Termite Hill (Vietnam Air War Book 1)

by Tom Wilson

  The mayor nodded again.

  "Next time we send a message that we will visit, I expect to receive proper treatment. The war is coming to you, and we will protect the people. It is your duty to support us."

  Xuan glanced back. The mayor's wife was frowning stupidly at the coins in her palm. He leaned toward the mayor confidingly. "You should get rid of that unfaithful piece of Chinese dog meat," he said. "She confided to me this morning that she is a practicing Christian. A patriotic mayor deserves better."

  He walked out to the veranda and met a waiting Van Ngo. Xuan took a deep breath of morning air. It was already warm. The late rainy season had gone and they could expect dry, hot days for a few months. He felt very good.

  "Where is the old aunt, Major Ngo?"

  "She was in the men's quarters when I saw her last, comrade Colonel. It seems she left a mess in some of their bedrolls, so they had her clean them."

  They left the mayor's home and walked casually toward Xuan's utility vehicle. Sergeant Ng held the door open for him. "The other officers?"

  "They are eating, Colonel."

  "Did they all console the widow of the traitor?"

  "She bit Quang Hanh, but he consoled her anyway. They all would have made you proud, Colonel. Even Major Wu. He tired himself teaching the old aunt how she should act with the men. He must like aged meat." Van Ngo laughed.

  "The Russian?"

  "No. He went back to the barracks early."

  "And the mayor?"

  "It took surprisingly little persuasion. He consoled his assistant's wife quite energetically."

  Xuan laughed.

  "Then I took her to my men's barracks and had her join the aunt. She was there when I arrived this morning, helping with the bedrolls."

  Xuan and his officers crawled into the vehicle as Sergeant Ng started the engine. Even the old, scarred veteran looked happy this morning.

  Xuan mused. "Perhaps now we can get on with business, and prepare to kill more Americans."

  They started with the location farthest from Bac Can, then worked their way back in, observing each potential site carefully, weighing the merits and problems with each location.

  On the second day, as they approached the closest site—the one they were sure they would prefer—Xuan looked far up in the sky and observed two American EB-66's, the Pesky planes fitted with electronic jammers in their bellies. Around the bombers swarmed several Phantoms, agile fighters that protected the bombers from Col Thao Phong's MiG interceptors.

  He watched for a long time, remembering the headaches they had given his radar operators. Nicolaj Gregarian joined him.

  Xuan pointed. "Those are the Pesky planes that jam our acquisition radars," he said. "They set up their orbits here, sixty kilometers from our nearest rocket battalions."

  Gregarian grunted, straining to follow them with his eyes. "That will be very close to our Wisdom complex," he said.

  "They use electronic receivers to triangulate the position of our radars," said Xuan.

  Gregarian cursed. "Then even here we are not safe."

  "I moved a rocket battery up here once to shoot them down. They jammed the radars and got away, then moved their orbit for a while, until we moved the battery."

  "Are they that effective?" said Gregarian.

  "When they are close to the radar, they are. Could Wisdom shoot them down?"

  Gregarian watched the Pesky planes and slowly nodded his head. "The rocket site will have an optical tracking device that is not affected by jamming."

  "Then it could shoot them down," said Xuan.

  Gregarian frowned. "I would not want to expose the special rocket battery to their bombs."

  "Pesky planes do not bomb. They fly above our artillery at ten thousand meters, jamming our radar and warning the Thunder plane pilots when we fire our rockets," he said.

  Gregarian shook his head. "What about the Phantoms?"

  "Those Phantoms do not carry bombs."

  "You are sure?"

  "I interrogated two different Phantom crews who had escorted Pesky planes. They carry only air-to-air missiles to fight our interceptors."

  He measured Gregarian's reaction and knew he was thinking hard.

  Xuan went on. "If we let the Pesky planes continue to fly here, then Wisdom may be compromised."

  Gregarian finally shook his head. "No. We can't do it."

  Xuan was quiet. He had set Gregarian to thinking and that was enough for now.

  Major Wu

  Major Wu stood a few meters distant, observing Xuan Nha and the Russian. Colonel Nha turned once to glance at him, and Wu fought to keep his face impassive.

  Never let him know what you are thinking, he admonished himself. He peered up at the specks in the sky far above, and when he looked back Nha was doing the same. He thought then about the notebooks he kept, and felt pleased. He was documenting everything, just as his beloved aunt, Li Binh, had told him to do.

  Throughout the trip, he had been careful to please Xuan Nha; only once had he lied to him. That secret he would guard closely until the time was right.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Wednesday, December 7th—0900 Local, Manila Highway, Republic of the Philippines

  Bear Stewart

  Benny deftly navigated between the largest potholes as they weaved their way back up the concrete highway toward Clark Air Base.

  "You're a great driver," said the Bear, holding on. "I think I'm gonna puke."

  "We hit a big one and the car won't survive. This thing's almost as old as I am."

  They slowed to a crawl behind two children perched on the backs of carabao, young boys dwarfed by the huge, docile creatures with their tremendous, sweeping horns.

  "Every once in a while," said Benny, "a carabao turns its head to bite at a fly and a kid riding on its back gets impaled. I wouldn't ride one of those things if my life depended on it."

  "Looks sort of like fun."

  "You ride horses?"

  "Where I'm from, if you don't ride horses they think you're queer. Most expensive thing I owned before I went in the Air Force was a roping saddle. I even tried bronc riding at the local rodeos until I left home. You ride?"

  "Not much. We lived just outside of Santa Rosa when I was a kid. Some of my friends lived on ranches and farms, and sometimes I'd go riding with them."

  "Julie said Santa Rosa's a nice place."

  "I'll probably go back there when I retire."

  "I plan on going back to McAlester some day."

  "Your folks alive, Bear?"

  "My dad died when I was eight, and Mom worked in the general hospital as a practical nurse. We were poor, even by east Oklahoma standards. Talk about grim."

  "I'll bet your mother's proud of you."

  "Yeah." The Bear stared out at the lush countryside. His mother was in the cancer ward of the hospital she'd worked in for thirty years. When he'd visited her before leaving to fly combat she hadn't recognized him. Old Grandma Bowes had told him his mother would live to see him back, but he didn't think so. He didn't like thinking about it.

  "Nice girls back there," said the Bear, changing to more pleasant thoughts.

  Benny nodded. "Very nice."

  "You seemed to hit it off with Liz."

  Benny nodded again, but didn't comment.

  "I told Julie I might be able to see her on my next R and R. She thought that was a great idea."

  The Bear thought about the present she'd offered, and about his response. He wouldn't broadcast the fact that he'd turned down a real, no-shit virgin. If it hadn't been for the double-decker with the Filipinas, and if he'd been positive that neither was carrying the Philippine killer-clap, it would have been different, he told himself.

  It was not easy to forget the stewardess with the awesome mammaries. Funny, likeable, and a virgin to boot. But he wasn't about to lose his mental block about getting "serious" with any woman.

  Benny drove on in the silence. A large pothole came out of nowhere. He swerved hard. T
he Bear grabbed the door-hold and hung on. "Hi-yo Silver," he said.

  "You were pretty vocal yesterday about me being an asshole," said Benny.

  He shrugged. "I was out of line. It's your life."

  "You really pissed me off. I feel a lot better today so maybe that was what I needed."

  "A lot of us have been where you are, Benny, but the timing for you was awfully shitty. It's traumatic enough being shot down, but then the wife thing on top of it? Hell, that would get to anyone."

  Benny looked at Bear for a long second. "You still want to fly together? Yesterday you had reservations."

  "Yesterday I was trying Psych two-oh-one and got carried away. But, sure, if you've got your act back together and really want to, I'd like to fly with you. Just don't do it because you think you owe me. Any of the guys in the squadron would have tried to help. I just happened to be here."

  Benny had obviously been thinking about it. "The other day at breakfast Glenn Phillips was saying we've got to do something about the defenses. If the Wild Weasel thing doesn't work, and the North Vietnamese threat just keeps getting worse, the strike pilots won't be able to fly up there at all."

  The Bear grunted unintelligibly as they slammed into another pothole.

  "So let's go and try to make a difference, okay?" Benny added.

  "We'll have to be damned smart to really make a difference. Glenn and I were pretty good, but we never did get to actually drop bombs on a site. We shot a lot of Shrike missiles and banged up some of their radar antennas with them, but it takes more. We won't really scare the bastards until we start bombing the shit out of their sites."

  "It's been done before."

  "Not often," the Bear replied. "Al Lamb and Jack Donovan killed a site with rockets and bombs back about a year ago, when the Air Force was trying to see if a concept like Wild Weasel could really work, but I'd bet not more than two or three SAM sites have really been destroyed with bombs since then."

  They talked about tactics and what they would do together on the remainder of the trip back to Clark Air Base. When they were coming into the outskirts of Angeles City, Benny held his hand out and the Bear took it. They shook hands.

  "A team."

  "Yeah," said the Bear. "I'm ready."

  "Well, I'm not. You're going to have to be patient while we practice together and I come up to speed. It's been a while since I went through Wild Weasel training, and I've forgotten the little bit they tried to tell us there."

  "Wouldn't help if you'd gone through it yesterday," said the Bear. "We'll have to build our tactics as we go along. No one has ever faced all the shit we're about to get into."

  "A hell of a challenge."

  "That's the only kind that's worthwhile," said the Bear.

  08/1600L—Takhli RTAFB, Thailand

  As the C-130 Hercules taxied toward base operations, the Bear was at a window, peering out at the long rows of F-105's as they passed the 357th squadron area. He sat beside Benny on the nylon web and aluminum frame seats lining the sides of the cargo aircraft.

  "They're here," he said. "F-105F Wild Weasel birds looking all shiny and new. Bet they've got a new-car smell. Want to take a look?"

  Benny felt his enthusiasm. "Sure."

  They hauled their B-4 bags with them as they walked down the ramp. The sky was blue and faultless; the heat hovering about the hundred-degree mark. Aircraft and men only a hundred yards away were indistinct, shimmering in the thermal waves that rose from the tarmac.

  The three Wild Weasel aircraft were parked in a single row, buttoned up, with cockpits closed, sleeves on pitot booms, engine covers over intakes, and chocks in place. They still carried travel pods—discarded fuel tanks from old fighters redesigned to hold the personal belongings of the aircrews who ferried the aircraft across the Pacific. The birds had obviously just arrived.

  Benny and the Bear scrutinized each one. The tail numbers were 277, 301, and 315.

  "Beautiful," said the Bear. "Want to see the equipment?"

  He opened the canopies on number 277 and crawled into the rear cockpit. Benny leaned in beside him, listening as the Bear described each receiver in detail. A few of them were new. They had the new APR-26 to correlate SAM launches with specific sites, and a two-band ER-142 to replace the single-band IR-133 receiver. The Bear went through the actions he had to take in the backseat to isolate a radar signal, then how he would transfer the information to the front seat so Benny could line up in the rough direction of the radar.

  "Best of all," exulted the Bear, "it's got the new Azimuth-Elevation system. When you get close, I switch to AZ-EL and bright dots ping on your combining glass, precisely on the SAM radar. It's a new idea called 'heads-up' display, so you don't have to look inside the cockpit when you're attacking."

  Benny was trying to digest it all. The AZ-EL hadn't been covered in his training.

  "Problem is, whenever I send a signal up to you in the front cockpit, I'm blind. Can't see if other SAM sites are launching missiles at us."

  "And that's when they're most likely to launch SAMs."

  "You're right. And that means we can't stay in AZ-EL mode for long. We'll practice until we get the hang of it."

  Benny was maxed out for the day. He crawled down, then the Bear closed the canopies and came down himself.

  "I've got a lot to learn," said Benny. "First I've got to start thinking Wild Weasel again."

  "We'll get there. Just remember, there aren't any real expert Weasels yet, no matter what Les Ries or anyone else says. The equipment is great, and the aircraft are like new, but no one has figured out good, solid tactics."

  "Brand new engine on this one," said Benny as he examined it.

  "No one's figured out a great way to kill SAM sites and survive," repeated the Bear, trying to press the point home to his new pilot. "That's what we're going to have to come up with. Shooting missiles at 'em makes us a nuisance, but when we learn how to bomb the bastards off the face of the earth, and return to do it to another one the next day, then we'll have the SAM operators shaking in their boots and things will start to get easier for everyone."

  "Sort of a private war, isn't it."

  "That's a good way of thinking about it. It's between the SAM site commander and us. He's got a hundred technicians and specialists helping him. All you got is me, my receivers, and your balls."

  "Looking things over?" asked a voice behind them.

  They turned and saw a skinny, sun-bronzed man, shirtless and wearing only fatigue pants and boots.

  Benny grinned and shook his hand. "Bear, meet Sgt Jerry Tiehl, best crew chief at Takhli. You chiefing this one now, Sarge?"

  Tiehl shook the Bear's hand and nodded. "My second Weasel bird. I got a wreck and tried to put it together a week ago, but we had to rush it too much. It lost oil pressure when Major Schumacher and Captain Stark were just going onto the tanker and went down."

  "They get out okay?"

  "Yes, sir, no thanks to me."

  "Bull," said Benny. "You can't take on that kind of responsibility."

  "It was my bird, sir." The matter was a simple one of responsibility for Jerry Tiehl.

  "Get ready to paint our names on this one," said the Bear, looking up at the aircraft.

  Tiehl looked at them both, then at the aircraft. "Chief Roberts said the squadron would assign crews and send him a list of names."

  Benny spoke up. "Get them to hold off on this one until we get the okay from Colonel Mack, Sarge. I'll try to get two-seven-seven assigned to us."

  "Will do, sir."

  "Is it a good airplane?"

  "If it's not, it will be. I won't lose another one to a malfunction." Tiehl spoke with such determination they knew it would be true.

  They reported in to the squadron. Their belongings had been transferred from the hootch to one of the new, modern concrete buildings the pilots called "Ponderosas." One of the sprawling, windowless buildings had been assigned to each squadron. Theirs was air-conditioned, and had a dayroom equ
ipped with a combination kitchenette and bar. Each of three hallways led off to a pair of two-man bedrooms and a bathroom. Compared to the old hootches, the Ponderosa provided gracious living.

  Benny and the Bear had been assigned to the same room, which made them suspect that someone in the squadron had known they would team up. When their gear was squared away, the Bear caught a ride to the club. Unlike the old hootches, the ponderosa was a quarter-mile away.

  The Bear ate dinner with Toki Takahara and Ken Maisey, who had been in the Weasel flight the day he and Glenn had been shot down. Maisey was a ring-knocker, quick to let you know he was an Annapolis graduate and not one of the rabble from lesser commissioning programs.

  Toki told him there were a lot of new faces in the squadron since he'd left.

  The Bear ordered his third choice, Salisbury steak, from the waitress, then turned back to the conversation. "Hell, Toki, I was only gone for eleven days."

  "We lost Jimbo Smith, Tommy Larkins, Mort Mullens, and two new guys you wouldn't know. J. J. Spalding and Tip Singleton both finished their hundred missions a couple days ago."

  "Jimbo Smith?" The Bear's chest felt heavy. Jimbo and Mike Murphy had been his closest buddies. They'd joked around, drank, and chased women in Takhli village together.

  "Is it true you and Benny Lewis are going to be flying together?"

  Word traveled fast at Takhli. "We're gonna give it a try, Toki."

  "We sure as hell need some help from somewhere. The defenses are worse than they've ever been, Bear. And Intell says it's going to get tougher, that the North Vietnamese have a bunch of new SAMs coming."

  A group of new guys were sitting at two tables nearby, wearing stateside Tactical Air Command shoulder patches and generally looking ill at ease. "Who're they?" the Bear asked, thinking he knew.

  "The Weasel crews who brought in the F-105F's."

  "I oughta kiss their feet for bringing us airplanes," said the Bear. He studied the new Weasels, thinking one looked familiar. The group stood, glanced around awkwardly, then left toward the bar, talking animatedly among themselves.

  "Hell," said Toki, "I'll kiss their asses if they help with the defenses."

  Sam Hall, Chickenplucker Crawford, and Swede Swendler—all flight commanders from the 357th—stopped by the table on their way to the bar.