The Generals Read Online Free Page A

questioningly, and Craig repeated what he had said, this time adding gestures. He wanted mortar ammo from the crates lining the passage unpacked, so that it would be more readily available when the barrage lifted, and they could go outside and start shooting back.
    There was no longer any question in his mind what Charley was up to. Charley wanted to take Foo Two, not just lob a couple of rounds in to make people nervous.
    He walked through one of the passages again, until he thought he was far enough so the Handie-Talkie would work.
    “Four, anybody out there?”
    “Where the fuck have you been?”
    “I think they’re going to start coming up the hill when the barrage lifts,” Craig said.
    “Figured that out all by yourself, did you?” Nine replied.
    “In the meantime, make goddamned sure they don’t get the M-60s,” Craig said. “We’re going to need them.”
    “You still got any mortars?” Seven asked.
    “And lots of ammo,” Craig replied.
    “Maybe you’re not as dumb as you look, Four.”
    “Check in, will you, guys?”
    Seven and Nine checked in. There were no other replies.
    Craig went farther inside Bunker Hill.
    (Three)
U.S. Army OV-IA Aircraft Tail Number 92524
Heading: 040° True
Altitude: 10,500 Feet
Indicated Airspeed: 270 Knots
(Plateau Montagnards, Republic of South Vietnam)
1525 Zulu, 14 October 1962
    The Grumman OV-1A “Mohawk” is a two-place aircraft. The pilot and the other crew member (most often, but not always, another pilot) sit side by side. The fuselage tapers from the noticeably bulbous nose, at the tip of which the cockpit sits, to the rear, where there is a triple vertical stabilizer tail structure. Excellent visibility is provided through large Plexiglas windows. The bulbous forward portion of the Mohawk has been likened to the tip of the male member, with eyes.
    The aircraft is powered by two turboprop engines, mounted on the upper surface of the wings. Beneath the wings are hard points, from which auxiliary fuel tanks, weapons pods, and the like may be suspended. On some models, long side-looking radar antennae were mounted beneath the fuselage. The fuselage from the trailing end of the wings to the tail structure is equipped with doors. Behind the doors are shelves on which communications and sensory devices of one sort or another are mounted. These are called black boxes, and the Mohawk was designed to accommodate a great number of black boxes.
    Army Aerial Observation had moved into the electronics age. The black boxes in a Mohawk, for example, could find by infrared and other sensory techniques, a tank, a truck, a motorcycle, a campfire, twenty soldiers; locate them precisely within a few feet, distinguish the truck from the tank or the motorcycle; and instantaneously transmit this data to equipment on the ground, which would then instantly print out a map of the area under surveillance, with neat symbols indicating the precise location of trucks, tanks, soldiers, campfires, and the like.
    There were two pilots in Tail Number 524. They sat on Martin-Baker ejection seats, wearing international distress or ange flight suits and helmets with slide-down, gold-covered face masks that completely concealed their faces.
    The only visible difference between the pilot and the copilot of 524 was that the pilot was considerably larger than the copilot, and that his orange rompers bore the insignia of a major and a senior aviator, while the copilot was identified by his insignia as a basic aviator and a chief warrant officer (W-2).
    524 was on automatic pilot. Both the pilot and the copilot sat with their feet on the deck (off the rudder pedals) and with their arms folded across their abdomens.
    “Watch it a minute, will you?” the pilot said over the intercom. Then he searched through the multiple zippered pockets of his orange flight suit until he found what he was looking for, a folded piece of paper on which was written “Kilimanjaro 115.56.”
    He then turned in his seat,