“You don’t have the balls to try it, Long!”
“Enough, John,” Furness said, forcefully this time. She looked sternly at John Long, her second-in-command. “We’re not going to solve anything here. The accident board will have its report in a couple days, and then we’ll all know for sure.” Then she looked grimly at Rinc and shook her head. “But our problem right now is one of trust, Seaver. Even if you’re found not responsible for the accident, who’s going to trust you? Who’s going to fly with you? And if you’re grounded, who’s going to trust you to properly plan a mission or give a tactics briefing?”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re going to have to prove to this squadron that you can handle it, that you can follow orders, that you can be part of a team and not think about yourself.”
“I damn well can be part of this squadron, Beck!”
“Shut up and listen,” Furness broke in angrily. “I’m not going to fire you unless directed by higher headquarters or unless I feel your membership here is dragging this unit’s performance and morale down. Both situations are out of my control. It’s going to be up to you to prove that you can fly with Aces High.”
Furness grabbed the flight authorization form, scanned it, then signed it. “You can fly again, Seaver — we can’t spare the manpower to keep you sitting on your ass for another two weeks. I want you to do a full annual check ride, including open-book, closed-book, orals, sim, pubs check, and flight evaluations.”
“No sweat, boss,” Seaver said confidently. “I’ve already talked with Scheduling, and I got a crew and a plane penciled in. I’ll be ready for a flight check by the end of the week.”
“You better be,” Furness warned. Long shook his head and snorted as if saying “No way,” but they both knew that if any member of the squadron could be ready for a flight check in less than seven days, it was Seaver. “If you pass, you can accompany us to our pre-D work-up — but I’m not going to let you try to requalify until I’m positive your head is on straight and you’re ready to do your job.”
“Hey, boss, give me a break,” Seaver said. “I’ll be mission-ready and up to speed before we go to pre-D. All I ask is for a chance to qualify.”
“I’m not worried about you, Seaver,” Furness said bitterly. “I’m worried about the morale of this unit if we fail the pre-D. I choose the crews that qualify, and right now I don’t think you’ll be ready in time.”
“But…”
“Do me a favor, Seaver, and shut up and listen. This entire unit has been through hell the past several weeks. We’re all hurting, not just you. But what do we see? You’re in here cooking up wild excuses for the crash.”
“They’re not wild excuses, boss. I think I know…”
“You don’t get it, do you? You might have the answer, you might not. But it doesn’t matter. Right now we don’t want to find out that someone screwed up. We all just need to know it’s gonna be okay, and everyone needs to pitch in, including you. You should start thinking about ways you can help this squadron pull itself together, rather than worrying about clearing your precious reputation.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do, boss?” Seaver asked hotly. “Give everybody a big hug? Serve tea and cookies and explore everyone’s feelings? Flog myself with a horsehair whip?”
“You do whatever you have to do to make this squadron believe you’re one of us, Seaver,” Furness responded. “If you do it, everything will eventually get back to normal. If you don’t, we’ll be on our way to being disbanded. Think about it. Now get the hell out of here and go home.”
There was silence for a long moment. That was Seaver’s indication that he was dismissed.
After he left, Long shook his head. “Fucking weasel,” he said. “He’s sticking to his lame-ass story.”
“Ease up on him, Long Dong,” Furness said. “Whether he’s going to make it or hit bottom, let him do it on his own. I just hope that if he doesn’t make it, he doesn’t pull this unit down with him.”
I am getting ready to go overseas for a major military exercise,” Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Mortonson raged, “and now you drop this on me. General Hayes, you’d better have a real good explanation.” This, Mortonson thought, was definitely one of those times when being the chief civilian officer of the nation’s youngest military service was a totally thankless job.
Mortonson, formerly a dean at Stanford University and lieutenant governor of California, got his post in the Pentagon as a gift for helping win California in the last presidential election. The position meant a boost for California’s aerospace industry and lots of grant money for California institutes and universities, which were two good reasons why Mortonson was being groomed to run for the Senate or for governor of California. But except for making a few speeches or visiting a few bases, no one ever saw or recognized the secretary of the Air Force — unless something went wrong. Then everyone knew your name.
First, it was the B-1 bomber crash in Nevada back in April. Technically, it was a Nevada Air National Guard plane, not an Air Force plane, but that kind of hairsplitting was useless from day one — it was and always would be an Air Force problem. The Navy squawked about how reckless the crew was, complained about all the violated rules of engagement, and demanded the Air Force clean up its act. Mortonson took the scolding from the secretary of the Navy and the chief of Naval Operations, got the third-degree stare-down from the secretary of defense, and loudly promised everyone to get to the bottom of the incident and kick some butts.
But now a new controversy had surfaced, and again it involved the Navy. During a scheduled antimissile weapons test over the Pacific Ocean, some very odd things had happened, and the Air Force guys on the scene, including the Air Force’s chief of staff, were being very,
Air Force Chief of Staff Victor Hayes fired off an e-mail message to the secretary of the Air Force less than an hour after the test, asking for an immediate secure video-or phone conference. Mortonson was out of the office and didn’t have access to a secure phone. Hayes arrived back at the Pentagon just a few hours later, asking for an immediate face-to-face meeting with the secretary and with Major General Gregory Hammond, director of the Air National Guard Bureau. Hammond was in charge of the office that interfaced the secretary of the Air Force and the chief of staff of the Air Force with the governors and adjutant generals of the states that had Air National Guard units. But by then the shit from the Navy had hit the fan, and Mortonson changed his schedule and took this meeting.
Of course, all this was going on in the middle of one of the biggest military exercises of the year: Team Spirit 2000 was going to kick off in less than two months. Often the controversial political football in peace negotiations between North and South Korea, Team Spirit 2000 had become the largest joint war game in the Pacific. Land, naval, and air forces from the United States, South Korea, and Japan were going to participate in the three-week- long exercise, practicing and demonstrating joint military maneuvers over a broad conflict spectrum and geographic area.
This was the first year that Japan was going to be a full participant instead of an observer or support entity. Because it was in the midst of near-collapse, with a severe government downsizing and financial reorganization program in effect, and still suffering the aftermath of the nuclear detonation in Yokosuka Harbor three years earlier, everything possible was being done to include Japan in major Asian defense events so as to try to keep that nation from sliding back into isolationism or extreme anti-American nationalism. Its ban on all combat-armed American warships in its territorial waters and its threat to close all U.S. military bases were ominous signs that such fears were valid.
About a year after the explosion — which had killed and injured only a handful of Japanese citizens and caused very little damage to Japanese property — Japan had begun buying frontline high-tech surplus military equipment from Russia as if it were dollar day at the Goodwill store. Ex-Russian MiG-29 fighters and Sukhoi-33 fighter-bombers were now flying alongside American-made F-15 fighters in the skies over Japan. It was a clear message that Japan wanted to rearm and assume more of the responsibility of defending itself — and it wanted to do so
To try to present a unified front, the Vice President of the United States, Ellen Christine Whiting, accompanied by several of the service secretaries and chiefs of staff, was going to tour some of the foreign players’ military bases in the region. Of course, that was not the only reason Mortonson was going along; his main task was to try to
