Free Retribution by Dale Brown Page B

prestige. But he knew he’d never been more than a political buffer. Part of the reason the President and the National Security Advisor used him as a liaison, after all, was the fact that he was young and had no political power base of his own.
    “I’ll do whatever job you want me to, sir,” he said.
    “Good. You have a bright future. Let’s get through this crisis, get these warheads, and then maybe we’ll have a chance to sit down and see how best you can serve your country.”
    “Uh, yes, sir.”
    The President went back to his desk.
    “You can go now, young Jed. Forward these reports to Admiral Balboa, with copies to Admiral Woods on the Lincoln . Make sure he has everything he needs. Dreamland is working with the Marines, under Woods. We’ll follow the chain of command.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Aboard the Bennett,
over the northern Arabian Sea
2100
    S TEVEN L. B ENNETT WAS A CAPTAIN IN THE U.S. A IR F ORCE, assigned to the Twentieth Tactical Air Support Squadron, Pacific Air Forces, during the Vietnam War era. After completing B-52 training in 1970, Captain Bennett went about as far from strategic bombers as you could in the Air Force at the time—he trained to become a forward air controller, calling bombs in rather than dropping them, and flying in an airplane designed to skim treetops rather than the stratosphere.
    By June 1972, Bennett was piloting an OV-10 Bronco, an excellent combat observation aircraft with only one serious flaw—it was almost impossible to crash-land successfully. The forward section of the two-seater would generally implode, killing the pilot, though the backseater could get out with minor injuries. Pilots quickly learned that it didn’t make sense to try and ditch an OV-10; “hitting the silk,” as the old-timers used to call ejecting, was the only way to survive.
    On June 29, 1972, Bennett flew what was known as an artillery adjustment mission over Quang Tri Province in South Vietnam. His observer was a Marine Corps captain named Mike Brown. The two men pulled a three-hour sortie and were about to head home to Da Nang when they learned that their replacement was running behind schedule. Going home would leave ground troops without anyone to call on if they got in trouble.
    Captain Bennett checked his fuel and decided to stay on station until the relief plane could get up. A short time laterSouth Vietnamese troops in the area called in for assistance; they were taking fire from a much larger North Vietnamese unit and were about to be overrun.
    Bennett and Brown called for a tactical air strike, but no attack aircraft were available. They then requested that Navy guns bombard the attackers, but the proximity of the South Vietnamese to their northern enemies made that impossible.
    So Bennett decided to do the job himself, rolling in on several hundred NVA soldiers with just the four 7.62mm machine guns in his Bronco’s nose. After the fourth pass, he had them on the run. He came down again to give them another snoutful, but this time his aircraft was hit—a SAM-7 shoulder-launched heat seeker took out his left engine. His plane caught fire.
    Bennett headed out over the nearby ocean to jettison his fuel and the highly flammable rockets used for marking targets. As he did so, an escort aircraft caught up with him and advised him that the fire started by the missile was now so severe that his plane looked like it would explode any minute. Bennett ordered Brown to get ready to eject; they’d punch out over the water and be picked up by one of the Navy ships or a friendly helicopter.
    Brown agreed. But then he saw that his parachute had been torn by shrapnel from the missile that struck the plane.
    Not a problem, said Bennett, whose own parachute was in perfect condition. Get ready to ditch.
    And so they did. The OV-10 cartwheeled when she hit the water, and then sank. If Bennett was still alive after the crash, his cockpit was too mangled for him to escape as the plane went under the