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."