Top Gun (16 page)

“I’m not sure I follow you, Colonel.”

“It’s like this, son,” Dougan explained. “During World War Two and in Korea, the U.S. military air-combat kill ratio was something
on the order of ten to one: For every one of
us
the enemy got, we knocked down
ten
of them. That was good, but then along came Vietnam. We went into it full of piss and vinegar: After all, we were flying
state-of-the-art airplanes, and gomer was fielding for the most part twenty-year-old subsonic MiGs. But then a funny thing
happened. We found that our kill ratio dropped to two to one. That was unacceptable. We couldn’t continue to trade a multimillion-dollar
Phantom jet and its even more precious two-man crew for every pair of crappy old MiGs we managed to bag. Both the Air Force
and the Navy knew what was wrong: crummy missile performance, crippling rules of engagement—”

“Yes, sir,” Greene interrupted. “There were more places we couldn’t hit the enemy than places we could.”

Dougan nodded. “But the most important missing element in our bag of tricks was decent training in ACM. The brass thought
the day of the dogfight was over, but they were wrong, and our guys were frying, or ending up in the Hanoi Hilton because
of their mistake. The Navy did something about this. In 1969 they established a kind of fighter pilot’s Ph.D. program in ACM
for their F-4 Phantom crews. They called it The United States Navy Postgraduate Course in Fighter Weapons Tactics and Doctrine.”

Greene nodded. “Top Gun.”

Dougan smiled. “Funny nickname for that outfit, considering that the Navy’s Phantoms weren’t armed with guns, but Top Gun
it was, and it did the trick. Before Top Gun, the Navy’s kill ratio was two to one. After Top Gun, it jumped to around thirteen
to one. Meanwhile, the Air Force’s kill ratio actually got a little worse as the war progressed, until we initiated our own
tactical training programs.”

“Yes, sir.” Greene vaguely nodded, sipping at his drink, wondering where this conversation was headed. “We’ve got our Fighter
Weapons School….” FWS was a course in ACM given to selected Air Force pilots who were supposed to take what they’d learned
back to their squadrons.

“We’ve got that, and a few other programs,” Dougan said. “But what we’ve got doesn’t go far enough. The feeling is that the
Air Force needs something akin to the all-encompassing experience of computerized flight-simulation scenarios, but in out
in the
real
world, in
real
airplanes. To that end, something new is in the preliminary planning stages” —the colonel’s eyes gleamed—“something that
will make Top Gun look like a game of dodge ball in comparison.”

“What is it, Colonel?” Greene asked quickly, catching a bit of the colonel’s enthusiasm.

“It’s not anything definite,
yet,
son. The pieces haven’t all been cut out, let alone put together, at this point. I
do
know this much, the whole shebang is code-named ‘Red Sky,” and a chunk of it is based on Top Gun’s idea of having a core
of instructor pilots flying full-time ACM against visiting groups of experienced pilots.”

“Full-time ACM?” Greene gasped. “Holy shit, sir…”

Dougan laughed. “I thought you’d like the sound of that, Captain. Imagine, those instructors will be mock dogfighting most
every day.” He winked. “The way you and Lieutenant Blaisdale were doing this morning.”

“It sounds like hog heaven, Colonel.”

“Figured you’d say that.” Dougan smiled. “Now, here’s the good part. Senior officers like myself have been asked to keep an
eye out for likely candidates to participate in Red Sky’s eventual implementation.”

“I’d like to volunteer,” Greene said instantly.

Dougan nodded. “And I have it in mind to recommend you, and I’m considering Buzz Blaisdale, but that’s another story. So,
then, you think you’d like a piece of what I’ve been describing?”

“Yes, sir!”

The colonel warned, “Before you sign on the dotted line, you’d best know that there’s a catch.”

Greene sighed, thinking,
there always is.
“What do I have to do. Colonel?”

Dougan said it absolutely deadpan: “Join the Navy.”

Greene laughed. “Come on. Seriously, sir?”

“Never more serious in my life, Captain,” Dougan replied. “You want this, you’re going to have to join the Navy to get it.”
He held up his hand to stop Greene before he could reply. “I don’t mean literally, but you will be assigned aircraft-carrier
duty, assuming you can hack carrier landing training.”

“Sir, slow down!” Greene pleaded. He set his glass on Dougan’s desk. “Either I’ve had too much sour mash, or something here
isn’t making sense.”

“Okay.” Dougan nodded. “I’ll start from the beginning. On one hand, the Air Force wants to build on what the Navy has accomplished
through Top Gun. On the other hand, the Air Force is a little touchy about perpetuating the widely held notion that the Navy
flew rings around us over Vietnam.”

Greene nodded. “In Vietnam, I remember I heard a lot of disillusioned griping about how the Air Force had become a bombing
outfit, and that when it came to ACM the time had come to face reality and let the Navy handle it.”

“It’s not that we’ve got a lot to learn, so much as we’ve got a lot to
relearn,”
Dougan replied. “When it came to dogfìghting the Air Force used to have it, but we’ve lost it, and now we want to get it
back. The Air Force wants to benefit from the Navy’s training and ACM procedures. The question is how to do that without humiliating
ourselves in the process. Toward the end of the Vietnam War, small detachments of Navy fighter pilots who’d graduated Top
Gun visited Air Force fighter squadrons in Thailand to try to teach them ACM tactics. The Navy guys supposedly did their best,
but our own men were simply too uptight over the notion of being tutored by squids to really profit from the experience. This
time around, the Air Force thinks the tutelage process might work better if the situation is reversed: if a couple of Air
Force hotshots are dropped into a squid environment. Accordingly, they and the Navy came up with Operation Indian Giver.”

“Kerrist!” Greene scowled. “I’d like to meet the guy who comes up with the names for this stuff.”

“That guy’s ultra top secret,” Dougan muttered, nodding in bemused agreement.

“Why not just send me to Top Gun School?” Greene asked.

“Senior-level personnel
will
be attending Miramar,” Dougan replied. “But the Air Force wants to do it the other way, as well.” He shrugged. “If you want
to read between the lines, I figure that what the Air Force wants is to see how good the
average
Navy fighter pilot is.”

“You mean the guy who never gets to Top Gun,” Greene mused.

“Right on,” Dougan said. “Anyway, as you can imagine, there’s no shortage of Air Force fighter jocks who’d like to get in
on the ground floor of Red Sky. I’d like to see you make the cut, because I think you’ve got the makings of an excellent ACM
instructor. I could put you on the list of guys who’d like to take a Top Gun tour, but you’d be farther down on that sheet
than I was on that fight card I’ve got hanging.”

“I read you, Colonel,” Greene said glumly.

“I think your best chance would be if you volunteered for the least popular aspect of the preliminary program.”

“Which is Indian Giver.” Green sighed. “Long-term bunking with the squids on a flattop.”

Dougan nodded. “The word is that there’s been a deafening silence of guys volunteering for Indian Giver. It means eight months,
or maybe longer, cruising on a flattop, and before that an extended period of training in order to qualify to land on a carrier.”
Dougan’s expression turned sour. “The squid fighter jocks have always lorded it over us blue-suiters on the topic of carrier
landings. As far as the squids are concerned, they can do something we can’t. Just between us, I agree that they’ve got something
worthwhile to crow about. We’ve got some fine fighter pilots, but not a one of them has ever had to prove himself by setting
down a screaming jet on a little scrap of metal moving and tilting on a big ocean.”

“I can do it, sir, given the training,” Greene declared adamantly. “If it can be done, I can do it.”

“I figured you were sure enough of yourself to at least give it a shot,” Dougan smiled.

Greene asked, “You said you were also thinking about recommending Lieutenant Blaisdale for Indian Giver?”

“Indian Giver calls for several
two-man
Air Force evaluation teams,” Dougan acknowledged.

“Colonel, it sure would be be a lot easier to handle being surrounded by all those squids if I had my buddy along.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Dougan said wryly. “Captain Greene, you now know the whole of it. Or at least as much about
Red Sky as I do. So how about it? You want in or out of Indian Giver? If you’re willing to volunteer, I’ll start the paperwork.
Assuming approval, you’ll be temporarily reassigned to a paper Tactical Fighter Training Group and released to Indian Giver.
First off, the Air Force will teach you how to keep detailed notes on everything you’ll be learning. Next you’ll be sent to
Pensacola so that the squids can start checking you out. Eventually, assuming you do hack the squids’ program, you’ll be flying
along-side our web-footed friends on training operations.” He paused. “But don’t forget, Captain, you’ve got other options.
I could still likely get you assigned to a traditional fighter squadron.”

Screw that,
Greene thought as he briefly allowed himself the luxury of daydreaming of a time when he was somewhere happily ensconced
as a Red Sky instructor, with nothing to do but fly ACM against the best and the brightest, every blessed day of his life.

“I’ll go with Indian Giver, sir, assuming they’ll have me.” Greene laughed. “I’d do
submarine duty
if it offered me a way into Red Sky.”

(One)

New York City

8 May, 1974

Don Harrison’s cab ride seemed to take forever. It was a Wednesday morning, the midtown traffic was bad, and the rumpled Checker
cab was uncomfortable. But then, Harrison rarely rode in cabs. They were an endangered species in car-crazy L.A.

Lucky Los Angelenos,
he thought sourly as the cab squeaked and rattled like a bucket of bolts over the infamously cratered Manhattan streets.
The Checker smelled of urine. Its black leatherette upholstery was torn, with silverduct tape patching the spots where the
springs poked through. The bulletproof glass driver’s partition was plastered over with red-on-white stickers telling Harrison
all the things he couldn’t do: smoke; eat or drink; play a radio; or expect the driver to carry more than five dollars in
change. What Harrison did expect the driver to be carrying was a switchblade and a hypodermic loaded with dope. The guy was
unshaven, and dressed in rags. He spoke no English and would have made a good fighter pilot if only he could have toned down
his driving aggressiveness.

This was the cab from hell, but Harrison would have been ornery even if he’d been lounging in a stretch limo’s glove-leather
interior. Harrison was on his way to the most important business meeting in his life. He knew that he was supposed to be feeling
poised and aggressive, but instead he felt like throwing up, and his queasiness had nothing to do with the cab’s putrid odors
or its pitching and swaying due to its worn-out shocks…

Last week Harrison had been in his office at GAT, thinking that things couldn’t get any worse concerning the Pont jetliner,
when he’d received a telephone call from Roland Tolliver. Tolliver was Harrison’s contact at the Aviation Venture Group, the
Manhattan-based syndicate of investment banks that specialized in funding commercial-aircraft project startups. The AVG syndicate
had worked extensively with GAT during Herman Gold’s reign, and had most recently loaned the company $400 million to partially
finance GAT’s share of Skytrain Industrie’s development costs on the Pont. Tolliver’s call had concerned that $400 million
loan.

Thinking back on it now, Harrison realized that on the telephone Tolliver had been deft as a surgeon. With typical understatement,
Tolliver had delineated what he termed the “circulating troubling rumors” regarding the domestic airlines’ position on the
Pont vis-à-vis its engine controversy, and had sounded solicitous and sympathetic as he’d discussed GAT’s problems. It had
almost given Harrison hope.

But then Tolliver had sunk the hook, “inviting” Harrison to New York in order to discuss the matter. At that moment in the
background behind Tolliver’s unctuous voice, Harrison could have sworn that he’d heard the shriek of the grinding wheel as
AVG’s on-staff, hooded executioner sharpened his ax. Harrison had no desire to march like a lemming to New York in order to
leap off Tolliver’s cliff, but he knew he had no choice: AVG could decimate GAT’s credit rating at any time.

Harrison readily agreed with Tolliver that it would be best if he hopped a flight to the Big Apple in order to soothe the
bankers’ jitters.

Trouble was, now that Harrison was here, he still couldn’t shake the notion that this was a kamikaze mission, even as he hated
himself for being so pessimistic. Hadn’t Herman Gold long ago taught him that if you thought like a winner it helped you to
look like a winner, which more often than not
made
you a winner.

Herman, how I wish you were here now,
Harrison thought as the cab pulled up in front of the midtown building where AVG had its offices. Sunday night he’d taken
the red-eye to LaGuardia, and since then he’d been holed up at the Plaza Hotel, chowing down on room service and going over
his notes, refining his last-ditch strategy intended to get the AVG banking syndicate back into GAT’s cheerleading section.

Harrison dolefully stuffed some bills through the cab’s partition and got out, clutching his briefcase. The office building
was a looming, black glass rectangle that reminded Harrison of a huge version of the monolith in the movie
2001.