“Devo flew a couple of really ugly passes this afternoon. Boltered once, got a taxi-to-the-one wire next time.”
“He’s been down a while with a cold. Maybe he shouldn’t be flying yet.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t.” Pearly hesitated, glancing around. “This is between us, okay?”
“Sure.” Maxwell was sure he knew what was coming.
“When I debriefed him, I thought I… I smelled something.”
“Like…?”
“Like booze.”
Maxwell kept his expression blank. He was right. “Are you sure. Did you ask him?”
Pearly looked uncomfortable. “No. I guess… you know, he’s the XO, and it’s not my place. Most of us think Devo’s a good guy, and I didn’t want to go to the skipper about it. And, anyway, what if I was wrong? That’s why I’m telling you.”
“You did the right thing, Pearly. I’ll take care of it. You can trust me on it.”
“Yes, sir, that’s what I thought.”
“Bullshit,” Davis said.
It was exactly the response Maxwell expected. “Pearly wasn’t making it up.”
They were standing in the passageway outside the wardroom. Davis waited while a couple of sailors walked past. “He was mistaken. He was probably sniffing the Vicks Nite-All stuff I take to sleep in the afternoon.”
“You know you can’t self-medicate when you’re flying off the boat.”
“What are you, my goddamn counselor or something?”
Maxwell knew Devo would react like this. Even if it were true, he wouldn’t admit it. And for all he knew, Devo was telling the truth. Maybe he did have sleeping problems.
“No, I’m your friend. You told me you were going to stay grounded for a while. No flying while you got over —”
“DeLancey hit on me. In front of half a dozen JOs. He wanted to know why the hell I wasn’t scheduled to fly in the exercise tomorrow. As much as accused me of being a pussy.”
“You should have told him you were sick. Knuckles would back you up.”
Davis shook his head. “If I’m gonna take over command of this squadron, I gotta be in the thick of it, like everybody else.”
“You scared the hell out of the LSO today. You shouldn’t be back flying yet. Look, I’m the Ops officer, and I make the schedule. Let me worry about DeLancey.”
Davis’s eyes looked wet and red. Maxwell worried for a moment that he might break down and cry. Devo was a basket case.
Finally Davis heaved a sigh. “Okay. I’ll tell ‘em I’ve got the trots or something. No flying. What’s Delancey gonna do?”
“I don’t know. I’ll take care of it.”
At the moment, he had no idea how he would take care of it. But his first priority was to keep Davis out of an F/A-18 cockpit. Then maybe he could talk him into taking leave, going somewhere to get his head straightened out. Then he would worry about DeLancey.
With his receding hairline and prominent forehead, Spook Morse, the Air Wing intelligence officer, looked like Ichabod Crane. “That’s correct, gentlemen,” he said. “The Joint Task Force Commander has ordered all patrolling of the southern No Fly Zone to be restricted to the 32nd parallel instead of the 33rd.”
The pilots in the briefing room were incredulous. “That doesn’t make sense,” said a Prowler pilot. “Why the hell would the battle group be pulling back now?”
“That’s sixty miles,” said Killer Delancey. “Why are we cutting them that much slack?”
Morse shrugged. “JTF wants to back off and let the tension subside after the… uh, shoot-down the other day.”
A triumphant look flashed over DeLancey’s face. “So they confirmed it?”
“Yes, sir. Your fourth kill. Satellite imagery and Rivet Joint both confirm that a MiG-29 was destroyed fifteen miles inside the NFZ.”
“Any sign of a response from the Iraqis?”
Morse took his time. Like all intelligence officers, he considered himself God’s appointed custodian of need-to-know information. He figured that pilots really only needed to know just enough to complete their narrowly focused little missions. The strategic and vital information — The Big Picture — was the exclusive property of intelligence specialists like himself.
After a sufficient pause he said, “We’ve obtained some… ah, evidence from certain… assets… inside the country that the Iraqis might be gathering a supply of anti-shipping missiles. Probably from North Korea, transporting them overland through Iran.”
“Assets?” asked Craze Manson. “Do we still have inspection teams in Iraq?”
“No.” Spook enjoyed feeding the little morsels to the pilots like scraps to a terrier. “Saddam evicted all the United Nations weapons inspectors. But it would be safe to assume, of course, that we still have… ah, sources.”
“And just what do your sources say happened to the second MiG?” asked DeLancey.
“Possibly destroyed. AWACS lost him before he got back to Al-Taqqadum. They think he might have run out of fuel.”
DeLancey pointedly gazed across the room at Maxwell. “Somebody should have shot the sonofabitch before he ran out of fuel.”
Maxwell sat with his arms folded, ignoring DeLancey. For an awkward few seconds, no one spoke.
Morse cleared his throat and broke the silence. “Here’s the good news. The Reagan is scheduled to sail into the southern gulf next week. We’ll be conducting a coordinated strike exercise against the Saudi base at Al-Kharj.”
“Exercise? What about port call?” asked Lieutenant Bud Spencer.
Spook consulted his fist full of index cards. Now he could really tantalize them. The Reagan had been at sea for nearly a month without an in-port liberty period. “Port call? Well, let’s see. Oh, yeah, here it is. A week from tomorrow. The Reagan will be making a port call in —” he paused, dragging out the suspense as long he could — “Dubai.”
The cheering reverberated off the bulkheads. It was so loud it could be heard up and down the passageway, all the way to the O-3 level. Dubai was regarded as the best liberty port in the Persian Gulf.
“Hot damn! Dubai!”
“Hide your daughters, Dubai, here come the Roadrunners.”
“BAGs and GAGs! We’re on our way, girls.”
BAGs was shorthand for British Air Girls. GAGs meant Gulf Air Girls. The hotels and bars and swimming pools of Dubai were renowned for their contingent of lithesome airline flight attendants.
“We already have a suite booked in the Hilton…”
“Party till we puke….”
“Met this girl from New Zealand — loved to do it in the Jacuzzi…”
Spook Morse sighed and put away his index cards. The intel briefing was effectively ended. He had been around pilots long enough to know that not one of the shallow-minded Neanderthals had the slightest interest in Iraq or the No Fly Zone or the geopolitics of Southwest Asia.
It would soon be party time.
“Hi, guys,” said the visitor, poking his head into the ready room. “Just introducing myself. I’m Dave Harvey. New shooter, just out of catapult school. Wanted to get to know the pilots in the air wing.”
A few Roadrunners looked up from their ready room activities. The visitor was tall and skinny, about six-two, with shiny gold oak leaves on his collar indicating that he was a newly minted lieutenant commander. He had a long neck with an Adam’s apple that bobbed like a counterweight.
“What’s your call sign?” asked Leroi Jones, looking up from his current task, which happened to be watching Oprah on the ready room television monitor.