As commander of Bravo Flight, Furness was first in line in the second row. She set her bag down at her feet and lined up directly behind the flight commander of Alpha Flight, Major Ben Jamieson, allowing enough room between her bag and Jamieson’s row for the inspector to walk. The rest of her flight lined up on her, and Charlie Flight lined up behind her. After allowing a few moments for everyone to get situated, she stepped out of place and walked down her row to count noses and take a look at her flight before the inspection.
Even though it was considered a “super Reserve” duty, the Enhanced Reserve Program attracted a great variety of characters, and they were all represented right here in Bravo Flight. It was impossible to pinpoint exactly what each crewmember had in common — they all came from diverse backgrounds and had widely varying skill and experience levels:
First Lieutenant Mark “Fogman” Fogelman was Rebecca Furness’ weapon system officer, or “wizzo.” He graduated with a commission from Air Force ROTC and a degree in business from Cornell University, and was one of the lucky few to draw the new RF-111 fresh out of undergraduate navigator training. The rumor had it that Fogelman’s parents, who owned a ski resort and lots of property near Lake Placid, used considerable political pull to get their son a choice assignment, but Furness was not going to bad-mouth that plan of action because she had relied on personal influence as well.
The 715th Tactical Squadron and its sleek, deadly Vampire bomber had attracted a lot of “political” appointees, persons with important families with powerful political ties. Promotion and more desirable positions were almost guaranteed if one was lucky enough to score an RF-111G assignment. It was considered a “front-line” combat assignment — everyone had to be nuclear certified under the Personnel Reliability Program and given a top secret security clearance — but because the unit’s primary mission was tactical reconnaissance, it was considered a relatively benign assignment.
Just out of Fighter Lead-in Training at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico, “Fogman,” only twenty-five years old, was the youngest crewmember in the unit. Because she was so “by the book” and demanding, Rebecca Furness often drew the squadron’s new weapon systems officers — it was found that Furness would either straighten the new guys out or drive them so completely nuts that they would quit. She had no doubt that a lot of veteran weapons systems officers preferred not to have a woman aircraft commander, so Rebecca ended up with the new guys who had little say in who they were teamed up with.
The kid never had his uniform completely up to standards, but Rebecca hated helping Fogelman fix his uniform because she always felt like a fussy mother doting over her child. But she had no choice. She ripped the squadron patch off his right sleeve, the F-111 “Go-Fast” patch off his left arm, and swapped the two. “Jesus, Fogman, aren’t you ever going to get these straight?”
“I was in a hurry this morning, Becky,” he replied, not offering any apologies. He gave her flight suit a quick appraisal, found something amiss, and gave her a smug grin. She remembered that she had been rushed, too, and the reason why, and wished she had checked herself in a mirror before reporting in. Oh well, too late now. Besides, she looked ten times better than Fogelman on her worst day. When Fogelman noticed Furness looking at his deployment bag, which looked significantly more empty than everyone else’s, he said quickly, “It’s all there, Major. I checked.”
“I hope so.”
“You can check mine if I can check yours,” he said smugly.
Furness stepped right up close to Fogman, sticking her face right into his. He did not retreat and had no room to get out of her way — he was trapped. “Was that a joke, Fogelman? Were you trying to make a funny? Or was that a sexual innuendo, like perhaps you were offering to show me your wee-wee? If so, get me a magnifying glass.”
Fogelman could feel several pairs of eyes on him now. “Yes … I mean, no, I wasn’t …”
“Or do you want to sniff my underwear? You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Fogman? Does women’s underwear turn you on? Maybe I’ll find some women’s underwear in your bag if I looked.” She backed off right away, giving him a chance to retaliate, but everyone was looking now so he didn’t try it. Furness gave him a half-amused, half-exasperated glare and continued on.
She did not presume to try to criticize most of the other members of her flight — they were all fairly experienced flyers. Her wingmen in her flight were Captain Frank Kelly and Lieutenant Colonel Larry Tobias. Kelly was a five-year veteran of F-111s, and Tobias, the oldest flying crewmember in the unit at age forty-eight, was his weapon system officer. Tobias had seniority over everyone in the squadron except for the squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hembree, but Tobias, a twenty-one-year Air Force veteran, had no command experience, nor had he attended Air Command and Staff College, and so was not eligible for command. He was a flyer, and preferred to stay that way. Furness simply greeted the two crewmembers, asked if they needed anything, and moved on.
Three of her other six crewmembers were new and relatively inexperienced. First Lieutenant Lynn Ogden, married with one child, was a WSO who spent three years as an RC-135 navigator before cross-training to the RF-111. It turned out that Ogden had volunteered for several dangerous reconnaissance missions during Desert Storm, and her reward was a coveted RF-111 assignment. First Lieutenant Paula Norton, unmarried, a former T-38 instructor pilot and C-21 military jetliner pilot, had been a mission specialist candidate for NASA’s space shuttle program, and had been given the RF-111 as a sort of consolation prize; she had made it known to everyone, not in words but in her attitude, that being in the 715th Tactical Squadron was a brief “pit stop” on her way to a high-visibility job flying generals and Cabinet officials around in VIP special transport duties like Air Force One. Major Ted Little, married with three children, another WSO and an ex-B-1B bomber navigator, had been out of active duty for nearly two years before joining the Reserves and landing an RF-111. In those two years, he had starred in several major motion pictures, three of which had become major box-office smashes, and had amassed a small fortune. The reasons why he moved from Hollywood to upstate New York, joined the Reserves, and flew the RF-111 were unclear, but he did qualify. Everyone joked he was simply doing research work for another movie. The other five crewmembers — Majors Clark Vest and Harold Rota, and Captains Bruce Fay, Joseph Johnson, and Robert Dutton — were veteran F-111 flyers who had been suddenly and unceremoniously dumped from active duty but had immediately found Reserve billets.
Everyone looked pretty good. Fogelman’s hair length was pushing the edge of the envelope, as usual, but that was the worst offense she could see in Bravo Flight. Only Lieutenant Colonel Hembree had access to military personnel and civil records, so there could still be some surprises — having unit members getting busted for DUIs, traffic violations, child support arrears, that sort of thing, was fortunately getting less common, but it still happened once in a while. Furness took her place at the left side of the row and stood at ease until the squadron was called to attention by First Lieutenant Cristina Arenas, the squadron executive officer; then squadron commander Lieutenant Colonel Hembree, operations officer Lieutenant Colonel Alan Katz, and squadron NCOIC Master Sergeant William Tate walked out onto the gym floor precisely at seven-fifteen A.M.
The squadron was ordered to parade rest, and the inspection began.
Rebecca could see this was going to be a tough morning. Colonel Hembree was not picking bags and people at random — he was inspecting everyone. The Alpha Flight commander, Major Ben Jamieson, and his WSO passed, but the first pilot in the flight was pulled out of the ranks and his bag tossed aside by Hembree himself. “Captain, maybe you better just go home and start all over again,” Hembree shouted, loud enough for everyone on the floor and almost everyone else in the gym to hear. “Your uniform looks like shit, you got a mustache and sideburns that look like something out of the damned sixties, and it looks like you’re ready to deploy to some beach in Florida instead of to a cold-weather base. You just lost one day’s training. If you’re not back here in one hour with a clean uniform, proper gear and proper grooming, you’ll lose the entire week. Get out of my sight.”