“Sir, You’re on Sir. But do you know whatever happened to that girl you rescued? She was cute.”
“Still is Gunny. We took her back to the States and returned her to her parents. Who were mightily displeased with her behavior and even more pleased to get her back alive. A bit later, she moved to Tennessee for a while then to Virginia where she got a job with Newport News. That’s where we bumped into each other again, I was with the Teams at Little Creek. One thing lead to another and she’s Mrs. Thomas now.”
“Sir, congratulations Sir. You got kids?”
“One at school, one on the way. How about you Gunny? Hooked yet?”
“You bet Sir and I got you beat. Wife at home, three kids in school. Met my lady when I was training in California. Been back down south a couple of times as well. Try to catch the kids there before they go bad. You know Sir, the people down there still talk about that Police Chief you threw through his window.”
The ‘ginger ale’ glasses clinked again. “Gunny, when this mess is over, come down to Little Creek and I’ll show you round the training facilities we have. Maybe there’s some stuff that might help your people out. You got the new rifles yet?”
“The ‘fourteens? Sure Sir. We dumped the old Garands before this cruise. Guys are taking time to get used to it though. Hard job to persuade them the twenty seven - fifty nine can do the job when they’re used to firing the old thirty oh six.”
“You think you got a problem Gunny? Somebody tried to convince us to switch over to a point-twenty-two for God’s sake. Had the company bringing the rifle around. Looked good but a twenty-two varmint cartridge? And the rifle was made of plastic would you believe? Rattled like crazy.
“For now, we’ve still got the old greaseguns. We’re looking for a new point forty five submachine gun. Trouble is it’s got to take a silencer and that’s a pain. Means the bullets got to be subsonic so we’re stuck with the old point forty five.” Thomas got his wolfish look again. “After all, we don’t want everybody to know where we are.”
Aviano Italian Air Force Base, Italy
Major Kozlowski viewed the piece of fish on his plate with the gravest suspicion. Aviano was filling up quickly and becoming a regular SAC base. What had started as a week-long courtesy visit had stretched to a month and then turned into a full-scale temporary deployment. The rest of 1/3O5th had arrived so there were now 24 RB-58s on the base and a full group of F-108 Rapiers, the 357th, was filtering in.
That was the bad news. After all, when there had been four SAC aircraft and their crews here, they’d eaten at the Italian officer’s mess where the food was beyond exquisite and the wine was better. Those happy days were gone for now, with almost 100 aircraft on the base, they had their own mess and their own cooks. The American cooks had realized they were up against serious opposition from their Italian rivals almost immediately and they’d organized a series of “American Regional Specialty” days. Today was Friday, the specialty was Cajun and, therefore, with impeccable logic, the evening meal was blackened fish. It looked, well, suspicious somehow.
“Hey Frenchy, you’re Cajun, what did your momma call this when you were growing up?”
Pierre “Frenchy” Thibodeaux poked the blackened fish despondently. “A mistake?” he offered a bit hesitantly. There was no actual guarantee the fish was either dead or a fish and he didn’t want it coming back to life on him. He thought carefully and decided not to chance it. The cramped Bear’s Den of an RB-58 wasn’t the place to come down with salmonella. Opposite him, Kozlowski had come to the same decision. Anyway, in his case, he was joining Carlo and Sophia tomorrow for a day in their country home and they’d feed him properly. “Mike, what happened today? Anything you can pass on.”
RB-58C “Marisol” Eastern Mediterranean, 6 hours earlier
It was amazing, from up here the Eastern Mediterranean really did look the way it was supposed to. The coastline was shaped the way the maps showed and the sea was the right color. In the Bear’s Den, the radar picture was showing much the same thing except it had paints the eye couldn’t see. One of them, a big one, was to the west of them. The USS Shiloh and her battle group. Others were much, much smaller. The two nearest were Farfalia and Minerva, 700 ton Italian coastguard ships.
They were patrolling the waters, looking for refugees fleeing from Egypt ahead of the Caliphate takeover. Technically, Marisol and her crew were just idling around on a training exercise, in reality, they were helping the Italians by vectoring them in on the refugees, the Boat People as the press was calling them. They were also covering the Italians against attack. The Caliphate was grimly determined to kill as many of the refugees as they could and they’d do the same to anybody who got in their way.
They could do it too. The Caliphate naval crews were operating a new naval weapon in these waters. Small patrol craft, fast attack craft the naval people called them, armed with a pair of heavy anti-ship missiles. They lurked in port and only came out when they wanted to kill something. A week or so earlier, there had been a small tug, crowded with refugees, trying to cross the Mediterranean from Egypt to Greece. One of the Caliphate’s FACs had attacked and hit it with one of its anti-ship missiles. The big missile had been designed to take down destroyers and it had made short work of the tug. There hadn’t been any survivors and the wreckage looked like matchwood. The Caliphate had answered diplomatic protests by stating that anybody who tried to leave the Caliphate without permission was an apostate and apostasy was punishable by death.
So Marisol was providing cover for the Italian ship and also protecting any refugees in the area. They were on the radarscope as well but faint flecks, so small and indistinct that they were hardly visible. Still, it was possible and it was a job worth doing. In the Bear’s Den, Eddie Korrina suddenly looked down at the scope. The situation had suddenly become complicated.
“Boss, we’ve got problems. I think there’s some refugees down there, must be a raft or something, it barely shows. Whatever it is, Minerva must have it as well, she’s picking up speed and moving to investigate. The bad news is, there’s some bogies out there also. Two at least. They’re on a collision course also and they’re hauling ass. My guess is hostile FACs.”
“Roger that Eddie. Xav, keep a watch on emissions. I’m going to order up some squid.” Kozlowski changed channels on the radio. “Shiloh this is Marisol we have a problem developing here. Italian corvette picking up refugees possibly threatened by unidentified surface craft. Need some back-up here guys.”
“Launching ready flight. Two Leatherneck Phantoms coming your way. They’ll orbit out of sight. Communication is Romeo-Quebec. Verification as per book. Good luck Marisol
Kozlowski started a gentle descent. Speed and altitude were life but in this situation he could drop to 30,000 without too much risk and it would give Eddie and Xav much better coverage. Below them, the Italian corvette closed on the contact, an extemporized raft built of oil drums and timber with at least a dozen people on it. How they’d sailed it as far as they had was anybody’s guess. Off to the east, the two Caliphate FAC were closing on them.