“I thought I’d better talk to my boss first, sir.”
“So you didn’t level with me. I’ve been an ambassador on and off for over twenty years. I was talking to presidents about affairs of state when you were a lieutenant filling out fitness reports on drunken sailors. I was helping prevent World War III when our new president was smoking pot without inhaling.”
Owen Lancaster got out of his chair and walked around the desk. He leaned against the mantel of the fireplace, then half-turned so he could see Jake.
“I’ll tell you right now that the United States has no business taking sides in the Russians’ political battles. We have no money to offer them. We have no bottled cure for all the problems they face. All our crowd knows how to do is jack the interest rate up or down a half a point and hire another ten thousand bureaucrats to manage the social problem de jure. These people are going to have to solve their own problems.”
When Jake said nothing, Lancaster came over and dropped into the adjacent chair. “The president wants me personally to brief Yeltsin on the goings on at the Petrovsk military base. I am to give him two options. A — he may order an air strike on the missiles and warheads still in the hangars at Petrovsk. The weapons must be destroyed by noon tomorrow, or B — the United States will do the job for him. His choice.”
“I doubt if he will accept either option,” Jake murmured.
“That is also my opinion. He doesn’t have enough clout with the Russian military to enforce an order telling them to blow up their own base, and it would be political suicide to allow American war-planes to fly across Russian territory to make an attack on a Russian military installation. The president and national security adviser see this the same way. So…if he refuses both options, I am to give him a third, a compromise. He will supply two airplanes and weapons and two of your test pilots will fly to Petrovsk and destroy the base.”
“I see.”
“I wish you did, Admiral.” Owen Lancaster levered himself from the chair and went to the window. With his back to Jake he said, “The Russians are a proud people. We are going to force Yeltsin into doing something that will probably sink him politically. To get rid of what? — a hundred or so nuclear warheads? — we are going to run a serious risk of putting a military dictatorship into the Kremlin. A hundred weapons — a drop in the bucket. Our president made this decision in less than an hour after talking with only Hayden Land and the national security adviser, who six months ago was preaching the big ideas to pimple-faced fraternity boys at a college in New England, kids who are still carrying their first condom in their wallets.”
“Yeltsin is no liberal Little Rock Democrat, sir. He’s half dictator. Any government Russia gets will be a dictatorship to some degree.”
“Admiral, I quit listening to that isolationist apologia when my hair started falling out. The Russians have gone from tyrant to tyrant since the dawn of time. They like tyrants — someone to do the thinking for them. But Yeltsin…he’s trying to force these isolated wood hicks into the world economy, the world culture. Boris Yeltsin may be Russia’s last hope. And ours.”
Lancaster headed for the door. As he went he muttered, “You knot-heads don’t seem to understand that you can’t go off half-cocked when the whole goddamn planet is at risk.”
18
It was three in the afternoon when Lancaster informed Jake by telephone of Yeltsin’s decision. “He’ll make two Su-25s available at the Lipetsk air base.”
“Where is Lipetsk?”
“About two hundred miles south. There will be a helicopter waiting for your pilots in two hours at Domodedovo. It will take them there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Admiral…I don’t know what story he is telling the air force.”
“Uh, are you trying to say we’re on our own?”
“Precisely.”
Jake hung up the telephone and looked around at his little staff. “Okay, gang. Here’s the plan. Rita and I will catch a chopper in two hours at Domodedovo that will take us to a Russian air base. They’ll make two Su-25 Frogfoots available. Rita and I will bomb the base at Petrovsk. Any questions?”
“Uh, CAG,” Toad began, glanced at Rita and cleared his throat. “Why Rita?”
Jake was genuinely surprised. Toad was not in the habit of questioning Jake’s decisions. “Well, she flew F/A-I8s for several years before she went to test pilot school. Goober Groelke has a helo background, and Miles”—the third test pilot—“came out of antisubmarine warfare. This job is dropping bombs and getting hits the first time around.”
“Oh.”
Jake looked expectantly at Toad.
“Just curious, that’s all.”
Rita was looking at her husband through narrowed eyes. A domestic matter, Jake decided, and forgot about it.
“Frogfoots. Those will be good planes for this job,” Groelke said.
“Should be,” Jake acknowledged. “We’ll find out.” He knew the Frogfoot from its reputation. A Russian close-air support and anti-armor weapon, the plane was a close copy of the Northrop A-9, which had lost the U.S. Air Force’s competition for a tank killer when flying against the A-10 Warthog. The Soviets used Frogfoots in Afghanistan and supposedly they were good airplanes.
“Brunhilde Tarkington,” Toad said to Rita when they were alone.
“What?”
“A name for the kid. If it’s a girl.”
“Don’t you ever, ever do that to me again, Toad. I don’t question your professional assignments. Don’t you question mine.”
“I’m not pregnant. Nor am I ever likely to be.”
“And don’t get cute with me, Bub!”
“I just love it when you talk dirty.”
She gave him her coldest stare. “I wear the uniform, I got the training, I take the pay — I will fly the missions when they come.”
“Brunhilde.”
“Not on your life.”
He watched her walk away with her shoulders slightly hunched, her head down, as if she were walking into a strong wind.
This fatherhood bit…it was awful sudden. Of course, when you’re married and do all the conjugal things, parenthood is one of the risks. Or rewards. Whichever. Still, it would have been nice to have a few years to think about it before it became a fact. Why didn’t she say, Maybe we ought to think about being parents? Why didn’t she say that?
Perhaps, he thought, she assumed I was thinking about it all along. Women are big assumers. The biggest assumption of all is the one they routinely make, that men think just like they do. And they are tortured by disappointment when it is proven for the umpteenth jillion time that men don’t.
Because he hadn’t been thinking about it. In fact, the possibility had never once crossed his mind. Kids are little people who wail in supermarkets, get beaned by baseballs at Little League, and ride in the back end of station wagons making faces at people in other cars. Other people have them. Usually other older people. The fact that he had been a kid once upon a time had never inspired him to want one of his very own or to even contemplate the prospect.
Of course he knew the theory that sex causes kids, but he had assumed Rita was taking care of everything. After all, she never got pregnant before.
Surely Rita would not have made a decision like that on her own. Would she?
Maybe there had been an accident. Toad Tarkington, professional naval flight officer, knew a great deal about accidents. A little dollop of carelessness could cause you to crash, burn and die. Sometimes even without the carelessness you crashed, burned and died — at a level too deep for philosophers, luck was involved. Life is a grand game of chance. This kid must have been an accident, he decided. Not that it mattered.