by Tom Wilson
"Good to have you back, Bear," Sam Hall said. "Hear you're teaming up with Benny. Great idea."
"Hi, chickenplucker," said Crawford. Pete had once been chastised by B. J. Parker for indiscriminately calling everyone 'chickenfuckers'. He now substituted 'chickenpluckers,' but everyone knew what he meant.
"Get your ass strapped back into an airplane and get back in the air so you can take care of us guys," said Swede Swendler.
When he'd finished eating, the Bear strolled into the bar. He'd planned this entry at Clark. He looked around for Mike Murphy but he wasn't there. The Bear looked on as the new Weasel crews were being introduced around.
He wondered how many would survive. No Weasel crew had yet finished a hundred missions at Takhli. It was a hazardous occupation, being a Weasel.
A short captain, one of the replacement Wild Weasel pilots, approached him with his hand out.
"Hi. I'm Henry Holden," he said. "I hear you flew with my roommate from the Academy."
"Roommate?"
"Glenn Phillips. We bunked together when we were cows at West Point."
"Yeah," said the Bear. "I flew with him."
"Too bad about him getting hammered. Never was coordinated, though," Holden jabbed a thumb at the room. "My backseater says he knows you."
The Bear bristled at the offhanded remark about Phillips.
"Pudge, you getting settled in?" asked Colonel Mack, who joined them.
"Yes, sir."
"You met the Bear, I see."
"Hell, I heard all about Bear Stewart two months ago when Glenn wrote and told me to get my ass into Weasels."
During the next few minutes the Bear learned that Henry "Pudge" Holden had married Glenn Phillips's younger sister and was thought of as a brother. He also found Holden every bit as pompous and cocksure as Phillips had been. Perhaps, he thought, they put bullshit into the food they served at Hudson High.
"Glad you're going to be joining the 357th," said Colonel Mack, who also appeared to be a friend of Pudge Holden's. "Have you met Benny Lewis yet? He'll be your flight commander."
That was the first time the Bear had been told who the new WW-flight commander would be.
"I knew Benny at Nellis," said Pudge. "He's a damn good man."
"Hello, asshole," said a voice at the Bear's elbow. He turned to see a captain almost as short as Pudge Holden holding a drink in each hand. The newcomer pushed one of the drinks toward the Bear. "You still drink horsepiss scotch?"
The Bear took the drink, then placed him. "Lyle Watson," he said. He was the one who had looked familiar in the dining room.
"You got it. Best fucking EWO in the world."
Watson and he had vied for the pleasures of the nurse at Columbus Air Force Base who had roomed with Marty. Each had vocally disliked the other, and had maneuvered to cut the other out. Although separated, Watson had been considered married and unavailable, and the Bear had commuted from his base in Louisiana, so both had a disadvantage.
"How's Marilee?" the Bear asked.
"Screwed her brains out last time I saw her. She sends her love."
The Bear grinned maliciously. "She get over the infection?"
Watson frowned. "Are you the bastard who gave it to her?"
"Nope. I just shared her misfortune and got the hell away."
Watson shook his head. "I had some fancy explaining to do when I got back together with my wife."
"Same with my girlfriend back at Barksdale."
"I want to call things even between us, Mal." Watson looked around the room. "I figure I'd better make friends now, because I hear you're considered the best Weasel EWO in the wing."
"I'm not holding a grudge. I'll teach you what I can."
Watson laughed. "Teach me? I just don't want you feeling bad when they find out I'm twice as good as you are."
The Bear was amused. "You'll be lucky to get five missions in before you get hammered."
Watson motioned toward the already noisy barroom. "Good guys?"
"The best you'll ever meet."
They sipped their drinks. The Bear knew Lyle Watson drank gin, even remembered his brand, because their common friend Marilee had kept it stocked in her apartment. He noticed that the drink Watson had bought him was Johnny Walker Black. Funny what people remember, he thought.
Mike Murphy came in and beelined for the Bear. "Hey, babes. Good to see you're back from the ravages of the Philippines. Any of the fifty-cent whores take pity and give you a little for five bucks?"
"All the women in the P.I. are now walking around bowlegged."
"Probably because Benny Lewis was there, babes. Fighter pilots do it better and you oughta know that by now."
"I can outjump, outfight, outrun, and outfuck any pilot alive." The Bear grinned. "Meet Lyle Watson. He and Pudge Holden over there are new Weasels in the 357th."
They shook hands.
"You guys know each other from before?" asked Murphy.
"We had a lady friend in common who gave us both a nice gift. Says something about his judgment."
"But not much," Mike said. "Good to see you back, Bear. Nice meeting you, Lyle. I gotta talk to a guy." Murphy left.
Two other captains walked up. Watson introduced them as Bill "Shaky" Anderson and Fred Norman, new Weasels destined for the 354th squadron, where Les Ries reigned as the WW-flight commander. Anderson appeared nervous, although he'd not yet flown a combat mission. Norman, a short and gnomelike EWO, was already intoxicated and obnoxious.
"The Thais call the 354th the pig squadron," explained the Bear. "They see the emblem in front of the squadron building with the mean-looking bulldog and it confuses them. They never saw a bulldog before, so they think it's a pig."
When Mike Murphy returned, the Bear took great pains to almost accurately describe the night in the Philippines when he'd gotten in thirteen good fucks with three beautiful women. Murphy didn't believe him but he liked the story, and that was almost as good to the Bear.
"Babes, that's gonna be a hard one to beat," said Murphy, thinking. Mike had an aw-shucks approach and an air of naiveté that women adored. They wanted to mother and take care of him, and he just smiled helplessly and didn't discourage them.
Andy Schumacher and Cinnamon Bear Stark came over to welcome him back, and he remembered the story he'd heard about them losing oil pressure and bailing out over Laos.
"I landed in a tree," Schumacher griped to Benny, showing his lopsided grin. "Only damned tree for miles around."
The Bear noticed they were nervous and laughed over inconsequential things. He wondered how long they would last now that they'd used up their confidence.
Maj Les Ries and his EWO, Dan Janssen, came over and Les clapped Benny Lewis on the back.
"I hear you're a Weasel again, eh Benny?" Ries said. The two started to talk, and the Bear stepped back, out of the conversation.
Janssen followed him, crowing. "Remember when Les and me rolled in and bombed that site last month, Mal? When our bird was shot up?"
He remembered. Whatever it had been that they'd bombed had been so well camouflaged and the photos so poor that it was hard to tell if Ries had bombed a SAM site, a formation of guns, or even a small village in a thicket of trees.
"Colonel Parker's putting us in for a DFC. We put the hurt on that bastard, Mal."
The Bear thought for a moment. "I hear things went pretty badly with the strike pilots while I was gone."
Janssen looked at him with a trace of belligerence. "Yeah, but Les and I have some new tactics figured out. Colonel Parker named us lead Weasel crew for the wing after you and Glenn got shot down. We're going to hold weekly Wild Weasel meetings and tell the new guys how it's done. You and Benny, seeing you'll be flying together, should be there too."
"Good to hear you're going to share your vast expertise, Dan." The Bear was being sarcastic but Janssen didn't notice.
Lyle Watson approached them, his hand out to Janssen. "Hi, I'm Lyle Watson."
"Dan Janssen. I'm th
e head Weasel EWO," said Janssen proudly.
Head Weasel EWO? Disgusted with the conversation, the Bear went to the jukebox and played a dollar's worth of quarters, repeatedly punching the buttons for "Lara's Theme." He took a seat nearby and enjoyed the plaintive sound. His thoughts turned to Julie, and he felt a wave of nostalgia mixed with bachelor caution.
Lt Col Johnny T. Polaski, their squadron ops officer, came over and sat down, listening to the music with him.
There came a pause between playings.
"Good to have you back, toad."
"Good to be back, sir. Damn good."
13/1340L—Route Pack Six, North Vietnam
Benny and the Bear were aloft together for the first time, flying as number three and leading the second element in the Wild Weasel flight led by Maj Les Ries and Capt Bad Bear Janssen. Benny said he would feel more comfortable if they didn't take the lead position until he'd picked up a few pointers.
Once again the strike force's target was the Yen Vien railroad yard, and Polaski was mission commander. He had admonished the strike pilots that this time they were to get all their bombs on the target.
"This time let's take 'em out so they stay out for a while," he'd said, full of himself for getting to lead a strike mission for the first time.
The Bear felt that Ries had postured and preached a lot at the mission briefing before he got down to business. Finally, he'd told the audience he intended to locate and bomb the SAM site that intelligence had labeled Lead 3, on the northern edge of Hanoi. Johnny T. had been impressed.
"You Weasels keep them busy," Johnny T. said, "and we'll be okay. We've pounded the defenses around the Yen Vien rail yard so much in the past couple weeks that they've got to be hurting."
Later, when they'd broken up for the individual flight briefings, Ries had told the Weasel flight that he just wanted them all to stay out of his way while he located the site and then he'd lead them in on a dive-bomb attack. The Bear had asked Ries if he wanted them to announce SAM launches he detected on his equipment as a backup, since the equipment in the Weasel birds was new to both Bad Bear Janssen and himself.
Janssen had quickly butted in. "You guys just hang on and try to keep up. I'll pick up all the SAM launches and Les will make the calls. There can't be two flight leaders."
The Bear had shut up. Afterward, when they arrived at aircraft number 277 and were beginning their preflight, he'd told Benny that he thought both Polaski's and Ries's planning was faulty.
"We're going to see a lot more defenses than they're planning on," he'd said. "If they've been pounding away at the same target there won't be less defenses, there'll be more. The gomers concentrate SAMs and guns where they think we're going to bomb. And if Ries thinks he can just fly in there and bomb the SAM site without more planning than that, he's dumber'n I thought."
"Maybe so, Bear," Benny had replied, "but I'm here to learn and if Les has something to show me, I'll hang on and watch. This is their show. When we're flight lead, we'll do it our way."
The Bear begrudgingly agreed.
As they approached the Red River, the Bear found himself fumbling with the new ER-142 receiver and wishing he had spent more time studying it. The scopes were smaller, and now he had to worry about two of them rather than one. He almost told Benny they had a tracking gun radar, then realized it was the elevation beam of a Fansong, the SAM radar tracker. He analyzed it closer, watching as it swept around, then told Benny as the Fansong started to track their flight in earnest.
Benny acknowledged.
Ten seconds later, when they were over the dog-pecker, the SAM signal was even stronger. Ries had still not advised the flight.
"Janssen must be having trouble with the new receivers like I am," said the Bear. "You'd better call him about the Fansong. It's got us centered and I think it's about to launch."
Benny disagreed. "He said he didn't want any calls."
The SAM signal jumped in power and doubled its pulse rate. Then the HIGH PRF light came on, confirming the Bear's analysis.
"Benny, he's about to launch missiles."
"You sure?"
"I wouldn't say it if I wasn't sure," he barked, unaccustomed to being questioned.
The APR-26 squealed, the launch light lit, and the ER-142 showed them centered in both beams.
"We've got a valid launch," said the Bear, "and it's at us."
"Tomahawk three has a SAM launch," called Benny, not waiting longer.
There was silence from Tomahawk lead; the Bear glanced over and saw Janssen still bent over his scopes.
Benny rolled the aircraft up on its right wing, then pulled back hard on the stick. "I see a—"
The aircraft bucked gently as the first SAM went off just to their left.
Benny reversed hard to the left, still in the slight dive and gaining energy.
The other two SAMs went wide to their right and above them.
"Shee-it!" cried the Bear.
"You okay?" asked Benny.
"Yeah."
Tomahawk four called. "Thank you, Tomahawk three." It was an implicit criticism of Ries.
Benny turned and started a climb to rejoin Ries and number two, who were at their eleven o'clock high.
"Tomahawk three, this is lead. We didn't have a launch indication on our equipment. Go ahead and call 'em if you see 'em first."
"Roger, lead," answered Benny.
The SAM signal was off them and tracking someone else now. Les Ries wasn't talking to the strike force to keep them advised of the SAM threat, which made the Bear grumble.
They flew on toward Thud Ridge, where they hugged up against the ridge so the SAM radars couldn't see them. They flew down the ridge, then turned and flew north, away from the target, still tight against the mountainside.
"What the fuck are they doing?" asked the Bear.
"What do you mean?"
"Ries briefed we were gonna pop up, find the Lead three site, and try to bomb it."
Benny grunted as they pulled g's.
"We're not doing the strike force any good hiding here next to the ridge," said the Bear.
"Tomahawks, I'm going to turn and fire a Shrike," called Ries.
On the radio they could hear the strike force as the flights approached the target, ten miles south of Tomahawk flight.
"Shee-it," said the Bear again, disgusted.
The flight went into a sudden, soaring right turn. When they stabilized there were no strong radar signals directly in front of them. The Bear wondered what the hell was going on. He saw a flash of fire as a Shrike missile streaked away from one, then the other of Tomahawk lead's pylons.
Five seconds later Johnny T. Polaski, Hatchet lead, said he was climbing to position for his dive-bomb delivery.
"Can you tell if they've got SAM activity?" asked Benny, talking about Polaski's flight.
"Not from this far out," answered the Bear, again cursing Ries for his stupid tactics. "I've got a couple SAM signals, but we're too far away to tell if or where they're shooting."
"Too bad."
"Ries is not doing anything like he said in the flight briefing," the Bear grumbled again.
Benny was silent.
The radio erupted with a melee of warning calls, curses, and the strained sounds of pilots' voices as they pulled g's.
"What the hell?" asked the Bear, who often flew with his radio turned low so he could concentrate on the radar signals.
Benny filled him in. "The mission commander just took a SAM hit. Hatchet two said it went off in his cockpit."
When they landed, still carrying their bombs and missiles, the Bear was so furious he could hardly talk. He remained quiet during most of the flight debriefing, staring coldly at Ries as he explained what his tactic had been.
"I wanted to get a few miles away, turn, and fire a couple Shrikes back into the area just before they went into their dive-bomb. I figured if a SAM radar came on the air the Shrikes would home in on it."
The Bear interjected. "Might'
ve been nice if you'd shared some of that philosophy with the rest of us before we took off."
Ries snapped around and glared hard at him. "You got a complaint?"
The Bear's voice was harsh as he rose to his feet. "I'd bet Colonel Polaski's got one."
Ries exploded. "What the hell do you mean by that?"
The Bear ignored him and walked out of the room.
Later Benny found the Bear reading a letter in the Ponderosa dayroom. "It's from Julie," he said.
"You came close back there," Benny said.
The Bear peered up with a quizzical expression.
"Ries could take an insubordination charge to Colonel Parker."
"Let him. He's an incompetent bastard. Didn't do a fucking thing he briefed. Even worse, he didn't give Polaski any support, just let him get killed."
"He thought he did the right thing. You're arguing he should have used different tactics, but like you told me, there aren't any tactics in the books yet and we're having to try a lot of different things."
The Bear kept his voice quiet. "Tell me, Benny, what do you think about what the Wild Weasels did up there today?"
Benny didn't hesitate. "We were ineffective. You and I will do it different, and I hope a lot better, once I get up to speed."
"God, I hope so. Benny, I counted six different SAM radars and five triple-A radars on the air at one time. That's more than I've ever seen before. We're talking about very directional radar beams, so there's no telling how many were really operating. We keep doing as bad as we did today, we won't be able to fly up there much longer. We gotta start coming up with some good, smart shit."
"You've got to learn to keep some of your criticisms to yourself, Bear, or you're going to end up in deep shit before we have a chance to even think about our own tactics."
The Bear released a pent-up breath of exasperation. Benny was right. Tactics were the prerogative of the flight leader, and it had been thoughtless of him to blame Les Ries for Polaski's death. It was time to shut up and act like a good soldier.
He found Ries in the bar and apologized. Les was noncommittal, nodding abruptly before turning away, as if the Bear's opinion wasn't worth his time. The Bear apologized to Janssen too, and received the same coolness.