by Ward Carroll
Punk left the ready room and headed down the passageway toward the Cheesequarters, still looking for Biff.
The only things the battle watch captain could make out as he entered the stateroom were the red digits showing 3:07 on the clock next to the admiral’s rack. The commander carefully made his way across the space as he aimed his penlight at the head of the bed. He slowly reached out and gently tried to shake his boss awake.
“Admiral . . . sir, we think the strikes have started . . . Admiral . . .”
The battle group commander quickly sat up and revealed his bare chest. The watch captain feared the old man might have elected to sleep in the nude, so he directed his light on the opposite corner of the room.
“Strikes have started?” the admiral asked as he clicked on the fluorescent light above the headboard. “What are you talking about?”
“We just saw a news report on the television in the command center. The reporter said she heard explosions.”
“Explosions? What kind of explosions?”
“What kind? I don’t know, sir. Big ones, I guess.”
“Get Fifth Fleet on the line.”
The commander scanned through the directory taped to the wall until he found the listing for the Fifth Fleet duty officer. He grabbed the receiver off the cradle of the most complicated-looking of the four phones on the admiral’s desk and dialed the number.
The admiral rustled out of bed and padded across the floor toward him. With the receiver against his head, the watch captain shot a quick glance over his shoulder and was relieved to see the admiral was, in fact, wearing boxer shorts.
“Is anybody picking up?” the admiral asked as he put his glasses on and attempted to pat down his sleep-mangled hair.
“No, sir,” the watch captain replied.
“Here, give me that.” The admiral relieved his staffer of the phone and hung up. He immediately picked it back up and began punching in another series of numbers.
As the battle group commander stood impatiently waiting for the fleet commander to answer his home line, the watch captain said, “Admiral, if I may say so, I always knew the Air Force would pull something like this . . . you know . . . try to start the war without us. I worked with—”
Another commander burst into the stateroom. “It was an industrial fire!”
“What?” the admiral asked, still waiting for the three-star to answer the phone.
“The explosion wasn’t us,” the commander explained. “They just had another report on the news that said it was some combustible liquids going off inside a burning warehouse.”
“Hullo?” a gravelly voice uttered through the earpiece. Without a word, the admiral slammed the phone back onto its cradle.
SEVEN
“I’m kinda confused, Rex,” Punk said over the din of turboprops, a sound that didn’t lend itself to easy conversation between those seated in the temporary accommodations slung along the sides of the C-130’s cargo bay. He took another disbelieving look at the paper that the air wing operations officer had handed him after their transport lifted out of Manama and headed toward Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia.
“There is guilt to be assigned in this case,” the air wing commander had written, “but it should not be on the shoulders of the men who were in the aircraft. Both aviators met or exceeded every reasonable expectation of professional conduct in what turned out to be a no-win situation. The responsibility for the loss of this F-14 lies with the senior officers in the chain of command, myself included. Officers in command are paid to make better decisions than those made in this instance. Any attempt by senior leadership to explain away or shift blame for what happened would be unprofessional and recklessly negligent. Our war fighters are precious resources who deserve better support than these two were offered on the night of the mishap. I recommend both the pilot and radar intercept officer be returned to flight status immediately and that their records be expunged of any negative characterizations associated with this event.”
“This doesn’t sound like CAG,” Punk said.
Rex, whose seemingly constant intake of food belied the anorexic appearance that earned him his call sign, finished the last bite of spaghetti and meat sauce he had been spooning out of the dark green meals-ready-to-eat (MRE) bag in his lap and returned, “There’s a good reason for that.” He folded the bag and put it aside before fishing another out of the cardboard MRE box. “CAG didn’t write it.”
“CAG didn’t write it? Who did then?”
Rex ripped the thick plastic bag open and popped a cookie into his mouth. He shook his curly-haired head and put his index finger to his thin lips. “I’ve said too much.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Punk implored. “You can’t just drop a bomb like that and walk away.”
“If I tell you,” Rex said with a waggle of the same finger, “you can’t tell anybody else.”
Punk raised his right hand. “I swear.”
“I’m serious, Punk,” Rex said. “This information is not for public consumption.”
“All right, I won’t,” Punk promised. “Who wrote it?”
“I work for CAG, and I’d like to make commander some day.”
“I said all right. Who . . . wrote . . . it?”
“The captain of the ship.”
“The captain of the ship?” Punk couldn’t make the connection. “Why would he write CAG’s endorsement? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen the two of them together.”
“Well, they’re not exactly close buddies,” Rex said. “And I don’t think they will be anytime soon.”
One of the C-130’s crew chiefs, an Air Force tech sergeant, walked over with one side of his headset slid in front of his ear and addressed Rex. “Sir, you can eat as many of those MREs as you’d like. We’re sick of ’em.”
“Thanks,” Rex returned. “They’re not bad.”
“Did you check the preparation date on the box?” the crew chief asked. “It’s on the bottom.”
Rex flipped the box over and read the date. The result turned his stomach. “This was made during Desert Storm.”
“That’s right,” the sergeant replied. “They tell us that MREs don’t have an expiration date, but there’s something gross about eating food that’s been sitting around for that long.” The crew chief opened a large trash bag in front of him. “I have to be good and hungry before I’ll eat ’em.”
“Yeah,” Rex returned, with an expression that evinced a sudden loss of appetite. “I see what you mean.” He gathered the spent food bags and the balance of untouched goods in the MRE and held them over the sergeant’s trash bag.
“Ah-ah. Save the gum,” the sergeant recommended. “It’s crucial if you want to get that taste out of your mouth.”
Rex rooted out the four-stick, olive-drab-wrapped pack of gum before dropping the box into the garbage bag. He immediately opened a piece and began smacking away as he continued to solve the mystery of the endorsement’s author for Punk. “After Smoke’s board, CAG and the captain went sidebar in CAG’s stateroom,” Rex said. “I happened to be a fly on the wall, so to speak, and I can tell you, the discussion wasn’t pretty.”
“What did they say?”
“Let’s just say the captain may have started CAG down a different path of sorts. He’s seemed like a new man since we left Bahrain. For example, the other day the battle watch captain was trying to blow him some grief about the air plan, and CAG fired back at him like I’ve never seen. It was awesome.”
“There’s hope for us all,” Punk said.
“Again,” Rex proclaimed, “you can’t pass this information along. No kissing the captain’s ass. No posturing around CAG. I just thought you deserved to know. The captain went to the mat for you guys, and CAG was a big enough man to yield when he needed to.”
“I must admit I’m still a little confused by the whole thing, Rex,” Punk said. “But, the secret’s safe with me.” He extended his hand and they shook on it.
Rex fashioned his flight jacket int
o a pillow and leaned away from Punk to get some sleep. Punk slouched in the nylon-webbed seat and looked around the cargo bay at the seven other members of the air wing planning team, all of who apparently had taken advantage of the extra night of liberty in Manama. The only person not sleeping was the team’s intelligence representative, the Ensign Holly half of the Pats, who sat reading The Bear Lives: A Modern Look at the Russian Threat, androgynous as ever in the brand new flight suit she’d drawn for the trip from the squadron supply clerk.
The Air Force transport continued to climb, and the cargo bay grew colder. Punk pulled the zipper of his flight jacket to its upper limit, shoved his hands into its pockets and thought about the day before in Manama.
Six hours of meetings with the Fifth Fleet staff gave the team no more direction than a simple “be sure and tell us what goes on in Saudi Arabia” would have and, by the end of the session, Punk was of a mind to spend some time by himself. While the rest of the team went to an American franchise bar for dinner, Punk ventured into the capital.
Sunset mixed with the sand in the air and gave the city a muddy hue. As the light faded, Punk walked the streets. The town was a pleasant variation on the theme of a metropolis built in a desert. He was reminded of Tucson, except with fewer pedestrians and uniformly nicer cars. There was traffic but no congestion.
The underlying press of government-sanctioned morality dominated the mood. As he’d been instructed during the cultural training they’d received before their first passage through the Suez Canal, he avoided staring at a group of women wrapped from head to toe in black robes. The other people he passed were neither friendly nor cold.
He crossed an intersection and came to the gates of a dramatically lit mosque, wondering if the local children dreaded attending services as he had dreaded Sunday school. He imagined them gleefully running back through the gates following their forced march, soccer balls in hand.
The scene had an Old World permanence about it that hinted he might outlast the challenges before him. But that glimmer of optimism was quickly replaced by the desire for his life with Jordan to begin again. He fought the need to call her with every phone booth he passed. Each time his resolve weakened a little more, but he managed to keep suppressing the instinct and continue on.
Punk moved down the wide sidewalk by the main drag, the four-lane that eventually became the causeway by the beach where they’d made the bonfire. He remembered how the boys had covered the streets as if they were their own that night, coming from the waterfront and storming back downtown, and he noted with growing melancholy how different and gray the place looked now. The road show had moved on.
He cut down a side street and wound up among the stalls of an alley market—not a gussied-up tourist stop but a place where commerce went on much as it had for centuries. Punk squeezed through the crowd while listening to the heated Arabic of the traders. The air teemed with the varied redolence of Middle Eastern life; the inviting scent of spices gave way to the stench of dung followed by the provocative odor of hookah smoke. The intoxicating smoke yielded to the warm smell of food as he came upon a dilapidated kiosk. He adventurously ate a lamb wrap with curd sauce and washed it down with a tepid cup of orange milky liquid he guessed was tea.
In time he came upon the Empire Hotel. He made his way to the pub and took up a position at the bar very near where he’d been seated the last time he’d patronized the establishment. The place was empty. Punk recognized the bartender and was pleasantly surprised when, without being asked, the man drew a dark beer and placed it before him. “You’re alone,” the big man said with an accent that Punk couldn’t place.
“Yes,” Punk replied as he studied the man’s face. He had smooth brown skin and jet-black hair slicked straight back across the top of his big head. His hands looked as big as bear paws as he alternated a towel between them while he methodically wiped the top of the bar.
“The girls are gone now,” the bartender said. “Some flew to Frankfurt, some to Singapore. They won’t be back for a few days.”
“Oh,” Punk returned with forced cool, trying to downplay the man’s perception regarding his presence.
“You’re going to Saudi Arabia,” the man observed. Punk didn’t respond, and as he wrestled with the classification issues, the bartender reached over, patted his hand, and said, “Relax, my friend. It’s no secret what the American military does here.” He took Punk’s glass away and topped it off as he continued to speak. “When you are here in large numbers, the carrier is in port. When you are here by yourselves, you are on your way to Saudi Arabia.” He replaced the glass on the bar and leaned over toward the pilot. “You know, the Iraqis are sleeping now. You can relax, too, you Americans.”
Punk sat in awkward silence for the few minutes it took to finish his beer, and then he passed a quick thanks and walked out of the pub. He sat in the lobby for twenty minutes watching the elevator doors open, hoping one of the British girls would stroll back into his life if only for some light conversation over dinner and a few drinks. He was rewarded for his efforts with nothing but a parade of somber locals.
The C-130 touched the runway and jarred everyone in the cargo bay awake. Punk glanced at his watch and figured he’d managed just over an hour of sleep, although he didn’t know exactly when he’d drifted off. Never good at sleeping while traveling, he was thankful for the gift of rest, however brief.
The crew chief dropped the loading ramp below the tail of the plane as they taxied toward the transient line. Punk joined the others craning around to get a view of Saudi Arabia’s topography out the back of the transport. As he had expected, there didn’t seem to be much to see, just sand-covered, wind-blown flatness.
Once the last of the four propellers stopped spinning, the crew chief instructed the passengers to grab their bags and move to the terminal for processing. On the way down the transport’s ramp, the sergeant took Rex by the elbow. Once they reached the tarmac, he guided him a few steps opposite the direction of the line of new arrivals.
“Sir,” the sergeant said, voice wavering slightly due to the delicacy of the matter. “The Saudi locals are going to search everybody’s bags in the terminal. They’re looking for two things: booze and porn. We’ve got a little amnesty bag set up in the back of the plane if you need it.”
“Thanks, sergeant,” Rex replied. “I can vouch for all the members of my group. We’re clean.”
“You’re sure, sir? No harm, no foul here.”
“I’m sure.”
“It’s very embarrassing to get caught by the Saudis. They make a big deal out of it. I’m just asking because . . .”
“Yes, sergeant?”
“Because you kinda look like a porn reader, sir. I’m not saying you are one, but you look like one. Me and the rest of the boys on the crew have gotten good at spotting them, and our efforts have saved the United States of America a lot of bad face time, if you catch my drift, sir.”
“I look like a porn reader?” Rex asked with concern. “What the hell does a porn reader look like?”
“It’s more than physical appearance, sir,” the sergeant replied. “It’s the whole package . . . like an aura, I guess. Anyway, the hair on the back of my neck stood up when I saw you, so I thought I’d check it out. I apologize, sir, if my instincts betrayed me.”
“I’m afraid they did,” Rex confirmed. “Now if you’ll excuse me, sergeant, I’ll rejoin the others.”
“Roger that, sir,” the sergeant said. “Look, we’ll probably be the crew who takes you back once you’re done here. I’ll hook you up with a couple of choice offerings from the amnesty box on the other end, just so there’s no hard feelings.” The sergeant gave Rex a pawnbroker’s wink and walked back up the ramp into the transport.
Rex considered his aura as he moved toward the terminal, which was nothing more than a small open-air hangar that housed several lines of tables placed end-to-end. A man dressed in a white robe and red-checked Arab headdress motioned for Rex to put his two
bags on the table between them, and as Rex complied, the Saudi called one of his co-workers over. They huddled with their backs to him, looking over their shoulders occasionally, and Rex suddenly feared, as a vampire might fear in a crowd of mortals, that he was radiating some immoral vibe. The huddle broke and each man took to one of Rex’s bags with an intensity that he was certain they hadn’t demonstrated with the luggage of those who’d preceded him in the line. The inspectors left no piece of clothing or toiletry untouched during the search, looking up from their duties only to read Rex’s eyes. The American stood wearing his best poker face, afraid that a magazine might materialize as the Arabs’ hands tilled through his belongings. The locals finished the search without incident, and Rex breathed a suppressed sigh of relief as the inspectors halfheartedly re-secured what they’d opened.
“Navy personnel over here,” someone shouted. “Navy personnel over here.” The eight of them, already road weary from the less-than-comfortable flight in the C-130, migrated to a heavyset gent dressed in civilian clothes and awaited further instructions.
“What’s wrong with this picture?” the man asked as he tugged on his flannel shirt. “I’m in civvies, you’re in flight suits. We’re about to drive a hundred miles across the Saudi Arabia countryside, and we’re going to do our best to not stick out. You need to look like me for the trip to Riyadh, so get changed.” He pointed to a group of tents about a quarter-mile away. “There are heads over there you can use. Once you’re finished, come back here, and we’ll climb into the vans and get going.”
Twenty minutes later, the team was reassembled. “I’m Porky, Lieutenant, United States Navy.” Porky gestured toward another stranger standing across from him. “That’s Beatnik, Captain of Marines. We’re your hosts for this part of the trip. Who’s the senior man here?” Rex raised his arm. “You’re with me, sir. I’ll take three more; the other four pile in with Beatnik. The general expects us at Escavah Village in two hours, so let’s rock.” He took a few steps toward his van and then stopped himself. “Oh, sir,” he said to Rex, “I understood from the manifest you had a female in your group.” He panned the team. “I don’t see one here. Did she not make it?”
