The Deadly Orbit Mission. Van Wyck Mason
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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1968 by Van Wyck Mason.
DEDICATION
For those dear and loyal friends Bill and Lu Hitchcock who were there when needed most.
CHAPTER ONE
1
There are a number of things about Washington, D.C., at eight-thirty in the morning which arc as predictable as cherry blossoms in April. When you want more hot coffee and you want it now the waitress is still lost in her private world of last night’s date and you can’t catch her eye. The tall, thin lady at the next table leans over and diffidently inquires whether you know where the Washington Monument is located. The morning paper reveals authoritatively that the Federal budget will be either expanded or reduced.
The desk clerk smiles obligingly and tells you there’s nothing in your box even while you’re looking at an envelope under your room number.
The cab driver launches into a discussion on the peculiarities of human nature while cutting off a school bus and narrowly missing two elderly, shaky pedestrians.
Normally, none of these events would even engage the passing attention of Colonel Hugh North, United States Army Intelligence. He grunted when the cab driver paused in his dissertation—a grunt in the right place solves many problems. North long ago had learned to take life’s minor annoyances in stride. He had the compartmented kind of mind that could absorb the details of his surroundings, provide the right words for a necessary conversation and continue to consider a major problem—all at the same time. It he hadn’t been equipped by nature with that kind of brain he would have had to develop one, such being a rock-bottom requirement for one who received the sort of high level intelligence assignments that he’d become accustomed to drawing.
This cloudless early September day, however, was anything but normal for the Colonel. Usually placid, he felt unaccountably jumpy. Ordinarily patient, he was irritated and uneasy. Why had he been pulled out of Vietnam a week ago only to lounge around a Washington hotel awaiting summons to still another pointless conference?
Certainly his recent assignment to duty in that beleaguered Southeastern Republic had been of top priority. Based at Vungtau, near Saigon, he’d been ordered to block Communist sabotage and further penetration of the South Vietnamese government’s forces. Vungtau had been the site of a school where teams were trained to fan into villages and hamlets and secure them against Viet Cong terrorism while teaching the peasants democratic and modern agricultural methods.
After he had cracked a force which had infiltrated the Vungtau headquarters itself he’d been airlifted by helicopter to remote trouble spots scattered from the northern and coastal provinces all the way to the Mekong Delta and the I Corps Area.
Surely it couldn’t have been a slight shoulder wound which had caused this recall? The G-2 officer had been directing a South Vietnamese force toward a Communist hideout when an Asian had put his foot down so carelessly as to detonate a land mine. The Vietnamese had been blasted instantly but only a fragment of splinter had caught North just above his left elbow.
A wry smile appeared beneath North’s close-clipped dark gray mustache on recalling the base surgeon’s expression upon surveying his naked and frequently scarred frame. During tours of duty for Army Intelligence—in the Far East, Near East and in Latin America—Hugh North had been hurt many times but so far he’d managed to escape permanent injury or disfigurement to long, bronze-hued features—rather Indian-like because of high cheekbones, flat ears and thin, slightly hooked nose.
In fact only a short scar running across the left cheek of a roughly handsome, finely chiseled face was visible. His crisp, short-cut hair remained plentiful and retained most of its original brown-black color. Slightly silvered patches showed above his ears.
The man’s body was a different matter; scars caused by a variety of hardware decorated the length of his hard and muscled six-foot frame. Beatings, sluggings and a few encounters with expert torturers had left so many indelible souvenirs that the surgeon, fresh from the States, had followed orders from Washington and at once had ordered him shipped home for a probable medical discharge.
Slitting open the envelope overlooked by the desk clerk, North wondered what it might contain. Nothing reassuring, that was a cinch. For how many years now had he been fighting silently, unglamorously but effectively ever since a long-retired Chief of the General Staff Corps had tapped him for G-2; his successors consistently had refused to let him go.
Almost from the start he’d discovered that survival and victory in Intelligence were not accomplished solely through a quick draw and courses in cryptography, forensic chemistry and judo. This was all right for actors and, to be sure, such knowledge did form a vital part of his own equipment, but quick thinking, eternal vigilance and rugged, sometimes merciless methods were what paid off when important chips were down.
He fingered the letter while his curiosity deepened as to why he should have been ordered to Washington less than a week after his recall from Vungtau, especially because he was well aware that, barring this recent shoulder scratch, he was perfectly fit for field duty.
The cab turned from Rock Creek Parkway onto the Arlington Memorial Bridge into Virginia and then toward the Pentagon. Hugh North checked his watch and found he had ten minutes left before yet another meeting with Lieutenant General R. D. Anniston, current Chief of G-2, General Staff Corps.
The note inside the blank envelope was brief and to the point:
TO: COL. NORTH
FROM: LIEUT GEN ARMISTON
REPORT AT 9.45 THIS A.M. PREPARED FOR POSSIBILITY THAT YOU MAY NOT RETURN TO YOUR HOTEL.
That was all, but enough. Hugh North pulled down mental ear flaps to drown out the drivers grievances against his fellow men while admitting to himself that, in all probability, he soon would be out-of-pocket for one traveling wardrobe and a set of toilet articles.
He then reviewed the unspectacular events of the past week during which he’d had four conferences with General Armiston—all having to do with Viet Cong problems. Other Intelligence officers had been present during the first three meetings, which in Pentagonese were termed “debriefings,” during which he’d reported in minute detail his Vietnamese observations and experiences—which suggested this information must be for some successor’s benefit. It was clear, in other words, that he would not be returning to Vietnam—at least not for the moment.
General Armiston bad sat quietly through these sessions fondling his bulldog’s jaw and only occasionally interposing a question. But he hadn’t appeared to be fully focused on the subject—which did not greatly surprise Hugh North. The General had Intelligence operations going all over the world so for him to remain preoccupied with events in a single area would have been incredible.
Only the General had been present at the fourth session, yesterday—a high security meeting convened in the General’s inner-ring office at the Pentagon; significantly, all events relating to Vietnam had been dropped. Instead, and without ever saying what was on his mind—the need-to-know code being in force—General Armiston had restricted his end of the conversation to purely technical matters, had interrogated Colonel North as to his knowledge of missiles. That veteran had passed this test thanks to G-2’s continuing program which constantly updated key officers on recent scientific developments.
Once the cab entered the main Pentagon drive North folded General Anniston’s note, set his lighter to it and deposited the charred remains in an overflowing ash receiver. His gesture was placid and, for the first time, he listened to his talkative cabbie.
“That’s right,” he agreed. “People are funnier than anybody.”
He tipped the driver generously and climbed out into the Virginia sunshine. For whatever reason he had been kept in the dark so far, he sensed that this waiting period soon would be over. Somewhere in this mammoth, five-sided structure packed with the top brains of the Armed Services, his assignment must be ready.
Hugh North relaxed for the