Stephen Coonts - Combat

“Okay.” Delight thought for a moment. “You figure it has something to do with the Chinese?”

“I don’t know what else. Anyway, I’ll get back ASAP.”

Delight punched Peters’s arm. “Okay, pard. You got it.” He returned to the bar, where Robbins was still holding forth.

Liz Vespa, intrigued by the arcane male ritual under way, edged closer to Delight and Robbins. Zack offered her the ice bucket. “Hey, Scooter. You need a refill?”

“No, I just wonder how you tell which movie is most manly.”

Delight’s warning receiver began twitching. He knew that Liz Vespa could kid a kidder. “Well … it’s, like, a Guy Thing.”

“Sort of common consent,” added Robbins. His perennial grin seemed to indicate that girls would not understand.

“You want to know what Manly is?” Vespa did not await an answer. “I’ll give you Manly. It’s PMS … actually, it’s flying with PMS.”

Robbins braced himself. Here it comes. The Girl Speech .

“Imagine feeling bloated from all the water you’re retaining. Then add a migraine headache, plus nausea. Then throw in stomach cramps — the kind that make you just want to curl up and go to sleep.” She leveled her gaze at both men. “Now, with all that, imagine making an instrument approach in rough air, at night.” Privately, Delight recalled when he had felt that way.

Vespa was warming up. “Now, after you’ve fought off vertigo in an instrument descent, aggravated by your headache and nausea, consider this. You feel that same way during an air-combat hop, pulling four or five Gs and doing that twice a day for a week.”

Liz drained the last of her vodka tonic and set the glass on the bar with a decisive clunk. “Gentlemen, I’m here to tell you: only Manly Men can fly with PMS.”

The men watched her walk away, too astonished for a reply.

Robbins found his voice first. “Wow! What got into her?”

Delight turned to Thaler, who joined his friends at the bar. “Hey, Psycho. What were you guys talking about with Liz?”

“Well, Ozzie said that he and Maria are getting engaged.” Thaler cocked his head in curiosity. “Why do you ask?”

Mr. Wei Chinglao sat across the desk from Terry Peters and played the game. Producing a pack of cigarettes, he politely asked, “Do you mind if I smoke?” In the months he had been working with ATA, he hardly could have missed the “No smoking” signs, let alone Robbins’s handlettered “Oxygen in use” beside the WW II LSO paddles on his wall.

Hook Peters had quit smoking three decades before, between Vietnam deployments. He had told his wingman, “If I’m ever about to get captured, you’ll have to shoot me. I’d tell the gooks anything after two days without a smoke.”

Now, Peters regarded Wei’s request. He knows I don’t smoke; he knows there’s no smoking in the building. If I turn him down, he probably thinks I’ll feel I owe him something . “If you don’t mind, Mr. Wei, I’m allergic to tobacco smoke. That’s one of the reasons we post the signs in our spaces here.”

Wei nodded. “Ah, yes. Please excuse me.” He put the Camels back in his shirt pocket. Americans: such a peculiar race. Well, not even a race, he told himself, as mongrelized as they had become. Asia’s homogeneous populations had blessedly escaped most of those problems. And such concerns over trivia! The cartoon animal used to advertise Wei’s favorite cigarettes had been virtually banned by the U.S. government. All things considered, America was a mishmash of contradictions: constant meddling in the affairs of other nations but unwilling to control its own borders; puritan ethics constantly exposed to public hypocrisy; a vicious civil war fought to free the slaves, the descendants of whom still suffer in economic servitude; a constitution proclaiming supremacy of the individual but steadily eroded by the power of the state. If not for its technological genius, Wei was convinced that America never could have come to world prominence.

“I am preparing a report for Mr. Lieu at the embassy,” the program manager explained. “Now that our pilots are nearing the end of their carrier-landing training, I am required to provide a preliminary assessment of their progress.”

Peters turned in his chair toward the “howgozit” chart on the wall. Each PRC flier’s name and grades were neatly inked in for each phase of the program. Where a pilot had failed the course was an abrupt, final red X indicating that he had departed. Two, Peters thought ruefully, had departed this life.

“Well, sir, the figures are right there for you. Overall, I think your pilots have done pretty well.” He turned back to Wei. “Actually, I was surprised that we didn’t lose more pilots or planes before now. The weapons and especially the aerial-tactics refresher programs had the greatest potential for losses, but Yao’s incident was the only one directly involved in our training program.” He did not need to add that the first loss had involved wake turbulence from a Boeing 757 landing at Williams.

Wei’s dark eyes scanned the chart, evidently reading the small, neat letters from fifteen feet. “Mr. Yao brought disaster upon himself, Mr. Peters. My report made that clear.” The normal brisk tone of his voice softened perceptibly. “I trust that you know we hold your firm completely innocent in that event.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, I have been following the field-landing practice as much as possible, and I believe most of our pilots are doing reasonably well. But how many might not achieve your own standards before going to the ship?”

“I was discussing that with Mr. Robbins. We noted four pilots who were inconsistent in the simulated carrier-landing pattern. Two of them have improved this week; the others remain erratic.”

“And they are?”

“Mr. Zhang and Mr. Hu.”

“I mean, Mr. Peters, who are the four?”

“Oh.” Peters was taken aback; he knew that Robbins was inclined to give the first pair “a look at the boat.” He referred back to the list. “Mr. Chao and Mr. Wong. But I should note that Mr. Robbins believes they are making satisfactory progress.”

Wei scribbled a note, then looked up. “Even if Chao and Wong do not complete the course, we regard this as an acceptable completion rate.” He almost smiled. “You have done well.”

Peters was surprised; outright praise from Wei Chinglao was unprecedented. “Well, thank you, sir. Of course, we won’t know the actual results until after the qualification period aboard the Santa Cruz .” He opened his mouth, then thought better of it.

“Yes?” Wei prompted.

No point kidding this guy . “To tell you the truth, sir, I’m surprised and impressed with how well your group has done here. They’ve done quite a lot better than most of us expected.”

Wei leaned back — an unaccustomed, almost relaxed, posture. “Mr. Peters, now I will tell you the absolute truth. These pilots are the product of a screening process completely unprecedented in our military history. Not only did we require exceptional pilots by our standards, but exceptional individuals. The language study alone eliminated several of our most experienced aviators.”

“Well, yes, sir. We knew that this group …”

“Excuse me, Mr. Peters. In all candor, your Navy was told as little as possible about these men. It was considered necessary as a security measure at the time.” He looked down, as if composing his thoughts. “When my government accepted your government’s ah, suggestions as to our internal affairs, there was much resentment. But it was judged worthwhile because of the greater access to American trade and programs such as this.”