destroyed.”
“A modern carrier takes one heck of a lot of destroying,” Tombstone said.
“The Jeff’s been through a few scrapes already and come through in one piece.”
“That’s right,” Brandt said. “You should’ve seen the other guy.”
“Well, I wish you good fortune. Allaha ismarladik.”
“Giile giile,” Brandt replied with carefully rehearsed formality. He’d been practicing the line on Tombstone; Turkish good-byes were two-part exchanges, with the person leaving saying “God remain with you,” while the person staying behind replied with “Go with happiness.” The phrase could literally be interpreted as “Go smiling.”
As the pilot and the XO left the bridge, Tombstone wondered if Ecevit had been trying to deliver a message with his concern, perhaps an unofficial warning from people in the Turkish government or military who were unwilling to risk making an official one. More likely, Ecevit knew nothing specific beyond what everyone knew, that the Black Sea was a bomb with a short, lit fuse.
The officers and men of CBG-14 were under no illusions about the danger they faced inside the Black Sea. It was part of the duty of the U.S. Navy ? and the tradition ? to go in harm’s way.
This was something different, however. In the past, “going in harm’s way” meant stopping an enemy threat as far from the coasts of the United States as possible, but America’s role as high-tech policeman for the United Nations was threatening to change that. The Republic of Georgia offered no threat to the United States at all, not to her population, not to her trade or even to her foreign policy, nor did it matter to American policy which of several Russian factions might be in control of the country at any given moment.
Russia, of course, was still a threat; they still possessed ICBMS that could obliterate most of the cities of North America, and with the accelerated fragmentation of order it had become impossible to know which faction in the civil war possessed how many working nukes ? or to know where they were pointed. American peacekeeper operations in the Black Sea were certain to attract Russian attention for any of a number of reasons, and Tombstone wondered whether the UN mission was worth the inevitable clash.
Tombstone had been in the Navy long enough to know that the politicians back in CONUS too often either overestimated the ability of forces in the field to carry out the often vague, scattered, and mutually contradictory directives issued by Washington or else underestimated the ability, the strength, or the sheer resolve of a potential enemy. They’d already decided to send a Marine MEU into the Black Sea, and now some dim bulb in Foggy Bottom had decided that CBG-14 ought to be there as well. It was often said that any time there was a crisis, any time the United States needed to project military power to any part of the world, the first thing the American president would ask was “Where are the carriers?”
Well, now one of America’s handful of precious CVNS was inside the Black Sea, with no certainty that they would be able to leave freely once the balloon went up in Georgia. Politicians who made the decisions responsible for getting their country’s military forces into this kind of pocket ought to be made to serve alongside the service men and women who bore the risks and the hardships those decisions entailed.
Stupid, Tombstone thought again, and with deep and sincere bitterness.
Stupid… stupid… stupid…
CHAPTER 2
Lieutenant Commander Tricia Conway, “Brewer” to the other members of her squadron, stood in the shower stall, dripping and half-covered with soap. She looked at the snake in her hand, gave it a frustrated shake, and swore. The water was coming out, but in a weak and lukewarm trickle instead of a hot, dashing spray.
They called it a snake… and other things, most of them obscene. All of the showers aboard the Jefferson were equipped with the devices now, white plastic shower nozzles on flexible hoses designed to spray water only when the button on the side of the handle was held down. It was a means of saving water, but for Brewer it was one more way that the Navy was intruding itself into her life, her private life. Even that wouldn’t be so bad, though, if the damned plumbing worked.
Water conservation was always of critical importance aboard any Navy ship; all crewmen, officer or enlisted, male or female, were treated to several training and indoctrination films before their first tours of duty aboard ship on the proper and approved method of taking a Navy shower.
First use just enough water to get your body wet.
She’d heard of some captains who cut the water to the shower heads if the usage meters showed someone spending more than five minutes under a running stream. It wasn’t that bad on the Jeff, thank God, but the rules were strict, and if the nearly six thousand men and women aboard used the fresh water supplies too quickly, then there were standing orders posted for rationing.
Then, with the water off, work up a lather an soap yourself down.
Brewer had always been somewhat fastidious, and the thought of the population of a fair-sized city crammed cheek by jowl inside a steel can, most of them young and athletic, most of them putting in eighteen-hour days of some of the most grueling work in the world, and not enough water for daily showers was fairly disgusting. There was always a slight stink of sweat and humanity clinging to the carrier’s berthing areas, the natural consequence of too many bodies in too little space.
After you’ve scrubbed yourself, turn on the water again, using just enough to remove the soap The snake was a relatively new addition to the Jefferson, one installed just a couple of months ago during her last rotation back Stateside. Scuttlebutt had it that several city commissions and representatives from the California state legislature were interested in the thing, that there was talk of passing laws requiring houses in the southern part of the state to have them installed in order to enforce water conservation measures there.
Remind me never to live in California, she thought. One of the few sybaritic luxuries that she’d learned to enjoy during her lifetime was a good, long, piping hot shower ? and since coming aboard ship that luxury had taken on the dimensions of an addiction, one that she could never get enough of. After spending sixteen hours or more wrapped up in a stinking flight suit, the thought of coming here to face the snake could be damned near unbearable.
The worst of it was that the snake didn’t work all that well, though she didn’t know if the flaw was in the snake’s design or somewhere in Jefferson’s plumbing. The best the thing could manage was an anemic stream of tepid water, when it was supposed to blast the skin with a high-powered jet. When she’d complained about it to Group Seven, the ship’s engineering and hull department, they’d laughed and told her to get in line.
“Shit, Commander, you want us to tear half the ship apart so’s you can get a decent shower?” one old-Navy pipe fitter chief had asked, grinning at her around the stub of a reeking cigar. “Maybe you got yourself in the wrong career track, know what I mean?”
She could have reported the guy for that crack ? published Naval standards about what constituted sexual harassment in the wake of the Tailhook scandal were exhaustive, specific, and draconian ? but she preferred to handle that sort of thing with professionalism and wit, not a reliance on regulations. She’d replied with an icy, “And maybe your people are in the wrong jobs if they can’t make the plumbing on this ship work,” and let it go at that.
Grimly, she continued sluicing the soap off her body, occasionally giving the shower attachment another shake, as though the hose were blocked and a good shake might free it. Navy showers were just one of the countless adjustments Brewer and the other women serving aboard the carrier had had to make as the price of equality, and generally the feeling was that if the men could put up with it, so could the women. Still, she wasn’t entirely certain whether the low pressure in the women’s head was something everyone aboard suffered with, or whether it was a problem restricted to the shower head reserved for female personnel. If it was the former, there wasn’t anything to be done about it. If the latter, then someone was having some twisted fun at the women’s expense… or worse, they were using this particular form of harassment to let the women know that they weren’t wanted aboard, and something most certainly would have to be done about that.
