South China Sea

move!” It was a distinctly British voice and the pilot didn’t move.

“Get to you in a jiff, old boy!”

It was Leigh-Hastings, aware that the American pilot had just landed in a trip-wire claymore minefield off strongpoint Echo.

Overhead, Phantoms roared in, firing salvoes of 2.75-inch-diameter rockets and bursts from three 20mm machine-gun pods, strafing the jungle at the rate of six thousand rounds a minute. Then came Skyraiders firing their four 20mm guns, each Skyraider carrying over eight thousand pounds of ordnance. It was all very impressive- looking, the multiple explosions lighting up the valley at moments like a string of Chinese firecrackers in a long alley. It was good for the morale of Freeman’s trapped men, but they found via a short but ferocious enemy artillery barrage on the triangle later in the morning mist that few, if any, of Cheng’s heavy guns had been silenced.

“Jesus,” one Englishman opined. “I thought they walloped them last night.”

“So did I,” Kacey replied. “Sounded like the Fourth of July arou—” A cluster of four 105mm hit the triangle, throwing wet mud and dust into the air before the barrage ceased.

The depressing truth — that the raid from the Enterprise had not destroyed the enemy’s dug-in arty — came via Freeman’s message that morning to the garrison at Dien Bien Phu. He said he would reinforce Dien Bien Phu with a battalion of Airborne as soon as the reduction in enemy firepower was sufficient to give him confidence to send in troop-carrying helos. His message explained how aerial recon had shown HQ that what the Enterprise pilots had seen as hot spots on the infrared were bogus revetments. They were bombing a lot of warm holes — hurricane lamps, paraffin stove tins, anything that’d show up on the infrared.

* * *

In his headquarters two hundred miles to the east at Phu Lang Thuong, Freeman was feeling far less confident than he had the night before. He was unusually tense and, for him, extraordinarily racked by conscience, torn between his overall obligation as field commander and his sense of obligation toward the men he’d sent in to Dien Bien Phu.

It hadn’t been a popular decision in either Washington — with the President, his Commander in Chief — or with Jorgensen in Hanoi. And now instead of the hard-hitting Special Forces preemptive strike he’d envisioned, the ninety men — or however many were left — were cut off deep in northwest Vietnam.

What had he told Bob Cline? “L’audace! L’audace! Toujours I’audace!” and now he was sitting on his bum in Phu Lang Thuong with an impending disaster both northward at Disney and west at Dien Bien Phu.

“Bob, I’m going in.”

“Where?”

“Dien Bien Phu. I ought to be there. Damn it, it’s my responsibility.”

“Begging the general’s pardon,” an alarmed Cline cut in, “but your responsibility is with Disney as well as Dien Bien Phu. You’d be robbing Paul to pay Peter.”

“Look,” a clearly agitated Freeman responded, “I’m personally responsible for sending these guys into Dien Bien Phu. From first to last it was my idea,”

“Maybe so, General, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. If you go into Dien Bien Phu, you’re as much as announcing you’ve no faith in your commanders there. That can’t be any good for morale — to relegate Berry, Leigh-Hastings, and Roscoe subordinate to your command.”

“Not if I go in as commander of the Airborne.”

“Then, sir, you’ll undercut the commanding officer of the Airborne.” Cline paused. “General, sir. No one doubts your courage, if that’s what’s at issue here. You’ve been awarded a string of medals as long as your arm.”

“You’re right, Bob.” He paused. “All right, then let’s draw up the reinforcement plans. First we have to do some—”

“Deforestation?”

“Yes.”

“Sir, are you going to use any herbicide?”

“Only if I have to. Why?”

“I’m thinking about the press. If they got on to that — I mean the herbicide you have in mind — how’s it compare with Agent Orange?”

Freeman was already drawing up attack plans against the enemy’s lines of communication beyond the Dien Bien Phu valley. Already totally immersed in the details of his TACAIR plan, code-named “Zebra,” and walking about a sand table mock-up of the Echo, Foxtrot, Delta triangle like a pool player lining up his shot, he quietly responded to Cline’s question about the herbicide. “Compared to the herbicides we have now, Major, you could use Agent Orange as a douche!”

“Christ!”

“Don’t worry, I won’t use it if I don’t have to.”

* * *

As Trang approached the culvert, the rain-sodden guard forty yards away stepped out from a lean-to made of a ground sheet and a collapsible teepee frame of three bamboo sticks and gave him a desultory wave. Trang waved back and asked when the next supply train was due. The guard answered, “In about a half hour.”

“Where’s the nearest maintenance shed?” Trang asked. “I’ve got orders to check the tracks — make sure everything’s secure after the rain.”

“Another hundred yards or so into the culvert,” the guard said uninterestedly, watching Shirley walk by, her figure in sharp relief under her sodden clothes. The guard looked up at Trang. “I’d like to check out her track, eh?”

Trang gave an appropriate grunt of agreement and, his horse’s head drooping with fatigue, led his three exhausted-looking prisoners on. Trang couldn’t see the next guard even after going into the culvert for another thirty yards, the drizzle of rain no doubt helping to obscure the view. Soon Shirley whispered to Mike Murphy to tell Trang she could smell tobacco smoke. “You sure?” Murphy whispered.

“Are you kidding?” Shirley said. “I’m allergic to it. I can smell a cig—”

“Be quiet,” Mellin whispered behind them.

Murphy was about to pass on the information to Trang, who told them quietly that he could see the red glow of a cigarette bobbing about. Looking back, Trang could no longer see the guard they’d passed.

By now they were well over a hundred yards into the culvert, and Trang could just barely make out the outhouselike shape of a maintenance shack, and now, with a surge of relief, he realized why Shirley couldn’t see the red glow of the cigarette although she’d smelled it downwind. The guard was inside the shed having a quiet smoke, the bobbing glow of his cigarette visible only now and then through the slit of the open door.

“Comrade!” Trang called out. The cigarette disappeared.

“Yes, comrade,” came a gruff, accommodating voice.

“I’ve got a few prisoners here — we’re to use them to help check the tracks. We need a few tools — a rail is loose back there.”

“Oh, all right, comrade. Authorization.”

“Yes,” Trang said, reaching in his top left tunic pocket, the guard unslinging his rifle, the better to see the authorization.

“You have a flashlight, comrade?” he asked.

“Got everything,” Trang said, who out of the darkness brought the Makarov 9mm crashing against the other’s temple. The guard dropped with a thud, his head bumping the door as he fell.

The next second Murphy had slit his throat. “C’mon,” he said to Shirley. “He’s about your size. C’mon, c’mon, the rain’ll wash the blood away. Quickly, in the shed.” Murphy undressed the man, handing the clothes into the shack, where Shirley, despite her five feet, three inches, could hardly stand upright. But she was done in a few anxious minutes and Murphy gave her the Chinese T-56, an AK-47 look-alike. “It’s got a full mag in and the safety button’s on — feel it?” His warm hands touched hers.

“Yes.”

“Goes off this way — got it?”

“Yes… I think.”