by Gordon Kent
“Let’s go to your office,” she said. “Then I want to see Admiral Pilchard.”
Dukas laughed. “I think if you’re real lucky, the assistant intel officer might have time for you.” She wasn’t amused.
16
In the Air Near Ambur, India
Harry O’Neill was sitting in the righthand seat of the Lear jet with earphones on his head and one hand on a radio dial. His pilot, Luis Moad, was beside him. “Keep trying,” Moad said. He was Goan-American, a former Navy pilot with a multi-engine qualification.
“Zip,” Harry said. “Ambur’s off the air, or I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“My guess is you know what you’re doing.” Moad grinned. “You better know what you’re doing, Harry—this heap has enough fuel to get to Ambur, and then it’s white-knuckles time.”
Harry changed frequencies, checking against a kneeboard card. Navy habits still ruled—kneeboard cards, comm cards, briefings, however cursory. Harry hadn’t been a flying officer in his tour with the Navy, so sitting up here hadn’t come easily to him at first; now, he was at home with the jargon and the drill.
“Intelligent life!” he muttered as their earphones filled with talk. He clicked his mike to intercom, said, “Chittoor,” aside to Moad. “Fifty K from Ambur.”
Moad glanced at his fuel gauges, nodded.
“Chittoor, this is BN756 registered to Ethos Security of Manama, inbound on heading 040, estimate 150 kilometers. What’s your status, over?”
“756, this is air-traffic control Chittoor, repeat, please.”
“Chittoor, what is the status of your field? Are you receiving aircraft, over?”
“756, Chittoor is open to limited traffic only. Are you an emergency?”
Harry looked at Moad; he nodded.
“Chittoor, this is 756, we filed a flight plan for Ambur but can’t raise them; we have fuel for only—”
Moad held up five fingers, pumped them. Harry made an “I don’t get you” gesture—five minutes? Five hundred kilometers? Miles? Moad switched on his own mike. “Chittoor, this is 756, we have one thousand pounds, estimate Chittoor in two minutes, request clear for immediate landing.”
“756, Ambur is closed because of military activity. Avoid Ambur air space because of known antiaircraft incidents there. Do you have fuel to detour around Ambur and make Chittoor?”
“Can do. Are we cleared?”
There was some garble and then the voice, accented but intelligible, told them they were cleared for immediate landing on 235, and then there was some chat about where they were coming from and did they have papers and did they realize that Chittoor was not an international point of entry.
“Chittoor, this is 756, we filed a flight plan at Bhulta, repeat Bhulta, no immigration necessary.” Harry didn’t say that their flight plan had been left on the plastic lawn chair belonging to the old security guard, or that he and his people were carrying false passports with false immigration stamps. Why make waves?
Bahrain
Dukas sat on the edge of Rattner’s desk, half-smiling at Mary Totten. “Maybe you got lucky. Navy may have a flight heading for Sri Lanka late today—depends on whether a couple of pilots get here from Naples in time. You want to be on it?”
“I’ve zero interest in going to Sri Lanka.”
Dukas shrugged. “It’s that or Bahrain.”
“What’s in Sri Lanka?”
“Bunch of aircraft from the Jefferson.” He’d told her about the accident.
“They could fly me into India. How far can it be?”
“That would be up to the senior officer on the ground, subject to approval from Fifth Fleet.”
“Who’s the senior officer?”
“Right now, I guess it’s Commander Siciliano.”
“What’s he like?”
Dukas grinned. “Not your type, would be my guess.” He waited for her reaction, which was guarded. “He’s a she.”
“Oh, shit.” She made a face. “I really do relate better to men. Well—can you get me on this plane?”
“I can ask for space for you and your analyst. If you don’t get bumped, and the flight goes, you’ll be okay.”
“Dukas, what I’m doing here is important! A lot more important than anything else that can be going on a goddam airplane!”
Dukas shook his head. “Believe it or not, the Navy believes that protecting its aircraft carrier is more important than providing transport for the CIA. You’d be higher on the list if you were a jet engine mechanic or a hydraulics specialist or an F-18 pilot. Right now, you can get bumped by an E-3 just out of weapons school.”
“You don’t think it’s important to your carrier that there may be nukes floating around loose in India?”
“Yeah, well, ‘may be’ doesn’t cut much ice next to the certainty that the carrier’s got no working deck. If I can get you on the flight, I’ll get you on the flight; if not—you’ve got a room at a good hotel.”
She stood. “What’re you doing this evening, if I don’t get on the flight?”
Dukas glanced at Leslie, who was bending over Greenbaum on the far side of the office. “I’m working. There’s one more thing.”
“Oh, shit.” She sat. “I hate ‘one more thing.’”
“Yeah, don’t we all. Listen, you said you got the okay to come here with a big team and a brass band, and then you got negatived down to just you and your nerd because the White House interfered.” She had told him the story of her calls to and from the DDI. “Why?”
“They don’t want India on their screen, I guess.”
“Fast work, considering everything has to go through about six layers there.”
“They knew what was going on even before I did. I thought I was the first horse out of the gate, you know? I saw it on CNN, I ran to the phone and got the DDO, and he said yes. Minutes, I mean minutes later, it was no. NSC knew more than I did, he said, knew more than he did, and the word was No.”
“They mention the accident on the Jefferson?”
“No, just—” She slitted her eyes, looked at him with real interest. “As a matter of fact, the DDI did say something about the Navy. Something about need to know, and I didn’t need to know.”
Dukas was frowning. “What time did you have this conversation?”
“Oh, shit—What difference does it make?”
“Just a thought. Write it out for me while I drive you to your hotel, okay?” He lowered his voice. “And get your analyst to take a bath, will you? Between you and me, he makes the office smell like the zoo.”
Trincomalee
Rose had spent the flight from Bahrain making lists. She had wanted to start making them back in Bahrain, but the process of getting to Sri Lanka had itself proven a major undertaking, and the moment that Fifth Fleet admin was notified by Fifth Fleet ops that she would be the senior officer at Trincomalee, she had become, de facto, the person responsible for anything that could be signed for—aircrew transfers and TDYs, maintenance personnel, spare parts inventories.
Fuel.
Two queries to Chris Donitz had not brought her any information; a junior officer named Soleck had called twice but no one had thought to transfer his calls to her, and that left her too ignorant and too late. So she had signed everything, okayed everything, found a senior chief aviation bosun’s mate to honcho the spare parts, and got herself to the plane.
The first list had to do with her immediate crisis—a diplomatic/military liaison mission to the Sri Lankan government to wrest permission for her planes to fly armed so that they could provide combat air patrol for the Jefferson. She continued to hope that the situation would be resolved by the time her flight landed, but the list had to be made. If she had to go, the transport would take her straight on to Colombo.
Contact embassy
Contact Sri L. DoD
Get status agreement
It was a short list, but the difficulties at each stage could be—“Don’t borrow trouble,” she said
aloud. And thought about the baby in her belly. The fetus. Three months along and worried that she’d miscarry again. She’d volunteered for this. What was she thinking of?
“Sorry, ma’am?” The man in the seat next to her was a veteran F-18 pilot whom she knew only as Hawk. He’d come off the command ship at Bahrain, where he had been on the Fifth Fleet staff as the targets officer. He was typical of the pilots she was bringing with her; all well trained, all a year or more out of the cockpit. She shook her head. “Talking to myself.”
He gave her a quick smile, put his cap over his eyes, and went instantly back to sleep.
She started to tackle the longer second list. She had run a chopper squadron and could do this in her sleep.
Fuel!
Space/habitation
Maintenance inventory
Comms
Planes
Personnel/rotation/flight sched/duty roster
By the time they turned on final for Trincomalee, she had twenty-four pages of written orders and sixteen checklists, and most of them had names already assigned. She looked at Hawk, who had become her maintenance officer because his short dossier said he had been assistant MO in his last squadron and he was unlucky enough to be asleep next to her. Sleep while you can, buddy, she thought.
Chris Donitz met her on the tarmac, his flight suit rumpled and stained and suggesting that he hadn’t been out of it in more than a day. He saluted her crisply, his face tired, closed.
“Is this NAS Trincomalee?” she asked, keeping her tone light and willing him to respond in the same vein. All the new people were coming off the plane behind her and she didn’t need a scene on the runway, and it was obvious to her from Donitz’s body language that he wasn’t entirely happy to see her.
He watched the line of people coming down the boarding ramp and gave a half smile. “Looks like it will be, soon enough. Ma’am.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“We’ve got four birds over the Jeff right now and two more on alert. None of them are armed beyond rounds for the 30mm because the authorities here won’t let us take off with missiles. I already have one plane down for maintenance with a landing-gear fluid leak and another coming up on a major engine-maintenance number. We don’t have a hangar and the aircrews are sleeping at a sleezebag hotel in town.” He took a breath. “You’re Al Craik’s wife.”
“Call me Rose. They call you ‘Donuts,’ right?” She turned back to the line. “Hawk!”
He was taller standing up than he had looked on the plane. He had short-cropped blond hair and a flat-top, and his glasses sparkled. When he joined them, he looked about five feet taller than Donitz and twice as clean.
“Ma’am?”
“As of now, you’re the detachment maintenance officer. Get with Donuts here, and find out who needs what. Here’s a list of things I need you to do ASAP. Get Chief Sardo on the inventory. Any news on getting fuel?”
Donitz crossed his arms. He looked defensive, if not downright resentful. “You’re taking command, ma’am?”
No way to sweet-talk around it. Naval tradition required Donitz to accept his loss of status, but long experience had taught Rose that no officer worth a crap ever liked losing a command, however temporary.
“You’ll be my XO. This is, as of now, Det 161, or Det Trincomalee. One of those, whenever Fifth Fleet makes up its mind. Here are my orders.”
Donitz sagged a little, uncrossed his arms. “Shit, ma’am, I didn’t mean you had to give me the paperwork.”
She nodded. “We have a space?” Space was Navy jargon for a hangar, offices, and maintenance area—everything that went with having planes and their impediments.
“Nada. We own the tarmac our planes are on.”
“Okay.” Privately, she thought that Donitz could have got something from the Sri Lankans; she could see an empty hangar, big, white, and British-built, down at the end of the runway. “Who owns that thing?”
Donitz’s arms were crossed again, and he backed up a step. “Don’t know.” The question seemed to accuse him. “Never thought to ask.”
She could see why Al liked him. He didn’t bother to make an excuse. She gave him her best smile. “You had other shit to do. When did you last sleep?”
“I got a few hours this morning. I’m good to go.”
“Okay. I need you to hold the fort for a while. My first duty here is to get the Sri Lankans off our backs so we can put our birds up armed. I brought an admin guy who can pay for civilian gas—for a while. That’s going to take time. I brought a bunch of people, some good stuff, and some clout. Here’s a list of my priorities for today. If you want to change the order, go ahead; you’re the XO. But getting space is the top, and that hangar looks good to me. And get me a flight sched. Everyone qualed flies. That includes me—put me on the sked for tonight. I gotta go to Colombo first and play diplomat. Figure me back in six hours.”
Before she could decide whether he needed to be handled, he was deep in her stack of lists with Hawk, and the transport pilot was telling her that he was cleared for Colombo if she was ready to ride.
Chittoor, India
The Lear jet was parked at the end of a row of grounded commercial aircraft, so it was a long walk from the terminal. Alan let Harry and Moad make the walk while he kept his people discreetly near the plane. Shaven and dressed in some of Harry’s clothes, he felt better, if a little unfashionable—Harry was two sizes bigger.
He gathered them inside the plane, handed out assignments: Ong and Benvenuto were to concentrate on the Servants of the Earth, gleaning everything they could from the Internet. Clavers, housekeeping and security—“That means you keep these two safe, fed, and watered while they work.”
“This is a long way from my designator, sir.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around.”
Alan gestured to Fidel. “Let’s talk.” He led the way to the front of the aircraft and sat them both down. Keeping his voice low, he told him what he knew about the Ambur electrical facility, the attack on it, and the likelihood that it was a nuclear storage site. “Harry’s on our side. I don’t want to say any more than that.”
“I kind of figured he was.”
“Air traffic control said there’s military activity around Ambur, including maybe SAMs—antiaircraft, anyway. I’ve been ordered to find out if there were nukes in there and, if so, what happened to them. Mister O’Neill has a source who maybe can tell him, so we’re going there. You’ve already done your part, Fidel—you took a lot of risks, you saved our buns, you got us out of Mahe. You can stay here and run security.”
“Or?”
“Or you can come with us and go through it all again—risk, the whole nine yards. Ambur’s a war zone.”
“You asking me to volunteer?”
“No. I mean it—you can stay here and run security on the plane and I’ll think to my dying day you did your duty and then some.”
Fidel looked at him, leaning forward in the airplane seat and turning, then looked out the small window and turned back. “You and I have some differences of viewpoint, Commander. I guess that came out yesterday.”
“I was wrong yesterday. You did what you had to do.”
“I want you to understand that I don’t get my kicks from it. I’ve seen a couple guys did—got so they killed for fun. They were nuts; I knew they were nuts, and they finally got put away for being nuts. I’m not like that. But yesterday, that’s what I do. And it’s what you do, too, if you’re honest about it.”
“Not without a lot of guilt.”
Fidel stared at him. “Well, if you didn’t feel something, you’d be nuts, you see what I’m saying?”
“You feel it, too.”
“I don’t let it bend me out of shape, though. I don’t make a big thing out of it.”
Alan half-smiled. “You’re not the one in command.”
Fidel absorbed that, grunted. “Djalik says you’re okay, but a gunner. I’ll go.”
“You
don’t have to—”
“I’ll go! Jesus, sir, I volunteer, okay?” He got up and made his way to the aisle. “You and me are never going to be asshole buddies, but I think we’re more alike than you maybe want to admit.”
He went down the aisle. Alan sat there. At that moment, if the plane had taken itself off and flown toward Bahrain, he would have cheered. But it wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t, so he hauled himself up and called down the plane, “Lieutenant Ong, could I see you for a minute, please?”
He moved so she wouldn’t have to climb over him. He wasn’t sure that close contact with Ong was a great idea. She sat next to him and said “Hi,” in a bright voice.
“Ah—Lieutenant, I want you to, mmm, back off a little from Petty Officer Benvenuto, okay?”
Her smile vanished. “What are you saying to me?”
“Benvenuto is twenty years old. He’s never been out of East Jesus, New York. He doesn’t understand people’s signals yet.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Her voice rose.
“Lieutenant, you’ve got him running around in circles. You were holding hands with him. That’s improper behavior; you’re an officer in the United States Navy!”
“I—was scared. I—needed to, um, depend—he’s strong.”
“Benvenuto is not a strong man. He’s a kid. You, on the other hand, are an officer. I’m sorry, you were out of line.”
She turned the big, teary lamps of her eyes on him. “Why don’t you like me?” she said.
Oh, shit. “I like you well enough, Lieutenant. But military relationships—”
“I told you, I need a strong man! You won’t do it; I need somebody! My father is strong, very strong; I was raised to depend on him.”
“What does your father do?”
“He owns a chain of Chinese-language newspapers. He thought I was insane to go into the Navy, such little jobs, and now I think he was right!” She began to sob. Quietly.
Alan let her get through it. He didn’t have even a Kleenex to offer, so he simply sat there. When she was calm, he said, “You did join the Navy, is the trouble. You are an officer. There are things you do and things you don’t do. Please don’t touch Benvenuto anymore; please stop calling him ‘Benny’—he’s Petty Officer Benvenuto—and please stop using him as a personal flunkey.” He changed his position in the seat and lightened his voice. “Now, you’ll be in command while I’m gone.”