Code of Honor

24

The three Asian cuties were not regulars at the Boondock Bar, but neither was Major Goodloe “Oh” Schmidt, United States Marine Corps. Tucked in off Kalakaua Avenue and within spitting distance of Waikiki Bay, Boondock’s was Schmidt’s kind of water hole. It was loud, with lots of buddies to watch his back, and an abundance of handsome women. Schmidt was relatively short and completely bald at thirty-seven years old.

Major Reed “Skeet” Black, Schmidt’s classmate from the Naval Academy, stood at the bar with him, nursing a Hefeweizen. His sandy hair was cut short. A hint of a Celtic tattoo encircled his right biceps and peeked from the sleeve of his Rogue CrossFit T-shirt. Schmidt couldn’t stand wheat beer, but it was good to see his old buddy, so he kept his feelings to himself. The men had gone to flight school together, then Hornet school in Pensacola. Both had seen action in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then run Tomahawk Chase — following cruise missiles after they’d been fired from Navy ships and submarines. Schmidt had gone back to Pensacola to pass on his knowledge to the new “studs”—what he and the other instructors called students — while Skeet Black rushed and won a coveted slot in the Navy’s Flight Demonstration Squadron, better known as the Blue Angels. Eventually, both men ended up in the seat of F-35B Lightnings, Schmidt testing Naval ordnance at China Lake — and Skeet working for the Marine Corps’ F-35 program out of the Pentagon.

They were both still flying airplanes when most pilots their age and rank were flying desks. That said something.

Two weeks earlier, they’d been temporarily assigned to the CVN 76, the USS Ronald Reagan, for some secret mission for which they’d yet to be briefed. Two Lockheed Martin F-35Bs, capable of short takeoff and vertical landing, STOVL, were assigned along with them. Sometimes the Marine Corps did things that way for OPSEC, or operational security, reasons.

Like Skeet would ever divulge any secret. You had to talk to do that, and Skeet Black wasn’t much of a talker. That was fine with Schmidt, because he preferred to do most of the conversing.

The problem was that the girls who were crowded around the wicker bar seemed to be even more turned on by his silence than they were by Schmidt’s war stories.

“You fly jets?” the girl nearest Schmidt asked, grinning like a gap-toothed Lucy Liu.

“I’m a pilot, yeah,” he said, giving Lucy one of his patented grins. He’d locked in on her from the beginning. She wasn’t drop-dead beautiful, but cute like a farm girl, a little bit out of her element at the bar — exactly what Schmidt preferred. She said she and her friends were college students at U of H Manoa. All of them were from California. All of them second-generation Americans from Taiwan. Flawless English with plenty of idioms — check. He’d approached her at the bar, not the other way around — check. Not too hot — check. Schmidt had a super-cool job, but his looks were more Goose than Maverick and he knew it. All that tallied up to the girls being friendlies. In truth they were a little young for him — but he was sure as hell thinking like a young man — which was to say not thinking very much at all.

Skeet just sipped his beer and shook his head in that amused and slightly disgusted way of his.

“That must be so dangerous,” the girl said, clicking her glass against his. “What kind of plane?”

“The fast kind,” Schmidt said, grinning again.

“Have you ever had to punch out?”

Schmidt took a drink of his second Jack and Coke of the evening. He always stopped at two before switching to beer. “You mean eject? Hell, no. I get on something to ride it, I stay on for the duration.”

Gap-toothed Lucy grinned coyly at that. “You must go all over the world.”

He gave a humble nod. “We see some cool stuff.”

She moved closer, shoulder to shoulder, pushing him sideways a little. “Like, what do you see?”

“Stars, ocean, people who want to kill us.”

“Do you ever have to fly at night?” one of the other girls asked. “I think that would be a deal-breaker for me.”

“It’s not bad at all,” Schmidt said. “The ship leaves a glowing trail behind it. Kinda beautiful, to be honest.”

She touched his chest with the tip of her index finger, running it down a couple of inches. “How’d you get your nickname? ‘Oh’?”

Schmidt raised an eyebrow. “You know… ‘Oh, Schmidt!’… sounds like…”

Lucy smiled, finally getting it, air-toasting with her fruity drink. “Do you guys fly together?”

“Sometimes,” Schmidt said.

“How do you keep from running into each other in the air?”

He leaned over so they were forehead to forehead. She smelled good, like Dentyne spearmint and Red Door perfume. “That is some secret shit,” he said. “I’m not supposed to be talking about my plane.”

She grimaced. “I’m so sorry. I don’t want to get you in trouble. You think anyone heard?” She turned to Skeet. “How about you,” she asked. “You’re a pilot, too?”

Skeet nodded. “I am,” he said, all cool and Gary Cooper — like. The bastard.

“Fighters?” she asked.

Skeet drained the last of his beer and set the glass on the bar, pretending he didn’t hear her over the din of the crowd. He caught Schmidt’s eye when he turned around. “Remember that time in Misawa?”

Schmidt shook his head, though he knew exactly what Skeet was talking about. They’d come home from training to find uninvited guests had been smoking in their apartments. The sheets were crumpled like someone had been sitting at the end of Skeet’s bed. Schmidt’s was always unmade, so it was impossible to tell on his. Files were rifled. Drawers were opened. A turd was left floating in Schmidt’s toilet. It was as if they wanted the aviators to know they were being watched. Psych-ops — mind games meant to trip them up. Neighbors reported seeing two Chinese men hanging around the complex. NCIS had impounded the turd — for DNA samples of known Chinese spies. It had turned out to be from a dog, but you had to hand it to those NCIS guys for trying.

Schmidt glanced at gap-toothed Lucy Liu. Her chest heaved, like it wanted to escape from the white T-shirt. Schmidt looked back at Skeet.

“No? Seriously, you think?”

Skeet nodded. “Afraid so.”

“You guys want to get a room?” the girl blurted out, sticking the tip of her tongue through the gap in her teeth. “The Sheraton is just a couple of blocks from here. We could all go.”

Schmidt shrugged, playing it cool. He raised his finger, as if to chide her. “You promise you’re not a spy?”

She stared at him straight-faced until they both broke into laughter.

“Of course you’re not a spy,” Schmidt said, slapping his leg, sloshing a little of his Jack and Coke. “Your English is too good.”

A wry smile spread across her lips. “So, you want to?”

“As much as I’d like to take you up on that…”

She turned immediately to Skeet. “How about you?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. He could have said he had an early day, but that would have been passing on intel — and Skeet Black was too wily for that.

Even so, with this incident, Schmidt knew their day was now going to start a hell of a lot earlier.

Five hours later, Major Schmidt stirred to the sound of someone banging on his door. He lay back on his couch, staring up at the ceiling, dressed in a freshly pressed woodland Marine Corps combat utility uniform, or MCCUU. Dead tired and dry-mouthed, it killed him that two Jack and Cokes could give him a hangover. He groaned and dragged himself to the door. This was getting old as hell. As he suspected, Skeet Black stood there, looking way too chipper, like he’d had a full eight hours and a big breakfast of oatmeal and almond milk. He was also in woodland MCCUU, the sleeves rolled up to his biceps, but his were just a little crisper.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Skeet said, looking around at the dirty dishes and pile of laundry on the end of the couch. “Guess you never got around to reading Make Your Bed.”

Schmidt rolled his eyes. “I forgot what a hoot you are at parties,” he said, grabbing his hat and locking the apartment door. “Anyway, that’s a Navy book. You know, if you hadn’t said anything, the Chicoms would have paid for our dates last night.”

“And you and I would have a big black mark on our PRP.”

The Personnel Reliability Program was DoD’s way of ensuring the trustworthiness of people in sensitive positions. You pretty much signed your privacy away — especially if you flew with nukes — which both men periodically did.

“For your information,” Schmidt said, “I figured out they were spies right before you did. The one with the gap in her teeth used my nickname — which I never told her. She’d done a background on me. Not very smart for a spy.”

“I think they just counted on us being dumb,” Skeet said.

“Or numb. Interesting that you were targeted. The Chinese have hacked into U.S. government personnel records so many times they’ve got data on all of us. Good we’re making a report.”

“Even so.” Schmidt groaned again. “The old man is going to have my ass.”

“We were both there,” Skeet said. “We were approached. We are making a report.”

“He’ll still be pissed,” Schmidt said. “But I’m a single guy, and no money changed hands.”

The wooden sign behind the abnormally clean desk in Captain Craig Slaughter’s cramped office said YOU CAN’T HAVE SLAUGHTER WITHOUT LAUGHTER, which pretty much summed up the Carrier Air Wing commander’s terrifying personality.

Slaughter was Navy, but as the CAG commander — the acronym for the previous title of Carrier Air Group had stuck — Slaughter was responsible for everything that flew or made things fly on CVN 76, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan. It was like he enjoyed doling out ass-chewings. He was sure as hell good at it, which Majors Schmidt and Black were learning firsthand as they braced to attention in the shipboard office.

Captain Slaughter was old-school Navy. His gray crew cut, barrel chest, and the ever-present stub of a cigar like an exclamation point in his mouth reminded Skeet Black of a crusty senior chief more than an officer. He recognized good men, though, and, a pilot himself, talented aviators. Unfortunately for Oh Schmidt, the CAG was also extremely perceptive to the situation.

“We are in the business of fighting wars,” Slaughter said, red-faced, laying on the theatrics like the professional that he was. “Not policing your pecker so it stays in your pants. If said pecker interferes with said war-fighting, then we got a problem. You read me, Major?”

“Loud and clear, sir,” Schmidt said.

“Why you?” Slaughter said, his eyes narrow slits. “Are you such an easy mark that Chinese girl-spies come up to you in bars to get information?”

Already braced to attention, Schmidt’s shoulder blades nearly overlapped at the accusation. “No, sir!”

“Did either of you happen to let slip what kind of bird you fly?”

“No, sir, Captain,” Schmidt said. “She… They know I am a pilot. That is all.”

“A fighter pilot?”

“That is possible, sir.”

“I realize that with spy satellites being what they are,” Slaughter said, “our enemies know when one of our birds has a rusty rivet, but sometimes we just might have a plan in place to thwart that eye in the sky… Do I need to spell out for you that very often, the type of aircraft we do or do not have aboard is… I don’t know”—he spoke through clenched teeth, slamming the flat of his hand on the desk—“A SENSITIVE MATTER?!!”

“I understand, sir.” Schmidt stared at the far wall.

The CAG turned his light-of-a-thousand-suns gaze on Major Black. “How about you, Skeet? What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Captain,” Black said. “We were drinking, letting our guard down more than we should have, conversing with members of the opposite sex, whom we now believe to be Chinese intelligence operatives. We broke contact immediately once we developed this suspicion. No critical information was revealed, but in hindsight, we should have been more careful about the information we did convey. I will use more diligence in the future, sir.” He ended with a phrase common to the debrief after every Blue Angels flight, displaying, he hoped, the fact that he knew there were many Naval aviators with just as much skill as he had, who’d worked every bit as hard, but somehow, through fate and fortune, he’d ended up where he was. “I’m just glad to be here.”

Captain Slaughter let it soak in for a moment before turning back to Schmidt.

“NCIS is going to ask you this, but I want to know myself. Did either of you give up any information about our upcoming mission?”

“All due respect, Captain,” Schmidt said. “But we haven’t yet been made aware of the specifics of our upcoming mission.”

“Sounds like a sound decision on the part of both the Navy and the Marine Corps,” Slaughter said, looking at Skeet. “Generalities, then?”

“No, sir. The young ladies know we fly, but that is all.”

“Well, gentlemen,” Slaughter said. “You will, no doubt, be ecstatic to know that you will shortly be leaving my gentle care aboard the Reagan for the meat of your assignment.”

“May I ask where, Captain?”

“Orders will be forthcoming,” Slaughter said. “But, as you can both surmise, the type of aircraft you fly are more suited to the Gator Navy than big-deck carriers.”

That made sense, Skeet thought. Amphibious landing craft and the sailors that ran them worked with Marine Expeditionary Units to project U.S. power around the world. The ships were smaller, with no catapults, but capable of launching all manner of rotary wing aircraft as well as STOVL-capable fighters like the Marine Corps Harrier and the F-35B. Skeet knew one thing: The CAG was extra-tense, even for him, so the assignment must be something big.

Captain Slaughter peered across his nose as if deciding what to do — though both pilots were well aware that any decision had been made before they ever entered his office. They were Marines, and accustomed to the theatrics of discipline.

“You’ve got balls,” he said, “I’ll give you that. We have some work to do in the coming days and Lightning pilots ain’t exactly growing on trees. We need you, but we don’t need you that bad. You read me?”

“Yes, Captain,” the men said in unison.

“Outstanding,” Slaughter said. “Now, go grab your shit from your apartments and get back here at flank speed. I’ve already spoken with your Marine Corps chain. Consider yourselves confined to base until further notice. The only way I want you off these premises is when you’re in the air on your way to your next assignment.” The CAG’s voice calmed a notch, and he took a long breath, like the theatrics might be over, and he was about to bestow some sage, fatherly advice. Instead, he curled up his upper lip like he needed to spit out something bitter and said, “Dismissed.”