Arsenal

ELEVEN

The conference room was oddly still and silent. In response to the blast, everyone from the Senate subcommittee to the Secretary of the Navy through the Chief of Naval Operations had ordered the battle group to a heightened state of alert and to withdraw outside the Cuban no-fly zone until the politicians could assess the fallout. On board the carrier, pilots and other flight officers flooded the passageways, restless without the constant overhead pounding of their aircraft spooling up, launching, and returning to the carrier.

Both the 03-level Dirty Shirt and the more formal Officers’ Mess on the third deck were crowded, not only with aviators but with the flight crews that supported them. Brunch had made a comeback, even on this weekday when normally the carrier wouldn’t have been operating at flex-deck operation.

“So where do we stand?” Batman glanced at Tombstone and then continued with his line of questioning. “Somebody tell me this makes sense. We just shot a bunch of precision munitions at Cuba-Cuba, for God’s sake and shot up a soccer field. And maybe, just maybe, some missiles.

Then the ship that shot them runs into a really high-tech threat a mine. Now she’s limping around like a wounded duck and we’re hiding out a hundred miles south of Cuba.” Glancing around the room, he saw agreement on every face, even as the men and women shifted uneasily in expectation of having to try to come up with an answer to the situation.

“Admiral,” Batman continued, turning to Tombstone, “anything to add?”

Tombstone shook his head. “No, that about sums it up.

Once again, politics has played a nasty role in what should have been a tactical exercise.” His voice grew hard. “And, for the record, there will be no further cooperation with any news media from this battle force. Is that absolutely clear?”

Once again, heads nodded, the gazes avoiding his.

Tombstone shifted his inscrutable gaze back to Batman. “I’d be interested in hearing some options.”

“You’ll have them.” Batman pointed at the chief of operations. “Get your brightest minds together. I want plans, options, and at least a decent idea of how you’re going to defend this battle group both from a Cuban navy threat and from mines. You’ve got two hours.” Batman stood and walked out of the room behind Tombstone.

The chief of operations stood as well. “Okay, people, let’s get out of this bird-cage and get back to our spaces. We’ve got some work to do.”

Bird Dog headed straight back for his desk, excitement pounding in his veins. This was his chance, the evolution he’d spent the last year training for at the War College.

Notional flight schedules, concepts of operational art and deception flitted through his head, each one vying for his immediate attention.

It would be, he decided, his finest moment so far in the Navy. Even better than shooting down those MiGs in China, more exciting than flying over the harsh Aleutian terrain as he had in the past-no, this would be the one evolution that broke him out from the pack.

Admirals would be fighting to get him on their staff, and early promotion to commander … well, that was another question, wasn’t it? The war-game instructors back at the Naval War College had said he was a natural, after all.

He slid into his chair, scooted it up to the desk, and fired up his laptop, eager to get started on his plan to win the war.

Just as he keyed up the word processing and planning outline, a stack of envelopes landed on his desk, knocking his mouse away from his fingers.

“Mail call. Bird dog.” Gator’s voice was sardonic, as always. “Looks like you’ve got some incoming fire from Callie. I thought I’d go ahead and read it first, but” “Asshole,” Bird Dog snapped, grabbing for the light pink envelope Gator held just out of reach. “Give it to me, now!”

Gator scampered out of range and dodged behind the filing cabinet.

“Only if you promise to let me read it when you’re done with it.

Though what that woman could ever see in you is a mystery to us all.”

“Gator,” Bird Dog howled, darting around the file cabinet and desperately trying to get his hands on his RIO’s. “I swear to God, you’re going to be puking your guts out in the back of that Tomcat when I get my hands on you. I swear it!”

“Looks like a damned kindergarten around here,” the operations chief snapped. “Gator, damn it, give him his envelope. Let him drool over it a while so he’ll eventually get back to work. You heard the admiral we don’t have time to fuck around with this.”

Gator yielded up the pink envelope to his pilot, but only after running it under his nose and taking a long appreciative sniff of the delicate scent. “It still smells like” “Gator,” the chief of operations said warningly. “Don’t you have to be somewhere else?”

“I guess I do at that,” Gator answered mildly. He ambled to the door, and heading back down toward Strike Planning said, “Let me know when he’s sane again. Captain.”

Bird Dog held on to the letter with both hands and looked pleadingly at the chief of operations. “Could I” The chief scowled at him. “Fifteen minutes. Get the hell down to your compartment, read the letter from your honey, then get the hell back up here. And when you’re back here, mister, I want your full attention focused on what we’ve got to do.

You got that?”

“Yes, sir!” Bird Dog smiled and headed for the door.

Callie’s timing was perfect. A letter arriving just as he made a masterstroke in his career! How could she have known?

Bird Dog darted down to the compartment, dodging other sailors and leaping easily over knee-knockers. He flung open the door to his stateroom, made sure his roommate wasn’t skulking in a corner, and threw himself down on the lower bunk. He paused to take a deep, appreciative sniff of the letter before he delicately teased the envelope flap away from the body of it. The smell of perfume grew stronger. He inhaled deeply, then drew out the two folded pages of paper.

Only two sheet she frowned slightly, then dismissed the feeling.

Callie wasn’t much for long letters, he knew, though he himself could have written ten or fifteen pages to her every night if he had the time, pouring out his need for her, his plans, and his description of the life they’d have together eventually. Still The first words stopped his breath. He read the first paragraph again, trying to understand what his eyes were seeing, at a complete loss as to understand why it sounded like his fiancee was … she was. Dumping him? How could she? Gradually, his heart started to beat again, though it had taken a dive to somewhere down behind his navel.

The possibility that Callie wouldn’t follow through with their plans, would find someone else while he was on cruise, had never even occurred to him.

He let the pages flutter from his hand and land on the worn, nubby carpet on his deck. This would take some time to think through, some planning to figure out just how to convince her that she was making a terrible mistake. Time he didn’t have right now.

When Bird Dog walked back into the Operations Department only four minutes after he’d left, the rest of the staff looked startled, then maintained a cautious silence. There was no teasing, no joshing about what he’d been doing in those moments alone in his stateroom. Whether it was the short time span or the expression on his face, every single officer there seemed to know. Know, and commiserate. At least half of them had had the experience of receiving a Dear John letter while out on cruise. But the predictability of the event made it no less tragic for the officer involved.

Bird Dog seated himself at his desk, toggled his mouse to dissolve the flying-toaster screen saver into shards of color, and called up the beginning of his operational plan. Within minutes, he was immersed in the intricacies of it.

The noise level in the Operations compartment gradually returned to normal. Everyone left Bird Dog alone.

“We’re still afloat, if that’s what you mean.” Captain Heather’s voice sounded infinitely weary. “Damage control is still de-smoking and dewatering the ship, but I don’t think we’re in any imminent danger of sinking. At least I hope we’re not.”

He ran one hand over his face, rubbing wearily at the skin that seemed to sag on his cheeKbones. his leg had been hastily splinted, and he held it out in front of him as he squirmed in his command chair. If the corpsman had had his way, the captain would be down on the mess decks with the other casualties right now.

The voice over the speaker was in marked contrast to the way the captain felt. Two days ago, it could have been him.

There was a cool, calm note of command in it, the very choice of words and expressions denoting absolute confidence in the ability of the battle group to take this war to the enemy’s homeland. “And your operational capabilities?”

Captain Heather forced down a small spike of anger.

Admiral Magruder knew that there were dead sailors on his ship, men still waiting on the mess decks for medical attention. The admiral was just asking what he had to know, needed to know and had a right to know: How capable was the Arsenal ship of being a part of the battle plan?

“Most of the electronics are fine,” he answered, striving for professionalism. God, it was hard, when he’d just come back from visiting the wounded and dead on the decks below. “What was damaged we can bypass. The structural integrity of the launch tubes is another matter. I think we have some damage we won’t really know until we try to op-test them.”

“I don’t have to tell you we don’t have time for you to return to port and do that,” Magruder said slowly. The captain stared at the speaker as the admiral paused. “Give me your best guess. We’ll plan around it.”

The captain sucked in a sharp breath. “Admiral, the missile-launching capabilities of this ship are honeycombed together in the forward and aft parts of the ship even along the gangplanks, in some cases. If one cell is defective, it could pose a major fire hazard for us. Without shipyard-level testing, I can’t be sure.”

“It you’re looking for certainties, you’re in the wrong business. And I don’t think you are. There was a reason the Navy put you in command of Arsenal, and I suspect it’s because you’re superbly qualified for the position. This is why you get paid the big bucks. Captain. Or are you going to take the easy way out and declare your ship a total casualty?”

“I need to get back to you. Admiral,” the captain said, his voice frostily neutral. “Give me two hours. I’ll have a complete operational damage assessment for you then. And my decision as to whether there’s any chance at all we can still launch safely.”

“That will have to do,” the admiral said. “Make it sooner if you can.”

The circuit dissolved into a smooth hiss of static, the connection broken. The captain slammed the receiver down and jolted upright in his seat, slamming his hand into his open palm. After a few minutes, his anger became determination.

As much as he hated to admit it, the admiral was right.

The USS Arsenal was out here for one purpose to demonstrate the operational capabilities of a platform so far advanced over anything else the Navy had ever designed that it would change the shape of battles to come. And if it couldn’t survive a hit from the most primitive of naval weapons, an underwater mine, and continue fighting, then it might not be worth all the money that had been sunk into the program. It was up to him to demonstrate that now, one way or the other. He owed that to the men who’d died, to the men who’d lived, and to his country.

He could do it. He was convinced of that now. It was just a matter of making his crew believe that their ship could do it, too.

She was getting tired of being tossed into rickety jeeps and ferried about to obscure locations and even more fed up with the Cuban demands that she broadcast what they wanted when they wanted. This was not the way reporting was supposed to be, not at all. Where was her journalistic integrity, her independence, her right to seek out the story that her audience deserved? Not here not under these circumstances. The First Amendment and freedom of speech simply had no application in Cuba.

As the jeep jolted over the potholed, muddy road, an unwelcome thought intruded itself into her indignation.

Maybe there was a reason that Cuba was off-limits for American citizens. Maybe the United States government, and even the State Department, knew just a tiny bit more about the situation in this country than she and her cohorts did. Was it possible? Had she made a mistake?

No. The day she permitted the State Department to determine where and when she might go anywhere in the world was the day she might as well turn to narrating documentaries instead of broadcasting combat reports.

She gritted her teeth, partially out of determination but more to keep from biting her tongue as the jeep swerved on the road to avoid a tank, and concentrated on the story. She turned to her companion. “Where to this time? Are more SEALs invading? Or do you have some other facility you want to make sure the Americans avoid bombing? I’d give that last reason some rethinking, if I were you. It didn’t seem like it did much good last time.”

And so it hadn’t. Even though they’d known she was present at the last missile site, the Americans hadn’t been deterred from launching their precision strike weapons at it.

She felt an odd rush of loneliness, of abandonment. Even amongst the cynical, hard-bitten reporters, there had been an unspoken article of faith that they were Americans, that if they really got into trouble, the Marines would come and get them not launch weapons at them.

But wasn’t that a reciprocal obligation? If it were, she’d violated it sorely by broadcasting photos of the SEALs coming ashore. She supposed she couldn’t blame them if they were less than eager to come to her assistance now, since she’d almost gotten some of them killed. In a strange way, it hurt.

“Nothing quite that important this time. Miss Drake. Or maybe more so. You’ll have to judge for yourself,” Colonel Santana said cryptically. “It depends on what you define as important. This might meet that criterion.”

Pamela’s breath caught in her throat. “The actual missile sites?” she said softly. “It is, isn’t it?” For a moment, the glimmering ethical reflections she’d had a few moments earlier were blasted into oblivion by the all-encompassing drive to get the story. She’d been thwarted once, twice, but not this time, she vowed. Oh, no, this time she would send the story home, all wrapped up in a neat, succinct package for her viewers, telling them what happened, why it happened, and how they, the viewers, ought to feel about it. She could do that. She’d done it too many times already not to be able to.

“Why the big hurry now?” she said suddenly, still feeling the rush of euphoria from the prospect of this story.

“Something’s not making sense about this.”

He glanced at her, annoyed. “It-would make perfect sense to you if you were Cuban.”

Why don’t you try explaining it to me? she wheedled.

“That’s why I came here, you know to tell your story, not the one the American military establishment wants told.

Why waste this opportunity to build support for your cause?”

“Mine is not a cause!” he said, his voice harsh. “Causes are what rabble-rousers have. I represent the legitimate, elected government of the nation state of Cuba. That is what Aguillar and even Leyta and his rabble seem to forget. They are nothing more than troublemakers, and have no concept of what the Cuban people really want or need. We do.”

“You certainly won a landslide victory at each of the last elections,” she said carefully, “with a record voter turnout that the United States itself has never approached. Still, there was only one candidate on the ballot. Do you feel that weakens your position any?”

“The people wanted only one candidate. This was their opportunity to show their grateful support for our leader, not to engage in pointless bickering.” The jeep ground to a halt unexpectedly, throwing Pamela sideways against the hard metal strake. She hit her head sharply, felt a flash of pain, then pushed it aside to zoom back in on the man she was questioning. “So if the Cuban people feel that way, in the majority, why is this revolution taking place?”

“It is not a revolution. It is treason.” He smiled coldly.

“And that. Miss Drake, is something you ought to understand.”

“But how will missiles help you deal with an internal affair?” she pressed. “Surely if Cuba is capable of handling this issue herself, the last thing you need is the United States annoyed and intervening.

Unless,” she said, pausing as insight flashed into her mind, “you’re having a problem with your Libyan masters. Are they holding out for more control over the legitimate government in exchange for quashing the rebels for you? Is that it?”

Bingo. She knew she’d struck gold by the flash of annoyance in his eyes. Exultation warred with an increasing feeling of uneasiness as she contemplated her position. She was in Cuba illegally, neither entitled to nor likely to get support from her own government, and trapped between three warring forces. The so-called legitimate government of Cuba, the Libyan “advisors” who were increasingly in evidence, and the guerrilla fighters whom Leyta represented on the mainland.

A hell of a story if she survived it.

“I don’t know how you can expect me to keep this up,” Admiral Loggins hissed. “There’s absolutely no chance I can keep the aircraft carrier out of it. Not after what’s happened down there. It’s not only impossible, but it makes no tactical sense whatsoever. None.”

“You’re going to be lucky if you’ve even got any carriers left after I’m through with you,” Senator Williams shot back. He pointed at the TV broadcasting ACN headlines in the corner of the room. “That footage of those SEALs is worth more during budget debates than five hundred pounds of briefings and testimony. You think they ever read all the material we send them? No they make their decisions based on sound bites and shots like that. And you can bet they’re going to be hearing from every Cuban constituent in every district over this one.”

“What you’re asking is unreasonable. With the Arsenal ship damaged, if we need to take action against Cuba, it’s going to have to be with the carrier. There’s no other way to do this safely; there’s just not” “Safety’ is a relative term. And you’re going to be thinking longingly about this conversation when the Senate subpoenas you about your relationship with Miss Pamela Drake and the film footage ACN broadcast.

Don’t cross me now, Keith. You’re in this too far.”

Admiral Loggins slammed his hand down on the desk and glared at the senator. “Don’t you dare threaten me. Not me, not Pamela not ever.

I’ve gone along with your plans because they were what I felt was best for the Navy, but you’ve gone too far this time. My relationship with Pamela has nothing to do with her work, nor does she have anything to do with mine. We’re just private citizens, trying” “The hell you are!”

Senator Williams shoved himself out of his chair and leaned across the desk to glare at Loggins, his hands planted and splayed on the blotter in front of the admiral. “You gave up a private life the day you put on those stars, and don’t you forget it. Just the way I did when I took my first oath of office in Congress twenty years ago. What you do, who you screw, all of it. It’s all career material.

And if you don’t understand that, then you’ve already been promoted two times too many. You got me?”

The admiral stood up from behind his desk slowly, his shoulders slumped. He stared out the window that gazed out across the Potomac, at the landscape spotted with fog and pollution, at the distant white figures of the various memorials scattered around Washington, D.C. There was truth to what the senator said but it wasn’t the whole story.

And if it were, then what did that say about the twenty-five years he’d spent in the military?

Duty, honor, country. Those were things that mattered, not the pork-barrel electioneering that Williams was engaged in. Not even his own career mattered more than duty.

He wondered why he hadn’t seen that before, what should have been so obvious to a man raised, educated, and tempered in the service of his country.

In the beginning, he’d seen the Arsenal ship project as something good for the Navy, an added capability that would give his country more options in coping with shattered nations and turmoil around the world.

He’d been proud to be one of the prime backers of the project, eager even to show the political powers why this was the right project to back.

When had that changed? He stared at the slimy senator opposite him and wondered at what point and how he’d let himself be drawn away from the honorable path and into a pattern of careerism and self-aggrandizement.

What had happened to his honor?

It might be too late for him personally, but it wasn’t too late for the Navy. To do the right thing, the honorable thing he felt a heavy burden lift as he reached his decision.

He straightened his shoulders and turned to glare at the senator. “No more private conversations. I’ve had it with you. And if it ruins my career, so be it. Three stars ought to be enough for any man and they will be for me if that’s what it takes.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you agree,” Williams snarled.

The admiral pushed a button located under the ledge of his desk. “Oh yes you are.” He moved around the desk quickly and slipped a half nelson on the senator before he could even react. Loggins shoved the man’s head down until he was half bent over, then wrenched the senator’s arm up behind him. With the senator completely under his control, the admiral goose-stepped him across the deep blue carpet to the door, opened it with his free hand, and shoved him into his anteroom. “Come back when you can get a civil tongue in your head.

And when you understand what your job for this nation really is.”

The crowd of visitors, petitioners, and those with appointments waiting in the anteroom gaped dumbfounded as Loggins slammed the door to his office. One of them, a short, sandy-haired man carrying a large manila envelope, stood up slowly. His boss expected him to use his best judgment, and if ever it had been called for, the aide mused, it was this situation. The budget information, the requests for information on sailors, and the rest of the weekly packets the aide was bringing over for the admiral’s attention could wait. He was certain that his boss. Senator Dailey, would be much more interested in what he had just witnessed in the anteroom.

Captain Heather leaned awkwardly against the missile tube, supporting his weight on his one good leg.

Getting down here with the help of the boatswain’s mate had been a bitch, but he’d done it; with this much on the line, there was no substitute for firsthand knowledge. He knelt down on the dirty deck, heedless of the damage-it was doing to his sharply pressed khaki pants. He stared at the launch tube, only vaguely aware of the engineering and weapons technicians around him. He ran one hand over the smooth metal, feeling for damage. It was as though he could feel straight through the metal, ascertain the delicate condition and structural integrity of each tube without really seeing it.

“This one’s fine,” he said finally. He looked up at the chief engineer and the weapons officer.

The engineer nodded. “I think so, too. That makes the figure about eighty percent. Captain, maybe a bit more.”

The captain straightened, winced as his splinted leg complained loudly.

The pain was getting worse sooner or later, he’d have to take the painkillers the corpsman kept handing him. For the first time, he noticed the grease and grime covering his khakis, evidence of the damage control battle that had been fought here the day before. “Guess I should have worn coveralls.” The logistical problems of trying to get them over the splint would have baffled him.

The chief engineer followed his gaze to look at the spots, then dropped his gaze lower down to the splinted leg, the khaki pants hanging in shreds. “I could have reminded you, Captain.”

The captain shook his head. “No.” He glanced back up at the chief engineer. “I’ve already been reminded enough of the basics today.”

Tombstone hung up the receiver after taking the Arsenal CO’s report. His eyes met Batman’s across the table, and he smiled slightly.

Batman nodded. Not many of Tombstone’s staff members would have believed it, but he himself had seen the somber admiral smile on several occasions. This was one of them.

“Sounds like the man’s got his shit together, doesn’t it?”

Tombstone returned the nod, the merest inclination of his head. “He does. So what now?”

“You’re asking me? Hell, Tombstone, you’re the one with two stars.”

Tombstone shook his head gravely. “It doesn’t make me infallible.

Tell me what you think.”

Batman stood and started pacing around the compartment. Finally, he looked back at his old flying mate. “I think this is a come-as-you-are war. No fancy preparations, no amphibious force standing by hell, we’re close enough to the U.S. to get anything we need on short notice. This is the O.K. Corral, and we’re here, and the hell with how Washington wants the war to be won. I say we disable the remote controls on the Arsenal ship and shift targeting back to where it belongs the captain.

Factor him into our strike plan, get the aircraft back up in the air where they were meant to be, and let’s go for it. We can turn those missile silos into glass, or at least shredded metal, in less time than it takes for the chaplain to say the morning prayer in Congress.”

“We’re getting rudder orders from D.C. I suspect they’re going to insist that the Arsenal take the lead again in the attack.”

Tombstone’s eyes were backlit with anger. “What’s your take? You’ve spent more time in D.C. than I have.”

Batman sighed. “If we propose a classic strike, they’ll say no. By the time we could convince them, we may have missiles inbound from Cuba headed for the continental U.S.”

“Agreed. So?”

“So fuck them we don’t ask. We just take care of business and our people and deal with the consequences later. That’s why we’re wearing the stars to take the incoming fire.”

Tombstone stood as well. He stretched, let out a long groan, then shook himself like a wet dog. “Do it. See how easy having two stars is?”

The President stared out at the Rose Garden from the Oval Office, his back to the two men standing at attention in front of his desk. Let them wait it was one of the prerogatives of his office as commander in chief that he could keep the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the chief of naval operations braced up for as long as he wanted.

He wondered what he would have said thirty years ago when he was a grunt on the ground in Vietnam if someone had told him he’d one day have this much power. He would have laughed, he suspected. Laughed and made some joke about somebody smoking too much pot. In country, where soldiers reckoned their lives by how many patrols they had left to do, a future devoid of artillery and snipers would have seemed an impossibility.

I blew it. Not only did I make the same mistake my predecessors did during Vietnam, but I have even less excuse than they did. I was there; I should have known better. At least I can fix it this time.

And maybe the next President that’s tempted to micromanage will know better.

He turned back to the two men, his face grave. “As of now we’re out of the targeting business.” He pointed his finger at the chairman. “You and me both.”

“You,” he continued, jabbing the same finger at the CNO, “call up your commander down there. You tell him that the Arsenal ship is hereby transferred to his complete command, as theater commander. Give him my objective sand give him his head. You got that?”

The CNO nodded, a grim smile starting at the corners of his mouth.

“Aye, aye, sir. we’ll get results that I can promise you.”

Even with the urgency of his information, it had taken the aide a good half hour to clear out the petitioners clogging Senator Dailey’s anteroom. Finally, when his boss motioned him in, he had his chance. He described what he’d seen in Admiral Loggins’s office, not bothering to supply his own conclusions.

They’d discussed the Williams-Loggins link too often for this falling-out to have many surprises.

Senator Dailey leaned back in his chair and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. “So it finally happened. That’s what I was counting on. The Keith Loggins I knew when I was on active duty had more balls than to let somebody like Williams suck him into something shady. Wonder what they broke up over.”

The aide shook his head. “I couldn’t hear everything, Senator. Just enough to convince me it had to do with the battle group to the south.

And we both know what side of the problem those two are on.”

Senator Dailey unfurled himself from the angle between his desk and his chair, then reached across for the telephone.

He paused, studied his aide thoughtfully. “Let this be a lesson to you. There’s an old saying” The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” I think it’s about time I called Admiral Magruder and gave him the day off.” He began dialing the number from memory.

“The day off?” the aide asked, looking puzzled. “Why is that?”

The senator smiled broadly. “Because in about fifteen minutes.

Admiral Tombstone Magruder is going to think it’s Christmas. Santa Claus, played by little old me, is about to give him everything he ever wanted or asked for.”

For the second time that day.

Tombstone Magruder hung up the telephone and laughed. “Just when you’re getting ready to mutiny, the elected Powers That Be come through for you.”

Batman smirked. “I was just getting used to the idea of it myself.

What did Senator Dailey have to say?”

Tombstone smiled back. “We’ve got everything we wanted and we’re willing to do without authorization. Weapons free, aircraft free everything. Evidently there’s been a falling-out amongst thieves back in D.C and we’re back to being the good guys.”

Batman dropped his feet off the desk and stood. “Hell, Tombstone, we always were the good guys. Sometimes they just forget that back there.”

“Now that they’ve got it straightened out,” Tombstone said, “let’s see if we can make it clear to the Cubans.”

Bird Dog double-clicked his mouse, transferring the contents from his rough drawing sheet into the cell on his war-game planning sheet. This plan had everything he needed, everything he’d been taught to plan for during his year at War College. He studied it again, trying to see if he’d missed anything. No, it was all there logistics support, objectives, and finally a succinct explanation of the desired end state to this conflict. He knew that was a little bit beyond his duties as a carrier staff puke, but it didn’t hurt to show off a little anyway.

Besides, this was going to be his big move, wasn’t it? No point in not showing the admiral he had a little bit more on the ball than the average lieutenant commander pilot. The sick uneasiness he felt over Callie was merely a background throb of pain now, constant yet submerged in his consciousness under the driving need to finish the operational plan. He kept his eyes riveted on the spreadsheet, not certain that he wanted to release it for review by the Air Ops chief.

Every minute he kept himself distracted with that prevented him from having to deal with the issue of Callie.

Finally, he noticed one small improvement he could make on the plan, one that just might lift his spirits a bit. He moused over to the relevant cell and added an additional flight of aircraft, one he knew that the squadron was not capable of providing on short notice they simply didn’t have enough pilots. With a little cooperation from Gator, he just might be able to pull it off. Now if only the Ops ACOS didn’t read the details too carefully….

Staff work was demanding, but it was usually finished by the time the aircraft went into the air. No point in not taking the extra manpower into account when planning for strikes, particularly since there were aircraft that would be sitting empty on the deck otherwise. He smiled, wondering how Gator was going to be feeling about that.

“No way.” Gator’s voice was cold and adamant. “I’m not climbing into a cockpit with you right now, not after that bitch just jilted you.”

“She’s not a bitch,” Bird Dog said, defending Callie unwillingly. In truth, he himself thought that she might be.

There was no other explanation for her complete lack of taste in dumping him in favor of a submariner.

Despite Bird Dog’s intentions of keeping his pain to himself. Gator had wormed the story out of him in less than five minutes flat. After hearing it, and noting the anguish in Bird Dog’s voice. Gator had flatly refused to fly with him again.

“I’m not unsafe in the air you know I’m not.”

“Even on the best days, you have an interesting interpretation of the standard rules of flight,” Gator said caustically.

“But now, with your heart down around your asshole, I’d be crazy to get in the cockpit with you. Plumb crazy.”

Bird Dog tried again. “Look at it this way. Gator. Who’s got more experience in combat than us? You and me, remember? The Spratlys?

The Aleutians? Now that was a helluva ride, wasn’t it? And if I can bring you back safely from that, flying twenty feet above ice with no radar and limited visibility, I can get you back from a normal, ordinary strike during daylight hours on a big island, don’t you think?”

Gator shook his head. “You ain’t been flying much, buddy.”

“That’s the problemGator, come on. I need to get back in the cockpit, and I don’t want to miss out on this one. That bitch dumped me-there’s gotta be something more to life than that. Please?” With all the bravado dropped and his soul exposed bare for Gator to see, there was something terribly appealing about the young aviator. Despite his best intentions. Gator felt himself giving in.

“We’ll get caught,” the RIO said.

“No we won’t. All pilots look alike in helmets and flight suits, and the squadron doesn’t know the admiral grounded me. Even Tomboy doesn’t have a clue.”

“Bird Dog, of all the idiotic schemes you’ve gotten me into, this is” “Please?” There was quiet dignity and plaintiveness in Bird Dog’s voice.

Gator sighed. “I’m an idiot. Okay, count me in.”

Bird Dog smiled.