Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing

As we have seen, the power a composite wing like the 366th can bring to bear in a time of war is impressive, possibly even decisive. But how might this power actually be used in a crisis? The question is often on the minds of a number of folks, from the JCS Tank in the Pentagon to the flight line at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho. (Currently, only one of the three USAF composite wings assigned to ACC, the 23rd at Pope AFB, South Carolina, has ever been deployed during a crisis.) The decision when and where to use the 366th, with its unique capabilities, will be a tough judgment call for the national command authorities who will order it deployed and the regional CinCs who will command it during a crisis.

The following scenario is designed to show you some of the possibilities. I hope it will help you understand the capabilities of the 366th Wing and of modern airpower in general. The composite wings of ACC, along with the carrier air wings (CVWs) on our aircraft carriers, are going to be our aerial fire brigades for the next generation or so. If the last few years have been any indication, the coming decades will be violent enough to make the Cold War look no more frightening than an election in Chicago.

OPERATION GOLDEN GATE — VIETNAM, MAY 2000

The inevitability of the event seemed so clear in retrospect, yet this did not mitigate the surprise. South Vietnam, once deluged by American and other Western influences, simply never bought into the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy of the North. And while Hanoi was able to make it stick for a generation, the demise of their governing philosophy everywhere else in the world only encouraged the South to go its own way. The leader was a former chieftain with the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN — the former Viet Cong headquarters) with his own reasons for rebellion. Only 5 feet/1.5 meters tall and thin, even by Vietnamese standards, Duc Oanh had been an earnest and effective foe of the RVN and its American protectors. Wounded twice in combat actions and nearly buried alive by a B-52 Arc Light mission in 1970, he'd carried the banner for his beliefs, only to be shunted to a minor post office job when the North finally overran Saigon in 1975. What began as personal resentment in Duc's mind grew into a dream as he watched the North stagnate while the South fought the ideological reins well enough to begin something akin to genuine national development. He saw the perversion of his people's revolution by the ruling council of the North as final proof of the folly of the old men who ruled this corner of the world. One day, the dream formed into action.

Many former revolutionary soldiers shared Duc's feelings.

The coup that followed was anything but bloodless. In eight violent hours of darkness, combat veterans of the Vietnamese Army systematically assassinated their own senior officers during parties following the twenty-fifth anniversary Liberation Day ceremonies on April 30th. By dawn most of the military formations in the southern half of Vietnam had either been decapitated or had new leadership. And from Radio Saigon (nobody but foreigners had ever called it Ho Chih Minh City) went out a cry of renewed Southern independence that caught every news and intelligence agency in the world by total surprise.

Hanoi's first reaction was predictably intemperate.

The People's Republic of China was the only nation with any inkling of what was happening — Duc had established covert links to that government, whose hatred of Hanoi was every bit as deep as his own — and by noon the first international recognition of the revolutionary government had been announced. As for the Americans, the timing was too close to an American election. The President — himself a veteran of the aerial campaign against Hanoi in the 1970s and one of a generation of former warriors with a personal promise to make that lost war right — had to act.

The Party headquarters in Saigon had originally been built by the French as Saigon's city hall. The wide corridors, arched windows, and high ceilings with slowly rotating fans gave the building an air of faded colonial elegance. But the wiring was almost as bad as the plumbing. The emergency diesel generator in the basement had been delivered from East Germany in the 1970s, and was inoperable for lack of parts. Brownouts and complete power outages in the city had grown more frequent lately, as the arthritic Vietnamese economy and crumbling infrastructure were increasingly unable to meet payments on oil shipments, even at the subsidized "friendship price" the Chinese comrades offered to help prop up one of the world's three remaining Communist states.

Vu Xuan Linh, Chairman of the city's Party Committee and effective ruler of a metropolitan region of over five million people, was not surprised when the lights went out. That happened often enough. He was surprised, though, when he heard bursts of automatic fire in the corridor outside, and a ragged crowd of men armed with sticks, hand tools, and a few AKMs taken from the still-warm bodies of the dead guards outside burst into the office, grabbed his speechless body, and hurled it from the third-floor window. As the pavement rushed up to smash him, he only had time to wonder why the crowd in the plaza outside was waving those tattered, forbidden yellow flags with three horizontal red stripes.

The phone lines to the South were down, and the few military posts that had not thrown down their weapons or joined the rebels were getting out only fragmentary reports. The rebels seemed to have some sort of electronic jammers (ham radio gear actually) and knew how to use them. But the CNN news feed on TV in the ready room of the 923rd Fighter Regiment was clear and chilling. Saigon, Danang, Hue, even small provincial towns like Dalat and Ban Me Thuot, all seemed to have broken out in a mad carnival of mutiny, vandalism, looting, and murder of government and party officials. Colonel Nguyen Tri Loc, chief political officer of the Vietnam People's Air Force (VNPAF) Fighter Command, could see that he was facing the greatest challenge of his career. He would have to send his pilots into action against their own people.

"Airmen," he said quietly to the two dozen pilots in the ready room, "this is the most serious crisis Vietnam has faced in a generation. Your grandfathers shed their blood to drive out the French imperialists. Your fathers shed their blood to drive out the Americans. If this criminal counterrevolutionary uprising is not crushed swiftly, all their sacrifices will have been for nothing, and your children will become slaves of international monopoly capitalism. Remember your training, and your aim will be true. The Party and the Nation are depending on you."

The pilots looked straight ahead, stood to attention, and filed out to the flight line. There were no sidelong glances or murmurs of conversation. The colonel had no idea what they were thinking, and that made him uneasy. The 923rd was trained for the ground attack role, operating some 24 Su- 22M-3 Fitters. Twenty were flyable today, an excellent maintenance performance considering the difficulty of keeping the temperamental Tumansky engines running without regular factory overhauls. The range of over 600 miles/983 km. for this mission would limit the ordnance each could deliver on downtown Saigon to either two pods of 57mm rockets, or two napalm canisters. The most urgent target was the secret police headquarters. If the rebels could secure the building and its voluminous records, it would be a disaster. (The Party leaders had learned well the lessons of the overthrow of the German Democratic Republic.) After striking the city hall, the broadcasting stations, the Caravelle Hotel, and other likely centers of the revolt, the planes would recover at Danang, if that airfield was still secure, or alternatively at Cam Ranh Bay, then refuel and return to Tho Xuan to re-arm. There were no target folders, but every pilot was given a large-scale city map. The latest weather satellite pictures indicated that after some morning showers, it would be clear over most of the South. There was no up-to-date reconnaissance beyond what every pilot could see on CNN. The air defense missile sites around Bien Hoa and Tan Son Nhut airport had been thoroughly sabotaged by their loyal crews before they were evacuated, but there was no way of knowing how many handheld SAMs and anti-aircraft guns had fallen into the hands of the rebels. The regiment took off in five four-ship waves, spaced a few minutes apart.

"Looks as if the VNPAF is making a full court press," General Russ Dewey, commander of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces, observed as the situation display flickered with the latest updates. "We haven't seen this much activity out of them since, oh, hell, back in '72."

"There's still no word from the Pentagon," Admiral Roy Shapiro, the Commander in Chief, Pacific (CINCPAC), replied. "Not that we could do much right now, even if we got a green light." You didn't have to see the gold wings above the admiral's chestful of ribbons to tell that he was an aviator. He had flown off carrier decks in the Gulf of Tonkin, out of Subic Bay and Clark Field in the Philippines, out of Andersen AFB on Guam, the Marine base at Kadena on Okinawa, and a dozen other places that were now mostly memories. It was the kind of situation that was every CinC's worst nightmare. Another Major Regional Contingency (MRC) was shaping up, and the nearest airpower that U.S. Pacific Command controlled was exactly two squadrons of 8th TFW F-16s in Korea, two thousand long, long air miles away.

There was still some daylight fading in the western sky as the planes came in from the north low and fast. Because the mission had been laid on in a hurry and the ground crews had humped whatever ordnance was immediately available in the closest bunkers at Gia Lam and Hue, they had been loaded with 250 kg. incendiary and fragmentation bombs.

The slaughter in the streets, thronged with celebrating crowds, was appalling. Months later the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that over five thousand people had been killed outright and about fifteen thousand seriously burned or injured. No one would ever know for sure — the provisional city government committee reluctantly had to order the dead buried in mass graves for reasons of public health. Some of the fires burned for days, but not as hotly as the wave of rage and revulsion that swept through the normally docile and apolitical Saigonese population. Even worse from the point of view of the world press was what happened to the visitors that made up Vietnam's major cash industry — tourism. Better than two hundred foreigners, mostly businessmen from Europe or Japan, were checked in at the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon. Most of them were eating an early dinner or drinking in the world-famous bar. There were also about a hundred elderly American Vietnam War veterans in the country, invited by the Hanoi government to visit old battlefields and exorcise ancient demons. The original idea behind their visit, in fact, had been to speed along the normalization of U.S.-Vietnamese relations. Unfortunately for them, and for Hanoi, the pilots of four MiG-27 attack fighters had been told that the Caravelle was under rebel control.

It is one of the realities of our time that satellite news networks are the finest intelligence-gathering agencies in the world. Though Hanoi denied conducting the strike, a Sky News TV crew from Britain had it on tape, with the yellow stars clearly visible on the MiGs. The tape was uplinked immediately to the global satellite network.

The first Security Council resolution came up for a vote within hours of the airing of the tape; the pictures from Saigon had shocked even the hardened diplomats of this cynical group.

The motion had been proposed by the ambassador from France, the one-time colonial ruler of the region. It called for a UN-enforced isolation of the South until such time as UN-supervised elections could be conducted. Some speculated that the French proposal was offered in order to soothe old feelings of guilt going back three generations. The other Security Council members barely had time to call in to their various departments and ministries of State to obtain instructions. The surprise came when the vote by the permanent members was taken.

"The United States of America?"

"Yes."

"The United Kingdom?"

"Affirmative."

"The Republic of France?"

"Oui."

"The Russian Federation?"

"Da."

"Japan?"

"Hai!"

"The People's Republic of China?"

There was a long, tense pause while everyone waited for the simultaneous translation. "Madame Chairman, China abstains." In capitals around the world, the great and powerful sucked in their breath.

"How the hell does the UN Security Council expect us to back them up when they won't even tell us what they want ahead of time?" the National Security Advisor raged to the President, the Cabinet, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"Mitch," the President said in his best soothing fighter jock voice, "we have a unique opportunity here with regards to Southeast Asia, and I intend to take full advantage of it."

"I agree, Mr. President, but what do we use for bases and deployment support? We've gutted our forces in the region and have almost zero influence within the governments that run those places," the National Security Advisor pointed out correctly. "And on top of that, we're down to zero carrier battle groups in the Western Pacific, after that little problem with the Eisenhower battle group last week."

A Cypriot supertanker outbound from the Persian Gulf had plowed into the side of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-68), killing over fifty U.S. sailors and causing a massive hole in the supercarrier amidships. The tanker sank. With the big ship under tow to Newport News, Virginia, for repairs at the builder's yard, it would be at least three weeks until another battle group could be assembled and dispatched to the Western Pacific.

"This is going nowhere," thought the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he noisily cleared his throat to gain the attention of the assembled group. When he spoke, it was with the controlled authority that had made him the first Marine to ever hold the post. "I should point out that nations do not have allies, but common interests. Things are getting a bit crazy over there. Which means a lot of people over there are eager for the craziness to go away. Which means I think we can count on the leadership of that region offering us some options, if we're just ready to make use of them. Let me make several suggestions." As he spoke, and wrote ideas on a white board at the end of the conference room, a few thin smiles began to crack on the faces of the attendees. The National Security Advisor was among those smiling.

It had been a long night for the Leadership Council of the Communist Party of Vietnam, and the meeting was still not over. A bunch of elderly, has-been revolutionaries, thought General Truong Le, the Vietnamese Defense Minister, trying to hold on to the memory of a war long since gone, with ideals long since dead. The Premier himself may have been a veteran of Dien Bien Phu and Hue, but even those in this room did not have the personal courage to point out that his service had been as a staff headquarters political officer. Now these old men were going to decide the fate of two nations, and they were not viewing the situation with any sense of reality.

"We will not stand for this interference in our internal politics by the capitalist powers," stated the Premier flatly.

"What would you have us do against the power of nations like America and Russia?" asked the Defense Minister. "We are a third-rate power facing the most technologically advanced societies in the world."

"Precisely the kind of negativism that our Great Leader Ho had to overcome during the Liberation decades ago. Where would we be now if they had listened then to defeatist drones like you?" barked the Premier. "I'll tell you what we are going to do to the weak-willed dogs that call themselves the leaders of countries," he continued. "We're going to declare a blockade around the whole of the so-called RVN, just like the one the UN thinks they can slap around us. Then we'll see who chokes first!" He finished the statement by slapping the meaty palm of his hand on the polished conference table, stunning the assembled members of the council.

"But that means that we are granting de facto recognition of the RVN in the process," protested the Foreign Minister.

"I should also point out that this action carries with it certain international responsibilities, and is almost certain to place our forces directly into conflict with the UN forces that will be deployed to this area," said General Truong Le calmly, "and that their so-called rules of engagement will never be as insane as the ones they imposed on themselves during the Wars of Liberation."

"I speak for the Council," said the Premier coldly. "The action will go forward as I have ordered it!" Nobody on the Council tried to protest.

No Vietnam veterans flew tactical aircraft for the U.S. Air Force… they hadn't in years. A few senior officers remembered going "downtown," but these were generals; and if they were allowed in fighters at all, they had to satisfy themselves with two-seaters. But the colonels and the majors were veterans of another air war. They knew what it was like to fight where their targets were not picked by a politician in the Oval Office.

Now the 366th logistics officer took her place in front of the map. "Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to run another no-fly-zone operation with a possible air offensive somewhere in the rub," she said. "Now, where the hell are we going?"

"The F-16s and tankers will bed down initially at Takhli, about one hundred miles north of Bangkok. Seems that the Thais got real cooperative when the bombing in Saigon started a few days ago. In fact, everyone has been that way." The officer grinned. "Good facilities. The Royal Thai AF has operated F-16s there for years. Excellent runway — it was built long enough to handle 'hot day' takeoffs of F-105s. The rest of the wing, for now, will go to U-Tapao, right on the coast about seventy miles southeast of Bangkok. The facilities are great. We can bring seagoing tankers of jet fuel and munition ships right into the port. We're going to forward-base the Combat SAR guys up-country at a Thai Army airfield called Sakon Nakhon and a little opium-smuggling airstrip called Chiang Rai in the middle of the Golden Triangle. It's hairy up there; we'll need some heavy security on the ground. The guys down at Fort Benning at the JFK School are sending some instructors and volunteers to take care of that problem. Meanwhile we'll be working to reactivate old air bases at Udon and Korat about two hundred miles northeast of Bangkok for any other coalition nations that send in forces later. Great locations, but the Royal Thai Air Force abandoned them a few years ago, and it'll take a lot of engineer work to make the jungle and cobras give 'em back."

Brigadier General Jack "the Knife" Perry, the 366th commander, looked at the map, and memories flooded back. For the first time in years, he desperately wanted a cigarette. "Thank you, Colonel," he told his logistics officer, who seemed much too young for the silver eagles on her shoulder boards. "Now how do we get there, Kurt?" He turned to his operations officer.

"The State Department guys are still twisting arms over some of the overflight rights, but it looks like we can do a Great Circle." That was the shortest and hence most economical route between any two points on the globe. "First stage: Mountain Home to Elmendorf, Alaska. If the weather permits, we can put some tankers at Shemya for refueling, but the ramp space there is tight. Second stage: Elmendorf to Yokota and Misawa, Japan. The Russians will let us base a squadron of ANG tankers at Petropavlovsk, as long as we buy the fuel from them and pay in hard currency. In emergencies they say we can divert to any of their fields in Kamchatka or Sakhalin. No diplomatic problem with Yokota and Misawa so far, but the Japs want us in and out fast, with no publicity. Third stage is Misawa to Taiwan. The ROC Air Force is rolling out the red carpet. We can use the civil airports at Taipei International, Tai Chung, Kao Hsiung, and all their military fields. No way to maintain OPSEC" — Operations Security—"on such short notice, but the ROCs will try to keep the media camera crews out of the landing patterns. The last stage gets complicated. We had planned on staging tankers out of Kai Tak Airport at Hong Kong; but the Chicoms said, not just no, but Hell, NO! Seems they don't ever want to be accused of a stab in the back, like Poles accused the Russians back in '39. So, we have to pre-position tankers at Manila, Kota Kinbalu in Malaysia, and Brunei. The Filipinos are gouging us for landing rights, so we can't count on Manila. We can get some Australian tanker support out of Singapore, but we're still working on how much."

The general nodded. Good staff work on short notice. His scarred index finger traced a line on the map, skirting the Chinese mainland air-defense buffer zone. "How about a shortcut across Vietnam?" he said, with a wicked grin.

"No way, sir. That's not the way we've trained to deploy," the ops officer said with an answering smile. "By that point our crews will be tired, and we don't want to risk tangling with their air defenses before we've had a chance to knock them down a little. It would be a bad start for the mission if we lost a few planes just to save a couple of hours' flight time."

The general reluctantly nodded. There was no point in staging another "Doolittle Raid" as a stunt. The way to win an air campaign was by the book.

It had been a long trip, and double issues of "piddle packs" had been the order of the day. For the aircrews of the 366th's A+ Package on their way to Thailand, it had been a day of contrasts. From the desert of Idaho, to the cold mountains of Alaska, now down to the equatorial jungles. They had one more refueling to go in about an hour, and were looking forward to seeing the tankers. The eight F-15Es of the 391st TFS, in two four-ship formations spaced a few miles apart, were cruising southwest at their most economical speed and altitude, about 470 knots/859.5 kph. at 20,000 feet. The Strike Eagles were combat loaded with a mix of GBU-24 LGBs, AGM-65 Mavericks, GBU-15s, and three 630 gallon/2,377 liter fuel tanks, as well as the usual load of two AIM-120 and two AIM-9 air-to-air missiles. They were accompanied by eight F-16Cs of the 389th, each armed with a pair of AGM-88 HARM missiles, an AN/ASQ-213 HARM Targeting System (HTS) pod, an external ALQ- 131 jamming pod, two AIM-9s, two AIM-120s, and a pair of 370 gallon/1,396 liter fuel tanks. These two groups were being escorted by eight F-15Cs of the 390th FS, armed with a full load of four AIM-120 AMRAAM and four AIM-9 Sidewinder AAMs. These last were headed "downhill" to 18,000 feet/5,486 meters, where they would meet up with a pair of KC-10A tankers to top off for the final run into Thailand.

At the moment, each group was doing different things to prepare the aircraft for the planned embargo of the North, as well as staying ready for any trouble from the Vietnamese off to the west. The ROE were Warning Yellow — Weapons Hold, which allowed the fighters to defend themselves if they were threatened in any way. The UN resolution clearly allowed them to do so, though everyone in the formation was quietly hoping that this contingency would not involve any expenditure of ordnance or loss of life. The F-15Es were testing their LANTIRN targeting pods, and were using their APG-70 radars to shoot a series of radar maps to help with the target planning that was already going on in Fast-3, the command-and-control KC- 135R of the 22nd ARS, which was already coming in to land at U-Tapao. The F-15Cs were testing their JTIDS data links to make sure that they functioned as advertised. And the F-16Cs of the 389th were calibrating their HTS pods and Improved Data Modems (IDMs) on known SAM sites along the Vietnamese shore to their right. The F-16s were all "netted" together, and the leader of the second flight had just turned on his gun camera video recorder when the radar warning receiver began to bleep. "What the ****," Captain Julio "Frito" Salazar, lead pilot of the second flight of F-16s, said. "Somebody down there is tracking us!" The frigates Dau Tranh ("Struggle") and Giai Phong ("Liberation") were the pride of the Vietnamese Navy. Originally built for the Soviet KGB as heavily armed Krivak-III maritime patrol vessels, they had been acquired by Hanoi for little more than their scrap value and carefully refitted with French weapons systems and Japanese electronics, though they retained the twin ZIF-122/SA-N-4 Gecko missile launcher forward. The cost of maintaining the ships was high, but the Party leaders judged that the political cost of conceding control of the Gulf of Tonkin and the South China Sea was even higher. Following standing orders, the ships fired up their gas turbine engines and raced out to sea at the first sign of trouble, lest they be trapped in Haiphong harbor by mines. Rear Admiral Vu Hung Van, flying his flag in Dau Tranh, had mission orders to blockade the southern Vietnamese coast, isolating the rebels while the People's Army crushed them.

"Admiral, aircraft bearing thirty degrees, at least ten, maybe more, in tactical formation. Definitely not friendly. If they maintain course and speed they will be within missile range in about five minutes."

"That will be our old friends the Americans," said the admiral, as an enigmatic smile crossed his weather-beaten face. "Let us prepare to welcome them." CNN had provided live coverage of the first movements of the American aircraft, and he knew what was coming. He also knew his duty and orders, and punched the button on the console for General Quarters.

Things began to happen at electronic speeds, beyond the range of human reflexes. As the fire control computers on the Vietnamese frigates began to develop target solutions, they commanded the tracking radars to switch to a higher pulse rate. At the same moment, HTS pods on the F-16s immediately detected this ominous development and alerted the pilots flashing the code STA 8 in two spots in the corner of the digital display of their ALR-56M radar-warning receivers (RWRs). It also told them that the Pop Group fire control radars of the two ships were in a firing mode, ready to launch. Captain Salazar reacted quickly. He immediately called a warning to the other aircraft of the package, and began to rapidly move his fingers over the HOTAS controls on his control stick and throttle. As he did, he called to his wingman, 1st Lieutenant Jack "the Bear" Savage, to hit the northernmost target with his HARMS, while he took the southern one. The IDMs linked the data from the HTS pods, and in a matter of seconds both aircraft had range and bearing solutions to their targets. It took only a few seconds more for the two pilots to set up the HARM missiles and launch them. Then the pilots turned on their jamming pods, set up their countermeasures dispensers, and made ready to evade the SAMs of the two frigates.

Ten seconds after the General Quarters alarm sounded, four SA-N-4 Gecko/4K33 missiles rose from the ships, while the four HARM missiles descended from the planes. The range was down to 5 miles/8.2 km. as the 100mm gun turrets of the frigates began slewing toward the black specks in the clear tropical sky. Diving in at over 4,500 feet per second/1,372 meters per second, the HARMs won the race. The proximity fuzes detonated above the ships, showering them with thousands of tungsten fragments and chunks of still-burning rocket motor fuel. Admiral Vu and his bridge crew were dead before they knew what had happened. The fragments from the HARMs' warheads virtually shredded the two frigates, starting fires in the forward weapons magazines of both ships, as well as rupturing the fuel tanks. The SA-N-4s, deprived of terminal guidance, followed a graceful ballistic arc until the fuzes timed out and they self-destructed.

The lead Strike Eagle had captured the whole engagement on the videotape recorder of his LANTIRN targeting pod. Two hours later, just a few minutes after he touched down in Thailand, the imagery of the first shots fired in what was now being called Operation Golden Gate was being relayed by satellite datalink to Washington. The good parts were rushed through declassification by a rather sharp Pentagon PAO, just in time to make the evening news. The Vietnamese would regret firing the first shots at the 366th. Giai Phong limped into Cam Ranh Bay, where the surviving crew mutinied and joined the rebellion. Dau Tranh blew up and sank when the fires reached the forward missile magazine. A Chinese freighter picked up the survivors a few days later. They were neither grateful for the rescue nor well treated by their rescuers.

The Military Committee of the Party had ordered all senior cadres to study diligently the lessons of the 1991 Gulf War. If the Americans, or even worse, the damned Chinese came again (they had attempted an invasion of Vietnam in 1979), the command-and-control centers of this nation would not be caught sitting around the capital waiting to be decapitated. The top-secret dispersal and evacuation plan was worked out in detail, but the details were changed at random intervals, and there were never any practice exercises, to reduce the risk that a high-level defection could fatally compromise the plan.

The first lesson of the 1991 Persian Gulf War for the leadership of bandit nations was that underground bunkers were a trap. They would be pinpointed by satellite reconnaissance, targeted, and smashed by precision-guided penetrating bombs. So the Party would take refuge in the vast network of natural caverns that abounded in the mountains north and west of the city. Centuries of bat droppings were cleared out, and carefully camouflaged remote antennas for French-built spread-spectrum cellular phone systems were installed; but otherwise, preparations were kept to a minimum, and no road construction was permitted in the vicinity of the cave entrances.

Following the incident between the frigates and the 366th's A+ Package, the UN Security Council voted another resolution, this one designating the Hanoi regime as an outlaw government and authorizing the use of force. When word of this was received from the Vietnamese delegation in New York, the leadership evacuation plan was activated. The plan was executed so smoothly that the foreign diplomatic and journalistic community in Hanoi never got a hint that anything was amiss until virtually the entire Party and Government structure had vanished from the city. Thus it came about that elderly members of the Central Committee found themselves being winched down in darkness from rickety old Mi-8 HIP helicopters through the forest canopy and into tiny clearings, where National Security Force guards led them to underground hideouts connected by comm links that were difficult to intercept and almost impossible to jam.

"Mitch, I'm going to have to fulfill a few legal obligations to make this enforcement business happen the way you and the UN Security Council want it done," the JCS Chairman said to the National Security Advisor in his office.

"What might those be, Jack?" the National Security Advisor asked coyly.

"I'm talking about assassination, Mitch. Not that it's illegal; but we do have to do some paperwork to make it all nice and okay. Especially the part about a signed Presidential National Security Finding showing that the continued existence of the Hanoi regime is a clear threat to the security and safety of the region," replied the annoyed JCS Chairman.

"Will this do?" said the NSC Advisor, handing the big Marine a leather binder with the seal of the President on it. The JCS Chairman looked it over carefully, taking his time as he flipped through the pages. He stopped abruptly when he reached the last page with the signature blocks.

"Nice touch having the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tem of the Senate endorse it… makes it all nice and bipartisan," the general observed.

"We thought it would add a certain moral conviction to the effort, especially since most of the veterans killed at the Caravelle were from the senator's home state," replied the National Security Advisor. "It just took some time to staff it through the Justice Department and the UN Security Council. Everyone wants to keep this most nasty of actions as tidy as possible. If, of course, your folks at the 366th can make it happen."

"All right, Bob," Brigadier General Jack Perry, the 366th's commander and the resident JFACC of the UN-sponsored action, said, "give us a rundown on operations to date."

"Yes sir," the colonel commanding the Operations Center said. "We've been running no-fly operations in the southern part of Vietnam for two days now, and we seem to have things under control so far. The light grays" — F-15Cs—"from the 390th have gotten an even dozen MiG kills so far, and VNPAF air activity outside their borders has virtually ceased. Also, the movement of Vietnamese units and supplies from the north has slowed greatly, and they have a backup of trains going from Hue back through Thanh Hoa to Hanoi."

"How about troop movements headed south?" the commander asked.

"Well sir, that's not so good," the colonel observed. "Satellite photos show large formations of light troops moving south on foot, with most of them headed for Mu Gia Pass and the old Ho Chi Minh Trail routes. National estimates make their numbers at approximately fifty thousand, in four identifiable divisions. They appear to have nothing heavier than personal weapons, and there are very few vehicles supporting them. Looks like a modern-day version of the Long March. They'll be through the pass and on the trail in less than a week. After that, you're going to have one nasty civil war down south."

"Just wonderful!" observed General Perry. He then asked the logistics chief, "And what happy news do you have for me, Harry?"

Lieutenant Colonel Harry Carpenter looked down at the notes on his laptop computer and began to speak. "Sir, the last elements of the C-Package arrived this afternoon. The Bones from the 34th will start mining operations of all northern harbors, rivers, and estuaries tonight. It will take about two nights to get them closed off. The UN posted the warning to navigators right after the embargo resolution was passed, and Lloyds threatened to pull the coverage from any ship still in harbor after 0000 local time tonight. The B-1Bs will start laying the eggs around 0400 local tomorrow, with activation in forty-eight hours."

"How about escorts and ROE?" the general inquired.

"Per your orders, sir," the lieutenant colonel replied, "no bomber shall drop any mine without logging it with a PY-code GPS receiver supplying the position. Also, each B-1B will be escorted by an F-15C loaded for air superiority and an F-16C with HARMs and HTS for defense suppression, if required. For tonight at least, the dark grays over at the 391st will do the no-fly job for us until that's done." He took a long breath and continued. "As for supplies and reinforcements, there's good news coming. Our old friends, the 8th FS from the 49th Wing at Holloman AFB, have just arrived this evening with twelve F-117s to help out with our leadership hunting, should that work out. In addition, we've been getting little bits and pieces of other things, like two RC-135 Rivet Joints to help out with the SIGINT problem. We also got two more E-3Cs from Tinker, to help out the three we already have. The first of the French and British fighters will arrive in about six days, as soon as they can get their tanker support settled. As for logistics, the first of the propositioned ships will arrive tomorrow, so we can stop sweating ordnance and fuel supplies. The Alert Brigade of the 82nd Airborne and 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade are standing by to help with the peacekeeping duties, if there ever are any. They'll bring elements of MAW-3" — Marine Air Wing Three—"and the 23rd Wing at Pope AFB if they ever arrive." He gave a rueful smile at that, knowing that things were not going well in the area they were about to discuss.

"Okay, ladies and gentlemen," General Perry announced, "lets get down to cases. What the hell happened to the enemy leadership, our designated center of gravity? Where are our damned targets? I want some dammed DMPIs, and I want them now! I'm listening. I'm waiting for an answer." The young brigadier had been under heavy stress already, and was now seriously irritated by a stupid tropical rash he had picked up in this hellhole, by the disappearance of the North Vietnamese national leadership, and by the dumb stares of his bright young intelligence officers. Had he been more of a screamer, he might have enjoyed a late night snack of lieutenant's butt on rye. But now, all he wanted was a target set for his Strike Eagles to hit.

Five hours later, the general was awakened in his hooch by the Operations Chief and Major Goldberg, a particularly disheveled-looking officer, even for an intelligence weenie. After rising and turning the overworked air conditioner to its maximum setting, the general sat down across a small table from the two officers and said, "This had better be good."

Goldberg pushed a book across the table. The paper binding was yellowed and stained, and the edges of the pages were ragged. It was in French:

"What the hell is this, Major. I don't speak Frog," the General snarled, realizing he would have to stop saying that when their French coalition partners arrived.

"The Caves of Tonkin, sir. Back in the thirties, a French geographer named DuBois did a thorough exploration of the karst caverns near Hanoi. I figured that's where they might be hiding their command and control infrastructure, so I called… an… old friend in Paris. She tracked this down for me. Please be careful with the fold-out maps in the back, sir. The paper is kind of brittle, but they're better than anything that NRO, DMA, or USGS could come up with."

The general picked up the book, leafed through it, and unfolded the first map as carefully as he would have treated the original manuscript of the Constitution. After two hours of study with Goldberg translating — as the first rays of sunlight began to light the eastern sky — he handed it back, almost reverently. "Get this all translated, and get the maps digitized and correlated to our datum references. Also, get access to someone who's an expert on the geology of limestone karsts. Now. That means right now, Major!"

A sigh of relief passed around the room. "We got 'em," the three officers muttered simultaneously. As the trio broke up, another thought about the French came to Major Goldberg, and he decided to make another phone call.

The twelve F-117s lifted off from U-Tapao, topped off their tanks from a pair of 22nd ARS KC-135Rs well out of radar coverage, and headed northeast. Through their FLIR imaging equipment, not a few pilots looked down on Thud Ridge, the karst finger pointed southeast towards Hanoi, which had guided their fathers and grandfathers in daylight on their own missions "downtown." But this was a different time, and the new USAF preferred to fight at night, when the optically aimed AAA batteries were largely useless. One of their targets was the Paul Doumer Bridge, proof that at least one colonel who had experienced the Vietnam War on the CBS Evening News had a sense of humor. The mission was to turn Hanoi into a darkened, isolated city, and do it in a single night. The whole purpose of the mission was deception, albeit deception with highly desirable effects. The missiles were still there, the SA-2s and -3s from the 1970s, and a few newer systems were in place, bought from Russia or cash-strapped clients of the now-defunct Soviet Union. Hanoi thought it still had a formidable air-defense system, remembering how many American aircraft had fallen in its rice paddies. Indeed, there was a large museum of such trophies. It is often said that countries prepare to fight the last war. But in the case of Hanoi, the war they planned to fight was two wars back.

Two hours later, the lieutenant colonel flying the lead Nighthawk looked with satisfaction on the image of the Paul Doumer Bridge as he began his attack run. A generation earlier, at the dawn of the age of precision guided weapons, his father had led a flight of four F-4Ds with Paveway I LGBs against this same bridge. Now he was flying serenely over Hanoi, with not a shot flying up at him, lining up on the same structure his dad had nearly died for exactly twenty-seven years ago this day. His target was a bridge piling, which provided structural support for the center of the bridge, in the deepest part of the Red River channel. The two GBU-27/Bs with their BLU- 109/B warheads dropped accurately and hit the target with a pair of huge explosions. When the FLIR screen cleared, he smiled at the result. On either side of the piling, the bridge was down, like a giant V into the river. The piling itself looked as if it had been chopped off by a meat cleaver, the support tower having been completely destroyed. It would be a while until this link in the Hanoi-Hue railroad would be fixed.

Ten seconds after his bombs hit, he saw the flash off to his right of two more LGBs taking out the air defense command center at Gia Lam Airfield. Seconds later, the Party headquarters went up. Other targets went up as well. The thermal power plant took two GBU-27/Bs into the foundation of the turbine room, throwing the delicate mechanisms out of alignment, tearing them apart like lunatic pinwheels from hell. In all, ten targets in the Hanoi area went up in a matter of just three minutes. Meanwhile, two additional F-117s took out the "Dragon's Jaw" Bridge at Thanh Hoa and the hardened Vietnamese II Corps command post at Hue. As the city went dark and panic erupted among the junior officers and bureaucrats left behind to supervise the functions of the government, the real targets of tonight's strike began to pay the price for their arrogance.

The rule was that nothing would go into the caves that could not be hand-carried to the entrance on a narrow footpath. Six champion athletes of the People's Army had the honor of carrying the 300 kg./660 lb. steel blast door almost 10 miles/16.3 km. from the nearest road. The engineers calculated that it would withstand the overpressure from any conceivable near-miss by a conventional weapon, and it was located far enough down a twisting passage that any guided weapon would have to be as agile as a Habu to negotiate the two right-angle turns. The Sergeant of the Guards at the entrance to the blast door was startled when he turned and saw the Defense Minister, General Truong Le, standing before him. "Comrade General, you cannot go outside."

"Comrade Sergeant, they won't let me smoke down there. I appeal to your fraternal revolutionary spirit. Take pity on an old man who is dying for a cigarette."

The general had been a recruit in Giap's army at Dien Bien Phu. He had led a battalion in the bitter street fighting in Hue during Tet. He had commanded a division during the final liberation of the South in 1975, then a corps on the Chinese border during the 1979 war with their hated Chinese neighbors. He might be Chief of Staff for the People's Army of Vietnam, but he was still close to his peasant roots. A big man by Vietnamese standards, he lived simply, and had refused to use political influence to get his sons cushy jobs in the Party. The soldiers loved him. His request was a breach of discipline, but the general and the sergeant stepped outside the cave entrance together into the cool night air for a smoke, carefully closing the blast door behind them. This ensured that they would be the only survivors of what was about to happen.

The two RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft were working with a C-130 Hercules equipped with a Senior Scout clip-on SIGINT system to isolate the final locations of what were now being called "the leadership caves" from the minute emissions of the French-supplied cellular phone equipment used for their communications. The idea had come to Major Goldberg when he remembered a small notice he had seen on an Internet newsgroup several months before about a French firm in Toulon selling several million francs' worth of satellite cellular equipment to the Vietnamese government. He talked the situation over with the newly arrived French liaison officer, sent ahead to scout for the squadron of Rafale fighters that was due to arrive in three days. A phone call was made to the electronics firm and the company controlling the satellite cellular service contract for the Vietnamese. After finding out that the service had been almost unused until a few days earlier, and exactly what frequencies the phones transmitted on, it was a simple matter to have one of the NSA SIGINT satellites identify a rough location for the cellular activity.

The three aircraft refined their positions, then handed them off, via their own MILSTAR satellite links, to an inbound strike force of 366th Wing aircraft. The Vietnamese leadership was in the 366th's sight, and the gun was cocked.

General Perry was flying this one himself in his own F-15E Strike Eagle, known as Wing King. Tonight's mission had it flying at 16,000 feet/4,876.8 meters, loaded with four GBU-24/B penetrating 2,000lb./ 909.1 kg. bombs. He had ordered a maximum effort for this evening's mission, and the maintenance chiefs had done themselves proud, getting sixteen of the complex birds into the air. The real kudos, though, had to go to the enlisted ordies from the bomb shops, who had switched plans for the evening and managed to build up the necessary LGBs to arm the dark grays, as well as getting the necessary mines into the B-1Bs for their last night of mining.

"Final update coming in over the MILSTAR link, sir," said Captain Asi "Ahab" Ontra, the general's personal WSO, over the intercom. The general smiled in his oxygen mask at the report. Ontra was one of the growing number of Moslems making a career for themselves in the U.S. military. Born in the Detroit area, with its large population of Lebanese immigrants, he may have been a bit too "dry" on Friday nights at the officers' club, but a better operator of the LANTIRN system was not to be found in the 366th. Now they were on their way to kill a government.

"How many of the caves have they identified?" asked the wing commander.

"Nineteen so far, sir. Major Goldberg seems to feel that may be all of them, sir," replied the young WSO.

"Have they told us what our target for tonight is?" the general inquired.

"They're not sure, sir… maybe some kind of military command center," the young man speculated.

"Okay. How long to target?" the general asked.

"Two minutes, sir. Your steering cue is up!" came the curt reply. It was all business now.

The Defense Minister shared a Camel with the young sergeant and sucked in the smoke and night air. Any other time, it would have been a beautiful night. Now his country was at war again, fighting for its pride… its self-respect… its identity… though he himself was beginning to question all of that. He looked over at the young soldier sharing a smoke with him and wondered what kind of nation he and the rest of the Party Leadership Council were going to hand over to this brave man.

"Target in sight, sir. Ten seconds to drop," Ahab called to General Perry, the green glow from the FLIR image on the Multi-Function Display lighting his face as he worked the two hand controllers to set up the LGB delivery.

"Roger, Master Arm on. Your pickle is hot. Stand by!" called General Perry over the intercom. As he did, the AAQ-14 LANTIRN targeting pod fired a short laser burst at the top of the karst to establish the range to target. This done, the time-to-drop clock counted down to zero. Then the four GBU-24/Bs dropped in rapid succession. They fell quickly, speeding up to over 900 fps./274.3 mps. When they were fifteen seconds from impact, Captain Ontra fired the laser again at the top of the limestone mountain, painting it with laser light. Again, a countdown clock in his FLIR MFD counted down to zero.

It was the memory of a younger man that saved him at that moment. There was only time for General Truong Le to yell, "Get down!" to the sergeant, before the four bombs impacted the top of the karst. For a moment, the old man thought that the weapons has been duds, though that illusion was rapidly dispelled when the delayed-action fuzes fired the charges in the BLU- 109/B warheads. There was no way the weapons could fully penetrate the limestone strata to reach the caves below. They did not have to. The tail-mounted fuzes had been set to detonate at the same moment, setting up the equivalent of a small earthquake within the soft rock. At once, a vertical shear wave was formed, heading down into the karst. It collapsed the cave tunnels below, like eggs under an elephant. Everyone inside was killed instantly. Meanwhile, the sudden collapse of the caves caused a huge overpressure of air in the tunnel entrance, blowing the blast door off its hinges with a "bang" and a "whoosh." The rogue door was flung out of the twisting cave tunnel like a sheet of paper. It missed the Defense Minister and his young comrade by inches as it careened off into the jungle. As the silence returned to the night, the old general heard other dull explosions, as twelve more targets were hit in exactly the same way. Instinctively knowing what was happening, he stood transfixed as the distant flashes announced the end of the Vietnamese Communist Party.

He was still standing when the young sergeant asked, "Shouldn't we report this to someone, Comrade General?"

The old man thanked the darkness for not showing his embarrassment to the young soldier. Then he replied as the last of the rolling thunder of the bombs died away, "Yes. And Sergeant, thank you for reminding me of my duty. Would you care to accompany me, please?" With that, they headed down the trail, back to the road, and hopefully, to Yen Bai Airfield some 20 km./12 miles away.

The Party Military Committee's study of the 1991 Gulf War had derived one important lesson about air power: Use it or lose it. The VNPAF would not cower in shelters waiting to be destroyed. It would go down fighting from dispersed airstrips like this one. So it was that Colonel Nguyen Tri Loc, formerly the chief political officer of the VNPAF, found himself commanding the remains of the 931st Fighter Regiment, following the death of its commander from a Yankee AMRAAM missile three days previously. The 931st now consisted of just nine flyable MiG-29Cs and a rugged antique AN-2 biplane. These had narrowly escaped from the burning and exploding rubble of the air defense command center at Gia Lam Airport northwest of Hanoi only hours ago. The colonel had realized that the Americans were not making his planes a target unless they were actually flying. The unit's first attempt to break the aerial blockade had resulted in the loss of five of his precious MiG-29s to long-range AMRAAM shots. Since that time, they had been whittled down to the survivors that resided in the earth and concrete shelters surrounding the airfield's perimeter.

The colonel had almost lost his own life two nights before, while trying to intercept one of the big B-1B bombers on a mining mission. He had flown alone that night, trying to hide in the clutter with his IFF transponder off, just in case they were trying to use that against him also. He had just sighted the black monster in the mouth of the Red River near Nam Dien when he saw the flash of a Sidewinder missile coming at him from an escorting F-16. Only a quick snapshot with one of his own R-73/AA-11 Archer missiles and a rapid run behind a nearby karst saved his life.

At the time, the incident severely shook him, though now he was just furious, angered by his regiment's impotence against the aerial invaders. He and the surviving planes and pilots lived at the discretion of a hostile opponent, only as long as they did not threaten them. That was the reason why the Yankees wiped out the surface-to-air rocket batteries that protected his base here in the Vietnamese highlands valley from which it drew its name. When the survivors of the four rocket batteries returned, they were cursing the HARM missiles that destroyed their engagement radars like thunderbolts from the blue. Despite this loss, the People's Army was still providing base defense, in the form of a few well-hidden S-60 57mm AAA guns, and some shoulder-fired missile teams equipped with the Chinese version of the SA-16, dug in on hilltops to the south and west.

Just finding the American intruders was almost impossible. Every intercept radar site in North Vietnam had been taken out in the first few days of the American intervention. So for early warning the colonel had only an Inmarsat-P satellite phone that connected him to agents on the ground in Thailand. He knew when a strike or patrol left Takhli or U-Tapao, but he could only guess where it was headed; and more than once he had scrambled his handful of fighters, wasting precious fuel and alerting the ever-vigilant AWACS planes, only to discover that aircraft had doglegged somewhere too far for him to have a chance at interception.

But today would be different. Several flights of F-15Es had just struck one of the last of the leadership cavern complexes, and an urgent coded message on the satellite phone told him that their return route would pass almost directly over his position. The odds for once were more than two to one in his favor. He would have the advantage of surprise, and this might be the last chance for the 931st Regiment to strike a blow before it was targeted and wiped out for good. He headed to his MiG, strapped in, and gave the order for the rest of the regiment to start engines. As the last of the howling Klimov RD-33 engines came to life, Colonel Nguyen Tri Loc taxied his MiG out for what would be the last air battle of the Vietnam People's Air Force.

General Perry brought the Wing King away from its target run and pulled into the standard Strike Eagle trailing formation. This had two pairs of F-15Es, with the trailing pair up to four miles behind the first two. Because he and his wingman had hit a large leadership cave complex that was close to the old PRC/Vietnamese northwest rail line, they had wound up as the trailing pair in the formation for the return leg of the mission, which would take them within five miles/8.2 km. of the Yen Bai Airbase. The Gunfighters' commander was elated. The last of the leadership caves had been destroyed by a total of eight GBU-24/Bs. Amazingly, the last of the Leadership Council had insisted on staying in their own private grave complex, even when warned about the imminent danger posed by the 366th's penetration bombs. It was as if they'd realized their time was up… like old elephants going off to die. General Perry smiled. For once, those responsible for making war on innocent people had themselves paid with their lives. Justice. His eyes were scanning the cockpit, looking for signs of mechanical and systems problems, when they fixed on the moving map display, and froze.

"Ahab," the general snapped, "get me an SAR picture of the runway at Yen Bai. Do it now!"

The young captain immediately slewed the big dish of the APG-70 radar around to the left and painted the airfield, just coming into sight now about 20 miles/32.8 km. distant. The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mode gave them photographic-quality images of ground targets from many miles away; targets as small as 8 feet/2.4 meters in size could be imaged. Both men stared tensely at the image in their MFDs. What they saw chilled them both, for on the screen were eight or nine small targets, clearly identifiable as aircraft. General Perry saw that most of them were clustered at what he remembered from satellite photos of the base as an arming and fueling pit. Two others were clearly getting ready for a takeoff roll. Immediately, he yelled over the intercom for Captain Ontra to take another sweep with the APG-70 in SAR mode, and saw that two more of the aircraft were missing from the arming pit. From the back seat, he heard his WSO mumble, "Oh, Allah!" They were in trouble.

Colonel Nguyen and his wingman stayed low in the valley, not turning on their radars or any other electronic gear which might reveal their positions or intentions. As they rocketed on full afterburner through the saddle at the western end of the valley, they pulled up and sighted a pair of the Yankee Eagle strike aircraft directly in front of them. Nguyen exulted as he set this up, and called to his wingman, "Captain Tran, you attack the right-hand target, I'll take the left one." With that, he checked his sensors. His Infrared Search And Track (IRST) system, contained in a small transparent ball in the nose, was giving him a good lock for his two R-73/AA-11 Archer short-range IR missiles. But the range was still too long, so he activated the RLPK-29/Slot Back radar, and set up a shot with his two R-27/AA-10 Alamo long-range radar-homing missiles. When the HUD showed the lead Eagle locked up, he depressed the trigger twice, and the two missiles were on their way. At the same time, he saw Tran's missiles leap off their launch rails and head for the second American fighter.

"Oh, Christ!" thought General Perry as he saw the smoke trails from the missiles angle up towards the leading pair of Strike Eagle Flight. He jammed a finger on the guard frequency transmit button and yelled, "Harry! Tony! Alamos coming up. Get the hell out of there now!" Both Strike Eagle crews reacted with trained precision, doing everything right. In the backseats, the WSOs immediately activated their defensive electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems, then began to hit the buttons for the ALE-47 chaff/decoy launchers to dispense metalized plastic strips and flares to try and decoy the incoming missiles. In the front cockpits, each of the pilots jammed the throttles of their twin F-100-PW-229 engines to Zone 5, afterburner, and racked their fighters in a sweeping left-hand turn towards the oncoming danger. They almost got away with it.

One of Captain Tran's missiles failed in mid-flight, and the other was decoyed by the Strike Eagle's internal ECM system, flying off into the western sky. The lead Eagle had no such luck. While the first missile went after a chaff decoy, the second was dead on target. It struck the F-15E at the base of the port wing, detonating there and taking it off completely. As the big fighter began to cartwheel into a spin, both crewmen activated their ACES II ejection seats and headed for a "nylon letdown" and God-knows-what on the ground. General Perry shook off the shock from the suddenness of the strike and realized that three or four more flights of MiG-29s just like this one were about to do the same thing to the remaining three planes of his strike force. He had to act fast, and time was burning.

But then things slowed down, as the adrenaline rush compressed time and events into a dizzying swirl. He slammed the twin throttles of the -229 engines to afterburner and punched the button for the radio channel again, thinking of the two men in their chutes as he spoke. "Tony, extend and get back into the fight when you can. Get us some CSAR" — combat search and rescue—"support up here to look for the guys." He then turned his attention to his wingman, a young First Lieutenant named Billy "Jack" Bowles, a full-blooded Cherokee from Oklahoma. He called over, "Billy, get the flight taking off now with Slammers. Now! Then try and extend and reassemble to the west."

Next he called to Captain Ontra in the backseat and ordered, "Lock up the second airborne pair with Slammers. Get the ECM going. And get me a raid count with the FLIR."

He needn't have said anything. Already, Ahab had the APG-70 in TWS mode, searching for and finding the second pair of Fulcrums. He quickly set up an AIM-120 Slammer for each of the approaching MiGs and fired them in Fire-and-Update mode. The two missiles quickly ate up the 5 miles/ 8.2 km. to the two Vietnamese fighters, obliterating them in a pair of dirty orange explosions. There were no survivors.

He heard Ontra in the backseat yell, "Splash two," over the guard channel, and heard a similar call from Lieutenant Bowles.

In his headset he heard the duty AWACS calling, "This is Disco-1 on guard. Bandits… I repeat… multiple bandits at Bullseye" — Hanoi—"295 degrees for 85" (85 miles/139.3 km). "King flight is engaged. King-3 is down. CSAR support is on the way. Oilcan flight, engage. Your code is BUSTER" (full afterburner). "I repeat. Your code is Buster!" The young female captain at the controller console of the AWACS was excited, but doing her duty. Now all General Perry had to do was stay alive for five minutes, and four F-15Cs from the 390th would be here to save their collective asses.

Colonel Nguyen, elated with his ambush of the first Strike Eagle, led Captain Tran towards the ground to avoid being ambushed himself. But as the two MiGs popped up over a ridge, his elation died. In addition to the two white American parachutes, there were four dirty balls of smoke, with trails heading down.

His men had paid the price for his victory. Now he had to avenge them. He again activated his radar and began to search for targets. He noticed he had lost Captain Tran from his wing and decided to keep going on his own.

General Truong Le stared in wonder at the air battle going on above his head, cheering like a boy at a soccer match when he saw the Strike Eagle go down. But then he watched in horror as four of the Fulcrums died in a matter of seconds with their pilots. "Four more young Vietnamese lost. For what?" he thought. Then he noticed the two Americans in their parachutes descending towards the ground. He and the sergeant rushed to the landing site and caught both men while they were struggling out of their parachute harnesses. The sergeant suggested that he should shoot them as retribution for the deaths of the MiG pilots, but the general decided that he had seen enough men die for one day, and motioned the two men down the trail to Yen Bai Airfield.

Colonel Nguyen saw a lone Strike Eagle chasing a MiG-29 in the distance, crossing his nose from left to right. He was racking his fighter in a tight turn to the right in an effort to save his comrade in the MiG when he saw an AIM- 9 Sidewinder missile leap out and shred the Eagle's quarry into a streaming fireball. Luckily, the pilot ejected, a rare Vietnamese survivor of this battle. Meanwhile, Nguyen was trying to catch up to the enemy strike fighter to get a shot when he saw a flash in his rearview mirror.

General Perry saw a lone MiG chasing Lieutenant Bowles in King-2 and made a conversion turn to the enemy fighter's rear. He had to kill this guy fast. Selecting SIDE mode from the HOTAS controls, he waited for the tone in his headset to settle down to a continuous scream. At a range of 2,500 feet/762 meters, he triggered the missile, which rapidly ate up the distance to the Fulcrum's port engine. It impacted the engine's afterburner can, contact detonating and blowing the back of the engine to pieces, taking with it the port rudder and horizontal stabilizer. Amazingly, the MiG continued to fly, the star-board engine, rudder, and stabilizer continuing to function. Cursing the tiny warhead of the AIM-9M, he switched the armament controls to GUN.

Colonel Nguyen heard and felt a huge bang in the rear of his MiG; then all the port engine annunciators flashed red in warning. He chopped the port throttle and popped the port side fire bottle to contain the fire that had broken out in the shattered engine. The bird was still flying, and perhaps he might get it home to Yen Bai. But seconds later, he felt a thumping in the control stick and throttle console, and the cockpit exploded with a flash and a sudden darkness. It was the last sight he would see.

General Perry placed the MiG in the firing cone of the gunsight, let the range close to under 1,000 feet/304.8 meters, and fired a three-second burst from the M61 Vulcan cannon in the Eagle's starboard wing root. The stream of PGU-28 armor-piercing/incendiary shells walked up the spine of the aircraft and eventually filled the enemy fighter's cockpit with explosions and smoke. The Fulcrum fell off and began to spin down to the ground. Eventually it impacted in a fireball, a funeral pyre to Colonel Nguyen and the Vietnamese People's Air Force. A quick check of the radar and radio showed only the two surviving Strike Eagles of King flight and the incoming flight of F-15Cs. He turned the nose of the big fighter to the southwest and began to think about fueling from the duty tanker and heading home. It had been a long ten minutes.

Captain Tran landed his MiG-29, the only surviving aircraft of the 931st Regiment's last air battle. As he taxied into a shelter, he cut the engines and allowed his head to fall forward against the control panel as he mumbled an old saying from an American Western film he had once seen, "From every massacre there is always one survivor… " He did not notice the old general and the sergeant when they walked by with their prisoners. His only thought was that he was very tired and never wanted to fly again.

Meanwhile, the Defense Minister was curious about the AN-2 biplane at the end of the field, and asked one of the ground personnel if a pilot was available to fly him and his guests back to Hanoi. The annoyed crew chief was about to curse at the old man in the grimy uniform when he saw the gold braid and stars. He ran off to ask Captain Tran to get ready to fly one more time.

Amid the chaos of the Coalition airstrikes on the leadership caves, it took several hours to establish that the Defense Minister General Truong Le was the senior surviving official of the DRV. From Bach Mai, the general had called Beijing, and the Chinese comrades had patched him through to Duc Oanh's temporary headquarters at Bien Hoa Air Base outside Saigon. Their conversation was brief, frank, and cordial. Both parties were well aware that every intelligence agency with two SIGINT analysts to rub together was recording, translating, and analyzing every word. At times like these in the life of nations, symbolism was important. So they agreed to meet face-to-face in the most politically symbolic location in their country, the walled and moated Royal Palace complex in Hue.

"I regret that I never had the opportunity to serve under your leadership," said Duc.

"I regret that I did not have a hundred thousand soldiers like you," said the general. "We have to end this conflict before our people suffer irreparable harm. What will it take to keep our country together?"

"We would like to propose a return to the provisions of the 1954 Geneva agreements. We both know that our people have little experience with elections. It will take generations for democracy to take root in this land we both love. We had better start soon, by working out a constitution. I would be honored if you would stand for election as President. I would be honored to serve as your Vice President."

The signing of the agreement was a formality. The photo of the old general and the middle-aged former guerrilla and postal clerk embracing in tears was a Pulitzer Prize winner.

General Perry sat in his command cell and looked out the window upon the scene of his force of B-1Bs and F-15Es, uploading maximum loads of CBU- 87 cluster bombs. The sight sickened him, because of where the deadly "eggs" were scheduled to be dropped. After the completion of the last mission against the leadership caves the previous day, he had received an order from the National Security Council, with an endorsement from the UN Security Council, to begin mass cluster bomb strikes against the four DRV infantry divisions moving up the eastern slope of Mu Gia Pass. It would be a slaughter when the canisters of CEMs opened over the exposed troops, filling the air with hot metal, fire, and screams. The vision filled him with remorse. Unfortunately, if the fifty thousand men of those units did not return to their barracks in the DRV, the action was going to be necessary. The great nations of the world had allowed the people of this region of the world to draw them into conflicts too many times to allow it to happen again. Thus, the fifty thousand young men marching to Mu Gia were doomed, unless the guys running things in Hanoi came to their senses. The knock at his door broke the spell of his thought, and he turned to see Major Goldberg standing in his door with a message flimsy in his hand and a broad grin on his face. "Good news, sir," said the younger man. "Messages from both security councils."

The general took the fragile paper and read the short message. It was a cease-fire. The DRV had sued for terms under the old 1954 accord, and there was going to be peace. The ground units of the peacekeeping force were being assembled and would be on their way within hours. He went limp from relief, and it was a long minute before he could look at Major Goldberg.

"Major, tell the ordies that they are to download those munitions dispensers immediately. Then pass the word that we're to plan for peacekeeping and enforcement operations. We may be here a while doing that. Lastly, please try and get a line on the two crewmen from King-3 through the UN. I want to know about them ASAP."

The major said, "Yes, sir," saluted, and left the room.

The "Yes" vote was unanimous.

The entire wing had staged out of Elmendorf AFB in Alaska in order to make the final leg home as one formation. The UN peacekeeping force had relieved the wing of its duties the day before, and the no-fly operation had been concluded with the implementation of the final UN resolution. Now, as the formation broke into the base pattern, General Perry saw thousands of people waiting on the flight line for what he knew was going to be an incredible homecoming. Somewhere down there was the President of the United States, ready to pin on medals and make the campaign speech of a lifetime. Also down there were representatives of the UN Security Council, to award the wing its special streamer for peacekeeping. Best of all, though, was that his family was down there — and the family of every deployed member of the wing, including the two downed Strike Eagle crewmen. The new Vietnamese Vice President had taken personal responsibility for getting them home, and Perry made a mental note to write a letter of thanks to the man. As he broke his Strike Eagle into the pattern, he smiled in the knowledge that this time there was going to be a parade for the Gunfighters coming home from Vietnam.