Frag Order: Enemy Inside The Gate Read online

  Then, quite suddenly, just as the pipper tracked up to the target, the orange floaters seemed to accelerate and fill the view. Guns barely managed to press the pickle button and release his bombs before the cockpit was swept up in a tornado of broken glass. The windscreen had taken a hit. Air whistled loudly in the cockpit like a scream, but Guns did not feel a significant rush of air.

  “Wolf!” Guns yelled over the hot mike interphone to the Pilot Systems Officer, Lieutenant Paul “Wolf” Wollensak, “you have the aircraft!”

  “Roger, I have the aircraft.” Wolf replied.

  Wolf quickly banked to the left, pulling four G’s as he climbed to 22,000 feet, which was the altitude for the delivery pattern. At his seven o'clock he was able to spot Gunfighter 22, the wingman, completing his delivery.

  Shiny fragments of glass and plastic sprayed the cockpit. The gunsight combining glass had shattered when it was hit with pieces of the inner pane of the windscreen. Although the Anti Aircraft Artillery had scored a direct hit on the front of his windscreen, the middle layer was still intact. The inner layer had shredded and separated in a process called spallation, which sent shards in all directions. One of those shards had penetrated the visor of Guns’s helmet and embedded itself into his forehead.

  As a steady torrent of bright red blood flowed down his forehead and into his eyes, Guns groped along the right side panel for the Emergency Ventilation Handle. He found it and pulled open the Cabin Dump Valve to reduce the differential pressure between the cockpit and the outside air. Now the cockpit was depressurized.

  “Any damage back there, Wolf?” he asked.

  “Negative, sir,” Wolf responded, checking the telelight panel. “All systems in the green.”

  “How's your forward visibility? I can’t see a fucking thing. There’s a lot of blood in my eyes.”

  “Forward vis pretty much standard. As usual, I can only see out the sides. I'll handle the radios, sir.”

  “You have to fly too,” Guns said, “This isn’t clearing up.”

  “Roger. I have the aircraft.” Wolf keyed his MIC switch on the throttle.

  “Gunfighter 22,” he transmitted, “Gunfighter 21 has taken a hit, and 21 Alpha is injured. Gunfighter 22, join up with me at angels twenty-two, and perform a post-strike damage assessment on my aircraft.”

  “Roger,” the wingman responded.

  Gunfighter 22 performed a left turning rejoin, then maneuvered above, below and on each side of Lead's aircraft, and resumed his position on Lead's left wing.

  “You've got damage to the forward canopy and a few small holes in the vertical stabilizer. No fluids leaking.”

  “Roger, 22.” He paused. Wolf knew they had to return to base immediately.

  “Covey, Gunfighter 21 needs to RTB. Please pass our BDA on the land line.” He could get his Bomb Damage Assessment any time. They needed to get on the ground, now.

  “Roger, Gunfighter. Good luck.”

  “Thank you... Gunfighter 21 Flight, button four, go.”

  “Two.”

  Wolf channelized his UHF radio to preset channel four.

  “Gunfighter 21 check.”

  “22.”

  “DaNang Approach, Gunfighter 21 flight of two fox-4s, declaring an emergency, require straight-in GCA. Lead will be stopping on the runway and will require medical assistance. Two will perform a low approach and fly a closed pattern to the other runway.”

  The Ground Controlled Approach would allow Gunfighter Flight to assess azimuth and elevation through the Approach Control facility's Precision Approach Radar so they could descend to the published approach minimums for landing. Even though the weather was Visual Meteorological Conditions – clear skies – Wolf needed all the help he could get with his restricted forward visibility.

  “Roger, Gunfighter. This will be vectors to a PAR approach to Runway 17 Right. Fly heading 140.”

  “Roger.”

  Wolf knew that this would be a difficult landing. Forward visibility from the rear cockpit was always terrible, and the rear cockpit did not have controls for the drag chute or arresting gear tail hook. Decelerating after touchdown was going to be a bitch.

  “Approach, be advised this will be a longer than normal landing roll.”

  “Roger. Fly heading 160. Right of course, correcting rapidly.”

  “Roger.”

  “Fly heading 170. Do not acknowledge further transmissions. Approaching glide path, gear should be down.”

  Wolf gave a thumbs-down signal to his wingman, nodded his head and lowered the landing gear. Then he gave a palm-down forward and aft rocking gesture with his hand, signalling that it was time for flap extension, nodded his head and extended his wing flaps. The wingman held perfect position.

  “Slightly right of course, correcting. Begin descent.”

  Wolf reduced power slightly and lowered the aircraft pitch three degrees. His Angle-of-Attack Indexer lights confirmed that he was on speed, and his AOA aural tone was sounding continuously.

  The controller’s voice crackled in Wolf’s headset: “On course, on glide path... On course, on glide path... Slightly left of course, on glide path. Fly heading 173... On course, on glide path. Fly heading 172... Approaching minimums. Take over visually.”

  Through the sides of the forward canopy, Wolf could make out ground references. Within moments, he had the edges of the runway in sight.

  “Gunfighter 21 has the field.”

  “Gunfighter 21 cleared to land. Gunfighter 22 go around. Cleared left closed.”

  “Gunfighter 22 on the go.”

  Wolf continued his descent, flaring only slightly as the runway edges appeared in his periphery. The aircraft made a firm touchdown, and Wolf never strayed from the runway center line as it rolled to a stop. The F-4 didn't have a parking brake, so Wolf had to hold the brakes until the Rescue crew arrived. When they responded, they’d have to open the front canopy and shut down the engines. There was no way for Wolf to do it himself since the rear cockpit throttles did not have a CUT OFF position.

  A member of the Rescue crew inserted pins in the forward ejection seat and then guided Guns down the ladder. As a medic led him to an ambulance, Guns wiped his forehead with his flight suit sleeve.

  “You know what,” Guns said, “I’m not going to the hospital. Just stitch me up here.”

  “No, sir. Can’t do it.”

  “I can order you to do it.”

  “Sir, I still can’t do it. You need sterile sutures.”

  Guns debated whether that was true or just bullshit. As blood continued to run into his eyes, he sighed with resignation, stepped into the ambulance and took a seat.

  1712L, April 4, 1969

  95th Evac Hospital, DaNang Air Base, South Vietnam

  In the Emergency Room, Guns’s patience began to wane, along with any feeling in his ass. He sat on the edge of a gurney whose waxed paper cover had – again like his patience – begun to wear away. The medic had wrapped a gauze bandage around his head to stem the bleeding, but he was still waiting for stitches. Cloth curtains separated him from the other patients and every so often a female voice could be heard from beyond the curtain, moving around the hospital to ask patients if they were comfortable.

  Finally, a petite blond woman in her early twenties drew the curtain back and entered. Droplets of sweat beaded on her forehead and her brown eyes were bloodshot from crying. Colonel Navarone tried to act like he didn’t notice her poorly-concealed distress to avoid embarrassing her.

  “I'm sorry for the wait, Colonel. I'm Nurse Kelly Hunter,” she said, extending her hand.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” Guns responded with a firm grip.

  She retrieved latex examination gloves from her pocket and quickly donned them with a snapping sound. She soaked a gauze pad in iodine, and after removing his bandage, inspected his wound as she swabbed his forehead with the brown solution.

  “It looks like the medic already removed the foreign debris,” she said, “Let’s just check
and make sure there isn’t any more glass hiding out there. How does it feel?”

  “More of a pain in the ass than a pain in my head. As soon as I get stitched up I’ll be fine.”

  She aimed the beam of her penlight into each of his eyes and noted the reaction of his pupils.

  Appearing to be satisfied with the eye response, she put her flashlight away and retrieved a syringe from a cabinet drawer. “This will anesthetize you while I suture the wound,” she said, as she began injecting Novocaine into his forehead.

  “And then you’re going to ask me if I'm comfortable, right?”

  “That’s what the Novocaine was for. Why? Are you feeling any discomfort?”

  “No, it’s uh… fine,” he said, “I was just trying to make conversation. While I was waiting, I overheard you talking, and you seem pretty interested in whether everyone’s comfortable.”

  “Before they die!” she said curtly, “That’s what we ask the expectants. You’re just a minimal.”

  “I'm not following you.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, you caught me off guard.” She paused and her demeanor softened.

  “A minimal is someone who needs minor treatment. Expectants are patients who are not going to make it. Then all we can do is provide morphine and make them comfortable until they pass.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you had to deal with that.”

  “We don’t let people die alone here. Not anyone. So we hold their hands, cry with them, ask them if they're comfortable...”

  “So that’s what I overheard. And I thought I had a difficult job. ”

  “Yes, sir.” Her lip began to quiver, “That’s all I’ve done since I arrived here. I don’t how much more I can take.” Her eyes welled up. She looked toward the ceiling and blinked back the tears.

  Guns tried to hide his discomfort while he searched for something to say. Sensitivity was not his forte. Fortunately, before his silence could be noticed, she continued.

  “I became a nurse to help people, not to sit around and watch them die.”

  She had finally put it in terms that Guns was familiar with: death. After two combat tours, Guns considered himself an authority on loss and the casualties of war. He felt like he lost more than most.

  “Nurse Hunter,” he began, “you do help people…”

  “Please call me Kelly. Not many of my patients have seen me cry and lived to talk about it.”

  “Kelly, you still have a sense of humor. That’s good. That’s usually the first thing people lose.” He thought carefully, trying to choose the right words. “Then they lose hope. Because in war, people die. Even when you’ve done all you can, even when you think you’ve tried everything, lives will be lost. You just try your best to make it the guys from the other side who die, not your own men.”

  “No offense, sir, but when you lose people, it’s in combat. They knew it’s was a possibility they could die. When I lose people, they die right in front of me, after they think they’ve been saved.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s not personal.” Guns reached into his wallet and withdrew a photo of him and another man standing in front of an airplane. “This is a photo from my last tour.” Guns pointed at the younger pilot in the photo. “This picture was taken the day before he died. It’s one thing to lose a brother in arms, it’s another when he’s actually your baby brother. My parents, his wife… They didn’t find out by a visit from the chaplain like most people. I had to be the one to tell them. Because I was there – I saw his plane go down.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “What I’m getting at is this – you can either say, ‘there was nothing I could do’ or you can say ‘I did everything I could.’”

  “What you’re doing right now,” he continued, “is incredibly important. Those kids, the ones whose hands you hold as you ease their journey, are really lucky. They’re with someone who cares. It sure beats dying alone in the jungle. Or in the air.”

  Guns could see her regaining her composure as he spoke. He took comfort in the fact that sharing his thoughts seemed to help her.

  “Thank you, sir. I guess I was just too close to the trees to see the forest.”

  She made some notes in his chart and finished preparing his discharge papers.

  “Here's your release. Now, the sutures need to stay in for seven days. You can remove them yourself if you want, but you'll need to see the Flight Surgeon to get off DNIF status anyway, so it's probably best to let him do it. No helmet until the sutures come out.”

  “Thanks Kelly.”

  Guns headed for the exit and called his headquarters on his “brick” hand-held radio.

  2

  April 4, 1969

  DaNang Air Base, South Vietnam

  Special Agent David Rice stood at the bar in the Enlisted Club. He casually glanced around the room while he nursed a scotch and water. By anyone's guess, he could have been looking for someone, or for no one at all. He felt mildly out of place. In a room full of people decked out in fatigues, he stood out like a sore thumb in his civvies, with his unshaven chin, and his brown hair so shaggy that it skimmed the collar of his shirt. But the get-up was necessary. He was undercover. He was in pursuit of Triad, and had no earthly idea of how Triad might look, but hoped that if Triad was in the club, he might tip his hand.

  A Senior Airman wandered up to the bar and planted himself beside David. The Sergeant looked up and down his five-foot-nine frame to briefly size him up.

  “I haven't seen you here before. FNG?” the Airman asked. Of course, if David had been a real Fucking New Guy, he wouldn’t have had a clue what the term meant.

  “Not in theater,” Rice answered, “but yeah, I’m new around here. Just arrived. I just finished six months at U-Tapao.”

  “In that case, welcome to DaNang,” the Airman said, extending his hand. “I’m Dick Lowery.”

  “Nice to meet you,” David said as he grabbed Lowery’s hand and gave it a firm shake. “David Rice.”

  He had gotten accustomed to the alias the Air Force Office of Special Investigations had assigned him. And after the incident at Cam Ranh, it became more a matter of necessity than just utility.

  “Are you a tech rep?” Lowery asked.

  Probably a natural question, David thought, since technical representatives were the only civilians on base. Also, they weren’t required to conform to Air Force appearance standards.

  “Yep. Striker Industries.”

  The conversation thus far had failed to be particularly interesting or unique but Rice had hopes that this series of “getting-to-know-you” questions might flag Lowery as his potential target.

  “Oh. I haven't seen anyone here from Striker before.”

  “Yeah. New contract.”

  “So what do you guys do over at Striker?”

  Rice tried to pace himself. The question could still have been one of ignorance or polite interest.

  “We service the cooling system for the seeker heads on the AIM-9,” he said, and awaited the Sergeant’s response.

  “Is that some kind of missile?”

  “I can't talk too much about it. Most of it is classified, but I can tell you that the AIM-9 is an air-to-air missile.”

  “Oh. And what's a seeker head?”

  “It… uhh...” David feigned hesitation, “looks for an IR signature. But again, classified.”

  “Right, well, let’s not get you into any trouble.” Lowery rattled the ice in his tumbler as he inspected its contents. “I have to get going anyhow. It was nice meeting you, David. Enjoy your stay!”

  “You too. I mean, it was nice meeting you,” David said, mentally adding a name to his list of potential suspects, a list that he planned to build upon.

  “Hope to see you around,” he said noncommittally as the Airman walked away.

  Over the next hour, he encountered two other enlisted men who, like Lowery, were rather unremarkable. Still, it would have been remiss had he not added them to the list.

&nb
sp; As David was about to call it a night, a large Sergeant sat down on the bar stool directly to his left and made eye contact with the bartender.

  “Seven and seven,” the Sergeant told the bartender.

  David looked around and noticed that the place had pretty much emptied out by that time. “I’ll have a scotch on the rocks,” David said.

  The bartender gave a nod and went to retrieve their drinks.

  “Government contractor?” the Sergeant asked David.

  “Yeah,” David replied, “Is it that obvious?”

  “The civvies are a dead giveaway,” the Sergeant answered, “What company are you with?”

  “Striker Industries.”

  The bartender returned with their drinks. The Sergeant took a long sip from his tumbler before placing it on the bar.

  “My name's Alek Winters,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Alek,” David replied, “I'm David Rice.”

  “So how long have you been here?”

  “I just arrived yesterday.”

  “Welcome to DaNang.”

  They made small talk for the next ten minutes, with nothing said that could serve as a red flag for David. Finally, Winters pushed back from the bar.

  “Gotta run now. It was nice to meet you, David.”

  Rice remained for another drink as he sat and reviewed the encounters of the evening. He wasn't sure if he had made contact with Triad or not.

  0730L, April 5, 1969

  DaNang Air Base, South Vietnam

  Sitting at his desk, Guns Navarone glanced toward the front waiting room. Through the blinds he saw someone in civilian clothes sitting in one of the chairs. Based on the visitor’s attire, Guns assumed it was one of the civilian contractors.

  “What the hell do I need to see a contractor about,” he wondered. But, from what he could discern, this didn’t look like the typical contractor at DaNang. By his posture, he looked more like a military officer. Then he saw the note on his desk: “OSI agent waiting to see you.”