LITMIR.BIZ

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no matter what God—or at least the Revolutionary Guard—might say.

      So now, tonight, he sat in the command trailer and smoked his fifteenth Marlboro and watched the blue-green light that was supposed to come on when the Americans arrived.

      And what would happen when it did?

      2210 Zulu. The Gulf.

      Skipper Craik walked slowly around his plane, looking into every opening, running his hand lovingly down her wings to her body, then crouching to look at her landing struts and gear. He never thought of the process as sexual, never saw the plane as a woman, although he would concede he had seen men run their hands over horses this way.

      He glanced up to make sure that her chaff and flare cartridges were full, and as he did so was vaguely aware that the sailor coding his plane with an IFF gun was a stranger. Probably a recode, he thought; they changed IFF at the last minute, sometimes. Still, his BN had already got a sweet and sweet on deck, so why change it now? The question was an annoyance, low priority, not even a worry; he’d ask the kid what happened when they were on the cat.

      He ran his hand up inside her jet intakes, checking for FOD or debris. Once in a while, some sailor with a grudge put a coin up there. He’d heard of a can of concrete, in another squadron. The fact that he had never found anything didn’t stop him. It was part of his ritual. He checked his car the same way.

      If he checked it himself, nothing could go wrong.

      Alan was finally ready. The frontseaters had already walked to the plane, but Senior Chief Craw refused to be hurried, even seemed to be dawdling. The delay covered nicely for Alan’s perpetual confusion about what order to put his flight gear on.

      Master Chief Young, the senior enlisted maintenance man, met them at the back door to the ready room. He was kitted up for the flight deck.

      “Got a present for you, sir,” he said to Alan.

      Alan looked around a little foolishly. Master Chief had a way of doing that to him. Going on the mission was all the present he wanted; what else could there be?

      “On deck,” the Master Chief said. They followed him down the passageway to the sponson, then up behind the tower.

      All around them, the carrier was preparing for battle. Bombs were going by on carts; fuel lines were being laid out to planes; aircrews were checking them while lastminute maintenance was done. The heavy stink of kerosene filled the air.

      Right at the elevator-deck edge sat Christine, long since repainted to cover the jokes left by their sister squadron on the Roosevelt. The facelift made her seem young again, and, caught in the glare of the launch of an early-cycle F-14 on burner, she was the most beautiful plane Alan had ever seen—a tribute to his loyalty, to say the least. Bulbous, big, and awkward, she towered over them like a bad dream.

      Alan belatedly switched on his blue light and bent to perform his one preflight responsibility, the chaff and flare pods; the Master Chief grabbed his shoulder, turning him up and toward the fuselage, instead. He pointed.

      Alan had to look for some seconds, then found it just below the TACCO’s window. There, stenciled on the gray hull, it said: LTJG ALAN CRAIK.

      His name on the plane.

      It meant acceptance—more, approval. And permanence. And what’s more, Rafe must have okayed it. Or even suggested it? Alan stumbled into the aircraft, knowing he was blushing and glad for the darkness, unable to speak. He almost forgot to preflight his seat.

      Mick Craik sat on the cat, his eyes wandering over the instruments as he took his baby to full power. The earth moved, but the gauges were good; she was a goer. He and the kid began the priest-and-acolyte formula of prelaunch checks. He reached for his inner calm, found it, and pulled it over him like an old, loved coat. He wished he could do the same for the kid. If his boy were going, he’d want—

      Where is Alan? he wondered. Surely Harry wouldn’t let him go on a live one like this. So you’d want him to treat your kid specially, and let somebody else’s kid go? he asked himself. He was no good at self-doubt; he pushed the question away.

      He thought the S-3 tankers were being put too close to the coast—big, fat, dumb grapes waiting for some Iranian MiG jock to bag them. He had made the objection to Staff; a lot of good it had done. At any rate, he didn’t want Alan up in one of the tankers tonight. One Craik in the air was plenty. Anyway, Alan had a different future: he had a kind of smarts that his father felt he lacked, the kind that could take you to admiral. Mick Craik, he thought, would retire where he was.

      Craik looked around. Planes crouched on every cat, and more waited behind every jet-blast deflector. Fire and light filled the darkness, and, as happened every time he saw it, he was filled with the power of it and moved by what he thought of as the glory. Not much glory left in war, he thought, but we still hear the tune.

      This was the center of his life, the heart of his belief. This is where we treat people fair, and a guy who works and plays the team can get ahead. This is where they respect competence instead of bullshit, because when the chips are down your bombs either hit the target or they don’t. Skipper Craik had known some pretty weird types in naval aviation, but they all got measured by the same stick; either they could fly, or they couldn’t. And this was his America, not abstractions like liberty, Western democracy, capitalism, but a place of no-bullshit that offered great cars, great women, great flyfishing, and the most beautiful mountains on earth. For that place, he would climb into his fiery chariot and ride like the wrath of God against people he had never seen.

      The blast deflector came up behind him. A blur of green showed as the cat crew hooked on the bridle.

      Mick Craik loved “The Ride of the Valkyrie.” It went with the noise and the thrill of this moment on the cat, the first seconds of launch. He wished they could play it as the cat blasted them forward.

      He was The Old Man in squadron myth, skipper in fact, old by comparison with the kids, and he knew that this was his last cruise with a stick in his hand. Yet he was eager to go. He wanted to prove himself one more time.

      This was what he lived for. No women’s tears, no bill collectors, no bureaucrats. Just the stick and the target.

      The cat officer crouched and began to extend his arm.

      Dear God, he prayed silently, as he always did, make it a good one if it’s the last.

      He snapped his best salute and they began to move.

      Alan was ready for the cat when it came. For once, the sickly dust/electrical/old sweat smell of naval aviation was not threatening him with instant airsickness. Airborne, Rafe got a good IFF check from the boat and they cheered; Christine’s IFF was, according to legend, entirely constructed from chewing gum and old slinkies. Rafe started her on the long, slow climb to their tanker station as Narc began cycling through volumes of kneeboard cards to figure out how he could talk to their fighter cover—the entire launch and deployment was being done EMCON. Senior Chief began inserting radar frequencies into a computer hit list. Alan, with the back end online and for once in his life way ahead of the mission, was wiping the inside of his oxygen mask with an alcohol swab stolen from sick bay. He figured they would be on oxygen if anything happened, and the taste of old pizza would not help his airsickness.

      He thumbed the intercom switch and began his stewardess routine. He tried to keep elation out of his voice, suppressed the urge to burble his thanks to everybody as he said, “Folks, we’re going to level off at Angels 23 and cruise there until someone needs gas, at which time Rafe will fart down the pipe. In the meantime, espresso and chocolate-chip cookies are being served by your flight attendant in the main cabin, and will remain available until we touch down at Cedar Rapids International. And thank you for flying Naval Air.”

      Rafe let out a whoop, and a flight-gloved hand reached down the tunnel. Alan pressed the thermos into the hand, balanced two cookies atop it.

      He turned to his monitor. Their radar was

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