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.