Sunday, 30 June
1245 local (Zulu -7)
Mischief Reef Outpost
Spratly Islands, South China Sea
Shih Tan glanced up at the sun. Even though it was already midday, the
hazy morning fog still hung in the air. Hot, humid, and dull–how much worse
could military duty get?
A lot worse, he recalled, if the reports of his friends were to be
believed. Last summer, a typhoon had swept into the South China Sea, and his
friend’s cadre had been evacuated with only hours to spare before the pounding
winds became too strong for the helicopters to operate.
Despite the heat, Shih Tan shivered at the thought of being marooned in
the bamboo structure during one of the vicious storms. He glanced up at the
Mischief Reef base camp. While strong enough to survive the normal
vicissitudes of summer storms, no bamboo structure could possibly survive a
typhoon out here.
He wondered why it had taken the authorities so long to decide to
evacuate the base camp for the typhoon. Certainly, there was classified
material at the site, and that would have to have been destroyed. The
equipment, too. Years of occupying the tiny rock had led to the accumulation
of radio gear, spare parts for the tanks, and the numerous bits of jetsam and
flotsam that human beings accumulate whenever they inhabit confined quarters.
Despite the comforts of Buddhism as a religion, Shih Tan had no illusions
about his own equanimity in facing death. Back on the mainland, he had a wife
and two children. Given any chance at all, he’d fight to see them again.
While human life might have been less valuable than tactical advantage to his
politico-military superiors, Shih Tan valued his own skin.
1246 local (Zulu -7)
Spook Two
“Doesn’t look so special from up here, does it?” Batman asked over the
ICS.
Spook Two was on its second special surveillance mission. After the
ship-based radars had proved that the ripple-skinned Tomcat was almost
impossible to track or target, Batman had convinced Tombstone to let the two
Spooks fly CAP above the Mischief Reef area.
“Not to me. But then, we’re not politicians,” Tomboy replied.
Maybe you aren’t yet, youngster, Batman thought, glancing back at her. I
wasn’t at your age, either. But, oh, if you ever put that fourth full stripe
on, the world changes, Yes, indeedy, it does.
After six months in the Pentagon, Batman was just starting to get a feel
for the place. It was a massive readjustment, going from being a captain in
the Fleet, with all the courtesies and privileges that went with it, to being
a Captain in the Pentagon. Hot and cold running admirals, the joke went. An
aviator captain, qualified to command a Carrier Air Wing at sea, was barely
senior enough to make coffee in the Pentagon. Not until the Captain learned
the ropes, anyway. Batman had figured that out fairly quickly.
He’d never been entirely sure exactly what his first billet there
entailed. He remembered going to a lot of meetings, reading countless white
papers, and reviewing tech manuals. Some of the material seemed to bear some
relationship to the F 14 program, but much of it didn’t. That last puzzling
study, for instance, on military health care and Navy Exchange operations. He
still had no idea how that’d ended up in his In box, much less in the urgent
stack.
Finally, he’d run into Admiral Dunflere, another proud member of the F14
community, in the cafeteria. The Admiral had been a Commander when Batman was
a senior Lieutenant, and remembered him.
More importantly, the Admiral had a vacancy on his staff and wanted him.
Batman had jumped at the chance to transfer out of whatever it was he was
doing into the JAST shop.
It was only later that he learned how to manipulate the system
sufficiently to be forced to conduct frequent field inspections on the JAST
birds, and to wangle himself into the training pipeline. Admiral Dunflere
seemed perfectly content to receive his weekly field reports via the laptop
computer and modem, and Batman took full advantage of his new-found freedom.
And this was what it’d gotten him. An extended trip away from the