Davis nodded. “Never saw the old man so worked up. I hope you guys have a a hell of a good story for what happened out there.”
“Sit down,” said Admiral Mellon. It was an order, not an invitation.
Maxwell, DeLancey, and their two wingmen, Leroi Jones and Hozer Miller, all took seats at a conference table. Each was still wearing his torso harness, carrying his helmet and navigation bag. Their flight suits were damp, stained with sweat.
CVIC–Carrier Intelligence Center — was a spacious room on the second deck. It had a projection screen on one bulkhead, charts of the Persian Gulf and Iraq on another, and the long table in the middle.
Admiral Mellon was already seated. Beside him sat Red Boyce, the Air Wing Commander, gnawing on an unlit cigar. Sitting in a corner chair was a civilian, a sandy-haired man in his thirties. He was wearing Navy khakis without insignia.
The admiral didn’t waste time. “What the hell went on out there, Killer?”
“The MiG we were vectored to intercept turned nose hot on us, Admiral,” said DeLancey. “The guy made an aggressive turn into me and my wingman. He was entering the NFZ. I didn’t have any choice except to shoot.”
Mellon’s eyes narrowed. He turned to Hozer Miller, DeLancey’s wingman. “Let’s hear it from you, Lieutenant.”
Miller pulled on his ear lobe and glanced at DeLancey. DeLancey nodded. “Uh, just like the skipper said, sir. It was definitely hostile intent. The MiG went nose hot on us.”
“Anybody get a radar tape of the engagement?”
“My tape was set on the HUD,” said DeLancey. “No radar tape.”
“Me neither,” said Miller.
Admiral Mellon had been a strike fighter pilot. He knew that the Hornet’s tape recorder could be switched from the HUD — Head Up Display in the windscreen — to any of several other cockpit monitors, including the radar.
“Sorry, I didn’t get it,” said Leroi Jones.
DeLancey crossed his arms over his chest and tilted back in his chair. A pleased grin spread over his face.
“Damn it,” said the admiral. “Everybody from the Pentagon to the Joint Task Force command is screaming for the video of the engagement. Somebody should have taped the fight on his radar.”
“Somebody did.”
Every pair of eyes in the room swung to Brick Maxwell.
Maxwell reached into the pocket of his G-suit and produced a tape cassette. He set it on the table in front of him.
The grin melted from DeLancey’s face. His voice took on a hard edge. “What the hell did you do that for? You weren’t even part of the engagement.”
“Leroi and I were assigned to cover you. I switched the tape to radar when you called a lock.”
DeLancey put his hands on the table and leaned forward. “If you were supposed to be covering me, why didn’t you take out the lead MiG?” His face was reddening. “The sonofabitch turned nose hot and you had a shot at him.”
“Because there wasn’t any need to shoot. The MiG was bugging out. There was no hostile intent.”
“The hell there wasn’t! He was hostile and you lost your guts.”
Maxwell and DeLancey locked gazes. Maxwell slid the tape cassette across the table. “There’s the tape. Let it show whether the MiG was hostile or not.”
DeLancey stood and aimed his finger at Maxwell. “Listen, mister. I don’t give a shit what’s on that tape. I’ve shot down more enemy aircraft than all the pilots in this air wing combined. All the pilots in this whole goddamn fleet, for that matter. Don’t you tell me about —”
Boyce cut it off. “Sit down, Killer,” he ordered. “Everybody chill out for a minute. I know you’re still tensed up from the engagement. You heard Admiral Mellon. He wants to see that tape.”
DeLancey was still on his feet. “Listen, CAG, I was the first on the scene. I know what I saw.”
“That’s why we have the tape. So we can all know what you saw.”
“Sir, I can tell you that —”
“Never mind what’s on the tape.” The voice came from across the room.
Every head swung to the man in the corner.
Whitney Babcock walked over to the table. “Commander DeLancey did exactly the right thing.”
“Mister Secretary,” said the admiral, “with all due respect, this is an intelligence matter.”
“It’s a lot more than that, Admiral. It’s a national security matter.”
The admiral looked exasperated. He sighed and said, “Gentlemen, in case you haven’t met our guest, this is the Undersecretary of the Navy, Mister Whitney Babcock.”
“Just call me Whit,” said Babcock. He went directly to Killer DeLancey and extended his hand. “Commander, let me be the first to congratulate you.”
“Sir?” A quizzical grin spread over DeLancey’s face.
“For your brilliant victory today.” Babcock turned to the admiral. “I think our country owes a tremendous debt to a warrior like Commander DeLancey. He deserves a decoration for this accomplishment. At least a Silver Star. Don’t you agree, Admiral?”
Jones and Maxwell walked along the passageway that led back to the squadron ready room.
“Whooee!” said Jones. “I’ve never seen the skipper so pissed. Did you see his face when you pulled that tape out? He looked like he wanted to kill you and me.”
“Not you, just me,” said Maxwell. “In case you haven’t noticed, the skipper and I aren’t exactly soul mates.”
Jones nodded. It would be damned hard not to notice, he thought. DeLancey had already told everyone that he considered Maxwell a carpetbagger who didn’t belong in his squadron.
Lieutenant Leroi Jones was the only black pilot in the squadron and one of only four in the Reagan’s air wing. He had not joined the clique of DeLancey devotees, like Hozer Miller and Undra Cheever and half a dozen others. He thought their behind-the-back contempt for Brick Maxwell was bullshit. Jones liked Maxwell and enjoyed flying with him.
Jones said, “I take it you and the skipper know each other from somewhere?”
“Another squadron, another war.”
“It must have been real bad. Killer acts like he hates your guts.”
Maxwell kept his eyes straight ahead. “What makes you think it’s an act?”
It was already dark out on the catwalk. Maxwell made his way, one foot in front of the other, hanging on to the steel rail. The catwalk was suspended beneath the port edge of the flight deck. A ten-knot breeze blew over the deck, and eighty feet below he could hear the carrier’s bow slicing through the choppy sea. Off in the distance, lights were twinkling on the western shore. Bahrain? Qatar? Some Saudi coastal port with a name he couldn’t pronounce?
The lights reminded Maxwell again what a tiny stretch of water the Persian Gulf was. Here they were, bounded on either side by renegade countries that wanted nothing so much as to see them consigned to hell. It really wouldn’t be too difficult, he thought. He knew that against a serious enemy — one with sophisticated naval and aerial weapons — the Reagan battle group and its escorts would be as vulnerable as ducks in a pond.
Coming up here to the catwalk at night had become a ritual for him. It was one of the few places aboard the great iron barge where he could be alone and think. Up here at night, exposed to the wind and surrounded by the summer sky and the black sea, he could imagine himself cut away from all earthly ties. He could be adrift in the vastness of the universe.
Like a space traveler. He could look at the stars and imagine the way things might have been. He could fling his voice out into the black void, and nobody could hear him.
Nobody except, maybe, one person.
“Are you out there, Deb?” he said into the darkness.