“My God!” he said. “You want to do it
“Not in the open, silly,” she said, smiling, and led him up the incline by the pond into the thicket of linden trees. Out of view, she turned to him, looked expectantly in his eyes, pushing her thigh into him.
“My God,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper in his excitement. “My God, Malle, I love you.”
“I love you,” she said, her expression unchanged, and as they embraced, her coat fell among the dead leaves, the long hat pin piercing his heart, blood spurting over her bodice. Staggering back, wiping the hair from her eyes, she picked up the coat, put it on, and trying not to hurry, walked away-then she was running. She slowed down, breathing quickly, intent on not looking at all conspicuous, unaware that when she had brushed her hair from her face, she had left it smeared with his blood.
The COMPAC–Commander Pacific — was in his Pentagon office when Congressman Hailey’s call caught up with him. It was on the scrambler, and the congressman was talking about a Wave, a nurse, La Roche, L. — nee Brentwood. Separated.
Given the fact that her younger brother, David Brentwood, was MIA in northern Germany and another brother, Ray, ex-captain of the FFG USS
‘‘I’m afraid,” the admiral informed the congressman, “I’ll have to forward the request to the chief of naval operations in Washington. Computer here says there was a disciplinary problem.”
“Yeah, I realize that,” replied the congressman. “Little indiscretion off Halifax. But surely she’s paid for that, being posted up there in Siberia. Anyway, we still have the siblings policy, don’t we? One missing or killed, the other is called home?”
“It’s voluntary, Congressman.”
“Hell,” said the congressman, “you don’t think she’d volunteer to get out of the Aleutians?”
“Well, congressman, we need everyone we can muster, and none of Admiral Brentwood’s children have been killed.”
“Jesus!” shot back the congressman. “What d’you want? One kid’s a goddamned monster in La Jolla Vets’ and one kid’s MIA. I’d say that was a fair contribution to the war effort.”
“Very well, Congressman. I’ll put the request through normal channels.”
“Shit — I don’t want you putting through anything. It’ll get lost in a sea of paper. That’s why I’m calling you. When you come up for congressional approval for the post of CNO, I’m not going to be wading through normal channels.”
“I’ll check it out, Congressman.”
“Fine. When can I expect to hear from you?”
“Oh, I’d say a week or two.”
“Jesus, Admiral — I mean today. Tonight.”
“I’ll get back to you, but I can’t promise—”
“Appreciate it,” said the congressman. “You boys are doing one hell of a job.”
“Thank you, sir.”
When he put the phone down, the admiral was shaking his head, passing a slip of paper to his aide. “A Wave — La Roche, L. What some guys’ll do for a bit of poontang. We’re trying to fight a war and he’s trying to get his favorite piece of tail to Honolulu. I thought I’d seen everything. Put it through normal channels. I don’t give a damn if the son of a bitch doesn’t confirm me.”
“Yes, sir,” said his aide, a balding, world-weary officer who’d served two other COMPACs. When his boss left, the aide faxed the request for a transfer to Washington. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t worded as a request, but the aide was long schooled in not saying what he was saying. His boss could afford to take the high road, at least officially, but the aide knew a quick response to the congressman would do COMPAC no harm, and aide to a CNO was one of the most powerful positions in the country. Either way, COMPAC had to deal with it. He was going to get a lot more of this bullshit. If the truth be known, the aide thought, it was probably old Admiral John Brentwood behind the request, using the congressman as a front.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
In the heaving darkness eleven hundred miles northeast of Japan, the rain-lashed flight deck of the U.S. carrier
As one of the pancake-rotodomed Hawkeyes, part of the carrier’s early-warning airborne screen, came in to land, three twin-engined “electronic countermeasures” Prowlers were warming up for the waist catapult, their bent “bee stinger” refueling nose rods casting strange shadows on the deck.
“He’s tired,” said the assistant LO, the landing officer in his yellow ID vest waving off a second Hawkeye for another run around, the plane already in its bolter pattern.
“Tired gets you killed,” yelled the LO, hand over his extended throat mike. The Hawkeye was coming in again.
“Looking good for the three-wire,” said the ALO, the plane approaching in low over the fantail.
“Clean trap,” confirmed the ALO, the Hawkeye’s nose dipping, power off, lurching to a stop. Seconds later its three moles, electronic warfare operators, came out. Arms extended, grasping the shoulders of the men in front of them, they were led through the blaze of light like blind men, their eyes not yet readjusted after the hours of near total darkness in the windowless aft of the Hawkeye’s electronic cave. As the seaman led them out of harm’s way across the hose-strewn deck, green-jacketed men checked the arrester cable, a blue jacket driving his yellow “mule” out to push the plane as quickly as possible to the “parking lot.” Another Hawkeye, its rotodome already up, well above the fuselage, turned about at the refueling station, as a “grape” jacket, with ear-muffs, quickly hooked up a wire-wrapped pressure hose, pumping a load of JP-5 fuel into the aircraft. Two men, green shirts, sprinted through the rain to Frank Shirer’s F-14 Tomcat as he and his radar intercept officer stood by, trying not to look upset. The two green jerseys, maintenance men, flicked up an access panel and replaced a black box.
“Try it!” one yelled at the top of his lungs, and the second man watched the cockpit as the Tomcat’s HUD lit up.
“A-OK!” the man screamed back, thumbs up.
“Thanks,” said Shirer, his voice drowned in the fury of a Prowler, a blast sheet up as the plane roared off the waist catapult into the rain-driven night.
On a mission to try to protect Shemya Island from an ominous buildup of Russian fighters and bombers at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula, no one admitted to being scared. They were too busy thinking about what they had to do. Next to submarine duty, working a carrier’s flight deck was the most dangerous job in the navy, made especially so this night by the line of squalls sweeping in all the way from the Sea of Japan. Screaming across the carrier’s deck, the wind gusts and shears combined with the back-blasts in a fierce hodgepodge of crosscurrents that could blow a man off the deck like a tumbleweed. The only good thing about this night was that the smell of Avgas wasn’t so astringent, the winds whipping fumes away as soon as they rose.
The first wave of fighters having taken off to go ahead and cover the carrier’s “Wild Weasels,” the advance electronic-jamming Prowlers, it was now Shirer’s turn as leader of the second wave. His cockpit closed, the Tomcat’s two twenty-thousand-pound Pratt and Whitney turbofans in high scream, preflight check completed, Shirer asked his RIO — radar intercept officer — if he was all set.
“Ready to go, Major?”
The Tomcat’s light gray fuselage appeared angular, ungainly, from the carrier’s island, the two intakes cumbersomely boxlike, until the plane turned under the lights, presenting its streamlined profile, the two flyers’
