Chain of Command c-12

by Keith Douglass

  A shot rang out, and I heard a shrill yelp of pain. My blood ran cold.

  "Damn it, Gator, I told you-" The voice broke off suddenly, but I recognized it.

  "Bird Dog?" I shouted. "Damn it all, that can't be you!"

  Sudden, deadly silence extended over the jungle. The Cossack soldier was at my side in an instant, his knife out now and gleaming in the sun. We had no language in common, but his intent was unmistakable. He'd arrived at the same conclusion I would have in his position ― that the odd American officer he'd been chaperoning through the jungle had betrayed them. That this was a trap, somehow arranged to lead the Ukrainian-Cossack contingent into a deadly, killing cross fire.

  He was ready to die, I saw that in his face. But equally clear there was his grim determination that if he was going, so was I.

  "Wait," I said, holding up my hands to show that they were bare. "You don't understand. Those are my people. Americans, yes?"

  A look of uncertainty crossed his face. The blade did not waver. Nor did he look behind him. I could see Yuri approaching now, moving quickly and altogether too noisily through the brush. "They're Americans," I repeated. "My people ― I know that man."

  Yuri hissed, clearly not believing me. I had to admit that it sounded pretty improbable myself. What were the odds that two Americans, and ones that I knew personally at that, would be in this very same spot in the jungle? Astronomical.

  "It's Bird Dog Robinson and Gator Cummings," I said rapidly. "They were on my ship, they're F-14 pilots. Maybe they were shot down, something like that. I don't know why they're here, but I do know I recognize that voice."

  Yuri was silent, assessing the possibilities. It was clear that he found my story as improbable as I did, but something in my face must have convinced him. Finally, he turned and muttered to the Cossack something low and unintelligible. The man nodded once, then slipped away quietly. Yuri turned back to me. "I told him to bring them to me," he said. He studied me, searching for any sign of uncertainty. "If they are who you say they are, then there will be more explanations. Immediately."

  "I have not betrayed you," I said, as calmly as I could. "How could I have arranged this, do you think? We are not nearly as Byzantinely intricate on our plans as your people are. You know that already."

  Yuri nodded, still not looking convinced.

  "Who was shot?" I asked. "One of my men?"

  Yuri shook his head. "I do not know. But we will find out very shortly."

  "Let me talk to them," I urged. "They may try to take cover, fight back. If I let them know I'm here, they won't."

  Yuri appeared to consider that for a moment, then he nodded. "Call to them," he said. "Tell them to walk toward the sound of your voice. I have ordered my men not to kill them immediately ― not until we understand what is happening here. You understand, by doing this, you will lead them to us. If this is a trap, they will both die. Before your eyes."

  I nodded, accepting the bargain. I took a deep breath, "Bird Dog, Gator ― it's Admiral Magruder. Tombstone."

  The silence persisted. I could hear no one moving in the brush, not even my Americans, who were as unskilled as I in the jungle.

  Still no answer. "Look, what does it take to convince you?" I shouted. "I'm not under duress ― you know I was on Jefferson, know I left there with an F-14 for the mainland. Maybe you don't know why I came ― maybe that's what's got you worried. They told me there were traces of my father's time in a POW camp here. I've been tracking them down. That's what I'm doing in the jungle, Bird Dog. Gator, talk to him ― make him listen to common sense. You always could do that."

  Still no answer.

  "What do you want me to do, recite the Chargers starting lineup for you? That only works in the movies, Gator. Bird Dog, remember Callie? Remember how you wangled your way out to Jefferson while you were supposed to be at the War College? And Gator, I know something about you too ― that half the time, you're about ready to strangle that young pilot of yours. He's gotten you into more fixes than anyone else around, and you keep bailing him out. But you love him like a brother, don't you? I know you do ― I can see it in your face.

  "Bird Dog, you were popcorn officer back when I was in command on Jefferson. You remember that? You used to come up with the most god-awful concoctions. Like putting pineapple syrup in the popper. I was so glad when you were promoted ― at least we could go back to having decent popcorn in the ready room."

  By now, I figured they were convinced that I was who I said I was. The only question remaining in their mind would be whether or not I was under duress, being held under gunpoint by Vietnamese forces simply to lure them out into the open. I turned to Yuri. "I have to go to them," I said. "They're not going to believe that I'm operating under my own free will if I don't. And I need something to convince them." I held out my hand for his rifle.

  Yuri scowled. "How do I know this is not a trap?"

  I stared back at him levelly. "You don't. All you have is my word ― and the fact that I've trusted you so far. Now give me the rifle."

  Finally, after an apparent inner struggle, Yuri handed over his AK-47. I took it in both hands, held it out in front of me, and walked toward the place where I'd last heard the noise. "Bird Dog, Gator ― look. I'm coming toward you. There are some men moving up quietly on you. And I want them to hold still. Tell them, Yuri."

  Back behind me, I heard Yuri shout out some commands in Ukrainian. I could discern no change in the bushes, but I was certain that he had told them to halt their advance.

  "Look out, you can see me," I called. "I've got a rifle in my hands. Would I have a weapon if I were under duress? Yeah, it could be unloaded ― but it's not." I pointed the weapon up at the sky and pressed the trigger briefly. A small spat of gunfire followed. "See? C'mon out, guys. You have to know that I wouldn't do this, not even if I were under duress, if it meant your lives."

  Finally, a noise from ahead, maybe forty feet away. Two figures rose slowly, one propping the other up. I saw the mud-streaked and battered faces of Bird Dog and Gator peering out at me. They were still in their flight suits, but they looked much the worse for wear.

  I walked toward them, almost running now. I grabbed both of them in a tight embrace. Gator howled, and I pulled back abruptly. "He's injured?" A flash of rage ― had the Cossacks done this? Had the bullet found Gator's arm?

  Bird Dog nodded. "When we punched out ― and his knee. The Vietnamese did something to it, during the interrogation. He's in pretty bad shape, Admiral." Bird Dog looked up at me appealingly, the sheer shock of the circumstances and what he'd been through in the last week on his face. I reached for Gator more carefully now, working my way around his injuries. "C'mon ― we have some medical gear."

  I led them back out of the bush and toward the troop of Cossacks. Yuri looked relieved as we approached, although he still scanned the bush around him nervously. "They are yours," he said finally. "But we have a very large problem now, Admiral. That gunfire, it will have alerted the Chinese in the facility. We must leave ― immediately."

  "No," I said flatly. "I've come this far, and there's too much at stake. I must see the facility ― I must. Send most of your men back, and have them take Bird Dog and Gator with them. See that this man gets medical treatment ― you can see that he's injured. But you and I, and your Cossack friend, will proceed on. Far enough to at least see this facility, to give me something that I can take back to my people."

  Yuri started to protest, and I cut him off. "I don't own weapons on that aircraft carrier now, Yuri," I said. "There are people I have to convince ― a few, at least. Just how important is this to you, Yuri? Are you willing to go as far as I am to stop this now?"

  Yuri looked subdued. Then finally he nodded. He barked out a few, harsh, quiet orders in Ukrainian, then motioned to my Cossack escort. "We will see how good you are, Admiral Magruder," he said quietly. "The odds are that we will not return. If so, your men's lives are forfeit, along with those that you have already lost."

/>   I nodded. Bird Dog and Gator held hostage against my good behavior. It was a fair enough trade. "Let's get going then."

  Most of Yuri's men formed up around Gator and Bird Dog. One large, massive Cossack swung Gator over his shoulder, the movement oddly gentle. They may not have been from the same nation, they may have been on different sides of too many conflicts in the past, but one-on-one there is something about one fighting man that another recognizes. They moved off into the brush, disappearing, and leaving us alone.

  The Cossack grunted, and muttered something sharp. Yuri nodded. "We need to clear out of this area immediately," he said. He pointed off to his right. "There's another path ― a hard one, up the mountain, but it will be more secure. And we will be able to see people approaching us as well."

  The Cossack took point, I took the middle position, and Yuri brought up the rear. We moved quickly, as quietly as we could, but concentrating on speed at the expense of some noise. I could already hear shouts and cries from somewhere far off floating in the air, and it was evident that my brief burst of gunfire had aroused some interest from the camp.

  A harder course this time, sometimes up virtually sheer rock walls and around massive boulders. We threaded our way along animal tracks, ghosts moving through this land that belonged to none of us. Finally we reached the crest of the hill, and Yuri tugged me into position. He handed me a pair of binoculars.

  "See ― there it is." He moved my head slightly in the direction he'd indicated.

  I could see a compound, one markedly different from the prison camps I'd inspected earlier. I tweaked the binoculars, bringing the picture into sharper focus. There were men in uniform there, although not the style I recognized as being either Ukrainian or Vietnamese. No, they were different, looser-fitting and darker in color. Many of them carried weapons at the ready, and there was an air of activity and alarm in their movements.

  "Hurry," Yuri murmured. "I do not know how much time we will have."

  I stared at them again, looking for some indication that this place was what Yuri claimed it was. The faces were undoubtedly Asiatic, probably Chinese. Still, the facial features were well within the range of physiognomy demonstrated by the Vietnamese people. I could not be certain ― not based on their appearance alone.

  The sun glinted off something pinned to one man's shirt, and I focused on that, straining to make out the details. It was a badge of Some sort, white and plain. There was no lettering visible on it.

  Suddenly, it hit me. I dropped the binoculars, handed them back to Yuri, and said, "Let's go. You're right, Yuri. Get us out of here."

  Without wasting time for questions, the Cossack led the way. We moved over hills, the sounds of pursuit faintly audible in the jungle behind us. We were running now, crashing through brush as though there were no need for silence, desperately putting distance between us and the weapons behind us.

  I panicked, gasping for breath, swearing that I would make this last run if I would do anything in my life. What I had seen was just too vital, of too critical importance for U.S. interests and stability in this region. The knowledge must not die with me, not when so many good men had already sacrificed their lives to get me here.

  Finally, we reached the one remaining truck. We jumped into it, fired it up, and were speeding back down the one-lane trail toward Yuri's garrison.

  "What did you see?" Yuri asked finally, as he regained control of his breathing. "All my arguments, all my facts ― what did you see?"

  I closed my eyes for a moment, recalling the brief flash of light on that white badge. It seemed odd, out of place in a jungle camp, and that was what had first caught my attention. After looking at it for a moment, some vague memory came back to me, and I remembered the last time I had seen something similar.

  It had been on an inspection tour of the engineering spaces on board USS Jefferson. Every engineering technician who works down there is required to have in his or her possession at all times one simple piece of gear. It is their first line of defense, their only indication that something might be going terribly and horribly wrong inside the bowels of the engineering plant.

  The Jefferson is a nuclear-powered carrier. And what I had seen on my engineering technicians' coveralls, and on the man on guard duty in the compound, was a dosimeter. A small one, the kind a technician clipped to his clothing to monitor his exposure to radiation.

  11

  Lieutenant Commander "Bird Dog" Robinson

  30 September

  USS Jefferson

  I don't think I've ever been as happy to see anyone as I was to see Admiral Magruder. After days and days in the jungle, at first I figured I was starting to hallucinate. You know, like seeing mirages? But I wouldn't have thought that Admiral Magruder's face would have been that high on my list of hallucinations.

  By the time I first heard his voice, I was getting seriously worried about Gator. We'd been making progress slowly, but in the last couple of hours he'd started to look like real shit. His face was an odd, green, pasty color and he'd stopped talking. He groaned occasionally, and made it worse by trying not to. I could tell he was hurting, bad, and we needed to do something right damn quick.

  All I knew was we were heading south, toward the part of Vietnam that was supposed to be friendly. How much that counted for, I didn't know. Not given the last air strike on Jefferson. Still, it was better than heading for the ocean and trying to swim home.

  By the time I decided that Admiral Magruder's voice wasn't some fever dream or nightmare, the possibility that we might not make it was starting to dawn on me. It's not something I'd ever admit willingly, but it was there. But how could I give up with Gator depending on me? I couldn't. So it was one foot in front of the other, stumble, fall, get up, and move on. If we were gonna die, we were gonna do it on our feet.

  If it had just been me, I would have stood up as soon as I heard the admiral's voice. But with Gator barely conscious, depending on me to keep him alive, I wasn't going to take the chance.

  It was the gunfire that finally convinced me. Not that I needed much more. There is something about Admiral Magruder that is rock solid. It goes through and through to his very core. He can be a nasty bastard if you cross him ― just ask the Chinese, or the Ukrainians, or any one of a number of assholes around the world that he's put down recently ― but if you're one of his, you know he'll come after you.

  As the admiral walked toward me, silent shapes rose out of the bushes around me. Strangers, not Vietnamese ― Russians or Asians of some sort, judging by their faces. But their appearance didn't worry me half as much as the knives I saw in their hands.

  Before I knew it, Gator and I were hustled into a large diesel truck and headed back out toward civilization. The admiral told us to go, said he had something else to take care of. I didn't try to pump him ― by then, I was too worried about Gator to do anything else but be thankful that we were alive.

  When they finally drove back into camp, Admiral Magruder's face was as scary as I have ever seen it. Something had pissed him off and bad. All I knew was I wouldn't be on the receiving end of whatever he had planned.

  He was traveling with the Russian-looking guy, the one I'd seen on Jefferson last time we were in the Med. Not Russian ― Ukrainian, I remembered. The details came flooding back in. Hadn't he been the asshole who'd planted the bomb next to Tombstone's cabin? And if so, what was the admiral doing cozied up to him?

  And just what were the two of them doing in Vietnam? I knew why the admiral was here. That story had made the mess decks intelligence circuit two seconds after he'd arrived on board. It was a hell of a thing, going after your dad in the jungle, and more than one of us admired him more than we could ever say.

  Still, this combination seemed pretty strange. Was there any possibility-?

  No. I swore at myself for even thinking it. But stories of the Walker spy scandal kept coming back to haunt me. Now there was a man that the Navy had trusted, had trusted completely. He had access to the most c
lassified material around. He'd had security checks, polygraphs, and every other security measure that the armed forces could dream up to safeguard their classified material.

  Yet he'd been a spy. A damned good one, from what I could hear.

  Details of other cases nagged me too. The CIA guy that got caught, Longtree the Marine. What about them? Was there any possibility, however slight, that Admiral Magruder could be involved in something like that? Even unwittingly ― hell, it would have to be unwittingly.

  But what could possibly have pushed him to those limits? There was only one thing that I knew of ― if the bad guys got a hold of Tomboy. Even then, I wasn't certain he would do it.

  Could they have Tomboy? It was possible, I guess. We'd all been flying back-to-back missions, the skipper included. She wouldn't have wanted to be left out of that, and if she'd been flying combat missions, there was every chance she'd been shot down. Shot down, captured, and once they realized who she was, turned into the most heinous sort of bargaining chip. Had that happened?

  I studied the admiral for a moment, looking at how intense he was. It was possible ― what else could bring that look to his face?

  Finally, I arrived at a decision. Gator wasn't any help ― he was still out cold, although he was getting medical attention now.

  I would keep an eye on Admiral Magruder, at least for the time being. At least until we got back to the boat and I was certain that there was no funny business going on. I'd probably have a chat with Lab Rat as well, maybe not tell him directly what worried me, but at least let him know what I'd seen and heard.

  Tombstone came in to have a look at Gator. He crouched down next to the cot and put one hand on my backseater's good shoulder. "How you doing, Gator?" he asked softly.

  Gator moaned, and his eyelids flickered. "Admiral?" The voice was a weak, hoarse whisper. "I feel like shit, if you want to know the truth."

  Tombstone smiled, something I hadn't seen him do very often. "I bet you do. We're headed back to the ship in a couple hours, Gator. You hang on ― you're all right now, and you're gonna be fine."