“Tell me about it,” Norton lamented as she started to rearrange her hair.
Furness then turned her attention to Fogelman. The little prick had his bag open, but had not begun spreading the contents out as she had asked. “Let’s go, Mark, hop to it.”
“The Colonel didn’t write me up, Major,” Fogelman hissed. “Not on my gear.”
“Who said anything about your gear, Mark?” Furness asked. The little creep, why in hell would he show up for a required formation knowing he wouldn’t pass inspection? “The Colonel gave you a break, then, because your hair is too long and he knows and I know that you don’t have all your stuff.”
“How do you know that?”
“Fogelman, are you really that dumb or just pretending to be?” Furness said with total exasperation. “Your bag is half the size of everyone else’s. Now open it up.”
“I wish you’d stop picking on me, Major,” Fogelman whined, raising his voice a bit so others in the squadron could hear his complaints. “If you want me out of the flight, just say so.”
“What I want is for you to open your damn bag, Lieutenant,” Furness said, eyes dead-on him.
He finally did as he was told. “Missing two flight suits … no mukluks … no mittens … no long underwear … no socks,” Furness summarized as she rifled through the musty, wadded-up clothes and gear inside. She found condoms, money, odd pairs of ski gloves, receipts with women’s names and numbers written on them, and parking tickets. Lots of parking tickets, some months old. They hadn’t yet shown up on his civil records check. “You left all your winter stuff up in Lake Placid again, didn’t you?” Fogelman didn’t answer. He liked to use his military cold-weather gear when he went up to his family’s resort in Lake Placid — he thought wearing military gear on the slopes made him look cool, like he was some Special Forces arctic commando or something — and he often left the stuff up there. “I hope it’s not too cold or too snowy, because you got a long drive ahead of you.”
“You want me to drive all the way to Lake Placid? In this weather? After the first day of Hell Week? How about lending me some stuff out of your spare bag?” Fogelman asked in a loud voice. All of the flight commanders had a spare deployment bag filled with odds and ends; Furness had two full.
Furness shook her head. “Because this isn’t the first time I’ve bailed your ass out with my spare bag,” she replied, trying to lower her voice to avoid attracting any more attention to her secret stash of gear, “and because you still haven’t returned the stuff you borrowed last time — you probably gave my last set of thermals to one of your ski bunny friends. Forget it. Figure out what you’re missing and go to Supply during lunchtime. Tell them you lost your stuff, and they’ll issue you new stuff.”
“And make me pay an arm and a leg for it!”
“It’s your fault, Mark. And get a damned haircut.”
Physical training (PT) was held every morning of Hell Week and was mandatory for everyone who was not flying. Furness had a good opportunity to observe Hembree during the PT test, and what she saw made her a bit nervous. Instead of allowing each squadron member to count his own reps and laps and report the score to the executive officer, Hembree and Lieutenant Colonel Katz supervised each event themselves, even to the point of coaching squadron members who appeared to be relaxing or quitting. Their voices, especially Hembree’s, could be heard echoing throughout the gym, and they weren’t words of encouragement — they were words of provocation, even admonishment. Since everyone in the unit could run pretty well, the two commanders carefully supervised the strength exercises, even getting down and yelling at members to grind out one last pull-up or do two more sit-ups “for the Seven-Fifteenth!” It was, she realized, an extremely intense display of… what? Determination? Although Hell Weeks in the past had been tough, the commanders usually tried to keep things relaxed and businesslike, not harsh or intense. The more she thought about it, the more Rebecca began to realize that this display by the commanders was more than determination. It wasn’t out of pride or creating an esprit de corps.
No, it was a display of concern.
And urgency.
Perhaps even fear.
Something was going on.
FIFTEEN
Everyone passed the PT test, although many had scores that Hembree found unacceptably low, so another test was going to be run at the end of Hell Week. The squadron members had ninety minutes to shower, change back into flight suits, grab a breakfast-to-go from the Burger King right outside the front gate, and report to the squadron for academics, testing, and situation briefings.
The RF-111 Vampire reconnaissance/strike aircraft had twelve “bold print” items—124 words, 27 lines — of such critical importance that they had to be committed to memory and written out or recited word for word. The rest of the morning was taken up with aircraft systems-and-procedures lectures, followed by a multiple-choice test. Fortunately, no one scored below 80, but Furness got another warning stare from Hembree when it was discovered that Fogelman got the lowest score in the squadron.
Then came the blood tests at the base hospital. Along with a severe downsizing in the American armed forces and the growth of the Reserve forces after the 1992 elections was a general distrust of the military, especially the citizen-soldiers who now flew such advanced warplanes. Every military person on active duty, and those Reservists federalized for active duty, was routinely screened for substance abuse. They also tested for sexually transmitted diseases, such as AIDS, and weight and blood pressure, which were considered telltale signs of stress, poor health, and subsequently poor performance.
Rebecca passed all of her physical training, academic, and medical tests, but by the time she had finished all these Gestapo-like “preventive” and “zero tolerance” screenings, gulped down a rabbit-food lunch at the Officers’ Club, and reported to the wing headquarters building at one P.M., she felt as worn out as if she had ran a marathon — and the afternoon sessions were just as demanding.
The first order of business was a worldwide intelligence briefing. The officer giving the Hell Week intelligence briefing was one of the sharpest and — in Rebecca Furness’ opinion at least — one of the most interesting and best-looking guys in the entire wing.
“This briefing is classified secret, not releasable to foreign nationals, sensitive sources and methods involved,” Major Tom Pierce began, “which means you probably saw it first last week in Aviation Week or will see it tomorrow night on the six o’clock news. Anyway, make sure the door back there is locked and let’s get started.” Major Thomas Pierce, the wing intelligence officer, was tall, trim, and good-looking, with close-cropped brown hair, an infectious smile, and round glasses which made his boyish face look even more innocent and inviting to Rebecca. Unfortunately, he was also very married, and apart from her self-imposed ban on dating members of her own wing, married men were definitely off-limits as well. Pierce was an ex-flyer who was bounced out of active-duty flying during the RIFs when the Air Force refused to grant any more medical waivers for his color blindness, so he joined the Reserves as a senior staff officer. He was a major filling a lieutenant colonel’s billet, which made him a real fast-burner in the Air Force, and it showed every time he gave one of these briefings.
As it had been for the past year, problems in Europe took center stage. “The conflict between the Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova over the disputed Dniester Republic seems to have gotten worse over the past few weeks,” Pierce began. He had an Operational Navigational Chart of the area in question, with the disputed region outlined in black — roughly five hundred square miles in southwestern Ukraine and central Moldova. “Now we know how bad it really is, because Russia tried to launch an air attack last night.”