Island Warriors

THREE

Commander Hillman “Lab Rat” Busby was slowly savoring his way through a bowl of the best clam chowder he had had in at least five years. He had watched Tony prepare it, saw the sauce steaming, until the cook had gently stirred in the clams. It’d simmered just long enough to barely cook them, just to the point of tenderness, and then been dished out immediately into his eagerly held bowl.

A sprinkle of pepper, just the right amount, Lab Rat meticulously counting each grain. Then he positioned his bowl just so, and opened a packet of crackers to rest on the side of his plate. Then, reverently picking up his spoon, he dipped into the steaming bowl. He scooped out a small serving, making sure it included some clam bits — indeed, they were almost impossible to avoid, as thickly as they were cluttered in the rich white broth. He let it cool just a few moments, and then slid it into his mouth.

The sensation was completely indescribable. Lab Rat groaned a low moan of pleasure. The other diners glanced around nervously, but he ignored them. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, like clam chowder on the Chesapeake Bay.

“Everything all right, sir?” his waitress asked, evidently reacting to the concern of the other diners.

Lab Rat swallowed, regretfully leaving his mouth empty. “Yes, perfectly fine. Absolutely perfectly deliciously — fine.”

He glanced over at the grill, and saw Tony smiling back at him. The burly Virginia-born and — bred fisherman understood. It was the rest of these people, the tourists who didn’t have a connoisseur’s appreciation of clam chowder and the jaded locals, too accustomed to the luxury of perfect chowder, who didn’t understand.

“Gloria!” Tony shouted, loud enough to be heard over the noise in the seafood shack. “Leave the man alone — he’s from the West Coast.”

Sudden enlightenment graced every face, and they all murmured sympathetically. A few couples looked at him with pity.

Lab Rat didn’t care. He scooped up another spoonful of chowder, his mouth eager to continue the gustatory orgasm.

Suddenly, the screen door burst open. Lieutenant Commander Bill Frank strode into the room, a look of concern on his face.

Frank was Lab Rat’s second in command of the intelligence detachment from the USS Jefferson. With the carrier in dry dock for repairs, she had little use for the highly specialized talents of her intelligence spooks. Admiral Everette “Batman” Wayne, never one to waste precious Navy manpower, had promptly formed the CVIC department into an independent detachment and sent them packing. The Navy had opined that with the Middle East situation still in flux — and when exactly wasn’t it? Lab Rat had wondered — that Lab Rat and his sailors would be most effective working in direct support of USACOM, the type commander with cognizance over the Atlantic theater of operations. Lab Rat and sixty-two others were currently making a nuisance of themselves at the Joint Intelligence Center, or JIC, at Naval Station Norfolk.

Frank plopped himself down in the chair opposite Lab Rat without speaking. The native of Alabama was never one to interrupt a man when he was eating, but Lab Rat could already see that bad news was coming. If he waited long enough, Frank would tell him, feeding him short phrases in a brief summary delivered in that slow drawl of his.

Lab Rat sighed and put down his spoon. “What now? Can’t I even enjoy my chowder in peace?”

“Back to the office, sir,” Frank said, no trace of apology in his voice. Whatever he’d been doing when his duty officer beeper had gone off, Frank evidently thought it was a good deal more interesting than immersing himself in a bowl of chowder. Given Frank’s disheveled appearance and the slight smudge of black on his collar — eye makeup, perhaps? — Lab Rat thought that he could make an educated guess as to what Frank thought was more important than a bowl of chowder.

“But what for?” Lab Rat asked, knowing even as he spoke the words that anything that warranted a recall was far too classified to be discussed here. Frank just shook his head.

Lab Rat stared down at the bowl of creamy chowder, almost ready to cry. He waved Gloria over, and said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask for this to go.” It would be cold, or least chilly by the time he got to eat it. Although he could eat in his car — no, not safe, not unless he left his here and rode back to base with Frank.

The sheer unfairness of it all came crashing in on him. “And,” he said, with sudden ferocity, determined to wring some sort of concession out of life, “I want another quart. To go. In an insulated container. With extra crackers. LOTS of extra crackers.”

Gloria stepped back slightly, then smiled and nodded. “You sure are from California, aren’t you, sir?”

Admiral Everette “Batman” Wayne and retired Admiral Matthew “Tombstone” Magruder stood on the pier and surveyed the battered hull of the USS Jefferson. She was in dry dock, her keel resting on individually crafted cradles, the water drained out of the dock so her entire hull was exposed. In dry dock, the carrier looked more like an office building than ever before. She was massive, overshadowing every other structure around, an imposing figure. It seemed impossible that she was upright, supported only by the cradles, ripped from the sea to stand naked and exposed to the world.

“The old girl has seen better days,” Tombstone said quietly.

“Yes. But it’s not as bad as it looks, they say. Another week, and she’ll be back together.”

To an aviator, an aircraft carrier was a shape-shifting creature of magic. At night, to an approaching pilot hoping desperately for the first glimpse of her lights through foul weather, Jefferson seemed impossibly small, a mere postage stamp in a vast ocean. In every approach Tombstone had ever made, there had been one fragile moment when it seemed inconceivable that the massive aircraft strapped on his ass could somehow land on that deck that looked so short.

But that moment passed in an instant, and within seconds, Jefferson looked like a granite cliff, massive and inhospitable. Her stern would rise up from the ocean almost one hundred feet, depending on how the waves caught her and how heavily laden she was. She stretched several football fields in length. Below the water line, there were another eight decks, in addition to the twelve above the water line, and that wasn’t even taking into account the height of her antennas and radar masts. Her deck was massive, stretching out for miles and miles, and finding the elusive three-wire seemed the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Once you were onboard again, Jefferson shrank by a factor of ten. Aircraft from eight squadrons crowded her deck and hangar space, and with thousands of sailors and officers running over her exposed surface, repairing, preparing for launch flight, and directing the aircraft around on the hot nonskid of her flight deck it seemed impossible to taxi to your appointed spot without sucking at least a dozen of them down your jet intakes.

And it didn’t end there. Even when you weren’t flying, Jefferson seemed impossibly larger on the inside than on the outside. Few people on the ship had been to every compartment — in fact, most sailors had never even visited each of her decks. The decks below the waterline that held her machinery, nuclear reactor, and everything that kept her steaming through the ocean in excess of thirty-five knots, was well out of the way for most except engineers. Above that, the decks were crowded with enlisted berthing and the enlisted dining facility, as well as some officers’ quarters. Then the 03 level, the one immediately below the flight deck. That housed the guts of the combat capabilities. Forward, the ship’s combat direction center, staffed by ship’s personnel, coordinated the actions of the battle group. Six decks above, the ASW commander, or Des Ron, took control of the undersea warfare battle, coordinating flights of S-3B and other antisubmarine warfare aircraft and assets, including helos and surface-ship towed arrays and sonars.

Back on the 03 level, aft of the ship’s CDC, were the flag spaces. They were curtained off from the rest of the passageway by blue plastic curtains pulled back to each side. They were sometimes tied back to provide passageway, but other times met in the middle. The tile on the deck there, too, was blue. Blue meant flag spaces — ship’s personnel were to steer clear and use the long passageway on the other side of the ship rather than trespass on that ground.

The blue tile area was short compared to the rest of ship, housing all the administrative and combat functions of the admiral’s staff. Both Tombstone and Batman had filled that billet, Tombstone first being pressed suddenly into power from his billet at CAG. Batman had just spent two years as the admiral in command of the battle group, and was still technically embarked on the battered ship.

The blue tile passageway was where elephants danced, and the rest of the ship ventured in there at their own peril. The short stretch of office space housed not only the admiral, but the Carrier Air Wing Commander as well. Technically, his billet should have been abbreviated as CAW, but the historic acronym for the earlier title of Carrier Air Group commander stuck even after changes in command structure rendered it obsolete. The senior, post-command Navy captains that filled the new billet were convinced to a man that CAW sounded exceptionally — well — stupid, although they’d generally phrased that thought in more traditionally colorful language.

The CAG owned all the aircraft onboard the carrier, and he was the immediate superior of each one of the individual squadron commanding officers. He, in turn, reported to the admiral onboard, the Carrier Battle Group Commander, and it was CAG’s responsibility to task missions and sorties to support the CVBG’s plans.

The final elephant dancing onboard the carrier was the carrier’s commanding officer, also a senior, post-command aviator captain as fully qualified as the CAG to run flight operations. In contrast to the CAG, the carrier CO owned the airfield just overhead the flag spaces as well as all the non-squadron maintenance facilities onboard. The ship’s CO also provided the infrastructure for the squadrons and the battle group staff in the form of messing and berthing for all the officers and sailors, medical, dental and religious staffs, communications and the carrier intelligence center, or CVIC. Both the CAG and the ship’s CO were normally rising stars, ones that could reasonably expect to rise to admiral rank and someday own the coveted blue tile passageway themselves.

But Jefferson’s last deployment might have permanently benched the CAG and ship’s CO. Batman had been in command as Battle Group Commander when Jefferson had taken the fatal shot, trapped in the Gulf during what looked to be a final flare-up in the Middle East. As Jefferson escaped the confined waters, she had hit a mine that the mine sweeper had missed. The resulting damage put her out of action, and brought her back here to the shipyards and had probably put a fatal black mark on the CAG and CO’s records.

“The keel is okay, it’s mostly the steel plates. Some damage to one shaft.” Batman’s voice was soft. “I hate to turn her over to anyone else in that shape, Stony.”

“Where do you go from here?” Tombstone asked.

Batman shook his head. “No word yet. The more senior you get, the harder it is to figure out the billets. And getting Jefferson all banged up while I was in command doesn’t help any.”

“You thought about retiring?” Tombstone asked.

“Yeah. I know I’ll have to some time — hey, if you can do it, I can too.” Batman tried on a smile that didn’t fit too well. “Nothing’s decided yet… for now, I’m overseeing her repairs, awaiting further assignment.”

They were silent for a moment, surveying the damage. Technicians scurried around her massive flanks like ants, clinging to scaffolding and ladders. The last of several massive steel plates was being lifted into place, where it would be riveted and welded to complete the repairs. Further down the pier, the damaged plates were piled up like giant potato chips, impossibly warped, burnt and twisted.

“Good thing the United States is ahead of schedule,” Tombstone said. “She can fill the gap, at least for a while. Until Jefferson is repaired.”

The newest addition to America’s nuclear ship arsenal was moored four piers away, and she was a stark contrast to the battered Jefferson. The USS United States had yet to see action, and her hull showed it. She was pristine, gleaming in the spring morning, still waiting for a final coat of haze gray paint that would help her blend into the horizon. Her radar antennas were glistening black, her pennants and fittings impossibly clean.

It wasn’t that Jefferson had been a dirty ship — far from it. But after a decade of being on the front lines of every conflict in the world, her age was starting to show. She had seen more action than any aircraft carrier since the world wars, and although she had held up well, there was no magical potion to restore the fresh gleam of youth to her cheeks. The new steel plates stood out smooth and unblemished like scars against the rest of her worn, oxidized hull.

“United States starts her sea trials today,” Batman said reflectively, turning the conversation away from himself. There was too much uncertainty in the future — he didn’t want to be reminded of it. “Remember those days?”

Tombstone groaned. “Do I ever. Long days, longer nights — God save me from ever having to do sea trials again.”

“I don’t think we’re in much danger of having to.” Batman’s voice was grave. He turned to his old lead and said, “So when are you going to tell me something about this?”

Tombstone shook his head. “When I can, I will.”

As Tombstone made his way home, his mind was racing over the possibilities. For the last two weeks, his uncle and he had been going over every conceivable scenario that might require the services of a covert air group. Between the two of them, they figured they covered most of the bases. Now they were in the final stages of contacting candidates for staff positions and asking them if they were interested in something very, very secret and very, very important. Tombstone had taken it on himself to personally contact the members of his previous pickup game in Hawaii, and was waiting for their answers. His uncle also had a number of men and women in mind, people he had served with over his decades in the Navy. Between the two of them, they were about to embark on a looting mission within the ranks of the United States Navy.

His uncle Thomas Magruder was brother to Tombstone’s father. Tombstone’s father had been a naval aviator during the Vietnam War. During a daring inland mission to destroy a critical resupply bridge, Tombstone’s father had been shot down. For decades, he’d been listed as missing rather than killed. It was only during the last five years, as Tombstone had acquired enough power within the Navy to give him some degree of flexibility in his assignments, that he’d begun to suspect the truth. During an encounter with a Ukrainian naval officer, Tombstone had learned that there was a possibility that his father had survived the ejection and been taken prisoner. Following the old path through Vietnamese prison camps, Tombstone had found evidence that his father had been taken to Russia. In one of his most grueling missions ever, Tombstone had finally found his father’s grave in Russia.

Uncle Thomas, a naval surface ship officer, had stepped into the gap in Tombstone’s life as a surrogate father. He’d been the one to teach Tombstone to throw a killer curve ball, to encourage him in his studies and coach him in his early years in the Navy, to stand by his side as best man when Tombstone finally married Tomboy. And now, as both of their careers were coming to an end, his uncle had been the one to lead him back to his real passion — flying.

As a former Chief of Naval Operations, his uncle’s possible second career opportunities had been virtually unlimited. But instead of signing on as a highly paid consultant to a defense industry contractor, his uncle had heeded a call to head up a specialized black operations unit composed of men and women who were willing to do what had to be done to prevent war before it started. They were so far off the books that their missions were completely deniable.

Foremost among the scenarios Tombstone and his uncle had planned for were ones involving China. The potential for difficulties in that region was enormous. And, with so much of America’s might committed long-term to the Middle East, there was every chance it would flair into chaos in the near future. Tombstone knew those waters well, having dealt with the Chinese on far too many occasions.

Most of the aircraft would be requisitioned rather than permanently assigned, along with the necessary complement of maintenance technicians. That was one way to keep the budget numbers low enough to cause no alarm elsewhere. The cover story made recruiting the most difficult part of it all. Tombstone’s face was too well known to too many of the operating forces all over the world, and there was little chance that he could avoid being recognized. He even briefly considered plastic surgery, but decided against it.

Ever since his return to the civilian world, Tombstone had felt a lightening up of spirit. The tragedies of the last year were no less real, but for the first time, he thought he might be able to survive losing Tomboy during the last attempted invasion of Hawaii. He had watched helplessly as her plane had gone down, unable to save her. In one sense, his life had ended when his RIO wife had died. Had he simply retired from the Navy at the same time, he thought the pain would have been unbearable. But the prospect of flying again full time had been the only sliver of hope and light in his otherwise dark world.

No, life would never be the same. For as long as he lived, he would feel this aching emptiness, this sense of a part of himself being irrevocably gone. But at least he would have a purpose in life, something on which to focus his energies. And eventually, he might even have a chance to strike back at the bastards that had taken Tomboy from him.

“Look,” Batman said, elbowing him in the side and bringing Tombstone back to the present. “She’s getting underway.”