Phantom Leader Part 14

Concern knotted her brows. "You sound confused. You don't sound like the firm, dedicated man who used to lecture me on G.o.d, country, and being the world's greatest fighter pilot."

He looked out over the water. "I don't know if I can explain this or not." He took another long pull. "I feel as if a lot of things are closing in on me."

"What is the main thing that seems to bother you?"

He made a snorting sound. "You sound like a jolly shrink, or Doc Russell. He's always asking questions. Seems to me you were on my case in LA one fine morning. You didn't like the answers you got, so you took off. It was raining."

She stroked his arm. "I ... shouldn't have done that. I had asked for it, and you were telling me exactly what you thought. I am sorry about that. But this is different. You weren't so ... so morose then. You were all jolly and eager to tell me what you thought. Now you are doing a lot of heaving great sighs and staring out to sea. Tell me about it.

Is it because you can't go after MiGs anymore?"

"I thought that was it, but no, it isn't really. At least not by itself. There are other things. One is the feeling that no matter how hard we-me and my buddies-try to win this d.a.m.n war, or even just fight it properly, we're held back. Or we're on the edge of a court-martial for treading too close to the edge of the rule book. That makes us feel kind of abandoned, like our own government doesn't support us, maybe even doesn't like us very much. By 'us' I mean all the GIs over here, not just aircrew." He rose to his feet, face flus.h.i.+ng with anger. "We're not just fighting a half-a.s.sed war, we're fighting a bunch of politicians back home who think they know more about war than we do."

"Hey now, take it easy," Susan said, and opened another Tiger beer. She got to her feet and handed it to him. "Cool off. I'm sorry I got this started."

He took the beer and sat down. "Oh h.e.l.l, Susan, don't be sorry. I get this way every so often. Maybe there is more to how I feel, maybe there isn't. Let's drop it for now."

They strolled the beach in silence for a while, then sat under a palm.

"So, what are your plans? What are you going to do if you get out?"

He s.h.i.+fted to face her. "Do?" He looked at her for a second, his eyes became firm. He put his arms around her.

"What I'd like to do is quit now, and then I'd kind of like you and I to spend our lives She put a finger to his lips. "Oh Court, wait a minute.

I didn't mean any ... I mean, I don't expect you to . . ." She untangled from his arms and stood up. "No," she said, "I just don't want to talk about this."

"Hey, wait a minute yourself. You're the one who brought up the subject about what I was going to do."

"I know." She turned to look out to sea. "I just want to hear about you." Small waves slapped the sh.o.r.e.

"So you've been hearing about me. More than I intended.

And hearing about me brings me around to us."

"It doesn't have to."

He stood behind her and put his arms around her waist.

"You're trembling," he said. "Did I say something wrong?"

She took a deep breath, then turned to face him. She had a too-brilliant smile on her face. "Look, flyboy, I'm your personal bunny for this whole R-and-R of-, yours. Take it, take me, for what I'm worth ... which is a h.e.l.l of a lot, I might add. Don't let's get involved in any long-range stuff.

Let's take the here-and-now and . She broke from his arms and pirouetted on the sand. She grasped corners of her shorts and flashed her legs like a Spanish hat dancer.

"Party," she sang out. "More beer. Let's party, sefior."

The message was with Court's key when they returned to the Raffles. He was to report back to the Director of Operations, 7th Air Force, Tan Son Nhut, RVN, ASAP. Court had the concierge book him on the next plane to Saigon. He said it was in the early morning and a taxi would be waiting for him at 0600.

Susan stood by the gift shop, worry lines creasing her face.

"What do you think it's all about?" she asked when Court returned.

Court flicked a copy of the Straits Times. "That," he said, and pointed to the headline: Ma.s.sIVE COMMUNIST ATTACKS BREAK TET TRUCE.

"What will you have to do?" she asked.

"Join my squadron, I expect. Fly air support for the troops." He wasn't aware he had a faint smile on his face and a look of expectation in his eyes.

That night, both in white, they dined again at a corner table in the Palm Court. They ate a light Sole aux Crevettes with a young white Macon, skipped dessert, and lingered over their coffee.

"Considering it's our last night, you seem awfully happy," Susan said.

Court gave her an evasive smile and stroked her hand.

"I'm not. Believe me, I'm not. I'm going to miss you something bad.

Let's dance."

"Methinks he doth protest too much," she said lightly and accompanied him to the dance floor.

They danced in silence, holding each other. Moonlight complemented the soft glow of the ground lights set among the flower beds.

"Court, about today. About marriage, I mean. Not now.

It wouldn't work. And you belong in the Air Force. You know that."

"I guess I do," he said slowly.

She leaned back and traced his lips. "I love you."

"And I love you."

"This is not a good way to part."

"No, it isn't."

"I'll come to Bangkok. That's close to your base, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Do you want me to come?"

"Yes, of course."

She looked at him and smiled. "You're a surprise. Here you've been talking about resigning from the Air Force and our getting married. Now I don't think you feel that way anymore. Funny what a little war can do. You probably think the MiGs will fly south any moment."

He looked anguished. That was exactly what he had been thinking.

"Susan, I-'

She put her fingers to his lips. "Shh. Don't say anything.

I understand." She felt a relief and a loss. I love this man, she told herself. But we simply cannot get married. Not now, maybe not ever. He is already married to his airplanes. And I . . . I have a little problem of my own. They danced close to some slow swing.

"I want us to sleep in your room tonight," she said a few minutes later.

"I want us to go there, now."

He signed the check and they walked across the gra.s.s of the Palm Court to the wide stairs leading up to the veranda.

After he unlocked the door to his suite, he swept her up in his arms and carried her across the threshold into the sitting room and on into the bedroom where they laughed, and danced a few steps. He lit a candle, poured white wine from the bar, and found some low piano music on the radio. They undressed each other, with slow and sensuous delight. They snuggled and danced, their bare skin warm in the darkness.

They clung to each other. Finally, quite late, they went to the big four-poster. In the night, he half-awakened and thought she was weeping.

He awoke to soft rain and gray dawn, dressed and packed quietly. Finally he knelt by the bed and slipped his arms around her. She was warm and smelled of girl. He nuzzled the hair over her cheek. She moaned softly and put her arms around his neck.

'Time," he said.

"I know." She looked up at him. "I want to stay right here." She drew his pillow into her arms. "I want to pretend for a little while longer.

I want to go back to sleep and wake up in Bangkok. I love you."

After he had gone, she buried her face in her pillow. Oh G.o.d, Court. I love you so much, so much, she cried in a husky voice, her body shaking.

I want to marry you, but I can't, I just can't. It wouldn't be fair to you.

The tires of his taxi carrying him threw up sheets of silver water as it pulled out of the Raffles driveway toward the Singapore airport. He sat back and lit a cigarette, his mind already in the c.o.c.kpit.

1545 HOURS LOCAL, WEDNESDAY 31 JANUARY 1968.

LKNG TRI SPECxALrORCES CAMP REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM Outside the ruined bunker, Wolf held the radio. "Sabre One," he transmitted, "drop those two guys of mine in the pit in the northeast corner. Tell 'em I want flanking fire from there on the north wall."

Clifton acknowledged, swept the area in front of him with gunfire, and swooped low over the pit into a slow-moving hover. The two SF men leaped from the helicopter into the pit, with their weapons, ammo, and the RPG-7.

As Clifton started to climb away, two streams of tracers converged on the c.o.c.kpit and engine bay of his helicopter.

Smoke spurted and began to trail from the exhaust stack of the turbine engine. His copilot stiffened, then fell over sideways in his harness.

The right door-gunner went down, cut nearly in half, intestines spilling from his belly like entwined yellow snakes from a ghastly red nest.

Clifton felt a hand lightly slapping his helmet and shoulder from behind. Fighting the controls, he barely cleared the trees. Leveling for a moment over the jungle top, he looked over his shoulder.

His right door-gunner stood, behind him, arms dangling, helmet and safety harness shot off, shocked eyes staring directly at Clifton from the b.l.o.o.d.y mask of his face. Then the man slowly toppled out the open door into the ma.s.s of trees below.

Clifton eased his crippled helicopter into a slow climb away from the battle zone. "I'm hit bad," he radioed Wolf "Real bad." He checked the controls and the gages. He had warning lights and gages running into the red, and his controls felt like they were being pulled out of his hands. Then he felt the throb in his left leg. He looked down and focused on a fountain of bright-red arterial blood shooting up from his thigh. Ahhh, s.h.i.+t, he said to himself. He saw Barbara's face. He pressed his transmit b.u.t.ton.

"Bob, you gotta get those guys out. I got to get on the ground. We're all dead in here." He pulled his helicopter back toward Route 9, the only clear spot to land outside the overrun compound. He saw his wife's face again, clearer this time.

"Sabre Two, roger," Warrant Officer Bob Berry radioed, holding his voice as level as he could. He turned away from his safe orbit and headed toward the Lang Tri camp. "Give me smoke, Dakota," he transmitted to the men on the ground.

Wolf Lochert couldn't acknowledge any of the radio traffic. He was fighting hand-to-hand with two NVA soldiers who had broken through the protective cordon around the bunker. Wolf held a K-Bar knife in his left hand and a .45 automatic in his right. He knelt in the stairwell and shot the lead attacker twice in the head. The momentum carried his body down the steps to flop on top of Lochert. The second man jumped into the well and started to kick the body away to get a shot at Wolf, who feinted right, then thrust his knife straight up into the man's groin. The soldier screamed and dropped his rifle, Wolf shot him twice in the face. Brain matter and white bone splinters sprayed from the back of his head.

Lopez flopped down next to Wolf and started shooting at the attacking figures.

" 'Bout time you got to work, Paco," Wolf said, busy inserting his last magazine into his M16.

"By G.o.d, Wolf," Lopez gasped, "if I'd have known it was you, I'd of stayed asleep." The two men squeezed off threeround bursts at the scurrying soldiers.

Heaps crawled up behind them. "I've got three more ready to go," he said.

"Yeah? Go where?" Wolf rumbled. "Look there." He pointed to an open area to the west. A single tank was rumbling directly toward the camp.

Its main gun fired three rounds in rapid succession. The three explosions bracketed their position in the stairwell, showering dirt and debris on them.

"Team Four, get that tank," Wolf radioed to the two SF men in the pit with the RPG. "Get him." There was no answer or movement from the pit.

The remnants of the other three teams were firing at the NVA infantry, holding them at bay for a brief moment.

"Anybody got anything to use against that tank?" Wolf asked his teams.

"Two, negative."

"Three, negative." Their voices were laconic and strained.

Team Four did not answer.

"We gotta get out of here. And I don't know if we can make it by helo.

Sabre Two, do you read?" Wolf said.

"Dakota, this is Sabre Two, I read you."

"You can't land here. We got a tank almost on top of us, he'd run right over you. We're going to E and E east, maybe to Kilo Sierra. You copy?" E and E meant escape and evade.

Before Sabre Two could answer, Doug Clifton's burning helicopter zoomed across the clearing and flew directly into the tank. A tremendous explosion shot a fireball a hundred feet into the air, stunning the guns of both sides into silence for an instant.

"My G.o.d," somebody transmitted on the FM.

"Okay, Dakota. Sabre Two coming in," Bob Berry transmitted, calm as if on a practice pickup. "Cover me." He brought his big UH- I over the treeline and began to flare for the landing, both door gunners blazing at the many targets available. The firing in the compound picked up, heavier than before.

The teams emerged from their pits and sh.e.l.l holes, ducking and running, stopping to fire back, and zigzagging their way to the helicopter. Heaps helped Lopez and his men from the stairwell. Toby Parker ran behind them. They were fifty feet from the waiting Huey when Heaps went down and Lopez slowed to help him. Wolf stopped and turned back to cover them. "Go on, go on," he yelled above the noise to the others. as shooting to each The left door-gunner of the big Huey w flank and almost directly over their heads as Parker and the other team members approached his s.h.i.+p in a straight line, giving the gunner open fire-lanes to either side of them.

Some of the men were crawling, some carrying others, wounded and dead, several were shooting back, trying to delay the final attack. Wolf Lochert was still forty feet from the helicopter when a half-dozen NVA broke through the south wall and attacked from the left. Wolf whirled and pulled the trigger. In four rounds the gun quit firing, it was empty. The NVA ran at an angle to cut them off from the helicopter before coming in for the kill. Two of the NVA went down, but the remainder cut the three men off from the helicopter. They raced toward them, shooting from the hip and running. In another ten feet they would flop down and accurately spray Wolf and his defenseless men. Lopez and Heaps drew their knives, Wolf, lying p.r.o.ne next to them, leveled his .45. "h.e.l.l of a note," he growled.

Just as the NVA soldiers went to the ground and started to open fire, five screaming men darted into the camp, each holding and firing a big M60 7.62mm machine gun, and charged the NVA from the side. Two others knelt on each side of the charge, firing M79 beehive rounds. Hundreds of tiny nails called flechettes scythed large gaps in the charging enemy. The NVA attack wavered and broke as scores of their men went down under the withering fire.

Wolf stared as three of the men ran up to him. "Move it, move it!" they yelled as if Wolf and his men were rookies on an obstacle course. "Get to that chopper. We'll be right behind you."