by Dale Brown
"Out. Away from here. I'm on a beautiful tropical island-I want to enjoy a little of it before I get tossed into prison." "Brad wanted us to stay in the hangar…"
"Brad's no longer in charge," Patrick said. He looked at John Or-mack with a mixture of anger and weariness. "Are you going to order me to stay, John?" Ormack said nothing, so Patrick stormed out of the room without another word.
After turning in his classified materials, Patrick went to his locker in the hangar, stripped off his smelly survival gear and flying boots, found a beach mat and a bottle of water, took a portable walkie-talkie and his ID card, grabbed a ride from the shuttle bus to one of the beautiful white-sand beaches just a few yards from the Visiting Officers' Quarters, found an inviting coconut tree, stripped off his flight suit and undergarments to the waist, and stretched out on the sand. He heard the walkie-talkie squawk once-someone asking him to return to answer a few more questions-so Patrick finally turned the radio off. But he immediately felt bad for doing that, so he set his "internal alarm clock" for one hour and closed his eyes.
He was exhausted, bone-tired, but the weariness would not leave his body-in fact, he was energized, ready to go again. There was so much excitement and potential in their group-and it seemed it was wasted because Brad Elliott couldn't control himself. He was too eager simply to charge off and do whatever he felt was right or necessary. Patrick didn't always disagree with him, but he wished he could channel his energy, drive, determination, and patriotism in a more productive direction.
It seemed as if only a few minutes passed, but when Patrick awoke a quick glance at his watch told him fifty minutes had gone by. The sun was high in the sky, seemingly overhead-they were close enough to the equator for that to happen-but there was enough of a breeze blowing in off the Indian Ocean to keep him cool and comfortable. There were a few sailors or airmen on the beach a few dozen yards away to the east, throwing a Frisbee or relaxing under an umbrella. "Helluva way to fight a war, isn't it?"
Patrick looked behind him and saw Wendy Tork sitting cross-legged beside him. She had a contented, pleased, relaxed look on her face. Patrick felt that same thrill of excitement and anticipation he had felt on the Megafortress. "I'll say," Patrick commented. "How long have you been sitting there?"
"A few minutes." Wendy was wearing nothing but her athletic bra and a pair of dark blue cotton panties; her flying boots and flight suit were in a pile beside her. Patrick gulped in surprise when he saw her so scantily clad, which made her smile. She motioned toward the Visiting Officers' Quarters down the beach. "Brad decided to let us get rooms in the Qs rather than sleep in the hangar."
Patrick snorted. "How magnanimous of him." "What were you going to do-sleep on the beach?" "Damn right I was," Patrick said. He shook his head disgustedly. "We were cooped up in that plane for over seventeen hours."
"And it was all unauthorized," Wendy said bitterly. "I can't believe he'd do that-and then have the nerve to chew you out for what you did."
"You mean, you can't believe he'd do that again" Patrick said.
"That's Brad Elliott's MO, Wendy-do whatever it takes to get the job done."
"Flying the Kavaznya sortie-yes, I agree," she said. The first flight of the experimental EB-52 Megafortress bomber three years earlier, against a Soviet long-range killer laser system in Siberia, was also unauthorized-but it had probably saved the world from a nuclear exchange. "But with half the planet involved in a shooting war in the Middle East, why he would commit three Megafortresses to the theater without proper authorization and risk getting us all killed like that? Hell, it boggles my mind."
"No one said Brad was the clearheaded all-knowing expert in everything military," Patrick pointed out. "If he was, he'd probably build Megafortresses for just one person. He has a crew behind him." He turned toward her. "Rank disappears when we step into that bird,
Wendy. It's our job, our responsibility, to point out problems or discrepancies or errors."
"Aren't you obligated to follow his orders?"
"Yes, unless I feel his orders are illogical or illegal or violate a directive," Patrick replied. "Brad wanting to engage that unidentified aircraft-that was wrong, even if we were on an authorized mission. We can't just go around shooting down aircraft over international airspace. We did what we were supposed to do-disengage, identify ourselves, turn, run, and get out. We prevented a dogfight and came home safely." He paused, then smiled.
"Why are you smiling?"
"You know, I was a little miffed at Brad ordering us up on this mission at first," Patrick admitted. "But you know, I probably… no, I definitely wanted to go. I knew we had no tasking or execution order. If I wanted, I could have asked the question, demanded he get authorization, and stopped this sortie from ever leaving the ground. The fact is, I wanted to do it." His expression grew a bit more somber as he added, "In fact, I probably betrayed you, maybe even betrayed myself for not saying anything. I had a responsibility to speak up, and I didn't. And if things went completely to shit and some of us were killed or captured or hurt, I know that Brad would be the one responsible. I accused Brad of being irresponsible, of wanting to get into the fighting before it was over-and at the same time, I was thinking and doing the exact same thing. What a hypocrite."
"You are not a hypocrite," Wendy said, putting a hand on his shoulder as his eyes wandered out across the beach toward the open ocean. "Listen, Patrick, there's a war on. There might be a cease-fire now, but the entire region is still ready to explode. You know this, Brad knows this, I know this-and soon some smart desk jockeys in Washington will know this. They really did want our team warmed up and ready to go in case we were needed. Brad just advanced the timetable a little…"
"No, a lot" Patrick said.
"You played along because you recognized the need and our unit's capabilities. You did the right thing." She paused and took a deep breath, letting her fingers slide along his broad, naked shoulders. Patrick suppressed a pleased, satified moan, and Wendy responded by beginning to massage his shoulders. "I just wish Brad was a little more… user-friendly," she went on absently. "Commanders need to make decisions, but Brad seems a little too eager to pull the trigger and fight his way in or out of a scrape." She paused for a few long moments, then added, "Why can't you be our commander?"
"Me?" He hoped his surprised reaction sounded a lot less phony than it sounded to himself. In fact, ever since joining the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, Patrick thought about being its commander-now, for the first time, someone else had verbalized it. "I don't think I'm leadership material, Wendy," Patrick said after a short chuckle.
His little laugh barely succeeded in hiding the rising volts of pleasure he felt as her fingers aimlessly caressed his shoulder. "Sure you are," she said. "I think you'd be a great commanding officer."
"I don't think so," Patrick said. "They made me a major after the Kavaznya mission only because we survived it, not because I'm better than all the other captains in the Air Force…"
"They made you a major because you deserve to get promoted."
Patrick ignored her remark. "I think I might be meeting a lieutenant-colonel promotion board sometime this month-a two-year below-the-primary-zone board-but I have no desire to become a commander," he went on. "All I want to do is fly and be the best at whatever mission or weapon system they give me. But they don't promote flyboys to O-5 if they want to just stay flyboys."
"They don't?"
"Why should they? If a captain or a major can do the job, why do they need a lieutenant colonel doing it? L–Cs are supposed to be leaders, commanding squadrons. I don't want a squadron." Wendy looked at the sand for a long moment, then drummed her fingers on his shoulder. He glanced at her and smiled when she looked up at him with a mischievous smile. "What?"
"I think that's bull, Major-soon-to-be-Lieutenant-Colonel McLa-nahan." Wendy laughed. "I think you'd make an ideal commanding officer. You're the best at what you do, Patrick-it's perfectly understandable that you wouldn
't want to spoil things by moving on to something else. But I see the qualities in you that other high-ranking guys lack. John Ormack is a great guy and a fine engineer, but he doesn't have what it takes to lead. Brad Elliott is a determined, gutsy leader, but he doesn't have the long-range vision and the interpersonal skills that a good commander needs.
"So stop selling yourself short. Those of us who know you can see it's total bull. The Strategic Air Command has got you so brainwashed into believing the mission comes first and the person comes last that you're starting to believe it yourself." She lay on the warm sand, facing him. "Let's talk about something else-like why you were watching me last night."
Her frankness and playfulness, combined with the warm sand, idyllic tropical scenery, fresh ocean breezes-not to mention her semiundressed attire-finally combined to make Patrick relax, even smile. He lay down on the sand, facing her, intentionally shifting himself closer to her. "I was fantasizing about you," he said finally. "I was thinking about the night at the Bomb Comp symposium at Barksdale that we spent together, how you looked, how you felt."
"Mmm. Very nice. I knew you were thinking that. I thought it was cute, you trying to stammer your way out of it. I've been thinking about you too."
"Oh yeah?"
Her eyes grew cloudy, tumultuous. "I had been thinking for the longest time if we'd ever get back together again," Wendy said. "After the Kavaznya mission, we were so compartmentalized, isolated-I thought I'd never touch you ever again. Then you joined Brad in the Border Security Force assignment, and that went bust, and it seemed like they drove you even deeper underground. And then the Philippines conflict… we lost so many planes out there, I was sure you weren't coming back. I knew you'd be leading the force, and I thought you'd be the first to die, even in the B-2 stealth bomber."
Wendy rolled over on her back and stared up into the sky. The clouds were thickening-it looked like a storm coming in, more than just the usual daily late-afternoon five-minute downpour. "But then Brad brought us back to refit the new planes to the Megafortress standard, and you were back at work like nothing ever happened. We started working together, side by side, sometimes on the same workstation or jammed into the same dinky compartment, sometimes so close I could feel the heat from your temples. But it seemed as if we had never been together-it was as if we had always been working together, but that night in Barksdale never happened. You were working away like crazy and I was just another one of your subcontractors."
"I didn't mean to hurt you, Wendy…"
"But it did hurt," she interjected. "The way you looked at me at Barksdale, the way you treated me at Dreamland, the way you touched me on the Megafortress just before we landed in Anadyr… I felt something between us, much more than just a one-night stand in Shreveport. That felt like an eternity ago. I felt as if I waited for you, and you were never coming back. Then I caught you looking at me, and all I could think of to do was come up with subtle ways to hurt you. Now, I don't know what I feel. I don't know whether I should punch your damned lights out or…"
He moved pretty quick for a big guy. His lips were on hers before she knew it, but she welcomed his kiss like a pearl diver welcomes that first deep, sweet breath of air after a long time underwater.
The beach was beautiful, soothing and relaxing, but they did not spend much time there. They knew that the world was going to come crashing down on them very, very soon, and they didn't have much time to get reacquainted. The Visiting Officers' Quarters were only a short walk away
"Damn shit-hot group we got, that's what I think," Colonel Harry Ponce exclaimed. He was "holding court" in the Randolph Officers Club after breakfast, sitting at the head of a long table filled with fellow promotion board members and a few senior officers from the base. Ponce jabbed at the sky with his unlit cigar. "It's going to be damn hard to choose."
Heads nodded in agreement-all but Norman Weir's. Ponce jabbed the cigar in his direction. "What's the matter, Norm? Got a burr up your butt about somethin'?"
Norman shrugged. "No, Colonel, not necessarily," he said. Most of the others turned to Norman with surprised expressions, as if they were amazed that someone would dare contradict the supercolonel. "Overall, they're fine candidates. I wish I'd seen a few more sharper guys, especially the in-the-primary-zone guys. The above-the-primary-zone candidates looked to me like they'd already thrown in the towel."
"Hell, Norman, ease up a little," Ponce said. "You look at a guy that's the ops officer of his squadron, he's got umpteen million additional duties, he flies six sorties a week or volunteers for deployment or TDYs-who the hell cares if he's got a loose thread on his blues? I want to know if the guy's been busting his hump for his unit."
"Well, Colonel, if he can't put his Class A's together according to the regs or he can't be bothered getting a proper haircut, I wonder what else he can't do properly? And if he can't do the routine stuff, how is he supposed to motivate young officers and enlisted troops to do the same?"
"Norm, I'm talkin' about the real Air Force," Ponce said. "It's all fine and dandy that the headquarters staff and support agencies cross all the damned t's and dot the i's. But what I'm looking for is the Joe that cranks out one hundred and twenty percent each and every damned day. He's not puttin' on a show for the promotion board-he's helping his unit be the best. Who the hell cares what he looks like, as long as he flies and fights like a bitch bulldog in heat?"
That kind of language was typical in the supercolonel's verbal repertoire, and he used it to great effect to shock and humor anyone he confronted. It just made Norman more defensive. Anyone who resorted to using vulgarity as a normal part of polite conversation needed an education in how to think and speak, and Ponce was long overdue for a lesson. "Colonel, a guy that does both-does a good job in every aspect of the job, presenting a proper, professional, by-the-book appearance as well as performing his primary job-is a better choice for promotion than just the guy who flies well but has no desire or understanding of all the other aspects of being a professional airman. A guy that presents a poor appearance may be a good person and a good operator, but obviously isn't a complete, well-balanced, professional officer."
"Norm, buddy, have you been lost in your spreadsheets for the past nine months? Look around you-we're at war here!" Ponce responded, practically shouting. Norman had to clench his jaw to keep from admonishing Ponce to stop calling him by the disgusting nickname "Norm." "The force is at war, a real war, for the first time since Vietnam-I'm not talkin' about Libya or Grenada, those were just finger-wrestling matches compared to the Sandbox-and we're kicking ass! I see my guys taxiing out ready to launch, and I see them practically jumpin' out of their cockpits, they're so anxious to beat the crap outta Saddam. Their crew chiefs are so excited they're pissin' their pants. I see those guys as heroes, and now I have a chance to promote them, and by God I'm gonna do it!
"The best part is, none of our officers are over there in the 'Sandbox' ordering someone to paint the rocks or having six-course meals while their men are dying all around them. We're going over there, kicking ass and taking names, and we're coming home alive and victorious. Our troops are being treated like professionals, not conscripts or snot-nosed kids or druggies or pretty-boy marionettes. Our officers are applying what they've learned over the years and are taking the fight to Saddam and shovin' Mavericks right down his damned throat. I want guys leading the Air force that want to train hard, fight hard, and come home."
"But what about…?"
"Yeah, yeah, I hear all the noise about the 'whole person' and the 'total package' crapola," Ponce interjected, waving the cigar dismissively. "But what I want are warriors. If you're a pilot, I want to see you fly your ass off, every chance you can get and then some, and then I want to see you pitch in to get the paperwork and nitpicky ground bullshit cleaned up so everyone can go fly some more. If you're an environmental weenie or-what are you in, Norm, accounting and finance? Okay. If you're a damned accountant, I want to see you working overtime if necessary
to make your section hum. If your squadron needs you, you slap on your flying boots, fuck the wife good-bye, and report in on the double. Guys who do that are aces in my book."
Norman realized there was no point in arguing with Ponce-he was just getting more and more flagrant and bigoted by the second. Soon he would be bad-mouthing and trash-talking lawyers, or doctors, or the President himself-everyone except those wearing wings. It was getting very tiresome. Norman fell silent and made an almost imperceptible nod, and Ponce nodded triumphantly and turned to lecture someone else, acting as if he had just won the great evolution vs. creation debate. Norman made certain he was not the next one to leave, so it wouldn't appear as if he was retreating or running away, but as soon as the first guy at the table got up, Norman muttered something about having to make a call and got away from Ponce and his sycophants.
Well, Norman thought as he walked toward the Military Personnel Center, attitudes like Ponce's just cemented his thoughts and feelings about flyers-they were opinionated, headstrong, bigoted, loudmouthed Neanderthals. Ponce wasn't out to promote good officers-he was out to promote meat-eating jet-jockeys like himself.
It was guys like Ponce, Norman thought as he entered the building and took the stairs to the Selection and Promotion Branch floor, who were screwing up the Air Force for the rest of us.
"Excuse me, Colonel Weir?" Norman was striding down the hallway, heading back to his panel deliberation room. He stopped and turned. Major General Ingemanson was standing in the doorway to his office, smiling his ever-present friendly, disarming smile. "Got a minute?"
"Of course, sir," Norman said.
"Good. Grab a cup of coffee and c'mon in." Norman bypassed the coffee stand in the outer office and walked into Ingemanson's simple, unadorned office. He stood at attention in front of Ingemanson's desk, eyes straight ahead. "Relax and sit down, Colonel. Sure you don't want some coffee?"
