“Do you ever have a problem with the men passing the word that you’re on the prowl?”
“Communications are monitored. The first idiot who tries to pull that stunt is going to answer to me.”
“I see.” Tough little cookie, he thought. “By the way, Captain, I’m here tonight strictly as an observer. Anything I see or hear won’t go any further.”
There was a moment’s silence. Finally Andrea answered, hating having to say it, “Thank you, sir.”
MacLendon half smiled into the dark. Spitfire, he thought. “Mind if I smoke?”
“No, sir. My whole family smokes.”
“You?”
“No, sir.”
“How’d you miss it?”
Again there was a pregnant silence. Turning, he saw the struggle on Andrea’s face. It was over quickly, but he caught it.
“Girls,” she said finally, “don’t smoke.”
“Oh.” He lit his cigarette and cracked the window to let the smoke trail out. “But they go to the Air Force Academy and become regular officers?”
“No, they don’t do that, either. But if you want something badly enough, that doesn’t hold you back.”
“I guess not.” He felt another inkling of real respect for her. It didn’t mean he was necessarily going to like having her around, or that she wouldn’t be a headache, but it gave him some of her measure. “Married?”
“No, sir. Are you?”
She turned the personal question back neatly, and he decided it was time to change tacks. “No,” he replied. “How long have you been at the base?”
“Two years come December.” She paused, then decided to make an effort to be friendly. Only God and Uncle Sam knew how long she was going to have to put up with this cowboy. “December is a wonderful time to arrive in North Dakota. No chance to acclimate. Winter hits you like a ton of bricks.”
“This is my third tour here,” he offered. “There’s something about surviving a North Dakota winter that leaves you feeling a little smug.”
“Smug?”
“Like you went eyeball to eyeball with Mother Nature and came away whole.”
She surprised him with a throaty chuckle.
“Where are you from originally, Captain?” His question was a traditional military icebreaker, a perfectly legitimate query from one transplant to another.
“All over. I’m an Air Force brat.”
“Who’s your father? Maybe I know him.”
“Charles Burke. He retired four years ago as Chief Master Sergeant.”
MacLendon suddenly swiveled to look at her better. “Charlie Burke. Was he air crew chief at Mather in ‘74?”
Such coincidences no longer surprised Andrea. Everywhere you went in the Air Force you met old friends or friends of friends. It was, at heart, really just a large family. “Yes, sir.”
MacLendon’s brain clicked. He hadn’t spoken to Andrea Burke at Mather, but he’d seen her. A teenage girl in a ridiculously frilly dress at chapel on Sundays. Thin, leggy, coltish. He’d seen her a couple of times rough-and-tumbling at football and basketball with a gang of boys who all had her hair and freckles. He’d noticed her because she’d struck him as out of place in both those situations. And he knew Charlie Burke. No girl would have found it easy growing up under his thumb. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.
He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and let the subject drop. Pursuing it any further would require getting more personal than he chose to get with his officers, or than she would like to get with her CO. Nonetheless he could still recall some of Charlie Burke’s more outrageous statements about God’s whys and wherefores in creating women. The worst of it was, the man hadn’t been joking.
So he knew her dad, Andrea thought. She waited to hear all the hearty male things men always said about her father and was surprised when they didn’t come. Could it be that somebody in the world didn’t think her father was the best mechanic, the best sergeant, the best good ol’ boy, in the Air Force?
Everything MacLendon learned about Andrea Burke raised his opinion of her another notch. A pretty remarkable young woman, he thought, as she turned off the truck’s headlights and proceeded slowly down a narrow access road toward the perimeter of the weapons depot. She was approaching from the base side of the huge, hangarlike building that sat near the Main Gate, the side from which security would least expect an illegitimate approach.
Turning the truck to one side, Andrea pulled onto the grass and switched off the ignition. In front of them, to the right, lay the alert shack where B-52 crews spent a week at a time waiting for the war they all hoped would never happen. In the old days of the cold war, they often hopped aboard those planes and flew to the Fail-Safe line. These days such alerts were much rarer, but from time to time, when a chip failed in the computers at Cheyenne Mountain, or when international tensions raised the country’s defense status to a war footing, they raced to their planes and took to the air.
To the left was the weapons storage building, where nuclear warheads from both missiles and bombs were stored and repaired. Most warheads were in place on their launch vehicles or in the bellies of the bombers, but maintenance had to be performed on a rotating basis, and it was here the work was done.
Unarmed, those weapons were safe, but MacLendon always felt a swift clenching in his gut when he was near them. More than once in his career he’d taken to the air with his bomb bay full of these weapons and his blackout curtains drawn, not knowing if this was the big one.
If Andrea Burke felt a similar reaction to the destructive forces nearby, her face betrayed nothing. She looked at MacLendon. “How are you on stealthy approaches, Colonel?”
“I used to be fairly good. After I was shot down in Nam, I evaded the Vietcong for six weeks.”
Andrea didn’t want to be impressed. For some reason she didn’t understand, she didn’t want to like this man. She didn’t want to respect him. She was impressed anyway.
“Well, sir,” she said, “the idea is to get up to the depot without being detected.”
“And if you get that far?”
Andrea’s expression turned grim. “I damn well better not. If I do, there’ll be hell to pay.” At the back of her mind was the belief that tonight, of all nights, she was going to make it through security. Why not? Everything else had gone wrong since Alisdair MacLendon had set foot in her life. And what kind of name was Alisdair, anyway? Did people actually call him that?
“What kind of security is there inside the building?” MacLendon asked her.
“None. Once you get inside, it’s assumed you have a right to be there.” Seeing the dubious look on his face, she explained. “I didn’t set up the security arrangements, Colonel, but I assure you they’re excellent. There’s only one way in or out, and as long as you guard the access adequately, you don’t need internal security. The inside of the building is entirely open. The warheads sit on high platforms that allow them to be viewed clearly from any place within the hangar. It also makes it impossible to move them surreptitiously. Maybe you should arrange to take an escorted tour.”
“Maybe I will.”
Andrea pulled off her beret and opened the glove box. Taking out two black ski masks, she tossed one to MacLendon. “Terrorists are a big concern,” she said automatically, as she pulled a mask over her head. “They’d love to get their hands on one of those little babies.” From behind the seat she brought out an M-16.
MacLendon looked at the ski mask in his hands and then at Andrea, who sat, M-16 in her hands, head tilted questioningly. He’d trespassed far enough, he decided abruptly. He’d learned what he needed to know about her, and he had no business involving himself in her actual functioning.
“I’ll wait here, Captain,” he said. “I’d just increase the chance of alerting the sentries.”
After the briefest hesitation, she nodded. “Yes, sir.” So the man knew when to back off. Well, that would make the next few years a lot easier to take. Moving si
lently, she climbed out of the truck and closed the door without a sound. A moment later, she’d vanished into the shadows.
MacLendon lit another cigarette and settled back to wait. Beyond any doubt he liked the cut of Andrea Burke. He’d been known to pull just such stunts as this one to check on his troops, was in fact doing precisely that by accompanying her tonight. Unless he unexpectedly found evidence to the contrary, he was pretty well convinced he could leave her to run her squadron and not worry about it. He hoped he was as fortunate in his other officers.
The door at his elbow suddenly flew open, and MacLendon found himself looking down the business end of an M-16. Lifting his eyes higher, he looked into the face of a young, somewhat nervous security policeman.
“Please step out of the truck, sir,” the airman said. “And don’t try anything. My partner has you covered.”
Over the airman’s shoulder, MacLendon saw another SP, his rifle also at the ready.
“I’m not doing anything wrong, Airman,” MacLendon said easily. “Sitting in a truck, smoking a cigarette, isn’t a crime.”
“No, sir. Please raise your hands and step out of the truck, sir.”
Shrugging, MacLendon climbed out of the truck, keeping his hands in plain sight. The second SP, balancing his rifle in his right hand, raised his radio with his left and called for backup.
“I need to see your identification, Colonel,” the airman said, focusing on the eagle on MacLendon’s cap. “Where do you keep it?”
“In my right hip pocket. I’ll get it.”
“No, sir, keep your hands high. Jerry?”
“Go ahead. I’ve got him in my sight.”
MacLendon suffered the indignity of having his right hip pocket invaded and his wallet pulled out. At the same time, the airman removed his sidearm from its holster. With a flashlight, the airman examined his ID.
“It looks valid,” he said after a moment. “Sorry for the inconvenience, Colonel, but this isn’t a good place to stop for a smoke. You’re sitting on the edge of a controlled area.”
“Is it all right if I lower my arms?”
The airman hesitated just an instant. “Go ahead. Colonel, I don’t recognize you.”
“I just arrived on base on Friday. You’ll be seeing quite a bit of me from now on.”
“Well, sir, you’d better take the truck and park someplace else.”
“I can’t.”
Both cops stiffened. “Sir?”
“I’m waiting for someone.”
The muzzles of two M-16s rose again. “Perhaps the Colonel will explain who he’s waiting for at this time of night beside a controlled area,” said the second cop.
MacLendon smiled. These kids were good, and he was beginning to enjoy himself. “I don’t want to spoil her surprise.”
“Her—holy cow! Burke’s on the prowl again.”
“Something tells me she won’t find anything she doesn’t want to,” MacLendon remarked. “You two are clearly doing your jobs.”
For an instant pride showed on the younger man’s face, and MacLendon realized that Andrea Burke had successfully instilled in these men a recognition of the importance of their work. His respect for her took another upward hike.
“Sorry, sir,” said the elder airman, a staff sergeant, “but we’ll have to ask you to come with us to the security station.”
“But why?” Annoyance flared in him. A colonel wasn’t used to this kind of treatment. “I showed you my ID, and I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“No, sir, but you are acting suspiciously,” the sergeant replied.
“Suspiciously? Smoking a cigarette?”
“Refusing to move on, sir. That’s suspicious.”
Much as he disliked to, MacLendon had to admit they were right. This was a SAC base, Strategic Air Command, and he had been sitting at the edge of a controlled area right between nuclear weapons storage and the airfield where battle-ready B-52s stood waiting. Refusing to move on did constitute suspicious behavior, and these men clearly didn’t know who he was beyond his ID. Frankly, if he hadn’t been personally involved in the situation, he would have wanted the hides of these SP’s for doing anything else.
Sighing, he shrugged. “Which way? And do you mind if I light another cigarette?”
“Just move slowly, sir, and light it now.”
So he moved slowly, pulling the pack and lighter from the breast pocket of his field jacket. Then, with two M-16s pointed at his back, he marched toward the security station at the front of the weapons depot. Behind him the staff sergeant spoke into his radio, announcing that he was bringing in a suspect and requesting someone to cover his leg of the patrol. All very efficient and correct.
Just as they reached the front of the depot, Andrea stepped out of the front door, M-16 slung over her shoulder. She caught sight of MacLendon and the two SP’s at his back, and a grin split her face.
“Well, well, well,” she said slowly, the grin deepening. “What have we here?”
“You know perfectly well what ‘we’ have here,” MacLendon snapped, his patience flying out the window at the sight of her amusement.
Andrea blinked slowly, and while she wanted to continue teasing him—his annoyance made it almost irresistible—her brain advised her it would be foolhardy. Her grin vanished.
“It’s okay, Stewart. Colonel MacLendon was out there waiting for me. The Colonel is the new Bomb Wing commander.”
The rifles were lowered instantly, and the two men snapped to attention.
“Actually,” Andrea continued, her entire demeanor growing cool, “you made an excellent decoy, Colonel. These men were so busy moving in on the truck that I slipped right past them in the dark.”
A quiet, dismayed oath escaped the sergeant. Andrea’s eyes flicked over him.
“However,” she continued just as coolly, “the backup you radioed for caught me, Stewart. You and Mallory get a six-pack, and so does the backup.”
Six-pack? MacLendon wondered. She awarded six-packs for a job well-done? Well, it was certainly a unique command style, but he wasn’t entirely certain he approved.
“Make it Coors, please, ma’am,” said Stewart, relief drawing a grin from him.
“Coors it is.” Andrea returned her attention to MacLendon. “Shall we go now, sir?”
“Not without my ID and sidearm,” MacLendon said.
“Oh! Right, sir!” The younger airman—Mallory, he guessed—became awkward in his embarrassment, but he managed to dig MacLendon’s wallet out of his pocket and the pistol from where it was tucked into his belt.
“Thank you,” MacLendon said, his humor rapidly returning at the sight of a very good cop reverting to an awkward, embarrassed young man. He doubted the kid was older than nineteen. “You men did a very good job.”
He was immediately rewarded with two under-arms salutes: arm straight across the chest, palm down, hand opened flat. He returned them and then looked at Andrea. “Captain?”
Not until they were in the truck and headed back to the BOQ did MacLendon speak.
“I’m favorably impressed, Captain Burke,” he told her, watching her in the dim glow of the dash lights.
“Thank you, sir.”
A cool customer, MacLendon thought. A very cool customer indeed. He wondered if she were naturally cool or if the glimpses of annoyance and humor she permitted to show from time to time were a more accurate clue to her nature.
For the very first time in his life, MacLendon found himself wondering what price a woman paid to succeed in a man’s world. Andrea Burke was clearly succeeding, but perhaps she’d had to sublimate herself to do it.
And maybe this was really who she was and what she was. He didn’t think he would ever find out, but for some odd reason he’d sure like to know.
“It’s not very late,” he heard himself say. “Shall we stop at the O-Club for a drink?”
Not very late, and it was Saturday night. It crossed Andrea’s mind that she was leading a very unnatural life. She
didn’t think one other woman in the entire country spent Saturday night skulking in the shadows to check up on her subordinates.
Because she was a woman, she hesitated before answering. A man in her position would have accepted immediately, recognizing the political necessity and recognizing also the honor inherent in being asked to share a drink with the future CO. But she was a woman, and she had to consider appearances and the possibility of gossip. Still it was the Officers’ Club, not some night spot in town. Deciding it was safe enough to accept, and wise to do so, she agreed.
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome, Captain.” His tone faintly mocked her punctiliousness. “Loosen up, will you? I’m convinced you’re an excellent officer, so relax a little.”
“Yes, sir.”
MacLendon sighed. “Have it your way, Burke. Maybe a couple of beers will help.”
Andrea fully intended to drink ice tea, but she didn’t tell him so. A wise junior officer didn’t get drunk in front of bird colonels who were up for general. Heck, a junior officer didn’t dare loosen up even a little bit.
Her uneasy concern that they might be alone at the bar was vanquished the instant they set foot in the club. Better than twenty years in uniform had won MacLendon a lot of friends, and he was hailed immediately by a group of colonels and majors who were playing cards at a large, round table. He moved immediately to join them.
“I’ll just leave,” Andrea whispered to him, starting to turn back.
MacLendon looked down at her with those icy eyes as if he could see to her soul. “Chicken,” he mocked softly.
It was like pushing a button, he thought with amusement. Captain Burke’s chin took on a pugnacious, determined set, and she marched toward the table. Lips twitching, MacLendon followed. He’d figured anybody raised among a gang of brothers would have an automatic response to that challenge. Someday, he decided, he was going to find out what happened when somebody double-dared her.
Andrea had met all the colonels and majors at one official function or another and was greeted pleasantly enough, albeit a touch coolly. She was perfectly aware that she would never have been invited to join them under other circumstances. Some popular male captain, perhaps, but the subtle lines of sexual discrimination still existed in social matters.
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