I went down to Medical to see how Gator was doing, but the corpsmen wouldn't even let me in the door until I'd had a shower. They damned near grabbed me and pitched me in one right there, claiming I posed a health hazard to the entire ship. I gave up trying to get in and went back to my stateroom to hunt down a clean pair of skivvies. My roommate was blessedly absent ― I didn't feel like doing any explaining. Not after the last week.
I showered quickly, soaping up and washing down three times before I finally felt clean. I scratched my head, wondering if anything had taken root in it during my time in the jungle.
I was getting sleepy now that I was clean, but there was one last task I had to perform. Donning clean skivvies and a flight suit, as well as the blessed comfort of clean socks, I headed back down to Medical. The corpsman almost didn't recognize me. He did a double take, then motioned me into the ward.
"How is he?" I asked.
The corpsman nodded with satisfaction. "He's gonna be just fine, sir. We shot him full of antibiotics and put him to bed. He's out cold now." He gave me an assessing glance. "Something you ought to consider doing yourself."
"I want to see him," I said, ignoring the suggestion that was sounding better and better each minute. "Just for a minute."
The corpsman led me over to the private curtained-off area where Gator was. He had some color back in his face, and he looked better now that he was clean. His shoulder and knee had been bandaged, and I saw an IV line running into his right arm. I patted him on the arm and said, "You're gonna be fine, buddy. These guys are doing a good job. You're gonna be just fine."
As I left, I cornered the first doctor I saw and asked, "How about the knee? Is he going to be able to fly again?"
The doctor's face was guarded. "It's too soon to tell," he finally admitted. He glanced back at the curtain, as though making sure Gator couldn't hear. "There's been a lot of damage. He'll need surgery, obviously. After that, we'll see how it goes."
"He can't fly now, though, right?" I asked. It was a very, very stupid question, given the condition of his knee as I'd last seen it. Another indication that I badly needed sleep and food, not necessarily in that order.
The doctor's face was worried as well. He took me by the arm, leading me over to another treatment cubicle. "You're cleaned up, right?" he asked. "Here, let me check you over."
"No, I just came down to see how Gator was doing," I protested. "I'm fine."
The doctor shook his head. "I doubt it. Let me have a look at you. I'll make it an order, if I have to."
Silently, I shrugged out of my flight suit and stood there in clean skivvies and socks. "On the examining table," the doctor ordered. "On your back."
I shrugged and complied. Might as well get it over with. Then I could get back to my rack.
The doctor ran his hands over me, asked a few questions about how I felt and when I'd last eaten, then finally nodded. "You're exhausted, of course," he said. "When were you planning on getting some sleep?"
"In a little while," I said. I had been planning on going straight back to my stateroom, but I hated being pushed around by doctors. They seemed to think they had absolute control over everyone's life, and I wasn't about to let him tell me I needed some sleep.
"I see." The doctor looked thoughtful. "Well, I want to run a few lab tests ― no, no, I insist. No telling what sort of nasty blood toxins you could have picked up down there." He disappeared out of the treatment cubicle for a moment, then returned with a syringe and a couple of vials. "Make a fist," he ordered.
I started to comply, then felt a sudden sting in my upper arm. I turned my head to look at him. "Hey! Since when do you take blood out of my shoulder?"
The doctor smiled gently. "Ever since I want to make sure a hardheaded pilot gets some sleep before he becomes a danger to himself. Consider yourself grounded for two days ― longer, if you don't do what I tell you to do."
The world was fading around me, becoming gray and fuzzy. I protested, I tried to struggle up into a sitting position, but there was no use fighting it. Whatever he jabbed into my shoulder was a lot stronger than I was at that point.
I was still trying to climb off the bed and onto my feet when darkness washed over me completely. I went down hard for the count.
This time, the admiral briefed us himself. That wasn't usually done. Under normal circumstances, you get jammed into the CVIC briefing room with the other guys flying the same mission and you get your data dump from Lab Rat or one of his assistants. But it wasn't every day that we went to war without a full-scale buildup, Air Force tanker support and careful testing of the civilian waters by the politicians back home.
Or that we faced a target that scared the shit out of all of us.
Nuclear weapons take warfare to a whole new level of pucker factor. With a target like this, ringed with SAM sites and shoulder-mounted Stingers, you got to take life seriously. The admiral knew that ― down deep, he was still one of us, even though he was carrying around a hell of a lot of metal on his collars. He wouldn't be in the air with us ― at least not physically. But from what I'd seen of the J-TARPS, it was the next best thing to being there.
I expected him to start off with a pep talk. You know, the God-and-country routine.
Bastard surprised me again. I hate it when that happens.
The lights dimmed and a photo flashed up on the wall. I sucked in a hard breath. Not something tactical, a copy of the flight plan, or much of anything else relevant to the mission. No, this one was a beauty.
It was an aerial view. Burnt jungle surrounded by those overwhelming patches of green wilderness. Smoke still curled up from some areas. Down in the lower left-hand corner, a picture of raw dirt. An excavation, maybe. It looked like…
"No," I said involuntarily. "It can't be."
Even in the dim light, the admiral's eyes seemed to find me. I was staring, feeling like a catfish that someone had started gutting, trying to breathe but feeling panicky.
"Next slide," the admiral said as if he was briefing us on the weather.
A closer view now. I could see figures running away from the excavation, heading toward the sheltering jungle.
Running might have been too strong a word for what we had been doing right then. I had Gator half over one shoulder, and was stumbling along trying to keep him off the ground and moving in the right direction. I remembered the fear, the feeling of dirt caving in on me, the sheer impossibility of thinking about anything else except being out of the cave we'd almost died in.
"You saw us," I said, the words spilling out barely under control. "My God, you saw us!"
The admiral nodded. "We didn't know who it was at first. Took a while to get the picture cleaned up enough to make out the details. Once we did, we realized it could be our people. By then, you and Gator had disappeared."
I slumped back down in my chair, reliving the nightmare. A hand clamped down on my arm, startling me. "Get over it." Two calm, green eyes looked back at me. "You weren't there."
"You aren't there. So listen up and pay attention to what you can do something about."
Lieutenant Commander Julie Karnes ― the name to match the face popped into my mind. "What the hell are you doing here?" I demanded.
"Paying attention to the brief. Like you ought to be doing," she answered, no more perturbed than a turtle sunning on a rock.
It wasn't an answer, but it was a good suggestion. I turned back to the screen, and tried to concentrate on what the admiral was saying.
"You've all already heard the stories," Admiral Wayne said. "About Bird Dog and Gator. This is where it happened. Next slide, please."
Some damned photo dog had been lying in wait for us when we'd come off that helo from being in country. He must have been using a zoom lens, because what we saw now was a full-face close-up of the three of us straggling off the SAR helo. Hell, I damned near didn't recognize myself, as battered and filthy as I was in that picture.