Top Hook. Gordon Kent

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СКАЧАТЬ in the back of the ready room near the coffee-maker. Strip everything off it except the simulator, okay? So we don’t have Duke Nukem running in the ready room?”

      “Got you in one, sir.”

      “Good. Then talk to all the flight crews. Everybody uses the sim, even pilots. But concentrate on the NFOs and the AWs.”

      A seaman he didn’t recognize handed him a message. Alan held him with a wave and read his nametag. Cooley.

      “Where do you work, Seaman Cooley?”

      “Maintenance, sir.”

      “Cooley, please locate Mister Cohen and tell him I want to see him. He was on the hangar deck the last I saw.”

      “Uh, no, sir, he just, uh, left.”

      “Find him.”

      Alan knew he was condemning a brand-new man to a long hunt for staterooms. He consoled himself that Cooley would know the ship better when he was done.

      The message was from NAS Norfolk. LTjg Soleck had been scheduled on a flight and did O-in-C Det have any other instructions? Alan sighed. Maybe to send me a guy who can get places on time?

      By three o’clock, he was drinking his seventh cup of coffee, and his mood was as foul as the acrid, thin stuff in his cup. His first flight was an hour away, and he didn’t think 902 was going to make it. He grabbed Senior Chief Frazer, the maintenance chief, because Cohen hadn’t yet been found.

      “Frazer, 902 is due to launch in one hour.”

      “We’re on it, sir.”

      “Is 901 in better shape?”

      “No, sir.”

      “Frazer, what the fuck, over?”

      “901 is down for hydraulics.”

      “Is this the wrong time to ask why 902 didn’t get a rehab for her port engine back at Pax River?”

      Frazer looked trapped. Alan realized he was boxing the man into a position where he either had to inform on a shipmate—or his department head—or take blame for something he didn’t do. Alan shook his head at his own error. “Never mind. Senior, will I have a bird for the first event or won’t I?”

      “I’m trying. Yes!”

      Alan walked back to the ready room to find Stevens, Craw, and Reilley waiting to brief for the flight that so far had no aircraft. Reilley switched on the closed-circuit TV, and they watched the weather brief and then a quick description of the flight area. The other aircraft in the event were simple carrier quals.

      Stevens briefed the emergency procedures in a singsong voice and looked at a map. “We’re going about forty miles south, taking a look at the Willett, and then flying home. Short event. Any questions?”

      Reilley held up a kneeboard card with the NATO and UN communications data. “All this up-to-date?”

      Alan reached for it and Reilley handed it over with a minute hesitation. Am I making this up, or did he not want to show me his kneeboard card? Alan looked at the card and noted that many of the callsigns were unchanged since his last tour here, almost two years ago.

      He had imagined giving a little speech about their first operational flight, something to mark the occasion, but when he faced them he saw veiled hostility from Stevens and Reilley and concern from Craw. He searched for brilliant words that would make everything right, and he was about to open his mouth and say something about the det’s mission and the need for solidarity when Senior Chief Frazer came in.

      “I’m sorry, sir. I need two more hours. I can get both them planes up for the third event.”

      Stevens smiled without humor. He was relishing the failure, Alan realized, and for a moment he hated the man. He walked from the ready room almost blind, clearing the area before he could say something he would regret.

      He wasn’t used to failure, and it stung. The feeling that he was personally responsible for a major problem compounded the feeling of alienation that had clung to him since his orders had been changed. He was used to stress, and to danger, but he had begun to feel in this situation as if he was an observer of events, not a participant.

      He hadn’t got control.

      Telling Rafe that he didn’t have a bird for the launch was one of the hardest things he had ever done. He had watched the maintenance crisis slide out of his control all day, first the downing of 902, then the problems with 902’s port engine that “everybody knew” except Alan, then scrambles to get work done, and condescension from the VS-53 maintenance shop and the slide to failure. And now it was certain, and he walked into Air Ops ahead of Stevens and canked his unit’s first operational flight.

      Rafe met him going out.

      “Problems?” he asked with a smile.

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Sir? Better walk with me, Alan.”

      Rafe walked down the passageway, slapping the occasional back, looking coldly at a jg running for his brief. Then he pulled Alan into the flag briefing room, empty at this hour.

      “I can count the number of times you’ve called me ‘sir’ on one hand, Spy. So how bad is it?”

      “This is the wrong fucking time to call me spy, Rafe.” Alan realized that the storm was still there, and grabbed hold again. “Sorry, Rafe, let me start that again. I just had to cancel my first event. Both my birds are down and I don’t have all the parts to fix them because I apparently left some stuff on the beach. That’s the worst—the rest is just other crap.”

      “How’d you end up here with two down birds?”

      “I don’t know yet.”

      “Better find out. Kick some ass.”

      “Right.”

      “Hey—I know you ain’t the bad guy. But you are responsible.

      ” “I know!”

      “Make it work for you. Sometimes it helps to get mad; you get the assholes’ attention that way. Oh, hey—I forgot. We found your NCIS guy.”

      “You forgot!”

      “Yeah, I forgot. I’m the CAG; I have other duties than carrying messages. In fact, I was just gonna give it to you in Air Ops when we got sidetracked with your other problem.” He pulled a piece of paper from a shirt pocket. “I’ve already run this past the flag captain. Here’s the deal: your guy is arriving at a hotel in DC about five their time—that’s, um, 2300 here—and we’ve left messages there that he’s to call the NCIS office on the ship ASAP. That’s direct from Admiral Kessler, so he knows we’re serious. We also left messages at NCIS HQ in case he goes there. When he calls, you get your ass to the NCIS office and get on their STU and you tell him whatever the big secret is; when you’re done, Maggiulli, the JAG guy, gets on the STU at once and СКАЧАТЬ