‘Why me, sir?’
‘You’re the only person in the country who’s seen this area from ground level.’
‘And if we’re smart, we’ll keep it that way.’ Kelly’s memories of the place were anything but pleasant. Looking at the two-dimensional map instantly brought bad three-dimensional recollections.
‘How far did you go up the river, John?’
‘About to here.’ Kelly’s hand wandered across the map. ‘I missed your son on the first sweep so I doubled back and found him right about here.’
And that wasn’t bad, Maxwell thought, tantalizingly close to the objective. ‘This highway bridge is gone. Only took us sixteen missions, but it’s in the river now.’
‘You know what that means, don’t you? They build a ford, probably, or a couple underwater bridges. You want advice on taking those out?’
‘Waste of time. The objective is here.’ Maxwell’s finger tapped a spot marked with red pen.
‘That’s a long way to swim, sir. What is it?’
‘Chief, when you retired you checked the box for being in the Fleet Reserve,’ Maxwell said benignly.
‘Hold on, sir!’
‘Relax, son, I’m not recalling you.’ Yet, Maxwell thought. ‘You had a top-secret clearance.’
‘Yeah, we all did, because of -‘
‘This stuff is higher than TS, John.’ And Maxwell explained why, pulling additional items from his portfolio.
‘Those motherfuckers …’ Kelly looked up from the recon photo. ‘You want to go in and get them out, like Song Tay?’
‘What do you know about that?’
‘Just what was in the open,’ Kelly explained. ‘We talked it around the group. It sounded like a pretty slick job. Those Special Forces guys can be real clever when they work at it. But -‘
‘Yeah, but there was nobody home. This guy’- Maxwell tapped the photo – ‘is positively ID’d as an Air force colonel. Kelly, you can never repeat this.’
‘I understand that, sir. How do you plan to do it?’
‘We’re not sure yet. You know something about the area, and we want your information to help look at alternatives.’
Kelly thought back. He’d spent fifty sleepless hours in the area. ‘It would be real hairy for a helo insertion. There’s a lot of triple-A there. The nice thing about Song Tay, it wasn’t close to anything, but this place is close enough to Haiphong, and you have these roads and stuff. This is a tough one, sir.’
‘Nobody ever said it was going to be easy.’
‘If you loop around here, you can use this ridge-line to mask your approach, but you have to hop the river somewhere … here, and you run into that flak trap … and that one’s even worse, ‘cording to these notations.’
‘Did SEALs plan air missions over there, Chief?’ Maxwell asked, somewhat amused, only to be surprised at the reply.
‘Sir, 3rd SOG was always short of officers. They kept getting shot up. I was the group operations officer for two months, and we all knew how to plan insertions. We had to, that was the most dangerous part of most missions. Don’t take this wrong, sir, but even enlisted men know how to think.’
Maxwell bristled a little. ‘I never said they didn’t.’
Kelly managed a grin. ‘Not all officers are as enlightened as you are, sir.’ He looked back down at the map. ‘You plan this sort of thing backwards. You start with what do you need on the objective, then you backtrack to find out how you get it all there.’
‘Save that for later. Tell me about the river valley,’ Maxwell ordered.
Fifty hours, Kelly remembered, picked up from Danang by helo, deposited aboard the submarine USS Skate, which then had moved Kelly right into the surprisingly deep estuary of that damned stinking river, fighting his way up against the current behind an electrically powered sea-scooter, which was still there, probably, unless some fisherman had snagged a line on it, staying underwater until his air tanks gave out, and he remembered how frightening it was not to be able to hide under the rippled surface. When he couldn’t do that, when it had been too dangerous to move, hiding under weeds on the bank, watching traffic move on the river road, hearing the ripping thunder of the flak batteries on the hilltops, wondering what some 37mm fire could do to him if some North Vietnamese boy scout stumbled across him and let his father know. And now this flag officer was asking him how to risk the lives of other men in the same place, trusting him, much as Pam had, to know what to do. That sudden thought chilled the retired chief bosun’s mate.
‘It’s not a really nice place, sir. I mean, your son saw a lot of it, too.’
‘Not from your perspective,’ Maxwell pointed out.
And that was true, Kelly remembered. Little Dutch had bellied up in a nice thick place, using his radio only on alternate hours, waiting for Snake to come and fetch him while he nursed a broken leg in silent agony, and listened to the same triple-A batteries that had splashed his A-6 hammer the sky at other men trying to take out the same bridge that his own bombs had missed. Fifty hours, Kelly remembered, no rest, no sleep, just fear and the mission.
‘How much time, sir?’
‘We’re not sure. Honestly, I’m not sure if we can get the mission green-lighted. When we have a plan, then we can present it. When it’s approved, we can assemble assets, and train, and execute.’
‘Weather considerations?’ Kelly asked.
‘The mission has to go in the fall, this fall, or maybe it’ll never go.’
‘You say these guys will never come back unless we get them?’
‘No other reason for them to set this place up in the way they did,’ Maxwell replied.
‘Admiral, I’m pretty good, but I’m just an enlisted guy, remember?’
‘You’re the only person who’s been close to the place.’ The Admiral collected the photographs and the maps. He handed Kelly a fresh set of the latter. ‘You turned down OCS three times. I’d like to know why, John.’
‘You want the truth? It would have meant going back. I pushed my luck enough.’
Maxwell accepted that at face value, silently wishing that his best source of local information had accumulated the rank to match his expertise, but Maxwell also remembered flying combat missions off the old Enterprise with enlisted pilots, at least one of whom had displayed enough savvy to be an air-group commander, and he knew that the best helicopter pilots around were probably the instant Warrant Officers the Army ran through Fort Rucker. This wasn’t the time for a wardroom mentality.
‘One mistake from Song Tay,’ Kelly said after a moment.
‘What’s that?’
‘They probably overtrained. After a certain period of time, you’re just dulling the edge. Pick the right people, and a couple of weeks, max, will handle it. Go further than that and you’re just doing embroidery.’
‘You’re not the first person to say that,’ Maxwell assured him.
‘Will this be a SEAL job?’
‘We’re not sure yet. Kelly, I can give you two weeks while we work on other aspects of the mission.’
‘How do I get in touch, sir?’
Maxwell dropped a Pentagon pass on the table. ‘No phones, no mail, it’s all face-to-face contact.’
Kelly stood and walked him out to the helicopter. As soon as the Admiral came into view, the flight crew started lighting up the turbine engines on the SH-2 SeaSprite. He grabbed the Admiral’s arm as the rotor started turning.
‘Was the Song Tay job burned?’
That stopped Maxwell in his tracks. ‘Why do you ask?’
Kelly nodded. ‘You just answered my question, Admiral.’
‘We’re not sure, Chief.’ Maxwell ducked his head under the rotor and got into the back of the helicopter. As it lifted off, he found himself wishing again that Kelly had taken the invitation to officer-candidate school. The lad was smarter than he’d realized, and the Admiral made a note to look up his former commander for a fuller evaluation. He also wondered what Kelly would do on his formal recall to active duty. It seemed a shame to betray the boy’s trust – it might be seen that way to him, Maxwell thought as the Sea-Sprite turned and headed northwest – but his mind and soul lingered with the twenty men believed to be in SENDER GREEN, and his first loyalty had to be to them. Besides, maybe Kelly needed the distraction from his personal troubles. The Admiral consoled himself with that thought.
Kelly watched the helo disappear into the forenoon haze. Then he walked towards his machine shop. He’d expected that by this time today his body would be hurting and his mind relaxed. Strangely, the reverse was now true. The exercise at the hospital had paid off more handsomely than he’d dared to hope. There was still a problem with stamina, but his shoulder, after the usual start-up pain, had accepted the abuse with surprisingly good grace, and now having passed through the customary post-exercise agony, the secondary period of euphoria had set in. He’d feel good all day, Kelly expected, though he’d hit the bed early tonight in anticipation of yet another day’s punishing exercise, and tomorrow he’d take a watch and start exercising in earnest by rating himself against the clock. The Admiral had given him two weeks. That was about the time he’d given to himself for his physical preparation. Now it was time for another sort.