With Hostile Intent

by Robert Gandt

  Her voice became more insistent. “I just told you, an SA-3 site near Basra. Box, triangle, who cares? I know very well what I shot at.”

  Devo’s headache came back. He had seen the way the HARM left Spam’s Hornet. It was flying in a smooth arc, not the jerky, snakelike path a HARM took when it was locked on to a radar-emitting target. It wasn’t tracking.

  Fucking beautiful, he thought. When they returned to the carrier, it would be his job to explain why he let his knuckleheaded wingman pickle off a half-million-dollar missile. At nothing.

  <>

  It had been a milk run. They were en route back to the Reagan. Except for Spam’s HARM, they had expended no weapons.

  Then, a hundred-fifty miles out, they received a call from Surface Watch aboard the Reagan: “Nail Forty-one, this is Alpha Sierra. We need you to check out a surface contact that is approaching the battle group.”

  Alpha Sierra gave Devo the range ad bearing of the unknown vessel.

  Devo groaned to himself. “Nail Forty-one copies,” he said. “Descending to have a look.”

  Devo reduced power and lowered the Hornet’s nose. SPAM was late following. She floated high, then had to use full speed brakes to keep from shooting out in front.

  Devo leveled off at 1,000 feet above the water, flying at a comfortable 300 knots. “Fly abeam, slightly high. Keep at least a mile separation and watch for small boats and gunfire.”

  “Roger.”

  Devo’s radar was painting the surface contact straight ahead. “Alpha Sierra, Nail Forty-one flight has the contact on the nose twenty miles, stand by for ID.”

  Half a minute later, he could see the profile of the ship on the horizon. “Tally ho on the nose,” he called to Spam. “I’ll take it up the vessel’s starboard side and arc around to the left. Stay a mile abeam my right wing and hold your altitude.”

  “Roger that.”

  She still was out of position—too high, and closer than a mile abeam. But she wasn’t in a position to hurt anything, It was the best he could expect for now.

  “Devo’s descending out of a thousand. Keep me in sight at all times.”

  “Roger.”

  He eased down to 100 feet. He could see white caps and the varied colorations of the sea below him. Salt spray was peppering the windscreen. At this altitude, there was no room for error. With only a second’s inattention, he would be fish food.

  As he streaked over the stern of the ship, Devo saw that it was a merchant vessel. He could see the ensign of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but he couldn’t pick out the vessel’s name painted on the stern.

  He would have to come back for another pass.

  Devo started to pull up and turn back. It was then he saw a blur over his right shoulder.

  Spam’s Hornet! The belly of the jet was coming at him.

  Shit! She had lost sight of him.

  Devo jabbed the stick forward, punching the jet’s nose down. Instinctively he hunched down in his seat. He saw — and felt — the roaring mass of Spam’s Hornet slide over his canopy.

  Somehow they missed.

  Devo’s heart resumed beating. It was close, too damned close. He’d missed a collision by inches and —

  “Altitude! Altitude!” It was the synthesized voice of “Bitchin’ Betty,” the Hornet’s aural warning system.

  Devo yanked back on the stick. He glimpsed the digital altitude indicator counting to zero.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Inquest

  Persian Gulf

  1015, Monday, 19 May

  Where the hell is Devo?

  Spam eased the nose up and started her climb back to ten thousand feet. She glanced around, left, then right. No Devo.

  “Devo, you up?” she said on the number two radio.

  No answer.

  That was just like him, she thought. Take off and leave his wingman. Particularly if the wingman was a woman.

  Leveling at 10,000 feet, she tried calling Devo again. Still no answer. She was getting a bad feeling about this. Something weird had happened back there over the freighter. Like a good wingman, she had stayed with him as they passed over the ship. She remembered looking down at the ship, and then when she looked back up — Devo’s jet wasn’t there.

  He should have been more explicit in the briefing about what he wanted her to do. Instead, he had wasted time with all that picayune shit about where they would rendezvous. As though she needed lecturing from a. . . drunk.

  He had probably hauled ass back to the Reagan and left her out here. That would be the typical move of your classic male chauvinist fighter pilot who thinks women ought to be darning their socks. She’d get his ass roasted on a spit when they got back to the ship. She’d tell Killer what a jerk his executive officer really was.

  Now she had to get back to the ship by herself, and she wasn’t sure what the hell she was supposed to do. One more thing he didn’t cover in the briefing.

  She could hear the other returning jets calling on the CATCC — Carrier Air Traffic Control Center — frequency. Spam checked in using her call sign: Stinger 42.

  “Roger Stinger 42,” said the controller. “You got Stinger 41 with you?”

  “Negative.”

  Several seconds ticked past, then a different voice came over the frequency. “Stinger 42, this is the Captain. Look, we’re not painting Stinger 41’s transponder squawk, and we think he might be a nordo.” A “nordo” was an aircraft with lost radios. “Take a look around and see if your flight lead is with you, maybe on your wing.”

  Spam took a quick glance to either side of her jet. Empty sky. No radioless jet flying on her wing. “Negative. He’s not here.”

  Spam wondered what the hell was going on. The captain of the ship? They were worried about Devo. It didn’t occur to them that he had abandoned his wingman. She was getting a feeling that something had gone wrong, and she had learned by now how the male-biased Navy operated: The bastards were going to blame it on her.

  Spam stopped thinking about Devo. It was time to land on the thing.

  Her first pass was unstable, causing the LSO to give her a frantic wave off close to the ramp. Overcorrecting on the second pass, she missed all three arresting wires and boltered, back into the pattern.

  Her third pass was within limits but ugly. High in the groove, settling at the ramp, with an urgent power call from Pearly, ending with a number one wire — the closest to the blunt unforgiving ramp of the deck.

  Taxiing forward to where the director was signaling her to her parking spot, she began preparing herself for the debriefing. Already she could hear the accusations, and she would be ready with the answers. The LSO tried to make her look bad by yelling these hysterical commands on the radio.

  And Devo. The man was a blatant sexist. He shouldn’t have been flying. His briefing was unprofessional and erratic. Whatever happened to Devo was his own fault.

  <>

  CAG Boyce sighed and hung up the phone. He closed his eyes and massaged them with the tips of his fingers. This was the part of his job he hated most. In twenty-three years as a naval aviator, he had seen his share of mishaps. It never got any easier.

  He swung around in his chair and faced the officers seated at his conference table. ”They found debris,” he said. “Five miles from the Iranian freighter.”

  “Did the freighter fire on him?” asked Killer DeLancey.

  “No, there wasn’t any indication of hostile action.”

  “Any clue that he ejected?” asked Maxwell. “Locator beacon or. . .?”

  Boyce shook his head. That would be wishful thinking, and they all knew it. No beacon, no raft, no floating survivor. When you hit the water at 300 knots, there wasn’t much left.

  Losing a guy like Devo Davis was tough. Boyce and Devo went all the way back to the A-7 days together on the Kitty Hawk. Devo, for all his faults, was someone Boyce could count on to tell him how things really were.

  Now he couldn’t shake this feeling that he had helped kill
Devo.

  He had heard the rumors about the drinking. As Air Wing Commander, he was also aware that Devo was having problems in the cockpit. But they had already had a private talk about all that, and Devo convinced him it was a passing thing. He was having trouble getting over the split with Eileen. Nothing serious. He was coming out of it.

  Then, while the Reagan was in port in Dubai, Killer DeLancey had come to his office. He wanted Devo replaced and sent home. Killer thought that Devo was a drunk and a poor role model for the junior officers.

  Boyce turned him down. Devo, he told DeLancey, would come out of it. Devo was a good executive officer, he would make a good commanding officer. Just cut him a little slack, and Devo would get a handle on his problems.

  That, of course, was a lie. His real reason for keeping Devo Davis was more critical. He needed someone he could trust to watch Killer DeLancey.

  <>

  The recovery team completed its sweep of the surface around the crash site. To no one’s surprise, they found only a few baskets of floating debris — nothing that would yield a reason for the crash of Devo’s Hornet.

  The Aircraft Mishap Board convened the next morning in the air wing conference room. Boyce named Commander Spike Mannheim, of the VFA-34 Blue Tails, senior member of the board. Maxwell, as the Roadrunners operations officer, was assigned to the board, and so were Craze Manson, the maintenance officer, Bat Masters, the safety officer, and the air wing flight surgeon, Knuckles Ball.

  Spam Parker was the first witness called. She sat at the end of the table facing the five board members. She wore her dress khakis, her blonde hair tied back in a bun.

  Mannheim asked the first question. “Lieutenant Parker, please describe Commander Davis’s demeanor during the brief.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was he. . . alert? Upbeat? Perceptive?”

  “He seemed irritable. He was probably hungover.”

  “We’re not asking you to make judgments. Just tell us how he conducted the brief.”

  “Very unprofessional, in my opinion.”

  “Explain, please.”

  “Devo kept making a big deal about this overhead rendezvous, like it was some sort of religious thing with him.”

  Mannheim frowned. “You disagreed with your flight leader about the rendezvous?”

  “It just made more sense to rendezvous on a tacan radial.”

  Mannheim scribbled a note on his yellow pad. “Even though the air wing tactical procedures specifically call for an overhead rendezvous?”

  Spam didn’t like the questioner’s tone. “You asked me to tell you about the briefing. I just told you.”

  Mannheim studied her for a second. “Okay, let’s talk about the mission. Tell us what happened.”

  Spam described the HARM patrol.

  When she finished, Maxwell spoke up. “I’m curious, Spam. How did you happen to fire a HARM? Why didn’t Commander Davis take the shot?”

  “I guess he wasn’t watching his display. He didn’t see the Burner-three indication.”

  At this, Mannheim picked up a manila file folder. “We have reports here from both AWACS and Rivet Joint. They saw no Burner-three activity at all. It looks like the HARM you fired went inert, without tracking.”

  Spam looked at each of them. She was receiving clear danger signals. They were on a fishing trip. “I just told you. I had an SA-3 site locked up on my HARM display. There was a definite SAM threat to the strike force, and I fired a missile.”

  “Did Commander Davis say anything to you about your missile shot?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Mannheim looked at his notes again. “Here is a transcription of your HUD tape. After you fired the HARM, you and Devo had a radio exchange. He said, ‘What do you mean, a box? An SA-3 displays as a triangle. What the hell did you shoot at?’” Mannheim looked at her. “Well, Lieutenant?”

  Spam was sure now. They were trying to set her up. “Excuse me, but what has this got to do with Devo’s crash? Am I on trial here?”

  “We’re trying to reconstruct the entire sortie,” said Mannheim.

  “It seems to me you’re trying to blame me for something that has nothing to do with the accident.”

  Mannheim glanced at his colleagues, then made a note on his pad. “Very well. We’ll come back to that later. Tell us about the Iranian freighter you and Devo overflew.”

  Spam related how they received the call from Alpha Sierra to check out the unidentified ship.

  “Did you observe any hostile activity?” Maxwell inquired. “Any sign of firing from the ship?”

  “No. Nothing at all.”

  “What were Devo’s instructions to you about tactical formation?”

  Spam considered for a moment. They had the transcript from her HUD tape. They were trying to trip her up. “As I recall, he said to fly a mile abeam and higher.”

  “And is that, in fact, what you did?”

  “Of course.”

  Maxwell thought for a second, then said, “So you saw Commander Davis’s jet hit the water?”

  “Not exactly. I was. . . trying to get the name of the ship.”

  “I don’t understand,” interjected Mannheim. “If he was overflying the ship, and you were a mile abeam, how could you also be getting the name of the ship?”

  Spam’s anger was rising. The bastards were definitely trying to trap her. “That was our job, identify the ship. That’s what I was trying to do.”

  Mannheim again consulted his file. “Alpha Sierra has told us that your two radar contacts were converging as you approached the freighter. At the time they lost Devo’s radar signature, the two of you were superimposed on the radar display.” Mannheim put down the file and looked at her. “As Commander Davis’s wingman, you were supposed to be a mile abeam. Can you explain why you did not have him in sight when he impacted the water?”

  Spam knew for sure now where this was going. It was just as she expected. “What is this? An inquisition?” She shoved her chair back and stood up. “I don’t have to sit here and submit to this. Not without a lawyer.”

  “Sit down, Lieutenant,” said Mannheim. “This is a hearing, not a court of law. The purpose of all these questions is to learn the circumstances of the mishap flight.”

  “No. Your real purpose is harassment of a female officer.”

  Mannheim looked like he had been slapped. “Did you say —”

  “Harassment. You know what that means, Commander.”

  He exhaled a long breath and glanced at the other officers. “I know exactly what it means. Okay, Lieutenant Parker, we’re going to take a break. You’re excused for now.”

  Spam executed a smart-about face and exited the conference room.

  Closing the door behind her, she allowed herself a smile. She was right. They were trying to pin this whole thing on her. Blame the new female pilot so they could get rid of her. Well, she had put a stop to that — at least for now.

  The H word. In the New Navy, it was the ultimate weapon.

  <>

  DeLancey glanced each way down the empty passageway, then said, “You told them what?”

  “It was just a warning,” Spam said. “To make them back off a little.”

  “Harassment is a serious charge these days,” he said. “Whenever someone uses that word, it means the commanding officer is supposed to initiate a JAG investigation. Is that what you want?”

  “They were hassling me about Devo. Trying to make everything my fault.”

  “For example? What did they say was your fault?”

  “The HARM I shot, for one. And then they’re saying that I wasn’t watching Devo’s jet when he flew into the water.”

  Delancey froze for a second and looked at her. “You were watching your leader’s jet, weren’t you?”

  “Don’t you start. You sound just like them.”

  “I need to know,” said Delancey. He took another look down the passageway. “Were you in combat spread when Davis hit the
water?”

  “I don’t like these questions. You’re trying to intimidate me.”

  “Answer the goddamn question.”

  “This isn’t like you, Killer. If you’re going to act this way, I won’t talk to you.”

  DeLancey was nearing his limit. He slammed the edge of his fist against the steel bulkhead. “Listen, damn it. They’re going to roast you in the mishap report if you go on letting them think you fucked up that overflight of the freighter. They’ll hang the accident on you.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  “Really?” DeLancey said. “And why not?”

  “Because you won’t let them.”

  DeLancey blinked, not comprehending. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. You’re the commanding officer. You’ll have to do something.”

  Delancey peered at her as if seeing her for the first time. Her gray eyes looked right back at him, unblinking.

  <>

  Red Boyce finished reading the official Mishap Investigation Report. He slammed it down on his desk. “I don’t fucking believe this.”

  “I knew you’d say that,” said Mannheim.

  Boyce just shook his head. “That sonofabitch.”

  Mannheim had personally delivered the 102-page report to Boyce’s office. In the report Mannheim and his fellow board members concluded that the MP — Mishap Pilot, in the report — lost situational awareness while overflying the Iranian merchant ship and permitted his aircraft to impact the surface.

  In other words, Devo Davis accidentally flew into the water.

  It was the board’s further conclusion that a contributing factor to the MP’s loss of situational awareness was his wingman’s failure to maintain a deconflicting flight path during the overflight of the freighter.

  In other words, Spam Parker probably caused Devo to hit the water.

  But then, as an attachment to the report, was the endorsement of the MP’s commanding officer, Commander DeLancey. While agreeing with the conclusion that Devo Davis had killed himself by flying into the water, DeLancey emphatically rejected the second conclusion: