Chain of Command

3

God save me from good sticks. Whether they're male or female, they're never modest. They stalk the passageways of the carriers like grounded gods, arrogant and barely touching the deck. They can do no wrong, every trap is a three-wire, and they never, ever screw the pooch. I know. I was one of them.

It can't last forever, of course. Sooner or later, they come down hard. Sometimes they're the only ones who know it, but you can see it in their faces. It starts with a quiet, reflective couple of days, an unusual look of thoughtfulness on the pilot's face. That fades ― faster than you think. What you get at the end of it is a pilot who thinks, one who lets his mind rule his reflexes instead of the other way, one who knows he or she is mortal. In short, you get a better pilot. One who's likely to come back.

Of the five officers standing in front of me, only two had been through that process. One was Gator, Bird Dog's RIO. The other was CAG. Bird Dog, Skeeter, and Lieutenant Laurel, Skeeter's backseater, were still too young to ever admit that they were mortal. God knows, Bird Dog was long overdue. I'd known it was coming.

But God, not like this. Never like this.

"Sit down." I gestured at the ring of chairs arrayed in front of my seat. "Tell me about it."

A knock on the door interrupted Bird Dog before he could even start. Lab Rat opened the door and stuck his head in. "May I sit in, Admiral?"

I nodded, a little bit annoyed that he'd caught me in a slipup. Or was it? Of course I'd wanted to hear the details first myself ― deserved it, in fact. I was in command of this Carrier Battle Group, and everything that happened and every man and woman under my command were my direct and personal responsibility.

But Lab Rat, my senior Intelligence Officer, was right too. The first retelling of an incident is often the most accurate one, filled with the details that immediately stand out in each pilot's mind. Intelligence Officers such as Commander "Lab Rat" Busby thrived on that stuff, raw, hard data straight from the pilot's lips.

I pointed at the couch. Lab Rat slid into his accustomed space and perched on the worn cushions, his pale blue eyes alive and expectant behind thick spectacles.

"You were saying," I said to Bird Dog, although he hadn't been.

Bird Dog looked pale and shaken, as rocky as I'd ever seen him. He looked like he'd been about to keel over. A good thing ― if he hadn't, he'd be popped tall at attention in front of my desk instead of sitting down. I had to know what had hit him and hit him hard.

"We were just flying escort on the Snoopy," he started, a dazed, almost surreal quality in his voice. "Just a normal flight. Catch up on some formation, that's all."

Bird Dog led me back through the sequence of actions that had led to the downing of Snoopy 631, only occasionally stopping to backtrack or fill in some critical detail. About mid-debrief, his voice took on an eerie singsong sort of tone. I shot a glance at Gator, noticed his eyes were fixed on his pilot, a worried expression on his face.

Skeeter and his RIO were another story altogether. They didn't look happy, no, not that. More like relieved. And worried ― deeply worried. Laurel, in particular, a young woman on her first cruise with the squadron, looked shaken.

"So I circled, looking for chutes," Bird Dog finished. "There were none in the air, so I checked at sea level. None there. No chutes, no bodies, no rafts. Nothing." I was almost relieved when his eerie voice stopped.

"Why did you choose to use the Sidewinders versus the Sparrows?" CAG asked, after shooting a glance at me. "What about the range?"

"I thought I could make it," Bird Dog said, his voice almost inaudible. "I thought I could-"

"Admiral, if I may," Gator broke in, attempting a save.

I shook him off. As admirable as RIO loyalty is, this one was all Bird Dog's.

"You thought you could make it," I repeated.

"My Sidewinders were the weapon of choice," Skeeter said, the first words out of the young aviator. Even as junior as he was, he should have known better than to break into an admiral's inquisition. His gaze met mine, confident and aggressive. "The Sidewinders were working, Admiral. Bird Dog had a bad load-out, that's all."

"That's all?" I came up out of my chair like a snake had bit me on the ass and leaned across the heavy desk to stare at him. I planted both hands palms down on it, and raised my voice. "That's all?"

A deadly, cold chill invaded the room. Skeeter and Laurel were slowly tumbling to what Bird Dog already knew ― that over-confidence had killed four aviators in that E-2.

It wasn't my intent to be unkind, although kindness sometimes has little bearing on the decisions I'm forced to make. It was a combination of factors sheer anger and sorrow over losing the four aviators, maybe the possibility that I could bring home the seriousness of this to the two junior ones in front of me. Maybe I could catch them before they made their mistakes, before they repeated Bird Dog's. But not unless they knew just how deadly, deadly serious it was.

"I mean ― uh-" Skeeter fell silent, following a quick jab in his ribs by his backseater.

Bird Dog looked oddly crumpled, a still, motionless figure, in his seat. He was frozen in time, a time maybe only thirty minutes earlier when it had all happened. It was replaying in front of his eyes, in an endless loop, his imagination adding details that had never really happened. Things like the sound of the E-2 pilot's voice just before the missile hit, how clear and obvious it had been that he should have tried the Sparrow first, the fireball growing in size and intensity every time he thought about it.

I motioned to CAG, who reached out and shook him by the shoulder. "Snap out of it, Bird Dog."

Bird Dog looked startled, as though we'd awakened him from a sleepwalking episode. He glanced around the room, his eyes finally settling on the one most familiar figure in the room. "I blew it, Gator," he said softly, ignoring the rest of us. "That bird ― they were counting on me. And I blew it."

"You got a bad missile," Gator said gently. It wasn't a denial, it was just another reason.

But bad missiles happen, even during peacetime missions. Or what should have been a peacetime mission. I looked over at Lab Rat, sitting on the couch. He was practically quivering in eagerness to ask a few questions. I started to shake my head, then thought better of it.

If ever a man has been accurately pegged by his squadron mates, it was Lab Rat Busby. He was a small man, pale blond hair cropped close to his head, with brilliant blue eyes that made him look almost albino. He was tougher than he looked ― I'd seen him down in the gym bench-pressing a quite respectable stack of weights, and I suspect he'd always really wanted to be a Marine.

Or an aviator. But he must have known from the first that his vision would disqualify him, even for the backseat position. He'd gotten as close to it as he could, though, as an Air Intelligence Officer. He worked with what he couldn't have every day, and apparently took a great deal of pride in his aircrews being the best briefed on any ship ― and the best debriefed.

I nodded at Lab Rat. He fairly sprang off the couch in his eagerness to ask his questions.

"This SAM site," he began, picking his words carefully. "You say it came up out of nowhere?"

It was Gator that answered, stepping forward as the man with more knowledge than the pilot. After all, it was his ESM gear that would have given the first warbling indications of the SAM site if they'd held it. "Snoopy got it first, and I picked it up a little later. No doubt, it was an SA-6 site. We were right at the edge of the envelope, proceeding inbound. We talked about it, and finally decided it was probably just a mission maintenance fire-up of the gear." A faintly challenging look came over his face. "Naturally that was our conclusion. Since there was no intelligence briefing on any real threats in the area."

Lab Rat nodded impatiently, as though he'd already considered how and when the intelligence briefing he'd provided to the aircrews might have been in error. If there had been a mistake made by his people, I had no doubt that heads would roll.

"But there was nothing else unusual about it?" he pressed, clearly after something, and just as clearly not wanting to put words in their mouths. "The parameters all fit?"

"From what I saw, they did," Gator answered slowly. The grief swept over him now, hard and deep. "But the guys who got the first good look were-"

Lab Rat looked slightly chagrined, and an oddly human and vulnerable expression took its place on his face. "I'm just asking about what you saw," he said. "I didn't mean to imply-" Gator waved him off, now recovered. "The pulse repetition rate and frequency all matched. It looked to me like a normal SA-6 site."

"Did you see anything else unusual?" Lab Rat asked again. "Anything that might not have shown up in the link." He was referring to the tactical data net that bound the ships I to the carrier, providing a comprehensive display of every single platform's radar and ESM contacts. Gator shook his head. "Nothing." Lab Rat sighed, evidently disappointed at the response.

"Were you looking for something in particular?" CAG asked. Now there was an uneasy expression on his face. I knew what was going through his mind. It was the essential down-side of intelligence, one that all aviators faced from time to time. Very excellent info can be quite highly classified, far beyond the level of information that would be given to a pilot flying missions over a foreign country. It's not that the intelligence is inaccurate ― on the contrary, it is composed of the most precise on-scene reports and reports from national assets ― read satellites for that ― that the United States possesses. The information is detailed, dependable, and highly accurate.

And too classified to use. It was much like the problem with the British during World War II. Even though they'd broken the Enigma code and were reading German General Staff traffic, they were faced with the Devil's own choice. If they acted on the information, evacuating Coventry and other German bombing targets, the Germans would know that their communications were no longer secure. Since Britain wasn't ready to take the war to the Germans, they had to wait until they were to use the information. In other words, to use the information was to reveal its source and to compromise that asset forever.

Had the British evacuated Coventry, the Germans would have known that they were reading German radio traffic. The ciphers would have been changed, perhaps to something that could not have been broken in time for the D-Day assault. As massive as the casualties that the British took were, they would have been even worse had the British not held off on using that information.

Better gear, same problem today.

Then CAG looked at me, questioning. I kept my face impassive. Nothing on the ship was too classified for me to know, nothing. The same could not be said for CAG.

Finally, CAG recognized the problem and let it go. The entire exchange had taken place without words, and well outside the understanding of the aviators still preoccupied with the horror of what had happened.

Maybe not all of them, I thought, studying Gator. There was a guarded look on his face, as though he was pretty sure what was going on but was not about to let on.

A few more quick questions from CAG about flying conditions and decision points. Then I said, "That will be all, gentlemen. Turn over your aircraft and then report to Medical. You," I said, fixing my gaze on Bird Dog, "will go to bed." Bird Dog started to protest, and I cut him off. "You will tell the doctor I said you are to be out cold for twelve hours. After that, you will see him again. Further notice, I'm taking you off the flight schedule."

"Thank you, Admiral," CAG said as he stood up. He recognized the signs of a dismissal.

The other four aviators also stood up, with Bird Dog the last to do so. They followed CAG to the hatch, and at the last minute Bird Dog turned back to me. "I'm sorry, sir." His anguish was as evident in his eyes as it could be.

"So am I, son," I said. "So am I."

After they left, Lab Rat abandoned his precarious perch on the edge of the couch and stood in front of the desk. "Oh, sit down," I said, weary as I sometimes was of the reflexive courtesy of junior officers. "You know I want to talk to you, and you want to tell me something. Let's get it over with."

Lab Rat nodded, and took the chair that Bird Dog had just vacated. "You know what I was after."

I leaned back in my chair and laced my fingers across my stomach. It bulged out uncomfortably, and I concentrated on that sensation. It happens every cruise. I get caught up in the myriad matters that require my attention, from naughty personnel problems on board the ship to the constant pressure from higher up to generate positive publicity for the Navy. Being an admiral is a pain in the ass sometimes.

As a result of this, and my sincere dislike for running on the flight deck, I tended to gain weight during a cruise. Now, four months into this one, I was already feeling the slight tug at my waistband that told me it was time to get serious about my diet again. That, and some running. Maybe I could just do one or the other, and not-

"It's the nukes," Lab Rat said calmly, interrupting my consideration of matters that were under control and interjecting one that was not. "That possible nuke site."

"I know. I was thinking the same thing. But your evidence is still pretty tentative, isn't it?"

Lab Rat nodded. "It's only a possibility at this point, not even a low probability," he admitted. "But the SAM site bothers me. And the shot at the E-2, of course."

"Damn, I hate this business sometimes," I said. I was thinking of the letters that would have to be written, the paperwork filled out. A sudden flash of insight hit me. The formalities that surround death at sea ― maybe there was a point to them. It gave us something to focus on besides the loss of our shipmates, made us feel as if we were doing something as we filled out the innumerable forms, packed out personal gear after checking it for anything that might be embarrassing to the next of kin, and wrote those heart-wrenchingly difficult letters to the families.

"Admiral," Lab Rat said, "I have no explanation ― none ― for that SAM site being there and active. And for it firing on one of our aircraft. There is no reason, to my knowledge, that the Vietnamese would risk an open break with the U.S. like this. None. Unless that Intel spot report is true."

"Jesus!" I slammed my pen down on the desk, and saw it skitter across the surface and roll to the carpet. Lab Rat bent to pick it up. "How many generations have to spend their lives dying in this godforsaken land? How many?"

Lab Rat sat silent. It was one of the things I most appreciated about him, his ability to wait, absorb information and occasional outbreaks of temper without taking it personally. Every admiral needs someone to vent to. Command is a lonely thing. Lab Rat was, in many ways, my safety valve.

"Okay, run me through it again," I said, my rage fading as quickly as it hit me. "Tell me about this alleged nuclear facility."

Lab Rat nodded as though the last sixty seconds had not happened. "I sent out some queries yesterday, but haven't gotten an answer back. At this point, all I know is what I told you last time."

Not enough to go on by itself, but enough to make me extremely uneasy after the attack on the E-2. What Lab Rat had was a set of surveillance photos showing four huge eighteen-wheelers proceeding down a main highway and turning off onto a dirt road in northern Vietnam. The eighteen-wheelers had been preceded and followed by military assault vehicles, and a helicopter had dogged them the entire way. Nasty-looking, that ― but it wasn't all.

Another satellite, one more specialized than mere photo or infrared imagery, had the ability to track sensitive nuclear emissions from cargo. It was the same technology used to insure that garbage trucks didn't dump medical nuclear waste in landfills, only infinitely more sophisticated. I've never followed the technical details ― most of it is just magic to me. But the fellows whose job it was to be certain about these things had no doubts. There was nuclear material of some sort in those eighteen-wheelers, and not all that well shielded at that. They could tell me almost everything about the spectrum it radiated in, including a damned good guess about what might be in the other two vehicles. But there was one thing they couldn't tell me, and this is the always fatal flaw of raw intelligence ― what the Vietnamese intended to do with it.

The SAM site that had taken a shot at the E-2 was only ten miles to the south of the compound where the trucks and their cargo had disappeared into the deep jungle. At that point, not only had national imagery lost sight of them visually, but the radiation had disappeared from their displays as well. From there, things got murky.

One group of theorists said that it could be commercial power-plant fuel that was now safely installed deep inside shielding. Another claimed the radiation could have been caused by large quantities of medical supplies, although they had no explanation for the supplies' presence deep in the jungle. Still another argued that their cutting-edge technology wasn't all that accurate and there could be a programming fault or a data-transmission error that resulted in a spurious image.

It was the last group that worried me most ― and the ones I tended to agree with. Nuclear material of that grade means only one thing to me ― weapons. The location fit, as well as the disappearance off the satellites as it was moved into deep shielded cover and the involvement of the military. And now, the SAM site. This report was either a big mistake or a big problem.

"What if it is?" I asked, knowing that Lab Rat would follow my meaning immediately. He was a professional paranoid like I was. "What do we do?"

It wasn't just a question for him, but a larger question for the entire United States. We'd never really formulated a national strategy for dealing with nuclear materials in rogue hands, not really. Oh, sure, there'd been the carrot and the stick, the promise of economic assistance and trade incentives to entice other nations to comply with the ban on these weapons. The reverse had also been tried, with trade embargoes and sanctions levied against rogue nations that refused to comply with any of the international treaties.

Sometimes it worked. Most times it didn't. Nuclear material lost in the breakup of the Soviet Union was scattered around the globe now, and technology was increasing so fast that the possibility of a high-yield manned portable device was virtually a reality.

"I'm not sure we're prepared to do anything," Lab Rat answered after a moment. "With the budget cuts in the last decade, we're strapped to even maintain a deterrent presence in the major hot spots of the world. We could just go in and bomb it, I suppose. And while, of course, it wouldn't explode in a nuclear reaction, the debris alone would contaminate that land for centuries. Eons, even. You saw how dirty it was."

I nodded. The spectral analysis had shown a number of long-half-life compounds, and the prospects of that much refined atomic material seeping into the groundwater and gradually infiltrating its way into the world's oceans was not a pleasant one. It could very easily be a case of winning the battle but losing the war.

"So we'd have to go in and take it and hold it," I said, thinking aloud. "A long, bloody ground war ― one that we never really managed to win satisfactorily last time."

"There's something else," Lab Rat added. "You know how long it would take us to gear up for such an action. Sure, we might try Special Forces, try to get there quietly and eliminate the problems. Or it could be a surgical strike just like the Israelis are always pulling on their neighbors but then there's the groundwater problem. Whatever we're going to do, it has to be done fast."

"Why?" The shiver of alarm crossed up my spine. "Do you have indications that they're intending to actually use them sometime soon?"

Lab Rat shook his head. "No. Not use them. Sell them."

After Lab Rat dropped that little bomb on me and left, I hung around my office. There was no need for me to do so really. My pile of paperwork had been reduced to a manageable level, and I felt an urgent need to get out on the flight deck, to walk around and feel the fresh ocean air, see my aircraft ― my aircraft ― lined up hard and hostile in lines on the flight deck.

It doesn't take very long to reach anyone on a carrier. After all, they're not going anywhere. But even in this massive floating office building, it can take a while to find someone without using the 1MC. And if there were any news on the survivors from the E-2 ― I knew in my heart there wouldn't be, not after this long ― then I wanted to be right where they could find me. Immediately.

There was something else too, an issue I was trying to avoid thinking about. It was completely out of my cognizance, and I had no power to effect the end result one way or the other. But a wingman never forgets his lead, and I couldn't rub out of my mind the fact that Tombstone was on the ground in Vietnam right now.

I looked up at the clock on the wall ― the minute hand had moved slightly since the last time I'd done it.

Tombstone would be on the ground now, probably still stuck in meetings with the officialdom there. There was no way to reach him, no way sufficiently secure to talk this over with him, to warn him that he might be stepping into the beginnings of an American return to Vietnam. We'd never managed to establish a permanent peace there before, not with a massive military machinery behind it, and I doubted we could do it now.

If ever a man had demons, Tombstone did. When you first meet him, you think there's nothing behind that impassive face but good reflexes and a sharp tactical mind. It takes years of knowing him, mission upon mission in flight, before you know who he really is.

Still waters run deep, they say, and I've never seen it more true than with my buddy Tombstone. Two questions in particular haunted him ― how much effect his uncle had had on his career, and the loss of his father over Vietnam so many years ago. I thought someday he'd learn to live with both of those ― now it looked like he'd have a shot at answering the latter. He'd told me a little bit about the leads, and I'd felt my heart sink as I realized just how little he had to go on. These anonymous reports of evidence ― hell, POW families around the U.S. had been tragically bilked for decades with those. The commission set up in D.C. to track down the rumors was always chasing some bogus report of an American still held captive in Vietnam, or one who'd settled in the countryside with a native wife, or of a mass grave turned up. They never amounted to anything more than a few shreds of metal remains or maybe some bones.

But Tombstone had to go check it out firsthand. In his shoes, I would have done the same thing. But I would have been prepared for what was to follow, and I think that Tombstone probably had no idea at all.

Yes, his uncle had let him go with his blessings, even provided some military assets to aid him in the search, as well as points of contact. Only a few people in the Pentagon knew what was happening. And they were sworn to secrecy.

If Tombstone's mission failed, the details would be lost in the eternal shuffling of paperwork within the Pentagon. But if he succeeded in turning up any trace of his father ― ah, now there was the rub.

Tombstone had spent most of his career at sea, in command of squadrons or battle groups. He'd spent one obligatory tour in Washington early on, but hadn't been back for the extended tutoring in intricate politics that a flag officer generally receives. He couldn't see it coming ― but I could.

If Tombstone turned up evidence that his father had been abandoned in Vietnam, the public outcry and political scurrying for cover was going to be beyond anything he imagined. People would be passing the blame, pointing fingers, and wailing loud and long about how they'd not been the ones to abandon our men in Vietnam.

And that was just if Tombstone turned up remains. But I knew what he was really after, and what he thought he would find ― his father alive.

One of the hardest things about command is pushing aside things like that that eat at your gut and turning your attention back to business. With possible nuclear weapons in the hands of the Vietnamese, either for their own use or for sale to any one of a dozen rogue nations around the world, I had more to worry about than the fate of my best friend.

"Admiral, an update from the SAR helo." The Chief of Staff walked into my compartment carrying a brief summary of their last mission.

I looked at him, my hope evident on my face. "Any possibility?"

He shook his head sorrowfully. "It's been a long time, Admiral."

I'd known it, but even so, the report was a disappointment. Damn it, the U.S. had to take a stand ― had to. Let this pass and every tin-pot dictator around the world with a Stinger missile would be taking potshots at us. It was only the fear of massive, overwhelming retaliation that kept them at the bay now, and it was a threat we were ill prepared to back up at best.

"Keep me posted," I said finally. Not that I needed to ask him to.

The Chief of Staff nodded, hesitating as he started to leave the room.

"I'd like to schedule a memorial service, sir," he said hesitantly. "Nothing formal yet ― just to block out the time this coming Sunday."

"Do it." I stared down at the desk and shook my head.

On any cruise in the last twenty-five years, it could have been me or Tombstone. Only by the grace of whatever higher power looks out for aviators had we made it this far, although we'd both lost men under our command. And now, women.

"COS ― make it a good one. They deserve it."

COS looked relieved that I hadn't bitten his head off. That provoked a momentary shiver of chagrin.

"I will, Admiral." He pulled the door shut on his way out, and left me alone with my thoughts.