Phantom Leader Part 10

The men busied themselves at the tasks. They cleaned up the paper, inventoried the guns and grenades, and set about cleaning their weapons and the ammunition. Toby took several boxes of 5.62 cartridges and started filling M16 20round magazines. He had filled four when Ryder noticed what he was doing.

"How many rounds did you put in each magazine, Captain?" he asked.

"Twenty. Why?"

"These magazines have weak springs. Any more than eighteen and they jam. Would you mind taking two out of each one?"

Toby did as he was told until the magazines were heavy and oiled with cartridges. In the supply room, the Vietnamese started sc.r.a.ping dirt from the bare wall with their trenching tools and filling sandbags and empty ammo boxes, which they pa.s.sed to the others, who placed them against the main door.

Toby eyed the cavity in the dirt wall as the men sc.r.a.ped.

"How about an escape tunnel?" he asked. No one answered.

The men filled every sack they could find and sat back. The air was heavy and damp. d.i.c.kson pulled out a pack of Camels and offered them around. "No smoking," Lopez said. He picked up the radio handset.

Spooky, s.p.u.n.ky here."

"Hi, down there. This is Spooky, on station for the nation.

"Yeah. Can you shoot yet""

"Negative, s.p.u.n.ky. Solid undercast. We don't even see a glow anymore.

Sorry, guys."

Lopez signed off.

Suddenly the whole bunker vibrated and groaned.

Streamers of fine dirt gushed from the ceiling.

"What in h.e.l.l is that?" d.i.c.kson yelled, springing to his feet.

"Oh Christ," Ryder said, looking up, his lips drawn back.

"They got the tanks up there on top of us."

"Now will you call the G.o.dd.a.m.n Marines?" d.i.c.kson cried.

"You bet your a.s.s," Lopez said. "Now you guys start that tunnel." As Ryder scrambled to organize diggers and packers among the Americans and Vietnamese, Lopez picked up the microphone.

"Jacksonville, Jacksonville, this is s.p.u.n.ky. We got bad problems, you copy?"

"s.p.u.n.ky, Jack here. Go."

"We're trapped in the bunker and they've got tanks making like can openers. We only have ten, twelve hours of air.

We need your troops, man. Fast. You copy?"

"s.p.u.n.ky, Jack. Good copy. We got some boys ready right now. Stand by one while I get the details. Jack out."

Lopez looked at his new tunnel rats, frantically digging at the wall, grinned, and made an okay sign with his thumb and forefinger.

In five minutes Jacksonville called back, his voice hollow and slow.

'Go ahead," Lopez told him.

:,Cougar says negative relief. Copy?"

"Negative relief!" Lopez exploded. "What the f.u.c.k do you mean, negative relief?" He clutched the handset. "Who the h.e.l.l is Cougar?" he muttered as he fumbled through a three-ring binder. 'He found the communication section of the emergency ops plan worked out with Colonel Lownds, the commander of the 26th Marine Regiment at Khe Sanh.

The diggers and packers stopped and listened, sweat gleaming on their bodies in the lantern light. Lopez read where Cougar was the commander of III MAF, the Marine Amphibious Force at Da Nang. He was a lieutenant general.

There was a long pause. An anguished voice came over the loudspeaker.

"Aw Gawd, like I said, negative relief. We ... we aren't allowed to launch. Cougar says we can't go."

He stopped transmitting. He clicked on his transmitter, started to say something, then clicked off.

Lopez switched to the Spooky guns.h.i.+p frequency.

"Spooky, I need a patch to Green House Six," he said.

"Coming up, s.p.u.n.ky."

After a moment Green House was on the line.

"Roger, Green House," Lopez said, "we got a real problem here." He outlined their air and tank situation. "If we're not out of here by ten tomorrow, we're dead meat."

"s.p.u.n.ky, Green House Six. Here is the situation. The weather is full down and forecast to remain so for twenty-four hours. Further, we have been denied air a.s.sets. Cougar a.s.sets are to handle the situation.

Right now this is his show." Bull Dall's voice was heavy.

"His show!" Lopez shouted into the microphone. "G.o.d almighty, we've got Americans dying here. Does COMUSMACV know about this?"

"Affirmative. I've been on the horn to him all day and half the night."

The voice of Green House vibrated with anger.

"Hang on, I'm going down. . ." The bunker quivered under a m.u.f.fled explosion and the radio went dead. Lopez tried another radio. No answer.

"They got the antenna," he said. There was momentary silence in the bunker, then, with m.u.f.fled curses the diggers went back to work. Toby helped pa.s.s the dirt out to the Vietnamese, who packed it by the door, Lopez drummed his fingers on the radio table, then started pa.s.sing sandbags.

Overhead, two tanks crisscrossed the bunker, working on the corners, stopping and spinning on a tread, diesels roaring, slowly grinding the bunker down.

1430 HOURS LOCAL, TUESDAY 30 JANUARY 1968.

ABOARD Am FORCE ONE ENROUTE TO BERGsTRom AFB, AusTIn, TEXAs "How many times do I have to tell you that I want diet root beer on this f.u.c.king aircraft at all times?" The big man's voice boomed across the table at the man in the blue uniform standing at rigid attention. "You hear me, Sergeant? I want an order sent out to all Air Force Bases: Stock root beer."

"Yes, sir," the staff sergeant said to Lyndon Baines Johnson, the thirty-sixth President of the United States. He took the President's empty root beer bottle and turned for the galley.

As soon as he was gone, the President pressed a buzzer and leaned over to speak into an intercom. "Since the Air Force doesn't see fit to keep its Commander in Chief in root beer, bring me scotch and fresh soda."

The President sat at a kidney-shaped desk aboard Air Force One. The plane was at 40,000 feet enroute from Andrews AFB outside of Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., to Bergstrom AFB, Austin, Texas. The call sign, Air Force One, was used for any USAF aircraft the President happened to be aboard.

Today he was aboard a USAF C-137, a VIP version of the Boeing 707, operated by the Military Airlift Command's 89th Military Airlift Wing at Andrews. His big desk fronted a large table surrounded by airliner seats. Below the phone bank that put the President instantly in touch with the (White House Communications Agency) was a switch that could raise or lower the desk, not the chair, to suit the President's whims.

The chair he sat on behind the desk was as big as a throne.

Across from the President sat his press secretary, four reporters from the press pool, and USAF Major General Albert G. "Whitey" Whisenand. It was supposed to be an informal get-together initiated by the President.

Each man had a drink in front of him or in his hand.

General Whitey Whisenand was in his mid-fifties, slightly portly, and had graying, almost white hair. He had a cherubic face that looked as if he had just removed his jet pilot's oxygen mask. That appearance was due to burn scars he had received from an F-80 crash in the Korean War in the early 1950s.

A male steward entered and poured the President a scotch, then refreshed the other drinks. The press secretary declined with a wave. Whitey Whisenand quietly held a hand over his gla.s.s.

Whitey currently held a position on the National Security Council as special a.s.sistant to the President for Air Power.

While the t.i.tle specifically meant air power in SEA (Southeast Asia, the term used to denote Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and North and South Vietnam), the job description of the position was not so specific. The duties were vague and unspecified in writing by LBJ. Yet there had been some activity. Several times the President had dispatched General Whisenand to MACV in Saigon to get answers to questions such as "Why is the U.S. suffering so many airplane losses over Hanoi?" and "Is the U.S. winning or losing the war?"

Beyond the two trips there had been little else for General Whisenand to do, outside of some studies and his daily monitoring and reporting the aircraft and pilot losses in the skies over Hanoi. Unfortunately the only input from Whisenand to the President as a result of his trips to Vietnam had been what the President had not wanted to hear.

After his first trip, Whisenand had said, "Sir, our extraordinary losses over Hanoi are because the civilians, led by you and Secretary of Defense McNamara-civilians who revile the military, I might add-are picking inconsequential targets and forcing bad tactics, while constraining the airmen to outrageous rules of engagement."

After his second trip, Whisenand had said, "We are not winning the war simply because we have not declared war and we have no declared goals.

As a result the American people do not know why we are there. They, not to mention your political opponents, do not back you. Meanwhile the members of the American press are capitalizing on the situation and are selling stories and TV time at an unprecedented rate, thereby compounding the predicament. What it adds up to is, without clear-cut goals, our military is--although it doesn't know it at a loss as to how to proceed."

LBJ had reacted to Whisenand's straightforwardness by one . e calling him an old fart; another time by yelling he was a p.i.s.sant that he kept around just to see how long he could keep from stepping on him. But for some capricious reason of his own, LBJ had indeed kept Whitey Whisenand around, while others, including his Secretary of Defense, Robert Strange McNamara, were being let go. Or quitting because of the President's apparently unwinnable approach to the war in Vietnam.

Whitey had spent long hours talking to his wife, Sal, about whether or not he should resign from the Air Force he had served so long. He had felt for some time that he was more a token military representative to LBJ's staff than a fully partic.i.p.ating NSC member whose words had weight when it came to decisions regarding the prosecution of the Vietnam war.

"Maybe he's just using me," Whitey had said to her.

"Lord knows he doesn't ask the Joint Chiefs or the Chairman for advice.

Maybe he keeps me merely to show he does have a military advisor actually positioned within the White House."

"My dear, if you resign," Sal had said, "it will just give the critics and the press more grist. If you stay, you are the buffer between the White House and the Department of Defense. You have some influence on the man. Look at the trip he made to Vietnam last December. It was at your urging he do it to buck up sagging morale. To let the troops know that Was.h.i.+ngton really cared." After careful thought, Whitey had stayed on.

He was on this trip because the President had asked him to come with him to the LBJ ranch outside of Austin, Texas.

Lady Bird was already there preparing a big Texas feast for LOCAL politicians and heavy campaign contributors.

Now Major General Albert G. "Whitey" Whisenand listened to the President of the United States hold forth to the members of the press pool.

"Look around the world," he was saying. "Khrushchev's gone. Macmillan's gone. Adenauer's gone. Segni's gone.

Nehru's gone. Who's left-de Gaulle?" Johnson sneered when he said the French president's name.

LBJ picked up his gla.s.s, drained half, and held it aloft.

"Hah," he bellowed, "I am the king." He lowered the gla.s.s and looked around with slitted eyes at the reporters. "Remember this, anything I say with a drink in my hand or after nine at night is not to be repeated."

Later, before landing at Austin, the press secretary spoke to the reporters. "Gentlemen, this was a social gathering, you were not on board as news reporters. You are not to quote the President of the United States today."

When Air Force One bobbed to a stop exactly on time at Bergstrom, an entourage of automobiles swept up to the air stairs. Sandwiched in the middle between Secret Service station wagons was Johnson's favorite, a white Cadillac convertible. Hard-eyed Secret Servicemen scanned all directions.

"See you at the ranch," LBJ breezily said to Whitey, and swept off the flight line, frantically followed by his protection and the military officer with the "football," the briefcase containing the atomic-weapons release codes.

The USAF flight crew b.u.t.toned up the big jet. Three Andrews air policemen and their dogs stepped from the airplane to join the Bergstrom SPs to set up the guard exactly in accordance with AF Reg 207-13.

A tall USAF colonel stepped up to Whitey and saluted.

"General Whisenand, I'm on my way to the ranch, may I offer you a ride?"

Whitey recognized him as Ralph Albertazzie, the pilot of Air Force One.

He accepted, and twenty minutes later they were on the road. Albertazzie drove an Air Force staff car from the Bergstrom motor pool.

"I'm invited," the colonel was saying, "but I don't know why. The President has his ways."

On the way out, Albertazzie told the story of an Air Force colonel named Jim Cross who had once run the Military Office in the White House. The duties of the office ran from arranging covert presidential trips, to international security arrangements- from scheduling military medical facilities and doctors io the maintenance of Camp David, and of course the operation of the air fleet based at Andrews Air Force Base.

"The President is big on showers," Albertazzie said, "and the one at his ranch didn't have enough pressure. LBJ badgered the Military Office to put in new water lines and a pump -charged to DoD, of course. When the day came to use it, he stripped, got in, but jumped right out and began hollering for Jim, who was there in full uniform as his aide.

'Cross, you son of a b.i.t.c.h,' he hollered out the window. 'Get up here."

Cross walked in and LBJ said, 'You lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you said it was all set. It doesn't work." So Cross went into the shower and turned the handle, only to be hit with heavy spray from all sides. He turned it off and stood there in full uniform, soaking wet. LBJ, stark naked, snarled, 'Well, the son of a b.i.t.c.h didn't work for me. ' "

That night a Texas cowboy band played Western toetappers, while expensively garbed men and women in handtooled boots and form-fitting cowboy regalia ate from paper plates and drank from plastic cups under a huge Texas moon. Whitey estimated over 200 people were present. The noise was absorbed by the vast expanse of the ranch, Outside the perimeter he noticed guards and patrol cars. In the sky, helicopters with searchlights discreetly bobbed along the horizon. LBJ had spoken to Whitey only once, when he had detached himself from a crowd of admirers. "Come see me in the fireplace room around midnight," LBJ had said in a surly voice.

At midnight Whitey met with the President in front of a huge stone fireplace. Flames leaped from six-foot logs, yet from was cooled by air-conditioning. Outside of a small the ro lamp by liquor bottles on a credenza, the fireplace provided the only light in the room.

"Come in, come in," LBJ bellowed from the sofa. On the table was a drink and a half-eaten bag of potato chips. He was watching a late news broadcast, On the screen was Democratic Senator J. William Fulbright from Arkansas, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"These men," Johnson said in disgust as he got up and snapped the sound off, "these knee-jerk liberal crackpots."

He faced Whitey and shook a finger at him. "The Russians play a big role in this, you know. They're in constant touch with these antiwar senators. They eat lunch together and go to parties at the Russian Emba.s.sy."

Whitey wondered whether LBJ really meant this absurdity, or if he was saying it just to ventilate, or maybe for some ambiguous reason to shock him. The President continued.

"The Russians think up things for the senators to say. I often know before they do what their speeches are going to say."

Embarra.s.sed, Whitey stared at the fire. This wasn't for shock or humor, this was raw paranoia. The President was wound up, wound up much too tightly.

"Here is what I believe," the big man continued. "I honestly and truly believe that if we don't a.s.sert ourselves, and if the Chinese communists and the Soviet Union take Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, it seriously endangers India, Pakistan, and the whole Pacific world. Then we-the whole United States-will really be up for grabs. We're the richest nation in the world, and everybody wants what we've got. And the minute we look soft, the would-be aggressors will go wild.