“Good,” Masters said excitedly. “Great. Now, I need to see—”
She slapped five more binders in his hands — and she had a dozen more binders ready. “Airframe reports for your review. Better take a look at -030 and -040—I don’t think they’re going to make it, but you might be able to work your magic on them. Everyone else is ready to fly.” She piled the rest of the binders into his arms. “Revised flight plans, engineering requests, prelaunch reports, invoices you need to initial, and things I think you need to think about before we get the flying circus in the air. Look ’em over.”
“But I need—”
“Jon, you got what you need — here’s what I need,” Wendy said, as her husband stepped off the plane. She gave him a long, deep kiss as Patrick pulled his wife into his arms. Jon was going to ask her for something else, but the kiss lasted longer than his level of patience, so he ran off yelling for someone to get him a phone.
Masters did not see Patrick pat his wife’s tummy after their kiss parted. “How’s our new crewdog?” he asked in a low voice.
“Fine, Daddy, just fine,” Wendy replied, punctuated with another kiss. “A little stretch now and then—”
“Stretch? You mean cramps? Are you in pain?”
“No, worrywart,” she said with a reassuring smile. “Just enough to let me know that things are happening down there.”
“You feeling all right?”
“A little indigestion in the evening, and a sudden rush of sleepiness about every other hour,” Wendy replied. “I close the office door and take a nap.”
“I think about you all the time, sweetie,” Patrick said. “Working around jet fuel and rocket chemicals and transmitters, pulling long hours, on your feet all day. ”
“I stay away from manufacturing and the labs, I take lots of naps, and I find working on the couch with my feet up just as effective as working at my desk,” Wendy said. “Don’t worry, lover. I’ll take good care of your child.”
“Our child.”
“Our what?” Brad Elliott said, as he met up with the couple.
“Old married couple talk, Brad,” Wendy said, giving her ex-boss a peck on the cheek. With Wendy between both men, they walked arm in arm into the admin building. “How was the meeting at the White House? ”
“Good,” Patrick said.
“Shit, Muck, it went great—we’re a go! ” Elliott said excitedly. “The President approved our plan. They want us to get ready to fly out in the next couple days — and they want us armed. Fully operational, offensive and defensive. We watered their eyes but goodl The only lousy part is we gotta play nice-nice with the squids.”
“Oh, God, no! ” Wendy said with mock horror and plenty of sarcasm. “Now, that’s just totally unacceptable. Why would we ever want to be backed up by five thousand highly trained sailors and seventy aircraft? Nothing bad ever happens in our missions.”
“ ‘Old married couple’ is right — you’re sounding more like your old man every day,” Elliott said. “We don’t need the Navy, and we sure as hell don’t need ’em telling us what to do.”
“Well, that’s the way it’s going to be,” Patrick said, rubbing his eyes wearily. “We’ve got to rechannelize the planes to new Navy fleet frequencies — Admiral William Allen, commander in chief of U.S. Pacific Command, is taking charge of the mission, with Terrill Samson as his number two.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it, Brad?” Wendy asked. “General Samson is one of us.”
“Hey, the Earthmover might speak bombers, but he’s just feathering his nest and looking for a soft place to land — he’s got his eyes on a fourth star and a cushy job at the Pentagon,” Elliott said with a sneer. “He’s afraid to go toe-to-toe with the suits. Because of him, we won’t be able to clear off for relief without calling CINCPAC first.”
“Brad, you’ve been bitching ever since we left the Oval Office,” Patrick said wearily. The exhaustion in his voice was obvious. “The only thing the Navy’s asked us to do is rechannelize our radios.”
“And they want to have a remote ‘check fire’ datalink to our attack computers, don’t forget that, ” Elliott interjected. “They not only want to tell us when, where, and how to fly our missions, but they want to be able to electronically inhibit any weapon releases, even for defensive weapons.”
“Can we do that—should we do that?” Wendy asked.
“We already told them we can’t tie into the computers, and wouldn’t even if we could,” Patrick said. “We’re going to put the datalink in, but it’s simply a communications link, not a remote control. That was the end of the discussion. Brad wants us to tell the Chief of Naval Operations where to stick his datalink.”
“I just wish we had someone a little stronger than Samson out there sitting with Allen in that command post, someone not interested in playing politics,” Elliott scoffed.
“Terrill Samson is precisely the guy we should have in the command center,” Patrick said. “Now, can we please terminate this discussion? The Navy’s on board and running the show, period. You’re going to get the avionics shop going on the rechannelization and the datalink, right, Brad?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Elliott said resignedly. “But I tell ya, Muck, you’ve gotta get tougher with those Navy bastards. They’re not interested in seeing us succeed. They’re only—”
“Okay, Brad, okay, I hear you loud and clear, so just drop it. Enough.”
Wendy grasped both men’s arms and steered them toward the stairs leading up to the second-floor executive offices. “Both you guys are suffering from hypoglycemia — I’ll bet you haven’t had anything except coffee since this morning. I’ve got hot soup and sandwiches set up in the little conference room. Let’s go.”
Both men let Wendy lead them upstairs, but outside the conference room, Elliott said, “I think I’ll pass on the midnight snack, Wendy. Wrap up a couple sandwiches for me and leave ’em in the fridge, and I’ll have them in the morning. I want to brief the day shift on the prelaunch checklist.”
“Okay, Brad,” Wendy said. “I figured you were going to be up early, so I made up the sleeper sofa in your office. Flight suit’s cleaned and pressed, too.”
Elliott gave Wendy a kiss on the forehead and gave Patrick a friendly punch in the shoulder. “You are one lucky son of a bitch, Muck. Thanks, lady. See you in the morning. You going to go running with me at five A.M., Colonel, or do I go by myself again?” Elliott laughed — he already knew the answer to that one.
“Good night, General,” Patrick said with mock irritation. He found a seat in the conference room, while Wendy poured him a cup of chicken noodle soup and fixed a turkey and tomato sandwich. Patrick remained stiff and uneasy until he heard the door to Elliott’s office close down the quiet hallway. “Christ, its like trying to handle a hyperactive three year- old sometimes.”
“Don’t tell me — Brad Elliott on the warpath in the halls of the White House.”
Patrick downed the soup in hungry bites and began to attack the sandwich. “I think he’s out to prove that the government made a huge mistake by forcing him to retire and closing his research facility,” he said. “Everybody is a target — Samson, the Navy, the President, even me. He’s got a chip the size of the Spruce Goose on his shoulder. The more people resent his arrogant attitude, the more it delights him, because it proves how right he is. And you know what the biggest problem is?”
“Sure,” Wendy Tork McLanahan replied, sitting beside her man and giving him a kiss. “He’s your friend, your mentor — and you need him.”