the middle of an adrenaline rush at the moment. “We go to north.”

“More to the northwest, right?”

“Oh ho, Major, you are remember your compass.”

Thieu sounded absolutely high, as if he were stoned on cocaine. It was just adrenaline—and the excitement of survival. Some men pressed down under the continuing strain. For others, the stress became a drug, something you almost lived for.