The doctor found Waters sitting behind his desk, wading through a stack of paperwork. “Come on in, Doc, and shut the door.” Fatigue lines etched furrows around his eyes and mouth. A tautness had driven out the vestiges of his once relaxed nature. Every physical sign pointed to a man being driven by his own inner demands.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got the clap too,” Landis said straight-faced.
The wing commander tried to force a grin that would not form. But it was the doctor’s first chip in the wall of stress.
“Is that getting to be a problem?” Waters asked.
“No, not really. It’s just about the only thing I seem to be treating these days, that and The Rats Ass Crude, our local variety of dysentery.”
“Where’s the clap coming from?” A sparkle of amusement was trying to creep into the wing commander’s eyes.
“Not sure yet. Maybe from our imported ladies. There are certainly enough of them, and a few of our more resourceful airmen have found a way to break through the language barrier and expand their services.” Indeed, over one hundred-fifty girls, mostly from Sri Lanka, had been contracted for to provide janitorial and maid services to the Americans. Waters nodded at the thought of the girls and how their small lithe bodies, large brown eyes, masses of dark hair and graceful movements as they went about their work cast an aura of grace and charm. He could understand why his men found them attractive and looked for a way around the chaperons that the contractors had provided to run the compound where the girls and other civilians lived.
“Colonel, all things considered,” Landis went on, “I’m not surprised that they’ve managed to get their things together. At least money hasn’t exchanged hands — yet.” The grin that was more characteristic of Waters finally broke through. “East meets West, so to speak, with a bang. At least I haven’t had any requests to marry. These girls strike me as being so giving and gentle that some of our troops are bound to fall sooner or later. It’s the good old American way of war — marry the locals. But, that’s not what I wanted to talk about, Doc. I had an hallucination or something like one a few minutes ago.” And Waters proceeded to recount his images of walls and bricks as Jeff Landis sat in front of him, hunched over, elbows on his knees, clasping his hands as he listened, not wanting to say a word until the colonel was finished. As Waters talked the doctor’s worry began to recede and Waters was finding the sounding board he needed to break his tensions against. The old Waters, he felt, was pretty much in place by the time he stopped talking. “I’m keeping too much bottled up inside me, aren’t I, Doc?”
“Probably. Human beings need to share each other’s burdens. That’s what those girls are doing, sharing their loneliness and sense of dislocation with someone else. And I don’t think you were hallucinating; your sense of reality is intact and you knew it wasn’t real. Your subconscious was simply sending you a strong visual image. It’s the price a sane man pays when he fights a war.”
The doctor believed he had said enough and guided the conversation away from Waters and onto their current operations. When he left Waters’ office he was reasonably sure that Waters was in control of himself and the wing. Not every commander was a Colonel Morris. Waters was made of sterner stuff.
Stansell finally located Jack on the beach hidden between two low dunes, sitting under a canvas canopy he had rigged, pulling on a beer and staring out to sea.
“You spend a lot of time here?” Stansell asked.
Jack handed him a cold beer from the cooler and motioned him into the shade of the canvas canopy. Stansell accepted it as a peace offering and sat down. “It’s a good place to think. Not too many people swim out here even though the water is crystal clear. Doc Landis says there’s some pollution and I guess the shark net is out there for a reason, but I haven’t seen one yet.” Jack continued to look out to sea, not wanting to tell the man that he felt better when he could concentrate without distractions on the men who had killed his friends.
“Colonel Waters asked me to get with you and work out some tactics,” Stansell said, waiting for the reaction. He was uncomfortable in the heat and crawled out of his Nomex flight suit, sitting in his shorts.
“I’ve been thinking on it, Colonel. The main problem is that damn trawler. It’s giving the Gomers our launch times and their reaction time keeps getting shorter and shorter. Hell, they were scrambled and jumped you before you coasted in. That’s why Colonel Waters canceled tonight’s missions. He figures we’d be jumped too.”
Jack was somewhat mistaken about the significance of the trawler; actually it only provided confirmation to the PSI that the frag order they had received from Mashur was being implemented. Without knowing the time and targets that were going to be attacked in advance, the PSI could not react in time to intercept them.
“It’s no big deal on changing tactics,” Jack went on. “I think your idea of blowing through the Gomers is a good one, but I also think you got it back-asswards.”
Stansell wanted to point out that an F-4 mud-mover couldn’t have a clue about how to employ an F-15, then remembered Waters’ words about listening to the pilot and strangled his reply.
“The MiGs come at us in waves,” Jack said, “and I want to use that against them. Break your Eagles into three flights, about like you did last time. When your first flight of Eagles encounters MiGs, shoot them in the face with missiles just like last time. But instead of blowing on through and leaving the fight, stick around and fight. The F-15 can out-turn any Flogger built, it should be a turkey-shoot for you. Then the second flight of Eagles should blow on through, stuffing any bandit they can in the face. It’s the second flight’s contract to meet the second wave, the third flight’s to meet the third wave.”
“What if there’s a fourth wave?”
“We should be off-target by then and headed home. There’ll be enough F-15s in the area to confuse them and we can defend ourselves at that point.”
Stansell thought it over. His inclination was to change things, make it more complicated, vary the way they would engage the MiGs. It upset him that he couldn’t think of anything better under the circumstances. Like most officers, especially action-oriented ones, he wasn’t an introspective person, rarely bothered to look at himself. Now for the first time in his career he realized someone else’s way of thinking was very probably better than his own… and it had taken a lieutenant to make him face up to it. Well, a lieutenant going on captain, he reminded himself, trying to find some consolation.
No denying it, this Jack Locke had the potential to be a first-rate leader, maybe even a combat commander. “Jack, I’d be glad to be your sponsor if you want to transition to F-15s.”
“Thanks, I appreciate your offer, but I’ll stick with Big Ugly for a while longer. At least until this is over.” And added quickly, “Besides, I’ve got to get Thunder home and married. It’s something Colonel Fairly trusted me to do.” Jack’s voice quieted. “He was my squadron commander and flight lead when Thunder and I got a Libyan MiG. He bought it on our second mission here.”