was here to meet some of the passengers. The Air Wing had been
shorthanded for weeks, and this COD flight was supposed to carry the
personnel they needed to bring the various squadrons up to full
strength.
Several officers appeared, walking with the usual stiff, exhausted gait
of Greyhound passengers. The planes were built for cargo and passenger
capacity, not comfort, and after a few hours cooped up in the windowless
passenger compartment, jolted by every air pocket along the way, even
the most enthusiastic flier was happy to feel a ship’s deck underfoot
again.
“Listen up!” he shouted over the noise of the flight deck. “Replacements
for CVW-20, follow me! The rest of you should see Master Chief Weston.”
He pointed to the carrier’s Chief of the Boat, who was standing nearby
waiting for newly arrived carrier crewmen to finish disembarking.
“Commander Grant! Good to see you again, sir!”
Coyote hadn’t been paying much attention to the new arrivals, but now he
recognized the petite redheaded woman striding across the deck to meet
him with a smile on her freckled face. Lieutenant Commander Joyce Flynn,
“Tomboy,” had been part of the original female contingent with Viper
Squadron during the Kola campaign. She’d flown as RIO with Magruder when
the CAG had taken out a Tomcat during the last desperate fight over the
Polyamyy sub pens. When their aircraft took a hit and the two bailed
out, Flynn had wound up with a broken leg. After the two had been
rescued, she had been put aboard a medevac flight for the States and an
extended hospital stay. Now she was back, looking fit and ready to fly.
“Well, Tomboy, looks like they couldn’t keep you away from our little
luxury cruise ship,” he said. “What was it? The colorful ports? The
ambience?”
She laughed. “Face it, Commander, you’re not getting rid of any of us
Amazons.”
He chuckled. The female combat fliers had earned that nickname in the
early days of the deployment, but it was hard for him to picture the
petite Tomboy Flynn as a woman warrior. “Good to have you back,” he told
her. “There’ve been a few changes, but you’ll still know your way
around.”
“Great.” They started across the deck toward the island. “Oh, hey,” she
said, catching his arm. “Thought you might like to know. You remember
Lobo?”
“Of course!”
“I got a letter from her just before I left the States.”
“You don’t say!” Coyote’s eyes widened. “How’s she doing, anyway?”
Tomboy grinned. “Instructor’s slot, no less. At Top Gun!”
“Well! Good for her! That’s great!”
But the mention of her name raised a small shadow in the back of
Coyote’s mind. There was a dark side to women serving in combat, a topic
not often discussed or even acknowledged among the men or the women
aboard the Jefferson, but always, always there. Rape.
Lieutenant Chris Hanson, running name “Lobo,” had been one of that first
batch of female aviators aboard the Jefferson last March. Shot down over
the Kola Peninsula, she’d been captured and gang-raped by
ill-disciplined militia. Hours later, she’d been rescued by U.S.
Marines; they’d found her on display in a Russian village, locked inside
a wire cage, naked, bruised from a savage beating, and shivering with
the onset of deep shock. While her physical wounds could be treated
easily enough, there’d been considerable question about the deeper
psychological trauma she’d suffered. Her medical report had openly
questioned whether she would ever fly again. .. especially in a combat
role where she would have to face the possibility of going through the
same ordeal again.
“There was talk for a while there, while she was in the hospital, that
maybe she’d have to resign her commission,” Tomboy explained.
“I heard something about that,” Coyote said. “I gather she fought it,
huh?”
“She’s tough. Tough enough she was fighting to be placed back on combat
status, last I heard.”
Coyote didn’t reply. From what he knew of the Navy establishment, it
wasn’t likely that Lobo would see combat again. Back in World War II,
five brothers had all died on the same day when the ship they were
serving aboard together was sunk by the Japanese. As a result, the Navy