The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga)

by Stan Hayes

  “Must’ve been some trek. Just doing that behind enemy lines is worth a Bronze Star, and with “V” device for valor! I know I’ve said it already, but congratulations, Peckerhead. Pretty good for your first month in country.”

  “Thanks, buddy. Naturally, I’m glad to be recommended for it- who wouldn’t be? But I’m really happy for Monty. He felt like hell being the cause of us getting left behind in the first place.”

  “Yeah, he probably won’t do that again, in the unlikely event he faces a situation like that twice in a lifetime. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. I’m sure that General Whomever’s soundly grateful for having his chestnuts pulled out of the fire.”

  Rick laughed. “Bet your ass he is. He wanted us recommended for the Medal of Honor, but cooler heads prevailed. When you come right down to it, Chin, it’s all grease; if that little fucker had been just any old gook-in-the-bush, d’you think we’d be gettin’ written up for any goddam decoration? Hell, man, we were just doing our jobs. I never fired a friggin’ shot, and neither did Monty.”

  “Did you actually see anything of the enemy?”

  “Nope. Heard ’em plenty, all night, moving pretty quickly. Not much weapons firing, just troops on the hump. The FARs must’ve been leading them a merry chase, probably all the way to Thailand. We’d just find a hole when we’d hear ’em coming, let ’em get by, get up and hoof it south some more. And about half an hour after first light, we heard choppers coming. We hustled to the closest thing that you could call a clearing, popped a smoke, they dropped the collar for the General and a couple of strings for us, and we were outa there. And I’ll tell you something else, buddy; I know we did plenty of string-hanging at Ranger school, but it’s a whole lot different when you’re thinkin’ about gettin’ shot at.”

  “I’ll bet. Well, speaking of generals, we’ve apparently got a terminally-pissed-off specimen down Padong way, Vang Pao by name. You’ve heard of him.”

  “Hardly a day goes by. What’s eating him?”

  “Something happened while you were gone. We got a major fucking black eye in Cuba; I doubt you’ve heard about it.”

  “Sure I have. You can’t take a piss without hearing ‘Bay of Pigs.’ What’s got ol’ VP’s shorts in a bunch?”

  “Allow me to paraphrase the good General: ‘How the hell can I expect the United States to be any help to me and my people, who are halfway around the world, if they can’t intervene effectively with the government of an island off their own coast?’ Now he’s about to get run out of Padong, a town- area- that’s been important to the Hmong for hundreds of years. Captain Taylor says that he should never have tried to defend it in the first place, that that’s not what the Hmong do well. They’re great at hit and run engagements, but piss-poor at set-piece battles; they were never trained nor equipped to do that. Regardless, the little rascal’s nose is out of joint in a major way, and that ain’t making our job any easier.”

  “Shit, Chin, what the hell could make this job easier? This ain’t a country, it’s a thoroughfare. Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodians- they’ve been running through here for those same hundreds of years that you were talking about. And the Laotians, except for the Hmong, and maybe Kong Le’s paratroops, just hide or step aside. You can’t turn generations of passivity into a warrior culture overnight. These people just don’t give a shit.”

  “Nobody but the Royal-Fucking-Family, and the half-of-one-percent that makes a good living off of ’em. Well, bucko, I guess all we can do is stay in one piece, learn a thing or two, get our ticket punched and move on. And that Bronze Star’s gonna look great on your chest.”

  “That looks to be about the size of it, trooper. Makes you wonder who’s thinking this shit up, doesn’t it?”

  “I can help you out on that,” Chin said. “CIA.”

  25 FREEDOM 7

  “Hello.”

  “Madame Presidente.”

  “Si, seen-yawer,” Linda said, chuckling. “Where the hell are you? This is way too good a connection for Puerto Rico.”

  “NAS Jax. Came up for a briefing on next month’s Mercury shot. Looks like we’ll have a ringside seat for it, since we’ll be flying backup recovery. A little shot of off-hurricane-season duty. I waited to call so I wouldn’t have to talk to y’all over a shitty connection. What’re they telling you about the Bay Of Pigs fuckup?”

  “Our people are madder than hell at JFK for rolling over on the air cover and letting Castro’s jets get airborne. One of the guys on the mission said that’s when everything turned to shit. If he’d let the B-26’s launch as originally planned, they would’ve caught the entire air force, which was no more than about half a dozen assorted relics, on the ground. That would’ve let the invasion force move inland before Castro’s troops could’ve organized their resistance. Apparently they went ashore at two different beachheads at this piss-poor location, which was swampy as hell, as opposed to the beach at Trinidad, which our guys had recommended as the landing site. As it was, the two T-33’s had target practice on the B-26’s, then took their time strafing the landing craft and support ships. Killed a bunch of our guys and captured the rest. I’ll swear if any of the guys at the office could get their hands on JFK, he’d be one dead Presidente.”

  “Well, it’s not just the guys at the office. Now that we’ve seen the US papers, pretty much everybody in the squadron feels the same way. Kennedy and those eggheads he’s got around him are trying to make the CIA the bad guy.”

  “And it looks like he can make it stick, at least for the moment. It’ll be a long time before much of the story is declassified, so the White House will have the last word for long enough for it not to matter anymore.”

  Jack took a breath before saying, “Hey- you guys weren’t flying support for any of this, were you?”

  “No, but at least one of the guys thought it likely enough that he strongly suggested that we not fly anywhere during the middle two weeks of April. As though it would be our call.”

  Jack fielded her comment with a faint snort. “Must’ve been your Jai-Alai pal.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. We hear a lot down here, that you don’t have the ‘need to know’ about.”

  “Hm. Pete around?”

  “Nope. Out at the hangar. Will that be all? Still love me, or have I been totally eclipsed by Lady Clare?”

  Anyone standing next to Jack would have seen his Adam’s apple jump. “The eclipse was your idea, remember? Anyway, with a little luck you may be as seductive as she is when you’re her age.”

  “Well, Buster, I’ve got a good mind to jump in this red Corvette, drive up there and suck that salami of yours till your head caves in, but I don’t want you throwing rocks at the old lady the next time you see her.”

  “I’ll meet you half way, Big Mouth. There’s a bar in Cocoa Beach, Bernard’s Surf. Gordon Cooper’s up here as astronaut liaison, and he says it’s the place to be. Take a right off A1A at Minuteman Causeway, go one block and you’ll see it. What’s the address, Gordo? ...2 South Atlantic Avenue. Better give me 15 minutes head start, I’m in a rent-a-heap. Oh no, hey, never mind; Gordo’s gonna drive me in his ’Vette. We don’t have to be back here till 0900.”

  “Jack...”

  “Be there or be square, baby. Don’t want to be late meeting your first astronaut.”

  14 September 1961

  Ahoy Dog-

  Sorry to be this long in getting back to you, but I’ve had my hands full for the past couple of months. I’m sure that you can say “ditto” to that, in whatever garden spot your APO tracks you down. Anyway, I just finished flying damn near 60 hours in nine days, which might not sound like much if you’re just looking at logbooks. The hours of which I speak, however, involved tracking and penetrating active hurricanes, which is “...shit of a different smell,” as CWO4 Rusty Parker, the CIC officer on my crew, is wont to say. A 14-15 hour flight’s par for the course in this outfit, and when you’re flying into and out of an active hurricane, it’ll beat you
down like 15 rounds with Marciano.

  Not that it matters that much what hurricane-level storm you might be dealing with, but this month we were working three storms at the same time. Spread that duty over eight flight crews and eight aircraft, and you’re pulling at every seam in the organization, from Operations to Maintenance to Admin; hell, even Medical gets bent out of shape. But it’s behind us now, and those sweet girls Betsy, Carla and Debbie have done their worst and blown themselves to oblivion.

  Even where you are, wherever that is, you may have heard about Carla’s wreaking havoc in South Texas; they’re saying that it’s the strongest storm ever to hit the state, with damage estimates upwards of $2 billion. Tom Hunt, my crew’s Flight Meteorologist, estimated the wind at 152 mph as the storm neared the coast, and baby, it felt like every bit of that. At least we were able to give the National Hurricane Center in Miami enough advance notice before the storm was likely to hit that local authorities were able to evacuate roughly half a million people, with the death toll under 50.

  The Metros, aerographers, do their best to steer us away from the “hard spots” in the storms’ wall clouds, but even their expertise has its limits, particularly when you factor in our operating altitude of a thousand feet during daytime penetrations. We go in low to let the Metros estimate the wind speed from looking at the sea state through the domed window that was designed to let them look almost straight down. Damn good thing we have a nice, sensitive radar altimeter back aft, so the Metro or his assistant can call the height above the water in increments of 50 feet. We also use it as a navigation aid, to compute the distance we’ve been displaced to the right or left of our heading. Of course, using it requires that you stay on a heading for at least 15 minutes, which is not going to happen when you’re flying storm recon. It can be a big help, though, when the mission is point-to-point, you’re between cloud layers or in the soup, and your LORAN, for one reason or another, ain’t available. Am I boring you? Probably, but when you’re over blue water and you’ve got two to three dozen people depending on you to get them where they’re going in one piece, it’s not boring at all. Just don’t get me started on the Kollsman Periscopic Sextant!

  All this navigation talk might get you thinking that I haven’t gotten any seat time in this big-ass bird, but that’s not the case. Even though I now occupy the crew slot of First Navigator, it’s on another crew, that of our XO, Commander Harv Lynchberg. Rumor has it that in anticipating his accession to the CO slot, he’s doing his best to hand-pick a crew that he can count on staying with him for the rest of his two-year tour of duty. Not long after we got back from Recife, the Ops office told me that I’d be moving to Crew Two.

  I got the formal notice from Lynchberg himself; he’d sent for me, he said, smiling hugely, to “advise me of my extraordinary good fortune” in being transferred to his crew.

  He and the Old Man are about as different as two people can be, Lynchberg large, bluff and demonstrative, Watson trim, self-contained and taciturn. Anyway, I guess the XO liked what he saw when he looked through my jacket to see what kind of student I’d been in the Training Unit. “Until we get ourselves a non-pilot navigator,” he said, “you’ll get a regular turn in the cockpit, and the rest of the pilots, including me, will take a turn on the Nav table. The training flights that you kept badgering Ops about scheduling have proven to be a very good thing; I found out how much I’d forgotten after I’d been on one flight. The Navy didn’t send us all to nav school for nothing. I’ve suggested to the Captain that every pilot fly a nav check twice a year, just as you’ve recommended. You’re doing a fine job, Jack; I’m looking forward to flying with you.”

  So it appears that, at least pro tem, I’m in the catbird’s seat with the soon-to-be Old Man. Not a bad place to be in any kind of military unit, as long as philosophies coincide. So far, so good. Somebody took the trouble to let him know that I’m a New York native, about which he reminds me every so often. For his part, the XO’s as Bronx-Jewish as a water bagel, and I guess you could imagine that he could be a bit sensitive about it. If the right moment ever presents itself, I’m going to ask him if he’s ever seen The Caine Mutiny; for all I know, LT Barney Greenwald, defense counsel and aviator manqué, may be his role model. He was all Navy, and he damn sure put Captain Queeg in perspective.

  All that aside, we junior pilots are scheduled for regular training flights, even during the hurricane season, so I do have the opportunity of wringing Aircraft #2’s butt out on a more-or-less regular basis. And I’ve gotta tell you, Dog, pushing ol’ Howard Hughes’ (somewhat modified) creation through the air with a couple of dozen of your closest friends hanging on for dear life is more fun than I ever thought it’d be, and it’s a kind of satisfaction that my previously-preferred incarnation, the carrier pilot, is never likely to know.

  I do run on; hope things are going to suit you out there in the Land of the Great Nowhere, buddy. Let me know as soon as you’re back in the real world, and we’ll figure out getting together.

  Later

  Jack

  The team had been back at Fort Bragg for less than a week when Captain Davis advised Rick that orders were being cut to assign him to the 24-week Advanced Spanish Language Course at Fort Bragg’s Special Operations Academic Facility. The Captain then ushered him into Major Cross’s office for his official farewell. “You and Montgomery did the team proud, Rick,” he said. “Your Bronze Stars with V are the first to be awarded for service in Laos. They’re the fourth highest decoration for valor that this country can bestow. Besides that, and equally important in the eyes of most around here, you’re also eligible to wear the Combat Infantryman Badge. On top of all that, you scored high on the Defense Language Aptitude Battery, and 7th Group’s going to need all the Spanish-language experts it can come up with in the next few years. For the foreseeable future, the Group’s activities will be focused on Latin America.” Standing and extending his hand, Cross said, “Enjoy your rest, Lieutenant; we’re looking forward to having you back as el hablador mejor de la lengua Español,” he said with a grin.

  Rick sat alone in the sparsely-populated BOQ bar, the lunch crowd, such as it was on a weekday, having cleared out. He’d taken a table, just in case the bartender was the talkative type. I’m going to sit here anonymously, he thought, and see if I can slow the world down just a hair. If it takes a jug of vodka to do it, all I have to do is walk, or crawl, to my little home-away-from-home, room 317. I oughta be hellaciously fine company when the troops start rolling in here around 1600. I, Rick Terrell, sometime Colts reserve flanker, now first-team hero with a medal to prove it. Never to be in The Bisque Gazette, spruced up in Class A’s, all decorations correctly mounted, sitting, standing, together, separately, the Gold Dust twins, straight from a strange little non-war in a nowhere little place called Bogeyland, since Montgomery and I and the rest of us were never there in the first place.

  What concerns me more than anything right now is how much I love it. Military people are the sole members of society who get to wear their balls on their chests, and the bigger the better. Must be why you never see a General with less than six rows of ribbons, even though half of them are probably for things like “stayed within budget for this or that project,” or “performed superior maitre’d liaison during his tour as military attache.” And even though I know that, it doesn’t bother me at all, because as a grunt, you come very quickly to the conclusion that the better your bosses play politics, the more, and better, weapons will find their way into your hands. And that is where, as the TV commercial has it, the rubber meets the road.

  Hell, I even understand the need for my “restful” 24 weeks aprendiendo la idioma de espanol. If the 7th Group’s going to concentrate on Latin America, then, shit, I’ll pay my dues. It’s gotta put me in line to be Exec on an “A” team, and that’s exactly where I want to be. But I didn’t get in this game to pamper diplomats or to be a language instructor. That fucking Kennedy pulls the air cover off of the Cuban invasion, makes
us look like a bunch of pussies trying to deal with some goddam banana republic in our own backyard. That shit’s gotta stop, and we sure as hell can’t stop it without being able to talk to, and understand, the Cubans or other Latin Americans who’ll fight for their freedom.

  Sometimes I can’t believe where I am today, compared to where I was when I made the “deal” with Master Sergeant Gordon to play ball for a couple of years for some stateside post around Baltimore. I truly didn’t know my ass from third base about what was going on around me, but somewhere along the line I started getting the message about what these commie bastards would like to make of the free world. Maybe Gordon actually had a pretty good idea of what I’d do, once the Army took hold inside me. Maybe he knew that I’d probably make Honor Man of my recruit platoon, and then there’d be no stopping me. Am I that big of a goddam ham, that starved for approval, that all the Army had to do was to keep putting a challenge in front of me and that, one way or another, I’d end up doing some goddam fool thing in the asshole of nowhere and getting decorated for it? Yes, goddammit, to all of the above. In Laos, I was a shooter for my country; next time, there’s a good chance that I’ll be a killer for my country. There’s some hate down deep in my system that I’ve gotta burn out (get that goddam Principal Martin, Coach Whitehead, chicken-shit Preston Rogers and that lying, nigger-loving bitch out of my mind!), and maybe that’ll be what it takes to do it. Hell, I’m startin’ to feel better already...

  “Flight, CICO.” Chief Warrant Officer Rusty Parker’s grumpy Alabama baritone reverberated through the WC-121N’s twenty-odd headsets. “CICO,” pronounced “see-ko,” identified him as the duty Combat Information Center Officer.

  “CICO, Flight,” acknowledged Lt. Commander Ray Browning in his own version of Dixiespeak.

  “Sir, we’re now paintin’ four- repeat, four- surface contacts, relative bearing 320 to 055, range 155 to 180 miles. Looks like they’re all dead in the water.”