“Let me give you a tip. You hear talk about this, you tell people to clam up. You get talk started about an operation like this, people start disappearing.”
“Hey, Rob, anybody wants to mess with Chavez and Muñoz and -”
“Listen to me, boy! I’ve been there. I’ve been shot at by machine guns, and my Tomcat ate a missile once, damned near killed the best RIO I ever had. It’s dangerous out there, and talk gets people dead. You remember that. This isn’t college anymore, Tim.”
Tim considered that for a moment. His brother was right. His brother was also wondering what, if anything, he should do about it. Rob considered just sitting on it, but he was a Tomcat driver, a man of action, not the sort to do nothing at all. If nothing else, he decided, he’d have to warn Jack that the security on the operation wasn’t as secure as it ought to be.
22. Disclosures
UNLIKE AIR FORCE and Army generals, most Navy admirals do not have personal aircraft to chauffeur them around, and for the most part they fly commercial. A coterie of aides and drivers waiting at the gates helps ease the pain, of course, and Robby Jackson was not above making points with his boss by appearing at San José Airport just as the 727 pulled up to the jetway that evening. He had to wait for the first-class passengers to deplane, of course, since even flag officers fly coach.
Vice Admiral Joshua Painter was the current Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Air Warfare, known to insiders by his “designator,” OP-05, or just “oh-five.” His three-star rank was a miracle. Painter was first of all an honest man; second, an outspoken one; third, someone who thought the real Navy was at sea, not alongside the Potomac River; finally and most damagingly, he was that rarest of naval officers, the author of a book. The Navy does not encourage its officers to commit their thoughts to paper, except for the odd piece on thermodynamics or the behavior of neutrons within a reactor vessel. An intellectual, a maverick, and a warrior in a service that was increasingly anti-intellectual, conformist, and bureaucratized, he thought of himself as the token exception in what was turning into The Corporate Navy. Painter was a crusty, acerbic Vermont native, short and slight of build, with pale, almost colorless blue eyes and a tongue sharp enough to chip stone. He was also the living god of the aviation community. He’d flown more than four hundred missions over North Vietnam in several different models of the F-4 Phantom, and had two MiGs to his credit – the side panel from his jet, with two red stars painted on it, hung in his Pentagon office, along with the caption, SIDEWINDER MEANS NOT HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY. Though a perfectionist and a very demanding boss, he deemed nothing too good for his pilots or his enlisted crews, especially the latter.
“I see you got the message,” Josh Painter observed, reaching a finger out to tap Robby’s bright new shoulder boards.
“Yes, sir.”
“I also hear your new tactics were a disaster.”
“They could have worked out a little better,” Captain Jackson admitted.
“Yeah, it does help if the carrier survives. Maybe a CAG slot will reinforce that in your mind. I just approved you for one,” OP-05 announced. “You get Wing Six. It chops to Abe Lincoln when Indy goes in for overhaul. Congratulations, Robby. Try not to screw up too badly in the next eighteen months. Now, what went wrong with the Fleet-Ex?” he asked as they walked off toward the waiting car.
“The ‘Russians’ cheated,” Robby answered. “They were smart.” That earned him a laugh from his boss. Though crusty, Painter did have a lively sense of humor. The discussion took care of the drive to flag quarters at the Naval Post-Graduate School on the California coast at Monterey.
“Any more on the news about those drug bastards?” Painter asked while his aide carried his bags in.
“We’re sure giving them a hard time, aren’t we?” Jackson observed.
The Admiral stopped dead in his tracks. “What the hell do you mean?”
“I know that I’m not supposed to know, sir, but I mean, I was there, and I did see what was going on.”
Painter waved Jackson inside. “Check the fridge. See if you can put a martini together while I pump bilges. Fix whatever you want for yourself.”
Robby made the proper arrangements. Whoever set up flag quarters for them knew what Painter liked to drink. Jackson opened a Miller Lite for himself.
Painter reappeared without his uniform shirt and took a sip from his glass. Then he dismissed his aide and very close look.
“I want you to repeat what you said on the way in, Captain.”
“Admiral, I know I’m not cleared for this, but I’m not blind. I watched the A-6 head for the beach on radar, and I don’t figure it was a coincidence. Whoever set up security on the op could have done a better job, sir.”
“Jackson, you’re going to have to forgive me, but I just spent five and a half hours sitting too close to the engines on a beat-up old 727. You’re telling me that those two bombs that took druggies out fell off one of my A-6s?”
“Yes, sir. You didn’t know?”
“No, Robby, I didn’t.” Painter knocked off the rest of his drink and set the glass down. “Jesus Christ. What lunatic set up this abortion?”
“But that new bomb, it had to – I mean, the orders and everything – shit, for this sort of thing, the orders have to chop through -05.”
“What new bomb?” Painter nearly shouted that out, but managed to control himself.
“Some kind of plastic, fiberglass, whatever, some kind of new bombcase. It looks like a stock, low-drag two-thousand-pounder with the usual attachment points for the smart-bomb gear, but it’s not made out of steel or any other kind of metal, and it’s painted blue like an exercise bomb.”
“Oh, okay. There has been a little work on a low-observable bomb for the ATA” – Painter referred to the new Stealth attack plane the Navy was working on – “but, hell, we’ve just done a little preliminary testing, maybe a dozen drops. Whole program’s experimental. They don’t even use the regular bomb filler, and I’m probably going to shit-can the program, ’cause I don’t think it’s worth the money. They haven’t even taken those things off China Lake yet.”
“Sir, there were several in Ranger’s bomb locker. I saw ’em, Admiral, I touched ’em. I saw one attached to an A-6. I watched on radar while I was up in the E-2 for the Fleet-Ex. Flew off to the beach and came back from a different direction. Timing might be a coincidence, but I’d be careful putting money down on that. The night I flew back, I saw another one attached to the same aircraft. Next day I hear that another druggie got his house knocked flat. It stands to reason that half a ton of HE’ll do just fine for that, and a combustible bombcase won’t leave shit behind for evidence.”
“Nine hundred eighty-five pounds of Octol-that’s what they use in those things.” Painter snorted. “It’ll do a house, all right. You know who flew the mission?”
“Roy Jensen, he’s skipper of -”
“I know him. We were shipmates on – Robby, what the hell is going on here? I want you to start over from the beginning and tell me everything you saw.”
Captain Jackson did just that. It took ten uninterrupted minutes.
“Who was the ‘tech-rep’ from?” Painter asked.
“I didn’t ask, sir.”
“How much you want to bet he isn’t even aboard anymore? Son, we’ve been had. I’ve been had. Goddammit! Those orders should have come through my office. Somebody’s been using my fucking airplanes and not telling me.”
It wasn’t about the bombings, Robby understood, it was about propriety. And it was about security. Had the Navy planned the job, it would have been done better. Painter and his senior A-6 expert would have set it up so that there would have been no awkward evidence for other people – like Robby in the E-2C – to notice. What Painter feared was the simple fact that now his people could be left holding the bag for an operation imposed from above, bypassing the regular chain of command.
“Get Jensen up here?” Robby wondered.
“I thought of that. Too obvious. Might get Jensen in too much trouble. But I’ve got to find out where the hell his orders came from. Ranger’s out for another ten days or so, right?”
“I believe so, sir.”
“Has to be an Agency job,” Josh Painter observed quietly. “Authorized higher up than that, but it has to be Agency.”
“For what it’s worth, sir, I got a good friend who’s pretty senior there. I’m godfather for one of his kids.”