The Hot Pilots (27 page)

Nose-up
, Robbie thought.
Get the fuck out of here
. He released his trigger, hauled back on the stick and lit the afterburner. He was thinking about how he’d been firing for
only five seconds but had already expended half the ammunition in the one-thousand-round drum nestled behind the gun—

—when Farris and his wingman toggled off their bombs.

The noise was incredible as the river erupted in a mushroom cloud. Steam and smoke hung in the air; there was zero visibility;
as Robbie clawed his way upward at a sixty-degree angle he could only hope that he would not blindly run into flak or small-arms
fire, or debris—

—or Farris and his wingman, who were now somewhere close by, struggling to regain the relative safety of the same upper reaches
of the sky.

Robbie burst out of the smoke to see the rest of the strike force; an orbiting cartwheel of glinting specks against the blue.
High on adrenaline and feeling sassy, he stood his Thud on its tail and went into a vertical roll in order to scan the sky
for the rest of his flight.

“Very fancy maneuver, Lieutenant!” Farris called.

“Thanks, boss.” Robbie laughed. “Where are you?”

“Try eight o’clock, a little low.”

Robbie looked, saw the rest of Warrior flight, and fell over into a dive. His element lead, Captain Strauss, saw him coming,
and began setting up for their dive bomb attack.

“We’re heading east to take out the rest of those barges,” Farris called. “Hope we do as well as you did, son …”

Robbie didn’t exactly know how to reply to that, so he just busied himself double-checking his switches to make sure he’d
depressed his sight and was ready to drop his bombs. Then he caught up to Strauss and positioned himself on the captain’s
wing.

“Let’s go, Four,” Strauss murmured.

“Rog.” Robbie gritted his teeth as they began their run.

As they plummeted toward the bridge Robbie was disappointed to see that although Farris and his wingman had scored several
direct hits the structure looked to be only slightly damaged. Meanwhile, it seemed like every gun in North Vietnam was aiming
at him as he followed Strauss down. Glowing worms of tracers slithered past his canopy. Red fireballs of flak floated up at
him. He could see the flak rounds exploding; see the angry orange eyes of destruction reaching out for him with tentacles
of black smoke as the shock waves shook his Thud. He borderline-registered that Farris and his wingman were spewing 20-millimeter
cannon fire at the remaining barges. It didn’t seem to be making much of a difference in the volume of fire coming his way,
but then he guessed that having even one guy shooting at you was one guy too many…

Toggle the bombs
, he thought.
Toggle them early. Who gives a flying fuck where they land. Cut them loose and get the hell away from these people doing their
best to kill you
—

But then he thought about how in a situation like this you either bought it, or you didn’t; it was totally out of your control.
There was only one thing you
did
control, and that was the bomb load hanging from the Multiple Ejection Rack beneath your bird’s belly.

Maybe he couldn’t push the fear entirely out of his mind, but he
could
cage it—within the crimson, concentric circles of his bombsight.

Not yet
, he thought as his Thud screamed toward the harsh embrace of the enemy’s guns.
Not yet
, as the flak explosions buffeted—

The Thud’s red pipper lazily floated, then superimposed itself upon the bridge.

Oh yes. Now
—

He bottomed out at three thousand feet, toggled off, and lit the afterburner, jinking like crazy, kicking rudder and moving
the control stick every which way, doing everything he could to zigzag and throw off gomer’s aim, short of throwing himself
out of the sky.

He climbed out of the righteous firestorm that was a combination of the enemy’s guns and his own exploding ordnance, and then
looked around for Captain Strauss. He saw that his element leader was safe and sound on his ten o’clock. He glanced at the
bridge. It was still standing, but he could have sworn that there were a couple of more craters in it where his red pipper
had been only a few seconds before.

The next rotation of Thuds was already beginning their bombing run as Farris called, “Warrior Four, tighten it up, son. It’s
a crowded sky, and there ain’t no traffic lights.”

“Rog, copy,” Robbie transmitted. As he came around a stray pair of Thuds startled him by streaking across his nose.
A crowded sky, all right
.

“Boss, you finish off those barges?” Strauss asked.

“Affirmative.” Farris chuckled. “Let’s start home.”

“I’m light on fuel, boss,” Robbie said as he regained his position on Strauss’s wing.

“We’re heading for the tankers now, son …”

Robbie glanced at his watch: 9:17; exactly six minutes in combat.
Well, they say that time flies when you’re having a good time
…

He’d never imagined that six minutes could last an eternity.

Robbie, showered and shaved and wearing a fresh flight suit, was sitting alone at a corner table in the officers’ club. He
was smoking a cigarette, nursing a beer, feeling glad that the first mission was over, and apprehensive about the next ninety-nine.
The radio behind the bar was on: Dionne Warwick singing “Walk on By.”

It was only one o’clock in the afternoon, but it might as well have been one in the morning from the atmosphere inside the
club. The place was always dimly lit; the round tables always filled with pilots unwinding after coming off a mission. The
club even had waitresses: a couple of Thai girls in their late teens. They were both less than five feet tall; perfect little
doll women, with long black hair straight as horses’ manes, high cheekbones, and small, impenetrable, onyx eyes. The girls
spoke no English; they simply giggled as they flitted from table to table with their beer-laden trays. They answered, interchangeably,
to “Hey-you” and “Come-mere,” and wore Air Force castoffs: worn-out fatigue pants cut off at the knees and old white T-shirts
shrunk so small that the girls’ round breasts and cherry nipples poked through the thin cotton.

Every pilot liked to talk about pronging these two, but Robbie knew that nobody ever actually would. The girls were fresh
and innocent; perpetual kid sisters. Nobody wanted that silvery giggling to stop.

“I owe you one of these …”

Robbie looked up. It was his boss, Lieutenant Colonel Farris, holding a pair of long-necked beers. Robbie started to get to
his feet in order to come to attention and salute.

“Forget about it,” Farris said. He set the beers on the table and grabbed a chair. “You can stop me if I’m wrong, Lieutenant,
but I’d wager you’re feeling a little depressed about now … Am I right?”

“Yes, sir.” Robbie nodded. “I guess I am …”

“That’s normal,” Farris assured him. “It’s kind of like postcoital depression. Do you read me … ?”

“Uh, yes, sir…” Robbie said awkwardly. “I guess …”

Farris studied him. “You got something else on your mind, now’s the time to spit it out.”

“Well,” Robbie hesitated. “I feel really bad about today, and with all due respect, I don’t think it’s post—Well, what you
said …”

“Go on,” Farris coaxed, taking a sip of his beer.

“A couple of times during the mission I almost lost it, sir…”

“You saying you were scared?”

Robbie thought about how he’d frozen up after that first midair refueling, and the way he’d felt while executing his bombing
run. “I guess I’m saying that I was so scared that I thought I was going to die of fright.”

“That’s good,” Farris said. “Any man who isn’t scared doing what we do is too damned ignorant to be here. The important thing
is you didn’t let your fear win.”

“But—”

“Listen to me, Lieutenant. Today, thanks to the luck of the draw, you were up against flight conditions that would have taxed
my most veteran pilot—”

“None of my training prepared me for what I had to do this morning—”

“That’s right.” Farris nodded. “But you handled it. Sure you had a few moments there when things were maybe a little touch
and go, but you hung in. You more than did your job.”

“Did I?” Robbie asked. “I’ve been thinking about the recon film we saw after debriefing. That bridge was still standing after
the strike.”

Farris shrugged. “That’s how it is. A bridge is just about the hardest target there is to knock down. It’s built to take punishment,
and if a bomb doesn’t land directly on it, all that happens is the bridge gets wet. Anyway, we’ll be going back to Song Sen
in a couple of days,” he added indifferently.

“Back
there?
So
soon?
” Robbie asked, surprised.

“Photo recon shows stacks of construction materials in the village. Gomer will have his bridge back in shape in no time flat.”

Robbie shook his head. “I just don’t get it, sir. Here I am being asked to fly missions requiring skills in which I’ve received
no training, and restricted from defending myself from the enemy, in order to bomb targets that the enemy can rebuild more
easily than I can knock them down—”

Farris toasted him with his beer bottle. “Welcome to Vietnam.”

Major General Howard Simon’s office was large but seemed too small to contain all the proud memories and tradition spanning
his forty years of service. Normally, Lieutenant Colonel Steven Gold felt like a kid turned loose in a candy store whenever
he visited this office, but not today.

Steve was standing at attention in front of the general’s desk, waiting for his boss to finish reading the report he’d just
delivered. As Steve waited, he tried to imagine the office as he’d known and loved it.

Up on the walls had been photos of the general when he was a seemingly impossibly young, fledgling lieutenant, and later photos
of him as a confident-looking colonel in a leather flight jacket standing proudly with the bomber crews under his command
in Europe during the war. There had been photographs of the general taken with the war birds that he had nurtured during his
tenure at Wright-Patterson’s research and design center; photos of him wearing his first star; photos taken with Truman, and
with Ike; photos of him as a two-star general, conferring with JFK, and with Lyndon Johnson.

And the photographs of Howard Simon with famous men and famous airplanes in fabulous places were only a small fraction of
what there had been to see. There had been the complete collection of Army Air Corps and USAF insignia, and the scale models
of airplanes. There had been vintage leather flying helmets, first-edition flight manuals, dummy ordnance—

But now the office was in disarray. Dust motes hung and twirled like dogfighting biplanes in the sunlight streaming through
the picture windows that looked out on the airfield. There were open, half-filled packing cases and pads of wrapping tissue
littering the carpet. Ghostly rectangles stained the walls where the photographs had only recently hung. The office was in
this sorry state because it was being disassembled.

Steve’s boss was retiring.

“Excellent report,” Simon said, setting the folder aside.

“Thank you, sir.” Steve had been relocated to Wright-Patterson for the past few months, living out of temporary officers’
quarters on base as he worked closely with the general. Simon was putting his professional affairs in order, closing out the
books on his long career of service to his country.

“Pull up a chair, Steve,” Simon invited. He was a tall, gaunt man in his sixties, with a shock of snow white hair and bright
blue eyes. “That is, if you can manage to find one in all this mess …”

“Yes, sir.” Steve removed the framed set of RAF-embroidered insignia from a straight-backed chair and leaned the collection
against some World War I vintage aircraft identification charts that were already stacked.

“I spoke with your father this morning,” Simon began as Steve sat down. “Do you know the old boy offered me a job selling
GAT airplanes to the government?”

Steve chose to assume the general’s question was rhetorical, but actually he had known about the offer. His father had discussed
it with him before making it to Simon. “It’s not such a bad idea, sir,” Steve offered.

“Could you ever imagine me a salesman?” Simon laughed. “I can just hear my sales pitch now: ‘You’ll buy these airplanes, and
that’s an order!’”

“Yes, sir. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all, sir…”

Simon laughed again. “Your father mentioned that the Vector-A matter was proceeding on schedule, but he was understandably
loath to go into the specifics over the telephone about how he was managing to get the weapons firing systems into Israel.
He said you could fill me in …”

“Yes, sir, well, it’s kind of complicated—”

“And risky,” Simon interjected. “I must say, I have to admire Herman’s courage in going through with it.”

“Well, my father’s never shirked from doing his duty for his country,” Steve said proudly. “Anyway, like I said, it’s complicated,
and I’m not all that clear myself on the specifics, but basically what’s happening is that the partially disassembled Vector-A
systems are being sent to Israel by way of France. The stuff leaves America hidden in GAT shipments to Sky Train Industrie—”

“That’s the name of the commercial jetliner consortium that GAT belongs to, isn’t it?” Simon asked.

“Yes, sir, along with the British firm of Stoat-Black and the French company Aérosens,” Steve replied. “It seems the Aérosens
directors are sympathetic toward Israel—”

“Well, they ought to be,” Simon snorted. “They’re making a fortune selling the Israelis Tyran II jet fighters …”

Steve nodded. “Anyway, Israel is paying a premium price for its Tyran IIs. In exchange Aérosens’ directors have agreed to
look the other way so that Mossad operatives working within the company can hide the Vector-A components among the Tyran II
spare parts shipments destined for Israel.”