Eagle Station

"You just bought and paid for another couple days in here, old buddy,"

Court said.

"I"ve got to get out of here. I"ve got to get up to that Eagle Station and see what is going on. That place is too important for me to be fooling around in some hospital."

"Is it really all that important?" Doc Russell asked Court.

"Sure, just as important as the air war in North Vietnam," Court said.

Later, when Court told the Phantom FACs about Wolf and the Jollys in the hospital, they made a unanimous decision.

They would host a party for the Jolly Greens (no combat air-crew member ever let a Jolly buy a drink) and for the famous Special Forces soldier Wolf Lochert (they knew his story; great job shivving that commie double agent). Since their heroes were all to be discharged from the hospital in a few days and return to their respective units, the Phantoms decided to set up a big celebration the night before they left.

Full Lieutenant of the United States Navy Rolly Grailson was placed in charge, mainly because he was the Special Projects officer for the Phantom FACs. Grailson was on exchange duty with the USAF from the carrier USS America, CV 66, where he had been flying F-4JS with VF-33, the Tarsiers. Grailson said he would have a long talk about making the party memorable with Major Richard "Chef" Hostettler, the Wing Intelligence Officer, who had the extra duty of Club Officer.

1230 Hours LOCAL, SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER 1968 HANOI CITY HOSPITAL.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM.

USAF Major Algernon A. "Flak" Apple was the first black pilot shot down over North Vietnam and captured. He was also one of the first POWs to make an escape from the Hoa Lo Prison, known as the Hanoi Hilton. He and his partner, Ted Frederick, had gone over the wall in the dead of night in makeshift coolie clothes. Their plan had been to make it to the British Emba.s.sy and seek asylum and eventual repatriation.

They had been discovered at daybreak hiding in a cemetery.

Frederick had thrown away his chance of freedom by creating a diversion, allowing Flak Apple to escape capture. Flak had dashed through the streets, bowling aside the early crowd as his costume unraveled, to the doors of a Western emba.s.sy. Instead of falling into the welcoming arms of the British, however, he had been disdained and clearly unwelcome at the French Consulate. Over the protests of a French doctor, he had been tossed back to the North Vietnamese soldiers.

There were now 451 American prisoners of war held in seven prisons in North Vietnam. Only a handful were not shot-down air-crew. Non-air-crew members included Army soldiers and Marines and civilian workers captured in South Vietnam and marched along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to captivity in the North.

Most died along the way.

Most of the POWs had tumbled out of the skies into the hands of a vengeful populace or searching North Vietnamese Army troops. Not all of those who reached the ground alive turned up in the prison system. Many were beaten to death where they fell, others succ.u.mbed to starvation and beatings as they were made to run the gauntlet of villagers made wild by the foaming harangues of communist political officers. Very few evaded capture for more than an hour or two, none escaped for more than a few Hours. Those that did escape from a prison camp faced the severest of torture, which under the humane and lenient policy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was called "punishment." Some of the escapees died horribly from their "punishment." There was no attempt by the DRV to keep within any of the Geneva Convention guidelines, because the American POWs and the Thai POWs who were unlucky enough to be in Hanoi were called war criminals and any day now could face trials for their war crimes.

After Flak Apple"s recapture, without preaching or preamble they hung him from a meat-hook at Hoa. Lo and started beating on him. For three days and nights they flayed him with whippy bamboo rods and lengths of rawhide, and even a fan belt wielded by a Caucasian, a Cuban known as Fidel. Finally, when he was an unrecognizable length of raw bleeding meat, when he had voided every possible bit of waste and moisture from every orifice in his body, when he was so close to death his mouth hung open and his dried-out tongue protruded, someone near the top of the communist party hierarchy sent word down that the piece of reactionary black filth was to be spared because he might prove to be of value. They might have plans for him. In any event, they were sure the Westerners finally knew he was alive, because his name had been given in a broadcast of an interview conducted by that unmentionably ignorant American named Robert Williams, who made his home in Cuba.

Williams had said, quite contrary to the fact of Flak Apple"s obvious wounds, that Apple was alive, happy, and being well treated by the humane and lenient people of Vietnam. And, most a.s.suredly the Party reasoned, the French would have told the American authorities that the very same man had appeared one day at their doors in Hanoi demanding asylum. However, the Americans, for some obtuse reason of their own, had not seen fit to make public the details of criminal Apple"s aborted escape. The Party did not find it necessary to inform those below their level that the criminal Frederick who had accompanied Apple had been shot and severely wounded. Later that day, Frederick had died without uttering a word within minutes of the start of his beating. His body had been taken to the big mortuary in Hanoi, where the remains of hundreds of American men lay awaiting opportune usage. The Party maintained flawless records of every American aircraft shot down and the disposition of its crew. They probed every crash site and bits of wreckage for remains and pieces of map or ID cards and flight suits.

They correlated their information gathered on the scene with that sent by spies from American military bases in South Vietnam and Thailand and with the extremely useful packets containing newspaper articles and, in some cases, high school and college yearbook information sent by Americans who prided themselves on doing all they could to support the just revolution by the peoples of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam against the oppressive regime in the South.

Yes, the Party spelled out, they wanted criminal Apple not only alive, but in a pliable and cooperative mood to meet with a special delegation from the United States; a delegation that would arrive in Hanoi via Bangkok very soon. If all went well, that is, if Apple were so pliable as to agree to an early release, then the prison personnel who partic.i.p.ated and helped bring about this progressive change in heart of this black criminal would receive special treatment themselves. In the meantime, prison personnel were to provide a list of names of those criminals who were proving cooperative, and who were perhaps even in favor of the just struggle for peace against the imperialistic oppressor. In the past, he had found only two.

Flak"s first awareness was a steady thrumming sound. Hearing was his first sense to transmit to his newly conscious brain.

He heard before he saw. He listened to the sound for ... Hours, maybe?

He didn"t know. He only knew he was not going to open his eyes to see where he was, nor was he going to move to find out what he was. He didn"t want to know if he was a slab of raw beef hung from a meat-hook or that he was a dead man whose skin had been stretched across a frame.

He knew he wasn"t alive, he simply couldn"t be alive. Not after the centuries of pain and mindless drooling and screaming and being on fire from within. The torture straps, the ropes, the thuds, the blows, the filthy rag stuffed in his mouth. A kaleidoscope of purple and red and black pain and muscles popping and shredded nerve endings ... no one could live through that. Thrum, thrum. The steady thrumming, it suddenly became clear to him, was the big tube of humanity through which all the blood flowed and the nutrients flowed as they were sucked out by ... by ... No, it was something else. He knew what it was, and it wasn"t any big tube of humanity. It was ... OH G.o.d.... AAAHHHHHH, AAAHHHHHH, AAAHHHHHH he screamed, as pain and reality and terror returned in a torrent of agony and streaming hot wires running through his nerves and fire melting his nerve endings. It was rain, and he had been tortured to insanity and death in the rain.

He howled like a dog when he felt the unmistakable touch of a human hand on his arm. "NOOOOOOOOO," he howled and tried to jerk away, but the straps bound him. "NOOOOOOO, NOOOOOOOO his scream faded as what little strength he possessed gave out. He still felt the touch. He couldn"t open his eyes. He didn"t want to open his eyes. He didn"t want to see the sallow faces of Big Ugh and Crazy Face and the others who had tortured him into mindless screams until blessed oblivion had occurred. He had one last breath. If he screamed it out, he would be blessed and die. "NOOOOOOOOOO."

A cool hand placed itself on his brow, then a cold cloth was brushed across his sweat-soaked and torn face. A quiet voice murmured liquid tones in his ear.

It was a lie. He was dead or they were just preparing him for more torture, They did that, he knew. They had splashed buckets of water on him and fed him a banana and later, his own vomit and excrement. He was dead; or would be dead; he would die. He willed himself to die. He could not take another second of pain. They were going to torture him again. He was through. "Dear G.o.d," he sobbed, "take me, TAKE ME, TAAAKE MEEEE.".

The cool cloth again, and the liquid tones. The touch, soothing, the cold cloth. He refused to respond. Then blackness folded into blackness and he knew no more.

She looked at his torn face, slack in repose. She had never seen such deep brown skin or such wiry curls of hair. She traced in wonder his broad nose and lips with her fingers. He lay naked on the white bed in the hospital room the Party had a.s.signed to him. The body that had once been big and robust was now shrunken and wasted. There was hardly a place unbruised or untorn. White stripes of adhesive tape holding the tubes in his arm and nose were his only covering. The doctors had been told to make him alive again, to make him eat and function and look presentable, and, above all, to be pliable, to be kindly disposed toward the North Vietnamese. She thought that was an odd request, but one did not question the Party. She was a.s.signed to be his constant companion, to sleep on the bare cot in his room.

There were no others, she was told, who wanted to touch him, to feel his body-this black criminal, this murderer of mothers.

But she was lucky, she had been chosen to be allowed to make a contribution to the Party by making this black criminal well and pliant.

She herself, the product of a Senegalese Legionnaire and a Vietnamese mother, her features so broad and her hair that refused to lie straight, she herself, who was called Co Dust, had been allowed to serve the Party when she returned from France with a nurse"s license. Co Dust meant unmarried girl so useless as to be made of dust. She rinsed another cloth and mopped his brow as the thrumming of the rain on the hospital"s tin roof provided a cover to the prayers in her heart of hearts.

For ten days now she had never left his side except to eat and bathe.

She had scrubbed and gone with him to the operating room twice; once to repair what had been burst in his stomach, and once when they had to rebreak his left arm and try to straighten it. She marveled he was still alive after the crash he had suffered, and then after the incredibly crude surgery by a doctor who said he hated even touching this black man. She could tell the bent left arm would never be better and was worried about His intestines. The Party did not know it but she had become a Christian in France and she prayed to the Almighty to give her the strength and power to soothe and heal this man who had been through so much. He did not look like a murderer; he did not act like a murderer.

He awoke a day later, more aware and alert than ever before.

Without moving or giving any indication he was conscious, he checked out his senses, one by one. The most prominent input was noise. He heard ... movement, both far and near.

Footsteps, small rattles, an occasional horn. He felt ... pain, yes, but not electric or blinding pain, just a dull ache over most of his body. He wanted to be more specific about this.

It was important. Perhaps he wasn"t dead. His hand rested on something. He carefully increased pressure with his finger, not enough so that an observer would see a movement but enough to inform him of the surface upon which his hand rested. His hand was on his leg. His leg felt the pressure and so did his right forefinger. Next, smell. He sampled what was pa.s.sing through his nose and palate. It was ... sweet alcohol and ... hospital.

That was all he could think of the smell-the combination of peculiar odors that spelled out hospital. Then all the hospital smell vanished as he smelled and almost tasted in the back of his throat the overlying odor of the spice and nuoc mam of Vietnamese food. Now all that was left to sample was sight.

Did he dare open his eyes? He reasoned he was in a hospital and he knew he was in North Vietnam and he remembered all the details of being beaten and why he was beaten, and was all this care just to make him well enough and conscious enough to undergo further beating? Would the beating begin again once he was p.r.o.nounced healed? He had better be very, very careful.

He lay for a long, long time, then, finally, he carefully lifted one eyelid a fraction of a millimeter, just enough to admit light.

He decided he had to move the other eye in parallel coordination, otherwise his effort to squint would produce a p.r.o.nounced muscle movement in his face and somebody might see that and punish him for it.

Carefully, carefully, he eased both eyes open just a slit, wary and alert for motion that would mean pain. But he saw no motion, only light, and soon a form took shape and he concentrated and synapses closed and he recognized ... a girl.

This was not what he had expected. Maybe everything before was merely a bad dream, a nightmare.

She was so attuned to his every motion and movement and knew what his hoa.r.s.e cries had meant that she remained motionless while he experimented with himself and his surroundings.

She knew he had to come to terms with the situation of his injuries and capture in his own way and in his own time. She sat motionless as his brown eyes took her in, then roamed the room, then returned instantly to her for a few seconds, then roamed again like a small child wanting to explore but afraid to leave the comfort and safety of its mother. He finally fixated on her. She glanced quickly at the door, then allowed a small smile to creep to her lips and she slowly rose and walked to the bed.

He saw the smile and the movement and watched her approach his side. She looked so calm and real and ... human. He could see compa.s.sion in her dark eyes. A tear rolled down his cheek.

He tried to speak, but she put her finger to his lips and shook her head. He spoke regardless.

"Am I home?" he said in a plaintive voice. "Am I home?"

Her own eyes suddenly glistened like black oil as she took his hand and said quietly, in an accented voice close to his ear, "Ah, non, chart. I am so sorry. You are not home." She took his hand and stroked it.

"How long have I been here? What"s wrong with me? Is the war over?" He struggled to get up. She pushed him back down and checked the tubes in place. She put her head close to his.

"I am sorry, the war is not over. You are in the Hanoi City Hospital.

You were sick, injured, and now you are getting ...

not sick." She could not think of the English word. She had studied the language in the lycie in France, but had had very little practice. She did not know if the Party knew she spoke English or not. It didn"t matter, she would be careful. She must keep some secrets from them.

They had told her to make him happy in whatever way she could. Once he was well and happy, the Party would deal with him about their requirements. She had been told she had very little time to prepare him.

"Sleep and soon you will be strong and I will answer all your questions." Co Dust stroked his brow until he fell asleep. She looked again at his body and the bruises and tears. He is very fortunate, she thought, to be alive after suffering such terrible injuries when he was shot down.

1330 Hours LOCAL, SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER 1968 OVAL OFFICE, THE WHITE HOUSE.

WASHINGTON, DC.

The thirty-sixth President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson, sat at the end of the conference table, sipping root beer from a gla.s.s tumbler. He looked up at the Air Force general standing near the table and put the heavy tumbler down with a crash.

"I"m tired," he said in an angry voice. "I"m tired of feeling rejected by the American people. I"m tired of waking up in the middle of the night worrying about the war. I"m tired of all these personal attacks on me. Do you understand?"

Johnson, a big man who wore wire-rim gla.s.ses, was dressed in a gray pin-striped suit and red tie, coat unb.u.t.toned and hanging loose. His heavy face looked tired and worn. Scattered on the table were several files and briefing books.

Across the table from him stood USAF Major General Albert G. "Whitey"

Whisenand. General Whisenand, a white-haired, portly man with burn scars on his face, wore his Cla.s.s A blues with ribbons and command pilot wings. As he studied the President it seemed to him that LBJ didn"t fill out his clothes as much as before.

"Well?" the President demanded.

"Yes, sir, I understand," General Whisenand said.

LBJ slapped his hand on the table. "How could you?" he roared. "You"re not President of the United States. You"re not the leader of the Republic. You"re just another of those p.i.s.sant generals who-" He stopped in mid-sentence to rub his face and ma.s.saged his temples.

"Sorry, Whitey, gawddarnmit. Didn"t mean to flare up at you.

Your old President is tired-mighty tired."

Whitey Whisenand felt a wave of sorrow tinged with pity.

Sorrow that this vital man who had once leaped at political problems with verve and talent had reduced himself to everincreasing isolation, and pity because his overbearing arrogance had blunted his ability to see the public as people who could not be swayed by mere bombast from a former Texas senator, even if he was sitting in the White House.

In previous discussions seven months earlier, in March, LBJ had released two bombsh.e.l.ls to Whitey before he made them public. One was that he was going to stop all bombing north of the 20th parallel. "It has to be done," LBJ had said. "Ever since that d.a.m.ned Tet Offensive, the American people are upset over every little thing. I know-if I stop this bombing up there in North Veetnarn they"ll be happy." The 20th parallel was a few miles north of the DMZ, in a region called Route Pack I by fliers, but considerably south of the Hanoi/Haiphong port area.

Whitey had had to work hard on the President to get him to allow reconnaissance flights north of Pack I to track all the supplies entering the Ho Chi Minh Trail pipeline.

The other bombsh.e.l.l was when LBJ had said he was not going to run for a second term as President of the United States because he had to prosecute the war. Whitey had not been sure he had believed him. At the time, Whitey had thought LBJ was afraid he wouldn"t get the nomination, that Kennedy or McCarthy would gun him down. Maybe even Humphrey. Then McCarthy had dropped out and Bobby Kennedy had been shot dead by a deranged man in Los Angeles and Humphrey had become the nominee.

LBJ slumped back and worked on his temples. "Ah, what"s the use?" After a few moments he took his hands from his face and looked somewhere in the distance beyond Whitey. "Maybe you can"t understand how tired I am," he said, "and how all this gawdamm war business has affected me.

And the election, too.

There"s a tie-in, you know. There has to be. I"m not going to let that Nixon become President of the United States. He wasn"t even a good vice president.

A strange look came over his face. "I still have ways of having him defeated. You"ll see."

1530 Hours LOCAL, SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER 1968 DOLLEY MADISON BOULEVARD.

MCLEAN, VIRGINIA.

They were on the back porch, the October chill held at bay by the brilliant sunlight. Bird sounds trilled and fluttered through the screened windows. Whitey Whisenand sat on a white wicker chair enhanced with dark green cushions. A matching chair, sofa, and gla.s.s-topped coffee table were in the ensemble. Whitey wore old khaki pants and a gray sweatshirt. Part of the Washington Post was on his lap. His wife, Sal, stood at her gardening table in a light blue blouse and blue jeans.

She was tall, of regal bearing. In contrast to her husband"s head of white hair, hers was a blue-black hue which she wore short, so it was more manageable. Sal was British by birth and American by marriage.

Whitey and Sal had grown used to Whitey"s need to talk out his thoughts at the end of each workday. She was an astute woman, a product of the British secret intelligence service in World War II, who easily grasped the complexities of Washington politics. Her questions and comments helped her husband better formulate and organize his thoughts. Whitey had met her in the UK in 1944. They had both worked in that red-brick Victorian monstrosity, the Bletchley Park Intelligence Center in Buckingham shire, northwest of London. At the time, he had been an Army Air Force captain trying to get back into Mustangs, and she was a Wren decoding specialist in the Royal Navy.

Sal had newspaper spread on the table and was reporting some rhododendron for the winter, although it was probably too late, as they had already suffered a hard frost. Some obscure gene from her Anglo-Saxon background forced her to plant things.

She bent over to get another clay pot of wilted flowers.

"Such an awful year," she said, and stood up to face Whitey.

"The killing of Martin Luther King, as barbaric an act as could be imagined. And the riots afterward ... well, I just thought the whole country was doomed. The Army having to be called out." She shuddered.

"I"ll never, never forget those awful nights when Washington was burning, the flames at night turning the sky red ... smelling the smoke all the way out here."

Whitey rubbed his face. "There"s a lot of confusion out there, and hatred. A lot of it directed at Johnson. All he ever wanted was to be loved and respected and he"s getting just the opposite.

It"s all too much for him."

"Poor man," Sal said.

Whitey snorted. "Don"t feel sorry for him. Feel sorry for all those American soldiers that are dead because of his waffling."

"But that hatred of LBJ doesn"t mean they will vote for Nixon," Sal said.

"Don"t be too sure. I think there"ll be a backlash." He paused.

"And I think he"s got something up his sleeve."

"Like what?"

"Our air strikes. He"s going to stop them all," Whitey said in a flat voice. "I"m sure of it. He was asking questions just today about the effects of no more raids north of the DMZ. How I thought the South Vietnamese would feel. What I thought the North Vietnamese would do.

How the American public would react. He never asked what the military would feel, much less whether they should be in on his decision to stop the strikes."

"And what did you tell him?"

I said I thought the South Vietnamese would feel betrayed, the North Vietnamese would celebrate a victory, and the American public would feel relieved because they never knew what was going on anyhow. He seemed to take that without too much difficulty, but when I said the American military would see it as a retreat, he became very angry and said all we generals like to do is-"

"Bomb, bomb, bomb," Sal finished for him. "That"s what he always says.