'Commander Payne can be pretty overbearing at times,' Brewer replied.
'He's made it abundantly clear that he doesn't think female NFOs can hack it.
Nothing overt, really, but he'll be talking to some men about how he feels, and pitch his voice just loud enough that a woman nearby can overhear.'
'Hmm.' His fingers drummed on the desk. 'What do you think the solution is here?'
'I wouldn't grant that request, if that's what you mean. Not unless there's something seriously wrong. They ought to learn how to get along themselves, and not come crying to Mamma. Or Papa, in this case.'
'I agree completely. If I start shuffling crew assignments, a lot of people are going to get pissed, not just Willis and Sunshine. You'll talk to Kandinsky?'
'Yes, CAG.'
'Don't come down on her for going around you with this. Her request is perfectly within her rights. But see if you can find out what the problem is with Willis. Specifics. Meanwhile, I'll have a talk with Willis, get his side of the story. Okay?'
'Sounds fair, Sir.'
'What about Slider Arrenberger?'
She shrugged. 'He's… opinionated. There've been no problems I'm aware of.'
'No friction?'
'Nothing that can't be handled informally, Sir.'
'Okay.' Tombstone clasped his hands together on his desk. This next was the hard one. 'Commander, I've heard… scuttlebutt. About sexual liaisons between the men and the women in the wing.'
She bristled. 'Are you suggesting we hold bed checks, CAG? Like they do for enlisted personnel?'
'No. But I'm worried about the problems those types of relationships could cause aboard ship. Jealousy. Hurt feelings. Lovers' quarrels…'
'Captain, the personal lives of the officers in this wing is not my concern. They are adults, and they are professionals. I don't-'
'They are adults and they are professionals, yes. But sexual activity aboard ship is still strictly against regulations, Commander. It's our responsibility to uphold those regulations, even though you and I both know that they're going to get bent or broken whenever there's temptation and opportunity.'
'There's precious little opportunity for hanky-panky aboard ship, Captain. And to answer your question, I've heard the same scuttlebutt but I don't know anything as fact. You can be sure, Sir, that I will uphold Navy regulations to the best of my ability. But I am not going to start demanding chits from my girls every time they want to leave their compartment to go to the head. Sir.'
'I wasn't suggesting that you should, Commander.' He unclasped his hands, then looked Conway in the eye. 'And you don't have any other gripes?
If you got 'em, I want to hear 'em.'
'No, sir. No gripes.'
'Okay. That'll be all, then. Dismissed. Thanks for coming in.'
But after she left, Tombstone was sure that there was a problem. He just didn't know what it was that was bothering her.
One thing was certain. This sexual integration nonsense was taking up one hell of a lot of man hours ? yes, and woman hours too ? just to make it work. Instead of working like a smoothly functioning machine, the air group's personnel were experiencing friction… and inefficiency. With the chances that the Jefferson would soon be in combat growing greater every day, that friction was becoming dangerous.
Tombstone had only one question at the moment, though.
'What in God's name would the Russians think of all this if they could see us now?' he asked the bulkheads of his office.
With no reply forthcoming, he returned, scowling, to the waiting expendables report. A moment later, his phone rang. 'CAG.'
'This is Lieutenant Commander Delano,' the voice said. Delano was on Captain Brandt's staff. 'The Captain's compliments, and he wonders if you could join him for an ops briefing in Flag Plot at fifteen hundred hours.'
'Very well, Commander.' Tombstone checked his watch. Despite the polite wording, this was not a request. 'I'll be there.'
'Very good, sir. I will inform the Captain.'
Tombstone sighed. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. He decided he just might be able to complete the expendables report before he had to be up in Flag Plot.
CHAPTER 6
Tombstone leaned over the plot table, studying the cryptic symbols and geometric shapes marked with wax pencil onto the glass top overlying the navigational chart of the North Cape-Murmansk Coast area. 'But what's it mean, Admiral? Is Washington actually giving us a shoot-first order?'
'Hell, no. You know it's never that simple with them.' Admiral Douglas E Tarrant, tall, slender, and aristocratic-looking with his head of silver hair, was the carrier group's commanding officer, and he was holding court in Jefferson's Flag Plot. His uniform, as always, was immaculate and razor-creased. 'The orders are to shadow neo-Soviet fleet units, particularly their ICBM subs. Starting Friday when we reach our patrol station, gentlemen, we are going to begin making Class-A nuisances of ourselves.'
'Off the Kola Peninsula?' Tombstone said. 'That's going to be like taking on the whole damned Russian military!'
'CAG's got a point, Admiral,' Captain Jeremy Brandt said. Brandt was Jefferson's captain. As hound-dog ugly as Tarrant was good-looking, he was short and fire-plug-built, with his blond-to-gray hair shaved to a stubble.
The three of them, Tombstone, Brandt, and Tarrant, were standing about the plot table, hemmed in by a number of senior aides and staff officers.
Tarrant and his entourage had arrived by helicopter aboard the Jefferson a few hours earlier from the Shiloh, the Aegis cruiser Tarrant used as his headquarters, and the lot of them had crowded into the carrier's Flag Plot to consider the latest set of orders from Washington.
Reaching out with the stem of an unlit pipe, Captain Brandt pointed out a line of red symbols on the map stretching down the jagged slash of the Kola Inlet. Sayda Guba, Polyamyy, Severomorsk, Murmansk. 'Wasn't it some CNO who called this stretch the single most valuable piece of real estate on Earth?
Hell, the Russian SAM operators alone must be tripping over each other there.'
'Secretary of the Navy John E Lehman said that,' Tarrant replied. 'He was referring to the whole Kola Peninsula, and he was dead right. Over here, in this strip of what was Finland before World War II, is Pechenga, just eighteen miles from the Norwegian border. It's both a commercial and a military port. And down here, just above where the Tuloma and the Kola rivers come together, is Murmansk. That's the largest city north of the Arctic Circle. Population about a half million. Ten miles further northeast is Severomorsk, headquarters for the whole Russian Northern Fleet. Enormous naval support facilities, shipyards, ammunition depots, that sort of thing.'
'There was a big explosion there a while back, wasn't there?' Tombstone asked.
'Correct. May 1984. Most of the Northern Fleet's missile reserves went up in one big fireball. We never did learn the number of casualties, but the damage was extensive.
'Anyway, the Tuloma River starts to open up here, becoming the Kolskiy Zaliv, the Kola Inlet. Eight miles north of Severomorsk is Polyamyy, on the Polyamyy Inlet. It's a major base for both surface ships and submarines.
Nine miles further to the northwest is Sayda Guba. Important submarine support facilities there.
'Right here in this region, between Polyamyy and Sayda Guba, are four massive, underground facilities,
