But he wasn’t proud anymore. He was scared. Officers began to stir. Nobody wanted to even touch the subject, or risk being the focus of some investigation.
Bark stood up and crossed to the other side of the ready room from the CAG. He looked at the squadron. “Any of you have anything to say?” he asked, sweeping his eyes over them. “Who was on the flight schedule yesterday?” he asked.
Woods thought Bark’s gaze rested a little longer on him than it did on the other officers.
“CAG,” Bark said, “when was this supposed to have happened?”
“They didn’t give a time. Sometime yesterday, during the air battles.”
“But the reports I’ve read said there were several battles, going on most of the day.”
“That’s right. We don’t know the actual time.”
Bark smiled. “Well, are they saying there were Jolly Roger Tomcats there all the time?”
The other officers smiled, realizing the ridiculousness of such a statement.
“I don’t think so,” CAG said. “Sounds like one section to me.”
Bark rubbed his chin, his brown eyes intense and thoughtful. “They say these Tomcats shot down ‘several’ MiGs?”
“That’s right.”
“How many?”
“Between four and eight.”
Bark whistled. “That’s pretty good work. And with missiles?”
“That’s right,” CAG confirmed.
“If they shot down four to eight MiGs, there should be four to eight missiles missing. Right?”
CAG thought for a second. “Right.”
“Let’s inventory the missiles.”
“Great idea,” CAG said. “Do it.”
“Yes, sir, sure will,” Bark replied.
CAG turned his gaze back toward the aircrews. “But I want to hear from the officers in your squadron. I want to hear from them that they weren’t there.”
“Sir, you asked them if they had anything to say, and they didn’t.”
CAG paced in front of the squadron. “How could the Syrians have been so wrong about seeing F-14s?”
Bark smiled. “I’d like to meet the MiG pilot that can tell the difference between an F-14 and an F-15 in the heat of the battle. Both have two tails, two engines, nice radome shaped noses, basically the same color unless you see them together — I have trouble sometimes when we fight F-15s. Easy mistake. Look at World War II — U.S. pilots shot at American planes thinking they were Japanese. Happens all the time.”
“But why would they say the planes had the skull and bones on the tail?”
“Because we’re the most famous Navy fighter squadron in the world!” Bark replied.
“Ooorah,” one officer said loudly, endorsing the accolade.
Bark went on, “We’ve been in movies, commercials, you name it. Nearly every book you see about F-14s has our plane on the cover. Every model made of the F-14, just about, has our paint scheme on it. It’s everywhere. It’s probably the only one they know about. Hell, CAG, that’s why VF-103 changed its name to the Jolly Rogers when the Navy decommissioned VF-84. We didn’t want to see that great tradition die, so we became the Jolly Rogers.”
CAG hesitated, his confidence in his information faltering. “What about the radar? They detected the F-14 radar.”
“I’ll bet they had the F-18 radar too, and our E-2C,” Bark replied. “It’s a powerful radar. Those electrons keep going — I’ll bet you could pick them up on the moon.” His eyes searched the room. “Who’s our NATOPS RIO? Wink?” Wink raised his hand. “How far you figure an F-14 radar could be picked up by ESM? More than a hundred miles?”
Wink nodded. “Way over two hundred miles. Probably could detect it on the moon. Literally.”
“They probably were being bombarded by F-14 electrons. No news there. We were flying all day, and radiating the entire time. No reason not to. We didn’t even know about the air battle. This sounds like sour grapes to me. They know we were in port the day before. They’re probably just trying to make us look bad. To tie us in. Trying to throw blame around for their rout. As if the Israelis need our help.”
Maybe there was an explanation, CAG decided. He surveyed the room slowly, trying to find something that seemed out of place in the demeanor of the officers. “Well,” he said to Bark, “I guess we’ll know for sure if we’ve got a problem when that missile inventory is completed.”
“Yes, sir, we sure will.”
“I want CAG Ops to do the inventory.”
“Yes, sir, no problem,” Bark said.
CAG hesitated and then made his way out of the room. The officers breathed easier.
25
Woods sat at one of the tables in the dirty-shirt wardroom with his squadron mates.
“What do you think?” asked Easy, holding the lasagne on his fork in mid-air, his elbows resting on the table. “We now have evidence CAG has lost his mind. Do we do the Caine Mutiny thing and have him removed, or what?” he said, smiling.
“How could he buy what the Syrians say?” asked Big. “Have they ever said anything that was true?”
“You think he really bought it?” Sedge asked.
“Did you see his face?” Big asked. “He looked like he was going to kill somebody. All because the Syrians claimed to have picked up an F-14 radar.”
“He was really intense,” Easy said. “I thought he was gonna explode.”
“Depends on that inventory, I guess,” Terry Blankenship, the Machine, said in his usual mechanical way. “Like they’re going to find a bunch of missiles missing,” he added. He glanced at Gunner Bailey, who was sitting quietly at the end of the table. “Gunner, you’d better hope to hell your brain-surgeon ordies haven’t lost seven or eight missiles on this cruise.”
Gunner Bailey drank slowly from his glass of red bug juice, then put it down. “We inventory all the time,” he said. “There aren’t any missiles missing. Could have told him that,” he added. He took another sip from his glass and looked knowingly at Woods, who found himself breathing easily again for the first time in an hour.
Sami held the paper in his hands and read it quickly. The Arabic flowed. It was printed neatly in the newspaper and was easy to read even though his was a fax copy. The others in the room waited for him to finish. When he finally looked up, Kinkaid spoke first. “Well?”
“We’re in deep shit—”
“Yeah? Maybe he is. What does it say?”
“Well, first, it’s in Al-Quds al-Arabi. That’s the most authoritative Arabic paper in Europe. Published in London. They printed the entire communiqué. Very nicely done.”
“What the hell does it say?” Kinkaid yelled impatiently.
“The title is: ‘Declaration of War’ — actually Jihad — ‘of the World Islamic Guardians against the Jews and the Crusaders.’ ” He read, then continued. “According to the newspaper it was faxed to them under the signature of Sheikh al-Jabal. The Arabic is incredible. Poetic… He starts off with a bunch of stuff from the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad… then he says: ‘Since God laid down the Arabic Peninsula and created the Arabs for the land east of Europe, no calamity has befallen this land like the Crusades, which the Europeans brought here a thousand years ago and continue to this day, now carried on with their puppets, the Jews. The Crusader-Jewish alliance has ruined the verdure of the land, eating its fruits and destroying its people; this when the nations contend against the Muslims like diners around a table of food.’ “ Sami motioned with his hand, indicating he was skipping the totally unnecessary. “ ‘The facts are known to all… ’ Then he lists the three main grievances: ‘First, The United States is occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of its territories, plundering its riches, overwhelming its rulers, humiliating its people, threatening its neighbors and using bases as a spearhead to fight against the neighboring Islamic peoples. The true nature of this occupation is now made clear by the continuing American aggression against the peoples of Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.