Chain of Command

11

I don't think I've ever been as happy to see anyone as I was to see Admiral Magruder. After days and days in the jungle, at first I figured I was starting to hallucinate. You know, like seeing mirages? But I wouldn't have thought that Admiral Magruder's face would have been that high on my list of hallucinations.

By the time I first heard his voice, I was getting seriously worried about Gator. We'd been making progress slowly, but in the last couple of hours he'd started to look like real shit. His face was an odd, green, pasty color and he'd stopped talking. He groaned occasionally, and made it worse by trying not to. I could tell he was hurting, bad, and we needed to do something right damn quick.

All I knew was we were heading south, toward the part of Vietnam that was supposed to be friendly. How much that counted for, I didn't know. Not given the last air strike on Jefferson. Still, it was better than heading for the ocean and trying to swim home.

By the time I decided that Admiral Magruder's voice wasn't some fever dream or nightmare, the possibility that we might not make it was starting to dawn on me. It's not something I'd ever admit willingly, but it was there. But how could I give up with Gator depending on me? I couldn't. So it was one foot in front of the other, stumble, fall, get up, and move on. If we were gonna die, we were gonna do it on our feet.

If it had just been me, I would have stood up as soon as I heard the admiral's voice. But with Gator barely conscious, depending on me to keep him alive, I wasn't going to take the chance.

It was the gunfire that finally convinced me. Not that I needed much more. There is something about Admiral Magruder that is rock solid. It goes through and through to his very core. He can be a nasty bastard if you cross him ― just ask the Chinese, or the Ukrainians, or any one of a number of assholes around the world that he's put down recently ― but if you're one of his, you know he'll come after you.

As the admiral walked toward me, silent shapes rose out of the bushes around me. Strangers, not Vietnamese ― Russians or Asians of some sort, judging by their faces. But their appearance didn't worry me half as much as the knives I saw in their hands.

Before I knew it, Gator and I were hustled into a large diesel truck and headed back out toward civilization. The admiral told us to go, said he had something else to take care of. I didn't try to pump him ― by then, I was too worried about Gator to do anything else but be thankful that we were alive.

When they finally drove back into camp, Admiral Magruder's face was as scary as I have ever seen it. Something had pissed him off and bad. All I knew was I wouldn't be on the receiving end of whatever he had planned.

He was traveling with the Russian-looking guy, the one I'd seen on Jefferson last time we were in the Med. Not Russian ― Ukrainian, I remembered. The details came flooding back in. Hadn't he been the asshole who'd planted the bomb next to Tombstone's cabin? And if so, what was the admiral doing cozied up to him?

And just what were the two of them doing in Vietnam? I knew why the admiral was here. That story had made the mess decks intelligence circuit two seconds after he'd arrived on board. It was a hell of a thing, going after your dad in the jungle, and more than one of us admired him more than we could ever say.

Still, this combination seemed pretty strange. Was there any possibility-?

No. I swore at myself for even thinking it. But stories of the Walker spy scandal kept coming back to haunt me. Now there was a man that the Navy had trusted, had trusted completely. He had access to the most classified material around. He'd had security checks, polygraphs, and every other security measure that the armed forces could dream up to safeguard their classified material.

Yet he'd been a spy. A damned good one, from what I could hear.

Details of other cases nagged me too. The CIA guy that got caught, Longtree the Marine. What about them? Was there any possibility, however slight, that Admiral Magruder could be involved in something like that? Even unwittingly ― hell, it would have to be unwittingly.

But what could possibly have pushed him to those limits? There was only one thing that I knew of ― if the bad guys got a hold of Tomboy. Even then, I wasn't certain he would do it.

Could they have Tomboy? It was possible, I guess. We'd all been flying back-to-back missions, the skipper included. She wouldn't have wanted to be left out of that, and if she'd been flying combat missions, there was every chance she'd been shot down. Shot down, captured, and once they realized who she was, turned into the most heinous sort of bargaining chip. Had that happened?

I studied the admiral for a moment, looking at how intense he was. It was possible ― what else could bring that look to his face?

Finally, I arrived at a decision. Gator wasn't any help ― he was still out cold, although he was getting medical attention now.

I would keep an eye on Admiral Magruder, at least for the time being. At least until we got back to the boat and I was certain that there was no funny business going on. I'd probably have a chat with Lab Rat as well, maybe not tell him directly what worried me, but at least let him know what I'd seen and heard.

Tombstone came in to have a look at Gator. He crouched down next to the cot and put one hand on my backseater's good shoulder. "How you doing, Gator?" he asked softly.

Gator moaned, and his eyelids flickered. "Admiral?" The voice was a weak, hoarse whisper. "I feel like shit, if you want to know the truth."

Tombstone smiled, something I hadn't seen him do very often. "I bet you do. We're headed back to the ship in a couple hours, Gator. You hang on ― you're all right now, and you're gonna be fine."

He patted my backseater's shoulder again, then glanced over at me. "Tell me what happened."

I ran back through the parts I could remember, the last battle with the MiG and Gator command-ejecting us. Then General Hue, the guy I thought of as Fred, and the surprisingly easy time we had of it at first. And the dirt cave ― what it was like in there, the bombing, and the providential crack in the dirt ceiling that had finally led to freedom.

I glossed over the time in the jungle, not remembering a lot of it. It didn't make any difference anyway ― what mattered was that we were here now. I concluded with "So we're headed back to the boat, Admiral?"

He nodded. His expression had gotten markedly somber when I talked about the cave-ins and the cave, and now he looked angry. "You bet your ass we are," he said softly. "I've got some things to check out." He glanced around, making certain there was no one else in the room with us. I edged a bit closer to him.

"Listen, Bird Dog, pay attention. This is important. On the off chance that one of us doesn't make it out, you've got to get word back to Admiral Wayne. Or to Lab Rat, or to any other senior official you can find. It's important ― so important, that if it comes down to sticking with me and Gator or getting off on your own and getting the information out, you've got to go. It's more important than either of our lives. You understand that?"

I started to protest, and Tombstone grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me. "No arguments here, mister. There's more to fighting wars than killing MiGs. If this doesn't get back to the right people, more people are going to die than you ever thought possible in one war."

"What's this about, sir?" I asked. I'd go along with it for now, make my own decision when I heard what the admiral had to say.

So he told me. All of it. Everything from finding his father's Horace Greeley inscription scratched on a prison camp wall to the dosimeter he'd seen pinned to the uniform of the Chinese soldier in the last camp. When he finished, I didn't know what to say.

"Will you promise me, Bird Dog?" he asked. "Swear that you'll do everything you can to get this stuff outta here. Swear it!"

"I swear, Admiral." A heavy, dark feeling settled over my gut. The idea of abandoning Gator anywhere, even in the care of the admiral, was so utterly repulsive that I could barely stand to think about it. We'd been through so much together, almost died together too many times. He counted on me just like I counted on him ― it was something that went beyond mere trust. But this was important ― too important. The admiral was right.

If he was telling the truth, one part of my mind said nastily. He could also be part of it, asshole. He's trying to mislead you, use you. There's something going on here that you don't understand.

I ignored the voice. If you couldn't trust your admiral and your backseater, who could you trust then? And without that, then life wasn't worth a whole lot.

Tombstone seemed satisfied by what he saw in my face, so he nodded and looked relieved. "I know I can count on you. Now, let's see how good these people are at keeping their word." He stood, brushed off his jungle garb, and left.

I took his place beside Gator, watching carefully to see how he was doing. His fever seemed to be abating some, and his breathing was slow and steady. The knee was an ugly, swollen mass of purple and red, probably dislocated or permanently injured. Could he make it back to flight status?

I wasn't sure, but his knee looked bad. I'd seen people permanently grounded for less.

The arm was a problem too, although probably it could be fixed easier than the knee. That is, if they got ahead of the angry red infection I saw streaking in his skin now.

All in all, Gator wasn't out of the woods yet. Or the jungle.

Whatever else you can say for them, the Ukrainians had some decent communications gear. Tombstone later told me that they had a list posted on one wall in the radio shack of the clear circuits ― the ones without crypto gear on them ― that Jefferson used. It was a matter of just a few minutes to go out over military air distress frequencies to them, coordinate a change of frequencies, and then get Admiral Wayne on the other end.

Jefferson's good, as good as they come. An hour and a half later, a CH-46 escorted by two F-14s was overhead, looking anxiously down at the landing zone and checking for wind and rotor clearance. There wasn't much space to spare, but the pilot made it. I know if I'd been in his shoes, nothing in the world would have kept me from getting on the ground.

The admiral helped me carry Gator out to the helo. The Ukrainians had him on a stretcher, but I wasn't willing to trust them with this part of it ― Gator was my responsibility, mine alone. The admiral might have felt differently, but I knew he'd understand.

That helo took off like it had afterburners, shooting up out of the trees that surrounded the LZ like sheer speed would compensate for any inadvertent contact with a tree branch. I damned near lost my lunch, what little of it I had left. Thirty minutes over the countryside, gazing down at it, I saw a swath of blackened land, evidence of some fire that had raged out of control. The one the admiral had told me about? I glanced over at him, and saw him nodding confirmation. "It was headed west," the admiral said. He pointed out the cave where they'd taken shelter to survive it.

There wasn't much more to say. The admiral had asked me a couple of times about my experiences in the dirt cave where we'd been held, and I found myself markedly disinterested in talking about it. Every time I started to say something, the cloying, dank feeling came back to me. The suffocation, air compressed around us, watching Gator curled in a small pool of water on the deck… maybe someday I'd be able to talk about it ― but not now.

I finally started breathing easy once we were over the beautiful blue waters off the coast of Vietnam. I stared out at the horizon searching for the one sure thing that constituted safety in my little world ― my aircraft carrier.

And there she was finally, stately and serene on the horizon. At first, all I could see was the antennas, that giant air-search-radar mast bristling with electronics. Then as we approached, the rest of her came into view. And finally, gloriously, that beautiful, sacred flight deck that I'd faced so many times myself. After seeing the admiral's face in the jungle, this ranked high on my list of things I'd never forget.

The deck was green, and we were waved in for a quick landing. The pilot took us in hard, slowing at the last moment to feather us back into a gentle landing. Corpsmen were crowding into the helicopter even before the rotors stopped turning, and they immediately took possession of Gator. This time, I gave him up. They could do more for him than I could.

Tombstone turned to me, an exhausted look on his face. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and the lines in his face were deeply etched. He smelled too, though I wasn't about to point that out to him. No doubt my own personal body odor was just as disgusting.

Again, the admiral seemed to be reading my thoughts. He smiled slightly, then said, "You look like shit."

"With all due respect, Admiral, so do you." I tried to muster an answering smile, and found to my surprise that sheer relief let me do it.

He stood, stretching slowly, waving off the corpsmen that were swarming around both of us. "I'm okay," he said. He looked over at me. "How about you?"

"I'm fine," I said, following his lead. The urge to appear just too, too casual for my own good was upon me now. It's something we all do when we've pulled off some incredible hair-raising feat that never should have worked. We cool it, pretend like it was in the bag all the time. "What now, Admiral?" I asked.

He fought off another medic, then shrugged. "We're going to go see Admiral Wayne ― both of us," he said as he caught my startled look. "You got a problem with that?"

"Uh, no, sir," I said, hesitating for a moment. I remembered the last time I'd seen Admiral Wayne ― God, had it even been this decade? I'd been pissed about the flight schedule, stormed into his office, and demanded to get on it.

Admiral Wayne should have shot me at that point, Hell, I would have shot me.

The prospect of seeing him again made my stomach flutter. But after the last week, I could handle a few nerves.

"Let's get going then," the admiral said. "Before these guys and girls decide to nail us with some morphine and kidnap us down to Medical."

"Uh, Admiral?" I asked. "Shouldn't we get cleaned up first? I don't know about you, but I'm pretty dirty." A massive understatement if there ever was one. I was caked in dirt from scalp to toes, even inside my tattered flight suit. Even worse, I felt like things were crawling on me. Tombstone laughed. "Batman's not going to mind," he said. "And the sooner I tell him what's going on, the sooner we can take care of the problem. C'mon ― besides, it'll be good for him. Getting exposed to what a real fighter pilot looks like for a change."