Tomcat

by David E. Meadows

  They make me nervous. We got a bunch of fanatics running126 david E. meadows around North Africa who can’t make up their minds whether they are religious fanatics or nationalist fanatics, but they find communal solace against America, ‘ great Satan.’ I want to eliminate that remaining air threat.

  While the EP-3E is airborne, see if they can contact the Marines. I know the aircraft doesn’t have the legs to reach their area and return, but I would like to beat the Air Force to reestablishing contact with them. Either way, the EP-3 has a com ms suite on it that could be used for relay if the RC-135, Rivet Joint aircraft, does find them.”

  Commander Steve Cloth grinned. “I would like to beat the Air Force, too, Captain. I will have a revised flight plan for tomorrow, along with a proposed Air Tasking order for you by our nineteen hundred hours meeting.”

  “Nineteen hundred hours?”

  the commander looked perplexed. “Yes, sir. Admiral Devlin and I always got together at nineteen hundred to go over the next day’s flight Operations. I presumed you would want. to—”

  “You’re right, Steve. Nineteen hundred would be fine.

  Let’s do it in my in-port stateroom, where we’ll have some privacy and quiet.”

  “Yes, sir. And, I’ll contact you when the EP-3 has launched.”

  Dick Holman nodded. “That’s fine, Steve. I am going to the bridge to see the acting commanding officer of the Stennis and wipe that shit-eating grin off his face. Plus, I don’t want him to forget that I will be coming back.” He shook his head as a smile broke across his face. “I hate to see an XO having so much fun.”

  “Dick, GOOD TO SEE YOU. COME ON IN,” Pete Devlin said, pointing the new CTF Sixty-seven to an armchair near the couch. He shut the stateroom door behind Dick.

  “I am glad you stopped by. How goes your first day on the job?” the admiral asked as he flopped down on the couch across from him, threw his feet up on the coffee TOMCAT 127 table, and took a sip of the lukewarm coffee in front of him. “Help yourself to some coffee if you want it.” He tossed a folder on the table. “You coming by gives me an excuse to skip some of this paperwork.”

  Dick shook his head. “Half day on the job, Admiral.

  Thought I would stop by and give you an update on the air campaign and solicit any suggestions or recommendations you may have.”

  “Glad of that. I rather feel about my promotion up as you do. I enjoyed being the MFIC — head mother fellow in charge — and now, here I am, second fiddle.”

  “Head mother fellow?”

  “Well, we must have some civility in the new job, my fine shipmate. So, tell me what’s going on and, as always, whether you need advice from an admiral or not, I will be sure to give it.”

  Dick grinned. He took the next ten minutes bringing Admiral Pete Devlin, the new deputy commander, United States Sixth Fleet, up to date on the air picture. Pete Devlin flinched when Dick briefed the plans for the RC-135 and F-16 flights tomorrow across the southern. Sahara desert.

  Dick was gratified when the admiral nodded in agreement over his plans to hot refuel the EP-3E and have it conduct a close flyby of the Oran Naval Base. The admiral mumbled, “Good, good,” when Dick briefed him about the plans to have the EP-3E fly south tomorrow with some FA-18s to both provide a Combat Air Patrol if Rivet Joint encountered any problems and to look for those missing Algerian fighters. The two spent nearly thirty minutes discussing the missing Algerian fighter aircraft that seemed to have vanished into the desert. Their concern focused on the aircraft, both of them being aviators, with little discussion on what they would do if the Algerian Kilo submarine sortied out of Oran. Kurt believed the submarine to be in dry dock, but like all Intelligence Officers, if his sources weren’t up to date and he couldn’t find it on CNN, he tended to be skeptical.

  “Seems to me that you are making me look bad, Dick.

  You’ve already thought ahead as to what needs to be done and executed it. I don’t think I would have changed a thing, other than lean over the shoulders of my staff and granny them to death.”

  Dick stood, went to the sink, and poured himself a glass of water. “All that talking made my throat dry.”

  Pete Devlin reached into the folder on the coffee table and drew out a sheet of paper. “Look at this, Dick, and keep it to yourself — including from Admiral Cameron. I don’t think he needs to know this, since it is only subjective.”

  Dick reached forward and took the paper. “What is it?” “I asked Kurt to see if he could find out anything about General Lewis. He stopped by about an hour before you did and dropped that off. It’s an informal, nonattributable E-mail from a shipmate of his at the N2 at OP NAV Seems our General Lewis has some powerful friends in Congress.”

  Dick scanned the half-page E-mail and looked up at the admiral. “What does this mean, Admiral?”

  “It means our dear friend, Senator Glendale, on the Senate Armed Forces Committee, plays golf with our general and has for years. They are close friends. Apparently the Army, in their infinite wisdom, passed over General Lewis for his third star, but Senator Glendale put the skids on the flag selection list until Lewis’s name was added.”

  “That means if they added his name, then they had to take someone else’s off.”

  Pete nodded. “Yeah. Right on the nose. Some bright, enterprising two-star major general in the Army is still a two-star major general in the Army, while our new commander of JTF African Force earned his third star the old fashioned way: politics.”

  “But, why did they send him out here? Punishment?

  And if so, for whom? Us or him?”

  “None of the above. Apparently, Senator Glendale has made it known that he considers Lewis as a great choice for the next Army chief of staff and eventually the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If you believe the candor from that E-mail — personally, I’d never send anything like this via E-mail; you got no control over it — this assignment for General Lewis is a stepping-stone to his fourth star.”

  “Damn. I suspect the general knows this, too?”

  “I would be very surprised if he doesn’t.”

  “Even so, Admiral. As much as it miffs us with his tasking the RC-135 to locate our stranded Marines before he even assumed the reins of JTF commander, it was a good action. No offense, but we should have thought of it first.”

  Pete drew his feet off the coffee table and leaned forward with his arms on his knees. “Dick, we did. Admiral Cameron has been asking for a Rivet Joint in the theater since the Joint Chiefs of Staff withdrew them for the Korean theater. All we got was, ‘, none available.’”

  “Except this one.”

  “Except this one, but I would bet my gonads that if we backtrack the decision-making process, we would find the Air Force using this opportunity to garner some political support on the hill—”

  “I wouldn’t want to say that too loud, Admiral.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he said, leaning back and throwing his arms across the back of the couch before he crossed his legs. “I keep forgetting that in this age of jointness, we aren’t supposed to suspect our fellow services of being political and parochial.”

  “But it wouldn’t be the first time. Remember Desert Storm?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “The Air Force was ahead of us,” Dick said. “Their cameras on the aircraft were compatible with CNN. They could fly a mission, get good footage of bombs going off and missiles hitting, then slip the film to CNN. By the time their aircrews showered and were having a cold beer, the film was live on CNN. As for us in the Navy, we had to rerecord our films before we could share them with the press pool. Our air victories were sometimes two days old before the public saw them.”

  “I would call that forethought, Dick. At least we learned from that.”

  Dick stood and looked at his watch. “Admiral, it’s around fifteen hundred hours, sir. I have to go back down to Air Operations. I want to observe the EP-3E reconnaissance and then — it’s been a lon
g day — I’m going to have a light dinner and maybe a short nap.”

  Pete Devlin looked up at Dick Holman. “Thanks for coming by, Dick. Keep the story on General Lewis under your hat. I don’t think it’s fair to Admiral Cameron what they’ve done, but he doesn’t need to be bothered with the internal Washington politics that sent the Army three-star to us.”

  Dick shut the door behind him, rubbed his eyes, and headed off down the ladders to the Air Operations space.

  Just what they needed in the middle of the crises here and in Korea, both challenging America’s will and military might: politics.

  CHAPTER 6

  Stapler worked his way to the top of the rise where Corporal Heights lay watching the oasis through a pair of binoculars the LT had loaned him. Small rust-colored rocks poked through Stapler’s desert cammies as he crawled the last few feet to the top. Christ! He was tired. Over forty-eight hours without sleep. He didn’t count the few minutes he had gotten earlier that morning.

  The swimming movement of his feet left a wake in the brown, sun-baked sand as he worked his way uphill.

  One more hour, and the sun would be down. The cold of the desert night would replace the scorching heat but, for the first hour, the change would be welcomed. He slapped Heights lightly on the shoulder.

  “What you got?”

  Stapler rested his M-16 on the crest of the hill, noticing the cracked, sunburned skin of his hands. His thumbs were cracked so badly from the dry, continuous baking heat that the skin around the nails and on the pads had burst, exposing tiny streaks of raw meat, making them tender to the touch. No blood flowed from the small cracks. Stapler cynically figured the white, blazing heat of the Sahara sun was boiling it away before it reached the surface.

  He imagined he could almost smell the water at the oasis. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, feeling the dryness, an ache rising from the pit of his stomach, begging for water. The green palm trees ahead shouted “Water here” at him. He wanted to jump up and run toward the oasis. The urge quickly passed. He wasn’t the only one thirsty. Only a small amount of water remained from the many gallon jugs they had loaded at the compound. Survival manuals called for a gallon of water a day while in the desert, but they had been unable to carry enough to give forty-three people a gallon a day.

  The truck had to be balanced between fuel, water, food, and the few people unable to walk. Already they had three suffering heat exhaustion. Fuel was the number-one priority.

  Without it, the vehicles would run dry, and they would never escape this desolate country.

  If they had stayed at the compound, they would have had water until rescue arrived. Stapler doubted they would have held out long against any sustained assault. The smoke rising from the burning compound soon after they fled showed it would have been a fight if they had remained.

  In addition, with no hope of backup or rescue, they stood little chance.

  Their intent was to get close to Base Butler. Let the Army rescue them. He’d put up with Top Sergeant Mac-Gregory’s ridicule. What was it the gruff old bastard always said whenever some officer used the word intent?

  “Our intent, Marines … “

  “My intent is … “

  “The commandant’s intent is … ” Top Sergeant Macgregory would always mutter, “Intent is a task with a purpose, so what in the hell is the purpose, sir?”

  “However, a decision made is a decision executed,” is what Gunnery Sergeant Leslie Stapler of the Marine Corps fucking Foreign Legion in the middle of the Sahara desert says. What was it the young female government employee — and she was nice to look at — told him about making decisions? It went something like, “Indecision is the key to flexibility.” Or, maybe it was, “Flexibility is the key to indecision?”

  Visions of Top Sergeant Macgregory mixed up with the cute government employee and, somewhere, Niagara Falls washed over them as they skipped in and out of his thoughts. He licked his dry, cracked lips.

  “Gunny? Gunny?”

  Stapler opened his eyes and raised his head off his arms. How long had he been asleep?

  “Gunny? Gunny, you all right?” Heights asked, reaching over and touching Stapler on the shoulder.

  “What’d you see, Corporal?” Stapler asked, turning his head slightly so he could look at Heights. He noticed skin peeling from Heights’s nose — raw skin exposed beneath where the flakes of skin had fallen off. “Put some screen on that nose, Heights. You want to see it fall off? Christ, son, have I got to be your mother, too?”

  “Sorry, Gunny. I don’t have any.”

  Stapler pulled a tube of government-issued sunscreen from his rear pocket. The Navy stock numbers were larger than the words identifying the product. The end curled on itself from where Stapler had rolled the tube, forcing the cream out. “Here, take this.”

  “How ‘ you, Gunny. I don’t want to take yours.

  Your nose doesn’t look any better than mine.”

  “You think I’d give you my last sunscreen? Not my fault you either lost yours or forgot to bring it, Marine,” Stapler said, knowing it was his only tube. He pulled his helmet down lower. “And keep that helmet over your eyes and forehead. It’ll help block out the glare of the sun and protect your face.”

  “Thanks, Gunny.” Heights handed the binoculars to Stapler. He doubted the gunny had another tube, but you didn’t argue with gunnery sergeants. They tended to get pissed off when you did.

  “You smell it, Corporal?”

  “Smell what, Gunny?” Heights lifted his head and took several deep breaths. “Oh, you mean that smell.” Heights pointed to the east of the oasis. “It’s those camels, Gunny.

  I have never smelled shit like that.”

  Stapler had meant the water, but he took a deep breath and agreed with Heights. “Yeah, that’s some stink all right. What else do you see at the oasis?” Maybe he was the only one to smell the water. Maybe he was so thirsty, the scent of water was an illusion — a nostril mirage.

  “Gunny, I count two trucks, thirty to forty men. No women or children. Camels grouped to the right — east.

  See them?”

  Stapler swung the binoculars in that direction. “Yeah, Corporal, I see them. About twenty to twenty-five camels, wouldn’t you say?”

  “But no women and children, Gunny,” Heights emphasized.

  “See?”

  “Means they aren’t out for a family outing, Corporal. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “I was thinking, Gunnery Sergeant, that if they were peaceful, they would be traveling with their families. That many men together, all of them with weapons, tells me they’re either bandits or a military force.”

  Stapler put the binoculars down. “Well, Corporal Heights, I usually frown on Corporals thinking before they’ve been in the Corps at least eight years, but in this case, I believe we need all the bright ideas we can get.” He slapped the man on his shoulder. “I believe you are right.

  For an old-timer like me, the fact that vehicle down there is a military truck tends to indicate it is a military force.”

  Heights quickly lifted the binoculars again, twisted the focus a slight turn, and looked. “Yeah, you’re right, Gunny,” Heights said with a hint of disappointment over failing to notice the Arabic numbers on the side of the truck doors.

  “It’s been twenty hours without water, Corporal. Got plenty of food for the next few days, but without water, we won’t make it. We already have three down — two of the older male riggers and one of the two female riggers— with heat exhaustion. The female rigger lost her hat some where along the way and never replaced it. Even a handkerchief draped over her head would have been something.

  It’s a wonder she’s still alive.”

  Stapler rolled onto his back so he could look back down the hill toward their camp. “It’s a wonder none of us Marines are down there with them, considering we hiked most of the way. Therefore, Corporal Heights, in the best tradition of the United States Mari
ne Corps, we are going to take that oasis. Darhickam Oasis is its name, according to the map Mr. Bearcat Jordan carries. Of course, the professor pronounces it differently. One day, some obscure little historian at headquarters, Marine Corps, will discover this battle and write a little footnote about it for Naval Proceedings. Then you’ll have a reporter show up at your front door, and your wife will wheel you out to the sunporch with all your grandchildren nestled around your ankles to tell her all about it.”

  “Gunny, you sure you ain’t been in the sun too long?”

  Heights grinned.

  Stapler looked at the corporal and saw the tight smile stretching the sunburned face. Those small cracks on the lips of the Marine must hurt like a son of a bitch. Stapler grinned, too. “Yeah, Corporal. Amazing what the sun will do to you.”

  Heights nodded toward the oasis. “Lot of open ground to cover, Gunny.”

  Stapler rolled back over, took the binoculars from Heights, and scanned the oasis. Most of the occupying force were wearing black or white tho bes Their heads were covered by a diagonally folded cotton square held in place by a double-coiled cord circlet, the ghutra. By the time he escaped the clutches of the professor, Stapler was going to know more about the Bedouin lifestyle than any Marine deserved to know.

  The professor, who never stopped talking, said the free flowing movement of the tho be actually helped cool the skin during the day and kept the body warm during the cooler nights. Stapler didn’t really understand how— he didn’t care how. The tho be covered every inch of the body with the exception of their hands, face, and feet. He looked at Heights and then himself. Of course, they both had their sleeves rolled all the way down and a helmet shoved down on their heads. Moist blisters covered the backs of his hands. Heights had the same sun-baked blisters on his.

  Stapler lifted the binoculars again and focused them on the oasis. This time, he spotted several individuals near a half tent located about fifty feet from the vehicles. He had missed them before because the tent’s khaki color blended with the desert sands. They drew Stapler’s intense interest.