reserved for women only. If she wanted, she could give herself a sponge
bath from the sink.
Too much trouble. Unbuttoning her blouse, she pulled it off, then
tucked it in with her dirty laundry. She’d grab her shower in the
morning during the 0500 to 0600 slot.
“You sure there’s nothing the matter?”
“Ah, I ran into Arrenberger up on 0-3.”
“The guy’s an asshole.”
“This is news?”
“Hardly. He’s been hitting on me a lot lately too.”
“You going to report him?”
Tomboy shrugged. “Hardly worth the hassle, is it? Counterproductive.
Especially if I get assigned as his RIO someday. You can bet I will if
he gets too far out of line, though.”
Stripped down to her panties, Conway pulled on the oversized T-shirt she
liked to sleep in, working her head through the hole. “Sometimes I want
to kick the bastard in the nuts so hard they pop out his ears. So much
for the camaraderie of men at war, right?” She climbed into her rack and
flicked out the reading lamp attached to the bulkhead nearby.
Tomboy watched her from the desk. “Am I going to bother you if I stay
up and read a bit?”
“Hynn, right now Valentin Krasilnikov and the entire KGB could break
down that door in pursuit of my maidenly virtue and I don’t think I’d
hear a thing.
Stay up as long as you want.”
But sleep didn’t come immediately. As Conway lay there, feeling the
corkscrew pitch of the carrier plowing through worsening seas, she
wondered about this test-case role she found herself trapped in. Women
serving aboard ship. Women in front-line combat. These were causes
she’d passionately believed in ever since she’d first made up her mind
to be a naval aviator like her dad and like Robert. Did she still
believe?
Wrong question. The real question should be, was she going to let a few
horny sewer-brains like Arrenberger kill that dream?
No … no way. She could handle Slider. She’d flame his ass if she
had to. Again she considered following the regs to the letter and
reporting Arrenberger to CAG. She had that right and that
responsibility, and he’d definitely been breaking the rules. It wasn’t
so much any single exchange of words or unwanted touching with that guy,
but his overall pattern of behavior.
He always acted like an asshole … except when he strapped on an F-14.
She hated to admit it, but that son of a bitch could fly.
Besides, there was no way to regulate or legislate against anybody’s
God-given right to be an asshole.
Eventually, she fell asleep.
CHAPTER 4
Wednesday, 11 March
0930 hours (Zulu +2)
Tretyevo Peschera
Near Polyamyy, Russia
Admiral Ruslan Zakharovich Karelin stood on the dockside, his coterie of
staff officers and guards clustered at his back as he surveyed the
bustle of activity echoing and re-echoing throughout the length and
breadth of the vast, rock-hewn chamber. Workers clustered everywhere,
and the piercing gleams of a dozen welder’s torches dazzled and hissed
from the flanks of dark, quiescent monsters. Steel clashed, and an
officer bellowed orders, the words ringing from rock and hull metal,
then swiftly vanishing into the steady background rumble of heavy
machinery. High overhead, the massive tackle of a traveling bridge
crane crawled ponderously along its latticework tracks beneath the
rough-hewn rock of the ceiling, casting weirdly shifting shadows from
the banks of fluorescent lights as it moved.
They called the place Tretyevo Peschera, the Third cavern, but such a
colorless name scarcely seemed adequate to describe the thrilling,
Socialist workers’ glory of this place. It had taken an army of
engineers, construction workers, and levies of forced labor imported
from the mining camps beyond the Urals seven years to pierce this
granite sea cliff, tunneling into solid rock for hundreds of meters.
Though that initial construction had been complete by 1984, work on the
deeper chambers and storerooms continued to this day.
During the past decade, construction on this and three other, similar
caverns scattered along the rugged western coast of the Kola Inlet
between Polyamyy and Sayda Guba had been interrupted only intermittently
during Russia’s brief flirtations with democracy.
“Is the work here proceeding on schedule?” Karelin demanded of his host.