Hilliard had paused for a moment and then leaned forward toward the camera. “I was glad to hear that Duckett put you in charge of this Panther business. It could be nasty. We must find out what happened, quickly and with no publicity. Both the secretary and I are counting on you.”
What had he said in response to the admiral? Commander Winters couldn’t remember, but he assumed that it must have been all right. And he did remember the last few words, when Admiral Hilliard had said that he would call back for an update after the meeting on Friday afternoon. Winters had not heard that voice for almost eight years but the recognition was instantaneous. And the memories that flooded forth were just a few milliseconds behind.
The commander took another drag from his cigarette and turned away from the window. He walked slowly across the room. His eyes slid across but did not see the lovely, soft print of the Renoir painting, “Deux Jeunes Filles au Piano,” that was the most prominent object on his office wall. It was his favorite painting. His wife and son had given him the special large reproduction for his fortieth birthday; usually several times a week he would stand in front of it and admire the beautiful composition. But two graceful young girls working on their afternoon piano lessons were not the order for the day.
Vernon Winters sat back down at his desk and buried his face in his hands. Here if comes again, he thought, I can’t hold it back now, not after seeing Randy and hearing that voice. He looked around and then stubbed out the cigarette in the large ashtray on his desk. For a few moments he played aimlessly with the two small framed photographs on his desk (one was a portrait of a pale twelve-year-old boy together with a plain woman in her early forties; the other was a cast photo from the Key West Players production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, dated March 1993, in which Winters was dressed in a summer business suit). At length the commander put the photographs aside, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and succumbed to the powerful pull of his memory. A curtain in his mind parted and he was transported to a clear, warm night almost eight years before, in early April of 1986. The first sound that he heard was the excited nasal voice of Lieutenant Randolph Hilliard.
“Psst, Indiana, wake up. How can you be asleep? It’s Randy. We’ve got to talk. I’m so excited I could shit.” Vernon Winters had only fallen asleep himself about an hour before. He unconsciously looked at his watch. Almost two o’clock. His friend stood next to his bunk, grinning from ear to ear. “Only three more hours and we attack. Finally we’re going to blast that A-rab lunatic and terrorist supporter to heaven with Allah. Shit, big buddy, this is our moment. This is what we worked our whole life for.”
Winters shook his head and began to come out of a deep sleep. It took him a moment to remember that he was onboard the USS Nimitz off the coast of Libya. The first action of his military career was about to occur. “Look, Randy,” Winters had said eventually (on that night almost eight years ago) “shouldn’t we be sleeping? What if the Libyans attack us tomorrow? We’ll have to be alert.”
“Shit no,” said his friend and fellow officer, helping him to sit up and handing him a cigarette, “those geeks will never attack someone who can fight. They’re terrorists. They only know how to fight unarmed people. The only one of them that has any guts is that Colonel Gaddafi and he’s nutty as a fruitcake. After we blow him to kingdom come, the battle will be over. Besides, I have enough adrenaline flowing that I could stay awake for thirty-six hours with no sweat.”
Winters felt the nicotine coursing through his body. It reawakened the eager anticipation that he had finally conquered when he had fallen asleep an hour earlier. Randy was talking a blue streak. “I can’t believe how goddamn lucky we are. For six years I have been wondering how an officer can stand out, distinguish himself, you know, in peacetime. Now here we are. Some loonie plants a bomb in a club in Berlin and we just happen to be on duty in the Med. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. Shit. Think how many other midshipmen from our class would give their right nut to be here instead of us. Tomorrow we kill that crazy man and we’re on our way to captain, maybe even admiral, in five to eight years.”
Winters reacted negatively to his friend’s suggestion that one of the benefits of the strike against Gaddafi would be an acceleration in their personal advancement. But he said nothing. He was already deep in his own private thoughts. He too was excited and he didn’t fully understand why. The excitement was similar to the way he had felt before the state quarterfinals in basketball in high school. But Lieutenant Winters couldn’t help wondering how much the excitement would be leavened by fear if they were preparing to engage in a real battle.
For almost a week they had been getting ready for the strike. It was normal Navy business to go through the preparations for combat and then have them called off, usually about a day ahead of the planned encounter. But this time it had been different from the beginning. Hilliard and Winters had quickly recognized that there was a seriousness in the senior officers that had never been there before. None of the usual horsing around and nonsense had been tolerated in the tedious and boring checks of the planes, the missiles, and the guns. The Nimitz was preparing for war. And then yesterday, the normal time for such a drill to be called off, the captain had gathered all the officers together and told them that he had received the order to attack at dawn. Winters’ heart had skipped a beat as the commanding officer had briefed them on the full scope of the American action against Libya.
Winters’ last assignment, just after evening mess, had been to go over the bombing targets with the pilots one more time. Two separate planes were being sent to bomb the residence where Gaddafi was supposedly sleeping. One of the two chosen pilots was outwardly ecstatic; he realized that he had been given the prime target of the raid. The other pilot, Lieutenant Gibson from Oregon, was quiet but thorough in his preparations. He kept looking at the map with Winters and going over the Libyan gun emplacements. Gibson also complained that his mouth was dry and drank several glasses of water.
“Shit, Indiana, you know what’s bothering me? Those flyboys will be in the battle and we’ll be stuck here with no role unless the crazy A-rabs decide to attack. How can we get into the fight? Wait. I just had a thought.” Lieutenant Hilliard was still talking nonstop. It was after three o’clock and they had already gone over everything associated with the attack at least twice. Winters was feeling lifeless and enervated from lack of sleep but the astonishing Hilliard continued to exude exuberance.
“What a great idea,” Randy continued. talking to himself. “But we can do it. You briefed the pilots tonight, didn’t you, so you know who’s going after what targets?” Vernon nodded his head. “Then that’s it. We’ll tape a personal ‘screw you’ to the side of the missile that’s going to get Gaddafi. That way part of us will go into battle.”
Vernon did not have the energy to dissuade Randy from his crazy plan. As the time for the attack drew closer, Lieutenants Winters and Hilliard went into the hangar on the Nimitz and found the airplane assigned to Lieutenant Gibson (Winters never knew why, but he immediately assumed it would be Gibson who would score a missile on the Gaddafi enclave). Laughingly, Randy explained to the fresh ensign on watch what he and Vernon were going to try to do. It took them almost half an hour to locate the right plane and then identify the missile that would be the first to be launched against the Gaddafi household.