Maxwell thought for a second, mentally reconstructing the scene on the flight deck the night Spam Parker crashed. “So Commander DeLancey was sitting in his cockpit when Lieutenant Parker’s jet hit the ramp?”
“Yes, sir, I believe so.”
“Weren’t you there?”
“As soon as the fire broke out, I ran over to man a hose.” Ruiz looked worried. “Did somebody do something they weren’t supposed to, Commander?”
Maxwell wondered briefly how perceptive the nineteen-year-old enlisted man was. Had he read anything into the questions? “No, not at all. This is what we do when we investigate an accident.”
The young plane captain shook his head. “Do you know what happened to Lieutenant Parker? Do you know why she flew into the back of the ship?”
“Not yet, but I’m going to find out, Ruiz.” Silently he added, Even if it kills me.
With that thought, Maxwell looked up, over Ruiz’s shoulder. In the front of the ready room, DeLancey was watching them intently.
Half an hour later, DeLancey stopped him in the passageway outside the Roadrunner ready room.
“You’re off the Mishap Investigation Board. As of now.”
Maxwell tried to read DeLancey’s expression. Nothing the man did surprised him anymore. “It’s not a good time, Skipper. The board is in the middle of making its report, and I’m —”
DeLancey cut him off. “You heard me. Butt out. You shouldn’t have been on the board in the first place. As executive officer, you’ve got real work to do. Right now you’re supposed to be up in strike planning putting together the coordinated ops plan.”
There was no use arguing. “Yes, sir. Who’s taking my place on the investigation board?”
“Lieutenant Cheever. Hand over all your notes and material to him. He’ll finish the report.”
Maxwell watched DeLancey walk away. DeLancey now had his acolytes, Craze Manson and Undra Cheever, on the board. It meant that he controlled the investigation.
The phone in Maxwell’s stateroom rang.
“It’s B.J. Johnson, XO. Can we talk?”
Maxwell glanced at his watch. “I’ve got an intel briefing in about an hour. How about the wardroom in ten minutes?”
“Someplace more private would be better.”
He thought for a second. “Okay, the hangar deck, by the number two elevator.”
“See you there.”
In another few minutes, they were walking along the perimeter of the hangar deck. Maxwell said nothing, letting her talk.
“Spam never actually told me something was going on,” said B.J. ‘But she was my roommate, you know. You get a sense of these things.”
She paused to watch a tug hauling an F/A-18 across the deck to a maintenance bay. The Reagan was between flight operations cycles. Blue shirts were respotting jets, shuffling aircraft from the flight deck to the hangar deck, getting ready for the next aircraft recovery.
“What things? For example?”
“For example, I’d come in, and she’d be talking on the phone with someone — she wouldn’t use a name. But I could tell by her voice that it was someone…” B.J.’s voice trailed off.
“Someone she was intimate with?”
B.J. nodded. “That was Spam. It didn’t surprise me. She called it ‘stud du jour.’ It was just her style. Wherever she was, she had a boyfriend.”
“She never told you who it was?”
“No.”
“But you have a pretty good idea, right?”
B.J. nodded again. “It must have been after Dubai. It was like, her attitude changed. She suddenly stopped badmouthing everyone, going on about how we were being screwed over by the establishment, like she used to. She talked about how she was going to get moved up to section lead. She was really upbeat.” B.J. paused, and said, “For a while.”
“Just for a while?”
“She was having trouble coming aboard, as you know. She was blaming it on Pearly. But then she started worrying about a FNAEB. She was afraid they would take her wings. I heard her say one time, if he let them FNAEB her…” B.J. didn’t finish the thought.
Maxwell gave it a moment. “Who was ‘he?’”
“She never actually said. But I could guess. So can you.”
He could. “The skipper?”
“It’s just a hunch. Call it intuition if you like.”
More than a hunch, Maxwell knew. They both knew she was right. He was shocked but not surprised. It wasn’t unheard of in the Navy that a senior officer, even a squadron commander, might become involved with a female subordinate. It would explain DeLancey’s coddling of a weak pilot.
B.J. was looking at him. “What do you think? Could it have had anything to do with her getting killed?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, trying to sound sure of himself.
He could see by her expression that she didn’t believe him.
“When?” CAG Boyce said, repeating the question. “That’s up to the President. Could be as soon as tomorrow. Or the day after.”
On the bulkhead behind him was an illuminated map of Iraq. All his strike leaders were assembled in the intelligence briefing space.
Boyce went on. “It seems that our intelligence assets in Baghdad have been compromised. But they sent an alert that Iraq has completed its weapons assembly project and is ready to push the button. The United Nations is now going through all the usual posturing. They’ve issued a forty-eight-hour ultimatum to Saddam to open up all his weapons facilities and submit to inspection.”
A Hornet pilot piped up, “Hey, great. Saddam’s gonna invite the inspectors over to his palace for tea and then give them all his new toys. We can all go home.”
A ripple of laughter ran through the room. Boyce said, “Yeah, right. What it means is he gets two free days to hit us before we hit him. And we can forget the element of surprise. He’s gonna know we’re coming.”
Boyce walked over to the map. “Strike leaders, I want each of you to finalize your strike plans. Re-plot all your run-in lines according to the latest threat assessments. These will be updated hourly based on satellite and recon data.”
“What about the air-to-air threat?” asked a Tomcat pilot.
“Al-Taji and Al-Taqqadum still have small units of flyable MiGs, but they shouldn’t have any ground-controlled intercept capability left. Anyway, the Brit Tornadoes are tasked with eliminating the interceptor threat on the ground before we get there.”
It was a place only bats could love.
The Carrier Air Traffic Control Center was as dark as the inside of a cave. What little light there was in CATTC came from the greenish glow of the radar scopes and the large lucite grease board that covered the opposite wall.
Chief Petty Officer Mark Williams, the senior enlisted controller, greeted Maxwell. “Good morning, Commander, how can I help you?”
“I’m looking for tapes from the ship’s air traffic control communications on the night of the Hornet crash, Chief.”
“We’ve already made copies of all that for the Aircraft Mishap Board, sir.”
“I know, but we don’t have anything with the mishap aircraft’s tactical communications. You know, transmissions made on the squadron discrete frequencies.”
Chief Williams scratched his chin. “I’m sure we made copies of your squadron’s tac freqs — both of them — for the board. You say there was nothing on them from the mishap aircraft?”
“Hardly anything. Maybe they were using another freq.” Maxwell was fishing now.
“If they were, we wouldn’t be taping it down here. Maybe she was just using good radio discipline that night.”
Maxwell had to smile at that one. One thing Spam Parker had never been known for was radio discipline. “Yeah, maybe so. Well, thanks for your help anyway.”