Stephen Coonts - Combat

“You mean, you can’t believe he’d do that again, ” Patrick said. “That’s Brad Elliott’s MO, Wendy — do whatever it takes to get the job done.”

“Flying the Kavaznya sortie — yes, I agree,” she said. The first flight of the experimental EB-52 Megafortress bomber three years earlier, against a Soviet long-range killer laser system in Siberia, was also unauthorized — but it had probably saved the world from a nuclear exchange. “But with half the planet involved in a shooting war in the Middle East, why he would commit three Megafortresses to the theater without proper authorization and risk getting us all killed like that? Hell, it boggles my mind.”

“No one said Brad was the clearheaded all-knowing expert in everything military,” Patrick pointed out. “If he was, he’d probably build Megafortresses for just one person. He has a crew behind him.” He turned toward her. “Rank disappears when we step into that bird, Wendy. It’s our job, our responsibility, to point out problems or discrepancies or errors.”

“Aren’t you obligated to follow his orders?”

“Yes, unless I feel his orders are illogical or illegal or violate a directive,” Patrick replied. “Brad wanting to engage that unidentified aircraft — that was wrong, even if we were on an authorized mission. We can’t just go around shooting down aircraft over international airspace. We did what we were supposed to do — disengage, identify ourselves, turn, run, and get out. We prevented a dogfight and came home safely.” He paused, then smiled.

“Why are you smiling?”

“You know, I was a little miffed at Brad ordering us up on this mission at first,” Patrick admitted. “But you know, I probably … no, I definitely wanted to go. I knew we had no tasking or execution order. If I wanted, I could have asked the question, demanded he get authorization, and stopped this sortie from ever leaving the ground. The fact is, I wanted to do it.” His expression grew a bit more somber as he added, “In fact, I probably betrayed you, maybe even betrayed myself for not saying anything. I had a responsibility to speak up, and I didn’t. And if things went completely to shit and some of us were killed or captured or hurt, I know that Brad would be the one responsible. I accused Brad of being irresponsible, of wanting to get into the fighting before it was over — and at the same time, I was thinking and doing the exact same thing. What a hypocrite.”

“You are not a hypocrite,” Wendy said, putting a hand on his shoulder as his eyes wandered out across the beach toward the open ocean. “Listen, Patrick, there’s a war on. There might be a cease-fire now, but the entire region is still ready to explode. You know this, Brad knows this, I know this — and soon some smart desk jockeys in Washington will know this. They really did want our team warmed up and ready to go in case we were needed. Brad just advanced the timetable a little …”

“No, a lot ,” Patrick said.

“You played along because you recognized the need and our unit’s capabilities. You did the right thing.” She paused and took a deep breath, letting her fingers slide along his broad, naked shoulders. Patrick suppressed a pleased, satified moan, and Wendy responded by beginning to massage his shoulders. “I just wish Brad was a little more … userfriendly,” she went on absently. “Commanders need to make decisions, but Brad seems a little too eager to pull the trigger and fight his way in or out of a scrape.” She paused for a few long moments, then added, “Why can’t you be our commander?”

“Me?” He hoped his surprised reaction sounded a lot less phony than it sounded to himself. In fact, ever since joining the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, Patrick thought about being its commander — now, for the first time, someone else had verbalized it. “I don’t think I’m leadership material, Wendy,” Patrick said after a short chuckle.

His little laugh barely succeeded in hiding the rising volts of pleasure he felt as her fingers aimlessly caressed his shoulder. “Sure you are,” she said. “I think you’d be a great commanding officer.”

“I don’t think so,” Patrick said. “They made me a major after the Kavaznya mission only because we survived it, not because I’m better than all the other captains in the Air Force …”

“They made you a major because you deserve to get promoted.”

Patrick ignored her remark. “I think I might be meeting a lieutenant-colonel promotion board sometime this month — a two-year below-the-primary-zone board — but I have no desire to become a commander,” he went on. “All I want to do is fly and be the best at whatever mission or weapon system they give me. But they don’t promote flyboys to O-5 if they want to just stay flyboys.”

“They don’t?”

“Why should they? If a captain or a major can do the job, why do they need a lieutenant colonel doing it? L–Cs are supposed to be leaders, commanding squadrons. I don’t want a squadron.” Wendy looked at the sand for a long moment, then drummed her fingers on his shoulder. He glanced at her and smiled when she looked up at him with a mischievous smile. “What?”

“I think that’s bull, Major-soon-to-be-Lieutenant-Colonel McLanahan.” Wendy laughed. “I think you’d make an ideal commanding officer. You’re the best at what you do, Patrick — it’s perfectly understandable that you wouldn’t want to spoil things by moving on to something else. But I see the qualities in you that other high-ranking guys lack. John Ormack is a great guy and a fine engineer, but he doesn’t have what it takes to lead. Brad Elliott is a determined, gutsy leader, but he doesn’t have the long-range vision and the interpersonal skills that a good commander needs.

“So stop selling yourself short. Those of us who know you can see it’s total bull. The Strategic Air Command has got you so brainwashed into believing the mission comes first and the person comes last that you’re starting to believe it yourself.” She lay on the warm sand, facing him. “Let’s talk about something else — like why you were watching me last night.”

Her frankness and playfulness, combined with the warm sand, idyllic tropical scenery, fresh ocean breezes — not to mention her semiundressed attire — finally combined to make Patrick relax, even smile. He lay down on the sand, facing her, intentionally shifting himself closer to her. “I was fantasizing about you,” he said finally. “I was thinking about the night at the Bomb Comp symposium at Barksdale that we spent together, how you looked, how you felt.”

“Mmm. Very nice. I knew you were thinking that. I thought it was cute, you trying to stammer your way out of it. I’ve been thinking about you too.”

“Oh yeah?”

Her eyes grew cloudy, tumultuous. “I had been thinking for the longest time if we’d ever get back together again,” Wendy said. “After the Kavaznya mission, we were so compartmentalized, isolated — I thought I’d never touch you ever again. Then you joined Brad in the Border Security Force assignment, and that went bust, and it seemed like they drove you even deeper underground. And then the Philippines conflict … we lost so many planes out there, I was sure you weren’t coming back. I knew you’d be leading the force, and I thought you’d be the first to die, even in the B-2 stealth bomber.”

Wendy rolled over on her back and stared up into the sky. The clouds were thickening — it looked like a storm coming in, more than just the usual daily late-afternoon five-minute downpour. “But then Brad brought us back to refit the new planes to the Megafortress standard, and you were back at work like nothing ever happened. We started working together, side by side, sometimes on the same workstation or jammed into the same dinky compartment, sometimes so close I could feel the heat from your temples. But it seemed as if we had never been together — it was as if we had always been working together, but that night in Barksdale never happened. You were working away like crazy and I was just another one of your subcontractors.”