Manson hesitated. Maxwell gave him a nudge forward. Manson straightened the collar of his uniform, then trudged back toward the conference room.
The squadron department head meeting continued without any further rancor. Maxwell made notes while he listened to each of the weekly reports. He assigned the upcoming duty watch periods, then thanked the officers for their support.
The meeting was ended. As Maxwell excused himself and left the room, he noticed that each of the officers rose and stood at attention. Even Craze Manson.
Maxwell came into his room and went directly to the laptop on his desk. He clicked the power button, then while he waited for the computer to labor through its boot-up, he slid a Berliner Philharmonic CD — Mussorgky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” — into the disc player.
When he finally got on line, he checked his mail box. It was empty.
No surprise, he thought.
He listened to the swelling symphonic music while he tried to compose an e-mail message. He could still see her face, the tears, the anger and disappointment. Damn you, Sam Maxwell. I love you…
After he had pecked out the message on the notebook keyboard, he re-read the note, then deleted it. He wrote another. And deleted it.
After the third try, he tilted back in the steel chair and stared at the screen.
Dear Claire,
You used to ask why my call sign was ‘Brick.’ Now you know. Describes how my brain works. I let you run away from me without telling you what I most of all needed to say: I WAS WRONG.
It was an unforgiveable, brickheaded mistake, and I’m sorry. It is too much to expect that I would get a second chance. I had that already. But if you should choose to see me again when the Reagan comes to port, I promise I will do better.
I love you.
Sam
He pushed the send button and logged off.
Chapter Nineteen
The Ramp
The blackness.
Spam hated it. She hated night flying in general, and in particular she hated launching and recovering on an aircraft carrier at night. Most of all she despised the inky, vile blackness that clung like a shroud over the Persian Gulf.
It was stupid. Why were they droning around in the dark up here on the CAP station? They called it Combat Air Patrol, but she knew that no one in the region, least of all the Iraqi Air Force, was crazy enough to venture out in this evil blackness.
Only the U.S. Navy. So typically stupid.
“Runner 405,” came the voice of Killer DeLancey, her flight lead. “Check your position. You’re too far abeam.”
“I’m just where I want to be,” she answered. “What’s the problem?”
“Your station is supposed to be a mile abeam. Move it in.”
She felt like telling him to shove it. He could pull that world’s-greatest-fighter-pilot crap with everyone else, but not with her. She didn’t have to put up with it.
She knew why Killer was her flight lead on tonight’s sortie. He was checking on her. He wanted to see how she performed as a wingman. She was being evaluated.
On every sortie for the past week, Spam had found herself assigned to fly with a senior officer. And they never gave her anything meaningful to do. Nothing but these goddamn boring CAP assignments.
Yesterday she’d flown with Craze Manson, who was a jerk. And the day before with Maxwell, the ex-astronaut that DeLancey hated so much. To her surprise, Maxwell seemed like an okay guy, which made her wonder why DeLancey was always bad-mouthing him. Spam reminded herself to check that story out. You never knew when such a thing could be useful.
At least she’d heard no recent talk about a FNAEB. Killer had gotten the message loud and clear. The cocky little bastard had figured out that if he wanted to keep his job, he had best look out for the interests of Lieutenant Spam Parker.
Sleeping with the boss. It always worked. The best career insurance you could have.
“Runner 405, we’re leaving CAP for the marshal.”
“Roger that,” she replied.
It was too early. She had expected that they would remain on the CAP station another ten minutes. The marshal was a stack of holding patterns thirty miles behind the ship where the inbound aircraft positioned themselves for recovery aboard the carrier. Each pilot was supposed to time his turn in the marshal pattern so that he “pushed” — departed the stack — at a precise time that would keep him in sequence with the other jets.
She knew why they were going early. Killer was worried she would have trouble getting set up in the marshal pattern and screw up the approach sequence.
Like last night. She had gotten out of sequence during the push. But it wasn’t her fault, she remembered. It was those dumb shits in CATCC–Carrier Air Traffic Control — who kept issuing totally incomprehensible instructions to her. They had deliberately caused her to arrive late at the marshal pattern, which in turn caused her to push at the wrong time, which had forced a couple of other Hornets to wave off their approaches to the ship. Then they tried to blame it on her —
“You’re ten miles from marshal,” she heard DeLancey say. “Make a left-hand entry and start your timing. Don’t screw this one up.”
Spam felt a burst of anger. How dare he talk like that when everyone could hear? Then she realized that she was hearing him on the back radio, the secondary frequency used for plane-to-plane private communications.
“I know what I’m doing,” she snapped back. “Save the lecture for those idiot CATCC controllers.”
That should shut him up.
In the briefing room before the launch, DeLancey had tried to intimidate her with that male senior-fighter-pilot act. Admonishing her about flying a good pass at the ship, staying in position, getting set up in marshal.
She had shut him up him by mentioning her upcoming interview with the senator from California.
DeLancey had nearly choked. “With who?”
“You know, the woman senator who’s investigating the reports about the Navy mistreating women pilots.”
After that he sulked. He was strangely quiet as they rode the escalator to the flight deck. On the radio he was surly and curt, giving her this unnecessary advice.
The two Hornets passed over the marshal holding fix at twenty-two thousand feet. Killer flashed his lights, signaling that Spam was detached from the two-ship formation.
She entered the holding pattern — and became confused. Was the holding radial two-thirty or three-twenty? What was her push time? How the hell was she supposed to get back to the fix when —
“Runner 405, this is Marshal. Where are you going? Your push time is now.”
“I was getting established in this stupid pattern. What’s the hurry?”
“Roger, 405, turn to a heading of zero-five-zero. Start your descent now.”
Spam was rattled and angry. On the back radio she said, “Damn it, this is your fault. You dropped me off too close to the stack. You’re gonna hear about this!”
I hate that bitch. The thought kept playing like a refrain in DeLancey’s head.
He was descending through 8,000 feet. On the marshal frequency, he could hear the controllers issuing instructions to Spam. She had missed her push time and was out of sequence. And, of course, she was arguing.
She was hopeless, thought Delancey. Spam Parker couldn’t navigate her way out of a parking lot. Yet she had everyone — from the captain of the ship to the air traffic controllers — treating her with kid gloves. No one wanted a war with such a belligerent female.
Including Killer DeLancey.