Cunningham leaned back in his armchair, his stout body sinking into the soft leather, a signal to Stevens that he was dismissed to go forward and execute the general’s orders.
The two captains had been waiting for the colonels to return from the briefing with Cunningham. Relief and confusion spread across their faces when they saw the three men walk in. Waters and Gomez were obviously in a good mood, Blevins in a sour funk. “I thought Colonel Waters was giving the briefing, not Blevins,” Williamson said. “It looks like the horse’s ass was nailed to the floor.”
“I don’t think they would change briefers this late,” Sara said. “I bet it went well and Blevins is feeling left out.”
Gomez motioned for the two analysts to join them in the battle cab. Blevins, however, stalked off to his office at the back of the main floor. Sara and Don hurried up the stairs after Waters and Gomez, ignoring the petulant colonel.
Gomez quickly related what happened, telling them how Waters had to take Blevins along with him to Egypt. “He’s such an—”
“Asshole,” the two captains chorused.
Gomez should have reprimanded them for their disrespect but found it impossible to censure them for saying exactly what he had been thinking. “One more thing. Another officer is to go on the team. Which one of you wants it?”
Sara Marshall looked to her junior partner, Don Williamson. Their working relationship was a finely balanced blend of intellect and personality and she did not want to upset it. While she badly wanted to go, she was reluctant to preempt the offer.
Williamson rocked back in his chair, arms and legs flopping down like a rag doll. “Sara, why don’t you go? I’ve got a heavy date this Saturday, and if I miss it, she’ll start without me.” The lie was easy for Williamson, who loved Sara with every hungry bone in his body.
20 July: 1505 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1705 hours, Alexandria, Egypt
The walk across the ramp had caused all the passengers deplaning at Alexandria South to break out in perspiration. Colonel Shaw recognized Muddy Waters long before they entered the air-conditioned small passenger lounge. Time had been kind to Waters, and although they were the same age, he looked fifteen years younger than the heavy-set wing commander.
“Welcome to Alex South, Muddy. It’s been a long time.”
Waters introduced Blevins and Sara. Blevins shook Shaw’s hand and nodded, saying nothing.
The wing commander was perplexed by Blevins’ withdrawn, cautious response. “The Puzzle Palace sent word you were coming but we expected you sooner,” Shaw said, trying to break through the colonel’s reserve.
“We broke down in Spain and had a twelve-hour layover,” Waters said, annoyed by Blevins’ behavior. “Actually I needed the chance to sack out. Never could sleep on an airplane, especially when someone else is driving.”
Shaw nodded. “We can check you into your quarters and go right to work if you want.”
“Thanks, John,” Waters said, “but I’d rather get a good meal and night’s rest. We can start to work in the morning when we’re all fresh. Okay with you, Gene? Sara?”
Sara was grateful. Blevins went along. The heat had made him especially irritable, but he was dreading the coming week in any case. Never mind Shaw’s welcome, he still felt excluded, which he blamed on his being non-rated, a ground-pounder.
As they settled into the air-conditioned car the driver had left running to keep cool, Shaw leaned back over the front seat. “I know you don’t want to get involved tonight, but the message didn’t say why you were coming here. Can you give me a clue?”
“We’re tasked with writing up an after-action report on Grain King, John,” Waters told him. “Sundown wants it circulated through Intel, Command and Control, and Ops—”
“Colonel Shaw,” Blevins broke in, “I would prefer discussing this in the privacy of your office tomorrow. Not here.” Blevins punctuated his statement with a curt nod in the driver’s direction.
Shaw smiled to himself, deposited the group in their respective VIP suites and invited them to join him and his wife Beth for dinner.
As he did, a rush of emotions went through Waters, remembering well Shaw’s attractive wife. Long dormant memories had surfaced in bits and pieces during the flight from the States, and now they had all coalesced and focused. The acute pain of his loss had died away long ago for Waters, but the recollection carried a life of its own. “I’d like that, John. How about you, Gene? Sara?”
Blevins declined, wanting to maintain a personal distance from Shaw. Sara readily accepted, glad to escape the irritating colonel.
The reason behind the arrival of the three officers had not bothered Shaw nearly as much as the attitude of Eugene S. Blevins, and after dropping them off at the VOQ he pulled his first sergeant aside. “Mort, spend some of your Green Stamps and find out about Colonel Eugene Blevins ASAP. I don’t need to be blind-sided.”
Back in his office, the first sergeant checked the Air Force register, digging out details on Blevins and duly noting the colonel’s current assignment to the Pentagon’s Watch Center. Although his marching orders had only covered Blevins, the NCO also checked on Waters and Marshall. Chief Master Sergeant Mortimer M. Pullman, loyal to the colonel, wasn’t about to let his wing commander be gunned down from any quarter.
Now he went into the command post, collared one of the sergeants on duty and explained what he wanted, collecting a long-overdue marker. While the younger NCO had never been stationed at the Watch Center, he had a friend who was.
Forty minutes later the chief paged Shaw, who was on his way to the Officers Club.
As Waters changed for dinner, images of the long-ago pain came surging back with renewed intensity. He and Shaw had been lieutenants learning to fly the new F-4 at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. It was Shaw’s wife Beth who had driven Waters to the hospital, where his wife and infant daughter had been taken after a serious car accident. Beth had stayed there helping Waters endure the ordeal of waiting. And when a young doctor told Waters that his daughter, Jennifer, had died, Beth had joined in his grief. Four hours later she again shared his despair when the same doctor, too old for his age, told them that his wife had died without regaining consciousness. It was Beth who had brought the young pilot back to some form of sanity and after that neither was ever quite the same.
The Shaws and Waters had parted when Waters was assigned to a different wing in Florida, but they had run into each other from time to time and had never lost contact. Still, it had been over six years since he had last seen Beth…
An hour later Waters and Sara walked into the officers club bar. A group of young officers and their wives standing at the bar quieted when the newcomers entered. Waters was learning what it meant to be seen with Sara. The attention she drew hardly bothered him, and he liked being with her. Why not? She was young, bright, witty and a looker.
Now a long-remembered voice took Waters’ attention away from Sara. “You haven’t changed a bit, Muddy.”
Turning, Waters saw a plump, matronly woman smiling at him. Her short black hair was streaked with gray, although the large dark eyes and wide, full mouth were exactly as he remembered them. He quickly collected Beth Shaw into his arms. “Beth, it’s good to see you—”
“Easy, Muddy,” she said, not breaking the embrace, then drew back and studied his face. “It’s not fair.”
“What’s not?”
“Men get better looking; women get fatter with double chins.”
The two stood back, still holding onto each other. Memories of when they were all newly married came flooding back…images of floating down the Salt River on inner-tubes dragging six-packs of beer behind them, of sitting around the officers club drinking beer and singing lewd, crude drinking songs, of learning with John to fly the F-4…
Beth Shaw knew all about memories and was more of a realist than Waters in putting them into perspective. She knew what time did to memories, how it could turn them into the unexpected. She knew they had all changed, and with a sure
instinct she sensed that Muddy Waters’ visit to Alexandria South could mean trouble for her husband, for his career, which had also become hers…“Muddy, I’m afraid at least one of us is getting old, like the F-4…Well, who else do we have here?”
Waters introduced her to Captain Sara Marshall. Beth had not really noticed Sara until now. She saw the absence of an engagement or wedding ring and felt her age even more. She had seen too many middle-aged colonels change their wives for a younger model and did not exactly look forward to any temptations coming her husband’s way. Still, she continued to play the perfect hostess as they sat down and ordered drinks. “Himself will be along in a few minutes. That damn telephone just won’t leave him alone. He was paged on the way over.”
The telephone page for Shaw was from Chief Mort Pullman. “Sir, we’ve got a real winner on our hands. According to some people who work for him, Blevins is a scumbag. Smart, but when it comes to common sense, he hasn’t the brains God gave a fence post. The word is he’d sell his daughter into white slavery to make general, and not a single NCO in the Watch Center would follow him to the latrine. He never makes a decision and always passes the buck. There is some good news, though. Captain Sara Marshall gets a grade-A endorsement from the NCO. Apparently she can’t stand Blevins but keeps quiet about it. Rumor at the Big P has it that Waters had a bad briefing with Sundown, stood up to him and walked out alive. Something else you ought to know—Waters was the guy who started the ball rolling on protecting Grain King.”
Shaw understood that the sergeant could not say any more over the phone, but it was enough. It never ceased to amaze him, the inside knowledge NCOs had about what went on in the Pentagon, even right into Sundown’s office. The chief had confirmed Shaw’s impression of Blevins. The guy could be dangerous…At least Waters still had his head screwed on straight, and Sara Marshall wasn’t a problem. You won some, you lost some…
He joined the three in the bar, offered his apologies and led them in to dinner, during which Beth’s early worries about Sara faded some when she observed an attraction between the young woman and Waters. Good…about time Muddy found someone to share his life with again. Good for all concerned…
The next morning the two colonels made the short walk to wing headquarters. Sara would join them an hour later; the captain understood the unspoken protocol dictating that the first and last meeting between a wing commander and a team should be private.
Blevins immediately criticized Waters for having dinner with the Shaws, implying it compromised the objectivity of their report.
“We’re here to write an after-action report, not ax anyone,” Waters told him, trying to keep the irritation he felt out of his voice. “John and I go back a long way; you want me to ignore him?”
Blevins shrugged, said nothing. Besides, the damn heat had given him an underarm rash. He’d better see a medic.
Shaw met them as they walked into his office, offering coffee.
Waters was ready to get down to work. “John, Sundown sent us here to take an in-depth look at the Grain King incident. He’s interested in everything that happened and sees it as a chance for us to learn some lessons about operating in this part of the world. He also wants to know why the alert birds were scrambled without missiles…”
Shaw allowed a grin. “I’ve got a classified file an inch thick on that. You should see some of the messages we’ve gotten back from headquarters in reply to our requests for permission to upload missiles on the alert birds. I think you should read the file. The general is going to get his eyes watered.”
“Colonel Shaw,” Blevins said, “are you saying higher headquarters specifically ordered you not to upload missiles for the scramble on Grain King?”
“No, it doesn’t work that way. We—”
“Did you specifically request to upload missiles when you were placed on cockpit alert?”
“No, I don’t think it would have done any good—”
“But you didn’t even try to use your command net to get permission. Is that correct?”
Shaw nodded.
Blevins was on a roll now. While still a captain he had chosen the Pentagon’s bureaucracy as the path to promotion, seeing the nice, orderly flow of information, orders, supplies and personnel as the real strength of the Air Force. To his way of thinking, jet jockies were just freewheeling incompetents who disrupted the proper way of doing business. In a way he felt it was his job to protect the Air Force from people like Waters and Shaw.
“Colonel Shaw, I’d like to have the complete file immediately.”
Shaw stared at Blevins. Waters didn’t try to suppress his shock. The wing commander’s eyes narrowed as he dissected the man, grudgingly conceding that for all his flabbiness and rigid attitude he did at least present a neat and professional appearance: firm jaw, slightly gray hair, chiseled mouth—all fitted the image of the very model of a modern Air Force officer. The image earned the promotions, Shaw decided. He clamped a control on his anger at Blevins’ insinuation that the file might be purged before he saw it, casually picked up a phone and called his first sergeant.
“Mort, bring in every scrap of paper, message, memo for the record, notes, anything and everything we’ve got on arming the alert birds to my office. Sign them all over to Colonel Blevins.”
Sitting the phone down he continued to stare at the colonel, appreciating how accurate Mort Pullman’s report on Blevins had been. “I think you’ll have everything you want in a few moments. Satisfactory?”
A sharp knock at the door announced Chief Pullman, who quickly entered and handed over a thick file to Blevins. “Please sign here, sir,” he said.
Blevins scribbled his name on the sign-out record, not recognizing the chief as the driver from the night before.
Shaw wondered why Cunningham had teamed Blevins with his friend Waters. Well, he never could understand Sundown’s logic. Who the hell could?…He turned to Waters, “Any other reason Sundown sent you here?”
Waters set the coffee cup down and opened his briefcase, trying to hide the disgust he felt at Blevins’ demand for immediate control of the file. An IG team would have done that. “I think this’ll help. Here’s the memo Dick Stevens gave me.”
Blevins instantly felt threatened as Waters handed Shaw the memo drafted by Cunningham’s aide. Any indication of such close cooperation made him uneasy.
Shaw read the memo and Waters felt better as he watched the colonel’s face, knowing what was in the memo. After reading it a second time, Shaw’s adrenaline was pumping. “Lord, Muddy, this is what we’re all about.” His excitement filled the room, crowding the problem of the missiles and Grain King into a corner, and with it Eugene Blevins. “Let me get my people working on it.” Without waiting for an acknowledgment from Waters, Shaw was on the telephone, ordering up a staff meeting in thirty minutes.
Chief Pullman found two offices for Waters and Blevins in wing headquarters to work out of and a smaller office in the command post for Sara. Waters decided to send Sara over to the squadron to meet the aircrews that flew in the engagement and get a copy of the videocassette tape of the mission debrief. He knew the F-4 jocks would try to do a snow job on her. Not realizing they were dealing with a first-class mind as well as body, they would likely reveal more than they should to impress her.
After Sara left for the squadron Waters closed the door for a private chat with Blevins. “Gene, have you ever been assigned to a fighter wing?”
Blevins shook his head. “I’ve been at headquarters at SAC, DIA and now the Pentagon. That’s where the action is.”
“Operational wings are the cutting edge of the Air Force, Gene. Shaw is responsible for about forty-five hundred personnel and their dependents, seventy-two aircraft, a munitions dump that can destroy cities and God knows what else. It’s an awesome responsibility few men have to live with. Please remember that when you’re dealing with him.” Waters knew he would never convince Blevins but at least he figured to slow him down. “Most of the generals we w
ork for have been wing commanders. They tend to support wing commanders when there’s a pissing contest with staff officers like you and me. Remember, the commander of Third Air Force handpicked Shaw…”
Blevins well understood power struggles, and the commander of Third was a three-star general who might serve on the brigadier general promotion board. Waters had gotten his attention.
Sara waited in the 379th to meet Lieutenant Colonel Fairly. She had not been lonely, for Thunder and Nelson had exercised proprietary rights until Fairly returned from a flight.
Like most men who first met her, Johnny Nelson wanted to make a good impression, even hoped he had an inside track. “What the weapons systems officer is all about is this…They call us the GIB, for guy in back, or the pitter, because we fly in the pit or back-seat, or wizzo, which is short for Weapons Systems Officer, also known as WSO. Those are polite names they call us.”
Thunder broke in then, steering the conversation. “We’re sort of a combination bombardier, co-pilot, navigator and radar operator. We also operate the radio and the RHAW gear, that’s our Radar Homing and Warning system. It can get pretty busy back there.”
“You mean you can fly the plane like a pilot?” she asked.
“Sure.” Thunder grinned. “Jack, my nose gunner, lets me fly it all the time, and sometimes land it. But the heavies would have fits if they found out.”
Sara could sense she had been brought into their inner circle when Thunder trusted her with the information about his landing the Phantom. Bryant had deliberately mentioned it, testing her reaction and trying to develop an ally in the game of choosing sides that constantly went on in the Air Force.
“You call Lieutenant Locke your nose gunner when you mean pilot, and everyone seems to have a nickname. How do you keep things straight?”
“We do it to simplify things,” Thunder said. “Our procedures tend to get complicated and it helps to balance out the formality the Air Force wants. You listen to the tapes of when we tangled with the MiGs, you’ll hear the boss call ‘Jack’ over the radio and not use our call sign, Stinger One-Two. We’re, assigned a different call sign every time we fly, which causes confusion when the heat’s on. It’s much easier to remember your wingman’s nickname, his tactical call sign, when you’re mixing it up in a fight.”
The Warbirds Page 10