Rules of Engagement (1991) (10 page)

"We will continue to do our jobs," Bailey hesitated, "and pray that someone intervenes who has the wisdom and fortitude to win . . . or end this debacle."

Hutton glanced at his roommate. Austin appeared to be absorbing the frank conversation with a degree of understanding.

"The second point," Bailey continued, placing his pen down, "ties to the first. We have missions to fly, albeit with questionable targets, but missions just the same."

Inhaling deeply, Bailey gazed at the floor, exhaled, then moved his eyes from man to man. "I expect all of you to continue to be professional leaders, and duty bound. I want you to carry out your duties as safely as possible, and not let personal resentment cloud your logic."

"Yes, sir," Brad and Harry replied.

"Oh, one other item," Bailey said, remembering what he had emphasized to the flight crews in the ready room. "I don't want anyone trolling for MiGs. That is a violation of standing orders, and I will ground anyone who is caught hunting MiGs instead of flying the mission he was assigned."

"Sir," Brad said firmly, "we weren't trolling for MiGs. We'd been sent in to check the weather."

"I'm well aware of that. I reminded the rest of the squadron, and I am simply reminding you."

The silence made Brad uncomfortable.

"Now," Bailey said, standing, "I want all of you to get out of here so I can get some rest. We've got a double strike laid on for tomorrow."

The four junior officers stood when the CO got up from his chair. They respected him as a leader, pilot, and plain old-fashioned good friend.

Opening the door, Bailey turned to his men. "I intend for you to continue flying as a team. You're doing a hell of a job under difficult circumstances."

Brad Austin and Russ Lunsford sat in adjoining seats in the ready room. They had on their flight suits and were taking copious notes about the target combat air patrol they had been assigned. Across the aisle, Lt. Cdr. Lincoln Joshua "Bull" Durham, the TARCAP mission flight leader, sat with his RIO, Ernie Sheridan. Dirty Ernie, the senior and most experienced radar-intercept officer in the squadron, rotated flying with the senior pilots.

Lincoln Durham, a friendly and sensitive giant of a man, had been an All-American tackle at Grambling College. After a brief stint with the Chicago Bears, Bull Durham had opted to join the navy and become a fighter pilot. The black aviator had graduated from flight school in the top ten percent of his class.

Jack Carella reminded the men about safety, then finished the brief and wished the crews good luck.

Brad and Russ followed Durham and Sheridan out of the ready room and down the passageway to the musty-smelling locker room.

Stepping over the hatch combing, Brad turned to his friend, Bull Durham. "How's your wife doing?" Cordelia Durham had returned to George Washington University to complete her master's degree in political science.

"Fine," Durham replied, working his combination lock. "I had a letter from her day before yesterday. Her studies are going well, but she is concerned about the growing number of war protesters. I guess it's really getting ugly."

Brad opened his locker and grabbed his g suit. "Has she had any problems in regard to you being a fighter pilot?"

"I don't think so. Cordy is not the type to say much about the war, or express an opinion." Durham paused. "Besides, she probably wouldn't tell me if she did--wouldn't want to worry me."

Brad slipped on his snug, inflatable g suit. "When is she graduating?"

Durham zipped his g suit around his waist. "The end of next month. I'm going to try to go home for her graduation, and surprise her."

"That would be nice . . . if you can get off this tub." "Right."

"Tell her hello from the jarhead." Brad had met Cordelia Durham in Hong Kong during an extended port call. The quiet, gracious woman had flown over with four other squadron wives.

"I'll do that," Durham replied, sitting down to zip the legs of his g suit. He leaned closer to Brad, almost whispering. "Also got word last week that Cordy is pregnant."

Grinning, Brad stuck out his hand. "Congratulations, Papa San."

"Thanks," Durham laughed, shaking Austin's hand. "We're excited, to say the least."

Chapter
9.

Brad and Russ sat in their idling Phantom, waiting to taxi forward when the port blast deflector was lowered. Bull Durham, on the starboard catapult, went to full military power, then selected afterburner. Bright orange flames shot out of the twin tail pipes as the deafening roar swept over the flight deck.

Brad watched his flight leader snap a salute to the cat officer. Four seconds later, the F-4 thundered down the catapult, rotated, settled low over the choppy water, then climbed to the departure altitude.

Nick Palmer, ahead of Brad's Phantom, taxied onto the number two catapult while Jon O'Meara and his RIO, Mario Russo, taxied over the starboard-cat shuttle.

The green-shirted deck crewmen quickly hooked O'Meara's F-4 to the number one cat, then scurried out from under the heavily laden fighter.

Palmer went into afterburner and rocketed down the deck in a repeat of Durham's launch. The blast deflector was immediatel
y l
owered, allowing Brad to taxi onto the steaming catapult. He moved forward slowly and stopped when the nose wheel dropped over the shuttle.

Feeling tension taken on his fighter, Brad was coming up on the power when O'Meara's F-4 was fired. The Phantom, carrying a 600-gallon centerline fuel tank, erupted in flames when the fuel cell split open from the g force. The torrent of fuel, ignited by the blazing afterburners, swept the length of the cat track.

"Oh, shit!" Brad exclaimed as his fighter came up to full throttle. He was afraid to reduce power in the event that his F-4 was fired intentionally, or accidentally.

O'Meara's F-4, trailing twenty feet of orange flames, hurtled off the deck and climbed unsteadily. O'Meara, hearing a frantic call from the Air Boss, jettisoned the ruptured fuel tank. Brad and Russ watched it tumble harmlessly into the water.

Billowing black smoke engulfed Brad's Phantom as the cat officer rushed up and gave him the catapult-suspend signal. Austin could hear Lunsford swearing in the backseat. Brad pulled his power to idle at the same moment the Air Boss yelled over the radio to shoot Austin's F-4.

"Sonuvabitch!" Brad swore, shoving the throttles forward again. The power was passing ninety-six percent when the Phantom squatted down and blasted the length of the catapult track.

"Stay with me, Lunsford!" Brad ordered as the afterburners lighted with a resounding boom. The F-4 settled low over the water, kicking up spray as Brad popped the gear lever up and tweaked the nose down to take advantage of the cushion of air between the Phantom's wings and the water. Lunsford held his breath and gripped the alternate ejection-seat handle between his thighs.

The compressed layer of air, known as ground effect, would allow the fighter to stay in the air until Brad had enough speed to climb. It was not in the book, but Brad knew it was their only chance to salvage the aircraft.

Slowly, Brad nursed the howling Phantom out of ground effect and started climbing. His left hand, holding the throttles in afterburner, was shaking.

"Goddamnit!" Lunsford shouted, gulping oxygen, "we've gotta be out of our goddamn minds."

Brad let the Phantom accelerate before switching to the carrier Strike frequency. He deselected afterburner, then waited while the controller explained to Durham what had happened during the launch.

O'Meara and Russo were holding overhead to trap after the launch was complete. The Air Boss, afraid that Austin's fighter might catch fire and explode, had fired the F-4 off the catapult. The fuel fire had been extinguished with only minor injuries to the deck crewmen.

"Joker Two Oh Three up," Brad radioed, calming himself while Lunsford, ranting over the intercom, continued to cast disparaging remarks about the Air Boss and his mother.

"Bring it aboard, Brad," Bull Durham acknowledged. "You doin' all right?"

"Roger that," Austin replied as evenly as possible. He was grateful that no one could see his shaking hands. "I have you at one o'clock."

"Copy," Durham said, then added, "you are now Dash Three." Brad clicked his mike twice and spoke to his RIO. "Russ, let's get it together."

"I'm gonna kill that sonuvabitch," Lunsford responded, breathing unevenly. "He fired us before we were ready."

"Calm down, for Christ's sake. He was just doing his job .. . and we need to do ours, okay?"

Exhaling sharply, Lunsford looked at Bull Durham's airplane. "I guaran-goddamn-tee you one thing."

"What's that?" Brad asked absently as he approached the two Phantoms.

"You are never going to pull the power back again unless the cat officer is standing in front of the goddamn airplane."

Brad started to respond, then decided to discuss the incident after his RIO had had an opportunity to calm himself. At the moment, they needed to concentrate on their mission.

The three-ship formation climbed in silence to the KA-3B Skywarriors waiting for them, checked in on the tanker frequency, and then topped off their fuel tanks.

Departing the Whales, Joker Flight checked in with Red Crown and headed toward Thanh Hoa. The target would be an industrial site heavily defended by surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft batteries. The three F-4s separated into a loose combat spread, with Austin in the middle 1,000 feet behind and 500 feet higher than Jokers 1 and 2.

Durham entered a wide orbit at 16,000 feet and listened to another flight of Phantoms check in with the leader of the strike group.

Ninety seconds later, the lead A-4 pilot commenced his run-in from the southwest of Thanh Hoa. The sky suddenly filled with exploding AAA fire and SAMs. The fourth Skyhawk pulled off the burning target as the flight leader of the second group released his ordnance and snapped into a ninety-degree climbing turn.

Brad, constantly scanning the sky and ground, caught a glimpse of the number three Skyhawk at the instant it was hit by a SAM. The A-4 disintegrated in a brilliant fireball, raining flaming debris on the target. The pilot never had a chance to eject.

"MiGs!" Ernie Sheridan shouted over the radio. "Four MiG17s at three o'clock low!"

The camouflaged MiGs, concealed by a thin cloud cover at 3,000 feet, had slipped into the area undetected. Passing 2,000 feet, the enemy fighters had been seen by the radar picket ship.

"This is Red Crown! We hold bogies climbing over the target. Repeat, we have bogies over the target."

Durham acknowledged the frantic call and rolled toward the rapidly approaching MiGs. "Jokers engaging! Drop tanks!" The three Phantom pilots simultaneously punched off their centerline fuel tanks.

Durham shoved the nose down, rolling to the right, and lined up for a head-on pass. The three fighter pilots saw the MiGs' 23mm cannons wink at them as the F-4s slashed through the Communists' formation. The MiG pilots broke in two directions, one section going low, the other two aircraft going high.

Bull Durham elected to go for the two pilots who had pulled up. "Hard starboard, goin' burner!"

The high MiGs went into a slow weave as the F-4s shot skyward. Durham, recognizing they were in danger of overshooting the MiGs, pulled his power to idle. "Jokers, go idle!"

Austin and Palmer had anticipated the call as they rapidly closed on the MiGs. They retarded their throttles and cracked open the speed brakes a few inches. Lunsford and Hutton were twisting their heads left and right, checking their sixes for the other two bogies.

"I'll take the one on the left!" Durham announced, then fired a heat-seeking Sidewinder. The MiG pilots, seeing the missile ignite, pulled into a diving high-g turn. The Sidewinder, unable to guide during the evasive maneuver, shot over the MiG and accelerated out of sight.

"The two on the deck," Hutton radioed in gasps, "are raising their noses!"

"Jokers, Showboat is engaging the low gomers!" The second Phantom target combat air patrol was entering the aerial fray.

"Roger, roger," Durham panted, violently rolling his Phantom to follow the diving MiGs. "They're running for their sanctuary . . . burners!"

The MiG-17s, flying close to 430 knots, were heading straight for Phuc Yen. The MiG pilots, diving steeply, had gained the knowledge that the U
. S
. missiles had a difficult time locking onto targets close to the ground.

The downside for the MiG pilots was the problem their aircraft had flying at high speeds close to the terrain. Not having hydraulically powered flight controls, the Vietnamese pilots had very little control authority. The faster they flew, the more aerodynamic resistance they encountered. Since the MiG pilots coul
d n
ot perform abrupt maneuvers, they were forced to run for safety once the Americans had the advantage.

"Cover us, Brad," Durham radioed as he bottomed out 100 feet above the ground. "Nick, take the one on the right."

Two seconds later, Palmer got a tone and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. "Sonuvabitch!" The Sidewinder remained on the launch rail while Palmer frantically checked his armament switches.