‘And the bad news?’ Admiral Podulski asked.
‘Do I have to tell you? Enough triple-A along the coast to turn the sky black. SA-2 batteries here, here, and probably here, too. It’s dangerous there for fast-movers, Cas. For helicopters? One or two rescue birds, sure, it’s doable, but a large lift will be real dicey. We went all over this when we scoped our KINGPIN, remember?’
‘It’s only thirty miles from the beach.’
‘Fifteen or twenty minutes in a helo, flying in a straight line, which they will not be able to do, Cas. I went over the threat maps myself. The best route I can identify – it’s your area, Cas, but I do know a little, okay? – is twenty-five minutes, and I wouldn’t want to fly it in daylight.’
‘We can use -52s to blast a corridor through,’ Podulski suggested. He’d never been the most subtle man in the world.
‘I thought you wanted to keep this small,’ Greer observed. ‘Look, the real bad news is that there isn’t much enthusiasm for this kind of mission anywhere. KINGPIN failed-‘
‘That wasn’t our fault!’ Podulski objected.
‘I know that, Cas,’ Greer said patiently. Podulski had always been a passionate advocate.
‘It ought to be doable,’ Cas growled.
All three men hovered over the reconnaisance photos. It was a good collection, two from satellites, two from SR-71 Blackbirds, and three very recent low-obliques from Buffalo Hunter drones. The camp was two hundred metres square, an exact square in fact, undoubtedly fitting exactly the diagram in some East Bloc manual for building secure facilities. Each corner had a guard tower, each of which was exactly ten meters in height. Each tower had a tin roof to keep the rain off the NVA-standard-issue RPD light machine gun, an obsolete Russian design. Inside the wire were three large buildings and two small ones. Inside one of the large buildings were, they believed, twenty American officers, all lieutenant-colonel/commander rank or higher, for this was a special camp.
It was the Buffalo Hunter photos that had first come to Greer’s attention. One was good enough to have identified a face, Colonel Robin Zacharias, USAF. His F-I05G Wild Weasel had been shot down eight months earlier; he and his weapons-systems operator had been reported killed by the North Vietnamese. Even a picture of his body had been published. This camp, whose code name, SENDER GREEN, was known to fewer than fifty men and women, was separate from the better-known Hanoi Hilton, which had been visited by American citizens and where, since the spectacular but unsuccessful Operation KINGPIN raid on the camp at Song Tay, nearly all American POWs had been concentrated. Out of the way, located in the most unlikely of places, not acknowledged in any way, SENDER GREEN was ominous. However the war would turn out, America wanted her pilots back. Here was a place whose very existence suggested that some would never be returned. A statistical study of losses had shown an ominous irregularity: flight officers of relatively high rank were reported killed at a higher rate than those of lower rank. It was known that the enemy had good intelligence sources, many of them within the American ‘peace’ movement, that they had dossiers on senior American officers, who they were, what they knew, what other jobs they had held. It was possible that those officers were being held in a special place, that their knowledge was being used by North Vietnam as a bargaining chip for dealing with their Russian sponsors. The prisoners’ knowledge in areas of special strategic interest was being traded – maybe – for continuing support from a sponsor nation that was losing interest in this lengthy war, with the new atmosphere of detente. So many games were going on.
‘Gutsy,’ Maxwell breathed. The three blowups showed the man’s face, each one staring straight at the camera. The last of the three caught one of his guards in the act of swinging a rifle butt into his back. The face was clear. It was Zacharias.
‘This guy is Russian,’ Casimir Podulski said, tapping the drone photos. The uniform was unmistakable.
They knew what Cas was thinking. The son of Poland’s one-time ambassador to Washington, by heredity a count and scion of a family that had once fought at the side of King John Sobieski, his family had been extinguished on one side of the demarcation line by the Nazis along with the rest of the Polish nobility and on the other by the Russians in Katyn Forest, where two brothers had been murdered after fighting a brief and futile two-front war. In 1941, the day after graduating Princeton University, Podulski had joined the US Navy as an aviator, adopting a new country and a new profession, both of which he had served with pride and skill. And rage. That was now all the more intense because soon he would be forced to retire. Greer could see the reason. His surprisingly delicate hands were gnarled with arthritis. Try as he might to conceal it, his next physical would down-check him for good, and Cas would face retirement with memories of a dead son and a wife on antidepressant medications, after a career he would probably deem a failure despite his medals and personal flag.
‘We’ve got to find a way,’ Podulski said. ‘If we don’t, we’ll never see these men again. You know who might be there, Dutch? Pete Francis, Hank Osborne.’
‘Pete worked for me when I had Enterprise,’ Maxwell acknowledged. Both men looked at Greer.
‘I concur in the nature of the camp. I had my doubts. Zacharias, Francis, and Osborne are all names they’d be interested in.’ The Air Force officer had spent a tour at Omaha, part of the joint-targeting staff that selected the destinations for strategic weapons, and his knowledge of America’s most secret war plans was encyclopedic. The two naval officers had similarly important information, and while each might be brave, and dedicated, and obstinately determined to deny, conceal, and disguise, they were merely men, and men had limits; and the enemy had time. ‘Look, if you want, I can try to sell the idea to some people, but I’m not very hopeful.’
‘If we don’t, we’re breaking faith with our people!’ Podulski slammed his fist on the desk. But Cas had an agenda, too. Discovery of this camp, rescue of its prisoners, would make it explicitly clear that North Vietnam had publicly lied. That might poison the peace talks enough to force Nixon to adopt yet another optional plan being drawn up by a larger Pentagon working group: the invasion of the North. It would be that most American of military operations, a combined-arms assault, without precedent for its daring, scope, and potential dangers: an airborne drop directly into Hanoi, a division of marines hitting the beaches on both sides of Haiphong, air-mobile assaults in the middle, supported by everything America could bring to bear in one, massive, crushing, attempt to break the North by capture of its political leadership. That plan, whose cover name changed on a monthly basis – currently it was CERTAIN CORNET – was the Holy Grail of vengeance for all the professionals who had for six years watched their country blunder about in indecision and the profligate waste of America’s children.
‘Don’t you think I know that? Osborne worked for me at Suitland. I went with the chaplain when he delivered the fucking telegram, okay? I’m on your side, remember?’
Unlike Cas and Dutch, Greer knew that CERTAIN CORNET would never be more than a staff study. It just couldn’t happen, not without briefing Congress, and Congress had too many leaks A possibility in 1966 or ’67, maybe even as late as 1968, such an operation was unthinkable now. But SENDER GREEN was still there, and this mission was possible, just.
‘Cool down, Cas,’ Maxwell suggested.
‘Yes, sir.’
Greer shifted his gaze to the relief map. ‘You know, you airedales kind of limit your thinking.’
‘What do you mean? ‘Maxwell asked.
Greer pointed to a red line that ran from a coastal town neatly to the camp’s main gate. On the overhead photos it looked like a good road, black-topped, and all. ‘The reaction forces are here, here, and here. The road’s here, follows the river most of the way up. There are flak batteries all over the place, the road supports them, but, you know, triple-A isn’t dangerous to the right sort of equipment.’
‘That’s an invasion,’ Podulski observed.
‘And sending in two companies of air-mobile troops isn’t?’
‘I’ve always said you were smart, James,’ Maxwell said. ‘You know, this is right where my son was shot down. That SEAL went in and recovered him right about here,’ the Admiral said, tapping the map.
‘Somebody who knows the area from ground level?’ Greer asked. ‘That’s help. Where is he?’
‘Hi, Sarah.’ Kelly waved her to the chair. She looked older, he thought.
‘This is my third time, John. You were asleep the other two.’