Top Hook. Gordon Kent

get back to you,” Menzes said.

      “Ten tomorrow morning, your office—access!”

      Another silence on his end, and then, almost meekly, “I may not be able to make that determination.”

      “When?”

      The wind had gone out of him, Rose knew.

      “I’ll have an answer for you by six.” He hung up.

      Rose looked at Emma. “Wow,” she said.

      Emma ran a hand through her hair, making it look even worse. “They haven’t got anything, that’s why he caved.”

      “How do you know?”

      “I’m guessing. I think we’re going to close out Phase One tomorrow, that’s the feeling I get, but, just in case, I’m going to hire an investigator.” She gave Rose that long, flat stare again. “They aren’t cheap, either.”

      “I already had that figured out.” She didn’t want some hired investigator; she wanted her friend, Mike Dukas. But he was in Holland. “Whatever,” she said. The word seemed to sum up her feeling of helplessness.

      USS Thomas Jefferson.

      At the moment, it looked as if the maintenance was so screwed up that 902 wouldn’t make its launch, and he hadn’t heard one word from Rafe about finding Mike Dukas. Trying to distract himself with a different problem, he worked at analyzing the det’s officers, most of whom he had now met for the second time. Aside from Stevens, there were only five. LT Mark Cohen, a pilot, was a difficult, pale man whose resentment and suspicion had seemed palpable, not least because he was the maintenance officer. LT George Reilley, the second pilot, red-headed and always laughing, seemed popular with the men; Campbell, an NFO, was in his first tour, had no reputation of any kind, but had a graduate degree in aeronautical engineering and seemed to have Craw’s confidence because of it; LTjg Derek Lang, also a backseater, had hardly registered on him but for that reason seemed unfriendly. The fifth officer was—or would be when he got there—LTjg Soleck. Soleck looked like a disaster, except that he had finished first in his class at Pensacola.

      But he needed Soleck. Because Alan had the liberty of putting senior enlisted men in one or both seats in the back end to fly the special equipment, he could theoretically make four crews, once Soleck was aboard. The Navy had intended that the det have only two crews for its two planes, but four would give them flexibility. If they ever got the planes to fly.

      Chief Navarro came and sat next to him, his glance asking for attention but not demanding it. Alan finished a message, signed off two equipment requests, and

      turned to face him.

      “You wanted to see me, sir?”

      “Did you get the simulator CD from Lockheed?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Chief, as of now, you’re the MARI training officer. Find a laptop, or better yet, a desktop, and put it 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