General Freeman was dreaming. It was long ago, and in the dream he was gazing down through the shot-dirtied air as French cannonades, steadily walking toward his lines, their noise stunning many a soldier by Freeman’s side, continued their deadly fire, and the muskets of his own infantry squares steamed in the rain from countless volleys. And still Napoleon’s infantry advanced, smoke from their cannons rolling in front of the big guns like fog. Now and then the sound of a French musket ball striking his sword’s scabbard gave off the strange, eerie sound of someone rubbing his fingers about the rim of a champagne glass, and all around him, like an errant ghost, was the sweet smell of wheat trampled under the boots of Napoleon’s army. His horse strained at the bridle, and through a gap in the smoke Freeman saw the first line of French cuirassiers, the squadron’s second line of cavalry, advancing at the walk some twenty yards behind. Freeman doubted they’d begin the swinging gallop as yet, the slippery ground littered with dead soldiers and mounts, if indeed they began it at all. It was late in the day at Waterloo. Europe held its breath — and still the Prussian reinforcements had not appeared. There was no time left. He drew his sword.
He awoke in pitch darkness, heard voices, unsure of where he was — then felt the yaw of the ship. His eyes sandpaper-dry from the heat of the recycled air, Freeman glanced at his watch. Three a.m. Someone was knocking on his cabin door. He flicked on the reading light, swung his legs off the bunk, and was pulling on his boots as the knocking continued. From long habit and in one fluid motion his left hand reached out, took the nine-millimeter Beretta revolver, and placed it firmly in the left shoulder holster. He stood, buttoning up his tunic. “Come in!”
The moment he saw Al Banks’s face, he knew something was wrong. A small, worried-looking ROK army captain was with him.
“General,” said Banks, “Washington’s cabled us. We’re to put the operation on hold.”
“What? Goddamn it, why?”
Banks handed Freeman the decoded transcript: “INTERNATIONAL SITUATION DEMANDS YOU POSTPONE OPERATION TROJAN STOP…”The rest of the message was merely an advisory of the CNO’s order to the LPH Saipan’s skipper to withdraw fifty miles from her present position, which would place her a hundred miles east of the interdiction of the thirty-eighth parallel and the Korean coast.
“By God!” said Freeman, jaw clenching, crumpling the message in his right hand and turning to the map of Korea taped to the bulkhead above his desk. “They’re in bed with the Communists!” He looked quickly from Banks to the hapless ROK officer, who was swallowing hard.
“This is a goddamned plot,” said Freeman, the ROK officer looking nervously at Banks, who knew better than to try to assuage the severity of the shock. The general was now pacing between the desk and the blacked-out porthole. “By God, I smell State Department all over this. Those bastards in Foggy Bottom are in bed with the Communists.”
The ROK officer was clearly alarmed.
“Don’t worry, Captain,” Freeman told him. “I’m not mad mad. I’m just plain mad. Those pansies back there in Foggy Gulch are doing a deal with those Chinks. It’s tit for tit.” Freeman stopped, stared up at the brown-spined green of Korea, his fingers running through his gray hair, then turned slowly to the other two. He appeared slightly dazed, recovered his composure, and spoke slowly, without anger but with the tone of the betrayed, a betrayal so deep, it was only now fully registering. “They’re giving up Korea,” he said. “Beijing’s putting on the pressure, and those yellowbellies at the State Department are telling the president to lay off. Give up Korea for a promise of nonintervention by China elsewhere.” He paused, the tendons in his neck tight as cables. “We, gentlemen, are being sold down the river.”
“Maybe you’re right, General,” Al Banks replied. “But we’ll have to tell the men right away. Most of the choppers are on the flight deck.”
“Yes,” Freeman agreed. “Pass the word.”
As Banks left the cabin, Freeman put his arm round the ROK officer’s shoulder, looking down at the man’s name tag. Kim Dae. There were more Kims in Korea than Smiths in America.
“You’re no relation to that NKA bastard, are you?”
“No, sir,” Kim replied hastily.
“Well, Dae, let me tell you, one of the worst moments in a commander’s life is having all your men pumped up, ready to go, and then — nothing. Orders canceled. Like they’re all ready to sit their final examinations and you have to tell them it’s off.”
“Only postponed,” said Dae encouragingly.
The general sighed, his hand dropping from the Korean’s shoulder, exhaling audibly in the small cabin that he knew was but a pinpoint in the darkness.
“Temporarily postponed,” said Kim, trying again.
Freeman, hands on hips, looked up again at the map and shook his head in disbelief. “By God, to think that all those brave men in that perimeter might be sacrificial lambs — it’s unforgivable. “He paused for a few seconds. “And my speech…”
Kim was nonplussed about the speech.
“One of the best I ever made,” said Freeman, his gaze so fixed, it seemed as if he could see straight through the bulkhead. “By God, those men were ready for it.”
“I cannot believe the American president would do this,” proffered Kim.
Freeman said nothing.
“I am sure he will not abandon us, General.”
“We’ll see, Captain. We’ll see.”
The Canberra bombers were now over West Germany in high cloud that extended all the way back from the Harz. Below, sixty-three miles south of Hanover and outflanked by the Soviets’ Forty-seventh Tank and 207th Motorized Infantry divisions pressing home the attack to secure the port of Rotterdam, one of the West German AA battery commanders requested an IFF— “friend or foe”—identification code from the planes. The Canberras responded, but their radio beams were scrambled by MiGs patrolling out of Rostock 160 miles northwest of Bremen. The MiGs were jamming NATO ground control as they came round over Lübecker Bay to attack the besieged U.S. Third Corps, who, in an unexpected counterattack, had destroyed three Soviet-WP pontoon bridges over the Weser, thus delaying the fall of Bremen.
The West Germany battery commander glimpsed an aircraft’s lizard patch underside for only a fraction of a second, but it was all he needed to convince the Sturmbannführer to unleash his mobile batteries of all-weather Rolands.
Three minutes later his crews reported that fifteen of the twenty-four missiles had found their mark, three of the nine misses being due to “circuit malfunction,” a grab-all soldier’s phrase covering everything from a slight wobble of the launch sleeve to a problem with the Roland’s oxidizer. Sometimes the soft ground gave way beneath the trucks under the impact of the back-blast, and this could throw the rocket off course.
A short while later the Rolands’ crews noticed that some of the debris coming down, wing segments, bore the distinctive red, white, and blue ball of the Royal Air Force. It was not long after this that the commander realized he had destroyed fifteen of twenty-four Canberra bombers.