Enemies

THREE

Airman Greg Smith stared out at the brilliant blue waters of the Aegean Sea. From his vantage point on the sponson, an open air compartment immediately below the flight deck, it seemed as though he were looking out from a cave. Clear sky merged with slightly darker water in an endless wash of blue from horizon to horizon.

Airman Smith was attached to VF-95 and worked as a plane captain. As a member of the line department, he was responsible for the overall care and well-being of his Tomcat when it was on the deck. He washed it, checked it for corrosion, made sure it was chocked and chained even during good weather, because out here you never could tell when a storm would blow in. You leave a bird unwashed, forget for a few days to check the delicate junctures between metals, and the next thing you know, bimetallic corrosion has set in.

Other plane captains might not be as meticulous about maintaining their birds, but there was no way Airman Smith was letting any pilot climb into his particular Tomcat if it wasn’t in perfect condition. After all, what if something happened to one of them? Something he could have prevented? He knew most of the pilots by sight now, at least well enough to speak a few respectful words to them as they signed out his bird in the flight logbook. They seemed like good fellows, all right guys. Of course, they had to be, didn’t they? Not just anyone got to fly Tomcats.

Right now, though, it wasn’t the condition of his aircraft that Airman Smith had on his mind. It was the upcoming mission, the one off the coast of Greece. He sighed, stared at the water, and wondered why the hell he was worrying about it. After all, he was just a lowly airman, Paygrade E-3. There were a lot of people a lot more senior that were getting paid to think about things like this, weren’t there? There had to be.

His grandfather had been thinking about it. Smith touched his breast pocket and felt the outline of the letter he kept stashed as a talisman. Not that he was superstitious or anything. No, nothing like that.

But Gramps — his father’s father — had been in the Navy, had been an enlisted pilot back during the Korean War. He’d flown lots of missions off carriers back before there were even steam catapults to blast them off the deck. Back then, as Gramps told it, they just started from the stern of the ship, gunned their engines, and prayed after they popped the brakes that they’d have enough airspeed to make it.

And Dad had flown off carriers, too. But a soft cat shot off the Saratoga on a North Sea patrol had ended his navy career only two weeks after he’d reported on board. Smith had been six years old when the two black sedans had pulled up in front of their home in navy housing. But even at that age, he knew what a chaplain coming up the sidewalk meant.

“He’s with Grandma,” Gramps had explained. “They’re watching out for us all the time.”

“I don’t want him to be with Grandma!” Smith had howled. “I want him here!” Gramps had pulled him close, let him cry himself out, and that was how it had started. The twelve years of constant moves, living with Mom and Gramps, watching Mom fade away into a dull, drab woman working two, sometimes three jobs just to keep food on the table. Gramps had explained that, too, had gone to the parent-teacher conferences, watched him play Little League, told him stories about the Navy and his time in Korea fighting the war.

One day after Little League, when Smith had sat on the bench almost the entire game, Gramps had seen the unshed tears shining in his grandson’s eyes. “It’s not fair,” Smith had whined, kicking up the dirt as they’d trudged off to the bus stop. “Coach isn’t fair.”

“Life’s not fair, Greg,” Gramps had said. When they got to the bus stop, Gramps sat down on the chilly wooden bench and took his grandson’s small hand in his and placed it gently over his left knee. Smith could still remember how the flesh curved away so abruptly under his hand, the cold metal artificial leg that cupped the stump. “Stop thinking that it ever will be. But in America, what matters is how the team does. Not whether you play or score. Not whether you lose a leg and another man loses his life. It’s about the team, about how the unit does. You know how I’ve told you about the war, about why it mattered that we were there, right?”

Smith had nodded. “We had to stop the North Koreans from killing people.”

Gramps nodded. “That’s right. And America was the only country in the world that was willing to step up to the plate and put an end to it. And I told you why we won, too. Do you remember?”

The young child had sighed. “Because we were on the right side. Because God wanted us to.”

“That’s right.” Gramps fell silent for a moment, then sighed heavily. “Someday you’ll see what that has to do with warming the bench. Maybe not now, but some day.”

Later on, there’d been more lessons, most of them drawing on Gramp’s military background and his grounding in traditional American values. Without even realizing it, his grandson had absorbed those things that Gramps said were American ideals. And when Smith had turned eighteen, shortly after his graduation from high school, he’d gone with Gramps down to the Navy Recruiting Station and enlisted. Later, when he’d told his mother, she’d cried. Gramps had explained things once again, but for some reason his mother hadn’t agreed. Smith, however, did.

So why weren’t they explaining to him what it all meant, the way Gramps would have? Why was Jefferson here? Where was the team spirit, the unit integrity that Gramps had always talked about?

He touched the pocket again. This whole UN business — Gramps was right about that, too. They shouldn’t be fighting for someone else like this.

“Hey, asshole,” a voice called down from overhead. He looked up and saw Airman Quincy Trudeau, his running mate, staring down at him. “Better get your ass up here. The chief is looking for you.”

Smith sighed and took one last longing look at the water. A few minutes of peace and quiet between launch and recovery cycles, that was all he wanted. Maybe one night to sleep all the way through and not get woken up for a watch, some problem with his aircraft, or just because the other guys in the compartment were making too much noise. A little sleep, a little time off — was that too much to ask for?

“Okay, okay. I’m coming.” Smith turned his back on the ocean and started up the ladder. It led to the catwalk that ran immediately below the level of the flight deck. Trudeau was waiting for him there, pointing out at the ocean on the other side of the ship.

“What?” Smith asked.

Trudeau smirked. “Made you look…”

Smith punched him, letting his fist fall a few inches short of its target. Trudeau dodged out of the way and they spent a few minutes sparring, hidden from the handler’s view by a couple of Tomcats parked side-by-side. Screwing around on the flight deck wasn’t allowed, not even for the guys who knew it better than they knew their own berthing compartment.

“So what’s really going on?” Smith asked, finally collapsing. “I thought you were asleep down in the chain locker.”

Trudeau groaned. “Don’t even talk to me about chains, asshole. Not after yesterday.”

The two of them had spent twelve hours hauling sets of tie-down chains up to the flight deck, on the rumor from the meteorologist that heavy weather would be setting in. Each aircraft had to be tied down with eight chains for foul weather, and each chain weighed twenty pounds. The airmen hauled them up in sets of ten, up four ladders and down three passageways just to get them to the flight deck.

The storm hadn’t materialized, but both men could feel the strain in their backs and legs. One more day with eight-point tie-downs, and then they’d be humping the chains back down to the locker. Why the hell couldn’t they store the chains somewhere closer to the flight deck, anyway?

“I had to get back up here anyway,” Smith said. “We’re on the flight schedule this afternoon.”

Trudeau yawned. “Me, too. Hey, did you hear the latest? We may be going to Greece with our birds. The squadron is sending a detachment ashore.”

“No shit? Man, I could go for that. Join the Navy and see the world — so far all I’ve seen of it is Great Lakes, Illinois, and Jefferson. One day ashore in Italy doesn’t count. Greece — now, that would be a good deal.”

Trudeau punched him on the arm. Even the light contact stung his overworked muscles. “Be okay with me, too. Guess we better not get caught at anything for a couple of days if we want to go, you know. They don’t send liberty risks on good deals.”

Smith nodded. Both of the young sailors had been classified as liberty risks at their last port call, based solely on an innocent misunderstanding with an Italian police officer. Of course, the possibility that it had been their fault and that they’d been drunk out of their minds had occurred to the chief petty officer they worked for. They ended up with an ass chewing and an early curfew.

“Flight quarters, flight quarters. All hands man flight quarters to recover aircraft,” the 1MC bleated.

“Whose bird?” Trudeau asked.

“Rogers.”

“He getting any better?”

Smith shook his head. “Still one dangerous son of the bitch on the flight deck. He’s got no common sense, no matter how many times you tell him. He’s going to get someone killed someday.”

Trudeau got to his feet. “Well, it’s not going to be me. If it’s Rogers’s bird, I’m staying out of the way.” He started off toward the island.

Smith watch him go. That was probably the smart thing to do, although he found himself reluctant to leave the flight deck. Rogers and his bird were part of the squadron, part of the team.

Maybe he’d go over the procedures one more time with Rogers, see if he could knock some sense into him. At least he could keep an eye on the other airman while the engines were still turning, make sure he didn’t walk into the jet intake. Rogers was an accident waiting to happen, and everybody knew it.

Greece. Let me go to Greece. I swear to God, I won’t screw up. Just give me a few days away from the ship, and I’ll be good for the rest of the cruise.

Smith trudged aft, toward where Rogers would be waiting for his bird, careful to stay outside the green lines to avoid fouling the flight line. Halfway there, he felt a familiar elbow in his ribs.

“Guess we’re in this together,” Trudeau said as he fell into step next to Smith. “My luck, you’d get yourself killed and I’d have to haul twice as many chains alone.”