Keith Douglass
Chain of Command
1
I didn't intend to kill the first one. Not really.
It was fifteen years ago, almost to the day. The Soviet MiG had a hard-on for me and my ass was nailed into the cockpit of an F-14A Tomcat by a four-point ejection harness. The conclusion was intuitively obvious. One of us was going to make an uncontrolled descent to the ground and impact at an angle completely outside of our aircraft's performance envelope.
The second that I heard the ESM warble telling me the MiG had me illuminated, I knew it wasn't going to be me.
U.S. Navy fighter-pilot training is as realistic as it can get. By the time I met my first real live MiG, I had two peacetime cruises under my belt, as well as Top Gun training. But ten weeks playing laser tag with adversary aircraft isn't the real thing. It isn't until you get cockpit-to-cockpit with someone who wants to kill you that you know what you're made of. Then the training kicks in, the reflexes they build into you. In my case, I killed the MiG before I ever really thought about it.
Something about seeing the coastline of Vietnam now materializing green-brown out of a swath of fog and clouds brought back the memories of my first kill as an F-14 pilot.
The coastline ? or maybe remembering just what else that canopy of green hid underneath it. And how it must have been for my father during his final mission over it. The one he never came back from.
Sunlight glinted off metal to my right. I jerked the Tomcat left by reflex, opening the gap between my Tomcat and my too-eager wingman. What the hell was he doing so close in anyway? You fly as my wingman, I want two hundred feet of vertical and forty-five degrees of separation.
The Vietnamese MiG honor escort knew that. I'd briefed them before we left the ship, actually talked to the pilot in slow, precise English, making sure he understood. He rogered up for the entire formation brief, assured me that his flight of two was experienced in formation flying, and damned near promised me he could build one of those sleek babies from the ground up.
Not that I'd believed him. I've flown with foreign air forces often enough over the past twenty-four years to know that nothing equals U.S. Navy aviation training ? nothing.
But I at least thought I'd made it clear that he was to stay out of my way.
The MiGs just off either wing knew that too. For an escort service, they remained a respectable distance off my wings, within visual but politely outside of my immediate envelope. I appreciated that, although God knows what they thought I'd do if they got too close.
That first kill We were over Norway, on a routine patrol off USS Jefferson. Lieutenant j.g. Dwight 'Snowball' Newcombe was in the backseat, a brand-new fresh-caught Radar Intercept Officer, or RIO. He started off shaky that day, but I never could figure out whether it was because he was flying with his skipper or because he was new. Hell, I hadn't been in command much longer than he'd been on board, and I'd been fast-tracked into the CO slot at that. Knowing that, I was probably just as nervous as he was.
Fortunately, my old buddy Batman was on my wing to keep me straightened out. He's two years behind me and it seems like he's been following me around my entire career. Right now, in his final months as Commander, Carrier Group 14, embarked on Jefferson, he's finishing up his tour just as I did ? with one last foray into harm's way before he's relieved. With the reputation he's making for himself, I wouldn't be surprised if he puts on that third star before I do.
Every man needs somebody like Batman around. He's more outgoing than I am, with a quick, easy laugh and an even faster temper. You always know where you stand with him ? there's never any guessing, although a few tours in D.C. shepherding the Joint Aviation Strike Technology ? JAST ? birds through the acquisition and purchasing cycles seem to have taught him a hell of a poker face. I doubt that it'll ever rival mine, but he's running a close second.
Batman. Rear Admiral (upper half) Edward Everett Wayne, if you want to get official. It was that 'upper half' that was about to really screw him, just as it had me. Batman was getting promoted and the slot of CarGru 14 was a (lower half) billet.
This has always struck me as one of the oddest facets of the Navy advancement system. You start off doing what you love, practicing it, living it every day until you know the envelope of your aircraft and fighter tactics so well that they're more reflex than conscious thought. You get better and better at it until they send you to Top Gun school ? then you really get good. You go back to the squadrons, fly your ass off, and move on up the promotion ladder, getting more and more responsibility until you end up damn near tied to a desk managing other pilots more often than you're airborne with a Tomcat strapped to your ass.
You get good enough and you never get to fly again. A hell of a good deal, right?
The second and third kills are easier. I remember them too. At least I think I do. After that, the details run into a blur of technical details ? altitude, fuel state, the weather that day.
Maybe when you can't remember that first kill anymore, it's time to retire from the military. In the last two years, I'd had plenty of job offers from the Beltway Bandits that have the Pentagon surrounded. I knew enough people, still drew enough water with them to be a hell of a defense contractor. But I wasn't ready to retire, not just yet. There was something I still had left to do in the Navy ? and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what it was.
Tomboy was the one who finally nailed me on it. I had unfinished business with the Russians and with my dad.
A couple of years ago, during one of the innumerable conflicts that seem to spring up around the world, I learned something that shook me to my very core. A Cuban radical told me that there was a very good chance that my father had not died on a bombing run over Vietnam. Before he left, he as much as said that Dad had been captured alive but seriously injured, and taken to Russia for further interrogation.
Russia. The very thought of it made my blood run cold.
I have a few memories of my dad ? nothing very specific, just fragments of memories, more like quick snapshots than specific sequences of events. I remember a pair of cowboy boots, my first attempts to hit a foam softball with a plastic bat, a birthday party here and there. He was gone so much during the early years, deployed with his squadron and doing what he knew was important to do for the country ? fighting the war that no one was very sure we were winning.
For thirty years plus, I've believed he died over that godforsaken land. Even though he was officially listed as MIA ? Missing in Action ? we knew he was gone. When the word finally came changing his status to KIA ? Killed in Action ? it was more a confirmation of something we'd tacitly accepted for years rather than any real change. It wasn't until I married Tomboy that I realized how very much I missed him.
My uncle, Dad's brother, did what he could. A damned fine job, most of the time, filling in for his younger brother as the father figure in his only nephew's life. Mom seemed to appreciate it. I did too, but not to the extent that I do now.
Uncle Thomas thought I was getting suckered on this. He believed with all his heart that his younger brother died over that bridge. He tried to talk me out of this mission, but in the end, when all else had failed, he came through with the goods.
Not that it was that tough. When you're Chief of Naval Operations and a front-line candidate for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you draw a lot of water. If once in a while you use it to do something for your family, how wrong can that be?
It's not like the Jefferson wasn't going to be here anyway. This cruise was billed as part of a new strategy in U.S. international relations, a mission of building strong military forces in new democracies in Asia. Maybe it's a good idea ? maybe not. Too far above my pay grade for me to say. Uncle Thomas says it will just make them
