Without remorse - Tom Clancy [104]
'All on film, too,' Podulski assured him.
'I didn't get any,' Greer said, 'but I didn't let the oxygen rot my brain either.' In addition to wearing soft clothes, this admiral had the map case. He took one out, the same panel he had back at his home, but more marked up. Then came the photographs, and Kelly got another look at the face of Colonel Zacharias, this time enhanced somehow or other, and recognizably similar to the ID photo Greer put next to it.
'I was within three miles of the place,' Kelly noted. 'Nobody ever told me about -'
'It wasn't there yet. This place is new, less than two years old,' Greer explained.
'Any more pictures, James?' Maxwell asked.
'Just some SR-71 overheads, high-obliques, nothing new in them. I have a guy checking every frame of this place, a good guy, ex-Air Force. He reports to me only.'
'You're going to be a good spy,' Podulski noted with a chuckle.
'They need me there,' Greer replied in a lighthearted voice bordered with serious meaning. Kelly just looked at the other three. The banter wasn't unlike that in a chief's mess, but the language was cleaner. He looked. over at Kelly again. 'Tell me about the valley.'
'A good place to stay away from.'
'First, tell me how you got little Dutch back. Every step of the way,' Greer ordered.
Kelly needed fifteen minutes for that, from the time he left USS Skate to the moment the helicopter had lifted him and Lieutenant Maxwell from the river's estuary for the flight to Kitty Hawk. It was an easy story to tell. What surprised him were the looks the admirals passed back and forth.
Kelly wasn't equipped to understand the looks yet. He didn't really think of the admirals as old or even as totally human. They were admirals, godlike, ageless beings who made important decisions and looked as they should look, even the one out of uniform. Nor did Kelly think of himself as young. He'd seen combat, after which every man is forever changed. But their perspective was different. To Maxwell, Podulski, and Greer, this young man was not terribly unlike what they had been thirty years earlier. It was instantly clear that Kelly was a warrior, and in seeing him they saw themselves. The furtive looks they traded were not unlike those of a grandfather watching his grandson take his first tentative step on the living-room rug. But these were larger and more serious steps.
'That was some job,' Greer said when Kelly finished. 'So this area is densely populated?'
'Yes and no, sir. I mean, it's not a city or like that, but some farms and stuff. I heard and saw traffic on this road. Only a few trucks, but lots of bicycles, oxcarts, that sort of thing.'
'Not much military traffic?' Podulski asked.
'Admiral, that stuff would be on this road here.' Kelly tapped the map. He saw the notations for the NVA units. 'How are you planning to get in here?'
'There's nothing easy, John. We've looked at a helicopter insertion, maybe even trying an amphibious assault and racing up this road.'
Kelly shook his head. 'Too far. That road is too easy to defend. Gentlemen, you have to understand, Vietnam is a real nation in arms, okay? Practically everybody there has been in uniform, and giving people guns makes them feel like part of the team. There are enough people with guns there to give you a real pain coming up this way. You'd never make it.'
'The people really support the communist government?' Podulski asked. It was just too much for him to believe. But not for Kelly,
'Jesus, Admiral, why do you think we've been fighting there so long? Why do you think nobody helps pilots who get shot down? They're not like us over there. That's something we've never understood. Anyway, if you put Marines on the beach, nobody's going to welcome them. Forget racing up this road, sir. I've been there. It ain't much of a road, not even as good as it looks on these pictures. Drop a few trees and it's closed.' Kelly looked up. 'Has to be choppers.'
He could see the news was not welcome, and it wasn't hard to understand why. This part of the country was dotted with antiaircraft