Force Protection. Gordon Kent

what worried him. The man in the left-hand seat was a lieutenant-commander and hated his guts, but that didn’t worry him, either.

      What worried Soleck was that in three days he was going to make lieutenant, and he didn’t know what he was going to do about a wetting-down party. It was tradition that you gave a party for your shipmates for a promotion, and you wet down the new bars with the most drinkable stuff available. Not giving a party wasn’t an option. Soleck had heard a story about a new jg in a squadron – nobody ever said what squadron it was, but everybody swore it was true – who had refused to give a party, and his CO had sent him away every weekend for months – courier duty, bullshit trips, hand-carried messages – until he broke and gave a party at last, and nobody went. Soleck couldn’t imagine that degree of isolation. You’d be frozen right out of a squadron. A pariah. He’d kill himself.

      So he had to give a party. But it had to be just right. Really phat. Something they’d tell stories about long after he’d been ordered someplace else. So that when he was, let’s say, an old guy – a commander, a squadron CO, even – the nuggets would stare at him and nudge each other and say, ‘The Old Man’s the one that gave a party so cool that –’ That what? There was the problem.

      ‘You take it?’ the man beside him said.

      Soleck snapped out of it. ‘Yes, sir!’

      LCDR Paul Stevens was a difficult man. He didn’t like Soleck, the jg knew, because Soleck heroworshipped Alan Craik, their CO, and Stevens and Craik didn’t get along. What Soleck didn’t understand was that Stevens never would have liked him anyway, because Soleck was an optimist and a doer and a happy guy, and Stevens went through life with his own personal cloud raining on him all the time. Now he scowled at the much younger man and sneered, ‘You awake?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      Stevens grunted. They had both been put up for the Air Medal for flying into a war zone seven weeks ago to pull out Craik and an NCIS agent and a spy they’d captured, and they’d flown back out with two Chinese aircraft pissing missiles at them and had lived to tell about it – but was Stevens happy? No. He’d done brilliantly, evading missiles with the slow, fat S-3, hoarding fuel long past the gauges’ limit, getting two wounded men back to the CV in time to get the blood they needed. But was he happy? No. All he’d said was, ‘That trip gets me O-5 and a medal, and I’m goddamned if I ever do anything that stupid again.’ The talk before had been that Stevens would get passed over for commander and would have to leave the Navy, but now he’d made O-5 and got a medal, and he remained as sour as a ripe lemon, a weight on the entire detachment.

      ‘I need to take a piss,’ he was saying. ‘Keep it level on 270 if you can manage it – you’re already three goddam points off.’

      Soleck started to object, then shut up. ‘Anything you say, sir.’

      ‘Yeah, I bet.’

      Stevens headed for the tunnel. Alone in the front end, Soleck brought the S-3 back on course and ran through the things he might have said. He knew what Stevens’s beef was: when Craik had taken over the det several months ago, Stevens had been acting CO and things had been a shambles. Craik had whipped them into a first-class outfit; then, with Craik home on convalescent leave after the wild ride out of Pakistan, Stevens had been made acting CO again, and the CAG had been right on his ass the whole time to keep him up to the mark. The CAG was Craik’s personal friend, Captain Rafehausen. ‘His asshole buddy,’ Stevens had sneered. Yeah, well, I admire both of them a hell of a lot more than I admire you, Stevens, Soleck said inside his head. You don’t even have a friend! Mister Craik gave you the chance that got you the medal and your fucking O-5, and you’re not even grateful! The trouble with you, Stevens, is that you’re –

      He was what? Soleck was too young, too inexperienced to know that there are people incapable of happiness. He thought that Stevens was lazy, but he also wondered if Stevens was actually afraid of failure: better not to try than to fail.

      Which brought him back to the wetting-down party: would he have to invite Stevens?

      He slid into a reverie about a private banquet room somewhere, maybe champagne – champagne, really? did aviators even like champagne? – well, booze, certainly. And women. He didn’t know what kind of women or how he’d get them, but they’d remember a party with women, wouldn’t they? And a theme. Something Navy – maybe a few musicians playing Navy stuff –

      ‘Jeez, you’re on course.’ Stevens dropped back into the left-hand seat. ‘You get any reading on that gas gauge?’

      ‘No, sir.’

      They were flying in tandem with the det’s other S-3, running MARI scans on surface ships in the Aden-India sea lane. Slowly, they were building a library of computer-stored images, and someday, when a classification system was evolved, you’d be able to bring an unknown contact up on MARI, and the computer would scan the data banks and give you an ID. Great stuff, but this part of it was really tedious.

      ‘Sir –’ Soleck began.

      Stevens ducked his bullish head as if prepared for a blow. ‘Yeah?’

      Soleck swallowed. ‘Sir, what did you do for a wetting-down party when you made lieutenant? If you don’t mind me asking.’

      Stevens stared at him. He hunched his shoulders, shook himself deeper into the seat and put his hands on the con. ‘I got it.’ Stevens looked away from him then, checking the gauges, doing a quick visual check out the windows. He was the best pilot in the det, maybe the best on the carrier, you had to give him that. Why was he such a prick?

      ‘I bought everybody a beer at the O Club. That’s what everybody does.’ He started to say something else and then thought better of it, but his tone had been kinder than Soleck had ever heard. Soleck wanted to say something more but could think of nothing. The moment passed, and when Stevens next looked at him, it was the old, sour face he turned. ‘Forty minutes to turnback. Call Preacher and tell them section’s forty from RTF, right tank uncertain, but estimate fuel okay to touch down.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      Soleck decided then that he’d have to ask Mister Craik. He wouldn’t see him for some days – the word was they’d fly off to Mombasa within the week – and then, when they were more or less alone sometime, he’d just ask him. The way he’d asked Stevens. Craik would know. He’d know if women or music or goddam fireworks were in order. Or if he should just buy everybody a beer and let it go.

      But what would be memorable about that?

      USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inbound Channel, Straits of Gibraltar.

      ‘You know Al Craik?’ asked a lieutenant-commander in a rumpled flight suit. He wore an old leather flight jacket against the forty-knot wind that blew through the Straits of Gibraltar. He was short, compact, and thin-faced, and the pocket of his flight jacket, embroidered in the blue and gold of VS-53, said ‘Narc.’

      ‘Never met him. But I went through AOCS with his wife. Rose Siciliano, then. Man, she’s a tough chick. Great pilot, too.’ He grinned at the memory and turned to look up at Narc as he descended the ladder from the O–3 level to the hangar deck. He, too, wore a flight suit and a jacket, only his was embroidered with the black and white of chopper squadron HS-9. It said ‘Skipper Van Sluyt.’ They were both officers in the same air wing: CAG 14, six days away from transiting the Suez Canal to relieve the USS Thomas Jefferson off Africa.

      Narc nodded. ‘She’s at NASA, going to fly the shuttle.’

      ‘No shit? Well, good work if you like that sort of thing.’ Skipper Van Sluyt started down the ladder again.

      Narc followed him down, surprised. ‘What, the publicity?’ Narc did like that sort of thing. He had an Air Medal of which he was very proud.

      ‘Yeah, Narc. That and the ever-present corporate –’ Van Sluyt had turned his head, perhaps wondering if his anti-NASA speech was going to have the right effect on Narc the Navy Yuppie,