Chapter One   February 12, 1973   The "Hanoi Hilton"   Tom Shannon watched unbelieving as the first group of 120 American prisoners of war formed up in columns of two. They looked strange in their ill-fitting new clothes-dark blue pants, light blue shirts, windbreakers, and some kind of little black bag. The clothes were the only new thing in the entire prison, with its worn walls, tired paint, and rusting iron fixtures.   According to the ceaseless tap code messages, those vibrating signals of defiance, they were being returned home. The POWs had tried to argue that the most injured and the sickest should go first, but the North Vietnamese had insisted on them going back in the order in which they came.   The tap code.   It was the only thing that kept him alive. Even though he was forbidden from mixing with the rest of the POWs, they knew he was there, and their messages had sustained him.

It came in many ways-the traditional tapping, by hand signal, even by bits of string, knotted in a Braille-like code. The tap code told him things had changed in the last year for the others-beatings had stopped, discipline had relaxed, relief packages were not plundered so badly, and food had improved.   But not for him.   His rations had never improved, but his last beating had been four months earlier, when the Rabbit had administered a scientific series of kicks and blows that brought him near death once again. He still ached, especially his ribs, which always seemed to take the longest to heal. One of the most vicious guards, nicknamed the Rabbit for his manner, had an obsessive, inexplicable hatred for Shannon.   The gaunt fighter pilot, former commander of the 6th Fighter Interceptor Wing, watched with envy from his latest cell, perched on the second floor of the main building. They had moved him around at random intervals, apparently determined to prevent him from making any contact with other prisoners.

Now, by standing on his toes and clutching the open windowsill, he could peer through a gap in the wooden shutters for a view of the yard where the six buses were parked. Ironically, the Rabbit seemed to be supervising the departure just as he supervised the torture.   Shannon sat down for a moment to gather his strength. It was emotionally draining to see the months-old rumors about the coming freedom suddenly become real-but only for the others.   Painfully he clawed his way up to squint again through the shutters, his vision, once so acute that he could pick out an enemy plane miles distant, now blurred. He knew that Everett Alvarez was probably leading the group. Everett was the longest surviving prisoner, kept here or in other filthy North Vietnamese prisons for eight years. Now Alvarez and the others were being set free, at last.

It was incredible.   A wave of trembling fear swept over him. Now he knew why the North Vietnamese had always kept him separate from the rest of the POWs-they never intended to release him.   In his six years of tortured confinement, he had spoken to only one other American, Michael Pavone, his backseater in their F-4 that had been shot down. Pavone had saved his life, nursing him back to precarious health for months. When Shannon had recovered sufficiently to be interrogated, the North Vietnamese promptly beat Pavone to death, as if punishing him for aiding Shannon.   Six years, that surely entitled him to be in the first group-if they were going to let him go at all. He could never understand why they kept him separated, nor could the other prisoners, who came to know him only by the covert tap code that linked them together, day and night.

The other prisoners were naturally suspicious of him at first, fearing that he was a North Vietnamese spy using the tap code to gain information. It took weeks before he convinced them that he was truly an American pilot.   The only rational explanation for his isolation was their resentment for his leading the famous Operation Toro, which trapped and shot down a lot of North Vietnamese MiGs. And later when the North Vietnamese had placed him in one of their crude propaganda films, he had outfoxed them. Even as he parroted their stilted phrases, he had blinked a message in Morse Code with his eyes, one that told the world that he was being coerced. Both events had earned him many beatings. The other prisoners had been beaten for similar things, but were not kept isolated for so long.   Now Shannon was blinking away the tears coursing down his face.

He hated himself for crying, but the thought of everyone going free, of them seeing their families again, while he stayed here, rotting alive, was impossible to bear. He was wearing the same filthy, black pajamas that he had worn for months. That was the sure sign that he was not going home, not now, not ever.   Shannon looked out at the grubby yard. There was some sort of disturbance-the POWs were refusing to get on the drab blue buses. He could see the Rabbit, his own particular nemesis, railing at someone-it had to be Alvarez or Robby Risner, the men who had been here longest.   The Rabbit turned and left the yard, and Tom slumped down, unwilling to watch anymore.   I''ve got to get hold of myself.

I cannot give in now. They cannot beat me now. Not after all this misery. He had started his mental rosary, the prayers that had kept him sane for so many months.   Fifteen minutes passed before his cell door burst open and the Rabbit came in, furious and bearing an armload of clothing. As always, the Rabbit''s hair was closely cut, his uniform pristine, his lean body erect.   "Put these on. Your friends won''t leave without you.

"   Tom reached out for the clothes carefully, certain that the Rabbit was toying with him. He tossed his filthy black pajama top to the side and pulled on a shirt, his bruised and battered fingers having trouble with the buttons. What a magnificent group of men his fellow prisoners were, renouncing their own freedom to save a man they had never seen, never talked to.   Only when he slid into the dark blue trousers did he allow himself to hope that his long agony was coming to an end. He was going home. He only wished Pavone was going with him.   March 17, 1973,   Palos Verdes, California   VANCE SHANNON STARED at the television set. For so many months it had been a source of pain to him, watching the debacle unfold in Vietnam, watching the miserable, long-haired peaceniks demonstrating against the United States, against their own country, by God, the worthless bunch of traitors.

  But now television was an unbelievable source of hope. It had picked up the dot of an airplane in the distance, panning over the crowd of people waiting at Travis Air Force Base to greet the returning prisoners of war. Almost everyone in Shannon''s family was there to greet Tom when he stepped off the plane. Nancy and V. R. were there, and so were Harry, Tom''s twin brother, and his wife, Anna. Vance Shannon''s wife Jill had stayed home to nurse him, as she had done for so long.   "By God, Jill, I should have gone, I shouldn''t have missed this.

"   Jill patted him on the shoulder as she had the previous ten times he raised his plaintive cry.   "No, honey, it''s best you are here. Let Tom and Nancy have their get-together, and he''ll be home to see you in a day or two. After six long years, you can wait another few days."   It was not like Shannon to wait for anything. An ace in World War I, he had become one of the top test pilots in the United States, ranking with Eddie Allen, Jim McAvoy, and Vance Breese. Afterward, building on his test pilot reputation, he had started a one-man consulting firm that quickly grew into an industry legend. His twin sons, Tom and Harry, had helped, but his real forte had been in picking innovative young leaders, giving them a piece of the business, and letting them run with it.

Now Aerospace Consultants had offices in eight cities and was a major force in industries no one had dreamed of when he had been flying his SPAD on the Western Front, or even when he was testing Mustangs for North American. Aerospace Consultants and its subsidiaries were a force in avionics, simulators, precision guided munitions, and the executive jet business.   At seventy-eight, Shannon was in better shape than he had any right to be. He''d survived a severe stroke, and by sheer willpower had brought himself back to the point that he was still of real value to the company he founded-at least on the airplane and engine side. Most of the rest he left to Bob Rodriquez, a twelve-victory ace in Korea, and an electronics genius who had carried the firm to new levels that he and his boys, smart as they were, could never have reached.   "I wish I could pick out Nancy in the crowd. She was wearing that fancy hat with the feather on the side, but I still can''t see her. I''d love to see her reaction when Tom comes off the plane.

"   "And I''d really love to see Tom''s reaction when he sees her and V. R."   March 17, 1973   Travis Air Force Base, California   NANCY SHANNON HELD tight to V. R.''s arm. At twenty, young Vance Robert was as tall as his father had been, six-one, and built just like him. On leave from the Air Force Academy to meet his father, V. R.

searched his mother''s face to see how she was bearing up.   He had been fourteen when his father, the old warhorse, had returned to the Air Force and volunteered for combat duty in Vietnam. Tom Shannon had blazed brightly across the Vietnamese skies, shooting down four-and perhaps five-North Vietnamese MiGs before being shot down and imprisoned for six interminable years. In the meantime Nancy Shannon had soldiered on, taking on more and more responsibility with the.