Harry Turtledove (Editor) - Alternate Generals III

We got some details on where we would be going: a big cave complex, very, very near the Chinese border.

"So there'll be no room for fuckups," Simons said cheerfully. "If you happen to go and get killed, try to look like a dead gook."

He still didn't tell us the name of the caves, or their exact location.

We trained hard, and fast, for everyone knew of operations that had great intelligence and looked good, but by the time people quit farting around and went to the field, the bad guys were long gone.

We couldn't find, or build, a duplicate of our target, so we concentrated on just learning how the others operated, how they thought, since none of us were familiar with the others' style.

That meant running patrols, big patrols, sweeping south of Hanoi. There were more than enough Viets in the jungles and paddies to make the training most realistic. We took half a dozen casualties in firefights, inflicted far more. Replacements came in, and we kept training.

We would fight in ten-man teams, another new thing, and so we practiced fire and maneuver, again and again and again.

Others built satchel and link charges, and everyone spent a lot of time on our improvised ranges, going through immediate-action drills to counter an ambush, firing everything from pistols to the two little 60mm mortars we'd take in as our artillery.

We would, if the shit hit the fan, be able to call in Air Force and Navy fast movers, fighter-bombers, but we were, Simons said, out of range of «real» artillery. "Except for the bad guys, of course," he added.

There was a problem with insertion-if we flew out of Hanoi, every Viet who could look up would report our half dozen helicopters.

Simons decided we'd go in by sea. He got big HH53 Sikorskys and their pilots, from the Air Force. "Twice our minimum requirement," he told me. "Fucking choppers break a lot."

When we got the go, we'd fly out to waiting carriers off Haiphong, the carriers would steam to a certain point, and we'd take off again. The HH53s, normally used for rescue purposes, were fitted for midair refueling. We'd refuel, go in on foot from a landing zone. The choppers would return to the carriers.

When… if… we made contact, they'd immediately take off from the ships and fly in to a certain point, refuel, and then come get us.

"Which means we could be on the ground getting killed for a while," Meadows said.

"You have a problem with that, Captain?" Simons demanded.

"Not at all, boss," Meadows said. "Just trying to figure out how many magazines to take."

And then the bad things started happening.

I was very glad I was out in the bush, running up and down and back and forth. When I creaked back in, there was a message to report to Colonel Simons. Immediately. Which meant before a shower, a beer, or even a balls-scratch.

"You are very damned lucky, Colonel," he growled.

"Why so, sir?"

"Because you've been out there in the tules for a while, so you can't be the rat-fink."

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Somebody's leaked," Simons said, and explained.

Somebody had talked at the wrong time and in the wrong place.

William C. Westmoreland had shown up in Hanoi, expressing interest in how «his» Special Forces were doing. Worse, also interested and in Vietnam on a "fact-finding mission," were two hard right-wing Republican politicos: Richard Nixon, who'd somehow avoided disgrace in the aftermath of the Kennedy attempted assassination; and John Connolly, once a Democrat, who'd milked the fact that he'd been in the limo with Kennedy in Dallas as far as he could, then jumped parties, looking for a national office.

Neither of them, I knew, was to be trusted in the slightest.

I supposed the ticket, in three years, would be Richard Nixon for president, Connolly for veep. They were smoking funny cigarettes-America doesn't elect losers, like Nixon was after Kennedy won in 1960, and everyone distrusts a fence-jumper, figuring a man who'll sell his own out once will do it again, if it benefits him.

But if President Rockefeller had ordered Ho Chi Minh's assassination, which was very definitely against presidential policy (in spite of Kennedy's obsession with Fidel Castro), that would make good fodder for the Republican Right.

Especially if it failed.

"Not me, boss," I said, getting only a little pissed. That sort of directness was just Simons's way.

"No shiteedah, Richardson," the Bull snarled. "I just wanted you to know what's going on… and not tell anyone, and I mean anyone. We got enough to worry about.

"We'll be going in in seventy-two hours. The operations order'll be available tomorrow morning.

"We're under a complete security hold. No MARS calls, no in-country phone calls, no visits, no visitors, and any last letters will be censored and not in the mail until we're in the boonies."

I left, wondering what kind of war it was where the commander of all in-country troops wasn't told about an operation. All wars are political, of course. But this one was too damned much like that for my liking.

But it was the only one I had.

We cleaned already spotless weaponry, sharpened already razor-edged knives, and wrote those last letters.

The basic weapon we carried was the CAR15, the stubby-barreled version of the M16. There'd been argument, finally settled by the Bull, on whether we should carry CARs or AK47s. The issues were reliability, lightness, ease of resupply, and so on and so forth. Simons had said we'd go for the CARs, because when somebody popped a cap, everyone would know whether it was a black or white hat.

I didn't get involved in the argument. I knew better than to try to lug my Schmeisser. It was a good weapon, but it did fire 9mm pistol rounds, which are pissing in the wind in a real firefight.

Other basic weapons were the M79 grenade launcher and cut-down Chinese RPD machineguns (called by them the Type 56). We went with the RPD because it could be lightened far more than the standard M60, and was more reliable than the SEAL's favorite Stoner.

The three snipers on the team carried accurized, semiauto scoped M14s, less accurate than the normal M70 Winchester bolt-action rifles, but capable of delivering a higher rate of fire, which Simons considered important, since he hoped to gun down Viet bigwigs in clumps.

Other than that, we carried a grabbag of 12-gauge pump shotguns, personal handguns, grenades, and explosives. Plus everyone carried at least one LAW.

I was carrying enough crap already, but added an old-fashioned suppressed High Standard.22 automatic to my pack. Other people, especially Jerry Shriver, also carried silenced pieces.

Our commo was one AN/PRC-77 per team, but the radios would only be used when we were closing in, or if we ran into trouble or on extraction. The US didn't believe those little brown bastards in the jungle could intercept, let alone read, transmissions, and ignored ambushes that proved things different.

But we knew better, having learned that the hard way. So we'd keep radio silence as long as we could.

For an emergency, we also carried search and recovery radios, small transistorized units used to bring in pickup.

Our weaponry may have varied, but the rest of our equipment was standard. For ammo pouches, we used canteen carriers, which would lug more magazines than the issue items. In our rucks, we carried changes of socks, and standard patrol rations, which was a pack of Minute rice, coupled with yummy add-ons like pilchards, Hong Kong crabs, strange-looking canned meat, and other items you had to be a while in the jungle to appreciate.

Instead of wearing any sort of camouflage fatigues, we wore standard fatigues we'd blotch-sprayed with flat black paint, a standard SOG modification. On our feet were normal jungle boots, and we wore floppy hats.