The Edge of Honor (35 page)

Brian had enjoyed only an hour of sleep and was having trouble waking up. With Vince Benedetti still off the evaluator watch bill, Brian had been operating on a desperately tiring schedule, catching an average of three hours of sleep after dinner, and a midmorning nap of an hour or so against six hours of watch in the afternoon and six more hours from midnight to dawn. The exec had talked the captain into putting Benedetti back on the watch bill for one three-day period, which allowed the other two department heads to go into a comparatively easy six on, twelve off schedule. But then one of Benedetti’s stars had run a boiler into a serious low-water casualty, so the chief engineer had been once more remanded into the main spaces. Austin, who managed five and half hours every night and a nap in the afternoon, all coincident with his body’s natural sleep cycle, was doing much better. Brian remembered those three days wistfully; now he was desperate for some coffee as the captain began his briefing. His eyes felt as if they were full of sand.

The United States, the captain announced, was going to resume full-scale air strikes against the North in order to relieve the pressure being put on Marine bases at the western end of the so-called demilitarized zone, between North and South Vietnam. The captain summarized the message.

“They initially plan a seventy-two hour campaign of Alfa-strikes, beginning tomorrow night at eighteen hundred.

Targets are mostly in the southern half of North Vietnam; we’re after NVA troop concentrations and their staging areas. Both carriers will be on the line, which means we’ll have surge strike ops, with one cycle every ninety minutes for three days and nights.”

The exec whistled. “Surge ops? They’ll barely have time to manage the traffic control at that rate.”

Austin nodded. “The outbound waves will meet the incoming strike about halfway back to the carriers,” he said. “We’re going to need all the AICs up there, probably three on, three off.”

The exec eyed Brian’s drooping eyelids. “Captain, I’d like to propose that Vince come back on the evaluator watch bill—tonight, if possible, so that Brian can get a full night’s sleep. Once this starts, we’ll need to be short cycling the eyaluators, too.”

The captain paused and then nodded. “Can you take the midnight-to-six tonight, Vince? I know this is short notice, but—”

“Yes, sir. Can do. I’ll go up at twenty-three hundred so Count can give me a good long turnover.”

“Okay, good. Brian, you’re new to continuous Alfa strikes. What we usually have to do is have two evaluators available to Combat when surge operations are in progress. One guy officially has the watch and oversees the strike-following function. The other guy is on call for an SAR or any other significant problem that pops up.

It’s up to the guy on watch to make the call as to when he needs help.

With three of you, one’s on watch, the guy who just came off watch is in the bag, and the third guy is on call. The exec and I will spell each other as necessary. It’s exhausting when they do this, but it’s also rather exciting.”

“Yes, sir. And they’ll do this for three days?”

“Right. After three days, the flight-deck crews on the carrier are worn out, and then at least one of the carriers has to go offline to replenish bombs and fuel. Seventy two hours of surge ops is about the max they can do with both carriers; after that, they’ll go to straight cyclic ops.

That’s where one carrier is on the line making strikes for sixteen to twenty-four hours and then the other one steps up while the first one rests and refuels.”

Brian thought about it for a moment, forcing his dragging brain to concentrate. “But if they go directly into cyclic ops after these three days, it means nothing changes for us, Captain.”

“Right on, Weps. As long as even one carrier is putting bombers over the beach, we’re expected to be up and running at max. Although typically, they do the cyclic ops for, say, eighteen hours, then break for six to eight hours. We’ll just have to wait and see what they do.”

Brian wondered how long Hood could keep that up, or how long he could keep that up. As if reading his thoughts, the exec grinned and said, “As long as they want; see, from their point of view, we’ve got it easy. We just do our thing sitting at NTDS consoles in an air conditioned CIC.

Those guys climb into airplanes and fly into North Vietnam to drop bombs, get shot at, maybe get shot down, get taken prisoner, or, if they’re lucky, make it out to the Gulf or into Laos for an SAR pickup.

Compared to what the flyboys are going to do for the next seventy-two hours, Red Crown is just a spectator sport.”

Brian nodded slowly in comprehension. His sleep deprived brain recognized that this was a big deal, but it kept returning to the imminent prospect of an entire night in the rack. He listened with half an ear as the exec ran through some changes to the daily routine in the ship and adjustments to the CIC watch bill. Raiford Hatcher confirmed that his supply Department and the mess decks could go into a constant serve mode for the many Operations and Weapons people who would be standing odd or extra hours of watch. The captain wrapped it up.

“Now, this is all still very much close-hold. We especially have to make sure nobody in the Cave or any of the other modules runs his mouth on an open radio circuit about the impending strikes. So—Count, brief your principals that we’re going into high-intensity ops soon, but warn them to keep their mouths shut. The troops will figure it out by around midmorning tomorrow, so they’ll have to be reminded not to yap about it.

Let’s do a prebrief at around, say, sixteen hundred tomorrow so as to let everyone get as much rest as possible. Because once this starts, it goes like hell.”

Brian had a thought and groaned out loud, then caught himself, embarrassed. The other officers looked at him.

“Helos,” he said. “What happens to the daily helo dance? We don’t still—”

The exec and Austin laughed out loud; even the captain smiled.

“Never fear, Weppo, you still get to play ringmaster for your beloved helos, only now you get continuous flight-deck operations for SAR birds.

Big Mother and Clementine will alternate pn-station every time a strike goes in—on top of everything else. And you haven’t lived until one of the fling wings breaks down on deck while the other guy is still out there.”

“I hate helos,” grumbled Brian. His face was so glum that the others laughed even harder. Everyone hated helos.

The meeting broke up and Brian headed back to his stateroom while Austin and the exec went back topside to Combat. He flopped down in his rack, fully dressed, in anticipation of having to get back up in an hour, then remembered that Benedetti was going to take his mid. He got back up, stripped, and took a Hollywood shower, standing in the rain locker for a full five minutes instead of the get wet, turn off the water, soap up, turn on the water, get rinsed, and get out regulation Navy shower.

He put on clean Skivvies, set his alarm for 0630, and was asleep in one minute. He awoke with a start at 1030 the next morning, having slept through reveille, breakfast, his alarm, and most of the morning. He felt better than he had in weeks. He shaved, dressed, and headed down to the wardroom. As he came out of his stateroom, he discovered that someone had taped a do not disturb sign on his door.

At 1600, nearly the entire wardroom, minus only the bridge watch standers, was assembled in D and D. Brian and Garuda had the watch.

There were already indications on the screens that something was up, with extra support aircraft beginning to fill the eastern sectors of the Gulf. There had been six recce runs made since midnight, which Brian felt had surely given the game away.

The captain replayed his briefing for the principals, which included the three evaluators, the SWICs, all the AICs, the senior helo pilots, and the LSO, Jack Folsom, as well as the module supervisors from each watch section.

Brian found it interesting that the bridge watch standers were not included, but then he remembered that, on a scale of 250 miles, the movements of the ship itself were not particularly important. Hood would probably remain in her box for the duration of the strikes.

Austin briefed the message air plans, and the status board supervisors busied themselves posting all the call signs and identification codes from the various carrier squadrons that would be involved. The senior helo pilot reviewed the endurance rules for continuous SAR operations, generally trying to put the best face he could on the circus that would be played out on Hood’s flight deck over the next three days. Everyone mentally rolled his eyes at the thought of seventy-two hours of nearly continuous helo ops; Chief Martinez’s firefighting crews would camp out in the flight-deck catwalks for the next three days and nights.

Brian went down to the evening meal, but then, not feeling sleepy after getting an entire night’s sleep, went back to Combat to watch. He wasn’t the only one with the same idea. D and D was crowded with khaki, as most of the principals had come up to take a look at their deployment’s first Alfa-strikes. The captain sat in his chair, with the exec standing beside him. They were watching the action on SWIC’s screen, which was a blur of amber, with a stream of tracks going to and from the carriers down on Yankee Station, and the heavenly host, as the support tracks were called, filling the skies over the Gulf with electronic-warfare jammers and listeners, Navy tactical radio-relay aircraft, SAR birds and their escorts, the Iron Hands, the ubiquitous E-2, who was controlling the strikes, and the Wager Bird, whose KC135 tanker now came to him during the course of the strikes.

Brian could not get close enough to the SWIC scope to see details, so he went into the surface module, where, as he expected, the surface guys had their NTDS console tuned into the air show going on to their west.

Because he was an evaluator, they made room for him at the console, even asking him who was who in the myriad of symbols streaming across the scope. It gave him a small surge of pride to be able to identify which symbols were the bombers, which the escorting Iron Hands, and to point out the crazy, taunting tracks of the Wild Weasels trying to stir up SAM sites. He watched for an hour as one wave tracked out of North Vietnam, to be overflown by the next wave coming in. The radio speakers in Combat were alive with crackling reports of targets engaged, SAM sites neutralized, and the yelled warnings among the strike aircraft of SAMs punching up into the night sky. The exec wandered into surface and nudged Brian on the arm.

“Just can’t stay away, huh?” he said to Brian.

“No, sir. It’s quite a show.”

“Well, it’s going to be here for another three days and nights. I recommend you go hit your tree; you’re making the Count nervous.”

Brian looked surprised. “Why is that, sir?”

“Well, he wants to make sure you get back here on time to relieve him.

And remember, it will take more than fifteen minutes to turn this show over. You should be up here by twenty-three hundred at the latest.”

“Aye, aye, sir. And thanks for getting Vince back into the game. I think I was at the end of my rope.”

“Yeah, well, you will be again if you don’t get your tree time while you can.”

“Yes, sir.” Brian hesitated, pointing at the screen with his chin. “All this doing any good?”

The exec shrugged. “Yeah, I suspect it is. They’re going after troop concentrations, vehicle parks, ammo and fuel dumps, all the things the NVA needs to sustain its operations in the DMZ and farther south. Their logistics system is primitive, which makes it hard to find worthwhile targets most of the time. When they do stack it up or park it somewhere, yeah, this sort of surge does a lot of damage.”

“Don’t they do anything about it? Like send up their Migs?”

“Not usually. I mean, look at the scope. Half that shit is attack birds; the other half is support and CAP— BARCAP, Migcap, SARCAP, Iron Hand—basically, a whole gruncha fighters tooling around praying that a Mig will show its Communist face. No, we won’t see Migs until the dust settles. Even the Migs that usually come up around Hanoi are going to stay in their bunkers. Now, you quit spectatin’ and lay below.”

Brian grinned and left Combat.

To a passing outside observer, the ship did nothing for the next three days but push along at a sedate five knots, boring endless holes in the sullen waters of the Tonkin Gulf, cranking up speed and turning into the wind every ninety minutes to recover and launch the next SAR helo.

The bridge watch standers fought boredom and sunburn and the engineers sweated in 110-degree heat in their steel jungle of steam lines and roaring machinery. While some of the deck apes continued their relentless pursuit of running rust, the bulk of the Deck Division spent their time dressed out in firefighting gear, hunkering down in sweaty lumps along the 01 level aft, by the sides of the helo hangar, around their hoses and foam generators, rising to their stations about every ninety minutes as Big Mother, the log helo, or Clementine exchanged places on the deck.

Throughout the rest of the ship, the mess cooks toiled through four meals a day, while the yeomen and disbursing clerks and the personnelmen pursued their paperwork.

Only the occasional distant thunder of jet engines or multiple contrails across the sky gave any indication to the rest of the crew as to what was going on. For about half of them, there was simply nothing going on.

The ship was just killing time before the Subic port visit.

For Brian and the other half of the crew, the next three days and nights passed in a blur of scope symbology and radio transmissions as hundreds of Navy sorties screamed over the long coastline of North Vietnam, raining 750-pound general-purpose bombs, napalm, and cluster-bomb units on truck-staging areas, tank parks, ammo dumps, and artillery concentrations across the countryside. Some of the attack aircraft skimmed along the numerous canals and inland waterways, dropping five-hundred-pound bombs configured as mines into them to interdict nocturnal barge traffic. The military airfield at Vinh and-three other southern bases were struck and their runways cratered from end to end.