Woods stood silently, then grudgingly he said, “Sure. What about?”
“About Tony.”
Woods thought perhaps there were some arrangements that had to be made. He had been appointed as the officer in charge of putting together Vialli’s personal effects and tying up whatever needed to be done. “What is it?”
“Would you mind coming to my office, just to talk for a while?”
“What for?”
The priest smiled, then replied, “I just thought you might want to talk about how you’re feeling.”
Woods tried not to show his disgust. If there was one thing he hated, it was people who spent all their time talking about how they were “feeling.” “Why would I want to do that?”
Maloney was taken aback by Woods’s reply. “I just thought you might like to.”
“You some kind of psychologist or something?”
“Not at all. I just thought…”
“It’s kind of obvious how I feel, isn’t it? Some other time, maybe,” he said, walking away. In fact, he thought, it was time for him to do something about how he was feeling.
Woods went briskly up the ladders to the O3 level and straight into the blue tile. He stopped at the Admiral’s wardroom and knocked loudly. He waited five seconds and knocked again. He heard a voice inside, then the door opened quickly. “Yes, sir?” a sailor asked.
“Is the Admiral here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’d like to see him.”
“Is he expecting you, sir?”
“No.”
“Your name, sir?”
“Lieutenant Woods. Sean Woods, VF-103,” he replied.
“Please wait while I inquire, sir,” he said. The door closed quietly in front of him.
Woods stood in the passageway for a short time, but long enough to feel foolish as several sailors passed by. He knew what they thought. He was in trouble.
“The Admiral would like to know if this is an emergency, sir.”
“Yes, it is.”
“The Admiral would like to know if you have exercised your chain of command, sir.”
“No, I haven’t. And I don’t plan on it.”
“One moment, sir.”
The door closed again, and Woods waited outside for another minute. The door opened and the sailor motioned to him. “You may come in, sir. The Admiral will see you.”
“Admiral — “ Woods began before he had even reached the Admiral’s table, the same one he had sat at so recently.
“Hold it right there, Lieutenant,” the Admiral said.
Woods looked around and realized he had barged in on a meeting of the Admiral’s staff. The Chief of Staff was there, the Operations Officer, the Intelligence Officer, and others he didn’t recognize. Nice move, he told himself. But hedidn’t care.
“What’s the emergency?” Admiral Sweat asked Woods.
“It’s about Vialli, sir.”
“We’ve had this discussion. Does your CO know you’re here?”
“No, sir. It’s not the same conversation we had before, sir.”
“You have thirty seconds.”
“I think we should do something about Vialli, sir.”
“Like what? His death didn’t even involve us, Lieutenant. If you recall, he had to lie to his Commanding Officer — a lie which you joined — just to be where he was to get himself killed.”
“We should retaliate, sir,” Woods said, as if he hadn’t heard a thing the Admiral had said.
The Admiral looked surprised. “How? And against whom?”
“Against the people who sent the communiqué, sir.” Woods answered, words gushing out as if he were now free finally to speak his mind. “I think they said it was faxed from Beirut. Pritch even printed out the translation. Didn’t you see it? I’ll bet our intelligence knows who this Sheikh is, and exactly where he came from.” He glanced at the Intelligence Officer on the staff, a small bookish man of about forty who made no sign of agreement or disagreement. “Once we find where they’re hiding, we attack them.”
The Admiral stared at him. “They thought they were killing Israeli citizens,” he said.
“Not too many people would mistake Vialli for an Israeli for long.”
“We don’t take action on our own, Lieutenant. It’s not for us to decide. You know that. It’s up to the politicians.”
“Admiral, couldn’t we at least ask for authorization?” Woods begged.
“No.”
“Couldn’t we tell them we’re here, that we’re available, that we could do it if they wanted us to? Sir?”
“They know we’re here, Lieutenant. The President will take whatever action he deems appropriate. Your time is up.” With that, the Admiral redirected his attention to the document in front of him.
“Couldn’t we at least tell them it’s feasible, and we could do it if they want? Maybe put the idea into their heads?”
“I think not,” the Admiral said as he leaned back and removed his reading glasses. “Look, I know how you feel. I’ve lost a lot of my friends in this business. I know how it pulls at you. I know how you wish you could have done something different, so it never would have happened. Especially in your situation. You could have prevented the whole thing by the exercise of a little leadership,” he said, looking hard at Woods. “You were his superior officer. You could have ordered him not to go. But now you’re going to have to learn to deal with it.” He picked his glasses up again. “Dismissed.”
Woods swiveled and began walking toward the door. Then he stopped and turned back to Admiral Sweat. “How many of the friends you lost were murdered, Admiral?”
Admiral Sweat remained silent, and Woods left quickly.
He opened the door to Ready Room Eight and saw a brief in progress. They hadn’t missed a beat, fitting the memorial service in during the time the ship was leaving port — still in sight of port — and not yet in position to fly. Wouldn’t want to interrupt the flight schedule with something as mundane as a memorial service for one of the Air Wing’s pilots.
Woods had never gotten used to the Navy’s cold approach to death. The first time he had seen someone killed aboard the carrier during a catapult accident, the ship hadn’t even slowed down. The launch went right on and the spare was launched to replace the downed airplane. The memorial service had been a few days later, when it could be held without interfering with the flight schedule. He had been told that if they did it any differently death would loom too large and affect the pilots’ willingness to put themselves at risk. He wasn’t convinced.
He closed the door quietly so he wouldn’t disturb the brief, removed his coffee cup from its hook, filled it, and took his seat at the desk on the other side of the ready room. He began working on the next day’s flight schedule. They were going to operate in the Aegean Sea south of Athens, to a small island, Avgo Nisi. An island reserved for military use, to be shot and bombed. It was inhabited only by very scared mountain goats and sheep.
Bark saw Woods come in. He got up quickly and strode to the back of the room. Bark had the look on his face that Woods had learned to dread.
“Hey, Skipper,” Woods said, trying to be nonchalant.
Bark pulled a chair up until it was touching Woods’s. He moved his face close to Woods’s and spoke in a low intense voice. “Don’t ‘Hey Skipper’ me,” he said, his eyes boring holes in Woods. “I just got a call from Admiral Sweat’s Chief of Staff. Later this afternoon, after I fly, I get to go tell the Admiral how it is one of my loudmouth Lieutenants showed up at his wardroom unannounced, to tell the Admiral that we should launch an attack on somebody, and if not that, to at least notify the Secretary of Defense and Congress, if not the President, that the nuclear aircraft carrier Washington is in fact in the eastern Mediterranean and ready to attack whoever they want us to.” His brown eyes bored into Woods. “That about sum it up?”