and cancel it for good. Worse, they might think he had lost his nerve. He considered asking Hennings for advice, but that would have been a tactical blunder.
“Sir,” the electronics man said, his hand poised over a set of switches on the console.
Sloan shook his head. “Get back to the mission profile. We can’t spend any more time on routine procedures. Send the approval for the release, then get another update from Lieutenant Matos.”
Petty Officer Kyle Loomis returned to his equipment. He had begun to suspect that all was not routine here, but as a former submariner, his knowledge of fighters and missiles was too limited to allow him to piece together what was not routine about this test. Without anyone telling him, he knew that his ignorance had gotten him out of the submarine that he’d come to hate and onto the Nimitz, which he found more tolerable. He also knew that his transfer request to the Mediterranean Fleet was secure as long as he kept his mouth shut.
Sloan watched the electronics procedure for a few seconds, then glanced at Hennings, who was still staring at the video screen. “Soon, Admiral.”
Hennings looked up. He nodded.
It occurred to Sloan that perhaps Hennings, like himself, wanted to go on record as having said nothing for the record.
Petty Officer Loomis spoke. “Sir, Lieutenant Matos is on-station. Orbiting in sector twenty-three.”
“All right. Tell him that we expect target information shortly.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sloan tried to evaluate his own exposure in this thing. It had begun with the routine delivery of the two Phoenix test missiles to the carrier a month before. He had signed for the missiles. Then came a routine communication from Pearl informing the Nimitz ’s commander, Captain Diehl, that Hennings was coming to observe an air-to-air missile testing. Not unusual, but not routine. Then came the brief communication that directed a routine practice firing of the missiles. The only exception to the routine was that “procedures and distances” be in accordance with the manufacturer’s new specifications for the AIM-63X version of the Phoenix. That was when Sloan had known that there was a top-level conspiracy-no, wrong word; initiative — a top-level initiative among the Joint Chiefs. They were going to secretly ignore the new arms limitation agreement that Congress had enacted. And by a stroke of fate, Sloan had been named the technical officer in charge of conducting the test. Within a year, he’d be a captain… or he’d be in Portsmouth Naval Prison. He looked at Hennings again. What was in this for him?
Sloan knew that he could have backed out at any time by asking for shore leave. But those old men in the Pentagon had done their homework well when they studied his personnel file. They knew a gambler when they saw one. A small stream of perspiration ran down Sloan’s neck, and he hoped Hennings hadn’t noticed it. “Approximately ten minutes, Admiral.” He punched a button on the console and a digital countdown clock began to run.
Sloan had an inordinate fascination, mixed with phobia, for countdown procedures. He watched the digital display running down. He used the time to examine his motives and strengthen his resolve. To rationalize. The updated Phoenix was a crucial weapon to have in the event of war, even though the idiots in Congress were acting as if there would never be any more wars. One discreet test of this missile would tell the Joint Chiefs if it would work under combat conditions, if the increased maneuverability would mean that the kill ratio of this newest weapon could be nearly one hundred percent.
The Navy brass would then know what they had, and the politicians could go on jawing and pretending. American airpower would have an unpublicized edge, no matter what happened in the future. Russia could go back to being the Soviet Union and the Cold War could refreeze; U.S. combat forces would have something extra. And with modern technology, a slight edge was all you could ever hope for. All you ever needed, really. There was also the matter of the Navy finding its balls again, after countless years of humiliation at the hands of the politicians, the gays, and the feminists. Nine minutes.
Commander Sloan poured a cup of coffee from a metal galley pitcher. He glanced at Hennings. The man was looking uncomfortable. He could see it in his eyes, as he had seen it several times the day before. Did Hennings know something that he didn’t?
Sloan walked to the far end of the console and looked at the gauges. But his thoughts were on Hennings now. Hennings seemed to be almost uninterested in the testing. Uninterested in Sloan, too, which was unusual since Sloan was certain that Hennings was to make an oral evaluation report on him. Sloan felt that almost forgotten ensign’s paranoia creeping over him and shook it off quickly. A seasoned officer turns everything to his advantage. He would turn Hennings’s detachment to his advantage, if necessary.
Hennings stood suddenly and moved nearer to Sloan. He spoke in a low voice. “Commander, will the data be ready as soon as the testing is complete? Will you need to do anything else?”
Sloan nodded. “Just a few qualitative forms.” He tapped his fingers on a stack of paperwork on the console desk. “Thirty minutes or so.”
Hennings nodded. The room was silent except for the ambient sounds of electronics.
Randolf Hennings let his eyes wander absently over the equipment in the tight room. The functions of this equipment were not entirely a mystery to him. He recognized some of it and guessed at what looked vaguely familiar, as a man might do who had been asleep for a hundred years and had awakened in the twenty-first century.
When he was a younger man he had asked many questions of his shipboard technicians and officers. But as the years passed, the meaning of those young men’s answers eluded him more each time. He was, he reminded himself, a product of another civilization. He had been born during the Great Depression. His older brother had died of a simple foot infection. He remembered, firsthand, a great deal about World War II, the Nazis and the Japs, listening to the bulletins as they came across the radio in their living room. He recalled vividly the day that FDR died, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the day the Japanese surrendered, the day, as a teenager, that he saw a television screen for the first time. He remembered the family car, a big, old, round-bodied Buick, and how his mother had never learned to drive it. They’d come an incredibly long way in a short span of time. Many people had chosen not to go along on that fast ride. Others had become the helmsmen and navigators. Then there were people like himself who found they were in positions of command without understanding what those helmsmen and navigators were doing, where they were going.
He walked over to the single porthole in the room and pushed back the blackout shade. The tranquil sea calmed his troubled conscience. He remembered when he had finally made the decision that he would have to evaluate his men on their personal traits and then trust their technical advice accordingly. Men, he understood. Human beings did not really change from generation to generation. If his sixty-seven years were good for anything, it was that he had arrived at an understanding of the most complex piece of machinery of all. He could read the hearts and souls of his fellow men; he had peered into the psyche of Commander James Sloan, and he did not like what he saw.
Petty Officer Loomis turned around. “Commander Sloan.” He pointed to a video display screen.
Sloan walked over to the screen. He looked at the message. “Good news, Admiral.”
Hennings closed the blackout shade and turned around.
Sloan spoke as he read the data. “Our elements are in position. The F-18 is on station, and the C-130 is also in position. We need only the release verification.” He glanced at the digital countdown clock. Five minutes.
Hennings nodded. “Fine.”
Sloan gave a final thought to the one command check he was not able to complete. If the test had not been a secret, and if delay had not meant possible cancellation, and if cancellation had not meant potential disadvantage in a future war, and his career weren’t in the balance, and if Hennings weren’t evaluating him with those steely gray eyes, and if it wasn’t time for the Navy to gets its balls back, and if that damn digital clock weren’t running down… then, maybe, maybe he would have waited. Four minutes.
The video screen’s display updated again, and Sloan looked at the short message. He read it first to himself, smiled, and then read it aloud. “The C-130 has launched its target and it was last tracked as steady and on course. The target drone has accelerated to Mach 2, and is now level at sixty-two thousand feet.” He glanced at the digital countdown. “In two minutes and thirty seconds I can instruct Lieutenant Matos to begin tracking the target and engage it at will.”
“Would you like another drink?”
“No, I think I’ll wait.” John Berry put down his empty glass and looked up at the flight attendant. Her shoulder-length brunette hair brushed across the top of her white blouse. She had narrow hips, a slender waist, and very little visible makeup. She looked like one of those models from a tennis club brochure. Berry had spoken to her
