by Robert Gandt
For years after Desert Storm there were rumors. There were always rumors after POWs were repatriated. Many Vietnam veterans clung to the belief that POWs were still being held in Hanoi thirty years after the war ended.
Maxwell didn’t believe the rumors. It had to be a cruel hoax. But what if it wasn’t?
“Who was it that called?” he asked.
“Nobody that I know. At least, I didn’t recognize his voice.”
“Did he say why he was telling you this?”
“He thought I deserved to know.”
“What does your husband think about it?”
“Nothing. I haven’t told him.” At this, she began to cry softly.
Maxwell waited for her to compose herself. No way, he told himself. It has to be bogus. No way could Raz have survived the fireball.
“Is it possible?” asked Maria. “Could he be alive?”
Maxwell thought for a second, then told her the truth. “I don’t know.”
“What should I do? What do I tell the children?”
Maxwell could hear the pain in her voice. She was young when Raz was shot down, still in her twenties. Too young to be a widow. She needed help raising her children. Maria was a woman who needed a man in her life.
“You don’t have to tell them anything, Maria. These things happen. Some crank wants to harass you. Unlist your number and try to get an ID on each caller.”
“What about Frank?”
Maxwell had met her new husband only once, several years ago. According to Gracie Allen, Frank Gallagher was a decent guy with a solid reputation and a thriving business in Virginia Beach. He was good to Maria and the kids. They seemed to be a happy family.
“Tell him the truth. That the CIA did a year-long investigation into Raz’s case and determined that he was killed in action.”
“Would the CIA lie to us about Raz?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. The same thought had occurred to him. Not unless they had a good reason. He couldn’t think of a good reason, so he said, “I don’t think so.”
He could see Maria chewing on her thumbnail, still uncertain. “You were his best friend in the squadron, Brick. Would you. . . please look into it. For my sake?”
This was the part of video conferencing that was most unsatisfactory. He wanted to squeeze Maria’s hand, give her reassurance. He couldn’t because she was six thousand miles away. “I’ll do everything I can, Maria.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
The screen went blank.
For several minutes Maxwell sat there alone staring at the empty monitor. It still glowed with a gray background, but the camera on the other end had been turned off.
He thought about Maria’s husband. Frank Gallagher had fallen in love with a woman who thought she was a widow. Now someone was telling her otherwise. And if it turned out that she really wasn’t a widow, that the ghost of her husband came back in the flesh, then how was he supposed to handle it?
That was Gallagher’s problem, but it was one that Maxwell understood perfectly. It was a problem that they had in common. They both loved women whose husbands had vanished somewhere in the barren maw of Iraq. Gallagher loved Maria Rasmussen, who was married to a ghost named Raz. And Maxwell loved Claire Phillips, who was married to someone named Chris Tyrwhitt, who had also gone to Iraq and become a ghost.
Maxwell rose from the video console, turned off the master switch like Chief Lester had showed him, and left the conference room. Walking through the hangar deck, he could see through the open elevator bay. He stopped to watch the brown shoreline of Bahrain glide past, framed like a picture in the great steel frame of the elevator bay.
The Reagan was making a port call. When the anchor was dropped and the watch list and admin business sorted out, Maxwell would turn the squadron over to his XO, Bullet Alexander, and go ashore.
Claire Phillips was waiting for him in Bahrain—or so he hoped. She was supposed to be on assignment from her network, covering the escalating tension in the Persian Gulf. That was the good news.
The bad news was that she was no longer a widow. Her husband was no longer a dead man in Iraq. He was back, very much alive, and Maxwell couldn’t stop wishing that he was still dead.
< >
Bullet Alexander took a seat facing the board members.
The day before, the team from the Reagan’s air wing had arrived at Al Jaber air base to sift through the remains of Bullet’s Super Hornet. To no one’s surprise, they found no telltale clues—no obvious combat damage or evidence of a mechanical failure—in the twisted and incinerated wreckage.
The AMB—Aircraft Mishap Board—convened in the air wing conference room. Maxwell appointed Cmdr. Gordo Gray, skipper of the Reagan’s F-14 squadron, senior member of the board. He also named Cmdr. Craze Manson, squadron maintenance officer, Lt. Cmdr. Hairball Shepard, the Safety Officer, and the air wing flight surgeon, Lt. Cmdr. Knuckles Ball.
The first witness the board called was the pilot of the crashed jet.
“Step us through the mission, Bullet,” said Gordo Gray. “From briefing until they picked you up off the sand.”
Alexander took a moment, reflecting back on the events of the previous day. So much had happened that it seemed like a week. He started with their briefing back in the ready room on the Reagan, the launch, the rendezvous with the KC-10 tanker, the ingress to the threat zone.
He was describing the first RWR hits from the SAM site when Craze Manson interrupted.
“I’m missing something here,” said Manson. “How did it happen that the squadron CO and the XO were scheduled on the same sortie? Especially a combat sortie? Isn’t that against air wing doctrine?”
Alexander shrugged. “I saw that the squadron was tasked to fly an armed reconnaissance, so I myself put on the schedule.”
“Doesn’t it seem like your place would have been back here running the squadron in his absence?”
“That’s between me and the Skipper. Why don’t you stick to the mishap?”
“Nothing’s off limits in a mishap investigation. I’ll ask any question I think is pertinent.”
Alexander took a deep breath and held back his anger. Manson knew perfectly well why Alexander had flown the mission. Craze was grandstanding for the other board members. He never passed up a chance for an easy shot at Alexander.
“The skipper ran it by CAG, and he said go for it. You got a problem with that, Craze, take it up with CAG.”
“We don’t need any more of that,” said Gray, giving Manson a warning look. “We’re here to determine what happened to Bullet’s jet, not why he was flying it. Bullet, get to the SAM engagement. Describe how you started losing systems.”
“Well, that’s the odd part,” said Alexander. “While we were defending against the SAMs, I tried to transmit—and couldn’t. Both radios had gone tits up.”
“Are you saying the radios went out before the SAM exploded?”
“Yes, sir, at least that’s the way I recall it.”
Gray shuffled through a stack of papers. “Here’s a record of the transmissions from you and your flight recorded by the AWACS,” he said. “According to the tape, you asked your flight lead for the time to go before the HARM he had just fired reached the target. He reported ‘ten seconds.’ You replied, ‘Too long. The first SAM is—’ And then your transmission ended.
Gray looked up from the report. “Isn’t that when the missile exploded behind your jet?”
Bullet tilted back, scratching his memory. He felt the gazes of the men across the table on him. “I know what you’re suggesting, Gordo. Sure, it’s possible, but that’s not the way I remember it. The radios went sour while I was still turning with the SAM.”
“So when did the rest of the failures occur?” asked Hairball Shepard. “The electrical smoke and the fire?”
“After the warhead went off behind me.”
“Did you feel an impact when the missile exploded?”
“No,
I felt and saw the explosion, but I didn’t feel anything hit the jet.”
Craze Manson was leaning forward on his elbows, a knowing smile on his face. “But the shrapnel could have struck something without your feeling it.”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“Just getting the facts. This was your first time in actual combat, was it not?”
“You know the answer.” Asshole.
“In the excitement of coming under fire for the first time, it’s not unusual that you might be confused about the sequence of events.”
Alexander took another deep breath and fought back the urge to choke the living shit out of Craze Manson. “I’ll say it again. I didn’t feel or see any direct result of the missile exploding.”
“That’s not unusual either. Happens to everyone the first time they’re shot at. They don’t know they’re hit until they see a red light telling them they’re on fire.”
Alexander could see where this was going. Craze was leading him. Whatever went wrong with his jet was going to be attributed to the SAM. And for all you know, maybe that’s the way it happened.
The board asked more questions about the Hornet’s electrical problems. They wanted to know why he blew the canopy, why the emergency oxygen bottle failed, why he ejected when he did.
Alexander answered their questions.
“Thanks, Bullet,” said Gordo Gray when they were finished. “This is one of those mishap investigations where most of the evidence comes from the testimony of the people involved and the records of the aircraft. The fact that it happened in combat conditions makes it even cloudier. Sorry if we seemed a little abrasive with you.” He glanced at Manson, then back to Alexander. “Hope you weren’t offended.”
Alexander rose from the table, keeping his gaze on Craze Manson. “Not at all,” he said. “In fact, I expected it.”
< >
Lagash, Southern Iraq
The prisoner awoke. He sat upright, rubbing the grimy film from his eyes. The truck had stopped.
A coarse layer of dust covered everything—the truck, the bench seats, the occupants in the back. There was no breeze. He could taste the dirt in his throat, feel it settling on his skin in a fine sediment. Ancient dirt.
For two days and nights they had driven. The landscape changed from a brown, marked by undulating wadis and mounds of sand to a jagged, boulder-strewn moonscape. Twice the procession stopped at villages that looked like stone age dwellings. They refueled the vehicles, filled the water containers, then headed on into the desert.
Darkness had fallen again. The prisoner guessed by the flatness of the terrain that they had traveled southward. North would have been into high country, the rugged moonscape that joined Iraq to Turkey and Syria and Iran. This had to be the great desert that extended southward through Kuwait, all the way down the Arabian peninsula.
The man who called himself Abu came around to the back of the truck. “You may dismount. We have traveled as far as we will go in the truck.”
The prisoner climbed stiffly down to the ground and gazed around. Once again he had the thought that they were about to execute him. He shook his head. Foolish thought. You’re still delusional. Why would they travel a thousand miles just to shoot him?
The two Land Rovers were stopped behind them. The guerrillas were unloading the vehicles, gathering their equipment into piles. In the darkness the prisoner could see only the silhouettes of low hills, a few ancient huts. Somewhere a dog barked.
“Where are we?” the prisoner asked.
Abu didn’t answer. He had his head cocked, listening to something.
Then the prisoner heard it. Something mechanical in the distance, growing in volume. It sounded vaguely familiar. As he listened, the noise swelled, coming toward them. A beating, whopping sound.
In the next instant he knew. The helicopter burst over the darkened hillside, rotor blades thumping the air like drumbeats. A powerful white searchlight swept the area beneath, then fastened on the men standing beside the truck.
The prisoner froze, certain that a hail of bullets was about to find them. He looked at Abu. He was smiling. “Right on schedule,” Abu said. “Now we take the last leg of our journey.”
Chapter 6 — Working Smarter
USS Ronald Reagan
Persian Gulf
1050, Monday, 15 March
“Another goddamn clinker,” said Boyce, peering down at the flight deck. “One of yours again.”
Maxwell nodded, not bothering to answer. They stood in Pri-Fly—Primary Flight Control—watching the launch of the CAP fighters. On the flight deck down below, a tug was towing a Super Hornet off the number two catapult.
“Haul the broken Hornet to the hangar deck,” bellowed the mini-boss—the assistant Air Boss—over the flight deck loudspeaker. “Move the ready spare to Cat Two.”
They could see the tug hauling the backup bird from the sister squadron, VFA-34, on its way to the catapult. The other three fighters in the CAP were already airborne, heading for the tanker.
It was the second time in three days a VFA-36 jet had missed a launch because of a maintenance discrepancy. The pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Flash Gordon, called in after engine start with an electronic glitch—an intermittent flight control system warning.
“The same thing that happened last time,” said Maxwell. “The avionics crew worked all night on it. Another A799. They couldn’t get the system to fail again.”
An A799 maintenance code was exasperating. It meant a system failed in the air, but worked okay when it was checked on the ground.
“Well, it just did,” grumbled Boyce. “What the hell’s going on with you guys? Your squadron won the Battle E last year, best strike fighter outfit in the fleet. You’re still in the running for it this year—except for one big problem. Your jets are breaking down. The other squadrons are kicking your butt in the operational readiness department.”
“We had some bad breaks, CAG.”
“You had some lucky ones, too. Bullet’s mishap being one of them. No identifiable evidence, so the board wrote it off as a combat loss, which doesn’t count against your operational readiness score.”
Maxwell nodded. He knew what Boyce was saying. The mishap might have been a combat loss. And it might have been something else. The truth disappeared in the smoking hole Bullet’s jet made in the desert at Al Jaber.
Boyce jammed his cigar back into his mouth. “You’re the skipper, Brick. Your squadron’s got a problem. Straighten it out.”
Maxwell knew the protocol. To such an order there was only one response. “Aye, aye, sir.”
< >
“What’s this?” said Craze Manson when he appeared in the doorway. “A lynching party?”
“Just a meeting,” said Maxwell. He and Bullet Alexander were already seated the small conference table in Maxwell’s stateroom. “Come in and take a seat.”
Manson came in, glancing at his watch as he took the remaining empty seat. “Let’s make it quick, if you don’t mind. I’ve got an appointment in a few minutes.”
“It can wait,” said Alexander. “This is squadron business.”
“Shouldn’t all the squadron department heads be present?” said Manson. “So you two can’t gang up on me?”
Maxwell thought again how he wished Manson would get orders to a squadron in another part of the world. Another ship, even. Anywhere except the USS Reagan. There seemed to be a rule that every military unit had to have one bona fide, card-carrying asshole. His squadron had Craze Manson.
It was no secret that Manson had a deep-seated contempt for both Maxwell and Alexander. When Maxwell moved up from executive officer to commanding officer of the Roadrunners, Manson had expected that he would be named as the new executive officer, which would put him in line to succeed Maxwell as skipper.
It didn’t happen. Instead, Maxwell chose a new executive officer from outside the squadron. Cdr. Bullet Alexander, who was just completing his tour with the Blue Angels demonstration team,
was drafted to be the Roadrunners’ new XO—and prospective CO.
Manson hadn’t gotten over it. He carried a massive chip on his shoulder, and he could barely bring himself to be civil to either Maxwell or Alexander.
Maxwell slid a printed handout across the table. “This is the reason for the meeting. That’s the squadron’s readiness status, measured in hours flown versus training events accomplished and maintenance discrepancies carried forward. Notice the bottom line. As you can see, the other two Hornet squadrons on the Reagan are kicking our ass.”
He gave Manson a minute to peruse the report. “You’re the maintenance officer, Craze. Tell me, why aren’t we flying the same number of hours as they are?”
“Very simple,” said Manson, “If we had more flyable jets, we’d fly them. We have a tech order to upgrade all the APG-73 radars, one at a time, and that’s got the avionics shop tied up. Plus we’ve got the periodic corrosion inspections to perform. That takes each jet out of service for ten to fourteen days, and that’s if we don’t find anything wrong. On top of that we’ve got the day to day maintenance, just fixing the birds that our guys break.” He gave Maxwell and Alexander each an indulgent smile. “That’s why we’re not flying the same hours. Any other questions?” He glanced again at his watch.
“Maybe you’re not getting enough out of your maintenance guys,” said Alexander.
“I’ve already switched the department from three eight-hours shifts to two twelve hour shifts. They’re working round the clock. Maybe you’d like to tell me what else we could do?”
“The other squadrons have the same problems, and somehow they’re getting more service out of their jets.”
“We’re not getting the same parts support they are,” said Manson. “We’re forced to cannibalize our jets, removing parts from one to put on another. That triples the maintenance time required. Instead of just removing one part and replacing it with one from the supply chain, we have to pull the part off a good jet. The whole process just feeds on itself.”