"That'll do it," Batman opined, nodding and chewing. "Now tell Dr. Batman what triggered that LBC in the first place."
"LBC?"
"Little black cloud, of course. Aren't keeping up with our official navy acronyms, are we?" He shook his head. "Obviously, CAG, You're slipping, suffering deeply from the Strain of command."
Tombstone sighed. "You got that right. I'm concerned about our nuggets.
Our female nuggets."
Batman grinned. "Woman trouble, Tombstone? That's not like you. What would Pamela say?"
Pamela Drake was Tombstone's fiancee, a network anchor for ACN news.
"Leave Pam out of this."
"I suppose we should. Although I imagine she's just thrilled by the news that we have girls serving aboard the Jefferson now. Her and about six thousand other Navy wives and sweethearts who have to stay behind while their men sail off into danger."
"I've had some letters from worried wives already," Tombstone admitted.
"God, this female aviator thing is nothing but one big headache, As if we didn't have headaches enough already."
"Ah, don't sweat it. Be like me. I love the women's movement!"
Tombstone eyed his friend warily, sensing a trap. "You do?"
"Yup. Especially from behind!"
Tombstone closed his eyes, groaning. "You, Wayne, are a hopeless degenerate."
Batman nodded vigorously. "A Neanderthal male chauvinist pig, that's me."
"Yeah, and you're probably the last person aboard this boat I should talk to about this. I still remember that incident in Bangkok."
"Incident?" Batman's eyes widened into blank innocence. "What incident?"
"The Thai International Hotel? Skinny-dipping with a couple of stewardesses in the hotel's pool, with God knows how many civilians watching from the lounge through a big underwater window?"
"I'm sure I have no idea what the captain is talking about," Batman said with sore-wounded dignity. "I would certainly have remembered the incident in question had I been the alleged perpetrator involved. Sir."
"Save it. You never did track that one stew down again, did you? What was her name?"
"Which one? Becky or Arlene? Besides, I still don't know what you're talking about."
"I rest my case. I can't talk to you about the problems I'm having with women on board ship. You're too busy chasing them."
Surprisingly, Batman didn't answer right away, and when he did, the bantering tone was gone. "I know I used to be a skirt-chaser, Stoney," he said. "Used to be I had just one use for women. That's not true anymore."
Tombstone regarded his friend for a moment with a level gaze. "I know.
I was out of line, Batman."
He'd heard the story from Batman himself. Several years back, during Jefferson's deployment to Thailand during an attempted military coup in that country, Batman had been shot down by rebels along the Thai-Burmese border.
Chances were he would have ended up dead… but he'd been found instead by a young Karen woman named Phya Nin, a sergeant in the Karen National Liberation Army. He almost certainly owed her his life. Ever since, Batman had continued to maintain the traditional facade of the swinging, predatory, womanizing naval aviator, but it was clear that nowadays his manner was a facade.
Perhaps he'd learned something about women while hiking through the Thai jungle.
"Hey, no biggie," Batman said. "But in case you were wondering, I'm not bedding the Amazons. Not that the idea doesn't have a certain appeal, but it's too damned hard to manage any privacy on this bird farm!"
"'Amazons?""
"The DACOWITS Amazons. What the guys are calling Conway's people.
Strictly unofficial, of course."
DACOWITS was the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.
Founded in 1951, the organization had for years been in the vanguard of the fight to secure women the same opportunities in the military as men. Since the late 1970s, though, the committee had frequently been used as a political front for the radical feminist agenda. Some people had claimed that its more extreme members actively sought the draft for women, if only to deliberately expose more American women to a non-traditional lifestyle, forcing change for change's sake.
Tombstone had no opinion on such charges, but he hated the political shenanigans that were turning the U.S. military into some kind of social testing program. The Clinton Administration had forced the women-in-combat issue, just as they'd forced another controversial issue by lifting the military's ban on homosexuals. Damn it all, between the gargantuan budget cuts and the social engineering, it was as though the White House had been determined to torpedo Navy morale and efficiency.
"So what's eating you about 'em?" Batman prodded.
"Now that I think about it, I'm afraid the problem is more with me than with the situation. I was up in Pri-Fly tonight, watching while they brought Conway and Hanson down. Hanson trapped okay, no problem, but the weather was getting dicey by the time Conway charlied. She boltered once, and her fuel was getting tight."
"She made it?"
"Yup. Second pass."
"Happens to the best of us, man."
"Sure. The point is, I was up there with the Air Boss about to have a cow, hoping Conway wouldn't have to ditch and praying she wouldn't slam into the roundoff. Damn it, I worry about any of my men when they're in trouble, but this was different. Worse."
"The fact that Conway's a woman made it worse?"
"I guess that's what I'm saying." Tombstone took a deep breath. "I was brought up in a pretty traditional family, Batman. A Navy family. I was always taught that the womenfolk back home were part of what we were fighting for. You know, civilization. Family. Motherhood."
"Mom in the kitchen baking apple pie."
"God damn it, Batman-"
"Hey, chill out, CAG. I'm not making fun of you. But it sounds to me like you're having some trouble adjusting to the times that are a-changin'."
"You got that right." He shook his head. "Another dinosaur, blundering off to extinction."
"Another male chauvinist pig dinosaur." Batman took a bite of chicken and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "But you're worried about more than just your response to female aviators."
"How perceptive."
"That's why they pay me the big bucks, man. What's the matter, then?
Afraid one of 'em'll go on the rag and bleed all over the seat of one of your airplanes?"
"Jesus, Wayne!"
"Sorry. Bad joke. Okay, how's this. You're afraid Conway's people can't cut it, is that it? That they can't handle the pressure?"
"Well, I used to wonder about how hard they'd push. Aggression's supposed to be a male thing, you know. Then I realized that any woman who'd fought her way to the top of the pyramid in naval aviation sure as hell didn't have anything lacking in the aggressiveness department."
"I'd say that's an understatement."
"I'm worried about the wing's morale. The men as well as the women.
Damn it, we're about to go into combat. People are going to be making split-second decisions where a half second's hesitation is the difference between living and dying. People are going to die, Batman." He closed his eyes for a moment and saw again the horror aboard the Jefferson after the last of the Battles of the Fjords.
Modern, high-tech warfare carried its own peculiar intensity. Four Soviet Kerry missiles had struck the carrier at the height of the battle, and fuel and munitions in the hangar bay had been set ablaze. The fires had nearly claimed the ship. He could still remember the scene on her flight deck, just after he'd returned to the Jeff aboard an SH-3 helicopter. The wounded had been lined up on stretchers in ranks, waiting their turn to evacuate. Kids, most of them, with hideous burns over faces and arms.
Could he watch something like that happen to a woman?