Though what that woman could ever see in you is a mystery to us all.”
“Gator,” Bird Dog howled, darting around the file cabinet and
desperately trying to get his hands on his RIO’s. “I swear to God,
you’re going to be puking your guts out in the back of that Tomcat when
I get my hands on you. I swear it!”
“Looks like a damned kindergarten around here,” the operations chief
snapped. “Gator, damn it, give him his envelope. Let him drool over
it a while so he’ll eventually get back to work. You heard the admiral
we don’t have time to fuck around with this.”
Gator yielded up the pink envelope to his pilot, but only after running
it under his nose and taking a long appreciative sniff of the delicate
scent. “It still smells like” “Gator,” the chief of operations said
warningly. “Don’t you have to be somewhere else?”
“I guess I do at that,” Gator answered mildly. He ambled to the door,
and heading back down toward Strike Planning said, “Let me know when
he’s sane again. Captain.”
Bird Dog held on to the letter with both hands and looked pleadingly at
the chief of operations. “Could I” The chief scowled at him. “Fifteen
minutes. Get the hell down to your compartment, read the letter from
your honey, then get the hell back up here. And when you’re back here,
mister, I want your full attention focused on what we’ve got to do.
You got that?”
“Yes, sir!” Bird Dog smiled and headed for the door.
Callie’s timing was perfect. A letter arriving just as he made a
masterstroke in his career! How could she have known?
Bird Dog darted down to the compartment, dodging other sailors and
leaping easily over knee-knockers. He flung open the door to his
stateroom, made sure his roommate wasn’t skulking in a corner, and
threw himself down on the lower bunk. He paused to take a deep,
appreciative sniff of the letter before he delicately teased the
envelope flap away from the body of it. The smell of perfume grew
stronger. He inhaled deeply, then drew out the two folded pages of
paper.
Only two sheet she frowned slightly, then dismissed the feeling.
Callie wasn’t much for long letters, he knew, though he himself could
have written ten or fifteen pages to her every night if he had the
time, pouring out his need for her, his plans, and his description of
the life they’d have together eventually. Still The first words
stopped his breath. He read the first paragraph again, trying to
understand what his eyes were seeing, at a complete loss as to
understand why it sounded like his fiancee was . . . she was. Dumping
him? How could she? Gradually, his heart started to beat again,
though it had taken a dive to somewhere down behind his navel.
The possibility that Callie wouldn’t follow through with their plans,
would find someone else while he was on cruise, had never even occurred
to him.
He let the pages flutter from his hand and land on the worn, nubby
carpet on his deck. This would take some time to think through, some
planning to figure out just how to convince her that she was making a
terrible mistake. Time he didn’t have right now.
When Bird Dog walked back into the Operations Department only four
minutes after he’d left, the rest of the staff looked startled, then
maintained a cautious silence. There was no teasing, no joshing about
what he’d been doing in those moments alone in his stateroom. Whether
it was the short time span or the expression on his face, every single
officer there seemed to know. Know, and commiserate. At least half of
them had had the experience of receiving a Dear John letter while out
on cruise. But the predictability of the event made it no less tragic
for the officer involved.
Bird Dog seated himself at his desk, toggled his mouse to dissolve the
flying-toaster screen saver into shards of color, and called up the
beginning of his operational plan. Within minutes, he was immersed in
the intricacies of it.
The noise level in the Operations compartment gradually returned to