BAT-21 (14 page)

As Hambleton watched, his spirits sinking with
every detonation, his ears picked up an unusual sound in the sky. It
was different, not the whine of the jets nor the buzzing of the
fighters. He finally recognized it as the distinctive drone of
turboprop engines. A Hercules C-130?

What was a Specter doing, coming over to strafe
with its Gatling guns? The big, cumbersome airplane would make too
good a target in broad daylight. To risk it on a strafing run when
the faster fighters could handle that more productively made no
sense. What then?

Up from behind a low mountain popped the big
camouflaged airplane. Escorted by two Sandys, it came in low, almost
treetop level, under the enemy radar and ground-control intercept.
Whatever the plane was doing here, it must be part of the plan
Birddog had talked about.

Fascinated, Hambleton watched the Hercules swoop
over the nearest village, Sandys on each wing tip. There was no sound
of gunfire, save for sporadic sniping rifle fire from the soldiers on
the ground. Directly over the village a blizzard of white came
bursting out of the C-130's cargo hatch. As the plane roared over the
other villages the same thing happened, leaving a series of puffy
clouds in the sky drifting toward the ground. Completing its last
pass before the antiaircraft guns could even be cranked up, the big
plane thundered away, hedgehopping over hills to the north and
disappearing from sight, the Sandys right at its heels. Not a shot
had been fired by any of the planes.

Hambleton scratched his head. What was this all
about? What kind of hand was now being dealt in this cockamamy,
no-limit game of survival with the North Vietnamese? What had been
the purpose of this Bullshit Bomber? Thoughtfully he watched the
little clouds float down around the villages.

Hambleton recalled Colonel Black's outfit. In fact
he had, on occasion, even bent an elbow with the crusty, eccentric
genius who commanded the psychological warfare unit. Colonel Ed Black
was a slender, precise man who had the bearing of a trade-school
professional. A blizzard of white hair stormed continuously over his
scowling eyes, and he talked in the clipped tone of the West Point
graduate. Flying AC-130's and U-10's equipped with loudspeakers, his
unit dropped propaganda leaflets and broadcast the tapes used in the
psy-warfare program.

The Bullshit Bomber unit had been successful. By
dropping leaflets printed in the local Vietnamese language over enemy
strongholds, the outfit had averaged a VC defection for every hour of
flying time it put in. It was, in Black's words, "A pretty
inexpensive method of removing nearly two divisions of enemy soldiers
from the battlefield." Hambleton had agreed.

Black had shown him a couple of the propaganda
leaflets, and had translated them into English. The first was a
safe-conduct pass. It guaranteed preferential treatment to any enemy
soldier who would turn himself over to South Vietnamese authorities.
The other was a simple leaflet stating there was going to be a heavy
attack in a certain area, and warning all peasants and civilians in

that area to evacuate immediately with their women
and children.

"We also promise them a nice hot meal and
shelter if they evacuate a battle area," Black had said. "If
you can't grab them by the balls, grab them by the stomach. Their
hearts and minds will follow. I like my type of war. Very little
bloodshed."

"What about the Vietnamese who can't read?"

"We've covered that too. We fly over the area
with our speaker planes until time for the attack. Have you ever
heard one of our planes?"

God, yes, Hambleton had. You couldn't spend more
than a day or so in this theater of war without hearing one of the
damned things. It would wake the dead. The taped messages were
prepared by the psy-warfare people, and augmented when necessary with
live broadcasts from VC who had defected from their local area. It
was astonishingly effective.

Now here he was, watching many thousands of
messages floating down in a blizzard over the villages. Soon the
noncombat- ants would evacuate. And some of the Communist soldiers
might even waver once they knew their positions were no longer immune
to attack.

Hot damn! The boys back at the head shed must be
preparing for an all-out offensive. With the evacuation of the
civilians they could come in over the villages and wipe out the guns
once and for all. And then, by God, they could bring the choppers in.
Safe and sound. Hallelujah!

Then he sobered. He remembered what else Black had
said about his psychological warfare program—the harassment
missions. It wasn't going to be quiet.

"Harassment missions are most productive,"
Black had said. "We often fly them in conjunction with our
leaflet drops. Ever heard the tapes of our funeral dirges?"

"No," Hambleton had said.

Black had told him to count his blessings. There
was nothing like a Buddhist funeral dirge played at eardrum-splitting
intensity. There were also tapes of babies crying; passionate women
panting for their husbands and lovers; little one-act skits using
professional actors who talked of homesickness and the dangers faced
by family separations.

"If nothing else," Black had concluded,
"I wager the VC is bushed from being kept awake by the noise all
night.

So if things went according to pattern, Hambleton
would have another sleepless night. And things seemed to be going
according to pattern, for up the Hercules popped again—turboprops
biting the humid air—from behind the hills to the north. This time
it was alone, the Sandy escorts keeping their vigil from on high lest
their drone block out the loudspeaker's message. Even from his
position Hambleton almost had to cover his ears as the loudspeakers,
kicking out God knows how many decibels, blasted the landscape. The
message was in Vietnamese, but Hambleton had no trouble guessing its
content. Wailing out in the indigenous dialect, it would be warning
all who could not read the leaflets that they should vacate the
villages and head south as quickly as possible.

The plane delivered its message, then vacated as
quickly as it had come, growling out of sight before any of the big
guns had a chance to really lock onto it.

Hambleton assumed the bullshit bombers would be
back during the night. Cloaked in the security of darkness they could
orbit almost unmolested, blasting out their tapes and their funeral
dirges until a man would very nearly be separated from his sanity.
But he wouldn't complain. He knew the speaker plane was for his
benefit. If it worked, the fighters would be able to come in and
destroy the firepower that kept his rescuers at bay.

His eyes returned to the soldiers manning the
minesweepers. Except for stopping to take potshots at the low-flying
planes, they had barely interrupted their labors. They were making
headway. From the looks of things, another twenty-four hours would
see the mine field cleared—at least enough to make a passage
through. The Sandys would drop more gravel, of course, and keep
harassing them. But until the villagers had evacuated, the Air Force
could not bring the massive firepower to bear on the villages that
was required to destroy the guns. It was going to be a tight race as
to who got to him first: the determined Vietcong or the equally
determined Air Force. Any way you sliced it, he was getting damned
tired of being the pawn in this hellish chess game.

Pawns tended to get eliminated.

It had been a wild night. Times Square on New
Year's Eve. The Calgary Stampede. The New Orleans Mardi Gras.

The psy-warfare Hercules with its nerve-shattering
loudspeakers had not been Hambleton's only company. The BS
bomber had a twin sister, far more lethal and eerie. And it was this
sibling, known as the AC-130 Specter, that had made a spectacular
entrance onto the stage of Hambleton's private war. It was an
appearance he had welcomed with open arms. In fact, having once flown
a mission in one, he even had developed a sort of kinship with the
big, lumbering airplane.

The AC-130 was the latest version of the original
"Puff the Magic Dragon" gunship concept. It had replaced
the old Gooney Bird C-47, and later the AC-119 Stingers. It was a
veritable flying arsenal. Poking out of ports in its capacious belly
were rows of machine guns and 20-mm revolving-barreled Gatling guns
that could each spit out six thousand rounds per minute with pinpoint
accuracy. And it carried plenty of ammunition to keep them going
steadily! Other intriguing armaments being tested in the big plane
included 40-mm Bofors machine cannon and even a special 105- mm
howitzer which had a recoil that all but sent the big aircraft flying
sideways.

Last night, watching it all from the ground,
Hambleton had been overwhelmed. The fireworks had started after dusk.
The enemy, knowing of the impending attack because of the dropped
leaflets, had accelerated their efforts to reach him. More mine
detectors had been brought in, and there were now half a dozen
employed in trying to clear a path through the mine field.

Not to be upstaged, the FAC had brought in Sandys
to strafe and drop load after load of gravel. By dusk it had still
been a stalemate. Hambleton remained protected, but with the coming
of darkness his optimism had started sinking with the sun. Darkness
would definitely be on the side of the enemy.

But again, the Air Force had another ace up its
sleeve. Thanks to the Hercules gunships, the black curtain of night
was seldom lowered. Coming in low under the radar fence, the AC-130's
dropped their powerful one-million-candlepower flares, which
instantly turned night into high noon. Hidden by the blinding
magnesium flares in the sky and flying under the GCI's radar, Specter
was virtually invulnerable to the heavy antiaircraft guns. Flying
with her lights out, the only way to spot her was in the brief
moments she would let loose with her Gatling guns. Then her red
tongues of flame flickered down like those of some mammoth dragon,
licking out the lives of the men working with the mine detectors.

As the night had progressed, Hambleton began
breathing a little easier. The Air Force was more than holding its
own. It was keeping the Vietcong at bay in spite of their growing
numbers. And now, well past midnight, the soldiers had actually
retreated from the perimeter of the mine fields. It was the first
time the gomers had actually failed to return with their minesweepers
after a strafing attack of the Sandys or the AC-130's.

And then he saw why.

In the next burst of brilliance from the flares he
observed the column of refugees.

It was a motley group of old men, women, farmers,
children— noncombatants heeding the leaflets dropped by the
psy-warfare plane. They were filing out of the villages and heading
south. Their belongings were stacked high on oxcarts, A-frames,
bicycles, wheelbarrows—anything that could serve as a conveyance.
Herded along with them were all manner of livestock, their cackling
and mooing and braying adding to the cacophonous din of war.

Hambleton felt a knot growing in his stomach.
Nothing like uprooting half a dozen villages and dispossessing whole
families so that the game of war could continue. Was he responsibile
for this too? If not for him, would these villagers be allowed to
stay and work their fields and live their lives in peace under the
Communist yoke? Perhaps, but then again...

Oh hell, Hambone, you don't know! At least the
soldiers were letting the villagers leave in peace. But then, as he
watched the tragic scene before him, he realized something else.

The refugees were being allowed to leave, all
right, but the soldiers had carefully selected their route of
departure. The column was being guided right along the outside
perimeter of the mine field, as close as possible to where the
minesweepers had been working. The reason was clear. This explained
the enemy's fallback. The gomers had organized the refugee line of
march right through the flrefight zone, forcing it close to the land
mines. They knew the Air Force would think twice before strafing so
close to women and children.

"God a'mighty!" muttered Hambleton.
"Those dirty little bastards." He clicked on his radio,
checked in with Birddog. He explained the situation.

"Roger, Bat," said Birddog. "The
plot thickens. Will have to back off until the refugees are out of
there. Keep in touch."

"Roger."

Now it was going to be tough stopping the North
Vietnamese, who had now gone back to work on the land mines.
Unmindful of the hapless refugee who might be in the way when one of
the mines was detected and detonated, the soldiers worked their way
inexorably forward, clearing a path. At this rate daylight would
find a corridor cleared—and there was not a thing the Air Force
could do to stop them. At least not until the last refugee had filed
out of the zone.

Hambleton checked his watch. Almost three. A good
several hours until daylight. If only the refugees would get the hell
out of there! He fought the urge to shout to them, urge them to hurry
along. How long would it take to empty the villages? An hour?
Several? The attack wasn't scheduled to start until daybreak. So they
knew they had time, and they seemed to be in no hurry.

How long would it take for the mines to be cleared
enough to make a path through? Several hours? Judging by the
increasing frequency of the exploding mines, the gomers were making
good time. There was only one comforting thought: The Sandys would be
able to come in with more gravel, and not risk killing civilians.
With their precise aim they could probably reseed the cleared areas
almost as fast as the enemy could sweep them. But all things
considered, it was now back to nip and tuck.

Hambleton was damnably tired. Several times he
found himself napping with his eyes open as he scouted the scene
before him. He had to stay awake. Keep on his toes. Gomers coming
closer. Better order more gravel from Birddog. As long as old Specter
was up there dropping flares and there was good visibility, the
Sandys could spot their target and drop their loads exactly. Have to
keep them coming.