“The very one.”
Woods felt goose bumps on his arms. “What would I do?”
“You can cover me. We are expecting the Syrians to come after us this time. We will be baiting them. Just a little.”
“They’re going to be sending fighters after you?”
“Yes.”
“What could I do?”
“Keep them off me. I have to deliver a laser-guided bomb to our friend.”
“Why don’t you want your own fighters doing escort?”
“I do. They will be there. You can fly high cover, above most of the AAA and low SAMs.”
Woods tried to keep his voice from shaking. “I’d never get permission.”
Woods barely heard Chermak’s rueful laugh. “I didn’t expect you to ask.”
Woods’s mind was spinning. “Are you serious?”
“Very.”
“I couldn’t be of much help. I can’t fire my missiles. Can’t very well go back to the ship without them.”
“There may be a way around that too.”
“Are you nuts?” Big asked, quickly glancing around for other squadron officers. “This is the kind of thing that they don’t think is funny. We’ll be making big rocks into little rocks.”
“What’s up?” Pritch asked, strolling up to the two Naval officers she enjoyed being with the most. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said to Big.
Big ignored her and, returning his focus to Woods, said, “You talk to Wink yet?”
“No. I wanted to talk to you. If you’re in, we can talk to Wink and Sedge.”
Big shook his head thoughtfully. Pritch looked at them in frustration. “We’d never pull it off,” Big said finally.
“It’ll work. There’s not that much to plan. We just have to go along with them. Making it look like a regular hop from the ship will be the tricky part, but it will work. I know it will.”
“Maybe you’re not the best person to decide that.”
“Let’s find Wink and Sedge. I’ll go over the whole thing. Then we’ll decide.”
Big spoke to Pritch. “Let’s go.”
They moved toward the back of the room where most of the squadron was congregated, waiting to return to the ship.
“Go over what whole thing?” Pritch said to their backs.
20
Big took off his white uniform and hung it in his closet. “We’re sticking our heads into a noose. They don’t need our help. If we don’t show up it won’t make any difference at all.”
“Except we already said we would.”
“I doubt they’d care,” Big said, sitting down heavily in his stateroom chair.
“You having second thoughts?”
“I’m way past that,” Big said. “I think these are fifth or sixth thoughts. I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I shouldn’t have done, some of them even illegal.” He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. “I’ve broken Navy regulations on occasion, when it suited me. I’ve even worn my belt upside down, contrary to Uniform Regulations. My being left-handed and all, it seemed like I should be able to wear it as a normal left-handed person would, not some arbitrarily drawn regulation.” He opened his eyes and studied Woods’s face. “But I’ve never done anything that qualifies as a felony before.”
Woods stopped undressing and turned to Big. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I’m not going to talk you into anything. You’d hold it against me.”
“Of course I would. I’ll hold it against you even if you don’t talk me into it,” Big replied. “Are we doing the right thing here, Trey?”
Woods closed his closet door too hard. “Tell me what right is, Big. Is it right that some self-appointed Sheikh Assassin or whoever else it will be next time, can shoot one of our squadron mates and get away with it? Is that right?”
“That’s a stupid question. I’m asking about us, not them. What’s right for us isn’t decided by what they do. It may make it harder, but it doesn’t determine it.”
“They don’t care about anybody! Human life is not valuable to them, except maybe for the chumps who are at the head of their organization. I don’t see them doing the attacks themselves. Human life is valuable to me though. A lot. That’s my point.”
“I don’t know, Trey,” Big said. He drummed his fingers on his fold-down desk. “What do you think Father Maloney would say about it?”
Woods was shocked. “Since when do you care what he thinks about anything? Every time he sits down by us you get up and leave like he has leprosy.”
“I get uncomfortable talking about religion.” He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I guess I don’t like being put on the spot. I don’t know what I think. It shows fast.” He rubbed his mouth. “You ever think about dying?”
Woods’s face showed his amazement. “What’s gotten into you? Mr. Cavalier, Mr. Cynic, suddenly you want to know the meaning of life?”
“I don’t know, Trey. Thinking about tomorrow, it just occurred to me.”
Woods sat down. “Sure, I’ve thought about it. The way I see it, I’m invincible until God wants me to die, then there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Big reflected. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. My father used to say it. I always thought it sounded clever… until he died. Then it wasn’t funny anymore.” His voice trailed off. “You gonna go with me or not?”
Big sighed resignedly. “You’d probably get lost, or screw something up. I’ll have to be there to watch out for you.”
Woods relaxed. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. We may both end up in Leavenworth.”
“Bring it on. Let me testify in a court-martial about how no one cared about Vialli. If we end up in Leavenworth, it’ll be worth it.”
“I hope you’re right,” Big said, climbing onto his rack for a short night’s sleep. “Somebody’s got to take care of these terrorists. I guess it’s time somebody took a risk to do it. It’s like Humphrey Bogart said in The Maltese Falcon,” Big added. He did a Bogart voice: ‘You’ve got do something about it. If you don’t, it’s bad for business, bad all around.’ “
Woods thought he heard a noise and turned toward the stateroom door. He heard it again. It was a soft but determined knock. He opened the door a crack and Wink pushed it the rest of the way open and let himself into the room.
“Wink. What’s up?” Woods asked.
“We can’t do this,” Wink said nervously. He looked around the room to make sure they were alone. He acknowledged Big sitting on his rack.
“Do what?”
“Cut the crap.” Wink sat down in Woods’s desk chair and rubbed his hands back and forth on the tops of his legs like a schoolboy in the principal’s office. “We’ll never pull it off.”
“Yes we will,” Woods countered.
“Too much can go wrong—”
“No doubt about it. But we will pull it off, Wink. You know we can do it.”
“It’s not the escort part of it that worries me.” He was clearly struggling. “I don’t want to go to prison, Trey, not for some impulsive, feel-good revenge deal.”
“We won’t go to prison!”
“We’ll never pull it off!” Wink exclaimed, louder than he intended.
“Yes, we will. What’s gotten you going?” Woods asked. “You said you were in—”
“I was. I’ve been lying in my rack staring at the overhead. I can’t even swallow. Do you realize the implications if we get busted?”
“Of course I do. But we won’t.”
“Yeah. Right. Tiger has to do the fake symbols on the radar—”
“You talk to him?”