COMING SOON

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SON OF THUNDER

(Chapters 1 through 3)

A novel by J.D. Wetterling

Chapter One

It was a perfect Sunday morning for a baptism by fire. A magnificent clear blue sky covered the azure and emerald stained glass of the South China Sea, and a meandering tan ribbon of sand separated the sea from the lush, ragged green of the tropical jungle. Fire and brimstone were not a part of the spectacular scenery over the eastern shore of South Vietnam, but both were there, loaded and locked in the barrels of ten big anti-aircraft guns just over the horizon to the northwest.

Two F-100 Super Sabre jet fighter-bombers, in jungle camouflage greens and browns, streaked through the heavy air of the tropics at fourteen thousand feet armed to the teeth with the weapons of war. The leader of the two-ship flight, called Dusty Five One Flight, was Lieutenant Colonel Jack English, a crusty eighteen-year Air Force veteran and Operations Officer of the 629^th Tactical Fighter Squadron, Tuy Hoa ("TWO-ee-wa"—rhymes with Ma) Airbase, Republic of Vietnam.

His wingman was 25-year-old First Lieutenant John D. Ellsworth, fresh out of fighter pilot school in New Mexico. This was as good as it could get in John’s view—son of a poor Midwestern farmer, half a world from home, driving a single-seat, single-engine, supersonic jet fighter in a war to liberate a whole nation of poor farmers from Communist oppression.

"Gung-ho" was the standard term, but as an adjective it was inadequate for John’s mind-set. His goal in pilot training had been to finish high enough in his class to draw a fighter assignment to Vietnam. When he graduated first in his class he was disappointed that there were no F-105 assignments offered. He had dreamed of spending the war in a single-seat "Thud" over the Red River Valley of North Vietnam, hammering away at Ho Chi Minh’s heartland around Hanoi and Haiphong. That it was the most dangerous mission of the war did not register in a mind that considered living dangerously the pinnacle of fighter pilot cool. He took the next best assignment available, F-100s, then fought his way up to graduate "Top Gun." His greatest concern in fighter pilot school had been that the war would end before he got there. Mortality had not yet registered in a young mind under the influence of that group psychosis the recruiting posters called esprit de corps. The Lieutenants’ motto, repeated ad nausea at the bar was, "It’s a lousy war, but it’s the only one we’ve got." On that Sunday morning, in the cramped, noisy womb of that swept-wing angel of death, the war suited John perfectly.

At Chu Lai, about 160 miles north, the two F-100’s banked left and rolled out headed northwesterly across the rugged, jungle-covered mountains of Vietnam’s central highlands, heading for the A Shau Valley on the border between South Vietnam and Laos. There was something different about this day. Like cattle sensing a storm brewing, man and machine sensed death on the horizon, but greenhorn John thought it was just a case of pre-game jitters.

The air war in South Vietnam and Laos was at its peak and the A Shau Valley was one of the primary battlegrounds. As the southern terminus of one of the branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, this beautiful wandering valley, just fifty-five miles west of the big coastal city of Da Nang, had been the scene of some of the war’s bloodiest battles.

In March of ‘68, President Johnson halted the bombing of most of North Vietnam. It was a so-called "goodwill" gesture aimed at furthering the peace talks in Paris between North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger. One thing it did accomplish: the flow of North Vietnamese supplies down the Trail through Laos and into South Vietnam increased many-fold. At night the truck traffic was as heavy as the Los Angeles Freeway at rush hour. While Tho and Kissinger grappled for position like two sumo wrestlers on the front pages of the world’s newspapers, Uncle Ho was moving his big anti-aircraft guns, no longer needed back home, onto the Trail to protect his supply lines.

The A Shau valley, long and narrow with a steep mountain rim and triple canopy jungle, was currently in the hands of the Army of the Republic of (South) Vietnam—ARVN for short—and the US Army, but Ho Chi Minh wanted it back, and another bloody battle was brewing.

Dusty Five One Flight’s mission that morning was called "road interdiction" on the frag order from Seventh Air Force. That meant cratering the roads in the daytime so the big Russian-made two-and-a-half ton trucks, loaded with war supplies, couldn’t travel them at night. The strategy was very close to worthless. Countless North Vietnamese with two-dollar shovels could negate millions of dollars worth of air power in a matter of a few hours. That section of the Trail that led over the western ridge into the A Shau was so crucial to Ho’s resupply efforts that he had moved in several dozen anti-aircraft artillery pieces to protect the shovelers.

Colonel English, a salty Korean War veteran, had sensed a hot mission. In the pre-flight briefing that morning he had lectured John at length on how to duel anti-aircraft artillery batteries and live to tell about it.

"Lieutenant, keep that plane turning at all times or there won’t be a piece of you large enough to ship home. You’ll be a part of the Southeast Asian dust till the end of time." He slapped his hand knuckle side down on the table. That meant ‘crash and burn’ in fighter pilot sign language. His message was crystal clear. "Fly steep dive angles on your bomb runs. That guy on the other end of the gun will be as scared as you are. But he probably can’t run and hide. We’ve been finding them handcuffed to their weapons lately."

John was only two months into a twelve-month tour of duty and had yet to see big anti-aircraft artillery fired at anybody, thanks to some judicious scheduling on the part of Colonel English. But apparently the Colonel figured John was now ready for the real stuff and the young Lieutenant hung on every word of his hero’s advice as reverently as if he were listening to the Pope giving the benediction.

Lieutenant Colonel English didn’t carry an ounce of fat on his six-foot frame. Two wars and a few thousand hours of jet fighter time had stooped his shoulders a bit, but his blue eyes burned with the intensity of a man who loved his work. He was a young tiger in an aging, graying body, a mentor and role model, and John worshipped him.

When the briefing was over Colonel English concluded with his famous invitation, the one all the lieutenants knew by heart. "Well, there’s a couple of supersonic angels all gussied up and waiting out there on the flightline, Lieutenant. Let’s go light their fire and dance the wild blue."

They arrived over A Shau just as another flight of two F-100’s, Panther Two One Flight, was bombing the target under the direction of the Forward Air Controller. The FAC, whose call sign was Golf One, was flying an O-1, a single-engine "Bird Dog" spotter plane no bigger than a Piper Cub. John and Colonel English switched to Golf One’s radio frequency and listened in on the conversation as they watched the F-100’s attacking the target. It was shooting back. As Dusty Flight circled high and to the east, John could see the muzzle flashes of 37-millimeter guns, the geyser of tracers which represented every fourth or fifth bullet, and the sickening black puffs of flak bursts as the bullets exploded at preset altitudes.

"Panther Two Two is in from the west," the pilot called as one of the planes dove on the target.

There was a tone and intensity in that voice that John would recognize anywhere—he’d heard it many times before. It was Rock Dillon, his friend from fighter pilot school, the guy he had consumed countless beers with at the Officer’s Club, competed against for "Top Gun" honors, and beaten by the slimmest of margins. He was the only guy John knew who might, just might, have a greater passion for this business than he had himself. John wanted to call out to him but knew better than to distract him at a time when the utmost concentration was so critical.

Rock dropped two bombs and started to pull out of his dive. Just as he got the nose of his plane pointed back toward blue sky, one of the North Vietnamese guns found its mark. The plane, without a word from Rock, rolled upside down and split-essed straight into the ground in an enormous fireball.

There was stunned silence on the radio. John could hear his own pulse thumping in his ears. All the butterflies from all the football games he’d ever played were congregating in his gut. The cockpit air conditioner was turned down so low it was blowing flakes of frost, but John was drenched in sweat. His tongue felt like an oversized cud of sawdust in a mouth totally devoid of saliva. He fumbled for the water flask in the lower pocket of his G-suit and released his oxygen mask to take a drink. He was hyper-ventilating so badly he choked on the water. After re-attaching the oxygen mask, he flipped the toggle switch to one hundred percent oxygen and tried to concentrate on taking deep breaths. He had no doubt about what would happen next.

The FAC, from his position west of the target, broke the silence by stating the obvious. "Well, I guess there’s no need to call Search-and-Rescue on this one. I’m sorry, Panther Two One. You might as well take it on home. I’ll file a report from this end."

"Roger, Golf One," Panther Two One replied. He sounded like a whipped pup.

"Dusty Five One Flight, this is Golf One. Did you see where that ground fire was coming from?"

"That’s affirmative, Golf One," Colonel English replied. His voice was calm and confident—just another day at the office. It was a tone John worked hard to emulate.

"Well, that’s your target. Use your own tactics and make as few or as many passes as you want. I’m holding two miles west of the ridge at 12,000 feet. I’ll be well out of your way. You’re cleared to attack." The FAC’s voice was sad and weary. His words sounded like a eulogy, as if he were resigned to letting two more fighter pilots bury themselves in the jungle.

"Dusty Flight, set ‘em up hot. Arm nose-tail. Bomb pairs," Colonel English ordered. His ominous command produced a rush of adrenaline through John and jolted him out of his shell-shocked state. His right hand felt like it had five thumbs as he fumbled with the armament switches.

At fourteen thousand feet directly over the target, the flak bursts were well below the two F-100’s, but they formed a broken deck of black clouds partially obscuring John’s view of the ground.

"Lead’s in from the north," called Colonel English as he rolled belly up to the morning sun and pointed his nose down toward the target in a 45-degree angle. There was a steely, torqued-jaw tone to his voice as he stared down the barrels of those big guns.

John continued the circular orbit around to the west, laid the stick over against his left knee and rolled in as Colonel English was midway through his first dive bomb run. He made his radio call, but what he heard through his own earphones sounded like a stranger talking—the tone was an octave higher, with just a hint of a quaver.

Colonel English was barely visible among the black clouds of flak. The target, on the other hand, was perfectly clear—two circular gun sites with five guns each next to the snaking dirt road on the ridge. They were so new they had not yet been covered with camouflage netting.

The guns in one of those sites rotated around toward John, the circle of muzzle flashes winked away on the ground, and in the same instant his plane was enveloped by tracers and black flak bursts. He had preset his gun sight for a forty-five-degree dive angle and five hundred knots airspeed, but he had rolled in so close to the target that his dive-angle was almost straight down, the airspeed was already passing 500 knots, and all his parameters were wrong and getting worse. There was no way he could hit the target out of such a messed up dive.

John’s face and exploding bullets the size of walnuts were closing on one another at over 1000 miles per hour and he thought he was inhaling his last breath. In total panic, he punched the bomb release button just to get rid of the bombs and pulled back hard on the control stick. Too hard....

His G-suit inflated automatically, squeezing his legs and abdomen like a tourniquet. John grunted like a weight lifter but the centrifugal force of the dive recovery drove him down into his seat so hard that it drained the blood from his eyeballs. He blacked out.

With his vision gone and only his inner ear and seat of the pants to guide him, he held the control stick steady and counted to five to make sure the plane was headed skyward again, then eased up on the back pressure. Ten seconds or so later, with the G-forces off his body, his vision returned and he desperately scanned the instrument panel to reorient himself.

"What’s the matter, Two?" Colonel English asked from some far away corner of the cosmos.

It was only then that John realized he had not felt the "thump-thump" of two bombs leaving the plane when he had punched the pickle button atop the control stick.

His eyes rotated instantly to the armament control panel on the side console. The switch settings were wrong. Then another quick glance at the instrument panel sent shivers through his sweat-soaked body. The accelerometer gauge told him he had over-stressed the wings—nine G’s of centrifugal force on the wings during that terror-stricken dive recovery. According to the book, seven and one-half G’s were the redline—exceed that and the wings fold up around your ears. John could hear the voice of his old instructor at gunnery school: "That was one ham-fisted piece of stick and rudder work, Lieutenant. You got a death wish or something?" He had lived for this day, dreamed about this day, and now that it had finally arrived, he was so scared he was trying to kill himself.

"Dusty Five Two, this is Five One. How do you read?" This time Colonel English’s voice had an irate tone. He could be a mean mother when he wanted to be. John had never met a field grade officer who couldn’t.

"Five Two, loud and clear. I couldn’t pick up the target for all the flak and I didn’t want to waste the bombs." It still sounded like a stranger talking and this time the stranger was telling blatant lies. He was much more concerned about wasting his million-dollar hide than about wasting a couple of thousand dollar bombs. The truth was he should be dead and he knew it. The only thing that could have kept the wings from folding up at nine G’s was the weight of those accidentally undropped bombs still hanging on the outboard pylons. If he had gotten the switch settings correct, steep as that dive was, his plane would have disintegrated and rained scrap metal and pieces of his hide all over the A Shau.

Then he committed the most outrageously suicidal act of all. Rather than admit to his flight commander he had screwed up and overstressed the airplane, rather than take that badly damaged F-100 straight home and gingerly put it on the ground, he said nothing.

John took a deep breath and dove into that fire hose of tracers again. From somewhere he could feel copious quantities of adrenaline being injected into his system. His mind felt removed from his skull, as if it were residing in a safe place, watching and pulling the strings on the slow motion puppet that was his body. This time the adrenaline seemed to anesthetize the fear, and it was all mechanical.

The tracers weren’t quite as heavy, thanks to Colonel English’s good shooting, but they were still right in his face. He pickled off two bombs and pulled out of the dive with a smooth six G’s and pointed right at the mid-morning sun.

"Bull’s-eye, Two," Colonel English called.

Oh sweet redemption, John thought, but answered with a curt, "Roger."

Confidence returned. The baptism was over and he had not drowned in spite of himself. The gun camera was not mounted inside his head and there was no co-pilot to witness that fiasco on the first bomb run, so he could write his own history.

After they had dropped all their bombs, they strafed the jungle perimeter around the decimated gun sites, probing for the North Vietnamese ammunition supplies with 20-millimeter cannon fire. By this time the North Vietnamese gunners, if there were any left alive, had lost their enthusiasm for shooting at F-100’s and John and Colonel English were unopposed as they worked over that ridge like a couple of mad hornets.

On John’s second strafing pass, as he was hosing down the area south of one of the gun sites, a large explosion with black smoke erupted out of the triple canopy jungle.

"You found the ammo dump with that one, Two. Good shooting," called Colonel English. John was clearly back in the colonel’s good graces.

Again he replied with a curt, "Roger," but this time his calm, cool, fighter pilot tone of voice had returned.

"Bring it on in, Two, and we’ll go down and take a closer look."

John pulled up into route formation on Colonel English’s left wing and they dove for the valley floor. Coming up the A Shau valley right on the deck, they pulled up into a climbing right-hand turn and popped over the ridge just above the treetops.

The devastation was complete. The gun sites were a smoldering junkyard of twisted gun barrels, scrap iron and bloody body parts. They swung around to the scorched earth where Rock’s plane had crashed. There was not a single piece of scrap metal visible in that small, steaming crater.

"Dusty Five One Flight, that was one fantastic piece of work. My bomb damage assessment report will show two gun sites with several guns each destroyed, one ammo dump and fifty Killed-By-Air. It was great working with you. I’m going to put you two in for a hero medal. Good job. Good day," Golf One called. He sounded born again.

"Roger, Golf One, copy the BDA and the KBA. The pleasure was all ours. Sorry about Panther Two Two. Good day." Colonel English was calm and collected as ever. The flight back to Tuy Hoa was just plain thrilling. The effects of the adrenaline had not even begun to wear off. John remembered having a kidney stone attack once. The pain was excruciating and multiple shots of morphine had done no good at all. Suddenly the stone passed, the pain stopped, and he floated right up off the bed propelled by all that morphine. That was nothing compared to this high, and in a single-seat fighter no one else could hear the whoops and hollers of ecstasy—or see the mistakes. They had killed his friend but he made them pay the price, and the proud victor promised himself that he would spend the next ten months extracting a bigger price.

As they flew home over the mountainous jungle of the central highlands, the midday cumulus clouds were already well developed. They frolicked in three dimensions like two larks playing follow-the-leader through a forest of towering, puffy white clouds—in and out and up and down and over and around.

Those forever vivid memories of the carnage at A Shau, the terror of imminent doom that had paralyzed him and the realization that Rock was dead and by all odds he should be too, were stuffed down into that black box—the receptacle for all things too horrifying to think about—at the lowest depths of John’s soul. He knew he would have to deal with them later, but right now they were overpowered by the sheer exhilaration of having been shot at and missed.

CHAPTER TWO

They parked the Super Sabres at the fuel dump, a grid of huge black rubber bladders full of JP-4 surrounded by earthen revetments but exposed to the sky...or incoming rocket and mortar rounds. Lieutenant Colonel English, sporting a big grin and multiple salt rings under each armpit of his wet flight suit sauntered over to John just as he stepped off the boarding ladder.

"That’ll get you a Distinguished Flying Cross or I’ll kiss your ass," he roared as he slapped John on his wet back. The turbine blades of the jet engines were still winding down with a deepening metallic whine, making conversation difficult.

"Thank you, sir," John replied, but his grin was something less than jaunty, in spite of his efforts. His knees were wobbly—the steadying effect of the adrenaline had worn off —and he felt at least a decade older than the gung-ho kid who flew off to war just a couple of hours ago.

"You did a good job, son, and I’m proud of you." He shook John’s hand. Something under the wings of John’s plane caught Colonel English’s eye. "What the...?" He ducked under the starboard wing for a closer look followed by John.

Dozens of rivets that held the aluminum skin to the underside of the wing spars were popped and hanging down about half an inch. The colonel pulled a panel loose that revealed the big steel I-beam that was the main spar. It had rivers of hairline cracks in it.

With hands on his knees, Colonel English let out a low whistle and turned and stared at John as if he had just seen him walk on water.

John considered lying about it, but the evidence couldn’t be hidden. Aside from the overwhelming evidence they were looking at, the extreme readings of the accelerometer were permanently recorded by the instrument and checked by the crew chief at the end of each flight.

"The accelerometer read nine G’s, sir."

Colonel English pondered that for a moment and said in low, reverent tones, "Gawd almighty. I don’t know why you didn’t splatter yourself all over the A Shau, boy. Someone up there must really like you." He rolled his eyes heavenward. "But I can assure you the old man won’t. Let’s debrief."

"Yes, sir." John was soaked with sweat but shivering in the hot sun. He wondered if Colonel English noticed. A horrible thought ran through his mind: his flying career might be over.

The debriefing was long, intense and agonizing. The thrill of victory was a distant memory. Colonel English had suggested they debrief in the squadron commander’s office. A very somber Colonel Redman, Squadron Commander, sat and listened to Colonel English’s comments as John did more humble listening than talking. John admitted that perhaps watching his friend die had effected his performance, and, "Yes, sir," he was scared, but there was no acceptable excuse. John suffered a convenient memory loss as to just what he knew about the state of his over-stressed aircraft and when—another fringe benefit of a single seat fighter. The truth would have gotten him reassigned to the base civil engineering squadron, never to fly again. Any pilot stupid enough to continue to fly a severely damaged plane whose wings he had just tried to pull off in a fit of panic was not an asset to the U. S. Air Force.

"Well, Lieutenant, you have screwed the pooch. Do you think you have learned anything from this experience? Do you think you can go back up there and fly that airplane the way you were taught and not kill yourself and break another one of my airplanes?" Colonel Redman’s tired eyes bored right into John’s soul. The hurt they conveyed made John feel so contrite he wanted to cry.

"Yes, sir. I’m sorry I broke your airplane. I know I don’t deserve a second chance but...I want this...more than anything, sir...and I would appreciate the opportunity to redeem myself." As he talked—begged—the thought that disturbed John even more than the possibility of being permanently grounded was that his own voice did not sound very convincingly confident. In the quiet of the squadron commander’s austere office, the thought of violent death by those big guns in his face less than an hour ago was more frightening than the actual event. If asked the question, he could not answer how he would react the next time...was not even sure he wanted there to be a next time. His mind was totally muddled by the very event he had lived for and trained for over the last two years.

"Well, I want you to take tomorrow off, Lieutenant, and give serious consideration to what you did wrong...." Colonel Redman leaned back in his chair and paused to let that sink in. John quit breathing. "Then I’m going to do something that I hope I don’t live to regret...." Now John fought to keep his lower lip from quivering. "We’ll try to put you on the flying schedule Tuesday with Major Gillespie. He can give me a second opinion of your capabilities." That emphasis on ‘try’ told John it was not a foregone conclusion. "Colonel English, if you don’t mind I’d like to have a few words with you. Lieutenant Ellsworth, you’re dismissed...you are a very lucky young man."

John rose from his chair and saluted. "Yes, sir. Thank you very much, sir." He exited the scene of his inquisition by the shortest route possible. As he slunk back to his hooch, he found himself thinking that dying a hero up at A Shau would have been preferable. The pain would have been considerably briefer, and everyone would assume he was killed by the enemy, not his own hand. Now his sense of invincibility was as fractured as the main spar of his airplane and courage hemorrhaged from the open wound. He wanted in the worst way to go straight back to the flight line and get into an F-100 and take-off and prove to himself he still had the right stuff. It was like falling off the bicycle as a kid—getting right back on was the best antidote for fear.

Dusty’s Pub, on the beach of the South China Sea, was the bar that the lieutenants "volunteered" to build for all the squadron pilots. In a land where the enemy could be anywhere and everywhere, the only safe place to relax was inside the perimeter bunkers and concertina wire. That limited the options to the beach and the bar, and the bar won 90% of the time. It was a twenty-five foot square slab of concrete with only one wall and a flat roof that doubled as a sun deck. Dusty’s unique decor included a V-shaped bar extending from the brick wall with eight rattan barstools around it. Behind the bar was a 1950’s vintage refrigerator for the beer, and above the fridge hung a felt painting of a naked blonde lounging on a tiger. On the wall to the right of the fridge were two rough wooden shelves that held the group’s hard liquor supply. The other three sides of Dusty’s Pub were bounded by the pilots’ living quarters—very basic mobile homes on skids about six feet from the edge of the concrete slab of the pub. They were so basic they looked more like dark green metal boxcars than living accommodations for four people. The only thing that kept them from being ovens in the oppressive heat of the tropics was one small overworked window-type air-conditioner mounted in a square hole in each end wall of the box car. The remaining floor space of Dusty’s was occupied by a half-dozen round wicker tables with woven tops, designed more like low coffee tables than bar tables, with four frameless woven wicker wingback chairs around each.

John and Colonel English’s mission to A Shau was by far the best bar story of the evening. Colonel English told the first person version, leaving out the less than glorious parts of John’s performance, to John’s immense relief. It was a debt he would never be able to repay. The colonel’s status rose to near sainthood in John’s grateful eyes. Hands in motion, the colonel described the action over the target while all the pub-crawlers analyzed and re-analyzed their tactics and what-if-ed it to death. Mercifully, John’s mentor chose to disappear after one telling of the story and two shots of scotch—neat.

John had received such a dose of humility that day that it was easy to sit on a barstool and play humble hero. Even the several beers that usually spelled the end of John’s country kid modesty were ineffective. The fear was, hopefully, tucked down out of sight, but just barely below the alcoholic fog level of the pub. Numerous verbal jabs by his associates were unsuccessful in getting John to expound upon Colonel English’s version of his baptism.

The Army nurses were over from Phu Hep Army Base, which shared Tuy Hoa Valley and its beach with the air base. They were sweet gals, though not exactly homecoming queens, and they were there. So in the best fighter pilot tradition, standards were adjusted accordingly. First Lieutenant Katherine Moffit was an exception to that adjustment, in John’s view. She was the short brunette in jungle fatigues sitting at a corner table, and there was something about her that appealed to John. Most of the jocks would probably say it was her D cups, but John liked to think he had a nobler perspective than that. Several men in the squadron had made passes at her—which was not a claim to fame in this environment—and she was friendly enough, but no one had bragged about getting to first base or even knowing where it was with Kate Moffit. The rap on her was something about a soldier in her past and a dislike of warfare and warriors in general, but that could have been sour grapes by those players who couldn’t find first base.

Twice her eyes had met John’s recently, but with no reaction on her part and he had yet to work up the courage to speak to her. Back at the fraternity house at the University of Illinois, John had always worked hard to cover up his country-boy-with-no-social-graces self-image. At six feet, one hundred eighty pounds, he felt like he had the right physical assets. The addition of a mustache in the war zone, wider than regulation, was, in his opinion, a capital improvement. It hid his crooked grin. But it did nothing to enhance his courage when it came to approaching women. And tonight, of all nights, he was not feeling like courage personified.

Suddenly she was headed his way.

"May I join you, Lieutenant Ellsworth?" she asked with a smile as she climbed aboard the rattan bar stool next to John.

"Uh-h-h, yes ma’am. My name’s John." He rotated about 45 degrees on his barstool and leaned toward her to hear over the din of the Pub.

"I’m Kate. I want to hear your version of today’s mission."

"Oh, it was a...uh...just a little Sunday morning baptismal service up in the A Shau. The Colonel said it all...." His words sounded awkward to him, his smile didn’t feel right and his face was hot.

"Complete with human sacrifices, I understand." She was still smiling and her tone was friendly, but she obviously wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

"Oh, one good friend—one of the world’s best fighter pilots—and about, uh, fifty gooks in retribution on the altar of freedom," he said.

"I’m sorry about your friend."

"Thanks...." John was his usual brilliant conversationalist self in the presence of women. "Fifty gooks are not enough retribution for his life."

A frown briefly furrowed Kate’s brow as she pondered that remark, and then she said, "I hear you two will probably get a Distinguished Flying Cross."

"I’d rather have my friend, Rock, back.…" John very nearly lost it there.

"You’re not feeling much like a hero, are you?"

Well, to be honest, ma’am...Kate, I’ve been trying to drown a number of imponderables in this beer, and I don’t feel much of anything. How about...would you be available for sober conversation tomorrow afternoon at 1400?" John could hear his words, but they seemed disassociated from his besotted mind. Courage is a wonderful thing, even when it comes out of a beer can, he thought.

Kate hesitated for a frightening heartbeat, then answered with a drop-dead smile, "I think I could arrange that. It’s my day off."

"The beach?"

"Sure."

"I’ll pick you up," John said with his first big grin of the evening. Even a blind pig finds an ear of corn once in a while, he thought. That wasn’t the end of the conversation. That’s just all he remembered. The horizon was rotating around his barstool and it was only partly because of the booze.

                                                                               *       *      *

The sedative effect of the beer wore off somewhere after midnight and the lid came open on the black box. This box wasn’t the inert kind that held recorded flight data in airplanes. This one stored up John’s fear like a jack-in-the-box, where it grew in the dark like a germ culture until the spring-loaded lid, uncontrolled by his conscious mind, popped open. The multiplied fright sprang forth like a raging, starving gargoyle, and John paid his dues for the day’s work.

There were tracers everywhere and John couldn’t get the Super Sabre out of its dive. He was pulling on the control stick with both hands for all he was worth, but it was frozen. He could hear Rock calling over the radio, "Pull up! Pull up, John!"

"Wake up! Wake up, damn it!" Ron shouted as he shook John with both hands.

John’s left leg was doubled up with his knee in his chest. With both hands he was trying to pull it right through his rib cage. He was drenched with sweat and the bed sheets were soaked.

"I think I’ve been hit." John felt his forehead. "It feels like the top of my skull has been blown away."

"It’s all that beer you consumed last night, hog breath. Take some aspirin and calm down." Ron lay back down on the bottom bunk.

John wondered why no one was awake in the other bunk if he had really been putting on such a show, but then he remembered the other two roommates were both on night alert. He rolled out of the top bunk, crash-landed on the floor and stumbled to the bathroom. It felt like the trailer was afloat in a rough sea. Palming three aspirin, he forced down two glasses of water and struggled back into the top bunk and the sweat-soaked sheets.

"Tell me, Ron," John asked as he stared up into the blackness, "did Kate talk to me last night?"

"Yeah. You’re taking her to the beach tomorrow. Pick her up at 1400. Now let me get some sleep, asshole."

"Oh, great! I was afraid that was part of the dream. Sorry to wake you."

Ron Johnson was a friend when he wasn’t rudely awakened from a sound sleep. He was another classmate from F-100 school, Class 68-FR. He was the only guy John ever met who really went to Slippery Rock State University and played football. He looked like the running back that he had been, stocky and still in good shape with a black flat top. Ron’s wife had often invited John over to dinner at their house, probably out of concern for his dietary habits. John’s date was usually their basset hound. The dog drank water out of the commode and his ears were always wet when he put his head and paws in John’s lap. They had given him the Biblical name of John the Basset.

It was nearly noon before John’s body even twitched again. After a shower, shave and a lot more water he felt miraculously fit. He pulled on a freshly washed, un-ironed flying suit and strolled down the sidewalk between two dozen pilots’ hooches enroute to the chow hall.

Tuy Hoa Air Base had only one large chow hall for the wing of three fighter squadrons and all the necessary support groups. The big beige metal building faced the South China Sea across a blacktop road and 100 yards of sand beach to the east. It formed a natural barrier of sorts for the base. The Tuy Hoa River formed the northern barrier, with a barren quarter mile stretch of sand serving as the open field of fire between the river bank and the northern perimeter machine gun bunkers. The chow hall and all the buildings on the base were clustered near the beach on the east side of two parallel runways running northeast/southwest, one a two-mile chunk of concrete for fast movers like F-100s and the other 4000 feet of perforated steel planking—PSP—for light planes and cargo planes. There was not a single tree or blade of grass inside the perimeter fence. The only thing that was there the day the USAF civil engineers arrived was coarse brown sand. Even now, five years into the war, the only vegetation was a few flower beds around the pilots’ hooches and Dusty’s Pub. It was a stark, dismal place by any definition.

It was another torrid day below the Tropic of Cancer and John’s fifty-yard walk generated a freshly sweat-soaked uniform, but it felt great to be alive and inhaling the salt air of the South China Sea, in plain view not 100 yards away. But in spite of a hot date on a day off, John felt sadness and anger over the loss of Rock and a gnawing uncertainty about his abilities as a fighter pilot—the kiss of death in this business. He wasn’t even certain he had a future as a fighter pilot at this point. Today was really supposed to be a day of punishment, like a kid being sent to his room to think it over after being a bad boy.

After an uninspiring chow hall ration of minute steak, soupy instant mashed potatoes and a wilted salad, John returned to the lieutenants’ motor pool next to the squadron lounge—Dusty’s Pub. It was the adjacent 25-foot slab of concrete, and it, too, was surrounded by four junior officers’ trailers. The field grade officers, majors and above slept just two to a trailer—one in each end—and were slightly removed from the noise of the lieutenants’ motor pool and the squadron lounge.

The motor pool contained three motor scooters variously consumed by rust. They were strictly unofficial transportation, passed along to new lieutenants as old lieutenants completed their one-year tour and rotated back to the real world.

John climbed onto the first one he came to, checked the gas supply, fired it up and headed for Phu Hep Army Base. It was only a mile down a dirt road south of Tuy Hoa Air Base. The road was actually the main drag between the nearest big city—Nha Trang—one hundred winding, rutted miles south, and the thatched roof hamlet of Tuy Hoa, just north across the Tuy Hoa River from the air base. It was full of pedestrian and bicycle traffic. Ninety percent of the humanity on the road wore shiny, black pajamas and pointed straw hats. The Tuy Hoa Valley was a farming community and both sides of the road were lined with rice paddies. Some of the more well-to-do farmers turned the muddy soil with a water buffalo and a sharp stick whose shape looked unchanged from the dawn of the agricultural age. Poorer farmers used something akin to a wooden spade. The air was full of that fetid odor of animal and human excrement—the fertilizer that made the rice grow. Children played in the yards of tiny thatched roof and wall hooches devoid of indoor plumbing, electricity or windows.

Everyone John met returned his smile. They seemed so industrious and happy—aside from the living standard and Oriental looks they were not a bit different than the kind of farm country folks John had grown up with on the other side of the world. It seemed a tragedy to John that these pleasant, unassuming people should have to be involved in such a war. Why couldn’t those old communists in Hanoi let these people live in peace? And why wasn’t the United States fighting this war on North Vietnam’s turf instead of disrupting the lives of so many innocent people who just wanted to be left alone to live their bare subsistence but happy lives? The sledge hammer reaction to the North’s guerrilla tactics in South Vietnam was destroying the innocent while trying to save them.

The guard at Phu Hep’s main gate waved John through. The Army base was more rudimentary and temporary looking than Tuy Hoa Air Base, with more wooden structures with tin roofs instead of metal buildings, and tents everywhere. Eight hundred yards of black top later he pulled up in front of the nurses’ barracks, nondescript square wooden structures with tin gable roofs and window air conditioning units—a sign of officers’ living quarters in the tropics.

Dressed in fatigues and combat boots, Kate came out through the door before he could park the motorscooter. It was not an outfit designed for sex appeal, and certainly not a first date, but Kate’s smile made up for that. John opened the right saddlebag to stow her beach bag and she climbed aboard behind him.

"How are you feeling today, Hero?" She asked as she put her arms around him from behind.

"Worth at least a million bucks, but don’t call me hero."

"Well how about Handsome John, then," she responded. Her mouth was so close to his right ear that her hot breath generated the most delightful chills down his spine.

They motored back out the gate, past the rice paddies, farmers and grinning children and back to Dusty’s motor pool.

"You can change in my hooch. All of my associates are at the office," John said. The trailer had one room on both ends with a bathroom in the middle. The floors were covered with an ugly dark brown linoleum and the walls with cheap blond wood paneling. There was an 8-by-16 inch window on each side wall, up near the ceiling, with just enough dark curtain material to keep out the light. With solid metal doorways the whole unit was just a plain box of refrigerated air that kept torrential rains off and shut out the world. John’s three roommates and he had decided to put the two bunk beds in one end and make a living room out of the other, instead of the standard floor plan of one bunk bed in each end. That way there was always a quiet place to sleep and a place to read, write or just waste time at any hour of day or night, since this war business was a 24-hour-a-day thing. The living area consisted of a three-cushion sofa of unknown origin and vintage along one wall, a desk and three-foot high refrigerator on the opposite wall with just enough room left over to walk between them. The walls were papered with a collage of every Playboy centerfold from at least the last decade.

John opened the door of the hooch and was wilted by the smell of the little Vietnamese cleaning lady. She was a sweet, ever-smiling little lady about four and a half feet tall wearing the standard black uniform with matching stained teeth. She was very efficient, but her odor was like nothing he’d ever smelled before coming to Vietnam. It must have had something to do with hygiene and diet, because she always looked clean. For the price of a few beers, she kept the hooch and the pilots’ clothes clean, but the lieutenants had to vacate the premises when she was around. Luckily, she was on her way out.

"Number one job, Mama-san."

She just nodded her head several times as she smiled a wide smile with one eye closed and said something in Vietnamese. If she knew a word of English, she never used it.

"Kate, sometimes Mama-san brings along her two daughters, about ten and twelve years old. They are the most beautiful little girls. I just love ‘em to pieces."

"I think these people are all beautiful, John."

John held the door for Kate and ushered her into the bathroom, apologizing for the smell as Mama-san left the hooch. "I think that perfume is called ‘Afternoon in Tuy Hoa City’. It lingers long after the company has gone."

Kate just chuckled. She didn’t seem to mind.

He got out of his sweaty flying suit and into a swimsuit while Kate changed in the bathroom, but he left his boots on. The blacktop road they had to cross could fry bare feet. He filled a cooler with a six-pack of beer and grabbed an old army blanket to lie on.

Kate came out of the bathroom wearing a yellow two-piece swimsuit under an unbuttoned, oversized fatigue jacket stripped of all rank and insignia.

"What do you think?" She said as she winged out the fatigue jacket with both hands.

He stared as long as he dared, swallowed, and said, "It, uh, takes my breath away."

"Thank you," she beamed. "I just got it in Bangkok a couple of weeks ago."

"It’s beautiful...like the girl wearing it." An awkward silence followed, as John was taken aback by his own glibness. "Uh, you might want to wear your boots till we get across the beach road, or I can carry you across. That black top is hot enough to grill steaks on."

She tilted her head slightly and stared at John with tongue on upper lip as she pondered her choices and all their implications. "My boots don’t match this ensemble," she decided, smiling. She had no comment at all about the wallpaper of their living room.

When they reached the chow hall John scooped up Kate and carried her across the road and onto the beach. She was heavier and more compact than he expected.

The beach was wide. A hundred yards east, the South China Sea lapped placidly at the shore. The tan, coarse sand was difficult to walk on, even at the water’s edge, with dunes just high enough to lend privacy to someone sitting near the water. They spread the GI blanket between the dunes and the edge of the wet sand. Aside from a few sandpipers and sea gulls, they had the beach to themselves.

Kate removed her fatigue jacket and dropped it on a corner of the blanket. Her tan skin and short, dark hair accented by the yellow suit and sparkling, emerald-green eyes stood out against the dunes like a mirage. She sat down beside him and began to apply suntan lotion as he unzipped and pulled off his flying boots.

"War is hell. Don’t you agree?" She said with a smile.

John froze for a split-second with both hands on one boot and his foot in the air. He couldn’t tell if she was trying to make a joke or provoke an argument. He pulled the boot off, dropped it beside the blanket on the sand, and looked at Kate.

"Well, it sure was yesterday, but I’m on...uh...vacation, I guess you call it, today and besides...politics and philosophy are not really my thing. I want to talk about you. Where are you from and what are you doing in a place like this?" She could try if she wanted, but John intended to try his best to avoid an argument with a pacifist, if that’s what she was. With what he had just been through—was still going through—he didn’t feel like debating that subject.

"Ooh, that’s a boring topic. I’m from everywhere—I’m an Army brat. But as a kid I spent a lot of time with my grandparents in L. A."

"Los Angeles?" John interrupted. "I would never have guessed you were a California girl."

"No, lower Alabama. Thanks for asking...you’re sharp." She paused to smile at him as he chuckled. "It was a little vegetable farm and my idea of heaven after life on army bases." She rolled over on her stomach and laid her head on her forearms. "Would you mind putting some lotion on my backside?"

"I would not mind at all. Thanks for asking...." John reached for the lotion bottle. This time Kate giggled and it had a remedial effect on John’s shyness. "I’m from heaven myself—a farm in western Illinois—but I never thought of it that way."

"I thought you had that fresh-from-the-farm air of credibility about you...."

John threw his head backed and laughed. "There was a time in my college days when I would have considered that an insult. My nickname at the Phi Delt fraternity house was "Kicker." That was short for "Shitkicker." I worked so hard to change that image.... I’m already sorry I told you that. If you drop that name at Dusty’s Pub I’ll rue the day I ever laid eyes on you."

"Oh, I don’t want you to rue. I’ll stick to ‘Handsome John’. You haven’t forgotten about that lotion, have you?"

"Oh, no...sorry. I even remember where you wanted it." John squeezed a clear, thin lotion out of the bottle onto her back between her shoulder blades. It ran down the valley of her backbone, under the strap of her suit top, and puddled in two dimples below her waistline. Neither of them talked as he concentrated on covering every square centimeter of her backside. Her skin was smooth as velvet, except for a brief time when goose bumps rose as he diligently rubbed the lotion on the back of her legs. He had some major physical manifestations himself as the world of war was overpowered by more basic considerations. This is some penance for being a bad boy, he thought, but only briefly. This little lady was doing an excellent job of keeping his troubled mind off his worries.

"Hey, thanks...good hands." With just the slightest flush to her face, Kate rolled over and sat up.

"You’re welcome. The pleasure was all mine. So tell me, what brings you to a place like this?"

"The U.S. Army, silly boy. It certainly was not choice. My father is a bird colonel on General Abrams’ staff at MAC-V Headquarters in Saigon. But don’t let that fool you. I am most assuredly not into this war. I don’t even step on bugs. Patching up men mutilated by other men just reinforces my conviction about the nature of mankind—and I’m certainly not a career type. I took this Army hitch to make my daddy happy—it worked—and that’s the only reason I did it. I’ll be a civilian in eight months and I can’t wait.

She stared out to sea and the silence got awkward, but John once again fought off her invitation to debate. "Where did you go to nurses’ training?"

"Denver General."

"Will you go back there when you get out of the Army?"

"I hope so."

"Could I interest you in a beer?" John asked as he opened the cooler and reached in.

"Is it from the same dog that bit you last night?"

John froze again. The green-eyed lady’s mind was quick and the tongue was acidic. "The same.... Kate, you’re brutal. Is your answer yes or no?"

"Yes." She laughed again. It was a laugh that neutralized the acid and it was infectious. "You absorb punishment well. It’s my way of compensating for my inadequacies. I’m sorry."

"Forgiven," John said as he pulled two Black Labels out of the cooler. There was a comment fraught with hidden meaning, he thought. He grabbed the five-inch, folding Buck knife he carried in a pocket sewed to his right flying boot and stabbed the tops of both cans twice and twisted.

"That’s a wicked looking can opener. Is that Air Force issue?"

"No. My dad gave it to me just before I left the States. I had the pocket sewed to the boot in the Philippines. We stopped there on the way over to attend Jungle Survival School. With a little bit of luck, stabbing beer cans is the only use it’ll get."

"Deo volente...Shalom." She raised her beer toward his and tapped his can.

"Cheers, Kate." John didn’t understand a word of Kate’s toast, but the cold beer felt good inside his hot body.

"Did you enjoy Jungle Survival?"

"Yeah, it was a kick. It was even educational. The thing that sticks in my mind was the snake lecture. The instructor said there were one hundred kinds of snakes in Southeast Asia. Ninety-nine are deadly poison and the other one eats you whole." Kate appeared to genuinely enjoy his humor. Her laugh gave him a chance to change the subject back to her.

"Living in Denver I bet you like to ski?"

"Sure do. You?" She asked.

"Yes, but I’m not very good at it. I spent Christmas vacation of ‘67 at Arapaho but never got off the beginner’s slope. I was afraid I’d break a leg and the war would end before I could get here." Oops. As soon as the words came out of his mouth he knew it was a mistake. He’d left himself wide open for the very thing he was trying to avoid—a pacifist haymaker. God almighty, maybe I do have a death wish, he thought to himself.

Kate took the opening and gave it everything she had. "Oh, you fighter pilot types are so weird. I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s a lousy war but it’s the only one we’ve got," she said.

"Well, that’s the sanitized version. Actually it’s a shitty...."

Kate reached over and poured her beer in John’s lap. Startled, John reached up and grabbed her wrist and they wrestled for the beer can. In their laughing struggle, her bathing suit top worked down a couple of inches below her tan line, revealing a sight John found outrageous. There, on her left breast, was a tattoo. It was a paratrooper insignia. Who, in her right mind, would deface such a thing of beauty? It was like finding permanent graffiti on bosom of the Venus de Milo.

Kate caught John’s darkening, open-mouthed stare and looked down over her cheekbones at her bosom. She dropped the beer can in his lap and with both hands she hiked her top up while John quickly relocated the beer can.

"What...?"

"The mark of the devil," she quickly interrupted. Her face clouded, her voice was hoarse and she sat up primly and stared out to sea. This time there was an extended silence that got really uncomfortable and he could not bring himself to look at her. He wanted to hear more explanation than that, but none was forthcoming. He took a long drag on his beer and tried to calm down. In the midwestern Bible belt where John grew up only tramps and circus ladies wore tattoos. He thought he heard a sniffle coming from Kate, and decided the gentlemanly thing to do was try to change the subject.

"Think it’ll rain?" He offered.

Kate shattered the silence with laughter and said, "Only on the just, country boy." She sniffed again and the storm cloud passed...but not the impression.

They spent the next hour drinking beer and perspiring and swapping stories about growing up in the country. Then, out of the blue, Kate said, "Tell me, John, what does it feel like to kill fifty people?"

"You don’t give up, do you?" The battle was joined. He sat with knees drawn up and arms around his legs, staring at the eastern horizon shimmering in the afternoon heat. He decided on the honest approach. She was far too sharp-witted to play mind games with. "To answer your question, it feels very good if you’ve just watched them kill one of your friends. But my main concern was...uh...about trying to do my job without killing myself or being killed by Charlie. All I could see most of the time was the business end of those guns." He considered telling her about the carnage he witnessed when it was over, but thought better of it. "I don’t think you’re talking to a psycho here, if that’s your real question."

She ignored his counter punch. "Did you ever watch a man die? I mean close up...right in his face, holding his hand...half his body blown away?" The passion in her tone of voice just confirmed the conviction of her words. She rotated 180 degrees on her fanny so she could more easily look into his eyes as they talked.

"No." John expected an anti-war diatribe, but she let it drop with another long silence as her eyes locked on his. She had magnetic eyes.

Finally she asked, "Were you scared?"

"You know fighter pilots are fearless...." That sounded like a lie, even to John. His guilty plea was a nervous laugh as he had to look away from her gaze.

"Bullshit, Lieutenant."

John hesitated before he responded. "Drill sergeant language does not become a lady of your class, Kate." But it went with the tattoo, he thought to himself. For the second time in the afternoon the sweetness and light began to fade from the beach party.

"You’re evading my question, John?"

John caved in. "I confess I was scared out of my wits, at first. I put that Super Sabre so far outside the envelope I can’t even tell you why I’m still here to talk about it." John just blurted it out.

"Envelope?" she asked.

"I over-stressed the airplane. I put nine G’s on the wings. They’re supposed to fold up around your ears at seven and one-half G’s."

"Oh...tell me...I’ve never really understood G’s."

"G is for gravity. The pressure on the wings of an airplane as it turns or pulls out of a dive is measured in G’s. One G is your weight as you lie here on the beach. Two G’s would be twice your weight. An airplane in level flight has a one-G load on the wings. Pulling out of a dive usually puts four to six G’s of pressure on the wings. If I were sitting on a bathroom scale at the time, it would read four times my normal weight."

"Hmm.... Am I making you uncomfortable or do you always squirm like that?"

John tried to choose his words carefully as he stared at an afternoon squall forming far out to sea. She served sarcasm with syrup—what a unique talent. His nervousness about his future must have been showing, but he was certainly not going to share that with Lieutenant Moffit or any other lieutenant. He was glad he had chosen truth, otherwise she would have buried his brains in the sand, but now he was going to have to dance around it. "I squirm a lot when I’m around pretty girls and...uh...your mind is a whole lot quicker than the average girl I’ve known...and yeah, your questions are making me uncomfortable, but, uh, it’s okay, as long as you remember your confidentiality oath, Doctor. I find you...very therapeutic." He forced a smile.

"You say the nicest things, country boy." She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "That’s pretty good stuff for a bashful warmonger. Somewhat outside the obnoxious fighter pilot parameters."

"I hope I’m not being a traitor to the fraternal order of fighter pilots."

"I think...that as hard as you try to bend your personality into this preconceived image of what you think a macho throttle jockey is supposed to be, you don’t really fit."

"I’m crushed...."

"No. I’m serious. I believe that under that effort at a fearless facade there’s just the soul of a shy guy trying to stay alive in this crazy killing place." Her smile and the compassion she exuded somehow took the sting out of her sharp words, but it was the words that he responded to.

"You’re wrong there, Kate Moffit. I am here because I volunteered to be here. I believe in this cause. Freedom is what it’s all about and these poor peasant farmers...I can relate to them because I come from a long line of peasant farmer stock and I love ‘em dearly...they are having their freedom and their property taken away by an oppressive regime of old communist bastards...and I’m going to do my best to keep it from happening. And Rock was here for the same reason, and before I’m done there are going to be 50 times 50 dead gooks on the alter of freedom...in honor of him." John’s face felt flushed and he knew he was talking too loudly. Kate had an intent, analytical look on her face as she stared back at him and absorbed his diatribe.

"Kate, I’m sorry. You have found my weakness. Why do I feel like I’m standing here naked in front of you? I love what I do and I do it very well most of the time. And it’s a noble cause, in spite of some very stupid politicians trying to play General and botching it badly. There’s no place else I’d rather be than fighting this war." He was aware of the defensiveness of his tone and his words. She had driven to the heart of the matter—laid him open like a book.

"You’re a worthy adversary, John."

He looked deep into those smoldering green eyes. Her smile was irresistible, even if it did have a hint of exasperation in it. This time he leaned forward and gave her the briefest kiss on the lips, sending a charge of electricity down his spine. It also bought him a reprieve from Kate Moffit’s psychiatric couch.

Drawing back in silence with her eyes fixed on his, she appeared to savor the moment, then answered with a conciliatory tone. "You’re different, country boy, and in a nice way...and I hope you prove me wrong, but let’s save it for another day. Nurse Moffit’s critical care clinic is closed...." Then, a parting shot: "I just think all wars are wrong except in self-defense."

John thought of a really snotty retort. He thought that anyone who tattooed her boobs could use some clinical care, too, but he let it pass after those kind words of positive feedback. "Well, I guess I can understand that view, Kate, but once a nation goes to war, for whatever reason, don’t you think it should fight to win? Isn’t it a travesty to waste human life for anything less?"

She stared back into his eyes as she pondered her response, then said, "Let’s take a recess and go for a swim." She didn’t wait for an answer.

He struggled to his feet and followed her into the surf. Like two kids playing hooky from school, they jumped and splashed and dunked one another. Finally they sat down, exhausted, in the shallow surf, their backs to the beach and the afternoon sun.

They lay on their sides on the sand facing one another with heads propped on elbows, oblivious to the world as the surf lapped at their feet and the afternoon cumulus clouds floated by overhead. The war seemed far away inside Kate’s aura. All things considered, this sexy mystery lady with a polar opposite worldview was a pretty decent diversion for John’s day of punishment.

                                                                            *       *      *

By happy hour, they were back in the squadron lounge. Kate looked prettier than he remembered in jungle fatigues. He made a point of checking it out, and there was no airborne insignia on her uniform. Someday, and soon, he was going to have to know the story behind that trashy, low class, bizarre devil’s mark on her breast.

Someone, somehow, somewhere had "requisitioned" a frozen quarter of beef and run it through a radial arm saw at the Base Engineering Squadron, cutting it into one-inch thick steaks. Everyone not on duty turned out, including the nurses from Phu Hep. There was no difference between Monday and Saturday at Dusty’s Pub. It wasn’t a Monday to Friday line of work, so every night was a Saturday night. Those scheduled for dawn patrol just went to bed a little earlier, that’s all. Those flying night missions or sitting night alert just moved their happy hour to 0500 instead of 1700, and the drinking lamp was lit twenty-four hours a day.

Ron wandered into the lounge. He enjoyed life drunk or sober. He never got into those funks like John did—couldn’t stand those soulful blues records by Nina Simone that John played over and over until the mood passed. John’s mother would have called Ron wholesome, that is if she never was exposed to his vocabulary. Spying Kate and John, Ron came over to the table. John was prepared for a wise guy remark.

"You have an 0500 brief in the morning with Major Gillespie. Mission to Three Corps, Ace. I’m briefing at 0530 so I’ll go down to the flight line with you. Hi, Kate, how was your afternoon?"

"Fine, thank you," she said sweetly.

"Except for the company?" Ron offered.

"Well, he’s the best of a sorry lot," Kate shot back. "Like you guys always say, if your standards are too high...lower your standards."

"Really?" Ron gave them a theatrical look of surprise. "Well let me warn you, John and I go way back and he is rotten to the core."

John wasn’t listening. He was thrilled with the news that he was scheduled to fly, confirming the fact that he still had a flying career. When his eyes refocused he was staring at Kate. She was intently staring back, wearing an I-wish-I-knew-what-was-on-your-mind smile.

John stuck to soda that night. Natural intoxicants like Kate Moffit were better than booze. And he was on the flying schedule tomorrow. How much better could life get?

By 2200 the nurses were headed toward the olive drab six-pack truck for the trip back to Phu Hep. Since motor scooters were not authorized outside the base after dark, John walked Kate toward the truck. They trailed behind the other nurses. As they walked by the squadron bunker, about fifty feet from the Pub, he took her hand and they ducked into the entrance near the sidewalk. It was just a basic box on the sandy ground about twenty feet by thirty feet by eight high with three-foot thick, sand-filled walls and four layers of sandbags on a flat roof. In the murky darkness of the bunker they embraced. There was such a height mismatch that it was tough to embrace her and kiss her at the same time.

"Kate, I had a great time today. See you at happy hour tomorrow?"

"Well...we have so many social options here in metropolitan Tuy Hoa, you know...but yours is the best offer I have. And like they say at the Pub, ‘don’t bust your ass’ and no show on me." She was looking straight up into his eyes with her chin on his chest. Those green eyes seemed to glow in the dark like cat eyes.

"Lady, you come from all sides at once. I hope I get the chance to figure you out." "Play your cards right and maybe you will, G.I. Goodnight."

Only Kate Moffit could talk like that and not sound like a hooker, John thought. Her non-verbal communication overpowered her words.

"Goodnight, Kate."

They stepped out of the darkened bunker and she turned right and he left. John floated back to his hooch, undressed and climbed into his bunk, completely on autopilot, his mind overwhelmed by the quick-witted, green-eyed enigma with the endearing insults. He still could not put his finger on what it was about her that appealed to him—it was not her worldview or her strong will, and it sure wasn’t the devil’s mark. Perhaps it was that infectious laugh and those magnetic eyes. He couldn’t imagine a future with a tattooed pacifist, but war is hell and she just might make for a delightfully diversionary present.

                                                                        *       *      *

"So, Kate, how was your hot date this afternoon," Lieutenant Smith asked as the truck headed back to Phu Hep.

"Well, he passed the Katherine-the-self-righteous-bitch test—he asked to see me again. I just hate it when I do that, but these flyboys are so pretentious I just can’t resist shooting them down. He was pretty dodge-y, though—I couldn’t bring him down—and he didn’t try to show me he was the world’s greatest gift to women. I think under that fighter jockey veneer there just might be some redeeming qualities. And his roots are rural—that’s a plus. I had fun. We’ll see."

"Methinks yon Katherine analyzeth too much," a voice in the back seat said.

Lieutenant Smith responded, "Kate, this is the wrong place to look for Mister Right. You’re always going to be outranked by airplanes here, girl. Lighten up."

"Moi? Lighten up? Are you kidding?" she said melodramatically.

An olive drab Army truck filled with six nurses erupted in laughter.

 CHAPTER THREE

Colonel English fixed a bleary, red-eyed gaze on Ron and John from behind the scheduling counter to the left as they walked through the door of squadron operations at 0445 hours.

"There’s been a schedule change, men. The first couple of two-ship, in-country missions have been combined into a four-ship, out-country. Seems there was some heavy truck traffic through Mu Gia Pass last night. You’ll be rendezvousing with a tanker for air-to-air refueling over Pleiku. Ordinance is seven-hundred-fifty-pound slick bombs. Major Gillespie will lead. Lieutenant Day is number two, Lieutenant Ellsworth is three, and Lieutenant Johnson, four. Some guys get all the luck."

Then he looked John square in the eye. "Ellsworth, follow me." He rose and walked back down the hall to his office, holding the door for John and closing it behind him. John held his breath when the door latch clicked shut.

"That airplane you flew Sunday is so busted up it’s going to be down two weeks for repairs. The old man just damn near changed his mind when he heard that. You defied all the odds, son. I convinced him that we should give you another chance. I saw what you could do once you got your initiation behind you up at A Shau, and I was damned proud of you, boy. You could be one of the best that ever was, but if it happens again...or anything like it...you’ll be a supply officer for the rest of your Air Force career. The squadron commander’s goodwill has been 100% depleted in your case. I won’t be able to save your ass a second time. Copy?"

"Copy, sir. Thank you, sir."

"You must never...ever get rough with that airplane or she’ll turn on you and destroy you both." Colonel English was so close to John’s face he could smell last night’s scotch. "That Super Sabre was called a widow-maker long before you started flying...for good reason. Smooth hands.... Smooth hands. Remember, you’re dancing the wild blue, not wrestling greased hogs down on the farm. Am I communicating with you, Lieutenant?"

"Loud and clear, sir. Thank you, sir."

"Dismissed."

John exhaled, snapped off a salute, did an about face and escaped to the fresh air of the hallway. John tried to ignore the inquisitive looks of the other lieutenants as they sat down to brief for the mission. He knew they were thinking that he had probably left a significant piece of his ass in Colonel English’s office—it was the squadron woodshed. But as far as John was concerned the scar tissue would forever commemorate another valuable lesson at the master’s knee. The war was far from over and already he owed Colonel English his career. Somehow, somewhere he’d find a way to make the payback, but how do you do that in this business? He had no idea.

If A Shau was the hottest in-country target, Mu Gia Pass was the hottest out-country target. As the southernmost of only two passes through the rugged mountain range separating the western border of North Vietnam from Laos, it marked the beginning of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Because it was a strategic choke point, U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine fighters, had, over a period of several months, bombed it until it resembled a giant rock quarry. What started out as a series of narrow, winding mountain roads had been bombed wide enough to construct a superhighway. Since it was so critical to the supply effort of North Vietnam, it was surrounded by numerous anti-aircraft artillery pieces of all sizes. With the halt of US bombing north of the 19^th parallel in North Vietnam, the AAA batteries multiplied and the ground fire was murderous.

As the weatherman, Captain Raines, pontificated his way through his portion of the pre-flight briefing, John wondered how someone could be so wrong so often and still be so pompous. John decided he must have been practicing for a TV job on the evening news—clearly not a duty, honor, country guy like the fighter jocks or even other weathermen that he had known—and tuned him out as he daydreamed about other things. He was glad he didn’t learn of the schedule change till he arrived for work. Going to sleep with visions of Kate on the beach was infinitely more pleasing than watching a re-run of the previous night’s midnight movie or worrying about the next day’s mission. He’d slept like a baby.

Major Gillespie, unlit cigar angling out of his mouth, opened the briefing checklist. "Call sign, Dusty Three One, flight of four. Time hack; in ten seconds the time will be o-five-ten hours local.... Ready, hack." Major Gillespie droned on through the checklist. His dull monotone told all assembled that even he wasn’t listening to his own briefing. John half-listened—just in case he got asked a question—as he stared at the map of Vietnam that took up one whole wall, floor to ceiling of the 10-foot square briefing room. The map had plastic over the top of it so it could be written on with grease pencil—the all-purpose communication tool of all pilots. Six inch circles on the map identified the TACAN stations located around Vietnam, the navigation aid that all fighter planes used. An instrument in the cockpit received signals from the TACAN station that indicated the direction and distance to the station. The wall adjacent to the wall map contained a large chalkboard, the other necessary ingredient of a fighter squadron’s preflight briefing room. Most fighter squadrons had three or four such rooms, each identical, right down to the square table and four chairs. John always tried to get the chair across from the wall map, an aid to daydreaming during boring preflight briefings. Not all of them were so, especially Colonel English’s briefings. Those were like sitting at King Arthur’s table as he imparted the wisdom of the ages. But Major Gillespie’s briefings required a daydream aid to stay awake.

Major G. had thick white hair and too much belly and butt for his flight suit. Ron Johnson, behind his back, called him Major Blivet—twenty pounds of shit in a ten pound bag. He looked old enough to have flown top cover at the crucifixion, thanks to the hospitality of the North Koreans in the early fifties. He’d been their guest for three and a half years after punching out of an F-80 near the Yalu River in the summer of ‘50.

He was a lovable old toad, but far too cautious for the immortal young hot shots with fire in their bellies. They knew before he even got to that part in the checklist, that if the target was shooting back, they were going to make one pass each, salvo everything, and go home. This was Major Gillespie’s last tour of duty before retirement and he fully intended to have a retirement to enjoy.

John wanted a second coffee in the worst way but had learned painfully, early on, that the relief tube on an F-100 had only enough capacity for one cup of used coffee. Finally, the briefing ended and they all walked to the head for one last, nervous bladder-drain, and then on to the equipment room.

The four pilots jockeyed for position at the equipment counter. It was not much different than a coatroom counter, except that behind the 15-foot long counter the rows of racks held items a lot more exotic than hats and coats. Special racks held each pilot’s backpack parachute, g-suit, survival vest, shoulder holster, Mae West flotation gear and helmet bag—twenty-five pounds of absolutely critical equipment for a fighter pilot. On the wall to the left behind the counter the helmets and oxygen masks hung on special pegs and the wall to the right contained a workbench where specialists repaired equipment. A safe in the rear held the pilots’ .38 revolvers and a one-foot square box at the right end of the counter held the cartridges for pilots to load and unload them before and after missions—spare ammo was carried in the survival vest. John could always sense the seriousness of a mission by the decibel level in the room as men zipped up G-suits, checked survival gear, parachutes and oxygen masks. The hotter the mission, the quieter the room. This morning the place was a funeral parlor. The only sounds were the cylinders of .38 caliber revolvers spinning, the slap of leather as they went into shoulder holsters and the sound of zippers and snaps. Everyone worked hard to avoid looking anyone else in the eye, lest the apprehension show. The butterflies in the gut were starting early. As a group they walked down the center hallway of Dusty Squadron from the equipment room toward the main entrance. Like four scuba divers, they clattered and clumped along corseted from the waist down in g-suits, parachutes slung over one shoulder, survival vests unzipped and Mae Wests unsnapped against the heat, carrying helmets, thick plastic checklist books and kneeboards in padded, olive-drab draw-string bags. There were no wisecracks, no bawdy repartee, no grandiose exits...and no smiles.

Even the ride across the tarmac to the airplanes in the squadron step van was silent. There were padded benches on both sides of the van’s interior—it looked like a bread delivery truck, painted blue, without the advertising on the sides. All four pilots sat staring down between their feet, alone with their thoughts. John noticed a faint odor of stale beer. That was probably roommate Mike Day. The kid seemed to do his best flying with a hangover. For such a young guy, he already had a nicely developed beer belly.

The van stopped at Major Gillespie’s revetment first. Each revetment held one loaded F-100. They were constructed with common walls like a one-story condominium with three walls and no roof. The three sand-filled steel walls were ten feet high and four feet thick. The walls blocked any movement of air, turning the revetment with its steel planking into an oven at mid-day. Major G. stood up, removed his still unlit but well-chewed cigar and laid it in the van driver’s ashtray, then stepped out the side door. "Be standing by on freq at five five past the hour, gentlemen," he said glaring at his watch.

Three forearms went up in unison as the three wingmen all checked the time.

                                                                             *       *      *

"Tuy Hoa Tower, Dusty Three One, flight of four, ready for take-off. Northwest bound."

"Roger, Dusty Three One Flight, cleared for take-off. Good hunting."

"Good day."

There it was again—that boot in the butt as the afterburner kicked in on take-off roll—and another chapter of life in the fast lane began. Four Super Sabres took off on Runway 21 in five second intervals, pointed inland. They turned right after take-off, fanned out across the rice paddies of that beautiful valley by the sea and began the climbing join-up on the lead plane. The sun was just coming up. It felt great to be alive and airborne.

As John closed on the lead plane, he snuggled in close and looked it over carefully, then dropped down a few feet to check out the underside. Four 750-pound olive drab bombs with yellow circles on the nose, two under each swept wing, hung from individual pylons. Each was mounted on either side of the 12-foot long tapered drop tanks hanging from the center pylon of each wing. The drop tanks were painted just like the airplane, top and sides jungle camouflage colors and the bottom light sky blue. Each bomb, about five feet long and 18 inches in diameter at the fattest part, had a two inch wide yellow circle painted about six inches back from the brass fuse mounted in the bluntly tapered nose and X-shaped fins in the rear.

As many times as John had seen these bombs explode from the air, he really had no comprehension of the terror it must strike in the heart of an enemy soldier who sees it falling toward him. It just looked like so much inert cast iron hanging there. He had never stood on the ground in the vicinity of an exploding bomb and had no desire to—that’s what the grunts were for. He preferred the view from his skybox.

He slid back up on Major Gillespie’s wing and gave him a thumbs up signal, indicating that all was properly attached. Having just returned from the overhaul facility in Taiwan, the plane had a brand new jungle camouflage paint job and the last six feet of the fuselage had not yet blackened from the intense heat of the tailpipe and afterburner, nor had the muzzle blasts from the four internal cannon blackened the underside of the nose five feet aft of the oval intake duct. If there was a prettier piece of machinery in all creation, John had never seen it.

Box Niner One, a KC-135 jet tanker, was already on station at twelve thousand feet over Plieku when Dusty Flight arrived at the rendezvous. Although they had only been flying thirty minutes, they needed a top-off to make it to Mu Gia Pass and back. The three wingmen slid into echelon right formation, everyone on a line angling back forty-five degrees from the lead plane, and moved up near the tanker’s right wing tip. The central highlands were socked in, the solid undercast a field of snow five thousand feet below with a clear blue dome above.

One by one, Dusty Three One Flight dropped down and behind the big tanker. It was just a 707 airliner with one big fuel tank inside instead of seats. The refueling boom poked down forty feet from the tail of the tanker in an angle thirty degrees to the fuselage. At the end of the boom was eight feet of four-inch rubber hose and a drogue shaped like a giant badminton birdie. It was about sixteen inches across at the wide end.

It was called the probe and drogue method of air-to-air refueling. With a closure rate of about one knot, the F-100 poked that drogue with its probe. To make it more challenging, the probe was located on the right wing of the F-100. It was just at the edge of the pilot’s peripheral vision as he stared straight ahead at the tanker. If the air was smooth, it was do-able with the most precise flying. In rough air or when the tanker’s autopilot wasn’t working, it was like pinning the tail on a dancing donkey.

Major Gillespie struggled on the hook-up, stabbing at the drogue twice before successfully hooking up on the third try.

The secret was to stay relaxed. Tense up and the smoothness would go out of your flying. John decided Major Gillespie was probably a little tense without his cigar to chew on. When he got his fuel load topped off, he backed away and moved over to the left wing of the tanker. John couldn’t help thinking of his friend, Rock, as he flew alongside the big tanker waiting for his turn at refueling. This day would be for him, he told himself, and every day henceforth that he had a chance to kill North Vietnamese. He made a mental note to write Rock’s wife a letter.

One by one Dusty Three Two, Three Three, and Three Four hooked up. All three lieutenants made the hook-up on the first try, a point not to be lost on the lieutenants but never to be discussed in Major Gillespie’s presence.

"Thank you Box Niner One," Major Gillespie called.

"You’re welcome, Dusty Flight. We’ll be on station for three more hours if you need us on the way home."

"Roger, Niner One. Good day."

They pulled away from the KC-135 and picked up a heading of three hundred thirty degrees to arc around and approach Mu Gia Pass from the southwest. The tension continued to build. It was another perfect day to be flying but nobody was basking in the joy of flight or enjoying the gorgeous wild scenery of northeastern Laos. John reached for his water flask, having learned over A Shau that it was easier to drink before the adrenaline begins to flow. He checked and double checked all the switch settings that could be set up in advance, set the pipper—the electronic sight—for a forty-five dive angle, dialed in the forecast altimeter setting for the target elevation and set the sight dimmer rheostat to bright setting. This time he was determined to get it right the first time—he would not screw the pooch.

Twenty-five miles south of Mu Gia Major Gillespie called the FAC. "Squid Zero One, this is Dusty Three One, flight of four Fox one hundreds, sixteen seven hundred fifty pound bombs, thirty-two hundred rounds of twenty mike mike."

"Copy your munitions, Dusty Three One Flight. We’ve got some trucks broke down out in the open in the pass and that will be your target. Triple A this morning has been very heavy. The flight ahead of you has got them some kind of pissed off. There’s at least 57-millimeter guns active down there, perhaps bigger. If you can see them, go ahead and try to neutralize them if you want. I strongly recommend just one pass apiece. It’s a very long walk to friendly territory from here."

"Roger, Squid Zero One. Dusty Flight, set ‘em up hot. Arm nose tail, bomb salvo."

In quick, crisp succession they all responded on the radio.

"Twoop."

"Threep."

"Fourp."

They spaced out equidistant in a left-hand circle over the target at fourteen thousand feet, the maximum altitude an F-100 could lug a load of bombs on a hot summer day in the Orient.

"Lead’s in from the north," Major Gillespie called as he dove on the target. As the first one down the chute, he had the best survival odds. By the time three and four dove on the target the gunners had plenty of time to get their proper lead and wind correction worked out—if they survived lead’s bombs.

Try as he might to be fighter-pilot-cool about it, Major Gillespie forgot to take his thumb off the mike button, located on the throttle. The microphone itself was located inside the oxygen mask about one inch from his mouth. As Major Gillespie dove on the target, three gun sites opened up. The air in the vicinity of his plane was full of flak bursts—larger and blacker than those over the A Shau Valley. The heavy breathing the flak created in Major Gillespie was broadcast over his radio for all the world to hear as he dove on the target. The closer he got, the heavier the flak, the faster and deeper his breathing, with special emphasis on the exhalation. John could think of only two circumstances in a man’s life when he makes a sound like that—when he thinks he’s approaching the climax of life...or love.

Major Gillespie got his bombs away, pulled out of his dive and turned right then quick left. Somewhere in there, by accident or design, he got his thumb off the mike button. His salvo of bombs manufactured a pile of little rocks from big rocks, but at one hundred meters from any truck John could see, little else was accomplished.

Mike Day was halfway down the chute on his pass out of the west. As John rolled in from the south, he picked up the muzzle flashes from one of the gun sites.

"Three’s in from the south against the guns," John called without even making a conscious decision. And he was surprised at his own voice—calm, cool, even bored. Just right. And he made sure to get his thumb off the microphone button. He had learned a lifetime of lessons in those few intense moments over A Shau, including this: fear of embarrassment or failure was a far greater motivating force than fear of death when flying under the influence of adrenaline. The conversation with Colonel English, less than two hours ago, was permanently copied on his gray matter—smooth hands...smooth hands.

Those big guns drew him like a magnet. Dusty Three One, Three Two and Three Four could have the trucks. He wanted the guns. For reasons he could not understand, he was focused—alive—and in complete control diving into the oncoming leaden traffic. It was not remotely like his baptismal flight just two days ago. If he was going to get blasted into oblivion, it was okay, some things were worth dying for, but he wanted to do it dueling a big gun, not while he was trying to waste a lousy truck.

The Russian-made 57-millimeter tracers, coming straight at his face, floated and wobbled slightly. It was all in slow motion again, but this time, in spite of all the tracers and the physical and mental activity of guiding his turning, twisting, diving F-100, John sat there with his right thumb cocked waiting for things to happen. He was one cool dude, as if it were just another day on the practice range aiming at bull’s-eyes on the desert floor of New Mexico. Finally he reached the bomb release altitude precisely as he reached the right airspeed. The pipper moved through the middle of the target, his thumb came uncocked and he mashed the pickle button on the control stick.

The staccato "thump, thump, thump, thump" told him the bombs were away, and he knew it was well done—it had that good, deep-in-the-gut feel to it. Another of Uncle Ho’s triple A sites was going to be history. John knew it without looking back at the target. "This one’s for Rock," he called to no one in particular over the radio as he pulled out of his dive.

"Shack, Three Three," Squid shouted. "Hot Damn."

Another bullseye. Chills from head to toe! John laid the stick over in a victory roll as he rocketed back up to altitude.

Ron, coming in behind John as Tail End Charlie, flew through clear air. His salvo of bombs dropped right onto the bed of a large truck. When the dust settled there was a huge crater and scrap metal all over the Mu Gia Pass Expressway.

"Great work, Dusty Three One Flight. I can confirm one triple A site destroyed, one truck destroyed and two damaged. Stop in again the next time you’re in town."

"Roger, Squid Zero One. Pleasure doing business with you. Good day," Major Gillespie called.

The thrill of victory was short-lived. The big amber Master Caution Light, top dead center on the instrument panel, was glowing brightly two feet in front of John’s nose. It felt like it was wired directly to his heart, which was thumping in his ears again. A glance down at the warning light panel isolated the problem. The engine oil overheat light was on and the oil pressure gauge was falling....

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