“After we get in the Phil Sea the damned Air Force is going to lead strikes into the Spratlys to spank the Pricks. Navy is going to suppress the defenses for them, and we sit here doing surface combat air patrol.”
“Why, Skipper?” a young captain whined.
“Hell if I know! And I tell ya, it could be from the top. The budget is a daily battle in Washington, and if Marines aren’t involved in this operation the Navy can get a bigger piece of the pie.”
“What did CAG say, sir?” a major asked.
“We’re gonna exercise the jets in two days and transit past Iwo Jima in three. Once in the Phil Sea, Air Force bombers out of Guam, to include F-22s, will go in and soften up the Prick outposts in the SCS. Navy shoots their silver bullets to keep the Prick heads down, and we’re suckin’ hind tit with quick-reaction alerts to protect these rust buckets. Oh yeah, your JSF buddies from Yuma are on USS Solomon Islands, and they kicked off the Ospreys and Huey-Cobras to put swab helos on it. Waste of a good amphib.
“You know, if we had our shit together, we’d bring down the fighters from Iwakuni, the rotor-heads from Okinawa, flow us and the JSFs ashore at Cubi or Clark in the Philippines and we’d be right there. An instant expeditionary airfield with a Marine Air Group who is familiar with one other and ready to kick some ass. We aren’t going to take these sandbars with a frickin’ Tomahawk or some magic GPS bomb. You land a battalion of Marines and support ‘em with fires. You want to take territory and ensure it is taken, you gotta look ‘em in the eye before you shoot ‘em.”
Mother’s JOs were eating it up, pissed that the Navy was screwing them this way.
“On the other hand,” Mother continued, “flowing ashore to an austere field in the PI may not be the best thing. The Navy could leave us, you know. They’ve done it before out here. Can’t trust ‘em. They’ll leave ya.”
The JOs nodded, knowing that Mother was referring to the WWII Navy having to withdraw from the Marine beachhead on Guadalcanal in the face of superior Japanese naval power. Navy airmen, corpsmen, and Seabees fought with the Marines on the island, and many more sailors were lost in ferocious surface combat to keep the Japanese from dominating the waters around Guadalcanal, but the myth that the Navy abandoned the Marines over 75 years ago was accepted thought in much of the Corps.
The once vibrant and jovial ready room was now somber and frustrated at the thought of missing the big one — just because they were Marines. Frickin’ swabs!
CHAPTER 26
Weed knocked twice on Wilson’s stateroom door before he opened it. Looking up from his desk, Wilson motioned him inside. “Hey, Weed,” he said with a smile.
“Ready to go, big guy? They’re all gathered in the foc’sle.”
“Yeah… still not sure what to tell them. We start armed sorties tomorrow, but we aren’t at war… be ready for anything, report and track everything… but don’t start something with hundreds of pounds of high-explosive on your wings.”
“Yep, standard Navy tasking.”
“Clear as mud,” Wilson said, shaking his head.
“What are you going to tell them?” Weed asked as he pulled up a chair.
“Combat mindset. Be ready. Know your enemy, know your aircraft, know your wingman, and know yourself. Know the damn ROE. Time for training is over. It may begin tomorrow — probably not — but if it does, there will be no time for any of these pep talks.”
“What do you think?”
Wilson exhaled as his eyes met Weeds. “I think we’re going to hit them. Not sure where and how, but I expect we’re going to fight these guys. All over the Pacific… and maybe tomorrow.”
Weed nodded, and both men were quiet. “What does the Admiral say?”
“He expects a war of attrition. Pac Fleet is not letting up. He thinks it will start when Solomon Islands shows up as this floating sea-control base. A Zumwalt guided-missile destroyer is en route with a zillion missiles and every sub in the fleet is moving into a launch basket. Confront them out here, and if they push back, shoot everything we’ve got. Once the shooting starts, it’s kill or be killed. Shoot first….”
“And let God sort ‘em out…” Weed said in a low tone. Wilson made no effort to end the discussion.
“How many of our guys will we lose?”
Wilson tightened one corner of his mouth. “Don’t know. Depends on the tasking, how long this goes. Depends. Don’t know, but we have to be ready for it. This ship could get hit, hard.”
“Is Blower ready to fight the ship?”
“As ready as we are. Another come-as-you-are war. Are our guys 100 percent ready, 81 percent? How about the jets? Guess I’d take 81 percent at this point.” Both realized the frank assessment of their readiness was lowering their energy levels.
“You ready now to give a rousing pep talk to Air Wing Fifteen?” Weed asked with a grin.
Wilson smiled and looked at his watch. “Yeah. Guess they’ve been standing in ranks for a few minutes. You go ahead, and I’ll be right behind.”
Weed stood and zipped up his flight jacket. “It’s gonna be cold up there. Bring your jacket.”
“Not wearing one,” Wilson replied, as he ripped his Velcro nametag off his flight suit. He followed by removing his Air Wing patch, his TOPGUN patch, and his 3,000-hour Hornet patch and tossed them on his desk.
Weed removed his jacket and did the same. “Good leadership,” he muttered. Wilson said nothing, then turned to Weed.
“I’ll be two-mikes behind you.”
“Roger, Flip. Glad you’re the CAG.”
“You could do this, too, and probably better.”
“No, I mean it. There’s no better man. We’ll follow you through fire.”
“Thanks, my brother.”
“Just don’t talk all night!”
Wilson laughed. “Wilco,” he said.
Weed left and Wilson stood alone with the burden of command. Twenty years older than most of his pilots, he knew them, their young faces, their futures, the joys of parenthood, and the rewarding challenges of increased responsibility. He realized that, barring a last-minute reprieve, not all of them would return from this deployment. For a moment, he looked at a picture of Mary and the kids.
Closing his eyes, he folded his hands and brought them to his chin.
God… please give me the words…
Wilson prayed for inspiration, for deliverance, and for his Air Wing aviators. What was he going to say to them… in five minutes? He thought of Waldron and Stockdale, and their messages of determination and resolve.
He headed forward and contemplated the frames of knee-knockers ahead, some 300 feet in front of him with no one visible in the normally high-traffic passageway. Hancock pitched and rolled as it sped west mile after mile. How many times had he walked this starboard passageway on Hanna, or Happy Valley, or Coral Maru? Wilson knew the way to the foc’sle by heart, every hatch, every ladder. Memories came to him of all the fun times in the foc’sle during “The Follies,” poking fun at the heavies with Weed and Dutch, Olive and Annie. Now he was a heavy, and what he was about to say to his aviators waiting for him to arrive was serious, deadly serious.
Wilson had never felt more alone.
He ducked under the cat track and stopped at an open hatch with a ladder that led to the flight deck catwalk. Through a hole in the steel plate he could see gray North Pacific skies over a gray sea, and the salt air, brisk and bracing, charged him up. He was a combat aviator heading to war, and in command.