Phantom Leader Part 36

was one of the top songs of the year." He turned a page. "Here it says you can buy a new Chevrolet sedan for thirty-two hundred dollars complete with radio and heater."

"You're a smart guy, hunh?" Ceballos said. "Won't admit the murder of the Negroes in Detroit. That killer Johnson couldn't kill enough people in Vietnam so he has to use your Army paratroopers to kill Negroes in Detroit. Don't you see how you are being exploited?" Flak said nothing.

"Look," Ceballos continued, "don't you even know how many Negro men are in the Army? I'll tell you. In the Infantry, twenty-five percent are Negro. In the Marines, thirty percent, even fifty percent. You don't have more than ten percent of Negroes in your whole population. So Johnson puts them on the front lines to be killed. Or kills them in Detroit. What do you say?"

"Nothing."

"Listen to this," Ceballos said. "He is one of your own, this Stokely Carmichael. He broadcasts for us." He switched on a tape recorder.

Flak heard a man tell of the Imperialists' unjust war against the peace-loving people of Vietnam, of how black men were forced to fight their Asian brothers. He ended his harangue with the words, "There is a higher law than the racist McNamara. There is a higher law than the fool named Dean Rusk. There is a higher law than a buffoon named Lyndon Baines Johnson."

"And this," Ceballos said. The next tape played the words of Olympic gold medal boxer Ca.s.sius Clay. "I am Muhammad Ali. My religion forbids me to fight. I ain't got no quarrel with those Viet Cong. They never called me n.i.g.g.e.r."

Flak heard Martin Luther King say the war was a "biaspherny against all that America stands for." Doctor Benjamin Spock said he felt "nothing but scorn and horror for Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policy. In the rest of the world, our ruthless actions are being compared to the Soviet Union's suppression of the Hungarian revolt and Hitler's murder of the Jews." Flak had a hard time keeping an impa.s.sive face when he heard these famous men tearing down the country he loved. Ceballos switched off the machine. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?" he asked.

Flak Apple didn't answer. Mean anything, he thought.

G.o.d in heaven, it meant so much he was afraid he would break down in front of this man, his enemy. Rage, he thought. Let the rage build.

Use it. Rage against those Americans who were trying to destroy his will to resist. He stiffened.

"Answer me, " Ceballos thundered.

"Ali is a good boxer, Spock is a good baby doctor," Flak said in a voice without inflection, wondering if he was being taped.

"Listen, Algernon. I'm trying to be reasonable with you.

Help me help you and you will live better. You may even go home very soon. All I want you to do is tell me how badly you were treated in the United States. Tell me that you were It exploited. I can understand.

You are not a criminal like the rest of the prisoners. All you have to do is talk to me. Come on, talk to me."

"It's raining outside," Flak said.

Ceballos slapped his desk with a sound like a pistol shot.

"Listen, smart guy. You keep this up and I'll turn you over to the men who interrogate you, the ones who punish you.

If you do not cooperate, they will perform severe punishment. If that punishment causes you to lose your arm or your leg, they will dispose of you. They would not send you home a cripple." He lit a fresh cigarette.

"Now tell me, what do you want? To cooperate with me or to be a cripple? You must make a choice."

"Let me think about it," Flak finally replied.

"No. You must talk to me now." Ceballos slammed the desk.

"How can I talk to you when I am in pain, when I haven't slept for months, when I am starving? How can I make a decision under those conditions?" Flak pa.s.sed a hand over his face.

Ceballos got to his feet and came around to Flak's side of the desk. "On your feet," he barked.

When Flak stood up, Ceballos lashed out with both hands and slapped him a dozen times fast and hard. Flak swayed and fought to keep his balance. His ears roared and his vision became blurred.

"You must decide," Ceballos roared into Flak's face.

"You must decide."

Flak blinked and tried to focus. "Okay," he said. "I decide. I decide I want to go back to my cell."

Ceballos ripped off the pocket that held the raisins, then punched Flak in the stomach, knocking him to the floor.

Holding his stomach, Flak struggled to a sitting position.

"So you are an educated man, Ceballos," he said, breathing hard.

"Educated men don't have to use their fists. They use their minds."

"Yes, I am educated. You are the stupid one. It is only my fists that get your attention. You cannot see how much better life would be for you if you would cooperate with me." Ceballos strode to the door and threw it open. He signaled the guard and turned to Flak.

"Now listen to me," he said. "I will let you go back to your cell. I want you to think about what I said about cooperating with me. I will arrange for special food. Then I will send for you."

"Will you arrange for special food for everyone?"

"Of course not."

"Then I don't want any."

"I said you were a stupid man, Algernon. Now go. I will arrange the food anyhow. We will talk again, very soon."

"I need medicine," Flak said. "I need a doctor." He held out his bent arm. "Look at this." He pulled up his pant leg and pointed to the open sores from the stocks.

Ceballos' face clouded. "You have committed crimes," he shouted. "You are lucky to be alive." He pushed Flak out the door to the guard.

When Flak was let into his cell, the guard did not fasten the stocks on his ankles, nor was Crazy Face anywhere to be seen. That night, the bowl a new guard brought to Flak contained a warm, thick vegetable soup and a banana. Flak stared at the windfall. After a moment's indecision, he slowly drank all the soup, savoring the flavor, and peeled and ate the banana. Then he ate the banana skin. Late that night he contacted Ted Frederick.

WHAT U HAVE ON CUBAN CEBALLOS.

WE CALL HIM FIDEL. MEAN GUY. SUPPOSED TO GET US TO DO THINGS WITHOUT.

TORTURE. SUPPOSED TO SHOW THE V HOW IT CAN BE DONE.

STARTS OUT NICE BUT WINDS UP HITTING.

HE SENDING ME SPECIAL FOOD.

SRO SEZ EAT. SEND ME SOME.

WISH I COULD.

GN GBU.

GN N GBU. "Good night and G.o.d bless you." Flak arranged his blanket and for the first time in twelve weeks fell into a deep, uninterrupted sleep.

1230 HOURS LOCAL, THURSDAY 15 FEBRUARY 1968.

CAt.w.a.t HOTEL, SAIGON REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM "I don't care if it is two-thirty in the morning. I'd have got you at midnight if it didn't take so long to get this d.a.m.n call through."

Archie Gant propped the phone on his shoulder and pawed through his notes. He had circled in red a statement made by Wolf Lochert about the CIA's knowledge of Huey Dan. He sat at the small desk in his hotel room.

"I'm not complaining," Michael LaNew said, "merely remarking." He spoke from his apartment on Hill Street.

Gant's phone call had awakened him moments before. The connection was not good.

"So you're not complaining. You should. You don't have anything to do."

"The h.e.l.l I don't. I'm putting in twelve hours a day on the Dunston case." LaNew grinned. He was used to the brisk and sometimes brutal repartee from his boss.

"Well, drop it. No, don't drop it. Do what I tell you in addition to Dunston."

"Do what?" Some of the words Gant spoke never made it to San Francisco.

"Do what I tell you. Now listen. I remember when you first joined the firm. When I covered points on your r6sum6, you spoke of being the man who apprehended Shawn Bannister in Thailand last year on spy charges."

"That's correct, but they were dropped."

"I know, I know. That's not the point." Gant stabbed a finger at Wolf's words that the Agency knew Huey Dan's code name. "I remember you talking about your interrogation of Bannister and you said he used the name Lizard about someone he had seen. Tell me that part again."

"What about lizards?" LaNew yelled over the line.

"TELL ME WHAT SHAWN BANNISTER SAID ABOUT A MAN CALLED THE LIZARD." The line cleared in the middle of Gant's shouted response.

"Okay, okay," LaNew said, holding the phone from his ear. "Sometime during the interrogation Bannister said he went many places to get information for his articles. Not just to an American base in Thailand.

He had, he said, been in the VC tunnels under Cholon and met the commander of LOCAL VC forces. He had also seen a man he was told later was a top official known as than Ian, which is Vietnamese for lizard."

"AH HA," Gant trumpeted over the line. "What I want you to do is this.

Find Mister Shawn-the-spy Bannister, show him the pictures I am going to send the office by satellite of Huey Dan. See if he identifies him as the man he saw in the tunnels with the VC commander. When he does, get a sworn statement to that effect. Airmail it back to me."

"Easier said than written, Mister Gant."

"What do you mean'?"

" Shawn Bannister is running for a state a.s.semblyman slot from Berkeley.

One of his major platforms is, and I quote, 'To stop the wanton racist killings of Asians by Americans." To that end he is using the Wolfgang Lochert case as a media springboard. Every day he's on the TV or the radio or front page of some newspaper calling for Lochert's imprisonment.

Even said he would for once advocate the death penalty, that Lochert should be shot as a murderer to pay for his crime.

I don't think Shawn Bannister would do a single thing to help Lochert."

"Find a way, LaNew. Find a way."

1930 HOURS LOCAL, FRIDAY 16 FEBRUARY 1968.

8TH Tactical Fighter Wing UDORN Royal Air FORCE BASE KINGDOM OF THAILAND It was raining and there was very little wind. Water fell straight and hard from the night sky and splashed up silver from the lighted flightline ramp, the airplanes, the black asphalt streets of the air base. It streamed down the Udorn control tower windows, it hammered the ponchos of the Air Police walking perimeter guard, M16s muzzle down.

Rus.h.i.+ng streams filled runway drainage ditches. Blue maintenance vans moved slowly down the ramps and around the revetments, low bow waves spreading from their tires. Pilots and crew chiefs huddled under the wings of their glistening Phantoms, waiting for a lull to finish preffights and to open the canopies. Soon the core of the storm pa.s.sed and the business of the 8th Tac Fighter Wing resumed in the light warm rain that remained.

Court Bannister cracked the door of his BOQ room to let the tranquil rain sound mix with that of The Mamas and The Papas (... go where you wanna, wanna go ... ) he was playing on his Akai tape deck. The roar of an F-4 taking off into the heavy rain on a night mission vibrated in his gut for a few moments until the fighter was swallowed by the heavy black overcast.

Two nights before, Court had flown with Howie Joseph, a highly experienced instructor pilot from the 497th Night Owl squadron, in his backseat. Court had been building up his night-combat proficiency under Howie's expert tutelage.

The AAA had been thick and the mission very dangerous.

Court had had to use both his flares and his CBUs to destroy a truck park. Howie had performed the duties of a backseater, but had let Court figure out the attack problems by himself. At the end of the flight, Court had asked Howie Joseph if he would like to be the operations officer for Court's new night-FAC outfit. Howie had responded, "Does a bear s.h.i.+t in the woods?"

Court's BOQ room was small but private. All lieutenants and captains and most majors had to double up. As a commander of a unit, he did not have to share with a crew member of equal rank. His room was in the same long, one-story building as the crewmen of 497th Tactical Fighter Squadron, the Night Owls. The squadron whose aircraft took off only after the sun had gone down, and whose pilots and navigators fought the war only in the dark.

The rooms were side by side and opened motel-style onto a long, screened walkway which led from one end of the building to the communal bathroom and a covered breezeway at the other end. In the breezeway the pilots had built a bar with ceiling fans, papasan chairs, music from a tape deck and the LOCAL USAF radio station on the base, and a government refrigerator for which they had traded a dozen aviator sungla.s.ses. Thai housekeepers kept the rooms clean and did the men's laundry for a few dollars a week from each of them. Court's 10-by-12 room held a bunk with a real mattress, a small wood desk, and a tall steel locker with drawers. In the back wall was fixed an air conditioner that ran full-time. There were no windows. All the Night Owl rooms were completely blacked out so the crews could sleep in the daytime.

At the moment Court's room was illuminated only by the small circle of light from the lamp where he sat at his desk.

He took some paper and an envelope from a leather stationery folder and addressed the envelope to Susan at her Manhattan Beach apartment. The stationery was creamy and rich, a Christmas present from his father. He put his return address--his mail-room box number and APO San Francisco 96304-and wrote the word Free where a stamp would normally be fixed to the upper-right-hand corner. Since airmail stamps cost eleven cents each, total postal savings per man per year in combat totaled around twelve dollars, depending on how much he wrote.

His cigarette in the ashtray sent up long spirals of smoke.

He sipped from a gla.s.s of Australian red wine and thought of what to say to Susan. He tapped a finger on the gla.s.s, then wrote: Dear Susan, The trip back to Saigon was dull. Got a lot of sleep.

Spent about a week flying out of Tan Son Nhut, then came back here to Udorn. Have to do some more training before I get the FAC program in gear. Can't believe two weeks have pa.s.sed since we were together. Seems more like months.

Had dinner the other night with an old friend, Doc Russell. Don't know if I ever told you about him, but I told him about you. Nice guy.

Wanted to know when we were going to get married.

Susan, I know you wanted me to talk more, to tell you how I was feeling, but I He threw the pen down and crumpled the page. Christ, he thought, that's as insipid as a kid writing his mother from summer camp.

He took his wine and moved to the open door. The rain glistened off trees and gra.s.s and bushes. The cool breeze swirled around him. He saw the two empty lawn chairs, sodden in the rain, beyond the veranda where he and Flak Apple used to sit and commiserate with each other about the war. And now Flak was gone. Shot down up north. No one knew whether he was dead or captured. The North Vietnamese never gave out prisoner lists. The only way the American Government knew who was captured was by either the very few photographs released for propaganda purposes, the radio broadcasts made under torture, or through simple codes in the few letters that were allowed out. And Flak was gone. So many were gone.

Lost another one from the 433rd today, he had heard.

He put down his wine and walked down to the Night Owl bar in the breezeway, where he found Toby Parker, wearing shorts and a T-s.h.i.+rt, sunk in a papasan chair in the corner.

Toby lowered the notes Court had given him to study. He had arrived the day before from Da Nang to provide Court and his new unit with the latest Ho Chi Minh Trail information. They had spent most of their time together in Wing Headquarters.

"For a guy with a new command, you don't look very cheerful," he said to Court, "you look positively gloomy.

You should be happy and all inspired. This is your big command. The first of many, I'll bet. What's up?"

With effort Court worked up an alert smile. "Everything is just fine.