Ripley, John, 83, 166
Rockford Files, The (television), 235
Rogers’ Rangers, 80
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 10
Roscoe (dog), 24
S
SAC/rockets and Hambleton, 13–16
SALT 1 treaty, 243
SAM missiles
aircraft to protect from, 25, 26
CIA/Fan Song radar investigation and, 27
Cuban Missile Crisis and, 26
danger/fear and, 26–28
“jinking” described, 27–28
Russia and, 26
sites/NVA and, 25, 27
target aircraft signal/warning lights and, 26
SAM mission/Bat 21 (April 2, 1972)
enemy optical-only launch and, 34
enemy SAMs/aircraft and, 32–35
jamming/monitors and, 32, 34
jinking and, 32–35
men/crows with Hambleton, 29–30
plan/purpose, 25, 26
plane (Hambleton’s) on fire/crashing, 36–38
planes involved, 25, 32
Radio Hanoi and, 93–94
significance of downing EB-66C/Hambleton, 94
See also specific individuals
SAM mission/Bat 21 (April 2, 1972) and Hambleton
“Bravo” meaning, 39
enemy missiles/aircraft, 33, 34, 35
enemy shooting at, 41
landing/landing area problems, 40, 41–42
parachuting/conditions, 36–37, 38–41
plane fire/crashing and, 36–38
preparation/flight, 25–26, 29, 32
significance of downing EB-66C/Hambleton, 94
See also Hambleton, Gene post-shootdown
Saturn V, 14
SEALs
description/traits, 141–42
US military methods vs., 141–42
See also specific individuals
Serex, Barbara, 239
Serex, Henry M. (“Mike”)
background, 30
death, 37–38
description/traits, 30
SAM mission, 30, 37–38, 239
Shaw Air Force Base golf course, 155
“She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)” (Reed), 235
Sheehan, Neil, 79
shock waves effects, 71
Sikh terrorists/plan, 253–54
Smokey and the Bandit (movie), 235
Soviet Union
nuclear arms deal and, 243
Soviet Union and Vietnam War
China and, 45
communication/information and, 145, 146
Easter Offensive and, 146, 185
SA-7 missiles, 99
supplies, 45, 99, 184
timing, 45
torture/interrogation and, 45, 46
United States relations, 107, 145, 146, 242–43
violating peace accords, 244
war booty and, 45–46
“Special Air Mission” (Eighty-ninth Military Wing), Andrews Air Force Base, 118
Special Operations Squadron, 21st (Knives), 88
Springer, Paul, 80
Sprouse, Tim, 97
Stalin, Joseph, 13
Stars and Stripes, 93, 179
Strategic Air Command (SAC) role/components, 13
T
Tan Son Nhut Air Base
location/history, 77
people at, 131, 135
Tet Offensive (1968), 78
Thieu, Nguyen Van, 40, 243–44, 254
Tho, Le Duc, 78
Tho, Lieutenant
description/traits, 140
Hambleton/Clark rescues and, 140–41, 162, 175
NVA hitting bunker area and, 184, 186
See also Hambleton, Gene rescue/“ground” mission
Thornton, Michael, 250, 251
Time magazine, 93
Time of Useful Consciousness, 38
Times, The (of London), 94
Tincher, Daryl
Hambleton rescue and, 79, 80
Joker/position, 78
no-fire zone establishment and, 79
talk of Hambleton/rescue and, 165, 166
Tinh, Doan Cong, 180
Tiny Tim, 101
Tonight Show, The (television), 101
torture/interrogation by North Vietnamese
description, 44–45
guard selection and, 44
Jensen tricking interrogator, 46
Soviet Union and, 45, 46
wizard’s war men and, 44
See also specific individuals
Tucson National golf course, 152
Turley, Jerry
background/description, 83
disobeying no-fire zone, 84
Easter Offensive vs. no-fire zone, 82–84
U
Uong, Nguyen Thi, 180
US military
“missing” vs. “presumed dead” notifications/reasons, 63–64
views of South Vietnamese/army, 81
See also specific events; specific individuals
USS Constellation, 109
USS Hancock, 165, 218
USS Kitty Hawk, 109
V
Valdez, Juan, 244
Vietnam
French and, 77
See alsospecific individuals; specific locations; Vietnam War
Vietnam War
air vs. ground fight, 78–79
American POWs and, 244
Americans leaving and, 243–44
conflict in United States over, 30–31, 80–81, 87, 93, 166, 250, 264
embassy scene/Americans leaving, 244
heroes/talk and, 165–67
history (summary), 78–79
North Vietnamese people on, 180
Paris Peace Accords, 243
red fiery summer casualties, 242
reporters and, 166–67
situation (1972), 78
soldiers situation, 78–79
training Vietnamese aviators/vomiting incident, 50
US Air Force ordnance, 43–44
“war winding down” view, 87, 98, 109
“why are you here?” question and, 181–82
See also specific events; specific individuals/countries; specific locations
Vietnamization
“Easter Offensive” and, 40
Nixon and, 16, 40
US Air Force and, 16
Vogel, Mike
Alley/death talk and, 113–14
description/traits, 113
Hambleton rescue and, 113
See also Hambleton, Gene rescue Jolly Green 67
von Braun, Wernher, 14
W
Walker, Bruce
childhood, 264–65
description/traits, 264–65
military before Vietnam, 266
sister and, 265
Walker, Bruce/Hambleton rescue attempt
death, 271
FACs and, 269, 270–71
possible rescue of, 135, 267
post-shootdown, 129, 135, 267–68, 269–71
shootdown, 129, 267
Vietnamese peasants and, 270
white phosphorus rockets and, 270–71
Walker, Bruce/Martha
Bruce shipping out for Vietnam, 266–67
Lorin Marie (daughter), 266, 268
Walker, Charles, 264, 268, 269
Walker, Martha Lorin
as Air Force wife, 265
Bruce’s death and, 271–72
description/traits, 265, 266, 268
Did I Say Goodbye (play of), 266, 271
visiting Bruce’s parents/learning of Bruce’s shootdown, 268–69
Washington Post, 17
Wayne, John, 8, 17
Webb, Jack, 235
Webster, William, 252
Whitcomb, Darrel
Arlington ceremony/Hambleton and, 240
&nbs
p; documentary/Hambleton rescue, 256
on Norris, 19
rescue mission changes and, 228
Wicks, Trent
on Potts family, 262, 272
on uncle, 272
Wilbur, Stella, 3
See also Hambleton, Stella
Williams, Hank, 9
“wizards’ war”/men, 16, 44
World War I, 4
World War II
Air Force ordnance, 43
atomic bomb/Enola Gay, 11
Battle of the Bulge, 109
Douglas A-1 dive-bombers, 69
Easter Offensive comparison, 70
end, 11
Gene Hambleton and, 6, 11–12
Gil Hambleton, 11, 12, 234
men left behind, 80
newsreels, 6
Operation Paperclip and, 14
Redstone and, 14
Y
Yeager, Chuck, 27
Z
Zerbe, Frank, 143, 224
PROLOGUE:
“A GREAT AND CONSUMING TERROR”
On the afternoon of September 21, 1906, a high-spirited boy named Willie Labarbera was playing in front of his family’s fruit store, two blocks from the glint of the East River in New York City. Five-year-old Willie and his friends ran after one another shouting at the top of their lungs as they trundled hoops down the sidewalk, laughing when the wooden rings finally toppled onto the cobblestone street. They ducked behind the bankers and laborers and young women wearing ostrich feather hats, making their way home or to one of the neighborhood’s Italian restaurants. With each wave of pedestrians, Willie and the other children would vanish from one another’s sight for a second or two, then snap back into view once the walkers passed by. This happened dozens of times that afternoon.
More people passed, hundreds of them. Then, as the silvery river light began to dim, Willie turned and dashed down the street once more, disappearing behind yet another group of workmen. But this time, after the pedestrians had strolled past, he failed to reappear. The spot on the pavement where he should have stood was empty in the fading sunlight.
His friends didn’t notice right away. Only when they felt the first pangs of hunger did they slowly turn and examine the small expanse of sidewalk where they’d spent their afternoon. Then they began to look for Willie more earnestly in the lengthening shadows. Nothing.
Willie was headstrong and once boasted that he’d run away from his parents as a lark, so perhaps the other boys hesitated a few moments before entering the store and reporting that something was wrong. But eventually they had to let the adults know, and so they went inside. After a few seconds, the boy’s parents, William and Caterina, dashed from the shop and began searching the surrounding streets for some sign of the child, calling out to ask the proprietors of candy stands and small grocery stores if they’d seen the boy. They hadn’t. Willie was gone.
It was at this moment that something odd and almost telepathic occurred. Even before the police had been called or a single clue was gathered, Willie’s family and friends simultaneously arrived at a revelation about what had happened to the boy, without speaking a single word to one another. And strangely enough, people in Chicago or St. Louis or New Orleans or Pittsburgh or the tiny unheralded towns strung between them, the mothers and fathers of missing children, of whom there were more than usual in the fall of 1906, would have come to the same conclusion. Who had their child? La Mano Nera, as the Italians called it. The Society of the Black Hand.
The Black Hand was an infamous crime organization—“that fiendish, devilish and sinister band”—that engaged in extortion, assassination, child kidnapping, and bombings on a grand scale. It had become nationally famous two years before with a letter dropped into a mailbox in an obscure neighborhood in Brooklyn, at the home of a contractor who’d struck it rich in America. Since then, the Society’s threatening notes, adorned with drawings of coffins and crosses and daggers, had appeared in every part of the city, followed by a series of gruesome acts that created, according to one observer, “a record of crime here during the last ten years that is unparalleled in the history of a civilized country in time of peace.” Only the Ku Klux Klan would surpass the Black Hand for the production of mass terror in the early part of the century. “From the bottom of their hearts,” one reporter said of Italian immigrants, “they do fear them with a great and consuming terror.” The same could have been said for many Americans in the fall of 1906.
When the letters began arriving for the Labarberas several days later, their fears proved correct. The kidnappers demanded $5,000 for Willie’s return, an astronomical sum to the family. The exact words the criminals used haven’t been passed down, but such letters often contained phrases like “Your son is among us” and “Do not give this letter to the police for if you do, by the Madonna, your child will be killed.” The message was reinforced by drawings at the bottom of the page: three crude black crosses had been inked onto the paper, along with a skull and crossbones. These were the marks of the Black Hand.
Some claimed that the group and others like it not only were creating an entirely new level of murder and extortion in America, a dark age of spectacular violence, but also were at that moment acting as a fifth column, corrupting the government to their aims. This idea had plagued the new immigrants from Italy for at least a decade. “There was a popular belief,” said Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge about a supposed Italian secret society, “that it was extending its operations, that it was controlling juries by terror, and that it would gradually bring the government of the city and State under its control.” Skeptics, including the Italian ambassador, who bristled at the mere mention of the Society, countered that the group didn’t exist, that it was a myth created by Americans to curse Italians, whom the “whites” hated and wished to drive from their shores. One Italian wit said about the Society, “Its sole existence is, in fact, confined to a literary phrase.”
But if the Society was a fiction, then who had Willie?
The Labarberas reported the kidnapping to the police, and soon a detective knocked on their door at 837 Second Avenue. Joseph Petrosino was the head of the famous Italian Squad, a short, stout, barrel-chested man, built like a stevedore. His eyes—which some described as dark gray, others as coal-black—were cool and appraising. He had broad shoulders and “muscles like steel cords.” But he wasn’t a brute; in fact, far from it. He was fond of discussing aesthetics, loved opera, especially the Italian composers, and played the violin well. “Joe Petrosino,” said the New York Sun, “could make a fiddle talk.” But his true vocation was solving crimes. Petrosino was “the greatest Italian detective in the world,” declared the New York Times, the “Italian Sherlock Holmes,” according to popular legend back in the old country. At forty-six, he’d already had “a career as thrilling as any Javert in the mazes of the Paris underworld or of an inspector in Scotland Yard—a life as full of adventure and achievement as ever thrilled the imagination of Conan Doyle.” He was shy with strangers, incorruptible, quiet-voiced, brave to an almost reckless degree, violent if provoked, and was so adept with disguises that his own friends often passed him by on the street when he was wearing one. He had only a sixth-grade education but possessed a photographic memory and could instantly recall the information printed on a piece of paper he’d glanced at years before. He had no wife or children; he’d dedicated his life to ridding America of the Society of the Black Hand, which he felt threatened the republic he loved. He hummed operettas as he walked.
Petrosino was dressed in his customary black suit, black shoes, and black derby hat when William Labarbera opened the door of his apartment and escorted him in. The father of the missing boy brought out the letters he’d received but could tell the detective little else about the case. The Black Hand was everywhere and nowhere; it was almost occult in its all-knowingness, and it was cruel. This both men knew. Petrosino could see that Willie’s parents were “nearly crazed with grief.”
The detectiv
e emerged back onto the streets and immediately went to work, pumping his informers and contacts for clues. He had a vast network of spies and informants—nfami—spread across the metropolis: bartenders, doctors, peddlers, lawyers, opera singers, street cleaners (known as “white wingers”), bankers, musicians, scar-faced Sicilian thugs. Willie’s description soon appeared in many of the city’s dozens of newspapers.