Because public display of affection was against cadet rules and Dom Dominguez was in his khakis-the best he could do was gaze deeply into Barbara"s eyes. She appeared flattered by the attention.

"Like a lovesick marmoset," Cadet Third Cla.s.s Joe Kelly said.

"Disgusting."

"The marmoset, having eaten, looks for dice," Ken Tanaka said. He sat between Kelly and Dominguez.

:"How long you guys been dating now?" Kelly asked.

"Off and on since June Week one year ago," Manuel Dominguez answered.

"Well, actually, it started after June Week."

The scene had been the most pleasant of the three cadets" doolie year.

Just before June Week, when they had been officially recognized and didn"t have to put up with any more fourth-cla.s.s Mickey Mouse customs, Barbara Westin had come driving into the cadet visitor area in a black Thunderbird convertible, a perfectly legal thing to do. Sightseers from all over the country did it frequently.

,, Well, h.e.l.lo," she had said as Manuel Dominguez had marched by. "I thought you didn"t have to march in public anymore."

Manuel had swung around. Oh my G.o.d. The Most Beautiful Girl in the World. "I wasn"t marching, I was walking.

:"Like you had a board up the back of your shirt."

"You looking for Powers?" Dominguez loved being able to refer to the nemesis by his last name.

:"Oh my, no. Why would I be looking for him?"

"You"re driving his car."

She had made a tart face. "I most certainly am not. This car is mine.

I just let him drive it that one time."

I"ll bet it"s her daddy"s T-Bird. He had walked closer to the car, which sat very low to the ground from his position on the high curb. She had worn blue jeans and a man"s shirt with several top b.u.t.tons open. He had meant to examine the interior of the car when he found himself staring right down the front of Miss Barbara Westin"s shirt at her cute little B-cup b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Startled at the magnificent view, he had looked up, face flaming, and caught her looking intently at him with her deep brown eyes. Oh my G.o.d, ohmyG.o.d. Now I"ve done it. She"s going to drive right home and tell Daddy all about these lecherous cadets and he"s going to call my Tac officer and ... and ...

"Want to go for a ride, zoomie?" she had asked in a husky voice.

"Oh yeah, you had been dating that Powers creep," Joe Kelly said to Barbara in the snack bar.

"As a matter of fact we owe a lot to him," Dom said, convinced that "that Powers creep" had made it possible for him to date the most beautiful girl in the world by being the biggest creep in the world. In a way quite different from what he thought, however, he was correct.

Barbara smiled sweetly and said nothing.

Dom saw Tanaka"s normally cheerful face darken when Powers" name was mentioned. "Still on your case, isn"t he?" he asked.

Tanaka nodded. Powers was still treating him like a fourthcla.s.sman by jamming him for the slightest infraction at the SAMIs, the Sat.u.r.day AM inspections, at which he would find fault with such trivia as not liking the way Tanaka folded his laundry or, in Powers" role as a cadet flight commander, complaining of his gig line at noon meal inspections.

Dom"s eyes turned hard. "I"d like to get him someday."

Tanaka, cheerful again, nodded wisely. "it is said the shallowest fish has the broadest tail."

Barbara touched his hand. "Oh Ken, you say the sweetest, most clever things. Whatever do they mean?" They laughed as Tanaka made an exaggerated face of inscrutability.

"Well," Dom said, "your dad might have something to say about our going together ... all of it negative."

Mister George Hadley Westin indeed had something to say about his one and only daughter, nineteen going on twenty, even dating a... "Well,"

he had said, "someone of a different race."

Since her mother had died five years before, Miss Barbara Westin had little difficulty getting her way with her grief-torn and highly protective father. She had talked him out of sending her east for college, so she could attend Colorado College and play the local scene, where she knew her way around. Being an Out cast was too alien, she thought; here she was in control and could do as she pleased, especially when it came to playing the field with all the boys.

"Don"t you worry about Daddy," Barbara said. I play him like a pinball machine that never says tilt."

"One more picture," Dom said and raised his Brownie flash camera, which he carried on a strap around his neck. They all groaned, but smiled, as he held the camera up and pressed the b.u.t.ton. Barbara"s smile was heart-melting, he knew, and he hoped he had captured her sweet warmth.

He checked his watch.

"Time to make my Sunday duty call." Each of the three cadets had acquired the habit of calling home on Sunday afternoons from the bank of pay phones at the Antlers Hotel. Dom patted his pocket for change and departed.

He whistled as he went down the hall toward the phones, but stopped abruptly as a door to one of the small private dining rooms opened in front of him and a youngish man Dom recognized as one of the local rowdies stepped out, pulling a very drunk Jerome Powers in a vomit-stained uniform after him.

"And stay the f.u.c.k out, punk. This is a man"s game." Before he slammed the door, leaving Powers swaying in the hall, Dom saw several men sitting around a poker table littered with chips and beer bottles.

"f.u.c.king game," Powers slurred, and tried to walk down the hall. He caromed off a wall and fell to his knees, then toppled against the wall and slid to a sitting position, eyes bleary and unfocused.

Manuel Dominguez whipped his camera in front of him and snapped three photos as fast as he could wind the film and change the bulbs.

"Here, let me help you," he said when he was done, and grasped Powers"

arm.

And that was his mistake. For because of that gesture and what it led to, what Dominguez had seen and what he would do, Powers would finally get his wish to get back at Tanaka through this young cadet, though neither of them knew it at the moment.

A week later, on a dark afternoon, Manuel J. Dominguez was ushered out of the United States Air Force Academy for a violation of the cadet honor code.

0445 Hours LOCAL, WEDNESDAY 9 OCTOBER 1968 EAGLE STATION AT LIMA SITE 85.

ROYALTY OF LAOS.

"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday," the frantic call sounded over the radio. Every pilot in the night sky and every radar controller on the ground within a 200-mile radius of the transmitter heard the terse voice of the man in trouble. "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.

This is Beercan Two Two. We"re hit bad. My frontseater is wounded. I need a vector to the nearest friendly base. Anybody copy Beercan?" The voice was thin and desperate.

A controller at a clandestine radar site in northeastern Laos at his microphone. "Roger, leaned close to his scope and keyed Beercan Two Two, this is Eagle. We copy you loud and clear. What is your location from Channel 97?"

"Beercan is a Romeo Fox-Four Charley, ah, east of Channel 97 at, ah, 15,000 feet."

The Eagle controller spotted a blip at that location and marked it with his grease pencil. I think I have you. Squawk 53 on your parrot to make sure." Squawk 53 was the command for the man in the RF_4C Phantom jet, call sign Beercan Two Two, to turn dials on a device to send a special coded burst of energy to the radar screen at Eagle Station.

Beercan was a reconnaissance version of the Phantom jet. It carried cameras instead of cannons, photo flash cartridges instead of bombs.

"Beercan, you copy Eagle?"

"Ali, rodge, Eagle, I copy you loud and clear. I"m in the backseat.

Negative parrot back here and my pilot is unconscious. I need a vector to the nearest base and you"d better get somebody up here. My pilot can"t fly, and I don"t know how. All I can do is keep it straight and level ... sort of." The RF-4C had full flight controls in the backseat.

"Uh oh," said Staff Sergeant Al Verbell, the Eagle controller working Beercan, to his senior controller, Lieutenant Bob Pearson. "I"ve got a problem here, Lieutenant. You working any F-4s out there tonight? I need one to intercept Beercan."

He carefully watched the screen as he used the grease pencil to mark the progress of the blip. "Beercan," he transmitted through the boom mike at his lips, "turn right forty-five degrees then immediately back to a westerly heading." He watched the blip follow his instructions, "I"ve got you, Beercan Two Two.

Maintain 270 degrees heading while I get a vector for you.

What is your fuel state?"

,"I, uh, think I"ve only got twenty minutes or so, Eagle. I need help fast." The voice was that of a young man who was doing his best to remain calm.

Lieutenant Pearson leaned over Verbell"s shoulder and studied the scope.

Verbell pointed out the lone blip fifty miles east of their station. The two men were in a small gray van on a plateau atop a sharp piece of karst rising 5,000 feet almost straight up from the surrounding jungle floor. Outside their van were the radio antennae and domes containing their radar dishes. They were in Laos, very close to the border of North Vietnam.

"I think I can get someone to him," Pearson told Verbell.

"Meanwhile, give him a steer to Green Anchor." Verbell did as he was told, telling Beercan to turn south toward the anchor point for the orbiting KC-135 aerial tanker, call sign Green Tanker.

Pearson went back to his own scope. He wore a walk-around headset and boom mike. He switched range on his scope, keyed the mike switch clipped to his shirtfront, and called Alley Cat, an Airborne Command and Control Center (ABCCC, spoken as Aye Bee Triple Cee).

"Alley Cat, Eagle, how read?" "Eagle, Alley Cat, loud and clear. Go ahead."

"Alley Cat, we have Beercan Two Two, a shot-up recce Fox-Four Charley, fifty miles cast. The frontseater is wounded. The backseater is flying the bird and he"s a navigator, not a pilot. You got any Fox-Fours under your control we can vector up there to lead the guy in?"

After a short pause Alley Cat answered. "Eagle, go 325.4 and we"ll see what we can do with an F-4 we are monitoring."

Pearson switched his radio to the new frequency in time to hear Alley Cat make a call.

"Phantom Zero One, Alley Cat. We"ve got a little problem and we need your help. You onto anything right now?"

"Alley Cat, Phantom Zero One. We"re not stirring up a thing out here tonight. All the bad guys are hiding from us. What can we do for you?"

Phantom Zero One was an F-4 on night patrol over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, looking for trucks and guns. The pilot was Major Court Bannister and the backseater was Captain Ken Tanaka, an aircraft commander being checked out as a night IP (Instructor Pilot). Bannister was the commander of the unit the Phantom FACs from Ubon Royal "Mai Air Force Base-in which they flew. In less than a minute, Alley Cat had Bannister in touch with Eagle and they switched radio frequencies to that of the crippled F-4.

"Phantom Zero One, steer 345 for an intercept with Beercan. Make angels base plus six." Eagle had just told Bannister to take up the northwesterly heading of 345 degrees toward Beercan and to use whatever it took to get to 14,000 feet. The coded base alt.i.tude for the twenty-four-hour period was 8,000 feet.

Coding the alt.i.tude each day was an attempt to fool enemy radio intercepts.

Thirteen minutes later Bannister was approaching the intercept point. He was at a head-on angle to Beercan, who was one thousand feet above.

Bannister needed directions from Eagle to begin a long sweeping cutoff turn that would place him on Beercan"s wing.

Pearson listened as Verbell transmitted to Bannister. "We"ll start your cutoff in a few seconds, Phantom. How"s the weather ". up there?"

"Getting pretty rough. We"re in what remains of a big thunderstorm."

"Get over here fast, Phantom," the frantic voice from Beercan interrupted. "We"re in clouds now and I can"t hold this thing much longer."

Verbell keyed his mike. "Phantom, start a left cutoff turn to - . ." A savage boom rocked the van, the lights flickered and went off.

Court Bannister heard the start of the explosion a split second before the transmission from Eagle went dead. He rolled his big Phantom fighter into a left turn.

"Eagle," he called. "Eagle, You read Phantom Zero One?"

There was no answer, He tried again, then called Alley Cat for an alternate frequency to contact Eagle.

"Stand by," Alley Cat said. He called back after a pause "Negative response, Phantom. We"ve tried all frequencies" They"re off the air.

Can you continue your intercept of Beercan?" Alley Cat, the ABCCC, was a C-130 full of radios and controllers but no radar with which to vector Bannister.

"We"ll try," Court Bannister replied. He spoke to Ken Tanaka in the backseat. "You got him, Ken?" The F-4 carried its own on-board radar.

"Yes, sir. Keep turning. Tighten it up, he"s thirty degrees port for six miles." Tanaka refined the image on his radarscope in the backseat.

"Phantom, Phantom, this is Beercan, Beercan. Help me, help me. I"m losing it - . ." The sound of heavy and rapid breathing filled the headsets of those listening as the backseater in his rising panic kept his thumb on the mike switch, making it impossible for anyone else to transmit. If they tried, the air filled with squeals and howls. The man who has left his mike open hears none of that. Finally the backseater said, "Oh s.h.i.t," and the mike was unkeyed.

"Take it easy, Beercan," Court Bannister transmitted. He rapidly cross-checked his own instruments and small radar screen as he closed on the F-4. "Take it easy," he said again. "I"ve got good radar contact with YOU. Just keep those needles centered."

"Roll out, boss," Ken Tanaka said from Court"s backseat.

"We"re in trail with him. He"s twelve o"clock for six miles, one thou high, we have a fifty-knot overtake. You can start your climb. I"m locked on."

Court advanced the throttles a few percent and, using the radar, began to climb and jockey into position behind Beercan. After a few terse minutes he was 600 feet directly behind Beercan, thirty feet low, and closing.

"See anything?" Ken Tanaka asked.

"Negative," Court said as he alternated his scan up from the instruments in the c.o.c.kpit to the windscreen and the black night outside.

Tanaka read from his gages. "We have zero overtake, we"re about fifty feet low and two hundred behind."

Court inched forward a few more feet. Still nothing. Then he slid to the right a few feet and continued his overtake. He didn"t want to overrun Beercan. If he missed, he wanted to pa.s.s to one side, not ram into him. He scanned the gages, then looked through the windscreen again. Still nothing.

"Beercan, are your nav lights on?"

"s.h.i.t no. We just came from bad-guy country. They were off when we got hit. I can"t put them on from back here."

"h.e.l.l, boss," Ken Tanaka said. "No way we can intercept a blackout in night weather." Tanaka was correct. Radar could get them within 100 or even 50 feet, but was not discriminate enough to show a pilot how to join up within three feet of another airplane"s wing in the black of night and in heavy clouds.

"Beercan," Court transmitted, "turn up your c.o.c.kpit lights to full bright, put on your thunderstorm lamp, and twist your utility lamp to shine out the right side of the canopy."

The navigator in the backseat of the Beercan F-4 did as he was told, and Court saw a dim glow illuminate the black clouds off to his left. He quickly eased his airplane in that direction until he had the shot-up Phantom in view. The glow from the rear c.o.c.kpit gave him enough reference to fly a few feet aft of the right wing of Beercan. The plane was wobbling.