out after his climb. He would have been stuck at full flaps — rolled over on his back, and come right back down onto the flight deck!”
And, sir,” he added, meeting Bird Dog’s eyes with open challenge on his face, “you probably wouldn’t have gotten out.”
Bird Dog turned pale as the full implication of Shaughnessy’s find sunk in. “I didn’t know,” he said finally.
Gator put one hand on the airman’s shoulder. “That was damned fine work, and one of the sharpest problem catches I’ve ever seen. Thanks. You made a big difference today.”
Shaughnessy nodded, her eyes suddenly bright. “It’s my bird most of the time, sir,” she said to the RIO, carefully avoiding looking at the pilot. “It’s only yours when it’s in the air.”
“True enough. Would you please preflight this turkey again so we can get back onto the cat?” Gator asked.
“Sure thing, sir. It’s your bird in five minutes.” She darted off to get another MAF.
“And you,” Gator said, turning to Bird Dog, “really screwed the pooch this time, asshole. The only way you could make matters worse right now is if you don’t put this outside the cockpit and fly this damned mission as hot and tight as you’ve ever flown one. You owe these people that much.”
Sun flashed off the nose of the Tomcat, leaving red specks flickering in his vision. Bird Dog blinked and waited for his vision to clear before easing the throttle forward.
Flying — any sort of flying — would have also let him escape his thoughts for a while to concentrate on the almost-reflexive actions of bonding with the Tomcat. Sitting on the flight deck, with only Gator and the chatter on the flight deck circuit for company, it was too hard to escape thinking about the Chief’s words.
Arrogant, was he? He tried to summon up the anger he’d felt when the Chief said that, but all he could feel was embarrassment. Shaughnessy had just saved his life by catching the control surface problem. Bird Dog shifted uneasily, telling himself that it was the stiff new lumbar support pad that caused it.
Sure, he’d made some assumptions about his enlisted troops, probably some that weren’t entirely fair. But hadn’t they taught him that in Aviation Officer’s Candidate School? That it was up to him to supply leadership and direction to his troops? That the chiefs would depend on him for guidance, discipline for the men and women in the branch? Hell, everyone swore an oath to obey the orders of the officers appointed over them, didn’t they? Didn’t that include Bird Dog’s orders?
He thought of his drill instructor, the Marine gunny sergeant who’d shepherded him through those endless months of AOCS. Now there was an enlisted man who’d never disobey orders, he was certain. Shouldn’t the Chief be the same way?
Probably not, he admitted. He tried to imagine giving Gunny MacArthur an order to do anything. But that had been different, some part of his mind insisted. Gunny was the one who knew how things worked. It was his job to turn the raw civilians he’d been given into officers.
This was different, though. Bird Dog knew naval aviation now. He’d had classes on leadership, courses on motivating and leading people, in addition to his bachelor’s degree in psychology. This was stuff he understood, and he was right!
Yeah, and I walked right out of ground school and flew a T-34 by myself too. Sure he had — after countless hours of dual-controls flight with an instructor, simulator training, and a careful practical walk-through by more experienced aviators.
Maybe the same principles applied to learning to be a leader. It was possible — just barely possible — that he’d been wrong.
The heat in the Tomcat’s cockpit seemed more bearable than it had a few minutes earlier. When he got back, he’d go have a chat with the chief. It might be time to listen instead of talk for a while.
Bird Dog felt the Tomcat shudder, and steam pressure immediately began building in the steam piston below the decks. The shuttle holding the aircraft on the catapult transmitted the vibrations to his bird. A Yellow Shirt darted forward and out of view under the aircraft. He came out carrying six red streamers — Bird Dog counted them carefully as the ragged ends whipped in the wind. They were the safety pins on his weapons, which were now fully operational.
Another Yellow Shirt held up a white board with grease-penciled numbers on it, giving the Tomcat’s takeoff weight as it was currently configured. Two Phoenixes, two Sparrows, and two Sidewinders hung beneath his wings, a full range of ACM weaponry. Bird Dog begrudged the Phoenixes the space they took up; he would have preferred to have a full load of the more dependable Sidewinders.
Bird Dog nodded vigorously at the Yellow Shirt, confirming the launch weight. The Yellow Shirt held up his thumb, and then snapped his hand up in a salute, the signal that he was transferring complete responsibility for the aircraft to Bird Dog. He returned the salute. Somehow, the simple flight deck ceremony took on more meaning for him now. It was no longer an archaic ritual that impeded his speedy progress off the deck, but an exchange of responsibility as significant as any in the Navy. It was given and received as a sign of respect between men and women who shared similar responsibilities and burdens of serving their country, regardless of their education, background, or pay grade. It made them, for that split moment, anyway, equals.
He dropped his salute and shoved the throttle forward to full military power. A split second later, the Tomcat slammed him in the back.
Airborne!
CHAPTER 25
As the coastline of Vietnam slipped by below him, Bien made the call to the rest of the aircraft. “Feet wet,” he said, referring to the fact that he was over water rather than land. Not that it would matter. There were no SAR forces standing by.
He then reached down and flipped the protective plastic cover off of the IFF gear. He looked down long enough to check the position of the dials that set his modes and codes, the unique set of IFF symbols that would identify his aircraft to any unit with the appropriate detection gear. He twisted the dial until the numbers his Vietnamese superiors had given him were displayed.
In the ten miles of airspace around him, every Vietnamese pilot was doing exactly the same things.
“About time,” Jefferson’s TAO said, as a massive gaggle of hostile air contact symbols popped onto the big screen display. “I was starting to think they changed their minds.” The weak joke brought a spatter of laughter from the crews manning the consoles, the only indication that tensions were at a peak.
“Sir! Breaking the IFF codes for the Vietnamese forces!” the OS said.
“Thank God,” the TAO said quietly. “It looks like this crazy plan just might work.”
Exactly one minute after he’d changed the IFF codes, Bien shoved his throttle forward, accelerating quickly to 580 knots. At that speed, his jet gulped down fuel at a prohibitive rate. Fortunately, he thought as he observed the fuel gauge quiver, it wouldn’t be for long. He glanced behind him, watching the orderly Vietnamese formation straggle out into a ragged line of aircraft and then coalesce back into a fighting unit that followed him. He banked hard to the south and watched the others follow. Only twenty seconds had elapsed since his speed increase. His radio crackled with orders and demands for information. All the questions were in Chinese.
And that is exactly the wrong language for answers, Bien thought grimly.
“There they go,” Tombstone said. “Those birds breaking off and heading south are Vietnamese.”
