Top Hook

by Gordon Kent

  He grinned again. “Stay mad. You’re going to need it.”

  4

  USS Thomas Jefferson.

  USS Thomas Jefferson was an old friend, and Alan walked through the passageways with the familiarity of a man visiting a childhood home. The ship was preparing to get underway, and the noise was oddly calming to his own tension. Maybe, as Rafe seemed to believe, it really would all work out once they were at sea.

  His detachment had its own ready room, the lack of an A-6 squadron in the air wing having left one vacant. Ready Room Nine, all the way aft and almost under the stern, was the noisiest one; landing aircraft hit the deck just a few feet overhead, and, during flight operations, conversation was all but impossible. Heavy iron cruise boxes filled the front of the room below the chalk-board, but at least, he thought, it was theirs.

  He wanted to speak to his division chiefs and the officers acting as department heads, but the ready room was nearly empty. He also wanted to find Stevens, the former acting det commander, who probably believed he should have been given the command, even though it was so screwed up that the CAG had made a special point of it. Getting Stevens on his side was an important priority, if it could be done.

  The det also had a long list of maintenance problems that Alan thought had been gundecked too long, but, stepping in late and starting behind, he had to trust the chiefs to get the planes in the air until he could find what was really wrong and fix it. As it was, his unit had one aircraft scheduled to launch in four hours, and he wanted to prove himself to Rafe by making sure it was airborne on time.

  Alan put his own name on the flight sked for that first event, scratching a jg named Soleck, whom he hadn’t even met.

  “Where’s Mister Soleck?” he said to a chief who was overseeing the unpacking of the maintenance gear.

  “Who’s that, sir? He our missing officer?”

  “Missing?”

  “Last I heard, there was one hadn’t reported aboard, sir.” The chief was very businesslike; if he had heard the talk that Rafe had referred to, or if he had ideas about the new CO who had got involved in a shooting onshore, he said nothing.

  But an officer who hadn’t reported aboard? And where the hell was he? Alan reached for the only solid ground he could in the uncertainty of the det: a senior chief he knew and trusted. “Where’s Senior Chief Craw?”

  “Senior’s gone down to VS-53 admin, sir.”

  Alan ducked out of the ready room and swung down the steel ladder to the S-3 squadron’s admin section, his bad foot giving him a hippity-hop rhythm. Craw was sitting at a computer terminal with another officer hovering by him, but Alan pushed past.

  “Senior Chief?”

  “Commander! I thought I’d wait till we had some privacy, but, damn! it’s good to see you, Mister Craik.”

  Alan tried to smile. “It’s great to see you, Martin.” The use of the senior chief’s first name caused them both to look at the other officer, by some ingrained reflex of training and custom that said that officers should not call enlisted, however senior and however close, by their first names. “Lieutenant-Commander Craik, this is LTjg Campbell. His part of the translant ran like a top.”

  Campbell stammered a greeting and looked embarrassed. They shook hands; Alan had missed meeting him at Pax River. He turned back to Craw. “How bad was the move?”

  “Nothing we couldn’t handle. The planes were flying off empty and we were leaving half of our spare parts on the beach, but I sort of fixed that first.” Martin Craw’s sentences implied volumes. Sort of fixed that first suggested an argument won.

  “What else?” Alan and Craw exchanged a look that meant Tell it like it is.

  “The inventory was crap and the acting CO released the fly-off officers at 1500. Plus a new guy from flight school wasn’t informed that we had an immediate movement and went on leave straight from Pensacola.”

  “Is that LTjg Soleck, by any chance, who’s on the flight schedule in four hours?”

  Craw sighed. “Roger that, skipper. I’m trying to reach him. See, nobody ever sent him an info packet or a schedule or anything, so he has no idea we’re looking for him, either.”

  “Do we still have land lines tied in?”

  Craw glanced at his watch. “About ten minutes longer.”

  “Give me a phone. Then I’ve got to start meeting people.”

  He called the listed number in Pennsylvania twice. It rang through, but no one answered and there was no machine. Then he called the duty desk at NAS Pensacola and asked for a contact number for LTjg Evan Soleck. The petty officer at the other end shuffled papers for a few minutes and asked to call back. Alan hung up, feeling defeated by telephones in his every attempt, and started helping check the maintenance inventory with Craw and Campbell.

  “Why isn’t somebody from maintenance doing this?” Alan was looking at lists of parts and numbers that meant nothing to him.

  “Not my place to say, sir.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “The acting maintenance officer is in his rack getting his crew rest.” Alan winced. Rafe had been right: this detachment was a mess.

  The phone rang. The petty officer in Pensacola said that he had Soleck’s leave papers in his hand and read off the Buffalo phone number listed for contact. Alan thanked him to a degree that clearly surprised him and called the new number, looking at his battered Casio. Past four a.m. in New York.

  “Hello?” The voice was thick with sleep.

  “May I speak to LTjg Evan Soleck?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mister Soleck, this is Lieutenant-Commander Alan Craik, your detachment officer-in-charge. I need you to report for duty immediately.”

  “Hey, Corky, fuck off, okay? You might have woken my parents.”

  “Mister Soleck, I’m Alan Craik and this is not a prank.”

  Long pause.

  “Uh, sir? Is this for real?”

  “Welcome aboard, Mister Soleck. We flew off from Norfolk thirty-six hours ago and right now we’re about to weigh anchor from port Trieste. Do you know how to get travel orders?”

  “Uhh—”

  “Get your ass down to Pax River today and tell the travel section to get you here ASAP.”

  “Uh, sir? I have these tickets for a concert in Buffalo? And a date?”

  Despite himself, Alan smiled. “Tell her to wait, Mister Soleck. You’ll be at sea.”

  Then he walked down to the hangar deck, getting the feel for his men. No women in the det. Old habit made him start to think, Just as well, and then he remembered what Rose would have said. And that made him think of her, and he felt a pang of absence. All this telephoning, and he hadn’t even tried to reach her, but that had been their arrangement: she would be on the road to Houston, and they would talk when he got to Naples. He glanced at his watch again. Past four in Utica, too, where in another hour she would be waking, saying goodbye, getting the car and heading west. Without a care in the world.

  Down on the hangar deck, he was surprised to find aircraft number 902, due to fly in the first event, with her port engine dismounted and a swarm of maintenance personnel covering her. Several men looked his way; they looked at each other, and then they got very busy. Alan smiled at one he knew.

  “Hey, Mendez! What’re you doing, still in the Nav?”

  Mendez, Gloucester-born, Portuguese sailors in his genes, smiled a little reservedly and climbed down from the wing. He wiped his hand several times on his coveralls before presenting it to be shaken. Alan had served with Mendez during the Gulf War; Mendez had introduced him to the methods of loading the chaff and flare cartridges in the S-3’s underbelly. Looking at Mendez, Alan felt younger. “You made first class,” he said.

  “Up for chief this year, sir.” Alan nodded and pumped his hand. “Still married?”

  “Yessir, with two kids.”

  “Introduce me, will you?” Alan walked around the plane, and Mendez, always a popular sailor, introduced him to the men working there. Now they weren’
t a swarm; now they looked at him with interest rather than—what had it been? Suspicion? Alan could feel their questions, the ones Rafe had warned him about—Why had he lost a posting and got this? What was this guy doing here? Even Mendez seemed wary, but Alan pressed on. “Remind me when your chief’s board is coming up, will you, Mendez?” He looked around. “Okay, help me out, guys—what’s the story here?”

  In spurts, from various men, he was made to understand that 902 had a bad engine, that “everybody” knew that a new engine had been ordered so that this one could be sent in for rehab. Mendez dug out the sheets and showed him that this engine was two hundred hours overdue for rehab. Alan started to ask why and realized that he could only put Mendez on the spot with such a question, even if he knew the answer. Then he saw Stevens, a short, thick officer in a flight suit, come in with a chief, and he thanked Mendez and the others and moved toward the new pair.

  Stevens turned his head, saw Alan, and went right back to his conversation. Alan smiled, an angry tic that never moved his lower lip. They had met for two minutes at Pax River; now, Stevens chose to be a horse’s ass.

  “Lieutenant-Commander Stevens?”

  “Hey, Craik.”

  Alan excused himself to the chief, who moved a few feet off. “You in charge of this?” he said to Stevens. Alan raised one hand. He did not say “this mess,” but the motion accused.

  “If you’re the new boss man, I guess you’re in charge.”

  “Well, the new boss man would like to see the launch plan. And a flight sked that doesn’t include officers who haven’t reported aboard yet.”

  “I didn’t write either one of them.” Stevens hitched at an imaginary belt, as if he was pulling up his guns.

  Alan sighed. “Mister Stevens, why don’t you call me ‘Alan’? Or you can call me ‘sir.’” He looked around. “Who’s running maintenance?”

  Stevens jerked his head at the chief he had come in with, a short, intense man in khakis.

  “Senior Chief Frazer runs maintenance, with Mister Cohen as department head,” the chief said. “He’s up topside. I’m Navarro, sir. Intel chief.”

  “Linguist?” Alan looked for a handle to remember the man.

  “Farsi and Hindi.” Alan let part of his mind chew over the implications of those two languages.

  “You following the traffic on India and Pakistan?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is this the same crap they do every time?”

  “Sir, this is from the hip, but I’d say it looks fucking serious.”

  “More serious than Kosovo?”

  Stevens cut in.

  “You done with me? I’m on the flight sked later today.”

  “So am I.” Alan looked him in the eye, enjoying Stevens’s surprise. “Just walk with me a minute.” He shook hands with Navarro and said he’d see him later, then walked Stevens a dozen paces away and turned on him. “You’re the senior pilot in this outfit, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Got a problem?”

  Stevens hitched up the imaginary belt again. He talked to the air just off Alan’s right shoulder. “This divided command shit. You don’t like my ops plan? Tough. It shouldn’t be two guys, one in the air, one on the ground. I’m just being straight with you.”

  “There won’t be any divided command. I’m in charge. I expect the cooperation of my officers. I’m just being straight with you.”

  Stevens kept his voice low, but the tone was bitter. “Your officers! Some of us have been working on this project for a year. You walk in like we’re all dicked up and you’re gonna save us. Or is it that maybe you didn’t want this job in the first place? Maybe you were going someplace better?”

  Alan set his jaw, controlled his hands, his temper. Rafe had been right—there certainly had been talk. “Mister Stevens, I’m your commanding officer—”

  “Craik, everybody’s heard of your father. He was a pilot. He might have belonged here. You don’t!”

  Alan didn’t blink, and his eyes didn’t move. Stevens couldn’t hold that look for more than two seconds. Alan became very cold and very formal. “Mister Stevens, I don’t have time right now for you to have a tantrum. It looks to me as if we’re way behind and we have to get a plane off the deck in less than four hours. That’s my priority. I haven’t got time to dick around with you.” He leaned a fraction of an inch closer, his eyes still fixed. “If you can’t serve under me, get out. Stay or go, I don’t care; just say which!”

  “You know they’ll cream me if I go!”

  “You have three minutes to decide whether you’re my senior pilot or a man looking for a new job. If you want to leave, you leave today. I’ll square it with the detailer.”

  Stevens, red-faced, tried again to stare him down and lost. “I’ll stay, goddamit—I’ve always wanted to work for a fucking ground-pounding spy!”

  Heads turned throughout the hangar bay. Spy came out loaded with connotation, and Alan was briefly back in his first days at the squadron, dealing with the aviators as an outsider, an enemy, where intel guys, “spies,” were second-class citizens. He hadn’t been there in years.

  Stevens started to move away under the wing of 902. He followed and grabbed Stevens’s arm.

  “Start getting this unfucked. You and I are flying together in four hours.”

  It all certainly took his mind off Mike Dukas and the admiral.

  Washington.

  The lawyer’s name was Emma Pasternak, and she looked like an under-developed photograph of herself. The dress-for-success clothes did nothing to hide her essential anonymity; she wore no makeup, no jewelry, and her hair was cut so short and so awkwardly that Rose suspected the woman cut it herself.

  “We’re expensive,” she said. “We’re worth it—but can you pay?”

  Rose hesitated. “How much?”

  “A lot.”

  “We’re naval officers, for Christ’s sake!”

  “So mortgage the house.”

  “It is mortgaged! And I’ve never lived in it; it’s in goddam Houston, and I’ve got to find a place in fucking West Virginia; my kids are with my parents; my husband’s at sea—!”

  A long stare. Then: “Can you pay for it? Five years’ worth of legal bills?”

  “If it’s even a year, my career is finished.”

  “That’s what compensatory damages are for.” Her hand went to the telephone. “Can you pay?”

  Rose thought of her salary, Alan’s; of the empty house in Houston; of the house Alan had inherited from his father in Jacksonville, a little dump, but in a good market. They had some savings, a few thousand they’d put into tech stocks for the thrill of it—And two kids, and her with no career if it failed. And some friends.

  “Yes.”

  Emma Pasternak straightened and put the phone to her ear. “Let’s kick ass,” she said. She started to punch in a number.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Scare the shit out of the CIA.” She inhaled and drew herself up even straighter. Rose still had the feeling that the woman was an imposter, perhaps a daughter sitting in her mother’s chair for the day. She was simply too improbably wispy—until she opened her mouth.

  “Let me speak to Carl Menzes, please—Internal Investigations.” Pause. Rather icily: “This is Emma Pasternak at Barnard, Kootz, Bingham.” She wrote something on a notepad. Billing me for the call, Rose thought. Jesus, I’ll be timing everything that happens to me now.

  Suddenly, she heard Emma’s voice in a new key, fingernails on a blackboard. “What meeting is he in, may I ask?” Pause. “If you don’t know, how do you know he’s in a meeting?” Pause. “Is he in the building?”

  Pause. “Well, when you see him, you tell him that I am about to sue the Central Intelligence Agency and him personally in civil court for damages compensatory and punitive, and I think it only fair to chat with him before I file. Have you got that? Oh, and tell him that we met at the Liu trial, will you do that? Oh, thank you.” She covered the
phone and said to Rose, “The Liu trial, I was on the defense team, we reamed the Agency’s ass.” She held up a finger, and her thin lips gave what might, on a nicer face, have been a sort of smile. She nodded at Rose, indicated another telephone, which Rose picked up to hear a male voice saying, “—remember the Liu trial, but not very pleasantly. What can I do for you?” It was a pretty nice voice, she thought—a lot nicer than Emma Pasternak’s.

  “Did you get my message?”

  “Yeah, and I don’t believe you’re going to sue me, okay? Now, what’s this about?”

  “This is about a Lieutenant-Commander Rose Siciliano, who your office has railroaded, unjustly and illegally, and about who you’re withholding information.”

  “Is that the party on the other phone?”

  “What other phone?”

  “For Christ’s sake, cut the games.”

  Emma got a little paler. She leaned forward, seeming to talk to a shelf of books on the opposite wall. “No, you cut the games. We’re not having it, okay? Get real.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I go public, right now. I can have a column on the op-ed page of the Post, Wednesday’s edition, with a pickup in the Wall Street Journal. Okay? I can write the head for you, quote, ‘CIA Badgers Woman Officer in New Agency Scandal Colon Where the Power Is.’

  Paragraph. ‘Going beyond its mandate and its congressionally authorized powers, the Central Intelligence Agency has destroyed the career of a woman officer with quote the finest record in and out of combat in the US military unquote. Reliable sources within the intelligence community say that the Agency’s Internal Investigations Directorate can have got this fine officer transferred out of the prestigious astronaut program and into a dead-end, career-finishing job in Dog’s Ass, West Virginia, only by working the levers of the National Security Council.’ Paragraph. ‘Agency spokespersons could not account for—’”

  “Okay, okay, you do a swell improv. You’ve got nothing.”

  “Wrong. I’ve got the balls of two columnists on the oped page. How do you want to see yourself—‘the last gasp of Cold-War hysteria,’ or ‘witch-hunter extraordinaire for the New World Order’?”