“No way.”
“Colonel, if I were a man, you’d let me go. You need support personnel for the U/MFs. Shit, the only other person who’s qualified to fix that fucking computer and the com system is Rubeo. You want to send him?”
“You talk like a sailor, you know that?” Dog said.
Jennifer shrugged. “My bag is packed.”
If she were a man – hell, that was impossible to even imagine.
They did need a support staff. But a girl?
She wasn’t a girl, damn it.
“I want to talk to Cheshire before I make a decision,” said Bastian finally.
“Good,” said Jennifer, jumping up. “Should I send her in right now, along with Major Stockard, or do you want us to keep going the way we planned?”
Shaking his head, Bastian went to the office door and looked out into the reception area. Cheshire and Parson were there, along with three other Flighthawk specialists.
“Where’s Stockard?”
“Making sure the Flighthawks are prepped,” said Cheshire.
“Everyone in here,” he told the conspirators.
In the end, Dog had no choice but to agree that if it made send to send the Flighthawks, it was logical to send a support team as well. Parsons could probably build the damn things from balsa wood and speaker wire. Gleason made the most sense as a technical expert, since she knew both the software and the hardware used by the Flighthawks’ control system. No way he was sending Rubeo – it would undoubtedly be too tempting for him to be left behind.
Sending a high-tech team halfway around the world with untested weapons was exactly what he had called for in the white paper he’d written so many years ago. So why did his stomach feel so queasy?
“You’re good with this, Major?” he asked Cheshire.
“If the Flighthawks are going, and I think they should, we have to support them.”
He nodded. “This is my responsibility,” he told her. “I’m ordering you to do this.”
Her face flushed, probably because she knew that the Band-Aid he’d just applied to her culpability wouldn’t cover much of anything if things went wrong.
“I have some phone calls to return,” he said. “I’ll try to be there for your takeoff.”
“Fourteen hundred hours sharp,” said Parsons as they exited.
“That soon?”
“We’ll kick some butt for you, sir,” said the sergeant.
Bastian returned the wily old crew dog’s grin, then pulled over his mountain of pink phone-message sheets. Every member of the JSF Mafia wanted to take a shot at chewing off his ear today; might as well let them have a go.
“Lieutenant General Magnus, please,” he said, connecting with the first person on his list. “This is Colonel Bastian.”
“Oh,” said the voice on the other end of the line.
Dog was more than familiar with the tone. It meant, “Oh, so this is the idiot my boss has been screaming about all day.”
As he waited for the connections to go through, Dog fingered the official Whiplash implementation order, which had come through earlier in the day.
YOU ARE HEARBY ORDERED TO IMPLEMENT WHIPLASH AND SUPPORT SAME WITH ALL APPROPRIATE VIGOR.
‘Appropriate vigor’ could mean Megafortresses. It could mean Flighthawks.
Not if people like General Magnus didn’t want it to. Magnus was close to the Air Force Secretary; word was he was being groomed to be Chief of Staff. Dog knew him largely by reputation. An able officer, Magnus was a good man, unless you disagreed with him.
Then he was the devil’s own bastard.
“Bastian, what the hell are you doing out there in Dreamland? You sleeping?”
“No, sir, General,” said Dog.
“I understand you’ve been there for two weeks.”
“It’s about there.”
“You took your goddamn time.”
Well, thought Dog, at least he has a sense of humor.
“Well, I do my best, General, as pitiful as it may be.”
“I don’t think it’s pitiful at all, Colonel. I think it’s a goddamn time somebody had the balls to say what a piece of shit this JSF crate is.”
Dog looked at the phone, waiting for the punch line.
