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  But there was another side to the larger issue of women in combat than pregnancies and PDAs. During the Gulf War of 1991, women had served with distinction, including helicopter pilots operating at the front. The death of one female pilot in a helicopter crash, and the capture and sexual mistreatment of another, had been widely reported. Several women had died in one night when a barracks of the 14th Quartermaster Corps at Dahran had been hit by an incoming Iraqi SCUD missile.

  Finally, the Clinton Administration, coming to office in 1993, ruled once and for all that there should be no barriers whatsoever to women serving aboard ship or in combat aircraft. The Air Force, first to admit women cadets to their academy as far back as 1976, had swiftly integrated women pilots into front-line aviation, but implementation of the new policy in the other services had been slow. The Navy's first female combat aviators had begun feeding into shore-based fighter squadrons by the mid-nineties, but it wasn't until now that a serious attempt had been made to fully integrate women into carrier-based units.

  The official story was that Jefferson's squadrons had suffered severe combat losses in the Battles of the Fjords, and qualified women had been needed to bring the carrier's squadrons back to full strength. That played well on CNN, but Tombstone knew that there were still plenty of male NFOs available for duty. The situation was being used by the politicians back home who were eager for the support of women's groups such as NOW.

  As he took his tray to a vacant table and sat down, he couldn't help wondering what tune the radical feminists would be singing if the Russian situation deteriorated far enough that a draft became necessary, a draft that would put women in front-line foxholes next to men.

  He thought again of his conversation with Barnes up in Pri-Fly. If war erupted again between the resurrected Soviet empire and the West, there would be no way to contain it. Conway and her "girls" would be right in the thick of what promised to be a long, bloody, gruesome war.

  "Hello, CAG. You look about as chipper as a man on the way to his own execution. Surely the chow's not that bad."

  Tombstone looked up. "Hey, Batman. Secure a chair."

  Lieutenant Commander Edward Everett Wayne, wiry, dark-haired, and irrepressible, was VF-95's Executive Officer. He was also one of Tombstone's most experienced flight officers. The two men had known each other for better than four years now.

  "So why all the unrestrained hilarity?"

  "What?"

  "Actually," Batman said, stabbing a fork loaded with mashed potatoes at the empty space above Tombstone's head, "it's that little black cloud above you that worries me. I'm going to have to report that thing to the Met office, you know. They take a dim view of micro-thunderstorms going off loose aboard ship. Plays hell with their jobs. Makes 'em look bad."

  Tombstone chuckled, the bleak spell of his thoughts broken. "Okay, Batman. You can rest easy. Right after chow, I'll trot up to Scott's office and get my cloud registered."

  Lieutenant Scott was head of Jefferson's OA division, the Meteorological Office. An "oh" was one of Met's weather observations, taken once each hour when Jefferson was underway, and every thirty minutes during flight quarters.

  "That'll do it," Batman opined, nodding and chewing. "Now tell Dr. Batman what triggered that LBC in the first place."

  "LBC?"

  "Little black cloud, of course. Aren't keeping up with our official navy acronyms, are we?" He shook his head. "Obviously, CAG, You're slipping, suffering deeply from the Strain of command."

  Tombstone sighed. "You got that right. I'm concerned about our nuggets.

  Our female nuggets."

  Batman grinned. "Woman trouble, Tombstone? That's not like you. What would Pamela say?"

  Pamela Drake was Tombstone's fiancee, a network anchor for ACN news.

  "Leave Pam out of this."

  "I suppose we should. Although I imagine she's just thrilled by the news that we have girls serving aboard the Jefferson now. Her and about six thousand other Navy wives and sweethearts who have to stay behind while their men sail off into danger."

  "I've had some letters from worried wives already," Tombstone admitted.

  "God, this female aviator thing is nothing but one big headache, As if we didn't have headaches enough already."

  "Ah, don't sweat it. Be like me. I love the women's movement!"

  Tombstone eyed his friend warily, sensing a trap. "You do?"

  "Yup. Especially from behind!"

  Tombstone closed his eyes, groaning. "You, Wayne, are a hopeless degenerate."

  Batman nodded vigorously. "A Neanderthal male chauvinist pig, that's me."

  "Yeah, and you're probably the last person aboard this boat I should talk to about this. I still remember that incident in Bangkok."

  "Incident?" Batman's eyes widened into blank innocence. "What incident?"

  "The Thai International Hotel? Skinny-dipping with a couple of stewardesses in the hotel's pool, with God knows how many civilians watching from the lounge through a big underwater window?"

  "I'm sure I have no idea what the captain is talking about," Batman said with sore-wounded dignity. "I would certainly have remembered the incident in question had I been the alleged perpetrator involved. Sir."

  "Save it. You never did track that one stew down again, did you? What was her name?"

  "Which one? Becky or Arlene? Besides, I still don't know what you're talking about."

  "I rest my case. I can't talk to you about the problems I'm having with women on board ship. You're too busy chasing them."

  Surprisingly, Batman didn't answer right away, and when he did, the bantering tone was gone. "I know I used to be a skirt-chaser, Stoney," he said. "Used to be I had just one use for women. That's not true anymore."

  Tombstone regarded his friend for a moment with a level gaze. "I know.

  I was out of line, Batman."

  He'd heard the story from Batman himself. Several years back, during Jefferson's deployment to Thailand during an attempted military coup in that country, Batman had been shot down by rebels along the Thai-Burmese border.

  Chances were he would have ended up dead… but he'd been found instead by a young Karen woman named Phya Nin, a sergeant in the Karen National Liberation Army. He almost certainly owed her his life. Ever since, Batman had continued to maintain the traditional facade of the swinging, predatory, womanizing naval aviator, but it was clear that nowadays his manner was a facade.

  Perhaps he'd learned something about women while hiking through the Thai jungle.

  "Hey, no biggie," Batman said. "But in case you were wondering, I'm not bedding the Amazons. Not that the idea doesn't have a certain appeal, but it's too damned hard to manage any privacy on this bird farm!"

  "'Amazons?""

  "The DACOWITS Amazons. What the guys are calling Conway's people.

  Strictly unofficial, of course."

  DACOWITS was the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.

  Founded in 1951, the organization had for years been in the vanguard of the fight to secure women the same opportunities in the military as men. Since the late 1970s, though, the committee had frequently been used as a political front for the radical feminist agenda. Some people had claimed that its more extreme members actively sought the draft for women, if only to deliberately expose more American women to a non-traditional lifestyle, forcing change for change's sake.

  Tombstone had no opinion on such charges, but he hated the political shenanigans that were turning the U.S. military into some kind of social testing program. The Clinton Administration had forced the women-in-combat issue, just as they'd forced another controversial issue by lifting the military's ban on homosexuals. Damn it all, between the gargantuan budget cuts and the social engineering, it was as though the White House had been determined to torpedo Navy morale and efficiency.

  "So what's eating you about 'em?" Batman prodded.

  "Now that I think about it, I'm afraid the problem is more with me than with the situation.
I was up in Pri-Fly tonight, watching while they brought Conway and Hanson down. Hanson trapped okay, no problem, but the weather was getting dicey by the time Conway charlied. She boltered once, and her fuel was getting tight."

  "She made it?"

  "Yup. Second pass."

  "Happens to the best of us, man."

  "Sure. The point is, I was up there with the Air Boss about to have a cow, hoping Conway wouldn't have to ditch and praying she wouldn't slam into the roundoff. Damn it, I worry about any of my men when they're in trouble, but this was different. Worse."

  "The fact that Conway's a woman made it worse?"

  "I guess that's what I'm saying." Tombstone took a deep breath. "I was brought up in a pretty traditional family, Batman. A Navy family. I was always taught that the womenfolk back home were part of what we were fighting for. You know, civilization. Family. Motherhood."

  "Mom in the kitchen baking apple pie."

  "God damn it, Batman-"

  "Hey, chill out, CAG. I'm not making fun of you. But it sounds to me like you're having some trouble adjusting to the times that are a-changin'."

  "You got that right." He shook his head. "Another dinosaur, blundering off to extinction."

  "Another male chauvinist pig dinosaur." Batman took a bite of chicken and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "But you're worried about more than just your response to female aviators."

  "How perceptive."

  "That's why they pay me the big bucks, man. What's the matter, then?

  Afraid one of 'em'll go on the rag and bleed all over the seat of one of your airplanes?"

  "Jesus, Wayne!"

  "Sorry. Bad joke. Okay, how's this. You're afraid Conway's people can't cut it, is that it? That they can't handle the pressure?"

  "Well, I used to wonder about how hard they'd push. Aggression's supposed to be a male thing, you know. Then I realized that any woman who'd fought her way to the top of the pyramid in naval aviation sure as hell didn't have anything lacking in the aggressiveness department."

  "I'd say that's an understatement."

  "I'm worried about the wing's morale. The men as well as the women.

  Damn it, we're about to go into combat. People are going to be making split-second decisions where a half second's hesitation is the difference between living and dying. People are going to die, Batman." He closed his eyes for a moment and saw again the horror aboard the Jefferson after the last of the Battles of the Fjords.

  Modern, high-tech warfare carried its own peculiar intensity. Four Soviet Kerry missiles had struck the carrier at the height of the battle, and fuel and munitions in the hangar bay had been set ablaze. The fires had nearly claimed the ship. He could still remember the scene on her flight deck, just after he'd returned to the Jeff aboard an SH-3 helicopter. The wounded had been lined up on stretchers in ranks, waiting their turn to evacuate. Kids, most of them, with hideous burns over faces and arms.

  Could he watch something like that happen to a woman?

  "The morale and the efficiency of this unit are my responsibility," he continued. "I think having them aboard is hurting our morale, and I think it's going to get worse the closer we get to Russian airspace. The closer we get to battle."

  Batman didn't answer right away. "How do you feel about it?" Tombstone prompted him.

  "Oh, my morale's just fine, thank you. And I'm not aware of anyone else in the Vipers with a problem. Well, Arrenberger, maybe."

  "Slider? What's with him?"

  "Bad attitude, mostly. He's one of those 'the woman's place is in the home' types. And there're a few others who may like having them aboard too much, if you know what I mean."

  "The question is, what's that going to do to our combat efficiency when we go one-on-one against the Russians?"

  "There's not a lot we can do that we're not already doing. You make sure your people are the best trained, the best motivated there are, like always.

  Shouldn't be hard. You've got good material to work with. I think you're just shook because you reacted to a situation tonight like a man instead of like a commanding officer."

  "Yeah. And I can't help what I am, can I? I'm also wondering if that's going to be a problem for other men in this wing. What about these guys you say like having the women aboard too much?"

  "Hey, CAG. I named no names."

  "I'm not interrogating you. But is it a problem? PDAs?

  Fraternization?"

  "I'm pretty sure some of the guys have something going with some of the gals, yeah. You know Navy guys."

  "And aviators."

  "Right. But they're doing their jobs. They're professionals, Stoney.

  They wouldn't be here if they weren't."

  There was no way, Tombstone knew, to stop men and women from being men and women, certainly not when they were locked up together for month after month in an unrelieved confinement that could make life in a prison seem liberal by comparison. The question was whether the issue of sex aboard ship could impair Jefferson's fighting ability. There was nothing he could do but, as Batman had suggested, rely on his people's own professionalism and good sense.

  He wondered, though, about Conway. As the senior female aviator aboard, she was de facto the women's CO, though she and all of the women in turn answered to him, as commander of the wing.

  Was she having the same worries about her girls as Tombstone was having with his boys? Maybe it would be a good idea to talk to her about it.

  CHAPTER 3

  Tuesday, 10 March

  2215 hours (Zulu -1)

  0-2 deck

  U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  Lieutenant Commander Tricia Conway knew it was going to take her quite a while to familiarize herself with more than a tiny fraction of the Jefferson's miles of corridors, compartments, and companionways. She'd gone through numerous briefings on carrier layouts and shipboard life, of course, but after two weeks aboard she still carried the small map they'd given her the first day she'd reported aboard. By now she had the main routes memorized, the ones she needed to use every day between flight deck and hangar deck, say, as well as important spaces like VF-95's ready room, the officers' wardroom, and the collection of ship's exchange, stores, and services that was popularly called Jefferson's "main mall."

  Jefferson's female personnel couldn't approach that area, of course, without risking comments about "mall dolls," but then it was difficult to find any aspect of life on a carrier that couldn't be twisted to humorous, salty, or racy double meaning by the men who served aboard her.

  Aboard an aircraft carrier, the vast and cavernous, steel-walled space called the hangar deck marks a kind of dividing line in shipboard numbering conventions. The hangar deck is on the 0–1 level; decks above this level are numbered in ascending order, 0–2, 0–3, all the way to the 0–9 deck, high up within the carrier's island. Below the hangar deck, levels are numbered in descending order, first deck, second deck, third deck, and so on, plunging deeper into the bowels of the ship far beneath the waterline.

  Jefferson's complement of male aviators was quartered on the 0–3 deck, which extended uninterrupted from bow to stern and lay directly underneath the carrier's "roof," or flight deck. During launch operations, the steel-on-steel clatter of chains and cat shuttles just overhead, the tooth-rattling whump of steam catapults hurling thirty-ton aircraft off the carrier's bow, made sleeping or even simple conversation a chancy proposition at best.

  Jefferson's women, both enlisted personnel and officers, had been given a block of compartments one level down on the 0–2 deck just beneath the officers' wardroom. It was considerably quieter there than up on the 0–3, though during launch ops it could still get noisy enough to interrupt conversation or wake you from a sound sleep. There were other disadvantages, however, and one was the fact that the 0–2 level was divided fore and aft by the hangar deck, which was a full two decks high and took up something like two-thirds of the carrier's entire 1,092-foot length. In a classic case of you-can't-get-there-from-here, it
was necessary to cut past the men's quarters up on 0–3 to reach the women's quarters from points farther aft.

  At times, that could be like running the gauntlet.

  She was coming from the VF-95 ready room, making her way down one of Jefferson's endless passageways on her way to her own quarters and bed. She was passing the male flight officers' area on the 0–3 level, taking each raised frame opening or "knee-knocker" with a practiced stoop-and-step, when a man's too-familiar voice called to her from behind.

  "Hey, Brewski! Little trouble getting down tonight?"

  She turned in the passageway. Lieutenant Commander Greg "Slider" Arrenberger caught up to her, a toothy grin showing beneath his thick black mustache.

  "Nah, no big deal, Slider," she said. "Boltered once. It's a shitty night out."

  "Cold too. Cold as a witch's starboard tit." He winked broadly, clucking twice. "Anything the ol' Slider can do to warm you up?"

  She was too tired to banter with the man, or to think of something clever enough to verbally slap him down. In her present state of mind, Arrenberger was just one more petty annoyance. Crossing her arms, she leaned back against the bulkhead. "Fuck you, Slider," she said.

  "Hey, great idea! Anytime you say, baby. Make a hole!" He squeezed past her in the passageway, taking up just a bit more space than he had to to get by, contriving to lightly brush against the tips of her breasts with his body as he passed.

  Slider was a real pig, the source of the worst of the sexual harassment Conway had endured since she'd come aboard. Most of Conway's fellow flight officers treated her with complete courtesy, acceptance, and respect, but there were always a few…

  Starting at Annapolis, and continuing through flight training and assignment to a RAG at Pensacola, Conway, like every woman now aboard the Jefferson, had suffered through class after class on dealing with everything from verbal harassment to forcible rape. The best way of handling that sort of thing, of course, wasn't taught in sensitivity classes or role-playing sessions.