He paused for a moment, and I saw him look around the room to take the measure of each one of us. "True, and wouldn't make a whole lot of difference. Not to you right now. Hell, not even to me, for that matter. But what I do care about is my people. And those bastards tried to kill some of them. Succeeded, in a couple of cases. Shot down the E-2, the helo, and a couple of fighters. As nasty as that was, it's sort of one of the risks of military life. You hate it, but it's there."
"But this" ― Admiral Wayne pointed at the photo ― "is something different. Something more brutal than anything we can conceive. Torture, pain, and trying to bury a pilot and his RIO alive. Now that is something to get pissed about. You got any questions about it, you just take a good look at Bird Dog. Or go down to sick bay and see Gator. Remember what happened to them and watch out for the SAM sites. Remember, and make them pay."
With that, the admiral stepped away from the briefing podium and handed the slide clicker over to Lab Rat. Lab Rat flashed up a smaller-scale aerial photo that encompassed the entire missions area. The burnt jungle was still visible, but took up less of the picture now.
Julie Karnes. Now just what the hell was she doing on Jefferson?
Back a couple of years ago, I'd spent a year at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. It was the first time I'd had shore duty since my earliest days of pilot training, and I'd run amok.
Well, sort of amok. At least until I'd met Callie Lazier, a surface warfare officer in my class. I'd fallen for her hard ― hell, I'd even proposed. What's worse, she'd accepted.
Then, when the opportunity came up to scoot back out to Jefferson to do a little flying during a real crisis, it had all fallen apart. Callie was pissed at me for going. Started making this mumbo-jumbo touchy-feely crap about fear of commitment and all that stuff.
I'd pointed out that she knew I was a pilot when she got hooked up with me. Just where the hell did she think I would be after War College?
She hadn't understood ― but then, those surface pukes never do. It's a whole different Navy, steaming around at the hair-raising speeds of thirty knots.
We'd made up for a while, but it hadn't lasted. She'd Dear-John'd me on the next cruise.
And Julie Karnes ― she'd been Callie's roommate through it all. I knew her, of course, but not well. She was an F-14 RIO, which should have given us a lot in common. Except there were other things I was interested in when I was over at their place, things that had nothing to do with radar, ESM, or even flying.
Plus, I'd gotten the feeling she didn't like me too much. I'd figured it was because I took off to go fly missions over Cuba while I was supposed to be making like a student and keeping good ol' Callie happy. Those women ― they stick together.
So aside from Callie, the last person I really wanted to run into was Julie Karnes.
The female in question shot me another nasty look, as if she knew I wasn't paying attention. I looked back up at the front of the room.
Lab Rat was running through the estimated SAM locations, warning us in every other sentence that the damn things were mobile and could be anywhere. Our ingress and egress routes were planned to avoid their detection envelopes, but there he went again. "They could be anywhere, people. And the range is-"
I tuned it out, and concentrated on the routes inked out in blue marker on the screen, picking out landmarks and drop points.
"Is he boring you?" The whisper was so quiet I almost missed it.
"Gator will ― I mean, my RIO will take care of it," I whispered back, annoyed at her for breaking my concentration.
That cool green stare again, clearly pissed now. Like I cared.
But I wasn't flying with Gator this time, was I? What about the RIO I would get? Would he be as good as Gator? I'd been spoiled a little by flying with a solid, experienced backseater for so long. Hell, by all rights, I should have had a nugget in the backseat ― the Skipper tries to put a seasoned guy with a newbie to increase the chances of survival. It was just that a lot of people didn't want to fly with me. I had no idea why.
So maybe I would have to worry about SAM site planning, more than I would have before. Shit ― — all I wanted to do was fly.
"Maybe I will, maybe I won't," she replied. "There're two of us up there." She said the words casually, like it was no big deal.
"I pity your pilot," I answered.
I swear to God, she smiled. I hadn't meant it as a joke.
"So, now I know two things about you that Callie never told me. First, you don't pay attention at briefings. And second ― you don't read the flight schedule."
She was right about the last one. I hadn't wanted to see it, to see my name on there without Gator's right below. But I had this weird sinking feeling that I was missing the point.
Now she was turned full-face to me, paying as little attention to the brief as I was. "You didn't read it, did you." A statement, not a question. "You're flying with me, Bird Dog. And I swear to God, you're leaving command-eject selected."
We trooped out of the ready room and headed for the paraloft to pick up our gear. Karnes was already carrying her brain bucket and knee pad, but I wasn't suited up yet.
"This isn't a good idea," I said as we let the parariggers help us adjust our ejection harnesses. Mine was brand new ― the last one had already done what it was supposed to. "Flying together, I mean."
"Why not?" she asked, reaching down to adjust her crotch straps. I watched, still slightly bewildered at the machinations women go through with them. Like what do they have to adjust has always been my question. "Not that I'm disagreeing with you," she continued, evidently satisfied with the fit.
"Because! We've never flown together. I don't think hostile SAM country is a good place to begin our relation ship."
"Ah. So unless it's a nice peacetime hop ― or War College ― you don't believe in new relationships. Is that it?"
"That's not it, and if you were any kind of a RIO, you'd agree with me," I shot back. There was something in that oh-so-cool voice that really pissed me off.
Truth be said, the last crack was below the belt. And not true. The Tomcat community isn't all that big, and the chicks had gotten a lot of attention from the press and from everyone else. I knew what kind of aviators they were, more from their squadron mates than from the media, and I knew more about them than I would have known about a guy in the same position.
An oddly erotic memory of Callie popped into mind at that word ― position. Ah, the things we'd tried…
I shoved the thought away. You don't let stuff like that distract you when you're getting ready to fly a combat mission.
The point of the whole matter was that everything I'd heard about Julie Karnes was good. Not too good to be true, not that sort of bullshit. The golden-halo effect, you can pick it out after a while in the canoe club. No, it all had the ring of an honest assessment. So maybe she didn't have as much time in an ejection seat as Gator did, but she was supposed to be a damned competent RIO.
"I am a kind of RIO. But I'm not Gator's kind." She turned around to face me, hands on hips, her helmet dangling from one hand. "I gave up babysitting after junior high school. It didn't pay enough. It doesn't now either. So get this concept through that overblown ego of yours, amigo. We go out there as a team, not as hotshot young pilot with Daddy in the backseat. You have a problem with that concept, you speak up."
"I have a problem with your attitude, lady."
She sighed, then put her helmet down on the long table that the riggers use for packing parachutes. "Then try to find someone else who's willing to fly with you, Bird Dog."
The tone set me back. I'd expected her to be pissed, to come back with some smart-ass remark. Instead, the voice she'd used was gentle, almost kind.
"You won't, you know," she said, turning her back slightly to me as she fussed with the crotch strap again. Damn, I wished she'd stop that. "Everyone in the squadron knows you. Knows how you are. And after this last stunt, where Gator finally had to put your as
s in the drink to put out the flames, they're all spooked."
"They are not."
"They are too." She shot me a look of pure exasperation. "Go ask your skipper if you don't believe me. I talked with her when I checked in ― they stashed me with VF-95 since I was only on board flying in with Admiral Magruder. She came looking for me earlier today, asked how I felt about flying with you. She was going to take you herself, just to prove something to the rest of the squadron, but she's got some nugget to look out for. So I told her I'd do it." This little revelation left me speechless. Sure, I knew some of the wimps in the squadron were worried about flying with me. But Gator'd always been there to defend me. It'd never come down to the point of having to cram someone else in the backseat, and even if it had, Gator would have made them go. Made them, as one of the senior RIOs in the squadron. He'd personally vouch for the fact that I'd behave.
But like I said ― Gator wasn't here. Only this skinny broad with the green eyes and the mouth.
"So what if I say no?" I asked.
She sighed again. "Then either the skipper flies with you or you're off the schedule. I don't know whether she'd put up with another temper tantrum from you right now, and I don't want to find out."
Off the schedule. No way. Not during this strike. This one was personal.
She evidently read minds. "So you think you can get over your attitude problem long enough to go kill some dirt?"
"Why did you? Agree to it, I mean." It mattered to me, if not to her.
That cool, long look again. Like seawater, but warmer. "I've been around you a little more when you weren't playing hotshot," she said finally. "I don't think you'll get me killed in the air, and that's really my only criteria for flying with a pilot. If anything, after your little trip downtown, you'll be a little more cautious."
"Scared, you mean."
This time she laughed. "Oh, no, not that. Not in a Tomcat. Bird Dog, listen ― let's come to an understanding. I'll agree that you're the best pilot in the world, absolutely invulnerable in the air."
"Okay."
"And you admit that while you're immortal, maybe the guy in the back isn't. So it's not a matter of whether or not you're afraid, okay? It's a matter of having to fly with us lesser beings, ones that get killed when the aircraft is hit. That suit you?"
Oddly enough, it did.
"Let's go check out a bird and preflight," I said finally. "I got a mission to fly."
"We do, amigo. Learn the word ― we."
I signed our bird out from Maintenance, and Julie followed me up to the flight deck. The noise was overwhelming ― engines turning, aircraft taxiing, all under the watchful eyes of the yellow shirts and the flight deck handler.
We preflighted, doing together the things I would normally have relied on Gator to do alone, the brown-shirted plane captain tagging along with us. He had a worried look on his face. Evidently the RIOs weren't the only ones worried about my flying.
"I'll bring it back," I told the youngster. "In one piece."
He nodded doubtfully. "Good hunting, sir." We climbed up into our seats, and he helped us secure the ejection harness. The whole routine had a new significance to me now that I'd had to trust my ass to one.
More checklist, then finally we were ready. I kicked over the engines, immediately relaxing as I heard their pure, throaty growl. The noise enveloped me, holding me safe in the middle, protecting me against anything bad. I felt safe. "You ready?" I asked over the ICS.
"Ready," she said shortly.
Okay, so she wasn't a talkative one. I'd already figured that part out from remembering her at War College.
I taxied slowly across the deck, following the yellow shirt's signals. We were a little slow off the spot, delayed by that touching little heart-to-heart in the riggers' shop. Women ― just what had she accomplished with all that crap? Why do they always want to talk? Okay, so maybe I'd started it by not wanting to fly with her, but still…
The rest of our flight was already off the deck, forming UP and cutting slow patterns in the air while they waited on me and a straggler still sitting on the waist cat. Some mechanical problem. Green shirts, the enlisted technicians who know how the guts of this beast work, were popping open panels and swarming all over the bird.
We rolled slowly past them. They scattered, evidently flushed off the deck by the Air Boss, and then we had a green deck.
I cycled the control surfaces one last time for the catapult officer. The retaining pin that anchored my nose wheel to the catapult shuttle was already in place. I got the full-power signal, and slammed the throttles forward into full military power. One last check of the control surfaces, then the yellow shirt popped off a sharp, theatrical salute at me. I returned it. I owned the aircraft now, and anything that went wrong was my complete responsibility.
A few seconds later, that sudden jolt that says the shuttle was moving. Then that sickening, exhilarating buildup of speed, blasting us forward to 140 knots in just over that many feet. Just barely enough airspeed to get airborne, with more thrust than lift.
The first seconds off the cat are critical. You're in free fall for a moment, waiting for the aircraft to decide to fly. When the seas are rough, the waves are so close you think you'll never get airborne.
But you do. Unless you have a soft cat, a launch with insufficient airspeed, a Tomcat on afterburners has enough forward speed to stay up. But you always hold your breath a little, waiting for that to happen.
"Yee-haw!" A cheer from the backseat came over the ICS. It startled me. I'd heard other pilots say that their RIOs enjoyed the cat shot ― I love 'em myself ― but Gator always hated them. In landings, he was steadier than I was, but something about the launch just got to him. I'd hear him quit breathing, then give a long gasp after we were airborne for sure.
"Nice to have an appreciative audience," I said. Maybe this flight wasn't going to be as bad as I'd thought.
We climbed quickly, joined on the rest of the formation, and slid into position. We were flying in the last spot in the V, to lead's right. I glanced over at the other side of the formation and saw the distinctive face of Skeeter Harmon. He shot me a short, quick wave, then got back to the business of flying welded wing.
There were nine of us in the wing, all Tomcats fully loaded with ground-attack weapons and two little Sidewinders on wing tips. We were surrounded by Hornets with full anti-air loads, flying in loose-deuce pairs and covering all angles of approach. The Hornets, thirsty little bastards that they are, had launched first so they'd have time to hit the tanker before the real firepower showed up. There wasn't a lot of chatter on tactical, although I heard Thor's distinctive drawl rap out the punch line to a rude joke.
Hornets versus Tomcats. It was a good mix this time. I'd rather fly anti-air than ground-attack roles, but those damned little lawn darts were better at maneuvering against the MiGs. And we could carry a lot more firepower to the dirt than they could. I just didn't want them to get too used to it.
We were only fifty miles off the coast, well within Vietnam's coastal radar range, so it wasn't like this was going to be a complete surprise. They must have been on some sort of alert schedule. As soon as we reached the twenty-mile point, they were coming out to meet us.
Four pairs of Hornets peeled off to deal with the first wave. It chapped my butt to continue on inbound and let somebody else fight the air war, but there it was. You fly the mission you draw. Safe ― or relatively so ― inside a cocoon of Hornets, I pressed on and got to watch the air battle from the outside.
Ten MiG-29s against eight Hornets. Hardly seemed like a fair fight, our Hornets were so quick. They were fighting in the loose-deuce formation, one guy high covering the one down below fighting. The high position had the advantage of being able to trade altitude for speed almost instantaneously, and of having a little longer radar range.
The first MiG made an immediate, deadly mistake. He took on our lead Hornet without waiting for backup. Think of it as a cop walking into a b
ad neighborhood late at night alone. He should have known better. The pilot in the high slot nailed him with a Phoenix while the MiG was boring in, fixated on that lonely little Hornet out in front of the pack.
They started smartening up after that, although I'd wondered that it'd taken them that long to do it. You'd think the first engagement would have taught them better.
Never underestimate the value of training. You fight me way you train, and it was clear that these pilots had been thoroughly brought up in the Ground Control school of air combat. The interceptors on the deck, the GCIs, were trying to run the air battle, in typical Soviet fashion. It doesn't work against a flexible, fluid force like a Hornet pack.
I saw one Vietnamese missile brush by a Hornet with what looked like only inches to spare. The Hornet driver jinked, and flew ight into the second missile. Not a direct hit ― the missile clipped the tail assembly. A huge, bright chunk of Hornet took off for the ocean, and the rest of the aircraft flew by sheer momentum alone before starting spiraling toward the water. Just as the spin went flat and deadly, a chute popped out of the canopy. I flashed on that, remembering how it'd been.
Still we pressed on, leaving the first waves battling behind us. The MiGs just couldn't get around those Hornets at us, the fat, high-value targets they were after.
More MiGs, more Hornet interceptors. Another wave peeled off to take on the new flight.
"How're they doing back there?" I asked over ICS.
"Looks good ― only two MiGs left in the first wave, four in the second. Those Hornets are kicking some ass." Karnes sounded cheerful.
"Yeah, well, we're the ones who'll have to live with the bragging when we get back," I grumbled. "Hate landing with 'Winders on the wing."
"Five minutes to feet dry," she answered, reminding me that we weren't all that far from starting our bombing run.
I kept track of the air battle over tactical, listening to the Fox calls and yells. A few of my Hornet brethren and sistren got into trouble. I heard another call of "I got a chute," a pilot reporting seeing another one punch out successfully, and the gleeful cry of the woman that took that particular MiG out of play forever.
Chain of Command c-12 Page 25