might not reveal itself until he was again put under stress.
Stress such as what he might endure during a dogfight in the seat of his F-14.
Well, sure. Go after a guy with a cattle prod and he was going to show definite signs of stress. But the cure wasn't to leave him at home when he had a chance of striking back. The burns still hurt, especially on his underarms, stomach, and groin where his flight suit chafed, but they wouldn't stop him from flying.
He was going on this mission. He owed it to Pamela.
And to Bayerly.
He'd argued the point with the doctor, demanding at last that CAG be brought into it. It had taken some doing, but in the end, and at CAG's urging, the doctor had agreed.
Batman would be flying today too. Malibu Blake had a down chit, of course, and would be in sick bay for another few days with his sprained ankle, but the rest of them would be going. Tombstone checked his watch. In less than four hours now.
'Look. Slick…' Tombstone hesitated, unsure how to proceed. 'About the assignments for today…'
Connelly grinned. 'Don't sweat it, hotdog. Sure, I'm jealous as hell… but no hard feelings. You've been point on an alpha strike before.
That's probably why they picked you.'
Tombstone chuckled. 'Well, they didn't choose me for my boyish good looks.' He tried to make a joke of it. 'I figure my uncle has it in for me, is all.'
The final details for Bright Lightning had been posted only that evening.
VF-95 would be leading the way into U Feng, supporting the That air group called Trapdoor. VF-97 would fly CAP over the Jefferson… just as they had at Wonsan.
Once, Tombstone would have been upset at that. He wasn't certain what had changed. Possibly, he reasoned, he had a more realistic image of himself since his capture and escape. If there was anything special about him, it wasn't who he was related to.
And Slick's reaction told him that the other men in the air wing weren't holding his relatives against him either. At this point, though, what the other people thought didn't concern Tombstone. He was going on the mission, and that was all that mattered.
That, and the fact that Hsiao still held Pamela and Bayerly out there somewhere.
He would lead the Vipers to U Feng. But God help Hsiao if Tombstone ever met with that bastard again.
The 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) of the Royal That Army was organized along the same lines as the American Green Berets, concerned primarily with anti-guerrilla ops, intelligence gathering, and missions behind the lines. They trained extensively with their American counterparts, as well as with the elite troops of other nations. Though they normally wore two-piece jungle camouflage uniforms in the field, for special operations they wore the all-black combat suits and balaclavas of other elite units.
The men who rappelled from the hovering That UH-1s, then, were almost invisible against the night. They dropped from the helos in teams of four, landed on the roof of the hotel, and made their way quickly to pre-selected vantage points, M-16s and combat shotguns at the ready. For the past several hours, government helicopters had been making low passes over the area, in the hope that the defenders of the hotel's upper floors would become accustomed to the noise. Two bodies lay on the roof, army mutineers on guard cut down by suppressed, nightscope-directed fire from a neighboring rooftop seconds before the Hueys made their final approach.
At the same time that the airmobile force landed on the roof, assault teams entered on the ground level, securing the elevators and stairwells.
As Master Chief Buckley had noted during his closed-circuit TV broadcast the week before, officers in the That army were permitted to own their own businesses completely apart from their military careers. A check of government records by the That CIA showed that Colonel Kriangsak Vajiravudh was the owner of record of the Americana Hotel in the Yommarat district of Bangkok, as well as the unusual fact that the top two floors of the twenty-story building and the entire basement level below the parking garage had all been reserved for his personal use.
Operating under the tactical principle that it is always better to attack down when clearing a building rather than up, the roof assault teams moved in, splintering the access door with shotgun blasts and bursting into the stairwells. Supported by teams moving up from the eighteenth floor, they broke into the hotel corridors and began breaking into the penthouse suites.
Gunfire stuttered and barked as Kriangsak's bodyguards fought and died.
Stun grenades were tossed into hotel rooms seconds before black-garbed Special Forces troops rolled through, M-16s and CAR-15s at the ready. The defenders fought back, but they were disorganized and surprised. One by one, they were cut down.
The survivors began surrendering less than three minutes after the first shotgun blast, and soon the prisoners, disarmed, their wrists secured in plastic restraints, were being led in groups of three to Hueys which waited, hovering, just above the roof.
Fifteen prisoners were taken. Seven army mutineers were killed, at a cost of one commando dead and two wounded. In the basement, the attackers discovered an enormous cache of weapons, including over fifteen hundred Chinese-manufactured AK-47s, thirty RPD machine guns, dozens of RPG rocket launchers, case upon case of apple-green RGD-5 hand grenades, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, arms and ammo enough to start a small war… which, indeed, they already had. It also provided confirmation that one Kriangsak Vajiravudh was indeed a traitor.
In every way save one, then, Operation Dahm Baho, Black Light, was a complete success.
Unfortunately, Colonel Kriangsak was not in the hotel when the attack went down.
Colonel Kriangsak felt out of place in the commander's hatch of the Cadillac-Gage Stingray as it clattered up the four-lane highway toward Bangkok's central district. His place was on the staff of one of Thailand's senior generals, a world of desks and telephones, of briefing rooms and paperwork, not the clash of steel tracks on pavement or the stink of diesel fumes.
The Stingray light tank was one of six traveling in column toward the cluster of government buildings and royal residences which comprised the heart of the capital. Following the tanks were twenty trucks and over three hundred soldiers loyal to him. Their target was nothing less than the seat of government itself.
Seize the capital. Force the King to see the futility of continued bloodshed within the sacred precincts of Krung Thep. Prove to the armed forces of all Thailand that the army was strong, strong enough to stand against the communists and their Burmese hosts.
And with the American battle group gone, it was possible now. Kriangsak regretted his earlier doubts. General Hsiao had been right. The American carrier was vulnerable. Kriangsak had been on the shore at Sattahip two nights before, had seen the rocket attack and the volcanic pillar of fire rising from the Jefferson's flight deck. He'd watched as the stricken carrier, still burning, had ignominiously slipped her anchor chain and limped from the harbor, heading south.
The latest reports placed the Jefferson almost fifty miles southwest of Sattahip now, still moving away at slow speed. That news would shake the King, and all those who still hoped that American support would come. And it would cheer the CPT revolutionary front now bracing for a That army attack at U Feng. At least it would hold them together until the coup could unite the army… under the leadership of Kriangsak Vajiravudh.
Everything was unfolding precisely as Hsiao had promised. Kriangsak could only shake his head in wonder.
The tank's radioman tugged at Kriangsak's pants leg, demanding attention.
He ducked inside the hatch and accepted the radio headset. 'Kriangsak here,' he said.
'Colonel! This is Captain Priya!' The voice was rough with static, and nearly lost in the racket from the tank column. 'Headquarters has been captured!'
'What? Speak up!'
'I said headquarters has been captured. Special Forces broke into the Americana forty minutes ago!'
The news shook Kriangsak. It was not a fatal blow ? there were other arms and supply caches in and near
