After landing from their scramble, Jack and Thunder had gone through the mandatory debrief with Intelligence, expecting to spend hours with the Intel debriefer. Instead, the sergeant had produced a checklist and run through it, asking canned questions. They were through within twenty minutes and the initial report was sent out five minutes later, up-channeled to higher headquarters where it was eagerly awaited. Maintenance was next, where they quickly went over the condition of their bird. After that, Fairly had told them to report the next morning at 0800 hours for the flight debrief.
They had made a headlong rush for the officers’ club, and Jack wore his hat into the bar — a signal that he was buying. But Toni D’Angelo and Dave Belfort had beat them there, also wearing their hats. Then the serious drinking began, celebrating Jack and Thunder’s victory. Colonel Shaw told his security police to be “helpful” with the drunks, and they were put at a polite distance.
Breakfast had consisted of a beer and two cigarettes. Fortunately the crew chief who owned Locke’s jet, tail number 512, had made it to work on time. Should have known the bastards would have a work-call after yesterday, the crew chief thought. At least the line chief had let him and his assistant off last night after a quick post-flight of the Phantom. By the time they had made it to the Service Club the place was jumping. Everyone was celebrating the wing’s victory. The crew chief’s hangover was monumental. Now if the chief would only leave him alone — and if his partner would drag his ass to work — six hours might do the trick.
The maintenance forms were lying in the gun bay, right where the crew chief expected them. He thumbed through the write-ups from yesterday’s flight, deciding half the problems the pilot had written up couldn’t be duplicated or fixed. Then he noticed two entries: “One star missing from left side of fuselage,” signed off with the corrective action by corrosion control, “One star painted on left side of fuselage.” Looking up, he could see the freshly painted light brown star on the variable ramp that led into the intake duct, signifying that his bird had shot down an enemy aircraft.
Suddenly everything felt better. He was so proud of his only child. Then he saw the second write-up: “Gun jammed on high rate of fire on third burst. Total rounds fired: 508. Altitude 185 feet, airspeed 620 knots at time of jam.” The write-up was still open, meaning that he would have to get the gatling gun fixed this day.
He walked around his bird, a little more in awe of the machine than before yesterday’s scramble. He doubted he would ever understand everything that this baby could do. But… something was wrong, he could feel it. He tried to clear the fog of his hangover… Finally his eyes found it… his bird had, in effect, tried to commit suicide. Rushing up to the nose, he gently stroked the gun port beneath the long radar cone. The opening was about four inches bigger than normal. He had never seen or heard of that before, yet instinct told him what had caused it. The gatling gun had malfunctioned. One of the six rapidly rotating barrels had fired prematurely before it was aligned with the gun port. 512 had blown away part of its face. The crew chief’s nausea swept back over him, only this time it was not caused by his hangover. He was sick near to death that his baby had so badly hurt itself.
Jack and Thunder arrived at the squadron as the crew chief reported for duty. Jack was in the same condition as the chief and doubted if he could afford to pay his bar bill from the night before, whatever it might be. He hated to admit it, but the trash hauler, Dave Belfort, had set a tough example to match.
“Thunder,” he groaned, “who won last night?”
“Not you,” his backseater said. Thunder had closed Jack’s bar bill and carried the happily inebriated pilot back to the BOQ early in the morning.
The duty officer directed them now into the main briefing room.
Shaw and his deputy for Operations, Hawkins, were there along with the chief of Intelligence, the C-130 crew, and a female captain neither of them recognized. A sergeant was setting up a videotape recorder and camera.
“This is going to be a big deal,” Jack said, under his breath, appraising the newcomer. She was a plain woman, very thin, and possessed the hardest blue eyes he had ever seen.
Colonel Shaw stood. “Okay, let’s get this underway. The Pentagon wants the debrief on videotape. They’ve already received our initial reports and are more than passing interested in what went down yesterday — so interested that they’ve got a C-141 on the ramp to fly the tape to Washington as soon as you finish.
“Before we start the tape let me introduce Captain Mary Hauser. She is the controller from Outpost who worked you and will explain what her organization is all about. From now on everything you hear is classified top secret. It’s all yours, Mary.” The colonel sank into his chair. He had not slept the previous night and had been answering a series of messages and phone calls from headquarters since early morning.
The captain unfolded from her seat, astonishing Jack with her height. “Thank you, Colonel Shaw. Outpost is a covert surveillance site for monitoring the Libyans. Our parent organization is in Germany and we rotate every six weeks. Our cover is that we’re a training detachment teaching the Egyptians ground control intercept procedures. The GCI cover has worked well and we’d like to keep it intact. I’m also a master controller and fully current, which adds authenticity to our story. The recordings of our radio transmissions and radar tapes are here for this debrief. I’ll be taking them to D.C. with the tape of this debrief and your gun-camera film.”
Jack had recognized her voice right away. She wasn’t someone he wanted to mess with.
Because Fairly had been the flight lead for Stinger flight, he had the responsibility for conducting the debrief. He had been preparing for over an hour, and for the next hour he reconstructed the mission in chronological sequence, critiqued every action, sparing no one, including himself.
Mary Hauser brought up two new aspects of the mission. She asked if they had heard her warning call about approaching the border. All four said they did not. Careful reconstruction revealed the call came at the time they dropped off her radar scope, chasing the MiG. She then brought up the subject of the tanker. The SAC crew had kept pushing her to get as close to the engagement as possible, more than willing to jeopardize their bird to be in position to refuel the F-4s.
Hearing this, Jack decided he’d never criticize SAC again.
Fairly turned to Jack: “After downing the MiG, you were still flight-lead and should have immediately performed a fuel check, joined up the flight into a tactical formation and requested clearance to the tanker. Jack, you did not attend to business after the engagement. Further, you let your fuel state degenerate to a dangerously low level during the flight. The only thing that saved you from a flameout and fuel starvation was the tanker’s early departure out of orbit toward us. That call by Captain Hauser saved you. You owe her. And that’s all I have.”
After the videotape was shut off, Shaw again stood. “I know having an audience for a debrief is highly unusual. But I felt it would be appropriate to have a live audience to serve as a constant reminder that a good many people are going to be seeing this tape. I think it’s worked. Thank you and again, congratulations.” The room was called to attention as the wing commander left.
Jack walked out of the room, steaming. “Fairly crucified us — and on tape.” Nothing, it seemed to him, was ever good enough for the Air Force.
“We deserved what we got,” Thunder told him. And we also got respect in there, Thunder decided, even if you didn’t see it. That’s all right. He’d mention it to Jack later. And also the fact that the squadron commander had seemed fairly proud of them.