The Hot Pilots (24 page)

“You two are young men,” Steve heard his father say shyly. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Don said. “You’ve got to do what you think is right.”

Steve felt incredibly touched as his father turned his pale blue eyes toward him.
He wants—needs—my approval
…

The scales abruptly dropped from Steve’s eyes, and he saw his father not as he used to be when Steve was a kid, but the way
he was
today
. The red was gone from what little hair Herman Gold had left; the red had weathered to wintry silver gray. There were deep
lines etched into his father’s face; a lifetime’s worth of lines …

“I’ll tell you what I think, one fighter jock to another.” Steve glanced at Don. “No offense meant …”

“None taken,” Don acknowledged, smiling.

“I
was
a fighter pilot, once …” Herman murmured.

“
Once
means
always,
” Steve firmly insisted. “
Always
means that your entire life you lived according to the fighter jock’s credo:
Trust your instincts
. Well, I say you ought to keep on trusting them. You want to do this?”

His father hesitated. Then he nodded, smiling boyishly, and Steve remembered that smile from when he himself had been just
a little boy, and his father had been even younger than Steve was now; a robust, powerful man, standing tall beside an open-cockpit
airplane …

“Sonofabitch, but I don’t care about the possible consequences,” Herman said. “I
want
to
do
this.”

Steve beamed at Don. “What’d I say? Once a fighter jock,
always
a fighter jock.” He looked back at his father and winked. “Then you
go
for it, Pop.”

“I appreciate the way you backed me up—and Pop—in there,” Steve said to Don when they left Herman’s office.

“That’s okay,” Don murmured.

Steve glanced at him, thinking that Don seemed preoccupied. “You’re really upset about this Vector-A thing, huh?”

“Not really…”

Steve had to laugh. “Well I sure as fuck am. If you’re
not
worried then something
really
bad must be on your mind … Everything okay at home?”

“Yeah!” Don said too heartily, and then, “Well, maybe not … I didn’t want to worry your father with it, but Robbie called
home yesterday. He was all excited. He’s received his Wing assignment.”

“And?”

“With all this stuff going on in Southeast Asia since the Gulf of Tonkin thing last August, Suzy and I were keeping our fingers
crossed that he’d end up in Europe, in support of our NATO commitment …”

Now Steve understood. “But he’s not, is he? He’s going to Vietnam … ?”

Don nodded, frowning, his shoulders hunched in apprehension. “He’s going to war.”

First Lieutenant Robert Blaize Greene bolted awake. He sat upright in his cot, clawing at the mosquito netting clinging to
his face. He glanced at the luminous dial of his wristwatch: 2:30
A.M.

Robbie looked across the hooch. By the silvery moonlight coming in through the screened windows he saw Captain Stewart Saunders
sitting on the edge of his cot. Stew was dressed in a flight suit. As he bent forward to tie his boot laces the moon and shadow
turned his shaved head into a bone white skull.

“I was having a nightmare,” Robbie murmured. He cast aside the suffocating mosquito netting. He was sweating like a sonofabitch.
His sheets were soaked. He resisted the urge to rake his fingernails across the itchy heat rash ringing his neck.

“I was dreaming I was back in high school …” He paused to catch his breath; the humidity made it hard to breathe. “… I didn’t
know where my classes were, and I couldn’t find my locker.”

“
Verry interrresting
—” Stew mimicked a German accent. “
Ver you naked?
”

“What is this, like prison?” Robbie muttered. “They put the new guys in with the perverts?”

“I was just going to wake you anyway,” Stew said. “Weather officer predicts clear flying.”

“Well, all right,” Robbie said gamely.

“It looks like this is going to be your day, kid.”

“Yeah, all right …” Robbie trailed off.

Stew smiled. “Don’t freak, Lieutenant. Everybody’s got to bust his cherry sooner or later.”

Robbie nodded. At twenty-two years of age, he was one of the youngest pilots based at Phanrat. He was certainly the most inexperienced.

Five months ago he’d gone from Fighter Weapons School, into a squadron that was part of the Tactical Fighter Wing at McConnell
Air Force Base in Kansas. He’d had a gas flattening the wheat fields as he learned the ins and outs of his F-105 Thunderchief,
and once the Wing was certified operational in their Thuds, the organization was rotated to Japan. Robbie knew that combat
duty was preordained and he was looking forward to it: somewhere in the misty future. Then, just a couple of weeks ago, the
Air Force’s all-powerful computers had whirred, spitting out Robbie’s card, and he’d found himself in Thailand ahead of the
rest of his buddies, filling a slot in the 609th TFS, one of the three tactical fighter squadrons that called Phanrat home.

My first combat mission
, Robbie thought as he switched on the lamp on the little folding camp table beside his cot. At once the winged things that
ruled the Southest Asian night began thumping insistently at the window screens.

“You know, Stew, when I arrived I was really feeling gung ho,” Robbie began nervously. “But now I’m feeling kind of rusted
up …”

“Yeah, well, it was a tough break you got,” Stew said. He was at the mirror, carefully twirling wax into the handlebar curves
of his luxurious mustache. “I guess it would be best to get here and just jump right in, but rules are rules.”

Robbie nodded. Since he’d arrived at Phanrat he’d been parked on the shelf, with nothing to do but swat bugs and bite his
nails worrying about how he would react when he finally did see action. He’d been grounded because of a string of bad weather
and the relative difficulty of the targets that Saigon Command had seen fit to send the 609th’s way. His squadron’s commander,
Lieutenant Colonel Owen Farris, believed in an easy break-in for buck pilots. Farris wanted Robbie to bust his cherry on a
target in a less fortified area, during daylight, and in good weather, so that Robbie could maintain visual flight rules.
Robbie had begun to think that his opportunity would never come, but now here it was …

All the years of daydreaming, and the hard work to get through school, and then fighter pilot training
… Robbie climbed out of his cot and padded barefoot in his boxer shorts and T-shirt to his footlocker in order to grab his
kit.
It’s taken so long to get to this day; the first mission
. He stepped into his unlaced boots and headed for the door.
Just let me do okay
…

He noticed Stew watching him. “I’ll just hit the showers, and then I’ll meet you—”

“No,” Stew said.

Robbie, his kit in hand, paused in the doorway. “No, what?”

“No shaving, no brushing your teeth, no shower, and no deodorant.”

“Why the hell not?” Robbie demanded. Outside the hooch he could hear the voices of the other pilots drawn for the morning’s
mission as they walked by on their way to the mess. He glanced out the window. Here at the hooches it was too dark to see
much beyond a few glowing cigarettes bobbing like fireflies, but off near the hangar complex harsh lights were staining the
night sky. Robbie could hear the clanging of ordnance being fitted and the whine of the electric carts as the maintenance
crews hustled to prepare the fighters for takeoff.

“Why can’t I shower, for chrissake?” Robbie repeated. “I’m sweaty as hell. I’ve got plenty of time to make briefing …”

“Gomer doesn’t brush his teeth,” Stew replied. “And he doesn’t take showers, or use deodorant, except for maybe splashing
a little fish sauce in his armpits to attract the little gomer girls. Should you have to punch out over unfriendly territory
all that minty clean Ipana smell coming off you will let gomer sniff you out in that jungle of his like a bird dog on a quail
…”

“Come on …” Robbie shivered, and then laughed weakly. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Just get dressed and come grab yourself some breakfast,” Stew said evenly. “Be plenty of time to shower later.”

Jesus Christ, it’s really happening
, Robbie thought numbly.
Oh, please let me just get through this day
…

The civil engineers who were busy messing around with Phanrat would be working on the base long after Robbie’s tour of duty
was over. They’d already done a good job on the fighter maintenance/ordnance areas adjoining the spaghetti tangle of concrete
taxi ramps and runways, but the rest of “The Rat” was still nothing but a wide expanse of tramped-down dirt hacked out of
the emerald jungle. The base had elevated wooden sidewalks that floated in the mud, some rusting trailers where the senior
officers berthed, and prefab, hangar-type buildings that housed the mess and the officers’ club, both of which functioned
twenty-four hours a day. Near the ready line were the pilots’ personal equipment shack, and the Operations center, which was
where Robbie was now, along with the other pilots selected from “The Rat’s” several squadrons to take part in this morning’s
strike.

The main briefing room was a large, fluorescent-lit auditorium with sky blue walls, and an acoustic tile ceiling. The room
had a raised platform equipped with lecterns, blackboards, and maps, and a lot of those uncomfortable combination folding
chair/writing desks … Just like a high school or college lecture hall, Robbie thought, remembering his dream.

“… The primary target will be the Song Sen Bridge …” the operations commander was announcing.

Robbie was chain-smoking. The eggs, toast, and coffee he’d forced down were churning in his gut. He was sure that everybody
could tell how nervous and afraid he was, but when he looked around nobody seemed to be paying attention to him.

“… Song Sen is the name of the village where this bridge spans the Song Ca River southwest of …”

Get your shit together
, Robbie told himself.
Listen to the briefing
. Up on the raised platform the operations commander and his support staff—weather, intelligence, and weapons officers—were
talking specifics concerning their areas of expertise about the primary and alternate targets if for any reason the Song Sen
Bridge could not be struck.

Robbie tried to concentrate, dutifully shuffling through his maps and navigational cards and the mimeographed reports and
their update inserts, but he couldn’t focus. All he could think about was winning medals, or disgracing himself by acting
cowardly.

The Wing briefing broke up. The pilots left the auditorium for their individual squadron briefings held in smaller rooms around
the corner from the main hall. As Robbie entered his squadron briefing he saw Lieutenant Colonel Farris talking with his senior
officers.

Farris was in his early forties. He had red hair, freckles, a pug nose, and blue eyes. Behind his back the guys called him
Howdy Doody, but Robbie thought the commander looked like Robbie’s grandfather Herman Gold must have looked in his younger
days. Robbie took that as a good omen.

Farris must have felt Robbie’s eyes upon him. He glanced up, then winked at Robbie before returning his attention to his staff.
Another good omen
, Robbie thought, settling into a chair/desk.

“All right, this should be an easy one, gentlemen,” Farris began once the rest of the pilots had arrived and were seated.
“The weatherman tells us that visibility should be excellent. Intelligence suggests that the enemy has most of its defenses
concentrated over a hundred klicks to the north, at the Dragon’s Jaw…”

Robbie began flipping through his maps. He couldn’t find anything called Dragon’s Jaw, but then map reading had never been
his strong point …

“But before I go any further, I want to make a personnel change,” Farris said. “Lieutenant Greene—”

Robbie, his heart pounding, wondered if he was going to be scratched from the mission. He looked up from the crumpled maps
littering his desktop and his lap. “Sir?”

“Since this is your first mission, I want you where I can keep an eye on you,” Farris said. “For today you’ll be part of my
flight. Our radio call sign is Warrior …”

“Yes, sir.”

Farris moved on. “Major Gleason’s flight call sign is Rambler. Major Goldblum is Dasher … Major Lawrence is…”

It was almost 4
A.M.
when Robbie and the other pilots got to the personal equipment shack. The others were talking and joking as they drew their
gear. Robbie stayed out of it. He really didn’t feel like he had any right to be among these men who had all passed the ultimate
test: The least among them had twelve combat missions under his belt …

Robbie emptied the pockets of his cotton flight suit and stowed his personal belongings in a locker. He began donning his
equipment. First he laced on the chapslike, waist-high, G suit. Next came his vest, its many pockets bulging with survival
gear, including canteens and his beeper radio. He strapped on his chute, and a .38 revolver, then drew the weapon from its
holster to make sure it was loaded.

He stared at the gun, thinking about the survival training he’d received, and his target practice at the range. He’d gotten
to be a pretty good pistol shot, just as he’d gotten to be highly accurate at delivering dummy ordnance and cannon fire during
flight gunnery practice … But shooting at paper targets or bombing circles painted on the ground wasn’t anything at all like
attacking a flesh and blood enemy who was going to be shooting back at you—

Eahhhhhhhhhh—

A high-pitched wailing, the electronic equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard, startled Robbie. It was one of the pilots
fiddling with his rescue radio. If you punched out over gomer land it was that mournful cry that Search and Rescue would lock
onto in order to find you and pull you out—if they could …