demonstration flight in an F/A-18 when Zeus was in Special Forces. The idea was to educate the soldier on what pilots did when called in on a ground support mission.
The only education Zeus got had to do with the futility of trying to control certain involuntary bodily movements and reactions, none of them pleasant.
He couldn’t imagine what sort of aircraft the Vietnamese air force would be flying at this point. Probably one of those open-cockpit biplanes.
He braced himself as he was driven to the airport. Civilian traffic was now practically nonexistent, and the road was empty though it was the middle of the day. Some of the fires Zeus had seen on the way into the city were still burning.
The driver worked hard trying to keep the jeep — an old American vehicle — from falling into the worst of the craters on the access road to the military hangar area. Zeus’s teeth rattled as they careened back and forth across the road, the driver occasionally pushing the jeep into the pockmarked infield in an effort to find a smooth path.
A two-engined Russian transport sat at the far end of the apron area, being fueled. It was an An-26 Curl, a member of the turboprop family sometimes compared to the C-130 Hercules. Josh consoled himself with the thought that he could have done much worse as the jeep barreled toward the aircraft. He gripped the side of the dashboard, expecting the driver would slam on the brakes any second. But the jeep only picked up speed, until it looked for all the world that they were going to crash into the plane. At the last possible second, he turned the wheel and hit the brakes. The jeep screeched to a stop a few feet from the plane — and maybe inches from the fuel truck next to it.
“Great. Thanks,” said Zeus, pulling himself out of the vehicle as quickly as he could. Feet shaking, he grabbed his ruck — he had a sweater and a pair of binoculars as well as several maps — and started toward the plane.
The driver began yelling at him in Vietnamese.
“What?” asked Zeus, gesturing.
The man pointed to the right, beyond the oil truck.
“Isn’t this the plane?”
The driver signaled that he had to go farther — around the side of the building.
Zeus turned the corner. An old Cessna sat near the hangar.
It didn’t look like it could possibly fly, especially since the rear quarter of the plane was covered with a tarp. Zeus walked over and put his hand on the wing strut.
Was it his imagination, or did the strut give way as he pulled back and forth?
“Lieutenant Murphy?”
Zeus turned to find a man dressed in a pilot’s jumper grinning at him.
“I’m Murphy.”
“I’m Captain Thieu,” said the man, removing one of his hands from his hips to shake. The accent made his English hard to understand. “Headquarters told me you were on your way. You’re a little late.”
“Sorry.”
“We’re just about ready to take off. I will give you an orientation brief in the hangar. Then we will fly.”
“Okay.”
“Nice old plane, eh?” said Thieu, coming over and rapping his knuckles on the Cessna’s nose. “Old Bird Dog.”
“Yup. It’s nice.”
“It was American,” said the pilot approvingly. “You like these?”
“Uh…”
“Very good plane.”
“I’m sure. Do I get to wear a parachute?”
“Yes, of course.”
At least that was something.
“If we’re tight on time, why don’t we just take off right now,” said Zeus. “You can brief me while we’re in the plane.”
“It will be easier on the ground,” said Thieu. “I have to take a last-minute look at the weather and the other intelligence.”
“All right. What about that tarp?”
Thieu gave him a puzzled look. “What about it?”
“When do you take it off?”
“Oh no, no, no, Lieutenant. We are not taking that plane.”
“Thank God.”
“We’re flying the Albatros. You see?” Thieu pointed across the concrete parking area toward a fighter jet that looked nearly as small as the Cessna. “We’ll go in and out, very fast. Nothing to fear.”
Or any other meal for the past year.
Gravity squeezed him against the rear seat of the Aero L-39C as Thieu rocketed the plane off the runway, pushing the nose up nearly ninety degrees and then twisting onto the proper flight path.
The L-39C was a Czech-built aircraft, intended primarily as a trainer, though used by some Third World countries as a lightweight attack aircraft. Its single engine — there were scoops on either side of the cockpit, but only one power plant — could take it about 755 kilometers an hour, or 408 knots, not supersonic but not standing still either. When it came from the factory, the Albatros did not carry a machine gun or provisions for other weapons; however, the Vietnamese had added a 23 mm twin-barrel cannon to its underside, giving it a limited attack capacity
“Lieutenant, are you with us?” Thieu asked as they cleared through five thousand meters, roughly fifteen thousand feet.
“I’m here.”
“We will be over the reservoir in ten minutes.”
Zeus checked his watch. The Tomahawk missiles traveled at roughly 550 knots; the ships they were aboard were about 220 miles away. Once Zeus gave the okay for them to launch, it would take nearly a half hour for them to arrive. Zeus and Thieu would be circling the whole time.
Loads of fun.
Zeus closed his eyes, willing his stomach to behave as they flew. After a couple of deep breaths, he opened them again and forced himself to look outside the cockpit toward the ground.
The fields below were divided into long rectangles intersected by irrigation ditches. Houses clustered on the high spots, a few hundred or so gathered around the roads. They looked like little metal toys, their steel roofs glittering in the afternoon sun.
The clouds thickened, obscuring much of his view. When they cleared, he saw a large body of water and thought they were over the reservoir, but it was just the Hung River. They still had a good distance to go.
“You like flying?” asked Thieu over the interphone or internal radio.
“Not particularly.”
The pilot laughed. “I love it,” said Thieu. “I learned when I was sixteen. So today I have been flying for half my life. Today is my birthday. Much luck today.”
“That’s good,” said Zeus, struggling to sound enthusiastic. “Happy birthday.”
“Look at the mountains. Very pretty. No?”
They looked like green wrinkles in the earth.
Green wrinkles of…
Zeus took his maps from the leg pocket of his flight suit and unfolded them, trying to correlate what he saw with the ground below. The Tomahawks had three targets: the hydro plant and dam at Hoa Binh, the dam at Suvui, and the bridge below the dam where Route 6 ran south and connected to Route 15.
The Suvui dam was the most important target. Only a few months old, it had been built with the help of the
