Robert Adams - The Clan of the Cats

“General, what the hell is the point in committing an army to a war its not going to be allowed to fight properly and win? God in heaven, we didn’t even need to commit ground troops, not away back when. We owned the capability to subject the northern ports and population centers and larger supply points to high-altitude precision bombing just as we had German and Jap targets in World War Two; before they ever got a tenth of their air defenses set up, we could easily have turned Hanoi into a second Dresden, Haiphong into another Hamburg. You know it and I know it: the only thing the Reds of any nationality and race respect is pure, raw force; if we’d hurt them bad enough at the outset and shown a resolve to keep on hurting them, to annihilate them if necessary, they’d’ve cried uncle goddam quick, left the south alone, at least given a public appearance of living up to the Geneva Accords. So why didn’t we do it, huh?”

With an enraged snarl, Barstow hurled his glass of ice cubes at the side wall. “Oh, damn you, Milo! Don’t you think we tried to get that very order? Not just me, but quite a few others, some whose names would no doubt surprise you, men who you wouldn’t expect to be willing to advise and consent to that kind of totally destructive warfare. God knows, I was shocked to the core to find out they were on our side in the matter. But Johnson seemed to be firmly under the control of the fucking whiz kids, seemed to be abso-fucking-lutely convinced that left alone to do it all their way, they’d shortly present miracles, and of course all they ever produced was worse than zilch—destruction, all right, and on a massive scale, but generally in all the wrong places, and a war that has now dragged on for so long that not a few domestic onetime supporters are beginning to sound more and more like the fucking pro-Communist agitators.

“And naturally, when Johnson finally came around to our way of thinking, got it through his head at last that the so-called brain boys he’d inherited from Kennedy had either snookered him and the country or had been just blowing wind all along, it was too late in the game, way too late for anything short of a nuclear strike, and even in the extremes to which he’d been driven by events, he knew better than to order that.”

“It just might’ve been just what the doctor ordered, General,” stated Mito grimly. “That way, we wouldn’t even have needed to risk planes and crews, just delivered the load by missile.”

Barstow shook his head. “Milo, you’ve spent a whole hell of a lot of time out of the country, and so I doubt seriously that you’re aware of some facts. One of them is this: a whole lot of people in the U.S. of A. are scared absolutely shitless of doing any frigging thing that conceivably might upset the fucking Russians enough for them to throw their nukes at us , and not all of these people are in any way, shape or form the least bit pink, not that our own native crop of Marxist traitors don’t use that lever and any other they can lay hands on to discombobulate their fellow citizens, retard our war effort—such as it’s been—and speed the Communist conquest of Southeast Asia.

If Johnson or anyone else in a position of power had seriously proposed even a small-scale, surgical strike against North Vietnam with nukes, oh, Lordy, there would’ve erupted such a shitstorm that it would have had to be seen and heard and endured to be believed. Even if some rabid, leftist member of the defeatist press hadn’t had it leaked to him by a fellow traveler in the DOD or the White House, you can bet your bloody arse that one or more of our pack of Commie-lovers in the legislative branch would’ve had it in the papers and on the air in nothing flat. I tell you, Milo, certain elements of the news media have proven themselves of more value to the Reds in this war than five or ten full divisions of the NVA. To hear or to read the shit put out by those scaremongers, the whole damned country is in a state of constant turmoil and all of our allies are appalled at what we’re doing in and to Vietnam and are turning away from us in droves, as consequence. In the holy name of First Amendment rights, these bastards are cynically betraying their own, native land to the fucking Commies.

“The newspapers would be bad enough, Milo, but the fucking TV is a goddam monster. You remember the old blood-and-guts training films we used to use? The ones that had fucking trainees fainting and puking their guts out? Well, compared to the footage the fucking networks are broadcasting all over America right at suppertime these days, those training films would be about as shocking as any damned Disney cartoon would be, anymore.”

Milo’s visitor sighed gustily and shook his head forcefully. “Lordy, Lordy, how I do carry on. Build me another drink, will you. My tirades always leave me dry as the Mojave. But I’m not the only one who blows off on occasion and calls spades fucking shovels, am I, Milo?”

Milo looked at Barstow quizzically for a moment, then abruptly nodded. “You heard about me telling off that peckerhead over at the Pentagon, huh? Tell me, how in the hell did something like Henshaw get to an apparent position of some power over there, anyway?”

Barstow’s lips twisted in a moue of disgust. “Oh, hell, Milo, you ought to’ve guessed that already—he and a whole pisspot more just like him came in at the start of the Kennedy administration. But you guessed right on the power—he’s been there more than eleven years, assiduously kissing asses and, more likely than not, sucking carefully selected cocks as well, and not just in the Pentagon, either. He’s managed to acquire a goodly collection of ears, which means that your performance at his office the other day has wedged your scrotum into a crack, my friend.”

Barstow grinned. “Not that I don’t like whatall you told the bastard. I couldn’t’ve said it better myself.” He chuckled. “I liked it so well, in fact, that I played that tape over three times, Milo.”

“Henshaw recorded our, ahhh … conversation, then, General?” demanded Milo.

Taking a drink from his new glass, Barstow waved his hand, then lowered the glass from his lips and shook his head. “No, no, no, Milo, Henshaw doesn’t even know a tape was made. Some of my people made it … well, people who work ostensibly for someone else, but also for me, actually—wheels within wheels within other wheels, if you get my drift.”

Milo recalled the almost identical expression spoken by Barstow almost thirty years before, in Munich. “Just like all your earlier operations, General?”

This time the visitor laughed and nodded, smiling broadly. “ Mais oui, mon vieux ! Deception has always been my stock in trade, it’s what gives value to my services … which don’t, any of them, come at all cheaply. I’m shrewd and as devious as old hell, but I’m an honest man, too, I never yet have failed to give value for value. And that dictum applies to both employers and employees, Milo.”

Milo sighed. “Am I about to hear yet another recruitment pitch, General?”

“Not really, no.” Barstow set down his glass of ice and gazed over steepled fingers at his host. “After all, what is there that I could offer you for service to me, eh? Money? Hell, you’re richer than old Croesus ever dreamed of being, right now. Rank? If you’d cared at all about that, you’d’ve played ball with the army these last ten or so years; besides, few of us are or are known to be military personnel, anyway—you recall that surely from the work you were so kind as to do for me in Indochina, back in ’fifty-four. And in that regard, Milo, I still feel that I owe you a bundle for that, so tell me, my old friend, what can we do for you ?”