Joint Task Force #1: Liberia (24 page)

The sound of jet engines roaring down the sides of the USS
Boxer
shook the compartment.

“Combat, Bridge; just had those four French fighters fly down our sides.”

“Roger, Bridge; we have them on radar.”

“That’s good. What should we do? Wave at them or shoot them down?”

Holman reached down and pushed the “to speak” lever down. “Wave. It’s good for the heart.”

“One finger or whole hand?” Leo offered.

Holman patted his pocket. Cigars were in his stateroom. In
his thoughts, Holman was already composing a message to Commander, European Command about the incident. Someone somewhere within his chain of command knew what was going on. It was almost as if they were leaving the decision on how to handle the French to him. If that was true, they why? His head lowered, Holman turned, heading up to the bridge.

He bumped into the back of an officer standing in the shadows near the captain’s chair. “What the—”

“Sorry, Admiral, I was watching Commander Wlaz . . . wallz . . . Commander ‘What’s-her-name,’ and didn’t see you, sir,” the young man stuttered.

“I know you. You’re one of those pil . . . operators that’s here with Professor Dunning. I thought you left with him.”

“Oh, no, sir. He went, but the four of us are still on board. He didn’t want to leave the unmanned fighters and control equipment alone.”

“I thought all that stuff went with the technicians.” Holman looked at the name tag on the officer’s flight suit—SHOEMAKER.

“Yes, sir . . . I mean no, sir. Some of the lighter stuff and the data drives went off in the tech kit with the professor, but the bulk of the stuff is still aboard. He ordered us to remain with it until it could be off-loaded in Little Creek. It’s a little bulky, heavy, and sensitive to move without heavy equipment. The helicopters were busy.” Shoemaker shrugged his shoulders. “And it seemed we were low priority.”

“Then, you’re with us for the duration, Lieutenant Shoemaker,” Holman mumbled as he opened the hatch and started up the ladder.

“Admiral out of Combat!”

This was going to send the wrong message to that French bastard of an admiral. Colbert was going to interpret their acquiescence as showing how Holman would react to future French demands. If he only had Harriers embarked. Harriers weren’t the best fighter aircraft, but they could stand up to the Super Etendards, and having them would help even on this lopsided playing field. But the harriers were on the ships that had returned to Little Creek.

He stopped abruptly on the narrow ladder leading up the bridge, catching his Chief of Staff by surprise. Upmann’s face
bumped into his butt, causing Upmann’s foot to slip on the metal steps. Upmann’s grip tightened on the railing keeping himself from falling.

Holman turned around. “Leo, quit clowning and go back. Hurry,” he said, touching Upmann on the arms, trying to turn him around.

Upmann stumbled again before turning around and starting back down the ladder. “I don’t understand, Admiral. What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong, Leo. I think we may have had an answer for our French ally’s arrogance and never realized it.”

Upmann opened the hatch and stepped through.

“Where is that lieutenant who plays at being a pilot?”

“Admiral in Combat.”

He couldn’t help feeling a little mischievous glee over the thoughts of what that asshole Colbert was going to do when Holman’s joint task force miraculously appeared with fighter aircraft over it. Far be it for him not to repay the French aerial flyby show of respect with his own.

“WHEW!” LIEUTENANT PAULINE KITCHNER GASPED. “THIS
is hard work.” She wiped the sweat from her forehead, tilted the plastic water bottle up, and took a long drink.

“If it was easy work, someone else would be doing it,” Lieutenant Nash Shoemaker said as he intentionally fell backward off his haunches onto his butt. He leaned forward and grabbed his bottle of water.

“How much longer do you think it’s going to take us to uncrate these things?” Alan Valverde, the third lieutenant in the Unmanned Fighter Aerial Vehicle group, asked. “Where are the tech reps when we need them?”

“Tech reps ain’t military,” said Kitchner. “They don’t have to stay on board and ride with the systems when their job is done. They can hop on board that helicopter like Dr. Dunning, and be ashore hoisting a cool one within minutes of finishing their job.”

“Jurgen!” Shoemaker shouted. “Take a break and have some water. I don’t want you dying and me having to explain
to your mother that it was because you didn’t drink your water.”

The three pilots of the Unmanned Fighter Aerial Vehicles raised their water bottles in a mock toast to Ensign Jurgen Ichmens, who stuck his head out of the huge crate in the middle of the hangar deck. Ichmens nodded and started across the deck toward the three lieutenants.

“Naw, leave him alone,” Pauline said as Ichmens arrived and threw himself down beside the others. “He’s the only ensign we have. I think the three of us lieutenants ought to sit back and supervise Ensign Ichmens while he finishes uncrating the UFAVs. It will give him the benefit of our cooperative leadership while we ensure all safety procedures and standards are followed.”

“Yeah, I agree with Pauline,” Valverde added, chuckling. “We’ve only got one ensign and Jurgen’s it. Just think of the valuable training he’ll get from our supervision.”

“Just think of the valuable training I’ve already gotten from you three.” Ichmens chugged the contents of the small plastic container, and then, in an exaggerated hook shot, tossed the empty over their heads into a trash bin located against the bulkhead.
“Dos puntos,”
he said, hooking two fingers downward.

“Now we’ll have none of that here,” Shoemaker said.

“None of what?”

“You know,
putas
. You want to offend Polly the pilot?”

Pauline reached over and playfully slapped Nash on the back of the head. “Behave before Polly rips your cracker off.”

“What’s she talking about? What the heck does that mean?” Valverde asked. “Damn, Pauline, speak English.”

“You’re too young to know. Besides, you’re one of those super-secret cryptologic officers from Naval Security Group. I already know everything we say, you’re beaming back to some gigantic database so that years later you can blackmail me into wild, abandoned sex.”

“Too young? Shoot, Pauline, I’m three years older than you,” Valverde answered, ignoring the rest of the hyperbole.

“Age among lieutenants is like virtue among whores,” Ichmens added.

“What the hell does that mean?” Valverde asked, raising one eyebrow in a questioning slant.

“That’s rank among ensigns is like virtue among whores,” Pauline said, “and from the ensigns I’ve met, the whores have it over them.”

“No argument from me,” Valverde added. “Why I remember this time—”

“Okay, Lieutenant,” Pauline said, letting out a deep breath in mock anger. “Let’s don’t go down that road.”

“I have never understood that quatrain about virtue and rank,” Ichmens said, reaching into the ice container and pulling out another water. “Virtue and rank aren’t even related.”

“Ensigns aren’t supposed to understand. They’re supposed to stand at attention and accept as the gospel whatever their esteemed leaders tell them. And those crumbs of truth are to be squirreled away like nuts of wisdom until they need them,” Pauline rebutted.

“And it’s not a quatrain either,” Shoemaker added. “It’s one of those nuts of wisdom that Pauline mentioned.”

“Nuts is right,” Valverde said.

Shoemaker pushed himself up, took the white hand towel from his stateroom, and ran it across his shock of dark hair. “Well, enough of a break. Admiral Holman wants the UFAVs ready for launch tomorrow morning. We need to get back to work.”

“It would be nice if he could send us a working party to help,” Ichmens added. The athletic young man reached up and pushed sweat-soaked strands of blond hair off his forehead.

“He offered, but the last thing we need is to have some well-meaning sailor damage something. Once we have the five UFAVs unsecured and primed for launch, then the ship’s crew can move them to the flight deck. That won’t take long. What’s going to be complicated is getting the data links up and running once we have the control suites operational.”

“Take long? Last time it took twelve hours.”

Pauline reached into the ice chest and pulled another water out. “Then it should take less time. We’ve had this experience. We’ve done this—how many times? Three? Four?”

“This will be the fourth time, but it’s the first time we’ve done this without Boeing tech reps, Dr. Dunning, and someone
manning the monitoring station to feed us information on what is going on. Keep your fingers crossed it works when we finish. Admiral Holman isn’t a great fan of unmanned aircraft.”

“That probably explains why we haven’t been invited to sit around his table and exchange hair-raising aerial-combat stories with him.”

“I think he’s a fan of unmanned aircraft,” Shoemaker said. “I think it’s the idea of having our great Naval Security Group officer acting as a pilot that grates on his nerves.”

“Well, he does have the luxury of knowing that three of us are trained, highly qualified, and with the exception of Ichmens, we have over a thousand hours each in the air,” Pauline added. Then she turned to Valverde. “Come on, Alan. Why do we have you along with us? You’re wearing a Surface Warfare Officer device along with an Air Medal. Can’t say we see a lot of the cross-breeding the fruit salad on your left side implies,” she said, referring to the lack of the rows of medals worn on the normal uniforms.

“We won’t have someone on the monitor helping us this time,” Valverde said.

“Ah, come on, Alan. Quit ignoring our curiosity.”

Valverde pursed his lips and threw a kiss at Pauline, who slapped it away playfully.

Shoemaker brought the water bottle down from his lips, nodded, and said, “Guess we will have to become Navy pilots again and do it the old-fashioned way via radio.”

“I want to quit being a Navy pilot,” Kitchner said. “I want to be like Alan and be a super-secret type of person, longing for the thrill of the warrior ethos.”

“Yeah, you’re old, all right—what? Thirty maybe?”

“We got radio?”

“Of course, Ensign Ichmens, we have radio. How do you think we talk during our exercises?” Kitchner asked, and before he could answer, she turned to Valverde. “I’m the ripe old age of twenty-nine.”

“I thought it was an intercom system.”

“Jurgen, you could call it that. Our radios are cables running between the cockpit suites,” Shoemaker said, turning as he walked to the nearest crate, which contained one of the UFAVs. “I think the admiral will want us to be able to talk
with Combat Information Center once we’re airborne. This is going to be a real mission, and we’ll have to be able to talk directly to the Tactical Action Officer.”

Valverde pushed himself off the deck and stretched. “This heat is hell. Why can’t the ship air-condition the hangar deck?”

Pauline pointed to one of the open hangar doors. “Then they would have to shut the doors, and you wouldn’t have the cruise advantage of seeing the blue African sea languidly lapping the sides of the ship.”

“I can think of other things I would rather have languidly lapped.”

“Don’t go there,” she warned, winking at him, as she pushed herself off the deck and headed toward the second crate in the line. “Come on, Ensign, you’ve rested enough.”

“But I’ve just sat down,” he protested weakly.

“Ensigns should never sit when superiors are standing, which for an ensign is always. If you had worked harder and faster,” she cajoled, “your superior officers wouldn’t have to be doing this menial labor. Because of you, we are once again forced to regain vertical position.” Kitchner exaggerated a shiver. “What a horrible thought. Besides, you’re whining, Ensign. Lieutenants do not like to hear ensigns whine. It indicates they may actually understand their low status in life.”

“I’m not whining,” he replied as he hastily stood and walked past Lieutenant Kitchner toward the crate where he had been unpacking an Unmanned Fighter Aerial Vehicle.

“I think you were,” Valverde said, trying to sound serious. “Whining can have a major impact on morale.”

“My morale is slipping fast,” Kitchner said, her voice shaking slightly.

“Stop it, you two. You’re hurting the ensign’s self-esteem.”

“Uh-oh. The boss is exerting his authority,” Pauline said to Valverde. “Hey, Nash, you from California?”

“Sounds like it to me too. Oops! Did you feel that?” Valverde touched his stomach. “My morale fell another notch.”

“As the senior lieutenant of this group and therefore the one what’s in charge—”

“What’s! You mean who.”

“Could be who’s.”

“—I order all of you to raise your morale back to the level
of acceptable standards; to quit picking on the ensign—he’s the only one we have and we need him available for further leadership training; and to finish uncrating these UFAVs before dinner. Plus, yes, I am from California.”

A chorus of “Aye, aye” sounded through the hanger bay. Within minutes, the banter stopped as the only four UFAV pilots in the United States Navy inventory continued uncrating the aircraft. Even when they finished unfastening the stabilizing straps holding the fuselages, they still had to pull each UFAV onto the hangar deck to unfold the wings.

Shoemaker walked out of the crate. Sunlight blazed across the bay through the open hangar doors. He blinked his eyes several times. Sure he’d told the admiral they could do it, and they could. What he’d neglected to tell the man was they had never packed or unpacked the equipment by themselves. This was the first time, and even with the great level of confidence most aviators possess, he couldn’t help but worry a little they would fail to do something right. A vision of the four aircraft taxiing down the flight deck, off the end, and splashing into the water in front of the admiral’s eyes haunted him for a moment. Shoemaker imagined how he would turn to Admiral Holman after the four crashed off the bow and say,
“Well, Admiral, the good news is we still have one left.”
Might be the last words out of his mouth as the little Napoleon jumped up and throttled him.