Ian Slater - South China Sea

“And it’s surrounded by mountains,” Admiral Reese put in.

The President put down the letter opener. “Can’t we just pull the USVUN Special Forces out of there?”

“Not now,” Ellman said. “Number one, the U.S. public have expectations of possible MIA discoveries. Second, and most importantly from the political angle, Dien Bien Phu is crucial. Whether we like it or not, it’s become a litmus test. The world media is fixated on both Disney and Dien Bien Phu. But thanks to press creeps like that Frenchman LaSalle, the whole world is seeing Dien Bien Phu in particular as a test of U.S. will. Third, SATINT shows us that the PLA must have been building up supplies there for at least a month. We all thought it started with the PLA paratroop drop, but they were probably among the last Chinese to enter the area. They’re all around us.”

The President sat bolt upright. “Are you telling me we’ve been set up there?”

“Yes,” Ellman said. “Started with some cock-and-bull story about one of our officials in Ho Chi Minh City—” Ellman realized it was difficult for the President to recognize Ho Chi Minh City as anything but old Saigon. “Anyway, Jorgensen’s HQ apparently got some story from Freeman about MIAs in the area — one or a hundred, I don’t know. I would’ve thought most of them would be dead by now.”

CIA chief Noyer interjected. He didn’t like Ellman’s tone when the aide talked about “some cock-and-bull story.” Noyer had had a friend who’d gone missing. Only people who had lost someone could understand. “Far as I know, Mr. Ellman, it was no ‘cock-and-bull story,’ as you, I think, ineptly put it. One of our people, a Major—” Noyer couldn’t recall the man’s name now. “—Barker? Baker? But anyway, he’d followed what he believed was a genuine lead up to Dalat.”

“Where’s that?” the President asked.

“In the central highlands.”

The President nodded, not much the wiser. “Well, it doesn’t matter now whether he was set up with a false lead to get us involved in a vulnerable area or not. The fact is, now we’ve got ninety Special Forces with the enemy ringed all about them. The question is, what is it going to take to help them out?”

“To win,” Admiral Reese said, “Douglas Freeman has to resupply his Special Forces trapped in there and drive the PLA out from around them. There can’t be any half measures here, Mr. President, or we’ll have nothing at the bargaining table. We’re barely hanging on to Disney Hill. They’re both Freeman’s call.”

“Think he can do it, gentlemen?”

There was silence in the room.

In addition to the battalion of seven hundred PLA paratroopers who had arrived in and around Dien Bien Phu village days before and had seized the small airstrip immediately north of the village, now four companies, over four hundred men, of the PLA’s Chengdu Twelfth Army attacked Delta’s perimeter, some PLA rushing on the surface but most — over three hundred Chinese — coming in via the old tunnels used by the Viet Minh Communists against the French, the tunnels brought back to basic maintenance level not by the North Vietnamese, but by Chinese and local Laotian hill tribes who had infiltrated the area. The enemy tunnel rats were popping up like jackrabbits all over the place to fire off a burst and throw a few grenades before the American and British defenders had time to get a bead on them.

But most damaging was the sustained fire of the enemy’s mortars, many of which, like the bigger artillery guns, were firing from dugouts so deep in the mountainside that their camouflage nets were at ground level, the dugouts themselves shored up with logs. The fighting had already reached the wire at places where firefights were breaking out even as the mortar rounds tore into the ground inside the perimeter, throwing up clouds of dust that drifted ghostlike over the wire, which was littered with over thirty PLA dead and wounded.

For PLA commander Colonel Cheng it had merely been a test of the American and British firepower. The defenders’ firepower, or rather their accuracy, was much better than that of average field troops. Colonel Cheng had expected as much, for his own intelligence section had already advised him of the allies’ Special Forces training regimen, carrying over 250-pound loads, and the required ability to burst into a room of hostages, identify the hostage-taker, and take him out with one shot. The final test for the U.S. Navy SEALs was to go six days with only four hours’ sleep. These were crack troops. It would take more than a few forays at the wire to unnerve them.

Both sides realized the airstrip would be unusable by the planes of either side, and in any event it had been potholed by the Chinese using concrete-splitting mines, and all supply roads — mule trails into Dien Bien Phu within a fifty-mile radius from north to Ban Pa Haute in the northeast to Bang Beng in the southeast — had been severed and/or were covered by ambuscades of PLA infantry. In short, Dien Bien Phu had been cut off. The weather was now clearing in the valley, but not enough for accurate supply drops, and even when, or if, the weather cleared, Freeman knew that any drop zone would immediately be pummeled by what was now recognized as a formidable ring of Chinese field artillery and triple A dug into the sites of the PLA’s mountainous redoubts.

At his Phu Lang Thuong HQ, Freeman was pacing like a caged lion. “Well, by God!” Freeman proclaimed to Major Cline. “I’m not doing another Navarre.”

“I don’t follow,” Cline said.

“Navarre,” Freeman grumbled, “French C in C in ‘fifty-four — sent in a swashbuckler — Colonel Christian de Castries. Like General Navarre, Castries was a cavalryman — a damn fine one too, but when the enemy is all around you — with arty — you can’t fight it like a cavalryman. Can’t do a George Patton when you’re in a bull ring and the stands are thick with guns. No…”

Freeman, both hands on the map table, was staring down at Dien Bien Phu. Cline could hear the heavy rumble of PLA howitzers beyond Disney as the sky lit up in flashes. Cline admired Freeman’s ability to focus — as if mesmerized — on another battle while a different battle was raging so close at hand.

“No, Bob,” the general said. “When you’ve got this situation, the only way is to dig in — hold your position until the cavalry can come in.”

“Is there a chance of them making a fighting withdrawal?” the major asked.

The general was slowly shaking his head. “Ninety men? Even if Echo and Foxtrot can reach Delta, my guesstimate is we’d be lucky to get out one or two. But there’s another reason why we can’t try a fighting withdrawal.” With that, he thrust his HQ’s copy of the order from the Pentagon, adding, “It went direct to Jorgensen’s HQ south in Hanoi.” The message read:

NEGOTIATIONS FOR CEASE-FIRE MAKE IT IMPERATIVE YOU HOLD POSITION. HOLD UNTIL RELIEVED.

“Pawns,” Cline said disgustedly, throwing down the message. “They’re not here. They don’t care about our men.”

Then Freeman, the acerbic critic of the U.S. State Department, stunned Cline. “No, they’re right, Bob. We try to run out of this at Disney or Dien Bien Phu or show Wang a white flag, we’re finished in this part of the world. We haven’t got nearly the size of force here the French had, and they lost. But we have to hold. Our will is being tried here — just as it was for France in ‘fifty-four. If the enemy busts our balls here like they did the French, that’s it for the American century in Asia. China’ll rule the roost, including Japan and everybody else. But—” The general took in a long breath of air. “—we have a cavalry the French didn’t have.”