I hadn't seen anything, but I was glad I'd at least looked. There was no chance that we would see it now, not this deep in the jungle. Trees towered overhead, tangled with vines and undergrowth. The sky was just patches we'd occasionally catch a glimpse of. The real overhead was the jungle.
I was halfway expecting it when we got there, but it still depressed me. Wire fencing, with guard posts set in every corner. One main building, no signs of barracks or anything like that. But behind the building, a structure in the ground that slanted downwards, about eight feet across at the entrance and maybe six feet high. The entrance was fortified with huge wooden girders, a nicety of construction that degenerated further back into unfinished tree trunks.
The open cavern inside was pretty big, and seemed to be well supported by timbering and boards. It was maybe fifty feet by twenty, illuminated only by a single strand of electric lights that ran across the middle of the ceiling. Near the rear, there were eight sets of bunk beds. A primitive bucket evidently constituted the sanitary arrangements.
One of our guards flicked on the lights, pointed us down the ramp, and gave me a gentle shove. I started to swing at him, but Gator caught my arm with his good one. "Not now."
I looked around the wire enclosure outside. Twenty, maybe thirty uniformed ground troops were milling around smartly, their curiosity about us evidently at a fever pitch. Our two guards held them back, waving them away with their weapons.
We went in and settled down on two bunks, the lower two that were side by side near the forward part of the cavern. It seemed important to me to be as near as I possibly could get to that one blank patch of natural sunlight. Gator stretched out on his rack and fell asleep. I lay down on mine and tried to think.
What were the odds that anyone had seen us taken by the Vietnamese? The helo had seen us in the water, sure, and had probably gotten a report back to Jefferson. But after it had been shot down, what had happened next? Had any of the aircraft overhead actually seen the Vietnamese fishing boat come out and pick us up?
And what about Fred ― General Hue, I mean? If he really was a general, what was he doing flying? You don't do that when you get stars, at least not in the United States Navy. You barely get to fly when you're a captain. And if he wasn't a general, what exactly was he?
My mind ran around in circles, trying to make some sense of it and wondering whether anybody even knew we were still alive. Finally, despite my best intentions of standing guard over Gator the entire time, I fell asleep.
6
I hauled my ancient ass up six decks to Pri-Fly to watch the preparations. We'd lost three Tomcats, one tanker, and one helo. That in addition to the E-2C that went down four days before.
It wasn't just the aircraft, although that was the way we phrased it to keep from facing the ultimate tragedy. Airframes could be replaced, but the men and women who'd flown in them could not. Not in my air wing, and not in the families ― wives, husbands, children, and parents ― that they'd left behind. I would be writing those letters all too soon, facing the hard reality of what we do as day-to-day business. Then there would be time to mourn, time to think about them as I knew them, as I saw them in the mess every day and in the passageways of my ship.
But for now, we went by the numbers. It reduced the war to what it had to be for us to fight it ― for if we really thought about our people too long and too hard, or even about the other guy, we'd lose what you have to have to get shot off the pointy end of an aircraft carrier and go into battle.
"Every aircraft you have, CAG," I said for probably the third time. It wasn't necessary ― he'd heard me the first time.
CAG nodded. "We have contingency plans, of course," he began. "Actually drafting up the flight plans and getting all the birds on deck in the right spots with weapons on wings will take a little time." He shot me a glance that said he knew that I knew exactly how much time. I ignored it.
"Two hours ― every aircraft," I said. "Unless it's an out and out hangar queen, I want it in the air."
"We'll do it." CAG stood. "And if you could excuse me, I probably need to be down below keeping an eye on it." He pointed one finger in the direction of Vietnam. "Get a good look at the coastline, Admiral. In a couple of hours, there's gonna be too much smoke and fire to see anything."
CAG headed back down to his office on the 03 level, trailing a couple of Strike Warfare people in his wake like pilot fish. He was a good man, and if anybody could pull this off, he could. The tower was fully manned up because we had SAR assets airborne. I'd sent out four helos and three S-3s, hoping that by carefully quartering the area we might pick up some trace ― any trace ― of our downed aircraft.
Of our crews.
So far, the results had been zero. Three oil slicks, one chunk of a fuselage floating. No signs of any aircrew anywhere, and that was all that mattered. Evidence that they'd gone into the drink didn't matter ― hell, that was something we already knew.
The SH-60s and CH-46s had one advantage over the S-3. They could hover, get a good close look at the water, and see if there were any men in it. The S-3, on the other hand, had a lot longer legs. With tanking, she could stay airborne for five hours easy, although the noise and vibration would reduce crew efficiency considerably before then.
Under the circumstances, I thought they'd probably tough it out. In fact, I was certain of it.
After I'd committed a second squadron of Hornets to the battle, the Vietnamese had finally broken off and fled for home. They had an airstrip deep in the jungle, one that had been carefully camouflaged before except for heat sources and that was not the subject of constant intelligence updates. CVIC ― Carrier Intelligence Center ― was already working the problem real-time. Lab Rat had called me three times so far to let me know that Strike was getting the full picture on it.
I think of all of us, if it were possible, Lab Rat felt the worst. It was his intelligence the crews depended on ― and he hadn't known about the SAM sites. A simple equation from an Intelligence Officer's point of view. Bad intel equals lost aircraft. I wondered how bad it would eat at him.
The Air Boss turned to me and said, "Admiral, the first two helos are coming back in for fuel. No sign so far, other than those oil slicks."
Unspoken was the bigger question ― how much longer did I want to keep it up? We knew where the aircraft had been, had already covered the area pretty thoroughly. But there was a chance, a small one, that somebody hadn't been looking in the right direction, or that a current had carried the crews further out of the area. I'd already dispatched two destroyers as well to ride at the twelve-mile limit, and put them patrolling outer limits of the area.
"Another full cycle," I said to the Air Boss. "We've got to do it."
He nodded, clearly with something on his mind. "May I be blunt?"
"That's what I pay you for."
The Air Boss took a deep breath, then spoke quietly. "Admiral, we're going to need most of our SAR assets and support during and after the strike. My only concern here is making sure we have that."
It was a real concern, but one that I didn't think the aircrews would go along with. As long as there was a chance, no matter how slim, that there was a pilot or RIO out there in the water, they would insist on going back out. I had more crews than aircraft, and could rotate them through helos and S-3s at will, but eventually even aircraft start breaking down.