“He’ll have to find out about his RIO sooner or later,” the doctor said. It was not something he looked forward to telling the pilot, and he could sympathize with the admiral’s concerns.
“I know. I’ll do it when the time comes. But for now, what he saw up there might make a differencemight save some other man’s life.”
The doctor walked over to the bed, and placed one hand gently on the sleeping pilot’s shoulder. He tightened his hand slowly, trying not to put too much pressure on damaged muscles and tendons. He listened to the pilot’s breathing change, becoming shallower and quicker, then saw his eyelids flicker open. “Good morning,” the doctor said softly. “Do you remember where you are?”
Skeeter groaned, and rolled to one side as though trying to prop himself up on his elbows. The doctor placed his other hand gently on the opposite shoulder and forced him gently back down on the bed. “Don’t get up yet. Your body took a beating, and it’s going to hurt for a few days. You’re okay other than that, though.”
“What happened?” Skeeter shook his head, trying to clear out the fog. “Why am I-“
The sentence went unfinished as the details came back to him.
“We ejected, didn’t we? My RIO-“
Again he tried to struggle back up into a sitting position, even flung one foot off the edge of the bed as if he were going to jump out.
The doctor held him down more firmly. “Admiral Wayne is here. He’d like to ask you a few questions, if you’re up to it.”
Too weak to resist further, Skeeter lay back down on the rack. His eyes were brighter now, focusing on his surroundings. “Admiralmy RIO. How is he?”
Batman walked over to the hospital bed and laid his hand over Skeeter’s. “We haven’t found him yet.”
Skeeter moaned. “He got outI saw him. Heard him, at least.”
“Did you see his chute?” Batman asked carefully.
Skeeter furrowed his brow, trying to think. Had he seen a chute?
He shook his head, tried to force his mind to yield up the details of the ejection. Nothing came to him. “I don’t know.”
He looked up at the admiral, his eyes blurring. “But it had to work. They always do. Don’t they?”
His voice begged desperately for reassurance.
“Most of the time they do,” Batman said. It was tempting to offer the young airman what he wanted, reassurance that the missing man would be found eventually. But to do so would only prolong the agony. Batman was just coming to terms with it himself, the probability that the RIO’s parachute had failed to deploy and the man would never be found. As painful as it was, it was better that Skeeter start facing that now.
“We’re doing everything we can. We have every helo on deck airborne during daylight, and the Shiloh is quartering a search pattern now. If he’s out there, we’ll find him.”
“Daylight? What time is it?”
Batman glanced over at the doctor, who nodded. “Three o’clock in the morning. You’ve been out for a while.”
“Unconscious?”
“Skeeter, I hate to do this, but I need to ask you about the attack,”
Batman said, skillfully avoiding the details surrounding Skeeter’s own rescue. It troubled him in a way, although it would normally be understandable, following on the heels of Skeeter’s incident on the flight deck. It made him wonder whether the young man had the temperament to make it as a fighter pilot. It took guts and passion to climb into that Tomcat every day. He wanted people who cared about flying, cared desperately.
But that was only part of the equation.
To be successful, a fighter pilot had to compartmentalize his mind.
When he walked out of the island and onto the flight deck, he had to drain every bit of emotional tension out of his mind, lock it away in some dark corner for the duration of the mission. Later, he could worry about his wife, fret over his kids, or generally be pissed off at the world. But while you were on the flight deck, while there were airplanes turning nearby or while you were airborne, everything ceased to exist except the mission.
“You saw the Falcon in plenty of time, didn’t you?” Batman asked, focusing in on his current missiongaining information that could save the life of another pilot. “I saw the radar picturewhat really happened?”
Skeeter began detailing the encounter with the Falcon, using his hands to illustrate the relative position of the two aircraft during the rolling scissors he’d been trapped into. When he reached the part of it where he’d decided to pop his speed brakes, Batman smiled appreciatively. “Good call. Who taught you that?”
Skeeter thought for a moment. “Something I read in Fighter Combat, Admiral. The DukeDuke Cunningham.”
Admiral Wayne nodded. “Hell of an aviatoreven a better Congressman.”
“The thing is, that Falcon’s not a typical Falcon. Not the way they told me, at least. He just jumped right into the vertical, didn’t stick to an angles fight like he was supposed to.”
Skeeter frowned. “It was almost as though he didn’t know what he was doing. No, but that couldn’t be ithe was too damned good.”
Skeeter looked up at the admiral, puzzled.
“It was like a Chihuahua that thinks it’s a Great Dane.”
“Come again?” the admiral asked, failing to follow Skeeter’s analogy.
“You know how some dogs are, Admiral. They may be little, short, and not any more dangerous than a gnat. But you get some of’em, they get sort of this complexthey yap and yell and charge at you like they were a Great Dane. I guess nobody ever bothered to tell them they were just small dogs.”
He chuckled, then winced at the pain in his ribs. “That’s what this Falcon guy was likenobody ever bothered to tell him he ought to be in an angles fight.”
Batman frowned. “Anything else unusual about his performance?”
Skeeter’s face lit up suddenly. “I know what would explain itit’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Batman nodded. “We may be thinking the same thingan equipment change-out.”
“That’s exactly it.”
It did explain it, Batman thought. The intelligence briefing on the Turkish Falcons had made the assumption that they were outfitted with one of the two engines normally used on that airframe. But what if they weren’t?
What if Turkey had found a way to put a different power plant in the airframe, one with more thrust?
It wouldn’t take a lot, not as light as that aircraft was. Fuel would be the main problem, but Turkey’s strategy probably called for fighting close to home. It wasn’t like fighting from an aircraft carrier, where every gallon of fuel counted, not when you stayed close to home base and fuel support.
Batman laid a hand on Skeeter’s shoulder. “The Intelligence guys will be down to talk to you soon. They’ll want to follow up on thisyou up to seeing them in the morning?”
Skeeter nodded. “I don’t think I’m going anywhere for a while, Admiral.”
On his way back to his cabin, Batman considered the possibility of a higher thrust-to-weight Falcon and what impact that would have on his tactics. Or was this just an especially canny Falcon pilot, one who knew that the American aviators would be expecting an angles fight?
Wasn’t that one of the first tenets of Naval warfaredo what the enemy least expects?
No matter. He stopped by CVIC on his way back to his cabin, and quickly filled the duty officer in on what he’d learned from Skeeter. The officer promised to tell Lab Rat and have a full briefing on the possibilities ready by ten o’clock that morning. As he left, Batman saw the duty officer was calling the on-watch team around him for a war conference.
There was still no sign of Skeeter’s RIO, the XO of VF-95. No debris, no international air-distress beeper, nothing. While the search would continue for another twenty-four hours, Batman already knew what the final result would be. Another good pilot lost. Tomorrow he’d have to start thinking about the memorial service, about dealing with the squadron’s grief and anger over losing their XO.