It had been a long time since Lab Rat had popped tall for anyone, and he was really not enjoying it. Yet all it had taken was one glare from Captain Ganner to send him back into the braced salute of his midshipman days. He caught himself as he braced, and forced himself to relax.
“You have a problem, Commander?” Ganner demanded. “Because if you do, Mister, I want to hear about it.”
“No, COS, I don’t have a problem. Other than the one I’ve already pointed out to you.”
“You’re still on about the berthing assignments?” Ganner said, his face clouding over even darker. “I suppose your people are too good to live with the engineers?”
“Not at all, and you know it,” Lab Rat said, his anger boiling over. “But my people are berthed all over the place. Come on, sir, you’ve been on a carrier before — you know how it is. It’s just like on the…” He caught himself before he said “small boy,” knowing the term wasn’t a favorite among surface sailors, and continued with “a cruiser. You put part of your engineers together, another part somewhere else, so that if the missile hits, they won’t all be destroyed at the same time, right? Then you spread them out so you have senior people in each compartment to take charge. It builds team unity, just like it does on a cruiser.”
Ganner leaned back in his chair and tossed his pencil on the desk and glowered. “Well, I got the distinct impression your boys and girls already had this marvelous team unity — that’s why the admiral brought you on board, isn’t it? Because they were already a team? And now you’re telling me that’s not true?”
Lab Rat slammed his fist down on the chief of staff’s desk. He was aware that he probably looked silly — a short, blond, intell commander, barely weighing in at a hundred thirty pounds soaking wet, confronting a prototypical cruiser CO, tall, dark and strong. But he didn’t care — this went beyond some stupid power-play. It was affecting his people, and he was going to put a stop to it.
“Sir, I don’t know how and why you got so pissed off about all this,” Lab Rat said. “And frankly, I don’t really care. But the ship was built with berthing specifically designated for my department, and I want my people in it. It’s closer to CVIC in case of general quarters. Now, if you want us to swap quarters with the engineers, we’ll do that, too. That’s if you think we’re getting a special deal here. We’ll swap completely, so I’ll have two groups of men and a group of women berthed apart from each other. No more of this scattering us about at random between compartments. But if you tell us to do that, I imagine the engineer will have something to say about that, too. Because then his people will be just as far from their duty stations as mine are.”
Ganner studied him warily. “And I suppose if I don’t go along with it, you go to the admiral. And you aviators will stick together and you’ll get what you want anyway, is that it?”
“Permission to speak frankly, sir?” Lab Rat asked.
“You haven’t been?” Ganner sneered.
Lab Rat shook his head. “No, I haven’t. But now I will. And I’ll tell you what will happen if I go to the admiral. He’ll agree with me. It won’t take him any time at all to decide that I’m completely in the right and that you’re jerking my chain for some reason. And then you know what he’ll do? Hell tell me to get out of his office and deal with you. And he’ll back you to the hilt, whatever you decide. Because that’s the kind of man he is. You’re next line in as his chief of staff, the man who will step in for him if something happened to him, and he’s not going to undercut your authority. Oh, he won’t agree — make no mistake about that. But he’ll also back you up, right or wrong, unless you’re actively putting people in danger.”
The chief of staff’s face took on a slightly surprised look, as though a mouse has really turned out to be a tiger.
Lab Rat continued. “And you know something else? Even knowing that in advance, even knowing I’m going to lose — I’ll go anyway. Just like you would if our positions were reversed. Because that’s the kind of man I am. You got some reason for doing what you’re doing, but it doesn’t have anything to do with me or my people. We just happen to be here.”
There was a long moment of silence in the compartment. Lab Rat saw a range of emotions fly across the chief of staff’s face. He wondered how long it had been since anyone had spoken that frankly to the man. And he wondered whether he’d just shot himself in the foot for the entire cruise.
Finally, Ganner burst out laughing. He pointed a finger at Lab Rat. “The admiral told me you were a pistol,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t believe him.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on his desk and clasped his hands in front of him. “Okay. Sit down, Commander. Let’s hash this out.”
On impulse, Lab Rats stuck his hand out. After a moment, the chief of staff shook it. “We start over, sir? I’d like to introduce myself — I’m Commander Busby. But my friends call me Lab Rat.”
Ganner nodded. “Okay, Lab Rat. Sit down and let’s see what we can do to make this dog hunt.”
FIFTEEN
Air Force Major Frank Woods settled down in front of his tactical console and shoved a small cooler under his seat. It contained his lunch, a diet soda, and several candy bars. Since the AWACS flew long missions, most of the crew brought snacks along, even though it had a small, compact galley on board.
The weather outside at Osaka Air Base was pleasant. It was a clear, cool day, with the possibility of showers later that afternoon, which was of no interest to Woods. The AWACS was on a sixteen-hour mission in support of Cobra Dane and Cobra Judy, and the weather tomorrow morning was the only report that Woods was really interested in. He had a soccer game scheduled with his seven-year-old son.
“Going to be a long one,” one of the other officers remarked. “Let’s hope we have a home base to return to when it’s all over.”
“Stow it, Harley.” Harley Turks could find the dark side to a rainbow, and right now the prospect of spending the next sixteen hours in an aircraft with him was decidedly unpleasant.
“Come on, Frank. You got to have been thinking about it.” Turks’s voice was surly.
Woods nodded. The rumors were running wild all over the base, and had even made it into the preflight intell brief. Word on the street was that Japan would be terminating all landing rights for American aircraft, and that included any that were out of Osaka but airborne at the time. As mission commander, it would be Woods’s job to select an alternate landing site and to deal with the worries and insecurities among the crew — as well as the logistics problems — should that happen.
“Okay, everybody, listen up,” Woods said. The desultory chatter on the tactical interior circuit died down. “In all probability, this will be a long, boring flight with nothing to do. Just the way we like it, right? But like the intell weenies said at the briefing, there may be reason for concern, and I don’t want to downplay that. So everybody, look sharp. Be flexible — we’re dealing with the Navy. Harley will handle the communications, and try to keep it all working smoothly. Let’s just hope we’re bored out of our minds for the next sixteen hours, okay?”
Woods shoved his own worries aside as he ran through the remainder of the systems checks while he listened to the radio traffic piped into his right ear. So far, everything sounded normal, and his worries about missing tomorrow’s soccer game receded. His crew sounded sharp, right on top of every checklist. There was no tension in the Japanese air controller’s voice, nothing to indicate that this was anything other than a routine training operation.