“So you changed your mind?”
“About the adventure part, no. I still love flying. But the opportunity part, that stuff about the wings of gold and the camaraderie of naval aviators — it didn’t happen, Brick. It’s not happening. Not for me, not for any women aviators. It’s a lie.”
He had never heard B.J. speak so bitterly before. It gushed out in an angry burst. “Nobody said it was going to be easy,” he said.
Her eyes were filling with tears. “Damn it, don’t say that! I never wanted it to be easy. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing. It’s just that …” Her voice trailed off.
“You don’t think it’s worth doing any more?”
“I don’t think I can do it anymore.” She began to lose her composure. “I don’t want be a trailblazer. I don’t want to set a damned example. I just want to go someplace where I’m accepted for what I can do.”
She dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her T-shirt. “Sorry. Fighter pilots aren’t supposed to cry, are they? They’re supposed to be like John Wayne.”
“John Wayne wasn’t a fighter pilot. He was an actor. You, on the other hand, are a real-life fighter pilot. Feel free to cry.”
Maxwell knew what she meant. B.J.’s troubles were the same every minority faced when they broke into a fraternity like naval aviation. Just because you made it through the door didn’t mean they invited you to the table.
“It’s no secret,” she said. “They really want us to fail.”
“Who’s ‘they?’”
“Those who feel threatened by us. The Undra Cheevers and Hozer Millers who cheer whenever one of us bites the dust. It’s like… we have no friends. No support group.”
For a while Maxwell said nothing. He knew what she said was true. Women in military aviation were isolated, without the traditional bonds that male warriors took for granted. He thought about his own nugget years. Yes, he’d had a built-in support group. Not only did he have fellow male aviators with whom he lived and trained, he had mentors. He had his father, salty and opinionated. He had Josh Dunn, his father’s best friend. He had a sequence of mentors — flight instructors, department heads, commanding officers.
For men, mentors were natural and necessary. For women fighter pilots like B.J. Johnson, they were nonexistent.
“Okay, let’s start one,” said Maxwell.
“Start what?”
“A support group. Consider me the founder and president of the official B.J. Johnson support group.”
B.J. looked skeptical. “You’re making fun of me.”
“Not at all. The group has just been founded. There’s only one thing you’re not allowed to do.”
“Uh-oh. What’s that?”
“Quit.”
B.J. turned and gazed out to sea. Off on the eastern horizon lay the low, mottled coastline of Iran. To the north was Iraq. Enemies everywhere.
“What would it prove? They’re still gonna hate me.”
“That’s their problem. It’s your life, not theirs.”
B.J. didn’t respond. She peered around, taking in the panoramic view. “I see why you like it up here.”
“Out here at night, especially in a storm, you feel infinitesimally small. It puts your problems in perspective.”
“Is that how you felt in outer space? Infinitesimally small?”
“Yeah, if you can call a two-hundred-fifty-mile-high orbit ‘outer space.’”
She looked dreamily off into the distance. “I once thought I wanted to do that.”
“You still can. You could be an astronaut, B.J.”
She shook her head. “This is hard enough, just proving that I can fly the Hornet. Then I would have to somehow get into test pilot school, go through the same bullshit again. Proving myself. Then NASA. I can’t be a trailblazer anymore.”
Maxwell felt a shock run through him. He stared at her. “What did you say?”
She looked at him peculiarly. “Trailblazer?”
Maxwell turned his face out to the open sea. His mind was racing back in time. “That’s what she called herself,” he mumbled into the wind.
“She? You mean…”
“Deb.” Maxwell gripped the rail with both hands. “She always called herself a trailblazer.”
“Deb was your wife, wasn’t she?” B.J. said gently. “I heard what happened. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m over that.”
“She was an astronaut too, wasn’t she?”
“Almost. She was training for her first shuttle flight.”
B.J. waited a moment. “Is that why you quit?”
Maxwell didn’t answer right away. He had locked those memories in a dark compartment of his psyche, not to be shared. “It was more complicated than that.”
“. You resigned from the astronaut program.”
“Yeah, I resigned.”
She folded her arms over her chest and faced him. “No disrespect, sir, but doesn’t it seem a little… condradictory, you giving me a pep talk about not quitting?”
The ship was heeling to port. As the Reagan’s course altered to the south, the glare of the afternoon sun spilled over them. Maxwell pulled his sunglasses from the sleeve pocket of his flight suit and put them on. “You’re not me, and this isn’t the space shuttle we’re talking about. You’re already a fighter pilot, and you have to have a better reason for throwing away your career than because the guys don’t like you.”
She sighed and looked out over the rail again. The sun was low over the Saudi coastline. “What was she like? Your wife, I mean.”
“Smart. Good looking. Gutsy.”
“What would she say about what I’m doing now?
He looked at her questioningly. “What are you doing?”
“Being a trailblazer. Like her.”
He nodded. “She’d say don’t quit.”
Outside her room, the late afternoon sun had settled below the rim of the high rise buildings across from the hotel. As she listened to the man’s voice on the other end of the line, she felt a rush of emotion. She was surprised that Chris Tyrwhitt still had the power to rouse her.
“How did you know I was in Bahrain?” said Claire.
“Lucky guess.”
“Are you still trying to get me to Baghdad? Forget it. I’m not coming.”
“You don’t have to. I’m coming to you.”
A silence followed while Claire digested the news. She could hear him breathing on the phone. It sounded eery, as if his voice was being channeled through outer space.
“I’m very busy,” she said finally. “The divorce is still in process and we shouldn’t —”
“We have to talk, Claire. Really. I need to see you.”
“It won’t change anything. Too much has happened.”
“I don’t care what’s happened. I’ll make it up to you. You don’t have to believe me, just give me a chance. Can’t we at least have a drink, maybe dinner together?”
She hesitated. She wished he didn’t have this effect on her. Damn him, he was a masterful charmer, which was why she had fallen for him the first time around. She had learned her lesson. Once with Chris Tyrwhitt was enough, thank you.
But what the hell, he could be good company. He made her laugh, made her feel wanted, made her feel sexy. Which, of course, was the dangerous thing about Chris Tyrwhitt.
Don’t see him, she told herself. You’re finished with Chris Tyrwhitt.
“Okay,” she heard herself saying. “We can meet for a drink.”
Chapter Seventeen
Bahrain
A mini-tornado of dust swirled beneath the CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter as it alighted on the embassy landing pad. The khaki-clad naval officers trotted away from the helo in single file, clutching bags and hanging onto their caps. Each was running in the hunched-over position that fixed-wing pilots always took when they were forced to walk beneath the whop-whopping blades of a rotary-wing aircraft.