The last time Wedge had heard that little speech from his great-grandfather, he’d been six years old. The sharp-eyed pilot had only the slightest tremor in his voice despite his ninety-plus years. And now, as the clear sun caught light on his canopy, Wedge could hear the words as distinctly as if his great-grandfather were riding along as his back-seater. Except the F-35E Lightning he flew only had a single seat.
This was but one of the many gripes Wedge had with the fighter he was piloting so close to Iranian airspace that he was literally dancing his starboard wing along the border. Not that the maneuver was hard. In fact, flying with such precision took no skill at all. The flight plan had been inputted into the F-35’s onboard navigation computer. Wedge didn’t have to do a thing. The plane flew itself. He merely watched the controls, admired the view out his canopy, and listened to the ghost of his great-grandfather taunting him from a nonexistent back seat.
Jammed behind his headrest was an auxiliary battery unit whose hum seemed impossibly loud, even over the F-35’s turbofan engine. This battery, about the size of a shoebox, powered the latest upgrade to the fighter’s suite of stealth technologies. Wedge hadn’t been told much about the addition, only that it was some kind of an electromagnetic disrupter. Before he’d been briefed on his mission, he’d caught two civilian Lockheed contractors tampering with his plane belowdecks and had alerted the sergeant at arms, who himself had no record of any civilians on the manifest of the George H. W. Bush. This had resulted in a call to the ship’s captain, who eventually resolved the confusion. Due to the sensitivity of the technology being installed, the presence of these contractors was itself highly classified. Ultimately, it proved a messy way for Wedge to learn about his mission, but aside from that initial hiccup every other part of the flight plan had proceeded smoothly.
Maybe too smoothly. Which was the problem. Wedge was hopelessly bored. He glanced below, to the Strait of Hormuz, that militarized sliver of turquoise that separated the Arabian Peninsula from Persia. He checked his watch, a Breitling chronometer with built-in compass and altimeter his father had worn during strafing runs over Marjah twenty-five years before. He trusted the watch more than his onboard computer. Both said that he was forty-three seconds out from a six-degree eastward course adjustment that would take him into Iranian airspace. At which point — so long as the little humming box behind his head did its job — he would vanish completely.
It would be a neat trick.
It almost seemed like a prank that he’d been entrusted with such a high-tech mission. His buddies in the squadron had always joked that he should’ve been born in an earlier time. That’s how he’d gotten his call sign, “Wedge”: the world’s first and simplest tool.
Time for his six-degree turn.
He switched off the autopilot. He knew there’d be hell to pay for flying throttle and stick, but he’d deal with that when he got back to the Bush.
He wanted to feel it.
If only for a second. And if only for once in his life.
It would be worth the ass-chewing. And so, with a bunch of noise behind his head, he banked into Iranian airspace.
“You wanted to see me, Commodore?”
Commander Jane Morris, captain of the John Paul Jones, seemed tired, too tired to apologize for being almost fifteen minutes late to her meeting with Hunt, who understood the strain Morris was under. Hunt understood that strain because she herself had felt it on occasions too countless to number. It was the strain of getting a ship underway. The absolute accountability for nearly four hundred sailors. And the lack of sleep as the captain was summoned again and again to the bridge as the ship maneuvered through the seemingly endless fishing fleets in the South China Sea. The argument could be made that Hunt was under that strain three times over, based on the scope of her command, but both Hunt and Morris knew that the command of a flotilla was command by delegation while the command of a ship was pure command. In the end, you and you alone are responsible for everything your ship does or fails to do. A simple lesson they’d both been taught as midshipmen at Annapolis.
Hunt fished out two cigars from her cargo pocket.
“And what’re those?” asked Morris.
“An apology,” said Hunt. “They’re Cubans. My dad used to buy them from the Marines at Gitmo. It’s not as much fun now that they’re legal, but still… they’re pretty good.” Morris was a devout Christian, quietly evangelical, and Hunt hadn’t been sure whether or not she’d partake, so she was pleased when Morris took the cigar and came up alongside her on the bridge wing for a light.
“An apology?” asked Morris. “What for?” She dipped the tip of the cigar into the flame made by Hunt’s Zippo, which was engraved with one of those cigar-chomping, submachine gun — toting bullfrogs commonly tattooed onto the chests and shoulders of Navy SEALs or, in the case of Hunt’s father, etched onto the lighter he’d passed down to his only child.
“I imagine you weren’t thrilled to learn that I’d picked the John Paul Jones for my flagship.” Hunt had lit her cigar as well, and as their ship held its course the smoke was carried off behind them. “I wouldn’t want you to think this choice was a rebuke,” she continued, “particularly as the only other female in command. I wouldn’t want you to think that I was trying to babysit you by situating my flag here.” Hunt instinctively glanced up at the mast, at her commodore’s command pennant.
“Permission to speak freely?”
“C’mon, Jane. Cut the shit. You’re not a plebe. This isn’t Bancroft Hall.”
“Okay, ma’am,” began Morris, “I never thought any of that. Wouldn’t have even occurred to me. You’ve got three good ships with three good crews. You need to put yourself somewhere. Actually, my crew was pretty jazzed to hear that we’d have the Lion Queen herself on board.”
“Could be worse,” said Hunt. “If I were a man, you’d be stuck with the Lion King.”
Morris laughed.
“And if I were the Lion King,” deadpanned Hunt, “that’d make you Zazu.” Then Hunt smiled, that wide-open smile that had always endeared her to her subordinates.
Which led Morris to say a little more, maybe more than she would’ve in the normal course: “If we were two men, and the Levin and Hoon were skippered by two women, do you think we’d be having this conversation?” Morris allowed the beat of silence between them to serve as the answer.
“You’re right,” said Hunt, taking another pull on her Cuban as she leaned on the deck railing and stared out toward the horizon, across the still impossibly calm ocean.
“How’s your leg holding up?” asked Morris.
Hunt reached down to her thigh. “It’s as good as it’ll ever be,” she said. She didn’t touch the break in her femur, the one she’d suffered a decade before during a training jump gone bad. A faulty parachute had ended her tenure as one of the first women in the SEALs and nearly ended her life. Instead, she fingered the letter from the medical board resting in her pocket.
They’d smoked their short cigars nearly down to the nubs when Morris spotted something on the starboard horizon. “You see that smoke?” she said. The two naval officers pitched their cigars over the side for a clearer view. It was a small ship, steaming slowly or perhaps even drifting. Morris ducked into the bridge and returned to the observation deck with two pairs of binoculars, one for each of them.