by Ian Slater
“How about the weather?” Cline asked.
“We’ll go in with infrared fighters and bombers. We’re going to lose some if they go in as low as I have to, but without them our boys won’t be able to hold.”
Cline doubted if Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot could hold, even with TACAIR, but he recalled Freeman’s earlier point that there was an enormous difference politically between being wiped out and surrendering. Quite bluntly, being wiped out meant military defeat but not a breaking of will, a difference that was critical for Washington at the negotiating table. Of course, there was always the possibility that Wang’s buildup in the high ground above Dien Bien Phu was much less than anyone thought, and that the memory of the stunning French defeat at Dien Bien Phu was coloring USVUN intelligence reports. The writers of these reports might have recalled how, before Giap’s siege of 1953-54, French intelligence had performed so badly, assuring Navarre that the enemy buildup, because of the rugged limestone cliff terrain, could not be so substantial as to defeat the French garrison.
* * *
Echo, Foxtrot, and Delta were now busy digging in the complex of interconnecting trenches leading to and from machine-gun strong points in front of which they had cleared fields of interlocking fire in the shape of a triangle. Later that evening, fifty-pound spools of razor wire were successfully dropped before the plane was shot down, exploding on impact.
The most optimistic situation report sent to Hanoi and Phu Lang Thuong by Colonel Berry was that he estimated, from interdiction of PLA radio traffic, that his ninety-man Special Forces were outnumbered by at least twenty to one, when everyone knew full well that, all other things being equal, such as artillery, the optimum number of men needed for an attacking force to be victorious over a dug-in force was a five-to-one advantage.
Based on this rule of thumb, the situation for the Americans and British in Dien Bien Phu, in Pierre LaSalle’s latest report to CNN, was “hopeless.”
“How long do you think they can hold, Pierre?” the CNN anchor inquired.
LaSalle gave his usual Gallic shrug. “Twenty-four, perhaps forty-eight hours at most.”
“Thank you, Pierre.”
* * *
Fortunately for Colonel Berry, Major Leigh-Hastings, and Captain Roscoe, CNN reports were not considered the voice of God, and when Berry heard the CNN report off satellite feed, it inspired rather than depressed him. He immediately requested reinforcements, although he knew that this, depending on what Freeman was willing to send him, might make it necessary to fight for a drop zone north of the marshes at the old airstrip immediately north of Dien Bien Phu village.
While he was waiting for Freeman’s reply, Berry conferred with Leigh-Hastings and Roscoe, drawing up a plan to do something that he thought the PLA would not expect from the dug-in Special Forces — an attack to take the airstrip, utilizing the fact that the Nam Yum River formed the left flank of his triangle.
* * *
Freeman pored over the three-dimensional computer mock-up of Dien Bien Phu. There was no doubt that Berry had to be given reinforcements — whatever it took to hold the garrison until the negotiations reached a more favorable stage. The question was how and what to give him, and how for maximum defensive effect. For Freeman to think in the defensive mode was difficult, for he still clung to the axiom that mobility was the best form of defense, though in reality he knew such tactics could degenerate, as they did for Navarre, into merely feeding men to the enemy’s guns. Any fool could say, “Charge!”
“When will our planes from the Enterprise reach Dien Bien Phu?” Freeman asked.
“Seventeen hundred hours, sir. Fifteen minutes.”
“Dropping their bombs either side of the valley.”
“Yes sir. Weather report — mist lifting.”
“Beautiful,” Freeman said sarcastically. “We wait for the valley to clear, and when it does, we’ll be flying into night”
Cline reminded him that with infrared and terrain matching radar, the planes should still be able to put the smart bombs just where they wanted.
“Well, let’s hope so. Wang’s bound to have planted the high ground either side of that airstrip with triple A — turn the whole valley into a shooting gallery.” He picked up the weather report. “No moon. Well, that’s something.”
No moon meant not enough light for the PLA to attack, and brought back memories to Freeman of the Viet Cong moons years before.
* * *
If the brilliant use of camouflage nets by Giap had fooled French reconnaissance in ‘54, then the pilots flying the fighter-bombers from Enterprise were fully confident their infrared radar would pick out the enemy’s hot spots even if, as Giap had done, the guns were buried in deep, shored-up earth revetments from which they could be pulled and fired as needed.
As the F-14 Tomcats and F-18 Hornets peeled off and came into the valley heading north, the infrared images were popping up all over, whether from the residual heat of weapons having been fired earlier in the day, or from collective body heat, it didn’t matter. And the hot spots on the hills told the pilots where to place their five-hundred-pound laser-guided bombs.
Soon the valley erupted in strings of earth-shaking explosions and an intensity of crisscross tracer triple A of a density not seen by veteran pilots since the attacks on Baghdad in ‘91. The pilot of an F-18 had just slid a thousand-pound LGB down the beam when his cockpit began rattling violently. Everything from his caution lights through his backup gauges, digital display, and heads-up display was shot to pieces, and his control stick wasn’t responding. He pulled the eject straps over, elbowed in, pulled, heard the bang of the explosive bolt, and he was in a swirling, cold, wet, pitch-dark sky, illuminated by long, gentle arcs of triple A multicolored tracer and by the blossoms of orange light below, where bombs had hit. He felt the shock waves. Several minutes later he made a remarkably light landing in a marshy area, and had just released his harness and chute when he heard, “Don’t move!” It was a distinctly British voice and the pilot didn’t move.
“Get to you in a jiff, old boy!”
It was Leigh-Hastings, aware that the American pilot had just landed in a trip-wire claymore minefield off strongpoint Echo.
Overhead, Phantoms roared in, firing salvoes of 2.75-inch-diameter rockets and bursts from three 20mm machine-gun pods, strafing the jungle at the rate of six thousand rounds a minute. Then came Skyraiders firing their four 20mm guns, each Skyraider carrying over eight thousand pounds of ordnance. It was all very impressive-looking, the multiple explosions lighting up the valley at moments like a string of Chinese firecrackers in a long alley. It was good for the morale of Freeman’s trapped men, but they found via a short but ferocious enemy artillery barrage on the triangle later in the morning mist that few, if any, of Cheng’s heavy guns had been silenced.
“Jesus,” one Englishman opined. “I thought they walloped them last night.”
“So did I,” Kacey replied. “Sounded like the Fourth of July arou—” A cluster of four 105mm hit the triangle, throwing wet mud and dust into the air before the barrage ceased.
The depressing truth — that the raid from the Enterprise had not destroyed the enemy’s dug-in arty — came via Freeman’s message that morning to the garrison at Dien Bien Phu. He said he would reinforce Dien Bien Phu with a battalion of Airborne as soon as the reduction in enemy firepower was sufficient to give him confidence to send in troop-carrying helos. His message explained how aerial recon had shown HQ that what the Enterprise pilots had seen as hot spots on the infrared were bogus revetments. They were bombing a lot of warm holes — hurricane lamps, paraffin stove tins, anything that’d show up on the infrared.
* * *
In his headquarters two hundred miles to the east at Phu Lang Thuong, Freeman was feeling far less confident than he had the night before. He was unusually tense and, for him, extraordinarily racked by conscience, torn between his overall obligation as field commander and his sense of obligation toward the men he’d se
nt in to Dien Bien Phu.
It hadn’t been a popular decision in either Washington — with the President, his Commander in Chief — or with Jorgensen in Hanoi. And now instead of the hard-hitting Special Forces preemptive strike he’d envisioned, the ninety men — or however many were left — were cut off deep in northwest Vietnam.
What had he told Bob Cline? “L’audace! L’audace! Toujours I’audace!” and now he was sitting on his bum in Phu Lang Thuong with an impending disaster both northward at Disney and west at Dien Bien Phu.
“Bob, I’m going in.”
“Where?”
“Dien Bien Phu. I ought to be there. Damn it, it’s my responsibility.”
“Begging the general’s pardon,” an alarmed Cline cut in, “but your responsibility is with Disney as well as Dien Bien Phu. You’d be robbing Paul to pay Peter.”
“Look,” a clearly agitated Freeman responded, “I’m personally responsible for sending these guys into Dien Bien Phu. From first to last it was my idea,”
“Maybe so, General, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. If you go into Dien Bien Phu, you’re as much as announcing you’ve no faith in your commanders there. That can’t be any good for morale — to relegate Berry, Leigh-Hastings, and Roscoe subordinate to your command.”
“Not if I go in as commander of the Airborne.”
“Then, sir, you’ll undercut the commanding officer of the Airborne.” Cline paused. “General, sir. No one doubts your courage, if that’s what’s at issue here. You’ve been awarded a string of medals as long as your arm.”
“You’re right, Bob.” He paused. “All right, then let’s draw up the reinforcement plans. First we have to do some—”
“Deforestation?”
“Yes.”
“Sir, are you going to use any herbicide?”
“Only if I have to. Why?”
“I’m thinking about the press. If they got on to that — I mean the herbicide you have in mind — how’s it compare with Agent Orange?”
Freeman was already drawing up attack plans against the enemy’s lines of communication beyond the Dien Bien Phu valley. Already totally immersed in the details of his TACAIR plan, code-named “Zebra,” and walking about a sand table mock-up of the Echo, Foxtrot, Delta triangle like a pool player lining up his shot, he quietly responded to Cline’s question about the herbicide. “Compared to the herbicides we have now, Major, you could use Agent Orange as a douche!”
“Christ!”
“Don’t worry, I won’t use it if I don’t have to.”
* * *
As Trang approached the culvert, the rain-sodden guard forty yards away stepped out from a lean-to made of a ground sheet and a collapsible teepee frame of three bamboo sticks and gave him a desultory wave. Trang waved back and asked when the next supply train was due. The guard answered, “In about a half hour.”
“Where’s the nearest maintenance shed?” Trang asked. “I’ve got orders to check the tracks — make sure everything’s secure after the rain.”
“Another hundred yards or so into the culvert,” the guard said uninterestedly, watching Shirley walk by, her figure in sharp relief under her sodden clothes. The guard looked up at Trang. “I’d like to check out her track, eh?”
Trang gave an appropriate grunt of agreement and, his horse’s head drooping with fatigue, led his three exhausted-looking prisoners on. Trang couldn’t see the next guard even after going into the culvert for another thirty yards, the drizzle of rain no doubt helping to obscure the view. Soon Shirley whispered to Mike Murphy to tell Trang she could smell tobacco smoke. “You sure?” Murphy whispered.
“Are you kidding?” Shirley said. “I’m allergic to it. I can smell a cig—”
“Be quiet,” Mellin whispered behind them.
Murphy was about to pass on the information to Trang, who told them quietly that he could see the red glow of a cigarette bobbing about. Looking back, Trang could no longer see the guard they’d passed.
By now they were well over a hundred yards into the culvert, and Trang could just barely make out the outhouselike shape of a maintenance shack, and now, with a surge of relief, he realized why Shirley couldn’t see the red glow of the cigarette although she’d smelled it downwind. The guard was inside the shed having a quiet smoke, the bobbing glow of his cigarette visible only now and then through the slit of the open door.
“Comrade!” Trang called out. The cigarette disappeared.
“Yes, comrade,” came a gruff, accommodating voice.
“I’ve got a few prisoners here — we’re to use them to help check the tracks. We need a few tools — a rail is loose back there.”
“Oh, all right, comrade. Authorization.”
“Yes,” Trang said, reaching in his top left tunic pocket, the guard unslinging his rifle, the better to see the authorization.
“You have a flashlight, comrade?” he asked.
“Got everything,” Trang said, who out of the darkness brought the Makarov 9mm crashing against the other’s temple. The guard dropped with a thud, his head bumping the door as he fell.
The next second Murphy had slit his throat. “C’mon,” he said to Shirley. “He’s about your size. C’mon, c’mon, the rain’ll wash the blood away. Quickly, in the shed.” Murphy undressed the man, handing the clothes into the shack, where Shirley, despite her five feet, three inches, could hardly stand upright. But she was done in a few anxious minutes and Murphy gave her the Chinese T-56, an AK-47 look-alike. “It’s got a full mag in and the safety button’s on — feel it?” His warm hands touched hers.
“Yes.”
“Goes off this way — got it?”
“Yes… I think.”
“No thinking. Have you got it?”
“Yes.”
“If you haven’t got time to pass it to Danny or me, just tuck the butt under your right arm, hold it tight, and fire like you’re aiming a hose. It’ll jump high on you, but don’t let it frighten—”
“Quiet!” It was Danny. There was a noise like a faucet turned full on. The horse was urinating on the track.
“For Chrissake,” Murphy cussed. “Rude bastard! Nearly crapped myself.”
“Trang,” Danny said, “you move up ahead about twenty-five yards. Shirley back the other—” They heard the distant whistle of a train, and it reminded Mellin just how far they were from the border, given that the PLA engineer on the train could still sound his whistle without announcing it to the enemy soldiers on the border thirteen miles away. “If we succeed, each goes his own way, but get away from the line fast! Remember to head south.”
“What if it isn’t a supply train?” Murphy asked as he took the Makarov pistol, and Trang and Shirley, now on foot, walked in opposite directions down the track. No one had answered him, each intent on his or her task.
Danny Mellin handed Murphy a two-foot-tall T-socket wrench, the top of the T being the handles, the bottom of it a socket that fitted over the screw bolt that held down the tie and bracket up against the rail. When a screw bolt was taken out, the tight steel wedge between the tie bracket and the rail could be knocked out with a sledgehammer.
“We won’t use the hammer till we’ve taken all six screw bolts out,” Mellin explained. “That way we make all the noise as the train gets closer — use its noise to cover our noise.”
“Bit bloody dicey, isn’t it, Dan?”
“You got any better suggestions?”
“Yeah, blow the fucker up. Y’know, like the movies. A pack of TNT and the little plunger box.” They heard the whistle coming closer.
“Keep working on those screw bolts. Three to go. Hurry!”
As Danny hit the first wedge and knocked it out, it sounded as if it’d be heard for miles.
“Christ!” Murphy said.
There was the sudden chatter of a submachine gun. Danny hit another wedge.
“Christ!”
“Shut up, damn it!” Danny said, and hit the wedge again before it came out.
&nb
sp; The whistle sounded shriller now and they could see a shape coming at them. There was a woman’s voice. Shirley.
“What the—” Murphy began.
“The— A guard back there was coming up the track! I shot him.”
“Good girl!” Murphy said.
Danny was hitting the fifth wedge, not even looking up. “Mike, throw those bolts to hell and gone.” As Murphy did so, Danny hit another wedge and it shot out. They heard firing from Trang’s direction farther on but knew — or prayed — it wouldn’t be heard over the mounting rumble of the train about a half mile off now. They heard Trang — they assumed it was Trang — firing again.
Danny hit the last wedge and it wouldn’t budge. He was exhausted. They could hear the train coming up the straightaway before the bend that was the culvert. Mike grabbed the sledgehammer and hit the sixth wedge and it was out.
“Run!” Danny gasped. “Run!”
Somebody, perhaps the engineer or fireman, might have seen something wrong up ahead, but the yellow slit-eyed headlight showed only the shape of Trang’s horse as it took off down the culvert between the tracks. As Shirley, Danny, and Murphy clawed their way frantically up one side of the embankment they could hear the pained metallic squeal of brakes being applied and see rushes of bright, golden sparks. But by now the locomotive’s wheels had reached the loose rail and immediately plowed off the track into the stones, the headlight slamming into one side of the culvert even as the locomotive’s wheels were frantically reversing in a futile effort to stop the train. The locomotive was now at a more acute angle to the track, the long string of boxcars and wagons telescoping into one another and climbing higher and higher on one another so that the great pile of wrecked cars formed a logjam, as it were, from one side of the culvert to the other. Already several cars were alight from the spilled fire of the locomotive.
The flitting shadows of guards could be seen, some approaching the enormous rubble of overturned cars, and once they realized the train’s cargo was about to cook off, turning and running down the culvert as fast as possible.