By the time Troy had zigged back to the recon track assigned to him, Falcon One and Falcon Two were far ahead, no longer visible to him, exiting Dahlak airspace and turning for home.
'Falcon Three, we're gonna orbit at the egress point and wait for you to catch up,' Troy heard Hal say.
'Roger that, Falcon One,' Troy replied. 'Thanks. I appreciate the company.'
After all the months of internal antagonism, it was beginning to seem as though the three pilots of Falcon Force had finally reached the point where they could function as a team.
Chapter 11
'Why the hell can't we?' General Raymond Harris demanded. 'Why the hell not?'
'Because it's Eritrea, that's why,' the man in the suit said angrily.
Harris had been sparring with the man from the State Department — an under-undersecretary of some sort — practically since the conference began.
'I don't know why I bothered to come down here from Atbara, if I'm just going to be told what my guys can't do.'
There were a dozen people in the room, including the JTF commander and his staff, as well as the CIA reconnaissance interpreters who had sifted through all the data that Falcon Force had collected over the Dahlak Archipelago.
Essentially, Falcon Force had found what it had been sent to find — a good overview of the what and how of arms trafficking through the islands. The purpose of the meeting was for JTF Sudan to figure out what to do about it. Harris was present because attacking the traffickers with JTF assets would fall to his 334th Air Expeditionary Wing. The man from the State Department was there — pretty much as Harris had pegged it — to tell the JTF what it could not do.
'General, let me put it as clearly as I can,' he said in a patronizing tone. 'This, these islands, are part of Eritrea. The UN mandate says we are not to bomb Eritrea, which is technically neutral in this conflict. May I remind you that we had to do big-time, very big-time, damage control a few weeks back when your joyriding jet jockeys shot down a third of the Eritrean Air Force.'
'Technically neutral, my ass,' Harris replied. 'Begging your pardon for my choice of words, I take exception to the undersecretary's characterization of a country where Al-Qinamah has command posts, a country through which Al-Qinamah is hauling weapons and ammo that are being used to target American troops.'
'That's why I used the word technically,' the man said, loosening his tie.
'And one more thing,' Harris said, having sensed that the man was momentarily on the defensive. 'My aircrews were not on a joyride, they were not out there looking to attack somebody. They were shot at first…..'
'Enough,' interrupted the JTF Sudan commander, the three-star who was Harris's boss. 'Both of you have made it abundantly clear where you stand on this thing. Now, let's figure out what we can do, and decide what we will do to stop this crap from getting from those islands onto the mainland.'
'If I might interject,' one of the CIA analysts interjected.
'Please do,' the JTF commander said, happy to have a fresh voice shoehorn its way into the dialogue.
'The rules of engagement prohibit attacking Eritrean surface targets unless a JTF asset is fired upon,' the analyst said. Everyone nodded. This was a well-known given fact.
'We're also prohibited from attacking the Iranian ships that deliver the hardware.'
'We certainly wouldn't want to offend the poor Iranians,' Harris said sarcastically.
'But there is nothing to stop us from attacking extra-national ships in these waters,' the CIA man continued. 'Thanks to the data we have now, thanks to the 334th, we know that the barges go in and out from Dhuladhiya Island. There's miles of water between there and the mainland.'
'That's territorial water, Eritrean territorial—' the State Department man interjected.
'Under the UN resolution on piracy,' the analyst retorted. 'I think we are not prohibited from attacking extranational vessels engaged in—'
'Then I think we have our work cut out for us,' the JTF commander said, happy to have a plausible resolution to the problem. Turning to Harris, he asked, 'When can you…?'
'The 334th will have 16s armed and ready to go by this afternoon,' Harris asserted happily. 'But it's probably best to go at night; they're not used to us flying at night, and that's when they're more likely to be at sea with their garbage scows… I'll have an attack plan by the end of the day.'
'I'll have to run this past State,' the under-undersecretary said cautiously. Things were suddenly moving fast, and he did not like being out of control.
'Do you want me to look up the pertinent resolution number?' asked the CIA man.
Chapter 12
Troy Loensch had a rare and unexpected day off.
It was the first time since he was grounded that he had time to himself. It was the first such time in weeks without it being overshadowed by a reprimand. The 334th Operations Center was abuzz with the upcoming action in the Dhuladhiya Channel. Harris had all the F-16 crews who flew strike missions pulled into a big briefing, and this left Falcon Force sidelined for the next forty-eight hours. They were, as people say in recon circles, snoopers, not shooters.
He thought about calling home, but it was the middle of the night in California. He thought about reacting to his status as not a shooter by going to the primitive Atbara 0-Club and shooting pool, but decided to go shoot some hoops instead. He realized only as he started scrimmaging with a couple of other guys that he had unconsciously made the decision to play a team sport rather than a solo sport.
What had come over him? Had the self-centered asshole become a team player?
For Troy, the realization that Falcon Force had melded into a team had come on the same day that he had first gotten an inkling that his teammates, Jenna Munrough and Hal Coughlin, were more than teammates. Why hadn't he seen it earlier? He guessed that either they had done a very good job concealing their 'special relationship' or it had only just started.
Once again, he was the outsider in the small group of three — not that he really wanted to be a third party in a three-way relationship of that kind.
As far as his relationship with Coughlin and Munrough as pilots went, Dhuladhiya had been the turning point, although the turn had begun over the desert north of Al Qadarif. When he'd gotten his fuel tank punctured, they had stayed with him. There was little they could do for him, but they had stayed with him.
Then, Dhuladhiya. It was a place name that none of them had ever heard until that morning when the mission was briefed. Troy didn't have to double back to provide the coverage that Jenna could not — but he had, and he did so immediately. It wasn't that he had done her a huge personal favor, but he had displayed the action of a team player.
It was new for him. In football, wide receivers don't really have to be team players. They catch what the quarterback throws, but other than that, they don't have to be team players. Their job is to run, catch and run. They don't have to do for others. They have other people blocking for them. Their job is not to worry about covering for a teammate whose AN/AKR-13 craps out.
Today, out on the court — which was just a dusty patch of asphalt with a pair of mismatched hoops — he found himself passing as much as he was shooting.
Why not?
He was as good as he was, and he was not the best player on the asphalt. He was better than most, though not as good as the new guy with the short, blond Mohawk. The guy was good, he knew it, and Troy had no interest
