Rules of Engagement (1991) (44 page)

On the flight deck, the catapult and arresting-gear crews worked tirelessly to prepare their equipment for air operations. Aircraft handlers shuffled airplanes in preparation for the first launch.

Brad walked through the enlisted men's chow hall, noting the activity. The men sat at their tables, calmly eating and talking, while ordnance personnel wheeled bombs through the center of the room.

After negotiating a series of staircases, Brad went to the ready room for the CO's operational brief. Taking a seat next to Jon O'Meara, Brad placed his notepad on his thigh and extracted a ballpoint pen from his pocket. "I see that you survived."

"If I make it through the next twenty-four hours," O'Meara yawned, "I think I'll live."

"Where's Mario?"

"He's hard down, so I told the skipper I would take copious notes and thoroughly brief him."

A group of men, including Harry Hutton, entered the room seconds before Dan Bailey walked in.

Bailey joked with a few men, then approached the podium. His pleasant look disappeared, replaced by a grim scowl. The crowded room became deathly quiet.

"I have just returned from a meeting with CAG," he announced uncomfortably. "We're going to have some tough duty for the foreseeable future."

Brad watched Bailey's gestures, absorbing the gist of his message. How could the air war get any worse?

"The situation is heating up," Bailey continued, looking at the sea of somber faces. "There has been a marked increase in the number of cargo ships entering Haiphong harbor. The shipping activity is going on around the clock. From what intelligence says, at least fifty to sixty percent of the vessels are off-loading huge quantities of SAMs and antiaircraft guns."

Bailey looked into the eyes of his charges. "We are going to make a concerted effort to obliterate certain strategic sites, because the White House wants to get the North Vietnamese to capitulate. If we allow the missile and triple-A emplacements to proliferate, our job is going to get a lot more difficult."

"And deadly," Brad stated in a matter-of-fact voice.

"You're right," Bailey replied, turning his attention to Austin, then back to the group. "I know what you want to ask. Why don't we bomb the cargo ships?"

Brad nodded affirmatively with the majority of the other men. "I share your frustrations," Bailey said, looking around the room, "but they remain off-limits."

Brad indicated that he had a question.

"Yes, Captain."

"Skipper," he began, feeling Bailey's eyes boring into him, "don't take me wrong. I just want to know something."

"Brad," the CO said patiently, "as long as our government guarantees safe passage to foreign vessels, Uncle Ho is going to conduct business with them, and some of the ships will obviously be hauling weapons."

Exasperated, Bailey took a deep breath and blew it out. "It's that simple, Brad."

The ready room remained silent for a few moments before the CO regained his composure. He ached inside, knowing that his men were right and he could not do anything to correct the abysmal situation. His responsibility was to train the crews and prepare them for aerial combat, then send them off the carrier and into battle.

"Okay," Bailey continued, blanking out his feelings of contempt, "here is what we're going to be facing. More missions and more SAMs, flak, and missiles. The heat is going to be turned up on the North Vietnamese, and we're the ones who are going to increase the flames."

He looked at O'Meara and Austin, then scanned the entir
e r
oom. "We're going to start warm-ups, back-in-the-saddle stuff
,
and get honed to a razor's edge before we hit Yankee Station." The frown returned. "Any questions, gentlemen?"

No one spoke.

For three days the air wing had flown around the clock. The flight crews had conducted refresher training, along with day an
d n
ight carrier qualifications. One KA-3B tanker had bee
n d
amaged when the nose gear collapsed during a hard landing.

General quarters had sounded on two different nights, keeping the crew at the peak of readiness. There was a feeling of esprit de corps throughout the ship.

Fire drills and man-overboard drills had been practiced during flight operations. The ship's captain had been pleased with the results, and had rewarded the crew with a picnic on the flight deck prior to entering the Gulf of Tonkin.

Fourteen hours later, the task force had arrived on station, and the deadly business of war commenced.

Brad entered the cluttered locker room and opened his combination lock. The mood was somber as the crews went through their preflight ritual.

The mission brief and intelligence summarization had been depressing. Haiphong harbor was full of Soviet, Polish, Chinese, and North Vietnamese ships. Some were tied to the piers; others were moored to buoys in the harbor. Hundreds of dock laborers were unloading stockpiles of weapons, including Soviet-made SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missiles.

The prohibited areas and sanctuaries around Hanoi and Haiphong were ringed with SAM and antiaircraft emplacements. The dams and dikes that had been declared prohibited targets were now stacked with petroleum supplies and lined with missiles and triple-A guns.

Hutton walked to the locker next to Brad and leaned against it. "Why are we doing this?"

"We, as in you and me, or we, as in the Tuesday luncheon group in the White House?"

Looking forlorn, Harry fixed Brad in his gaze.

"Harry," Brad said stoically, "I've got the mystery figured out. Came to me in a supernatural experience."

A slight grin changed Harry's sad look.

"McNamara and his whiz kids own construction companies in the Republic of North Vietnam."

Hutton closed his eyes and chuckled.

"No, think about it. We bomb the dog shit out of dozens of meaningless targets, then stand down for whatever period of time it takes to rebuild them."

Brad's voice rose slightly. "Then, after everything has been remodeled," he lightly poked Harry, "Mac and his stooges telegraph the gomers to get the hell out of the way, because the first team needs some target practice."

Harry stopped smiling. "Brad, are you okay?"

"Do I look okay?"

"I'm serious."

"So am I," Brad replied, checking his newly issued .38-caliber revolver. "I couldn't be happier if I'd just won the Irish Sweepstakes and the Nobel prize."

"Maybe," Harry said cautiously, "you should ground yourself for a few days."

"No, I don't need to ground myself. I need to permanently ground every MiG pilot in North Vietnam, then I'll take a day off."

"You're losing it, my friend."

Brad emptied his pockets and placed their contents on the top shelf of the locker. He removed his academy ring and dropped it in the sleeve pocket of his flight suit, along with fifty American dollars.

Feeling his dog tags and Leigh Ann's pendant, Brad reached for his g suit. "Are you going with me, or have you decided to sit this one out?"

"Yeah, I'm going," Harry replied, reluctantly opening his locker. "What choice do we have?"

Brad zipped his g suit tight and reached for his custom-made torso harness. The snug-fitting harness would be attached to fittings on the ejection seat.

Inspecting his locker, Brad examined the small red-and-gold box at the back of the shelf, making sure it was intact. Inside the box was a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill for his squadron mates to buy a round of drinks if he did not return from a mission.

Reaching for his helmet, Brad paused, then turned to his RIO.

"Harry, we have to believe in ourselves. We're all we've got." Harry rested his forehead on his locker door and sighed. "I
know."

Brad placed a hand on Hutton's shoulder and gently squeezed him. "We're going to make it."

Chapter
40.

The massive flattop turned into the wind in preparation to launch the morning Alpha Strike. Since arriving on Yankee Station, the air wing had been hampered by the unseasonal monsoon conditions. A reconnaissance pilot had raced across the primary and secondary targets, reporting that the weather had lifted enough to strike the bridges.

Brad held the brakes and checked the engine instruments. Everything looked stabilized and normal. Exhaust gas temperatures matched; RPMs and hydraulic pressures were all steady. The F-4 carried a full complement of Sparrow and Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.

Waiting for Jack Carella to taxi in front of his Phantom, Brad looked around the flight deck. The crews, soaked to the skin by the frequent rain squalls, worked feverishly to ensure that the launch went as scheduled. The noise was deafening, forcing the men to communicate via radio headsets or hand signals.

Brad listened to the assistant air boss while the deck hands
,
leaning into the thirty-two-knot wind, fought to maintain their balance. Their pant legs whipped in the combination of wind and jet exhaust.

Peering through the drizzle on his canopy, Brad watched the carrier Coral Sea as the ship began to launch aircraft. The low overcast and reduced visibility made it difficult to see the airplanes leave the deck, but he could see them hurtle down the catapults.

Brad looked down at the kneeboard strapped to his right thigh. A chart, radio frequencies, and other mission information were clamped to the flat surface. The squadron had been assigned to fly cover for the A-4 Skyhawks and A-1 Skyraiders that were going to bomb the Haiphong rail and highway bridges.

If the strike was successful, the spans linking the city with the mainland would be destroyed. If not, the afternoon strike would attempt to complete the job.

Jack Carella, with Ernie Sheridan in the backseat, would be Brad's flight leader. They had the responsibility for rendezvousing with an RA-5C Vigilante, then escorting the sleek photo-reconnaissance aircraft directly over the target after the strike. The reception would definitely not be friendly.

Brad keyed his intercom. "You got everything cooking back there?"

"No," Harry answered nervously, "I'm composing a goddamn sonata."

Brad grinned at the reply, then watched Carella and Sheridan taxi toward the starboard catapult. A few seconds later, the drenched flight-deck director gave Brad the signal to taxi forward.

"Here we go," Brad announced to Harry as he added a handful of power to get the fighter rolling.

The Phantom lumbered up the slippery deck to the port-bow catapult. Stopping behind the jet blast deflector, Brad was scanning his instruments when the F-4 on the catapult was fired. He instinctively looked out at the aircraft.

The heavily laden Phantom squatted and raced down the deck. Brad watched in disbelief as the right afterburner snuffed out halfway through the cat stroke.

"Uh, oh," Brad said as the F-4 staggered off the bow. The pilot overrotated, causing the nose to rise too high. The Phantom rudder walked across the water, kicking up spray as it yawed to the right.

"Jettison! Jettison!" the frantic Air Boss radioed to the pilot in an attempt to get him to drop his ordnance. "Eject! Eject! Eject!"

Brad watched in horror as the RIO ejected at the instant the F-4 hit the water. The explosion caused debris to rain down as the carrier plunged through the floating aircraft parts.

"Did they get out?" Harry asked, stunned by the sudden tragedy. "Any chutes?"

"The backseater made it," Brad uttered, sick at the sight of death. "The pilot went in." The ejection seats had been sequenced to fire the RIO first.

"Was it one of ours?" Harry asked hesitantly.

Brad added power to taxi onto the catapult. "No, it was from the other squadron."

Harry turned as far to the right as possible. He could see the plane-guard helicopter settling over the downed crewman.

While their Phantom was being hooked to the catapult, Brad talked to Harry. "Remember our drill if we have any problems coming off the cat."

"I've got a grip on the loud handle."

They had briefed that if Brad gave the command to eject, Harry would initiate the ejection. Brad would have one hand on the control stick and the other on the throttles.

Carella's F-4 blasted off the starboard catapult and climbed gracefully away.

Brad felt the cat shuttle take tension on his Phantom. He observed the windswept cat officer talk into his Mickey Mouse headset, then give the turnup signal.

"Here we go," Brad announced as he shoved the throttles to full power, then into afterburner. He inhaled a deep breath of oxygen, quickly scanned the engine instruments, looked at the cat officer, and saluted.

The catapult fired, blasting the F-4 down the track and off the bow. The aircraft sank precariously low to the water before it started to climb.

Breathing rapidly, Brad raised the landing gear and flaps. "Is it okay," he said in an attempt to break the tension, "if I open my eyes now?"

"You're a smart-ass," Harry grunted as the Phantom entered the low, rain-filled overcast.