Woods tossed his black government-issue ballpoint pen down. He answered in a voice equally intense. “I was pissed, Skipper. Everybody is taking this too lightly…”
“Wrong!” Bark exploded, drawing looks from everyone in the ready room. He lowered his voice again. “You have no idea what anyone is doing! You’ve got a chip on your shoulder. We’re all pissed. We all would love nothing better than to hit back. But you know how these things go. The people who commit these acts are usually killed. Then it becomes real sticky. If the politicos want to go after the bad guys, they have two choices. To use the military—”
“We never go after the bad guys, Skipper! We just tool around the Med boring holes in the sky and worrying about our next port call! We never hit terrorists. Even when we know who they are, and where they are! We might send a Tomahawk somewhere, but the most powerful country in the world just whines about it!”
“You can’t just go after a terr—”
“Why not?” Woods argued, energized by the chance to talk about it. “Why can’t we go after them? It’s not like we don’t know who they are. They sent a communiqué to the press, saying how happy they are that they got to kill an American in their attack! It was a big bonus for them. We should take them at their word and make them pay for it.”
“We can’t just take revenge against them.”
“I’m not talking about taking revenge, Skipper. We have the biggest military in the world and we let these two-bit terrorists murder us or hold us hostage, and we sit around and wring our hands wondering what to do. Well, I know what to do. We know who they are and where they live. We ought to go knock the shit out of them. And we have the ability to do it right here on this ship.”
“It doesn’t work that way. I’m sure if the government wants to go after the terrorists, they’ll send the CIA after them. There are a lot of things that happen that you and I never hear about. We need to leave it to—”
“The CIA? The CIA? You’ve got to be kidding me, Skipper,” Woods said, barely holding back a smirk. “Those guys? Send some guy in with a handgun to get some terrorist mastermind? He wouldn’t have a chance. We’ve got to hit them, and hit them hard. So they know it’ll cost them if they attack Americans.”
“They weren’t attacking Americans, Trey,” Bark replied. “They had no way of knowing there was an American on that bus. They thought—”
“Come on, Skipper! They had to know he was an American! How do we know they weren’t there because of him?”
Bark stood up quickly. “That’s it, Trey. I’ve had enough. I came here to talk to you about going to the Admiral without my knowledge. That reflects poorly on the squadron.” His voice was loud enough for everyone in the ready room to hear now. “I was prepared to write that off as a lapse in judgment. But I think your head is full of bad judgment right now.” He pointed to Woods’s chest. “You’re grounded. From right now until when I say, you’re off the flight schedule. You’re the SDO for life until I say so. You got that?”
Woods stood up, looking at his Commanding Officer in stunned disbelief. He didn’t know what to say.
“Easy!” Bark yelled to the front of the ready room. “You’re relieved as SDO. Woods will take your place. Write yourself into the flight schedule.”
Easy looked at Bark with big eyes. Lieutenant Junior Grade Craig Easley was a junior RIO in the squadron. It was his first cruise. He had never seen a Commanding Officer on the warpath before. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly.
Bark turned from Woods and strode quickly to the front of the ready room. He picked up the papers on his seat and moved toward the door.
Woods yelled from the back of the room, “You can’t do this!”
Bark stopped where he was and turned, saying softly but clearly, “You may think you’re immune from Captain’s mast or court-martial. You’re not. You’re already over the line. Don’t push it,” he said as he walked out.
Woods moved slowly to the SDO’s desk and sat in the chair recently vacated by Easy. He slid down until his head rested against the back of the chair, staring at the cables coursing through the overhead.
The phone on the desk rang. Woods let it ring. After six rings he reluctantly leaned forward and picked it up. “Ready Room Eight, Lieutenant Woods speaking, sir.”
“This is Captain Clark. Chief of Staff. Is your Commanding Officer there, Lieutenant,” he asked, saying “lieutenant” as if it made him sick.
“No, sir,” Woods replied with no attempt at being helpful.
“Would you please find him, Lieutenant, and inform him that his appearance before the Admiral has been moved up. He will now be here at 1300. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir. Crystal clear, sir — 1300, sir. I’ll tell him, sir,” Woods said sarcastically, gripping the phone hard. The phone line went dead. Woods slammed down the phone, picked up a ballpoint lying on the desk, and made a note of the call on a pad of white paper.
“I am impressed,” said Lieutenant Big McMack, who had been sitting in the chair closest to the SDO with his feet up on the safe. He hadn’t moved since Woods got there. Woods hadn’t even noticed him. “I can’t remember when I’ve seen a junior officer anger so many senior officers. Nice work, Trey.”
Woods looked at Big with contempt. “Up yours, Big. I’m not ready for any of your sarcastic shit right now.”
“Now going after friends and peers, soon to be ridiculing strangers, women, and children.”
“Did I ask for your commentary?” Woods said.
“No.”
“Then keep it to yourself.”
“Can’t. It’s like poetry. It just flows. The real tragedy for the rest of the world is that I don’t have sycophants following me around writing down every word to pass my wisdom and humor to succeeding generations.”
Woods gave half a smile and a begrudging snort. Then he looked at Big. “What the hell is a sycophant?”
“Sorry. No clues. You only learn new words by looking them up. If I told you, you wouldn’t remember and then the next time I used the word brilliantly, you wouldn’t understand it then either, again missing the moment.”
“You an English major or something?”
“We’ve been together so long, and still you don’t know me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sorry. Another allusion. No I wasn’t an English major, Trey. I am one of those rare species — a drama major, now flying for the greater good in the world’s best fighters.”
“Drama?” Woods said incredulously. “Drama?”
“That’s right. Thespian. Actor extraordinaire. Writer of dramatic works, performer of the Bard, wizard of special effects on the stage.”
“How did you end up here?”
“I went to college on an NROTC scholarship. That which all you Canoe U grads wish you had done in retrospect.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because we went to accredited colleges that had numerous women and real football and basketball. And we only had to play Navy one day a week, and we could major in things like drama.”
“I thought you had to be a hard science major.”
“Nope. Most do, but there’s room for guys like me, with talent in so many areas. As long as we take physics, math, and the other extraneous crap that allows the Navy brass to think we’re truly just misguided science majors, we can still get a full scholarship and graduate with the rest of you pinheads, only senior to you in lineal numbers, because they throw us all into a pool, distinguished only by grade average. And our grades are always better than you chumps at the boat school.”