have to deal with the admiral. They saw what the pilot was doing — everyone in the LINK saw Lauren continue his search of the airspace for his wingman or a parachute. They saw and applauded him, hoping that they themselves would have the courage to do just that if it ever came down to it.
Just then, the telephone rang. The specialist picked it up and passed it to the intelligence officer. “Met, sir.”
The intelligence officer took the call, saying, “We’re a little bit busy right now for a weather report.”
“Not for this one,” a grim voice announced. “You guys have any idea what surface winds are doing right now?”
“No,” the intelligence officer said, dismay on his face. He was no dummy — there was only one reason for the meteorologist to be calling up right now with that particular inquiry. “But—”
“But, nothing. You better get this aircraft carrier turned around and headed south right now,” Met said. “Because, according to my calculations, if there was any biological agent released in that strike, it’s going to be coming across our deck in about fifteen minutes.”
Even if he had not known it from Admiral Jette’s voice, by the time the pilot was on final, he knew he was in serious trouble. But he was fresh from a combat mission and losing his wingman, and the kind of trouble he was facing didn’t bother him all that much. Sure, the admiral could shaft him on his fitness reports, recommend that he never be promoted, and even try to relieve him of command. None of it was mortal danger — except to his career. And that seemed a very unimportant matter compared to losing his wingman.
He could hear the tension in the air boss’s voice as he turned onto final, traced its echo in the LSO’s terse orders, and saw it in the strange, rebellious face of the plane captain who helped him out of his ejection harness. By now, the entire story would have made the rounds throughout the ship. And, as far as he knew, there was not a single aviator — strike that, a single sailor of any type — who would have done anything other than what he did. Oh, maybe some of them wouldn’t speak up, worried about the effect on their own careers. But inside, where it counted, he knew that each one desperately hoped that if their situations were reversed, he would have made the same choice that Lauren did.
Once the post-shutdown checklist was complete, he leaned back against the ejection seat, breathing deeply. The real world came crashing back in. In a few moments, he would have to face the admiral and accept responsibility for disobeying the admiral’s orders.
The plane captain, her face almost completely obscured by goggles and her cranial helmet, was deftly unfastening his ejection harness and inserting the cotter pins into the ejection seat, which would prevent it from accidentally being activated while the aircraft was on the deck. He noticed her in ways that he normally wouldn’t have. The slight curl of hair that escaped from her cranial to hang down over her forehead. The smooth, unlined skin below the goggles, the quick smile that threatened to break out into a full grin at any second. Her mouth was delicate, a deep red color that no cosmetic could mimic. He was seized by the sudden urge to grab her hands in his and kiss her, to feel contact with a woman. It was a natural aftermath of combat, particularly when you’d lost someone.
She seemed to sense his interest, and a slight flush rose on her cheeks. Her hands moved more slowly, lingering over the straps as she unfastened them. She paused for a moment, then pulled her goggles away from her eyes and settled them on the top of her cranial helmet. Her eyes, he saw, were ringed with red circles where the rubber from the goggles pressed into delicate skin. Her eyes were a dark, tawny brown, deep and full of sympathy. Her face was unmarked yet by life, other than by what the Navy had taught her. Purplish circles under her eyes reflected the long hours she kept.
“Sir,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Sir?”
“Yes, Airman Carmichael?” he asked, proud that his voice was kind and level. He remembered her now, the details of his interview with her when she checked on board and reported to the squadron. A smart kid, one with a lot of potential. Her A school had been aviation electronics, and she would soon rotate out of the line division and into her rating work center. He remembered that she seemed to be shy, exceptionally reserved, and he’d thought her rather sweet at the time.
“Sir, I just wanted to say — what happened up there—” Her voice trailed off. He held up a hand to stop her.
“What happened up there was—” He stopped suddenly, unable to make the party-line explanation come to his lips. He couldn’t lie to her, not to those dark brown eyes gazing into his, hurt, wanting to know why the world wasn’t working the way it ought to. “What happened up there,” he began again, even more gently but with a tremendous sense of release, “was really shitty.” Both of them knew he wasn’t talking about the loss of his wingman. “We lost two good men today. I searched every bit of the area — there was no sign of them. They never even knew what hit them.” For some reason, that seemed to ease her mind. He wondered whether he could have lived with himself if he had not stayed on station to look one last time for his wingman.
“It’s hard, isn’t it, sir?”
For one insane moment, he thought she was talking about his dick, which was indeed demanding to be heard. “Yes, it is,” he said gravely, fervently grateful that he had paused before answering. “It’s always hard when you lose someone.”
“The admiral is a shit.” Something had changed in her voice, a hard note at odds with the delicate face in front of him. She flushed immediately, all too aware that she was way out of line, and looked away.
“I won’t tell him you said that,” he said gravely, deeply gratified at some level that even this young airman understood the difference between right and wrong. “As long as you promise not to tell him that I think he’s a shit, too.”
Her face snapped around to his, a look of shock on her face. Then a hard, tight mile smile crept across her full lips, aging her immediately by a decade. “Our secret, Captain.” Somehow even her voice seemed deeper.
“Agreed.” Then he looked down at the ejection harness, and said, “Now help me get this damn thing off, okay? I’ve got an execution to attend.” He gave her the same tight smile she’d proffered just moments earlier, cementing the bond between them.
Later, waiting in the hallway passageway outside the admiral’s office, he held her face in his mind, drawing strength from her expression.
Lab Rat stared at the speaker overhead, listening to the horrific details coming across it, each one spoken in a flat, neutral voice with no trace of emotion. The winds across the Persian Gulf had shifted, and now traced a direct line from the recently destroyed biochemical site to the USS
“Of course, there are civilian cities along the dispersal path as well,” the admiral continued in a flat, detached voice. “Should there in fact be Iraqi chemical or biological weapons being dispersed, my medical staff advises me that we can expect significant collateral damage. I have already released an OPREP-3 report to JCS summarizing those attacks.”
“Dear God,” Coyote said, disbelief in his voice. “What do you need? Medical support? I’ll have that coordinated if there’s anything you need.”
“The offer is appreciated,” the admiral said. His tone deepened and he began to sound even more formal. “The ship has drilled very extensively for this very possibility, and is currently buttoned up as tight as she can get. The captain has every confidence that between the saltwater wash-down system and the positive pressure maintained inside the hull, there will be no danger of exposure.”
