Without remorse - Tom Clancy [111]
'Damn,' Kelly whispered to himself. It wasn't so much that the operation might have been betrayed. It had just taken too long ... and that meant that if it had been betrayed, the leaker had probably been one of the last people to discover what was afoot. He set that thought aside with a penciled question.
The operation itself had been meticulously planned, everything done just right, a primary plan and a number of alternates, with each segment of the team so fully briefed and trained that every man could do every function in his sleep. Crashing a huge Sikorsky helicopter right in the camp itself so that the strike team would not have to wait to get to the objective. Using miniguns to take down the guard towers like chainsaws against saplings. No finesse, no pussyfooting, no movie-type bullshit, just brutally direct force. The after-action debriefs showed that the camp guards had been immolated in moments. How elated the troopers must have felt as the first minute or two of the operation had run more smoothly than their simulations, and then the stunning, bitter frustration when the 'negative Item' calls had come again and again over their radio circuits. 'Item' was the simple code word for an American POW, and none were home that night. The soldiers had assaulted and liberated an empty camp. It wasn't hard to imagine how quiet the choppers must have been for the ride back to Thailand, the bleak emptiness of failure after having done everything better than right.
There was, nonetheless, much to learn here. Kelly made his notes, cramping fingers and wearing out numerous pencils. Whatever else it had been, kingpin was a supremely valuable lesson. So much had gone right, he saw, and all of that could be shamelessly copied. All that had gone wrong, really, was the time factor. Troops of that quality could have gone in much sooner. The quest for perfection hadn't been demanded at the operational level, but higher, from men who had grown older and lost contact with the enthusiasm and intelligence of youth. And a consequence had been the failure of the mission, not because of Bull Simons, or Dick Meadows, or the Green Berets who'd gladly placed their lives at risk for men they'd never met, but because of others too afraid to risk their careers and their offices - matters of far greater importance, of course, than the blood of the guys at the sharp end. Song Tay was the whole story of Vietnam, told in the few minutes it had taken for a superbly-trained team to fail, betrayed as much by process as by some misguided or traitorous person hidden in the federal bureaucracy.
sender green would be different, Kelly told himself. If for no other reason than that it was being run as a private game. If the real hazard to the operation was oversight, then why not eliminate the oversight?
'Captain, you've been very helpful,' Kelly said.
'Find what you wanted, Mr Clark?' Griffin asked.
'Yes, Mr Griffin,' he said, dropping unconsciously back into naval terminology for the young officer. 'The analysis you did on the secondary camp was first-rate. In case nobody ever told you, that might have saved a few lives. Let me say something for myself: I wish we'd had an intel-weenie like you working for us when I was out in the weeds.'
'I can't fly, sir. I have to do something useful,' Griffin replied, embarrassed by the praise.
'You do.' Kelly handed over his notes. Under his eyes they were placed in an envelope that was then sealed with red wax. 'Courier the package to this address.'
'Yes, sir. You're due some time off. Did you get any sleep at all?' Captain Griffin asked.
'Well, I think I'll depressurize in New Orleans before I fly back.'
'Not a bad place for it, sir.' Griffin walked Kelly to his car, already loaded.
One other bit of intelligence had been stunningly easy, Kelly thought, driving out. His room in the Q had contained a New Orleans telephone directory in which, to his amazement, had been the name he'd decided