I'm at twenty-two thousand feet, left wing man in a formation of five F-4U Phantoms. We're flying at an operational combat speed of fifteen hundred knots, fully armed. The five dark green and gray needle-nosed jets are pushing through the air, clear blue sky, above scattered cloudy patches and dense green and black jungle far below. The maps in the Operations building always look different than the real terrain does, now far below and densely secret. Six or seven minutes away from us is a cloudy pillar shooting to maybe thirty thousand feet or more a favorite hiding place for the new Mig-21's used by the NVAF. Fast planes. I've never fought with one, but I've seen a couple. They are very maneuverable, with swept wings and horizontal ailerons mounted below the vertical stabilizer in the stern. Not as fast as our planes, but more maneuverable by far. Occasional glances at my dash panel reveal a myriad of dials and gauges. Fuel state is fine, all hydraulics are working, my safety tree to the right shows all systems are green. The stick feels good in my right hand. The grips fit easily between my gloved fingers. I look to my right and get the "thumbs up" from Freddy Cap'n Jennings. Used to be a Navy boy. Flew the old Avenger fighter-bomber during the Pacific Campaign. Flew at Midway, at Guam, and at Iwo Jima real class. The ether snaps at me "Ojibway-leader-six to tribe. Read me?" It is Freddy breaking radio silence. We are supposed to maintain quiet at all times, but no one ever does. The static crackles a little as we call off in turn. My turn. "Fleetfoot five here, Ojibway leader. Nice day to go fishing, eh Fred?" From my far right another voice breaks in. "Hey, you birds. Let's skip out to Hawaii or Tahiti or someplace and do a little beach combing. Whatdya Say?" Number two chimes in "Sounds fine, Arty. What are you going to do, join the French Foreign Legion?" A lot of laughing. "I hear they still fly spads." A few more laughs, and then Fred breaks it off. "All right, you clowns. Let's cut the chatter. No sense inviting company." That makes us all kind of nervous, and I catch myself wanting to lift my sun shield and bite my fingernails. It's hard to think about war, twenty-thousand feet above the DMZ. My plane is a lethal weapon, able to present more concentrated fire power than a whole company of marines. Four Sidewinder rockets, napalm, six 20-mm gattling guns, that blast out about six-thousand rounds a minute I get light-headed just thinking about it. We have flown for about six minutes when we come to the cloud cover. The air gets a little turbulent here, and my stomach growls a little; even at fifteen hundred knots the ship lurches a little. Those seven-foot steel wings won't give much, though. I turn, look at Fred, then casually glance into my rear-view mirror. Something about the size of a fly darts across it in the space behind me, and disappears into the cloud bank. I blink my eyes, once, twice, and look again. Two more black dots zip behind me. My thumb mashes the red radio button into its housing. "Fleetfoot-five-to-Ojibway-leader. Acknowledge." "This is Ojibway. What's up, Reed?" I kind of flinch. Maybe it's just my imagination. "Freddy, we're being tailed by at least three bogies." I turn and watch him as he looks into his mirror and strains to see through the large clouds at his rear. "You positive, Reed? I can't see anything." "They're probably right on top of us, Big Daddy. They ducked into that large cloud funnel at the left. I thought I was seeing things, like flies in the cockpit or something. But then I saw two more." The others are looking behind us now. Straining their eyes. "Okay tribe, this is Ojibway leader. War party on our tails, so let's grab some ceiling." My hand pulls back on the stick, and my left pushes the climb lever at the left into the afterburner. I feel the huge surge of power as I wheel left and follow the streaking grey dart to the right ahead of me. My altimeter reads about thirty-five thousand and climbing. I'm at a sixty-degree angle now, and turning to the northwest. The clouds brush past my cockpit with lacey fingers and patches of blue and brilliant orange flash off the green visor of my helmet. Then I see them, above and to the left at about ten o'clock high. I turn, motion to Fred, but he sees them first and begins to turn the flight toward them. Six Migs come screaming out of the sun at us from our left side. The headphones roar to life. "Ojibway to tribe. Formation five-by. Roll and turn into their right flank. It's your show, Reed." That means I shoot first since I'm the point man, and have the clearest shot. "Roger," we echo. Five to six. Not bad odds considering our superior fire power and speed. We are closing the gap between us at nearly three thousand knots, four and a half times the speed of sound. Before I can think twice I have set the homing mechanism and fired the two sidewinder missiles. My shark-shaped plane shudders as two missiles, white and red turned to pink smears of speed, shoot from under my wings at five times the speed of sound. One homes in on the lead plane, while the other veers 16 to the right towards a second plane. It is only seconds before the billowing clouds around us burn vermillion and orange as the Migs disappear in a flash. The headphones again blare to life. "Nice shooting, mate." It's Fred. The others are above me to the right, and I get the "thumbs up" again as they roll above me in a long, arching turn. We cut under them head on, and begin a ninety-degree turn to evade pursuit. The blood drains from my face and neck. My fingers burn and feel bloated. Stars, all silvery and white shoot in front of my eyes as the increased pressure from the turn sucks the blood from my head. I feel my chin and cheeks sag as I try to keep my eyes open through the turn. One-hundred-and-eighty-degrees around. They are nowhere in sight. In the twenty-six seconds it takes to complete our turn they could be up to one-hundred-twenty miles away from us. My radar shows nothing as it scans the horizon in front of me, but they could have ducked behind us. I have two confirmed kills, and I hope I don't end up the same way. A movement to the side catches my eye. A streak of orange blurs in my mirror and I turn viciously toward the ground. And then a jolting flash. I see my wing falling behind me as my plane begins to carome through the sky in huge careening barrel rolls. Dammit, I almost got past it. Everything is spinning around in crazy circles. Hell. I didn't know they had air-to-air missiles on those things. I am numb, no pain, no feeling, no horror. I feel a strange power pouring through my body. My mind whirs away at lightning speed. Wait until twenty thousand feet, call the mayday, get a fix on my position, eject into the jungle. "Fleetfoot-five. Mayday! Mayday! Fix me, Fred. I've lost a wing. Where the hell are we?" The voice in my ear sounds deep and calm. "Roger, fleetfoot-five, I have you fixed. You're about two hundred miles north of the DMZ around sector Z-26. I'll follow you to ten-thousand and call the Jolly Green Giant. Roger?" "Roger!" The altimeter is falling, my spin is slower now in the thicker air, but I'm still picking up speed. Been dropping for ten or twelve seconds now. Twenty-five-thousand, twenty-thousand. Pull the visor over my face. Time to bail out of this crate. Two quick motions left hand squeezes the large yellow handle at the base of the seat and the canopy blows off. The wind rips at my clothes. Right hand pushes the red handle down, and a loud explosion the seat is blasted two hundred fifty feet away from the plane in a split second. My back almost snaps. The wind rushes past my face guard and tears at my nose and eyes. My oxygen hose snaps in the spin my lungs begin to ache and burn. I'm nauseated, falling, falling, spinning around and around, my eyes closed. Come on chute! Open up! I fall for days, years. Then the jerk comes, the chute opens, grabs, the chair disconnects and falls away from me, disappearing in the close, humid clouds. Must be three, four thousand feet up still. No sign of the jungle below. I feel a breeze now a steady push of air up past my chin and around the corners of my helmet. It's clouding the inside of my visor. Damn! got to lift my lid before I land. Nope. Keep it on just in case you land in a tree, Reed. Keep me from getting my face torn off by the branches. If I land IN a tree! Ha! There's nothing down there BUT trees for miles! Only open flat places are the landing zones, and they are only little specks in the jungle. Hmm. No breeze to turn the chute with. I'll just have to take pot luck. Wonder if I'll get shot before I even touch down. I guess it's happened lots of times before. The fog on my glass clears up and I see the long, arching fingers of the trees reaching up to grab me. I don't see anybody moving down there, but that doesn't prove a thing. These orange and white parachutes are brighter than flares. I have never felt so naked. I see an open area underneath me, about seventy feet across. Lucky as anything! I won't have to break my neck, but worse luck, I might get shot instead. My feet touch down, brushing first along the tops of the reed grass and then squishing into six inches of water. I hit, roll, splash, and sag as my chute catches in the water, smash my palm against my chest with a quick motion, releasing the shoulder harness of my chute, and roll onto my stomach. The grass and water are deep enough to hide me, but the lousy parachute is still strung out all over the place. I scramble to my knees, drag in the static lines, and roll the soggy mess into a loose ball. I take off my helmet and leave it next to the parachute. It's of no further use. All wet. Smells like a sewer. Hell. Almost wish I was in a tree somewhere. Got to stop wasting time thinking like that. I claw a hole in the oozy mud and stuff the largest part of my parachute and helmet into it. I have to brush off a few leeches already and more are coming, quietly, unseeing, but unerringly toward me. I crouch, run with bent legs, boots splashing wildly in the water until I reach the tree line. My tracks are so deep they might give me away. It's 1630 in the afternoon. Nearly dark. Have to get my bearings. Even though the flying suit is dripping with water, I am thankful that it is waterproofed on the inside. I have some khaki survival 17