“Has Jarvis seen you?”
“No, he hasn’t. The guys you sent to help were competent.”
“Then I’ll explain.” Qazi talked while Sakol chain-smoked. The sunbeam coming through the one window crept up the wall and finally disappeared, leaving the room in growing darkness.
The phone rang. “Captain Grafton.”
“Jake, this is the Admiral. I’m here in Flag Ops with Captain James and Doctor Hartman. Would you come over, please.”
“I’ll be right there, sir.”
Jake gave the message board to Airman Smith to lock away and rooted in his desk drawer for his baseball cap. He needed to be covered to salute the admiral, and aboard ship everyone routinely wore ball caps. He found his and settled it on his thinning hair.
In Flag Ops, the commanding officer of the United States, Captain Laird James, was discussing a mechanical problem in the forward reactor with Admiral Parker when Jake arrived. Laird James was in his late forties and tall and lean, without an ounce of fat. In those few times Jake had dined with him, James had only picked at his food. His hair was shot through with gray and the skin of his face was stretched tightly around a small mouth. He never smiled, or at least he never had in Jake’s presence.
The doctor was looking over the shoulders of several members of the watch team as they worked the displays on the Navy Tactical Data System (NTDS) computer. Jake stopped several steps short of the admiral’s raised padded chair and waited. When Parker nodded toward Jake, he stepped over and saluted. The doctor joined them.
“Doc Hartman wants to ground you,” Cowboy Parker said without preliminaries. “He says that your night vision is unacceptable.”
“Yessir.”
“Why don’t you want to be grounded?”
“Admiral, we’ve got these flight crews stretched as tight as rubber bands. We’re getting all the flying out of them that anyone has a right to expect. We lost one crew last night. And no matter how careful we are, we may lose another. These men all know that. I can’t ask them to keep flying unless I put myself on the flight schedule. It’s that simple.”
“How long would it take to get a new CAG out here from the States,” Parker asked Captain James.
“A couple months, if we’re lucky,” James said gloomily.
Parker shifted in his chair several times, then stood up and stretched.
“What do you think, Doc?”
“Sir, the regulations say …”
“How many times did you check Captain Grafton’s eyes?”
“I didn’t, sir. A first-class corpsman did.”
“So you don’t even know if the corpsman’s result, or diagnosis, is correct?”
“Well …”
“Assuming the corpsman is correct, could this be a temporary condition that might clear up?”
“I suppose anything’s possible, but—”
“He said that maybe nicotine is contributing to the vision loss,” Jake put in quickly. “I got a bottle of vitamin pills to take. And maybe quitting smoking will help.”
Parker looked at the doctor with one eyebrow raised.
“It’s possible nicotine is contributing to the loss,” the doctor said.
“You personally recheck Captain Grafton’s eyes in two weeks,” Parker said, “and let me know the results.”
“Yessir.”
“Can you live with that, Laird?” Captain James had been ordered aboard the United States while she was still under construction, so he knew every frame, every space, almost every bolt and rivet, all ninety-five thousand tons worth. He knew all the systems in the ship better than any other living human. He had no time for incompetents or fools, preferring instead to transfer those officers whom he concluded fell into one or both categories with fitness reports that ensured they were professionally doomed. His department heads scrambled to match his knowledge of their domain and lived in terror of his wrath. Jake doubted that Captain James could lead a horse to water, but as the chief administrator of a fifty-six-hundred-man institution, he was ruthless efficiency incarnate. In short, he was a perfect bastard.
“Yes, sir,” Laird James said sourly. Although Jake was not under his command — indeed, under the new air wing system, James actually needed Jake’s permission to fire the ship’s weapons — still, it was his ship, and if Jake crashed coming aboard, James would be splattered with his share of the blame.
“Thanks, Doctor. And Laird, I’ll talk to you later.” Both the doctor and the CO saluted and left the space.
“Can you still see to fly at night, Jake?”
“Yessir. Not as well as I used to, but well enough. If I couldn’t, I’d be the first to know.”
“I’m banking on that. Just go easy on yourself. Do most of your flying in the daytime. Are you flying tonight?”
“No, sir.”
“How did it go this evening with the helmet?”
“You should have seen them looking at it. They’re thinking. A man or two may quit, but most of ’em will stick like glue since they’ve been offered an out. They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t stubborn as hell; they’d have washed out long ago.”
“Go get a decent night’s sleep.”
“Thanks, Cowboy.” Jake saluted and Parker returned the salute with a smile.
Jarvis was led into the room naked and blindfolded, in handcuffs, and a rope was lashed around his ample middle to hold him to the chair. A lamp had been placed on the table and shone directly in his face. Qazi and Ali stood in the shadows until the guards closed the door behind them. Sakol was not in the room.
“Welcome, Jarvis.” Qazi came forward and sat in the same chair that he had occupied when Sakol was in the room. A portion of his lower legs was in the lamplight, but he knew from careful experimentation that his face was hidden. He crossed his legs and began moving his toe back and forth slightly. He nodded and Ali stepped forward and untied the blindfold. Jarvis screwed up his face in the light and narrowed his eyes to slits.
“We know your little secrets, Jarvis. All of them.”
“Who are you? Where am I?” The voice was soft, hesitant, fearful.
Qazi uncrossed his legs, leaned forward and slapped him soundly. The man in the chair began to cry.
“All your little secrets, Jarvis. Each and every one of them.” Qazi slapped him again.
“Please …” Another slap.
“Get a grip on yourself, Jarvis, or this will go on all night.”
Sniff. Sob. Sniff.
“You are here to help us, Jarvis, and you shall. If you do your work diligently and well, you may live to return to your wife in Texas and your Tuesday evening meetings with the woman who supplies you with little boys. If you fail us, well … I need not go into that.”
Jarvis was at least sixty, with several long strands of brown hair which he normally combed over his bald pate but which now hung at odd angles and made him look pathetic. His jowls quivered when he breathed.
“You won’t tell my wife about … Will you?”
Qazi slapped him again. “You fool. Your wife is the least of your problems.” Wrong response, he thought. He changed tactics instantly. “You will do as we say, or indeed, we will tell your wife, we will send her pictures of you and several of your little friends, then we will pass the photographs to several newspapers. Every man, woman, and child in Texas shall know of your perversions and your wife’s shame. Do you understand me?”
Jarvis blinked continuously and his jowls quaked as he nodded his head.