On the first day after the Article 15 had been administered, Matt had shown up in the squadron building at exactly 7:30 in the morning in a clean flight suit. He dropped in on mission briefings and listened to what the crews were planning for their flight. But he had to stop that, for it was a form of pure torture that was pushing him into a pit of despair. Then he hung around the scheduling desk drinking coffee and watched the crews go out to fly. That made him feel worse. At the end of the first day, his flight suit was still clean.
The routine repeated itself for two more days and Matt slipped deeper into a sour funk, wallowing in self-pity. On Thursday, Locke stopped him in the hall and asked for a “How goes it” on the self-help project.
“Sir,” Matt admitted sourly, “I haven’t got a clue.”
“That’s a true statement,” Locke said, looking around the squadron. Nothing had been done for three days. “It’s going to be a long forty-two days.” He walked away. Matt’s first thought was to strangle Locke, but instead late that afternoon, he found himself knocking at Locke’s office door, determined to restate his case and at least get back on flying status.
“Damn it, Colonel Locke,” he protested. “Rumor around the squadron has it that you raised all sorts of hell when you were a lieutenant. Why are you coming down so hard on me now?”
Locke motioned for him to sit down. For a moment, he looked into his own past and a sadness came over him. “Because I was going down the same road you’re on right now.” Matt started to interrupt, his case made. Locke held a hand up. “But the best officer who ever strapped on an F-Four saved me from myself by letting me sweat out a pretrial investigation for a court-martial. He knew I was going to get out of it because of a technicality — but I didn’t. One other thing; I deserved to be court-martialed. I was guilty.” He let it sink in. “That officer was Muddy Waters.”
Silence hung in the room. Waters was one of the Air Force’s legends, the man who had taken the 45th Tactical Fighter Wing into combat in the Persian Gulf and died getting them out. Now Locke’s squadron was part of the 45th.
Locke leaned forward over his desk. “Waters taught me the meaning of leadership. Without leadership, a fighter puke isn’t worth shit. And the key is a sense of responsibility — I didn’t have it then — and you don’t have it now.” The silence came down hard.
“Sir,” Matt finally said, “may I ask you a question about Waters?” He had overhead the old heads BS in the bar and every now and then, the legend of Muddy Waters would come up. “Did he really give you his call sign just before he bought it?”
Locke stared at him — hard. The memories were painful. “Yeah. He made me Wolf Zero-One just before he was killed surrendering the base.” Another long pause. “He gave me the responsibility of bringing the Forty-fifth home. I did.”
“It was different then,” Matt protested. “The Mideast is all sorted out now. I’ll never fight a war—”
“That’s what I said.”
Something turned inside Matt. Locke followed Waters into hell and came out forever changed. Long ago, Matt Pontowski had admitted to himself that Locke was probably the best pilot he would ever meet. And now he knew that Locke was a true rarity — a leader. “Sir, I want to be a leader, but what in the hell can a lieutenant do?”
“Leadership for a lieutenant means doing the best job you can and taking care of your people.”
“And who do I take care of?” Matt asked, bitterness in his voice.
“Your backseater. Don’t kill him. I happen to like Haney.”
“And not me.”
“There’s nothing to like. Sure, you’re a charmer and the ladies think you’re God’s gift to studdom, but there’s nothing to you.”
Locke’s hard words cut into him. A hard resolve came over him to prove Locke dead wrong. “Colonel, about this self-help project, I don’t even know where to start.”
“Talk to the best NCO you can find.” Locke looked and then nodded at the door, his way of telling Matt that the conversation was over. Matt stood up, saluted, and left.
The next morning, Matt found the NCO he was looking for, Master Sergeant Charlie Ferguson. Ferguson was the squadron’s senior-ranking sergeant and considered himself the unofficial “first shirt” for the squadron. He knew how to make the Air Force system work and, within hours, the lumber, plaster, and paint they needed were in the building. For help, Ferguson went to the “Detention Facility,” Air Forceese for jail, and had six inmates released to his custody for a work detail.
Matt was learning a lot about construction and how the Air Force worked. He had never realized that there was so much involved in just putting up a simple wall or doing a little electrical wiring or plumbing even though he had majored in civil engineering. He also learned how to bypass most of the Air Force bureaucracy’s paperwork. But he could not avoid all of it. He was getting the job done and would have been all right if it hadn’t been for the ceiling in the lounge.
Ferguson and his convict crew of laborers were almost finished with the lounge. They had installed a kitchen area and a bar, paneled the walls, and were ready to mount indirect lighting against the ceiling. But the ceiling was too high and Matt thought that they should drop it about two feet. He and Ferguson went on one of their “requisitioning runs.” The military contracting system generates tons of surplus and Ferguson found what they needed buried in a pile of junk that had been tagged for disposal. One the way back to the squadron building, the colonel who served as the base’s RM, the resource manager, stopped them. They explained that what they had found was surplus and that they were using it for a self-help project in their squadron. When they couldn’t produce the paperwork, the RM had them return it all.
The next day, Ferguson ginned up the required forms and Matt took them over to the RM’s office for an official signature. But he couldn’t get in to see the RM because a crew of workmen were installing a new dropped ceiling in his office using the same large acoustic tiles and hangers that Ferguson had unearthed. Matt was furious. That night, he and Ferguson’s crew of six convicts visited the RM’s office and did a quick bit of midnight requisitioning. By the next morning, the ceiling was safely installed in the squadron’s lounge.
The RM had a very strong suspicion about what had happened to his ceiling and was in the squadron before eight o’clock in the morning. For a moment, Matt was certain the man was going to have a heart attack when he saw his ceiling. Before they had lifted the large tiles into place, two of Matt’s “helpers” had dropped their trousers and bent over. A coat of paint was applied to the buttocks of each in the squadron colors of black and gold and each tile was pressed against the makeshift templates. Now the ceiling was decorated with a mass of black and gold butt prints. The RM sputtered and, at a loss for words, stormed out of the squadron lounge.
Matt and his crew were busy turning the tiles over when Locke came into the lounge. He shook his head and told Matt to report to his office. Once there, Matt paid for the ceiling with a chewing out of legendary proportions. Locke considered the matter closed but the RM had other ideas. Within hours, Matt was under investigation by the Office of Special Investigations for theft of government property. Ferguson came to his rescue two days later when he produced a bill of sale from a local civilian supplier that stated they had bought the ceiling tiles from him. Matt was off the hook but in the bad graces of every colonel in the wing. With the exception of the NCO Club, the squadron building had the best interior decoration of any building on base.