For the first time in our relationship, Lab Rat cut me off.
'You sent him in to do a job, Admiral. He let you come along for part of the ride, but only as long as it didn't interfere with his capabilities. Do you really want to see what just happened? Do you want to know and be forced into some action? Or will you settle for having things just the way they would have been before this newest toy?'
'Damn it, I'm responsible!' I stood and started pacing again, angry at more than just Brandon Sykes.
'Of course you are,' Lab Rat said. 'But do you really want to know what just happened?'
I considered the matter for a moment, cooling off as I did so. The truth ? no, I didn't want to know. No more than I wanted a bird's-eye view of the men and women who died following our bombing run, the tiny sparkles of flame that spurted briefly across the J-TARPS screen, then collapsed.
'They're in,' I said, and took my seat again.
Indeed they were. What I at first took for shadows on the ground were two SEALS, now edging closer to the back end of the revetments. This thing was massive, extending back into the jungle and shaded by the trees. Each could have easily held thirty or forty aircraft, though why they would have concentrated all their assets in one area was a mystery to me.
They crept around the side of the revetments still in Brandon's view, barely discernible moving shapes against the night. They moved out of his field of vision, and I heard Brandon's breathing pick up speed. Had the microphone been any more sensitive, I was certain I would have heard his heart pounding away as well.
It was over fast, so fast. Five minutes later, they were creeping back out as carefully as they'd gone in. They joined on Brandon, then the three of them moved out, picking up the other two along the way. They moved more quickly through the underbrush now, it seemed to me.
I had just started to breathe again, when all hell broke loose. A loud, wailing siren went off and the jungle behind the SEALs lit up like daylight. Someone had evidently discovered the two missing guards on patrol, and the response was fast and deadly.
I couldn't see them yet, because Brandon was concentrating on his own path, but I could hear the screams and commands being shouted out behind him. All five men had abandoned their complete stealth mode for a quiet but much speedier exit from the area.
What had taken them an hour to cover quietly, they did in less than ten minutes hauling ass. Before any effective patrols had been sent out after them, they were back at the boats and hauling them out, and were already en route to the ship when the first patrols appeared on the beach. All I could see was the rubberized side of an RHIB ? Brandon was evidently crouched down low in the boat, making as small a target as possible for the spatter of gunfire now splatting in the water around the RHIB. There was a heavy, consistent thud-thud-thud ? the bow of the RHIB slamming down against the waves as it hauled ass back out into deeper water.
'The helo is airborne, sir,' Lab Rat reminded me. 'All he has to do is make it to the five-mile point ? then the helo will rope them up and have them back on deck before the Vietnamese know what happened.'
We'd established five miles as the safe point to keep the helo well out of the range of Stinger missiles as well as any other shoulder-portable weapons the Vietnamese might carry. The helo was going in low to avoid search radars, running a mere ten or fifteen feet over the tops of the waves to the intercept point.
'Shit!' I heard one of the electronic warfare technicians say. 'Not now, damn it!'
Lab Rat turned and surveyed the numbers flickering by on the Signal Intercept equipment. Whatever he saw drained the blood out of his face.
'SAM sites, sir,' he said, his voice low and level. 'They're lighting up all over the coast.'
'Have they got the helo?'
'No indication yet. They're still in search mode, but they're definitely alerted. He's going to have to fly low level all the way back.'
Lab Rat knew what that meant just as well as I did. At night, without much ambient light, low-level-over- water operations were particularly dangerous.
But not as dangerous as being in a RHIB with people shooting at you.
'How much longer?' I asked.
'Another two miles,' Lab Rat answered. 'The helo's got a visual on them ? says they're doing well, evading all the fire. No indication there's been any casualties.'
Those two minutes were some of the longest I've sat through, made particularly painful by the fact there was nothing I could do to help these men. Time has a way of stretching out when you're under fire, when seconds become minutes and minutes eternities. Your nervous system is so flooded with adrenaline that you're thinking faster, moving more quickly than you ever have before in your life. Survival depends on making the right decision, and making it seconds before you have to.
But at least you have some control over your own destiny. If you're just a little bit faster, a little bit smarter, or a little tougher, you know you'll make it out. And if you've got the right stuff to be a fighter pilot, you're all those things and more.
But it's entirely different watching someone else go through the same thing, unable to help or hurt them.
Brandon was talking now, his words faint over the roar of the engine and the slap of the sea against the rubber-bottomed boat. 'Admiral, if you can hear me, I think we may need to move up that schedule a little bit. The devices are in place and set to go off right before the strike is on top, but I think you need to move a little quicker. They're alerted now, sir. They're gonna be searching the revetment, and they might find our little presents. Suggest you command-detonate now, get the strike airborne as fast as you can, and play the cards as they lay. We're almost home ? the helos just blinked their lights at us, and I'm turning toward her.'
I turned to Lab Rat. 'You bet the cards?'
He nodded. 'Do it now.'
One corner of the CVIC's space was occupied by a signal generator linked to a high-frequency transmitter. It had a dedicated antenna on deck right now, hard-wired for just this purpose.
I watched Lab Rat as he set the signal generator to the appropriate sequence, then thumbed the switch on. We heard nothing. At least not inside CVIC.
From Brandon Sykes's microphone, I heard a small, muffled thud. Then a scream of exultation by the SEAL. Sheer joy, followed by a hurried commentary. 'Good work, guys! Hell of a light show out here. Man, did it ever go boom.' The sheer, reverent wonder in his voice at the size of the explosion was gleeful.
Lab Rat handed me a microphone. He pointed at a red light on top of the SEAL receiving gear. It blinked green. 'Want to congratulate them yourself?' Lab Rat asked.
I cleared my throat, then picked up the mike. 'Good work, men. Now get your asses back here.'
With the helo airborne, we were already at flight quarters, but now the hard rolling thunder of a Tomcat engine spooling up rattled the 03 level. Strike was one step ahead of me, as usual.
The first launch took place five minutes later, just as Brandon Sykes's headset camera swung around in a gut-wrenching panorama, briefly inverted, and then steadied on the helicopter above him. He'd just hooked the rope they were dangling to hoist him and the other SEALs up into the helo. The camera steadied on the inside of the helicopter, then turned to the open hatch on the side of it. Brandon was staring down at the water, and I saw a dull flash of light, followed by a geyser of water. He'd just blown the RHIBs.
'Admiral, we're launching the first wave.' Strike's voice over the bitch box was spooled up. 'J-TARPS mounted on one Hornet and two Tomcats, Admiral.'
I motioned to Lab Rat. 'Go ahead and switch the picture ? I think we're done with the SEALS.'
How quickly we'd become accustomed to new technology, capabilities that would have seemed sheer magic just ten years before. The J-TARPS display had awed me just the day before, and now I was casually directing my Intelligence Officer to display an air battle and strike for me real time.
Lab Rat quickly complied. 'They've got MiGs in the air,' he warned as he glanced at another piece of gear. 'Launch indications now.'
'It figures.' The catapult was thumping steadily now, shooting off another one of my aircraft every twenty- two seconds. Twelve aircraft airborne so far, one of which had to be a tanker. We'd agreed that the SEAL helicopter would serve temporary duty as SAR bird during launch while we shot everything we had off the deck. After the bomb-laden fighters were airborne, we'd launch another SAR helo and bring the SEALs back on deck.
The first J-TARPS was mounted under Hornet 301. 'Who's flying?' I asked.
