Chain of Command c-12

by Keith Douglass

  "I'm here to do a job, Admiral," she said coldly. "That's all."

  I looked at her levelly, ashamed that I was enjoying having gotten to her. "So am I, Ms. Drake. So am I."

  9

  Lieutenant Commander "Bird Dog" Robinson

  29 September

  Northern Vietnam

  Gator had been unconscious for a hell of a long time. I checked his breathing again, then his pulse, though I don't know what I would have done if either wasn't right. And I wasn't sure exactly how many breaths a minute he was supposed to be taking. As long as the chest was moving up and down, I had to be satisfied.

  The dark was absolute now. They'd moved a heavy wooden barrier across the entrance, and must have put canvas on top of that, because there were no stray slivers of light creeping past it as there had been yesterday. It looked bad for the Gator and Bird Dog, I had to admit it.

  The underground facility was dark and dank, and I had the feeling of being buried alive. I knew from seeing it in the daylight that the ceilings were a good seven feet tall, but it sure as hell didn't feel like it with the lights out. There were small pools of water on the floor, and a steady ominous dripping sound somewhere in the back.

  I found Gator a relatively dry spot to lie on, and tried to make him as comfortable as I could. But there was no way to check and see how bad they'd hurt him ― they'd even taken away my flashlight during the interrogation. Interrogation ― that's what they'd called it. Back where I'm from, we call it something else ― beating the shit out of a guy.

  Gator had already been hurt when we'd punched out of our aircraft, but at least the drugs had worn off. I'd been glad about that at first ― and that was my first mistake.

  They'd let us wait for twelve hours, just about ignoring us except for shackling our feet together. Not that we could have gotten far anyway. Gator was in bad shape, still half asleep from the drugs, and I wasn't about to take off without him.

  Finally, just as Gator started coming to pretty good, answering my questions and sounding just about like his old self, they came for us.

  Both of us.

  There were two teams of interrogators. Five guys grabbed me, took me off to one end of the concrete building. I got tied in a chair, was asked a few polite questions by the bigwig, and then it started.

  The same number of people had seized Gator and taken him off somewhere else. I'm assuming it was in the same building, but I hadn't had a chance to ask him since we'd been back. He hadn't regained consciousness.

  There were the usual questions about what kind of aircraft I was flying, what squadron I was attached to, and what ship I'd come off. Like that was a big mystery ― Jefferson was just over the horizon, and they damn well knew she was there. They should, after the damage we'd caused them.

  I gave them the standard spiel name, rank, service number, and branch of service. Then, just like they tell you in all those training flicks, I quit talking.

  They try to prepare you for this, just like they try to prepare you for aerial combat. The Navy does a pretty good job with their SERE ― Survival Evasion Resistance Escape ― School, but there're some things you just can't completely simulate. As bad as SERE School is, you know it'll end eventually. It's always surprising how fast your mind begins to believe it's real, to react to your questioners as though they're really bad guys instead of just other officers playing a part. But even when you start falling into the pattern, some part of your mind knows. Five more days, four more days ― you can count it down, know that it's going to end.

  What's more, you know they won't kill you. Sure, accidents do happen, even in training, but you figure that's probably against the rules. Killing pilots on purpose, I mean.

  I came home from SERE School bloodied and bruised, and a lot smarter about just how little it took to break a man. It can be done ― trust me.

  The good part was that they also taught us some techniques for surviving it. I started reviewing them in my mind, preparing for the worst. It got bad ― and then it got badder.

  They started with the easy stuff, knocking my chair off so I hit hard on the concrete floor. I took a hard knock to the head, faded in and out for a moment, and then they jerked me upright. The beating began, starting off with just hard punches to the face and extending from there. By the time they got to my crotch, I was crying ― and not ashamed to admit it. Hell, anybody would have been.

  Then they brought out the batteries. And the electrodes. I remember how it started, but not how it ended. The pain was simply too great, too much, too hard, too fast, and I blacked out at some point. When I came to, I was lying back on the deck, cold water splashed over my face. I was shaking, couldn't control it, and then started puking.

  There had been some more of the light stuff, the kind of torture that hurt really bad but that you could stay conscious through. Quite frankly, I wasn't sure which I longed for more ― some degree of control over my mind or the sheer relief of unconsciousness.

  Three hours, maybe four ― I can't be sure, not with SO much time missing in my mind. They never got what they wanted ― at least I don't think they did. I can't recall giving them anything other than the allowable information.

  They dragged me back to the cave, because I sure as hell couldn't walk. They took me about halfway in, then dropped me down on the dirt floor.

  "You have time to think about this," one of them said calmly, as though he hadn't spent the last couple of hours pulping my face. "Think ― we will be back."

  I sat up, trying to make my vision clear up enough so that I could look around for Gator. Just as the heavy wooden door was slamming shut over the entrance, I saw him.

  Gator was further back in the cavern than I was, still and unmoving.

  "Gator?" I asked.

  No response.

  "Oh Jesus, man, don't be dead," I said, talking as much to calm myself down as to reassure him. "C'mon, Gator."

  Still no answer.

  I crawled on hands and knees over to him, afraid I'd miss him in the dark that was now absolute. I put my face down next to his, felt him breathing against my cheek. I put one hand on his chest, felt it rise, then fall.

  At least he was alive. But how badly hurt was he? He'd gone in in worse shape than I was, and if he'd been through what I had been, there was no telling.

  "Sorry, Gator," I said softly, then started running my hands over his body, feeling for damage.

  No long bones stuck out from his flight suit, nor had he puked on his quite as much as I had on mine. His breathing sounded relatively even, if a little bit shallow.

  I curled up on the floor next to him and tried to come Up With some brilliant plan to get us out of this. Surely there was a way ― hell, I'd seen every John Wayne movie ever made, The Duke wouldn't be left to die in a stinking, leaky dirt cave with his buddy, no way. There was a way out ― there always was.

  I pulled myself to my feet, groaning a little, and found I could bear my weight on my own legs now if I leaned against the wall. I walked the perimeter slowly, feeling the outlines of our cave, stumbling once as I slipped in a puddle. I made the entire circuit, still with no good ideas. Finally, I went and sat back down next to Gator.

  "They know where we are, Gator," I said, trying to sound confident. I've heard that people can hear you when they're unconscious, and if Gator was in there somewhere fighting, I wanted to let him know he wasn't alone. "Just hang tough, Gator. You're doing fine, you're not hurt bad. We're gonna get out of here soon."

  I thought I heard him say something in his sleep, or maybe it was just a groan. My ears weren't working a whole lot better than my eyes. Encouraged, I kept it up for a while, started talking about the squadron and the people we knew, then stopped suddenly. Maybe they were listening ― maybe not. That was one of the things they told me to assume, that your conversations were always monitored. I went back to more general conversation, saying the first thing that came to mind as long as it wasn't about the Navy, my family, or anything near and dear to me. Fi
nally, I settled on Tennessee-Alabama football games. I retold every one I could recall in detail, focusing on the wins by Alabama. I knew Gator always took Tennessee over Alabama, so I gave them a good buildup too. I talked about the next game we'd see, how many beers we'd have, that sort of thing.

  Finally, I guess I drifted off. I sure as hell wasn't awake when the first bomb hit.

  If you've ever been on the ground when heavy ammunition starts hitting it, you know the sound. It's something you'll never forget, a noise and fury of vibration that you can recognize instantly. I'm not talking about the light stuff, about handguns and rifles and such. I mean the big motherfuckers I carry slung underneath my Tomcat, the ones I'd dropped around these parts not so long before.

  The ground shook like we were in an earthquake, and the noise echoed through our small den. I yelped, dove for Gator, covering his face with my hands. I hunkered over him, trying to protect him from the dirt that was raining down from the ceiling. Dirt and more ― rocks, I guess, because something hard hit me in the middle of the back and knocked me flat on top of him. I hung on for dear life.

  More bombs hit, real close. Too close. Much more of this and the dirt cave I'd come to despise so quickly was going to be my tomb.

  The first major cave-in occurred near the entrance, or so it seemed. I heard the sound, felt my ears pop as dirt collapsed in and compressed the air inside our chamber into a smaller space. Warm, moist ground cascaded across our legs, burying me up to my knees.

  I scrambled free, then picked Gator up under the armpits and dragged him back. If we'd been trapped before, we were doubly so now. I didn't know how much dirt there was between me and the wooden door, but I was certain it was too much to dig through right now. Especially since the bombing continued, thundering explosions that deafened you even underground and ripped your world apart.

  The earth around me groaned, and shivered. More dirt and rocks rained down from the ceiling, and I dragged Gator even further back. Now we were in the puddle, the water two or three inches deep and covering the tops of my boots.

  They must have sent two flights in on a bombing run, because there was about sixty seconds of blessed, absolute silence. Or maybe I'd just gone deaf. At any rate, I thought it was over. Hoped it was over.

  Then the second wave struck, even harder than the first. They sounded like they were right overhead, although they couldn't have been. Nothing would have survived in this cave if they had been. More cave-ins, so many more that we were crowded back into a narrow space maybe five feet deep at the very end of the tunnel.

  "Hang on, Gator," I screamed, barely able to even hear my own voice over the noise and fury. "Stick with me, buddy. We're gonna get out, we're gonna get out, we're gonna-" A final blast, more powerful than all those that had come before, slammed me down to the dirt on my back, still holding Gator under the armpits. The impact must have been so painful that it woke him, because I could hear him screaming. But between my deafened ears and the noise from the explosions, I could just barely hear him.

  A massive, low rumbling, then unexpectedly, light streaming down at me. One thin shaft, hazy and clouded with motes of dirt and dust and God knows what, but sunlight nonetheless. I laid Gator down carefully, propping him up against the back wall, which seemed the most solid of all. I scrabbled up the hard-packed dirt, trying to reach the opening. The wall collapsed under my fingers, cascading down near Gator. I tried again.

  This time, I found a small toehold on a wedge of rock, then another. I could reach the opening, barely six inches in diameter, with my hands now. I clawed at it, raining more dirt down, not caring, knowing that this was our only chance for escape.

  The loose soil crumbled easily, cascading down in a small anthill on the floor of our cave.

  Big enough? It had to be.

  I climbed down carefully, not wanting to dislodge the rocks that had served as handholds, and went back over to Gator. He was conscious now, quiet, but with his eyes darting around the cave like crazy. I tried to speak reassuringly. "Stay awake, Gator. We're getting out of here. It's gonna hurt, buddy, but I need you to stay awake. Okay?"

  "Okay." His voice was weak but readable, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Let's get going then. Before they find out there's a hole here."

  I hoped to God that the Tomcats would hold off for just a little while. Just a few minutes, long enough for me and Gator to get out of this hellhole before they rolled in again with the next wave of bombing. How dangerous that would be, being above ground at ground zero, I didn't want to think about. But anything beat being buried alive.

  I grabbed Gator by his collar, helped him stand up. Quickly, I pointed out the handholds, boosted him up to the first one, and shoved him by his butt up to the second. He was moving now, though God knows where he got the strength. I gave him one last shove on his good leg. Then I saw him half sprawl across the opening, his feet still dangling down at me. "Roll out of it, Gator. Roll out."

  I heard him say something, but couldn't make out the words. I started on my way up, got halfway there, and turned loose with my hands long enough to lift his legs and heave him up over the opening.

  I heard Gator start to scream, then stifle it. I fell back down on the floor of the dirt cave and cracked my head against something. The shaft of light shimmered, seemed to shift and go out, then reappeared.

  Gator's pale face was staring down at me from the opening. "Come on, Bird Dog," he said. I damn near cried ― now he was encouraging me? I felt a new burst of energy, and went at the handholds again. This time, with Gator out of the way, I made it.

  We lay there for just a second, covered in mud and dirt and panting hard. Then I rolled over and said, "Can you walk?"

  Gator grimaced. "Not much," he admitted. "My leg ― I don't know if it was from punching out or what."

  I shook my head. Better that he not remember, if he didn't. "Probably the ejection. C'mon, I'll help you. We need to get out of here before the third wave rolls in."

  I stood up, and started thinking about whether or not the ground under my feet was going to collapse. That gave me more energy. I picked Gator up, slung him over my shoulder, and moved as fast as I could toward the tree line. It sure wasn't a run, more like a staggering walk, but twenty seconds later we were in the jungle.

  I lowered Gator back down to his feet. "See if you can stand on one leg."

  He tried, and found he was able to put weight on his right leg. I looped his left arm over my neck and said, "C'mon, let's go home." We got maybe 150 feet away from the camp before the third wave of bombers rolled in. I could look up and see them, Tomcats on a bombing run, their deadly payloads heavy on the undercarriages. If we ever got out of this, if I ever got back in a Tomcat, I was going to remember how we looked from the ground. That, and how the poor bastards we bombed felt.

  There were only four Tomcats on this final run, and they did a damn fine job of it. As they banked away, I caught the squadron insignia on the tail, and realized it was the Black Vipers. My squadron ― our squadron.

  The last bird rolled in, dropped a couple of five-hundred-pounders on the compound. The last one went dead into the luxurious facility we had just vacated. The entire structure collapsed, blasting a fifty-foot-wide crater in the ground where we'd been.

  "Just in time," Gator said. He looked at me with just a flash of the usual Gator expression on his face. "You can't do anything the easy way, can you?"

  I laughed a little, then hoisted him back up. "C'mon. We're going south."

  The jungle was thicker than I thought it would be, difficult to traverse. Vines on the ground caught at our ankles, and we fell every two hundred feet or so at first. After a while, I got better at it. The sounds of the compound, the bombing and screaming and noise, gradually faded away behind us.

  "We need to get some altitude," I said. I pointed at the hill up ahead. "Think we can make it?"

  Gator nodded. "I think we need to. I think I know where we are, and if we can get over that hill and hea
d south, there may be some water."

  It wasn't until he said that that I realized how thirsty I was. I hadn't wanted to sample the pools of murky water on the bottom of our cave, and neither had Gator.

  And hungry ― damn, was I hungry. As the adrenaline started to ebb out of my system, that hit too.

  "We can get our bearings," I agreed. "You ready?"

  He nodded.

  We set out again, now getting better at this traipsing like a three-legged-man relay team through the jungle. I started hearing animals, something moving around in the trees ― at least I hoped it was animals. If it was Vietnamese, they sure hadn't figured out that they were supposed to be after us.

  Finally, we pressed at the hill, climbing the last hundred feet of it on hands and knees. We broke out into a small clearing, and finally I could get a good visual on the sun.

  "South of us is that way," Gator said decisively.

  I shook my head. "I don't think so. It's that way." I pointed in a direction ninety degrees off the angle he'd indicated.

  "Who's the navigator around here?" Gator demanded. "Bird Dog, you've never been able to find your way home alone. You know that. Now trust me ― it's that way." He pointed back in the original direction.

  "Okay," I agreed finally. Gator did have a point ― I'd always had a lousy sense of direction.

  We crossed over the hill and down into the valley beyond it. As Gator had suspected, there was a stream there. We both washed up, and checked each other over to assess the extent of our injuries.

  Gator was a good deal worse off than I was. His arm had been hurt in the ejection, but it looked like the damage done to his right kneecap was all courtesy of our late hosts.