by Ward Carroll
“Jeezus, is that guy fat enough?” Trash observed mockingly from the skipper’s chair. “He makes Biff look thin.” Biff replied with silence and the flash of a single digit.
“I don’t think his claim can be dismissed out of hand,” the burly, bearded newspaperman said from a studio near Capitol Hill. “If you look closely at the tape, you can see some things that potentially shift the blame for the shooting.”
“Why don’t we run that tape?” the host suggested to his production crew. Within seconds, the tape was running on screen, the same tape that had awakened Punk in Bahrain, the tape that the entire television-viewing world had been subjected to countless times during the last two weeks.
“Okay, slow the speed down,” the newspaperman requested. “There, now look at that. Gleason pushes the guard over and then pulls his arm back like he’s going to throw a punch. At the same time, he reaches inside of his jacket with his other hand.”
“What’s the implication, Paul?” the managing editor asked from his magazine’s West Coast bureau in Sherman Oaks, California, as his head and upper torso took the screen from the well-worn tape of the shooting. “Are you saying that James Gleason was about to pull a gun?”
“Well, I think . . .”
“By the agreement, the weapons inspection teams are not allowed to be armed at any time.”
“I know that, Ben. That doesn’t mean they aren’t armed.”
“You’ve always gotta have your conspiracy, don’t you? And who says he was reaching for anything? It looks to me like his arm simply got caught inside of his windbreaker as he was trying to catch his balance.”
“Gentlemen, we have ten seconds left,” the host announced. “Last question. War: yes or no?”
“If we don’t take strong action soon, our status as a leader in the post-Cold War world will be jeopardized,” the editor said.
“You know, not only am I tired of that argument,” the newspaperman replied, “the president is tired of that argument, most of Congress is tired of that argument, and the international community is tired of that argument. The U.S. policy in Iraq is confusing and pointless. We don’t have cause to go to war right now. We’re supposed to be a world leader; let’s set the right example.”
“That guy has always been a fucking communist,” Biff muttered.
“All right,” the host said. “Before we go to a commercial break, let me tell you that we would like to hear from our viewers on the following: should the United Nations take military action against Iraq? Let us know where you stand on this issue by dialing one of the two numbers on your screen. The phone lines are now open. We’ll be back with lots more, so stay tuned.”
“Punk, throw me the phone,” Biff said. “I want to vote for a war.”
“You’re serious . . .”
“Damn right, I’m serious. Throw me the phone.”
Punk tossed the portable receiver to Biff and advised, “You can’t dial outside the Boat from here.”
“Watch and learn,” Biff replied as he dialed four digits and brought the device to his head. “Hello, is this the comm center? To whom am I speaking? Petty Officer Bryant, this is Lieutenant Bartlett down in the Arrow slingers’ ready room. How are you tonight? That’s real good. Look, I need to get an outside line from this phone. Could you help me with that? No way, huh? That’s too bad because it’s a very urgent call. How ’bout if I throw in a couple of squadron patches for the effort? Closer? How ’bout a VF-104 ball cap, too? Okay, then. Thanks, Petty Officer Bryant.” Biff pressed the phone off and shot Punk a self-satisfied grin. “Never say die, my friend. I’ll have an outside line in two minutes.”
Two minutes later, Biff dialed in his vote of support for a war against Iraq.
The midnight bell sounded and Pavlov’s aviators made their way to Wardroom One for midrats, the fourth meal of the day for some, the third meal for most. Midrats took its name from midnight rations, an old surface Navy tradition of feeding the crewmembers before they assumed the watch through the middle of the night. But, with the advent of the aircraft carrier and the special breed who populated the passageways just below the flight deck, midrats took the form of an end-of-the-day social, a chance for aircrews to unwind over a slider (the at-sea term for a hamburger) or a bowl of cereal and relate the day’s tales to each other.
Punk was not among them. He still had some paperwork to finish before he could turn the watch over to the enlisted man who would guard the phone for a few hours while the lame lieutenant got some sleep before starting the duty process all over again the following day. Punk re-figured the day’s sortie count, flight hours, and fuel usage and, once satisfied with his addition, headed out of the ready room for the skipper’s stateroom. Before he left, he re-read the CO’s endorsement one more time.
Punk found the skipper’s stateroom cold and antiseptic, especially compared to the Cheesequarters. No carpet, no posters, no huge stereo speakers on the floor, no personal touch. Unlike the junior officers, who treated their staterooms as places to get away from the Boat’s atmosphere, the skipper was satisfied having his stateroom look like a ship, not a den.
“What’s on your mind?” asked Commander Campbell without looking up from the paperwork he was working on. He was still dressed in his flight suit, but he’d unzipped it to the waist and drawn the sleeves around the front of him like the belt of a bathrobe. Punk noticed that the Blue Angels T-shirt he wore was creased down the center of each sleeve, indicating it was probably brand new, and he wondered how many of those the skipper had gone through over the years.
“I’ve got the recap for you to sign,” Punk said.
“Oh, that’s right. You’re the duty officer for life.” The skipper took the sheets from Punk and gestured for the lieutenant to sit down in the only other chair in the room. “How did we finish up?”
“Real strong,” Punk said. “We missed that one sortie early on, but that was it.”
“Who’s on the first Alert 15 shift tonight?”
“Monk and Weezer,” Punk replied. “They’re sitting in the ready room in their flight gear.”
“And the Alert 5?”
“Beads and the XO are in the jet spotted on cat three.”
“Okay.” The skipper changed the subject. “You heard that a Prowler shot a HARM?”
“Yessir.”
“This could get hot quick.”
“I think it could,” Punk agreed. “The topic is sure dominating the news.”
“So how’s the ankle?”
“The ankle? Better, I guess. I don’t need the cane anymore, and Doc thinks I’ll be ready to fly in about a week.” Punk looked away from the skipper and down to the floor in front of where he was seated. “I’m not sure my ankle is the problem.”
“The mishap report?” the skipper asked. Punk nodded. “Well, I wouldn’t get too balled up over that thing.”
“Why not?”
“Because when it’s all said and done, you’ll still be flying the Tomcat.”
“What will I have to endure between now and then?” Punk pressed.
“Endure?”
“What sort of second guessing? What kind of assaults on my competence?”
“I think you’re overreacting, Punk,” the skipper said. “Nobody’s going to assault you. The system is just going to run the facts to ground and see what needs to be done to prevent this sort of thing in the future.” The commander pushed his chair away from the desk and swiveled toward the younger pilot. “I’ve never taken the time to tell you, but I’m actually damn proud of the judgment you showed that night.”
Punk rose out of his chair and moved toward the closed stateroom door. He turned and faced back in the skipper’s direction. “Please, skipper, don’t BS me.”
“I’m not,” the CO countered. “I really am proud of you.”
“That’s not what your endorsement said . . .” The words just shot out. Now there they were, adrift between them like floating mines between two ships.
“
My endorsement’s not even on the streets yet,” the skipper said. “How do you know what’s in it?”
“Never mind that, skipper. I read your statements, and they didn’t mention anything about your pride in me.”
Commander Campbell exploded. “Sit down and shut up, lieutenant,” he shouted, rising out of his chair. “Christ, you guys are whiners.” He paused for a time to rein in his temper and retook his seat. “Every time you and I get into a discussion you go angry young man on me.” The skipper slid his chair back to his desk and began shuffling papers. “You’re so damned idealistic all the time, Punk. You’re getting too senior for that shit. I’m sorry if my endorsement hurt your feelings, but—”
“It didn’t hurt my feelings, sir; it was a lie.”
“NO,” the skipper railed with a slam of his fist against the top of his desk. He checked himself again. “No,” he repeated calmly. “It’s not a lie. It’s an interpretation that the chain of command can live with.”
“They can’t live with the truth?”
“You mean your concept of the truth?”
“No sir, I mean the real truth.”
“What’s the real truth?”
“Well, we were overextended due to a misguided priority, and we diverted to a field that we were told was the primary divert, but was, in fact, closed.”
“So,” the skipper said, “you want me to tell the battle group commander that his priorities are misguided?”
“Only if you’re interested in forwarding the truth . . . sir.”
The phone rang, and the skipper silenced Punk with a wave and lifted the receiver. “Campbell . . . yes, Rex . . . yeah . . . yeah . . . when? That soon, huh? All right, I copy. In fact, I think I have the perfect candidate right in front of me.” The skipper hung up and gave Punk a sleazy smile. “Are you sick of standing the duty?”
“Yes sir, definitely. Why?”
“Because you get to go to Saudi Arabia as part of a planning team with the air wing staff. The joint task force needs some help putting the war together.”
“When do we leave?”
“Early tomorrow.”
“How long will we be gone?”
“Three or four days.”
Punk winced. There were worse deals than standing the duty. One of them was a multi-service strike planning mission. He’d received the dubious nod twice before: once during a stateside exercise and once at the beginning of his first deployment to the Med. Both experiences had been frustrating and painful. He uttered an unintelligible noise of disenchantment, excused himself from his audience, and opened the stateroom door to exit.
The skipper stopped him in the doorway. “I probably won’t see you before you fly off. Remember, you’re on the side of the United States Navy and carrier warfare. Make sure you don’t let the Air Force take all the primo targets, and get us some air-to-air missions.”
“If my previous experiences are any indication, skipper, I won’t have any say over that stuff,” Punk observed. “I’ll be doing grunt work instead.”
“Whatever, you can still influence the process.” Punk nodded and turned to go. He pulled the door along behind him and before it was fully shut, the commander threw out: “And stop worrying about the mishap report.”
Punk reversed himself and swung the door back open. “Sorry, skipper, but I can’t leave until I figure this out. Not to whine again or anything, but my concept of truth doesn’t speak to you at all?”
“I might ask you the same question,” the skipper returned. “As I said, you’re going to keep your wings and fly again. Nobody’s attacking you beyond the mishap. Your reputation is safe.”
“My reputation . . .”
“Believe me, that’s the most important element,” the commander said. “Both your peer group and mine respect what has to be done here. Success for you is keeping your wings; success for me is protecting the dignity of my superiors.” The skipper’s voice turned ethereal and his gaze lifted to the pipes that lined the ceiling of his stateroom. “You guard your reputation for years and then one thing destroys it . . .” He paused momentarily and then looked back at Punk. “Think what you will of me. Quite frankly, that doesn’t matter. I’m the number one commanding officer in the eyes of my boss, and I’ve worked hard to orchestrate that, goddam it. I’ll go into the next promotion board with good paper, but now I’ve got another problem. You know damned well that the rumors about this Iranian F-4 thing are spreading like wildfire up and down the flight line back home, and not just among the junior officers. Like I told you in Bahrain, that’s all it takes. All anybody on the board has to do is mention it in casual conversation—‘hey, did you hear about Soup and the F-4?’—and I’m fucking toast.” The commander paused again, turned back to his desk, and mindlessly shuffled some papers.
Punk cleared his throat. “So, skipper, the write-up?” he prodded. “We’ll just keep the boss happy? Is that what it’s about?”
“I’m satisfied with the truth of my endorsement. That’s not conniving; that’s good business. It’s just like the civilian world. A happy admiral is like a happy CEO, and when the CEO is happy, the whole company is happy.” The skipper smiled at the intuitiveness of his concept.
“Just like the civilian world,” Punk repeated mechanically.
“That’s right.” The commander’s smile widened.
Punk shook his head and walked out.
“You know what I’m sick of?” Rex asked the seven other officers seated at one of the circular tables in Wardroom One. “I’m sick of getting crayon renderings from my three-year-old that depict a happy family without a father.”
“I’m sick of trying to figure out why my fiancée isn’t home when I call,” Trash said.
“I’m sick of shitting in a crowd,” Scooter said.
“I’m sick of this strike planning trip that I haven’t even started yet,” Punk said. “Rex, what’s the itinerary for this thing?”
“The COD launches at 0800,” the air wing operations officer answered, referring to the carrier onboard delivery airplane that did double duty as a cargo plane and a transport, “so be in the transport office by 0700. We’ll land at Manama Airport about forty minutes after that.”
“Manama? I thought we were going to Saudi Arabia.”
“We are, after a night in Bahrain. We have to get our marching orders from the Fifth Fleet staff before we do battle with the Air Force in Riyadh.”
Punk got up from the table without finishing his slider and hobbled back to the ready room to tell Biff that he needed to find a new duty officer for the following day. He passed through the back door and happened upon the mail clerk with a large stack of letters under one arm and two boxes under the other. Punk relieved him of half of his letter burden and began rifling envelopes into the appropriate slots. When he was down to five, he shuffled through them and, seeing none addressed to him, swapped his handful with the balance of the clerk’s stack. The lieutenant madly flipped through the new bunch until he came across a letter from Jordan. He set it aside with a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been shut out and finished aiding the clerk with his duties.
Punk sat in his ready room chair and opened the letter with anticipation. Letters had almost become extinct with the proliferation of electronic media, and as Punk removed the pages from the envelope, he considered the tragedy of their loss. All an e-mail had over a letter was the speed of its arrival. There was something about the touch of her stationery and the curves of the handwritten lines of ink on the page that made her letters seem more intimate than the by-products of digital transmission. He brought the paper to his nose. After months of breathing jet exhaust, the faint trace of her fragrance reminded him of better days. He began to read.
Dear Rick,
I’m sorry it has taken me so long to write. I’d claim I’ve been very busy at work, but that’s not the reason for my delay. I haven’t quite known what to say to you lately, and our last phone call obviously didn’t help the situation. As I said, t
his has been a long cruise.
I have to be honest with you, Rick. You deserve that from me. I know your life on the carrier is far from enjoyable, but I have been miserable during the last five months. I can’t do this year in and year out. I don’t want you to make any career choices because of me, and at the same time, I’m afraid of what you might choose if I forced you to.
I don’t have the endurance you give me credit for, and frankly, I wouldn’t want it if I could get it. Life is too short. I don’t want to wish away half a year at a time for the next twenty years of my life.
I know this isn’t what you want to hear in the middle of what has got to be a very stressful time for you, but I felt I had to tell you what I’m feeling. I don’t want to forget this emptiness, and I know I would if I waited until you got home to talk about it.
This isn’t easy. I’ve cherished our times together and don’t regret a minute of it. But the time has come for me to think about me.
Let me call you when you get home,
Jordan
Punk sat motionless for a time, staring blankly at the letter. Her sentiments weren’t exactly a surprise but, at the same time, seeing them in writing had a finality he wasn’t prepared for. Had he already experienced her final kiss? He had spent so many hours thinking of her. With a few sentences it all seemed a waste.
He checked the postmark and felt a fool for the daydreams he’d allowed himself to have over the last five days. He read the letter one more time and then wadded it up and chucked it into the trashcan next to the coffee machine. His first instinct was to fire a stinging e-mail back to her, one that pointed out her poor timing and myopic point of view, but as he stood at the keyboard in the back of the ready room, the words wouldn’t come. Who could blame her for running from this warped way of life? He stared at his reflection in the computer screen against the backdrop of the e-mail display. She wasn’t going to be there when he got home.