Phantom Leader Part 27

"What is that and how long does it take?"

"The Article 32 investigation is like a civilian grand jury.

In the Army, the Criminal Investigation Unit, the CID, goes into the field and examines the evidence, which it presents to the investigating officer. He in turn makes his recommendation to the highest regional commander with jurisdiction for or against a court-martial. In Vietnam it's the commanding officer, a three-star general, of USARV, United States Army Republic of Vietnam. USARV is located at Long Binh, just north of Saigon."

"What if the CID says there is no case or the investigating officer does not recommend a court-martial?" Pulmer asked.

"CID makes no recommendations. They merely present the facts as they find them. However, even if the investigating officer does not recommend a trial, USARV can overrule and order Lochert be tried regardless."

"Who is the commander of UARV and what is his att.i.tude in this case?"

"In actuality, COMUSMACV, General Westmoreland, is the commander of USARV. It is only one of his collateral duties.

However, one of his deputies, Lieutenant General Elmer Farquell, actually runs it. I don't know what his att.i.tude is."

"Is he a Special Forces man? One of those Green Berets?"

The JAG civilian checked his folder. "I don't believe he is." ' 'Good, good." Pinky Pulmer sat back in his thick leather chair. Pulmer had correctly interpreted the Army's att.i.tude that Green Berets were snake-eating nonconformists that needed to be disbanded. A general officer with no Special Forces background could be reasonably counted on to harbor those very feelings.

"All right, all right," Pulmer said. "You two go back to your offices and make sure this affair proceeds quickly. I want that man tried and held up as an example that the Army does not tolerate such wanton and depraved behavior.

And I want you to set all speed records doing it." He looked at Public Affairs. "Prepare your press releases accordingly."

"Sir, I can't prepare anything. The man hasn't even been tried yet, much less found guilty."

"He will, he will," Pulmer said and waved them away.

After they went out, and the men from Audiovisual had taken the camera and screen, Pulmer leaned forward and dialed a California number. The three-hour time difference made it quite early in San Francisco.

"h.e.l.lo," a sleepy male voice answered.

"Oscar, it's Hayworth."

"For G.o.d's sake, it's six-thirty in the morning. What in h.e.l.l do you want?" Oscar Nebals was a man who valued his time in bed. Particularly when he had a companion.

"Well, well. I just thought you'd want me to report on the, ah, the Lochert affair."

"All right, report," Oscar Nebals said, and absently fondled his bed partner.

"Well, the Article 32 investigation is under way-"

"What does that mean? Will that man be tried or not" I've got my reputation staked on his being found guilty and put away. Why the h.e.l.l do you think I want you to push this?"

Pulmer explained the Uniform Code of Military Justice method and the role of General Farquell of USARV. "And I have it on good a.s.surance Lochert will be tried," he added.

"Whose good a.s.surance?"

"Well, ah, my guess, my prognostication is that he will be tried. Of course we could use more public pressure. Particularly from well-known names. Makes the public at large want to identify by following their views. Gives the views more impact." well-known writer and "Mmm. I have just the man. He's a about to run for office out here. it would make a good issue for him."

"Who is the man?" Pulmer asked.

"Shawn Bannister."

1500 HOURS LOCAL, SAt.u.r.dAY 3 FEBRUARY 1968.

COMMAND POST, BLACK PANTHERS COMPANY (ARVN), HUE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM.

"We must evacuate you," Captain Tran Ngoc said to the two Americans and Greta Sturm. They were in his heavily fortified command post at the edge of the Tay Loc airfield.

"My general has ordered me that the Panthers are to join with him at his headquarters compound south of the river."

Ngoc was wiry and handsome. His black hair was cut short, his eyes as black as anthracite.

The fighting had been fierce and constant since Ngoc had broken through the villa wall and rescued them. He had heard part of Wolf's radio calls, had seen the helicopter and heard the fighting. It was enough for him to act. He had taken them back across the airfield to his enclave, the only position in Hue still holding out against the NVA attack.

They brought out Rizzo's body. Lopez was still missing.

Others weren't so fortunate, Ngoc said. He told them of the deaths of a civilian USIA representative, an NBC official, several U.S. advisors, a German doctor and his wife, two French priests, and several Filipinos.

"And," Ngoc added, "we're receiving reports of reprisal murders of hundreds, maybe thousands, of Vietnamese civilians."

Ngoc and his men were fighting continuously and there had been little sleep. Captain Ngoc wouldn't allow Greta Sturm to fire a weapon ("Lovely ladies should not get hands dirty"), but had no problems allowing her to uncrate supplies and load magazines with cartridges (which caused her fingers to get dirty and greasy). Rizzo's body was off to one side in a body bag.

He pointed to a map. "Sixth NVA regimental commander has three infantry battalions and a sapper battalion against the Citadel. Fifth NVA is attacking southern part of Hue across the river." He pointed to their attack route from Laos to the west, south of Lang Tri and Khe Sanh. "I have ordered helicopter to pick you for a flight to Quang Tri. To pick you up for Quang Tri," he corrected himself. "Although fighting is there, it is not difficult or concentrated as here in old city."

Wolf agreed. Ngoc a.s.signed a squad to escort them to the helicopter pickup point. Wolf and Greta squatted behind a wall. Polter stood with the Vietnamese Army men. Smoke rose from all parts of the city. The sounds of battle grew louder as the NVA made determined attacks against Ngoc's last bastion of the ARVN at Tay Loc.

Wolf looked at his watch. "If we're not out of here in half an hour, we're not going to get out of here." Like Polter, he had his M-16 and fresh magazines from Ngoc. All three were dirty and grimy from battle.

Wolf in particular. He had had no sleep for three days. He rubbed the thick stubble on his jaw. He glanced around through eyes red-rimmed and sunken. "You did a good job back there at the villa," he said to Greta.

"Thank you." She was just as tired. Her s.h.i.+rt was rumpled and torn.

"Toward the end you didn't seem afraid. You held very good fire discipline. As good as any I've seen. That couldn't have come from your father. How did you stop being afraid so quickly?"

She flashed him a self-deprecating smile. "Because I prayed all the time that I would be killed quickly and cleanly. I wanted to die rather than be captured." She shrugged her shoulders. "So I was not afraid."

Wolf couldn't take his eyes from the flaxen-haired Greta Sturm. "But you said you were going to save the last bullet for yourself. Yet when it was time to make a charge, you were ready to go. Why was that?"

She tilted her head in thought. "Because I had decided it was better one of them should die by my last bullet, not me.

I would not give my life over to death without any struggle."

She looked into Wolfs eyes. "I think you can understand that?"

Wolf gave a short bark. "Oh yes, I can understand that.

Very much can I understand that."

They heard the whopping sound of a helicopter. In minutes a UH- I B with the roundel of South Vietnam on the fuselage had picked up the three of them and Rizzo's body.

The Vietnamese pilot cut across the Perfume River to relative safety before turning north to Quang Tri. Door gunners on both sides scanned the earth below and intermittently returned fire at ground positions shooting at them. The groundfire was from automatic weapons and inaccurate.

Wolf noted the NVA had no big AAA guns in place within the city. This was an infantryman's battle, and it was being fought under the toughest of conditions-street fighting.

When they were clear, the gunners sat back and the noise abated. Polter grinned and looked away when Greta took Wolf's hand in her own, "Wolfgang, thank you," she said. She p.r.o.nounced it Vulfgang.

"What for? Saving your life? I didn't do that, Captain Ngoc and his troops did." It was noisy and windy inside the helicopter. They had to lean over and speak loudly into each other's ear.

"Thank you for stopping me from going to those soldiers.

For not letting me carry a white flag. Maybe I have been carrying a white flag too long."

"What do you mean?"

Greta Sturm blushed. "There was a man. Back home. An older man who worked as an administrator at the hospital where I was a nurse. He wanted to marry me. My father, he thought that was a good idea. Always I had done what my father wanted me to do. A ' s a child, I wanted to become a doctor, but father wanted me to become a nurse. 'Girls do not become doctors,' he told me, 'girls become nurses." So I became a nurse.

But when my father wanted me to marry that man I ran away. I joined the Maltese Aid Society. I thought this was a way to get away from him and a way to help the Vietnamese people." She looked out the door at the earth below, then turned and spoke again, her eyes veiled.

"So I did get away, and I feel free at last from my father and that man.

But now I find that instead of helping Vietnamese people, I have killed some. That is not a good thing."

Wolf clasped her fingers in his powerful hands. He chose his words carefully. Though the thoughts he was about to express were never far from his mind and he had wrestled with them many times, he had never allowed anyone to know how he felt.

I "The act of killing is not a good thing. G.o.d did not put us on this earth to kill each other," he said slowly as he searched for the words.

"But sometimes it has to be done.

There are those who put themselves in positions where they have to kill or be killed. I do that as a profession. You put yourself in that position indirectly when you signed on with those people for Vietnam.

Maybe you are happy you escaped your father and his plans for marriage, but your ability to shoot, the ability your father taught you forced you to learn, maybe-help save your life and mine, and Polter's.

You shot, and you killed." He stopped and took a deep breath. His exhausted face contorted in his effort to define his deepest thoughts.

"But once you kill, you are changed forever. If you are of low esteem, it becomes a prideful thing.

But if you see yourself as an equal among humans, then it becomes a sacrifice, your sacrifice. You lose a little bit of yourself each time you kill. It is not easy to explain." He looked away for a moment.

"When you are a member of a profession that defends a country or a city or a village, you are trained to kill, and kill quickly and well. I say kill, not murder. There is a great difference. You are trained to kill those who are intent upon murdering you and yours for whatever rationale; those who have the means and cannot be reasoned out of that intent. And when reason fails, and there is no other way to stop them, you kill them. And another piece of you dies. Unless you are a demented executioner, you lose something. It is the price we who defend must pay.

We just hope that our service is finished before there is nothing left within ourselves, so we may enjoy what time we have left. Those who are called upon to serve too much, or who through circ.u.mstances kill more than most, who go beyond what their souls can handle, die early.

Alcohol, automobile wrecks, gun accidents, or the body one day just quits.

They get the sickness and die. They have lost too much."

Wolf's weathered face crinkled when he showed his teeth in what he hoped was a smile. "I'm tired, and I'm talking too much." He shook his head.

"It was for you I was talking, trying to explain things. So you can go back to Germany and regain what you might have lost."

"Go back and become a doctor," she said. "I could do that, now. I want to and I will. There will be no difficulty with my father, not anymore." She squeezed his big hands.

"But Wolfgang, what about you? What do you have to go back to? Are you sure you haven't gone too far?"

Wolf's lips formed a rueful smile. He took a deep breath of air and released it. He slowly disengaged his hand from hers. "When sometimes I think I have gone as far as I can, I see something like we saw yesterday, when they mutilated the bodies. Then the hate takes over ...

but that too is very dangerous. Hate can destroy its creator. It must be controlled. But I am trained, and I have trained myself, to control and ... to use my emotions." He stopped. He felt foolish. The words weren't coming right. Wolf looked deep into her gray eyes. The world around them faded. There was just the two of them and he wanted very much for this girl to understand him. With an effort, he continued talking, .aware as he did so that he had never talked this much to anyone since the seminary.

"You have to understand about me. I am a soldier. There are perhaps things about myself, some of my likes or dislikes, I can change. But I cannot change the fact that I am a soldier. It is my whole life. I don't have to worry about going back to it because I never left it.

There are better things to be perhaps in your eyes, but not for me.

There are those who build, those who teach or heal, those who research how to do things better. But I am a soldier. A soldier protects people. A soldier enforces laws. A soldier stands guard over what he believes in, sometimes alone when his only fuel is from his faith in himself. He trusts his judgment that his fellow soldier, his leader, his country and his country's cause is just and fair and deserving of his faith. Once that faith is broken and the man still serves, then he is a kept man, a mercenary who serves only for cash, not a just cause."

Wolf was surprised, shocked really, how he had opened up to this girl.

Never outside of the confessional had he revealed so much of himself.

Was this how it was just before you burned out? Or had this girl tapped something within him that made him want to tell her things, and teach her the way of things as he saw and practiced them? He wasn't sure.

He only knew he was greatly attracted to this resourceful and courageous German girl. And in a more complete way than he was attracted to the dancer Charmaine. He wanted desperately to see her again, this girl who was so much younger than he. But how to say it? He swallowed hard but could not find the words.

"You certainly speak right out," she said as if she knew his thoughts.

"Not always," he said. "There are times when ... when I cannot." Like now, he thought.

She saw the agony on his face. She knew what it meant and took his big hand. "We will see each other again. Many times."

"Yes," he said simply. His face relaxed and he leaned against the seat back.

The heat of the day was on them. The vibration of the helicopter was soothing to their worn bodies. They sat, still holding hands, and dozed. They awoke when the blades changed pitch and the helicopter started its descent to the Quang Tri runway.

At the change in pitch, Wolf was instantly alert and sat up straight. He stiffened and slowly disengaged his hands from those of Greta Sturm. She smiled through a huge yawn.

"You are back to the war among your own. You must pick up your quiet thoughts and put them away. Yes?"

He nodded slowly. "You," he began, inarticulate once again, but determined to get one last point across. A very important point. "You ... understand, " he said, grat.i.tude obvious in his eyes.

The Vietnamese pilot spiraled down over friendly forces and touched down under the raised-arm direction of an American Army crewman. He shut the engine down and asked for fuel in broken English. Polter helped him interpret and busied himself with the preparations to unload Rizzo's body. "He was a brave man," Wolf said, then helped Greta Sturm from the Huey helicopter. He held her a second longer than necessary.

"I don't know how it will be for a few days or even weeks. But we will see each other," he said.

"In Saigon," she said. "I will wait for you." They turned at the sound of a vehicle.

An Army colonel and two other officers dressed in khakis drew up in a jeep. They climbed out, the colonel leading the way, and approached them. The colonel returned Wolf's salute.

"Lieutenant Colonel Lochert?" he inquired in a conversational voice. He was a man of medium height, thin brown hair, and a pleasant face.