Harry Turtledove (Editor) - Alternate Generals III

"I will pay that sum," Lee said.

He reached for the pen.

I was quietly running F Company, 5th Special Forces (Airborne), Lai Khe, in what had been South Vietnam, when Bull Simon called on the scrambler phone to ask if I wanted to get killed.

Naturally, I accepted immediately.

At the time-April 1969-I was simultaneously the youngest lieutenant colonel in the Army, and at the absolute bottom of said Army's shit list.

Both events came from the same cause:

I had been John F. Kennedy's favorite Green Beret.

Naturally, when Kennedy's hand-picked successor, Hubert Humphrey, got his head handed to him by Nelson Rockefeller in the 68 elections, and Kennedy was sent off in disgrace to Hyannisport, I was doomed. If I'd had a brain, I would've quietly arranged a nice soft assignment, teaching ROTC at a women's college maybe, until my time ran out, then found an honest job mugging drunks somewhere.

Instead, I volunteered to go back to Vietnam, back into the nightmare that wouldn't end until we pulled out, hollowly proclaiming "victory," in 1987.

All of this deserves a bit of explanation.

In 1963, I was a comfortable junior at Georgetown, majoring in international relations.

I probably shouldn't have gone to Georgetown at all, because it developed a taste for politics in me, without adding the ability to compromise and equivocate any good politician or statesman must have.

Like most Americans, I'd heard Kennedy's immortal "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" speech, and determined my place of service would be in the State Department.

My father, a career officer who'd gone to work for "State," actually the CIA, after being badly wounded during the Korean War, snorted in dismay. He considered State, in his words, "a bunch of worthless pussies who couldn't find their dick with both hands and a White Paper."

But the Army wasn't for me. I somehow thought I was above marching from here to there with mud up my ass.

Then Kennedy went to Dallas, in November 1963. Three men hired by extreme rightist H. L. Hunt and a cabal of his equally crazed Texan cronies tried to assassinate him, almost succeeded, and my world changed.

Suddenly, pushing red-ribboned papers around the world didn't do anything for me. In spite of Hunt's giving the right wing a bad name, the Republicans were stupid enough to nominate ultraconservative Senator Barry Goldwater, and Kennedy was returned to office in the biggest margin in US history.

They say that he believed he then had a mandate from Heaven, as the Chinese say, and could do whatever he chose.

In 1964, I graduated from Georgetown, and immediately joined the Army.

That was just in time for Kennedy to overreact to the intelligence disaster in the Gulf of Tonkin, and subsequent pinpricks against US «advisors» in South Vietnam, just as he'd overreacted to Berlin, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Dominican nonsense.

But this time, he didn't get away with it.

A Brigade Landing Team of Marines went ashore in Da Nang, Special Forces were built up throughout the country, and a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division was sent to Bien Hoa as a fire brigade.

I barely noticed.

I was one of a herd of young warriors, sure there was about to be a war, a real war, and we wouldn't get to Vietnam before the gooks were hammered into oblivion.

It's interesting to note that less than ten members of my Officer's Candidate School class are still alive.

The war did wait on us.

I finished OCS, got my butter bars as a second lieutenant, and went to Jump School and Ranger School.

Kennedy announced the reformation of Rangers as full units, companies, then a full battalion, based at Fort Benning. I got assigned there as soon as I got my tab.

Now there was a full-scale troop buildup, throughout the Army.

"Everyone" knew what was coming.

Everyone except the rulers of North and South Vietnam.

The Marine base at Da Nang was hit hard, with over five hundred casualties, and that was it for Kennedy.

Plans for the invasion of North Vietnam went on the front burner.

There were leaks, of course, and diplomats from various nations came and went at the White House.

But Kennedy and his saber-rattling team would not listen to any calls for reason, for caution, for moderation, not until "the Communists are taught their proper lesson," as his brother Robert said.

We trained, and trained, and trained, and then, in endless shuttles of civilian 707s, we went to Vietnam, endless rows of tents, and more waiting for the Word.

I was a first lieutenant, executive officer of Bravo Company, First Ranger Battalion (Airborne) when the C130s finally loaded sticks of jumpers at Ton Son Nhut Airfield, outside Saigon, and droned north for the invasion of North Vietnam in May of 1965.

We kept well out to sea, as if keeping a secret, past the demilitarized zone, and then the huge formation of planes, escorted by flight after flight of fighters, were off the coast of North Vietnam.

None of my Rangers even pretended sleep, not even those who'd seen combat in other wars.

This was it, this was the big one, this is where we would stop pissy-assing around and break it off in Ho Chi Minh's butt.

Just below Haiphong Harbor, the formation split. Elements of the 101st were to jump into Haiphong and secure the harbor for the Marine landing teams headed toward shore.

The rest of us, Rangers and 82nd Airborne, went toward Hanoi, North Vietnam's capital.

My company, and two others, had been given a rather grim mission. We were to jump into almost the middle of Hanoi, just south of Ho Tay Lake. Our target was only known as a "military district," and no one really knew how many regulars of the Democratic Republic's army we'd face.

After we'd subdued these regulars, we were to head west, along the lakeside boulevard, and support other Rangers attacking North Vietnam's capitol building. We hoped to catch Ho Chi Minh and other governmental leaders at home, which, our briefers said, would end the war in a single masterstroke.

It didn't work out like that.

" Stand up ," the jumpmaster shouted, and doors on either side of the C130's ramp came open.

" Hook up ," and our static lines were clipped to the lines, clips facing inward.

We shuffled forward, stumbling under almost a hundred pounds of weapons and gear.

"Make equipment check."

"Sound off for equipment check."

The light next to the door was bright red.

Outside, it was a gray dawn, and below us was Hanoi, gray, sprinkled with lakes. I hoped to hell I wouldn't land in one.

"Stand in the door."

We were as ready as ready could be. Men were pressing hard against my back. We were to go out as tight and fast as we could, to keep the stick from being scattered all over the city below.

" Ready …»

The jumpmaster listened to his headphones, then straightened.

"GO!!"

He slapped me on the shoulder, and I was out into the slipstream, hands on my reserve, head bowed. The blast took and spun me, and I was falling. The static line came taught, yanked my backpack open, and the chute deployed. It cracked me like a whip, and I jolted hard.

I looked up, saw all those lovely unblown panels of my parachute perfectly deployed.

To one side of me was the huge Red River, in front and to my left, West Lake.

They'd dropped us right on target.

Above droned other planes, and the sky was full of parachutes. Parachutes and the greasy smoke of antiaircraft fire. I saw a 130 get hit, go into a bank, streaming paratroopers, and crash into the middle of a housing area. A missile flashed up, was gone, and a pair of jets dove down toward its launch site.