that the officer merely ascertain the presence of the Chief, and then take care of business outside in the passageway or in their work center spaces.
Chief Franklin stood up as Bird Dog stormed into the Mess.
“Evening, Lieutenant. Something I can help you with?”
“Shaughnessy was up on the aircraft without a cranial on,” Bird Dog said abruptly. A slight chill seemed to settle over the Chiefs’ Mess. “You know the rules, Chief,” he continued doggedly, ignoring a few pointed glances from the master chiefs.
The older man rubbed his face thoughtfully. “She’s bad about that,” he admitted. “But I gotta tell you, Lieutenant, she’s a damned fine technician. Got a real feel for those Tomcats, and takes her job real serious. Good sailor, right attitude. She’s gonna do real well.”
“She’s no good to the Navy if she falls off an aircraft and cracks her skull open. And if she can’t follow safety rules herself, how competent does that make her as a supervisor? Damn it, Chief, a good sailor in my book follows orders!”
“I see your point, Lieutenant. I’ll have a word with her. And no disrespect, sir, but which would you rather have? An up aircraft or all the nit-picky little rules followed?”
“I don’t consider safety rules to be nit-picking. My Branch follows all the rules, Chief. It’s not up to Shaughnessy — or you or me — to decide which ones we’re going to obey and which ones we aren’t. I don’t expect to have to talk to you again about this. Put her on extra duty — two hours a day for two weeks. Maybe that’ll teach her a lesson.”
“Sir, I don’t think — we’ve got shit hitting the fan out there, Lieutenant. As tough as the flight schedule’s going to be, those techs are going to be dragging ass. And Lieutenant,” the chief continued, his voice unexpectedly gentle, “no disrespect, sir, but you’ve just been through a pretty nasty experience. It’d shake anybody up. Those guys on the flight deck saw everything, too, and I guarantee you even the old timers are being super cautious up there. It hits you real hard, the first time. Every time, maybe. Now, don’t get me wrong, I agree with you about Shaughnessy. We got to do something — that’s why they pay us the big bucks, to make sure these kids don’t get hurt. But why don’t we think about this overnight, give things a chance to settle down. Might be that there’s a better way to accomplish what you want. This extra duty — I don’t know that I’d recommend it.”
The sympathy in the older man’s voice infuriated him, insinuating that he was making decisions based on emotion, that he couldn’t handle what he’d seen on the flight deck! For a moment, Bird Dog wanted to punch the Chief, to make him take back the words that Bird Dog somehow knew were true.
“Extra duty, Chief. I want a report from you every morning about what she’s been assigned to do. That clear?”
The Chief uncurled from his chair and stood rigidly at attention. The other chief petty officers in the mess looked studiously away.
“Sir, yes, sir!” the Chief snapped. His normally good-natured expression had faded into an impassive mask.
Bird Dog stalked out of the Chiefs’Mess, slamming the door behind him. From the passageway outside, Bird Dog heard the murmur of voices increase in volume.
CHAPTER 13
Shih Tan glanced up at the sun. Even though it was already midday, the hazy morning fog still hung in the air. Hot, humid, and dull — how much worse could military duty get?
A lot worse, he recalled, if the reports of his friends were to be believed. Last summer, a typhoon had swept into the South China Sea, and his friend’s cadre had been evacuated with only hours to spare before the pounding winds became too strong for the helicopters to operate.
Despite the heat, Shih Tan shivered at the thought of being marooned in the bamboo structure during one of the vicious storms. He glanced up at the Mischief Reef base camp. While strong enough to survive the normal vicissitudes of summer storms, no bamboo structure could possibly survive a typhoon out here.
He wondered why it had taken the authorities so long to decide to evacuate the base camp for the typhoon. Certainly, there was classified material at the site, and that would have to have been destroyed. The equipment, too. Years of occupying the tiny rock had led to the accumulation of radio gear, spare parts for the tanks, and the numerous bits of jetsam and flotsam that human beings accumulate whenever they inhabit confined quarters.
Despite the comforts of Buddhism as a religion, Shih Tan had no illusions about his own equanimity in facing death. Back on the mainland, he had a wife and two children. Given any chance at all, he’d fight to see them again. While human life might have been less valuable than tactical advantage to his politico-military superiors, Shih Tan valued his own skin.
“Doesn’t look so special from up here, does it?” Batman asked over the ICS.
Spook Two was on its second special surveillance mission. After the ship-based radars had proved that the ripple-skinned Tomcat was almost impossible to track or target, Batman had convinced Tombstone to let the two Spooks fly CAP above the Mischief Reef area.
“Not to me. But then, we’re not politicians,” Tomboy replied.
Maybe you aren’t yet, youngster, Batman thought, glancing back at her. I wasn’t at your age, either. But, oh, if you ever put that fourth full stripe on, the world changes, Yes, indeedy, it does.
After six months in the Pentagon, Batman was just starting to get a feel for the place. It was a massive readjustment, going from being a captain in the Fleet, with all the courtesies and privileges that went with it, to being a Captain in the Pentagon. Hot and cold running admirals, the joke went. An aviator captain, qualified to command a Carrier Air Wing at sea, was barely senior enough to make coffee in the Pentagon. Not until the Captain learned the ropes, anyway. Batman had figured that out fairly quickly.
He’d never been entirely sure exactly what his first billet there entailed. He remembered going to a lot of meetings, reading countless white papers, and reviewing tech manuals. Some of the material seemed to bear some relationship to the F 14 program, but much of it didn’t. That last puzzling study, for instance, on military health care and Navy Exchange operations. He still had no idea how that’d ended up in his In box, much less in the urgent stack.
Finally, he’d run into Admiral Dunflere, another proud member of the F14 community, in the cafeteria. The Admiral had been a Commander when Batman was a senior Lieutenant, and remembered him.
More importantly, the Admiral had a vacancy on his staff and wanted him. Batman had jumped at the chance to transfer out of whatever it was he was doing into the JAST shop.
It was only later that he learned how to manipulate the system sufficiently to be forced to conduct frequent field inspections on the JAST birds, and to wangle himself into the training pipeline. Admiral Dunflere seemed perfectly content to receive his weekly field reports via the laptop computer and modem, and Batman took full advantage of his new-found freedom.
And this was what it’d gotten him. An extended trip away from the five-sided office building and back in the cockpit. He glanced down at the Chinese camp perched on top of Mischief Reef and wondered if Tombstone really had any idea of what he was in for on his next tour to DC.
Well, at least Batman’s politician days were on hold for a while.
“See anything unusual?” Tomboy asked, breaking his train of thought.
“Nope. You?”
“Not a thing. As long as we’re out here, though, maybe we can take another swing around it. After that incident last week, it wouldn’t hurt.”
“You got it. Let’s do a little more op testing on this Tomcat on the way back, though.” Batman stood the
