Gordon Kent - Peacemaker

“Well,” she shouted over the storm, “you wanted a change!”

“Hey, man, this is too much like being a sailor!” he bellowed.

They were doing a quick familiarization cruise. She was air Navy; now she had to learn more about what the despised line officers did. The Grace Orbis was a much smaller ship than Philadelphia , the one that would launch Peacemaker, but Philadelphia was at Newport News being refitted for the launch. She figured that if she could stay upright aboard Grace Orbis, Philadelphia would be a cakewalk.

A ladder led up to a watertight hatch and the deck. To Valdez’s disgust, she wanted to see the storm close up. She gave him a shove. “Move it!”

Valdez started up. The bow rose and he swayed back and she thought he was going to come down on top of her; she put a hand in the middle of his back and pushed. The bow started down and he swayed to vertical again, and she started up after him. He was at the hatch, reaching for the big white handle, and she was halfway up the ladder when the ship made a more abrupt move to starboard, the bow going down and the deck swinging far over to her right. She started to make some sound to show she wasn’t scared, the sort of sound you might make on a roller-coaster, and then she felt Valdez sway back and down and into her, and her feet were going out from under her, sliding, and briefly she was airborne and then slamming against the metal rail. She slid down, banging her shins on the ladder, feeling a sharp, horrible pain in her gut and then hitting hard on the bottom step and bouncing once more to the steel deck below. Valdez was beside her in two jumps.

She thought I’ve hurt myself , and then almost at the same time, Don’t show it, don’t show it! and she was clutching his arm, feeling the bow come up, taking her with it, swaying; she clutched his arm and said, “I’m all right—I’m all right—” She clawed herself halfway upright. The pain flashed down her abdomen and into her thighs and she thought she would fall again, and she held on to his arm with both hands, staring into his brown eyes so she wouldn’t pass out. “I’m really all right—!”

“Oh, Jesus,” he was moaning, “oh, help us, Jesus—!”

“Get me up straight—I’ve got to stand up straight—I’m all right, I’m all right—!”

August

East Africa.

O’Neill sits beside Lake Victoria. He is waiting for her—the female agent who responded to his sign.

O’Neill is at peace, perhaps for the first time. He has found he likes Africa. He understands now what Craik meant about its size, about its smell, the look of it. He has no feeling of coming home; to the contrary, it is the most alien place he has ever been. Yet it brings him peace.

She will wear green, and if something is wrong she will also wear a red scarf. This is not the sort of tradecraft they taught him at the Ranch, but Ranch tradecraft is not designed for Africa in the 1990s; it is designed for Europe in the 1970s. He smiles to himself. The wonder of it is that any of what they taught him actually does work here. The cops-and-robbers of counter-surveillance, for example. Most of the psychology of recruitment. It is like being a Boy Scout and finding that what the Boy Scout Manual says about building a fire really does make flame, even if nobody in his right mind would ever make it that way.

Perhaps, when he goes back, he will teach about Africa at the Ranch.

He sees a green dress coming toward him. It is still far away, but he can see the swing of her, her size, and he can see that she does not wear a red scarf.

O’Neill rises and goes to meet his future.

Which is Alan Craik’s future.

Near Newport, Rhode Island.

“You’re over-controlling.” Rafe’s voice was calm, devoid of criticism, an LSO voice.

Alan eased up on the stick, flexed his hand, and tried to keep the little gauge that measured rate of climb centered on zero through the turn. The single-engine plane wobbled slightly, very like a horse that knows it has a novice at the reins.

“See the runway?” The question seemed superfluous—the ancient runway of Quonsett Reserve Naval Air Station almost seemed to fill the viewscreen. “Center up. Ease up on the stick. The plane will fly just fine without you.”

Rafe spoke to the tower one more time, but Alan’s entire concentration was on the airplane and the runway. The runway, which had seemed miles long a moment before, now seemed to flow beneath him at the speed of light.

“Throttle down.” Rafe seemed to be running a checklist. Alan looked at his flaps and saw they were at full. His momentary glance broke his concentration on the stick, and the plane wobbled. He corrected automatically and was delighted to find that he had recentered. The plane dropped lightly; the altimeter ran slowly down toward zero, and the plane touched, less than a third of the way down the runway. Alan wanted to shriek with joy, but Rafe smiled wickedly and said, “Full power.”

Alan reacted automatically, running the throttle to full before the speed fell below thirty knots.

“Touch and go. Flaps up.” Alan ran the flaps all the way up with one hand, trying to watch the airspeed while keeping the plane centered on the runway. The airspeed needle passed through fifty-five knots and he pulled back lightly on the stick. His eyes flickered to the rate of climb; he was trying to hold on five degrees, with reasonable success. The plane began to climb away. Rafe spoke to the tower again and turned to Alan. “Nice job. You might have a stick hand, at that. Now ascend to 5500 and turn on course 172 for Naragansett. We’ll land there for lunch.”

The plane was Rafe’s. He kept it at Quonsett while he attended the War College. As a senior 0–4 with no kids and a busted marriage that so far hadn’t cost him alimony, he could maintain the sleek Cessna 182 in top condition and decorate the dash with gauges that were meaningless to Alan.

“You landing on the altimeter?” he asked casually, fiddling with the pocket on his windbreaker.

“Is that wrong?”

“Unfortunately, it just broke.” Rafe grinned and taped a piece of cardboard—he had been planning this, the sonofabitch—over the altimeter dial. “You liked flying with me off the boat, you get to learn my way.”

Rafe’s way was unnerving. Alan watched the ground, then started to glue himself to the angle-of-climb monitor. The airfield was down there, visible, and Alan was well into the approach, yet he felt lost. He kept waggling the wings to get a better view of the ground, and once, he almost panicked when he saw that he was in a 15degree descent instead of being level, but he fought the machine and himself and at last achieved lineup with the runway.

“How’s Rose?” Rafe asked.

Alan took a deep breath. “Rose was pregnant,” he said. “She lost the baby.”

He watched the runway and made a minute correction.

“Never try to correct so close to the ground!” Rafe shouted, and the wheels touched. He modulated his voice. “Nice landing, Buddy.”

“She fell down a ladder during sea trials on her new project.” Alan was thinking of Rose, the pale face on the hospital sheets, the limp hand in his, the averted face. No tears. Rose .

“Fucking A, Alan, that sucks.” With the engine at idle and no slipstream, the utter honesty of Rafe’s comment struck him. That was how it had been at the squadron. Confrontation, joy, sorrow—all right there. Not a lot of bullshit. “She taking it out on you?”

Two nights before, he had tried to make Rose talk about it and he still saw her gesture—hands raised on each side of her head, fingers spread, blocking out sound, sight, him; her voice, I’ll deal with it! Just let me deal with it! The hands, the voice shutting him out—