The flight deck was at chest height. above Jake’s head, the tails of aircraft were just visible in the dim glow of the masthead lights. The aircraft were parked in rows, wheel to wheel with wings folded. Each plane was backed up with its main mounts against the steel curb around the deck; fifteen feet of its fuselage and tail protruded over the ocean.
Jake walked forward on the catwalk until he stood at the very bow of the ship. Here the wind came head on. By leaning out over the railing he could see the white curl as the bow cut the black water.
He rested his arms on the railing.
He thought of Callie. He tried to recall her face, her voice, her warmth, but it was difficult in the overpowering presence of the night sea. Was it love he felt for her?
Get a grip on yourself, Grafton. Reality is another long line period.
More worthless targets, more flak, more SAMs. More bombs to drop.
Only now McPherson’s dead. Dead for a few acres of splintered trees.
And what had Morgan believed in? They had never discussed the war, except professionally. War is night cat shots and going in low and fast and hard. And death.
McPherson. Dead.
“You should have talked to me, Morg. You should have talked to me.” The sea wind swallowed his words. He was talking to the infinite night that Morgan McPherson was now a part of. “How come we never talked? You should have told me. . . .”
What would Morgan say to me? I flew with you, Jake, and I lived as you lived and I felt what you felt and I was ready to die when you died. But I died alone. Yet I died swinging, laying the bombs in with a good radar and a good computer.
McPherson would tell him to keep swinging. Keep riding the cat and laying them in. Keep swinging at a good target. Swing at something that will make a difference. Swing at something that will make them bleed. Swing with a blade in your hand.
But what can you attack with weapons designed to destroy industrial targets when the enemy has a nonindustrialized, agrarian economy?
Bridges, railroads, and power plants had all been hammered. There were no oil refineries; fuel was stored in fifty-five-gallon drums, and storage areas were hit wherever they were identified. The one steel mill had been flattened. The Haiphong shipyards had been reduced to servicing only fishing boats. Munition storage sites? When they could be found by photoreconnaissance, they were pounded. Big factories making chemicals, cars, guns, glass, cans, television sets, radios, airplanes, dishes, furniture? Not in North Vietnam. Cottage industries, little shops, did all the manufacturing. There weren’t even any food processing centers, just outdoor markets so typical of Asia where rice and seaweed and rotting fish were sold from flimsy stalls. The dams and dikes were vulnerable, but the politicians refused to target them. So what was left Nothing. Except the people. Their only real resource was people.
Maybe that was the answer. Maybe the VietNamese communists couldn’t afford to lose their leadership What the hell! He could at least look into it. First, he would need a map of Hanoi that showed the streets an major buildings.
Abe Steiger was in the Mission Planning space “Don’t you ever sleep?” the pilot asked.
“Could ask you the same question,” Steiger said a he placed his index finger on the bridge of his glasses and pushed them back.
Jake shrugged. “It’s been a busy day.” He glanced around, hoping to see a map of Hanoi on the bulkhead He walked over to a chart index of Indochina. “Do you have any large-scale charts of Hanoi? Something that shows the streets?”
Steiger consulted the index, then searched through the drawers.
“It’s no big deal,” Grafton added. But he knew Steiger would be curious “I’ve been wondering what Hanoi really looks like.”
“I know what you mean,” Steiger said as he took a chart from a chest with deep, thin drawers and laid it on one of the tables. “I’ve taken out this one from time to time for the same reason.”
The chart showed the main streets and major buildings and the bridges across the Red River. That was about all. A bombardier would have a hell of a time constructing a radar prediction from this. “Got anything more detailed?”
“Naw, this is about it. We’re not National Geographic, you know.”
‘Where’s the Hanoi Hilton?”
Steiger’s finger went directly to the spot where the POWs were kept.
“This old prison here.”
Jake lit a cigarette and leaned over the chart. The French, who had been in Indochina for almost a hundred years before being evicted, would have located the important buildings on traffic circles and avenues.
“Got any pictures?”
“Some,” Abe said. “Just a minute.” The intelligence officer went next door to where reconnaissance photos were developed, studied, and cataloged.
About three minutes later he returned with a pile in each hand. “We have a few, but they aren’t too recent.”
Grafton flipped through the photos. Vertical and side-view shots were mixed together. He glanced at the captions of each, hoping that he would find one marked “Capitol” or “Communist Party Headquarters.” He did find two photographs that showed prominent buildings, and one of the structures had a flag in front of it. But that could be the post office. He continued slowly through the stacks, careful not to show too much interest in any one picture.
Jake had not yet apologized to Abe for the wardroom scene, although he intended to at some point. He and Steiger were now alone together for the first time since the incident. Jake sensed a coolness between them, but he avoided the subject and limited himself to occasional remarks about the pictures.
For the most part, the city consisted of endless blocks of three- or four-story apartments-the pictures showed laundry in seemingly every window-and drab squat little factories with smoke stacks. No hotels or tourists here, and no big public monuments like those in most national capitals. Even Karl Marx, Jake thought, would be appalled at this dreary, cheerless workers’ paradise. He found a picture of the remnants of the Paul Doumer bridge and studied it closely. Men had died and airplanes had fallen putting an end to the bridge.
Jake spread out the photos and scrutinized them one by one. If you could pick any target in the country, he asked himself, what would you bomb? Well, it would have to be here, inside the capital. If they have anything worth a damn, it must be here, in these pictures. But what?
“Got any infrared photos back there? Steiger looked doubtful. “I’ll see.” As soon as he had disappeared, Jake slipped half a dozen of the most interesting prints into his shirt. He was trying to pinpoint the major buildings on the chart when Steiger returned with three eight-by-tens taken from directly above the city.
These pictures could be mistaken for time-exposures of the city at night, but the light came from heat sources, not street lamps. The paved streets that had absorbed the sun’s energy showed as faint ribbons Some of the brighter hot spots were probably factories The pinpricks of light might be kitchen chimneys. What else can I learn from looking at these pictures? Jake wondered.
Would hot or cold air flow out of public buildings? Wouldn’t it depend on the time of day?
A magnifying glass might help. He realized he didn’t no know enough to interpret the pictures, so he finally handed them back. “Mind if I borrow this?” he asked as he rolled the chart into a tube.
Down in their room, Sammy was asleep. Jake sat quietly on his bottom bunk and examined the stolen photos again before locking them in his desk safe.
A significant target-perhaps Communist Party headquarters? If he could drop two or three thousandpounders into it, what a message that would deliver to the Hanoi leadership! The Communists would assume that the American government had ordered the bombing. Perhaps that would drive them to end the war.
He watched his cigarette tip glow in the dark as he considered the implications of such a raid. It was tempting. This would not be a “suspected truck park” or another raid on a bombed-out rail yard. No, this would be a real target, something worth the trip, a hit that might have a positive effect on the outcome of the war. Communists have a sure feel for gun-barrel politics, Jake told himself. They’d get the message. Of course, they’ll throw everything they own into the air to defend Hanoi, and we’ll have to get through it.
