Flash Point (5 page)

“I just put my arm around her for a second. She loved it. She snuggled right up to me — it was awesome.”

“You’re dreaming. She lives in northern Italy. You’ll never see her again.”

“We’ll be in Venice in ten days, dude. Her city’s only a couple of hours away by train and she had already planned to be there that weekend for a trip to a museum.”

Woods suddenly had a bad feeling. “You’ve already
talked
to her about Venice?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“You hardly know her.”

“I spent the whole day with her. After you went back to the ship we went for a walk in Naples—”

“Beautiful Naples—”

“We found a really cool farmer’s market kind of place. Fresh vegetables, all kinds of stuff. It was great to walk around—”

“Wait, wait, don’t tell me, you held hands—”

“Hey, bite me. Anyway, I like her a lot. And you’d better get used to it. I want to get to know her. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing I guess.” He actually couldn’t think of anything that was wrong with it. It just struck him as odd that she just happened to have plans to be in Venice when the carrier pulls in. “Nice coincidence.”

“Oh, what? She’s scheming to get close to me or something? Why? So she can get my fortune from my parents’ vegetable stand in New York? Give me a break.”

“It’s just an interesting coincidence.” Woods stretched his arms out in his leather flight jacket and breathed deeply. He looked at his watch. “Aw,
man
.”

“What?”

“I’ve got Boat O in fifteen minutes. I just want to hit the rack.”

“You’re on at midnight?”

“Yep.”

“Which boat?”

“E-boat.”

“Damn, man. You get all the luck. Slamming through the waves for three or four hours with sailors throwing up and shit all over the boat?” He leaned back and looked envious. “Wish I could go.”

Woods nodded. “Eat your heart out. If I’m really lucky it’ll be raining and thirty-eight degrees and the visibility will be half a mile, and we’ll get hit by some merchant ship and all be killed.”

“That
would
be cool. Just like Barcelona.”

Woods looked at his watch again. “I’ve got to head down. You gonna hit the rack?”

“Yeah. I’ve got to get up early. Evals due tomorrow. I haven’t even started. I don’t even know the names of the sailors in ops yet. But I’m supposed to rate them and say what great sailors they are.”

Woods stood up. “You should know them by now,” he scolded. He thought for a second. “What kind of name is Irit? Doesn’t sound Italian. Doesn’t end in a vowel, like Sophia, or . . . I don’t know . . . Manuela or something.”

“Manuela is Spanish, dude.”

“No, it isn’t. You’re thinking of Consuela, or something. I met an Italian woman named Manuela.”

“Whatever. Anyway, Irit is Italian. She’s from northern Italy, near Austria. You heard her. Torentino, I think. Maybe it’s part German.”

“Yeah. Could be, except Torentino is in the southern part of Italy.”

“Whatever. I probably got the city wrong. What time do you get off — 0300?”

“Yeah. Maybe 0400.”

“You’re going to be tired tomorrow.”

“I’m gonna to sleep in.”

“No you’re not. Quarters is at 0800 on the flight deck.”

Woods groaned and hung his head. “I forgot.”

“Hey, it’s important. Sailor of the hour, or something.”

“Think they’d notice if I didn’t show?”

“XO would have your ass.”

“The life of a Naval officer is one long battle for sleep.” He zipped up his flight jacket. “There must be studies. People do hard things better when they’re sleep-deprived.”

“They’re doing the studies now, dude. With
us
.”

“I’ll wake you up when I get in.”

“If you do, I’ll drop my alarm clock on your head.” Vialli slept on the top bunk.

They walked aft from the wardroom together, stepping over the curved bulkhead openings that were nine inches off the deck — the knee knockers. The O3 level was just below the flight deck; their stateroom was exactly where the angled deck met the rest of the flight deck, forming a shoulder. Vialli stopped, unlocked the door, and closed it behind him. Woods turned outboard and descended the three ladders to the main deck, the hangar deck, where he would find the ladder to the enlisted boat he would be commanding for the next three or four hours. His seagoing command.

He walked along the nonskid hard steel of the hangar deck, detouring around the airplanes there for maintenance, making his way to the fantail. He passed the snaking line of enlisted men waiting to go ashore on liberty. Woods shuddered at the thought of these eighteen-year-olds going ashore at midnight in a city that had whatever they were looking for.

At the fantail, open to the sea air, the Masters at Arms were in place. A Warrant Officer was in charge.

Woods’s Garrison cap — called a piss-cutter by those who wore it — was pulled down near his eyebrows and the simulated fur collar on his leather flight jacket was turned up to stop the biting breeze. The Warrant Officer saluted when he caught sight of Woods. The three enlisted men on duty saluted as well. “Good evening, sir,” the Warrant said.

Woods returned the salutes and looked at the Warrant closely. He didn’t recognize him. Woods nodded. “Any problems with the E-boats?”

The Warrant shook his head as he put his hands back into the olive green foul-weather jacket he wore over his dirty khakis. “No, sir. Nothing.”

“How’s the water?”

“Pretty calm. Three-, maybe four-foot swells.”

Woods glanced past the fantail over the black water toward Naples. One of the ship’s boats was plying its way back to the
Washington
, working against a rising tide. He could clearly see the city lights on the hills three miles away. “How’s the visibility been?”

“Real good, sir. We’ve only lost the lights on the hills a couple of times. Mostly the vis seems to be unlimited.”

“Much traffic?”

“Usual merchant traffic and smugglers.”

“Here comes your boat, sir,” the Warrant said as the coxswain gunned the loud diesel motor in reverse to line the boat up with the platform suspended behind the enormous aircraft carrier.

Woods watched the sailors disembark from the boat, most staggering, as a sailor played the line in and out to match the boat’s rise and fall with the waves. The coxswain kept the engine in gear, pushing against the current to keep the boat in place. Finally the boat was empty except for the crew and they were ready to load another group.

Woods hurried down the ladder and jumped onto the boat. The center of the boat where the coxswain stood was elevated three feet above the passenger areas in the bow and stern. Fully loaded, it could hold about seventy-five sailors. The seating areas were open to the night sky. If the weather was bad they could rig canvas covers for all the seating area, but it made the ride very stuffy, especially when any of the sailors got sick.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Phil Cobb of Woods’s squadron was the Boat Officer he was to relieve. Woods looked at the boat and then at Cobb. “Hey, Phil. How’s it been?”

“Usual drunks.”

Woods noticed the lights from the
Washington
reflecting off Cobb’s green nylon flight jacket. “How’d you get so wet?” he asked unenthusiastically.

“Swells are getting worse. The whole way out you’re going right into the waves. A couple made it all the way back to us.”

“Great,” Woods said.

“You’ll have a blast. I’ll bet it isn’t below forty degrees.”

Woods noticed Cobb was wearing gloves. “Mind if I borrow your gloves?” he asked.

Cobb shrugged. “I’ll pick ’em up tomorrow.”

“I appreciate it.”

“You got your long johns on, Trey?”

“You bet,” Woods said, as a chill caused him to shiver suddenly. “Wish I’d worn my green flight jacket.”

“Use mine.”

“Thanks.” Cobb was taller and bigger than Woods, who was thin. People thought he was skinny, which he hated. He worked out all the time to get bigger, but only seemed to get stronger without adding any mass to his frame.

The sailors started down the ladder and filled in the seating areas quickly, anxious to go ashore.

“That’s it for me,” Cobb said cheerfully. “She’s all yours, Trey.”

Woods saluted Cobb and said, half jokingly, “I relieve you, sir.”

Cobb smiled, returned the salute, and said, “I am relieved.” He turned and dashed up the ladder to the well-lit hangar bay.

Woods watched as the sailors in their civilian clothes eagerly filled the boat, sitting close to each other so that there was no unused space. Liberty expired at 0400, except for those who had a special chit authorizing an all-night stay ashore. Woods knew most of the sailors would wander off the quay, past the Hey-Joes who would try to sell them something they didn’t want, past the prostitutes who would try to sell them something they did want, past small restaurants they didn’t like, only to end up at the USO club a few blocks from the waterfront listening to the same music they listened to all the time aboard the ship, and talking to the same people they talked to every day. But they could drink. They would consume more alcohol than any straight-thinking person would consume, stagger back to the quay, and get back aboard his boat just in time to throw up on someone, preferably someone they knew, or a fistfight would ensue and they would get written up for being drunk and disorderly and have to explain their conduct to the ship’s captain. Woods pulled his collar up more tightly around his neck. The night was getting colder by the minute, that Naples-on-the-water-bone-chilling-coldness that seemed to settle in when it was overcast and windy.

“Ready to go, sir?” the coxswain asked.

Woods nodded his head as he looked around for other shipping traffic that could be a factor on the trip in to the harbor. A twenty-minute ride, then a ten-minute wait on the quay. Then a twenty-minute ride back. The first of many. “Let’s go.”

The coxswain threw the throbbing diesel into reverse and backed away quickly from the
Washington
, turned into the waves, and started for shore. As he stood in the boat and strained his eyes ahead in the night, Woods felt like Washington crossing the Delaware. Except he had a motor. And Washington had a mission.

Kinkaid panted slightly as he counted the rings at the other end of the line. He was using the STU-III phone in his office, the encrypted phone that was cleared for conversations up to Top Secret if the person on the other end of the line had his STU-III properly encrypted, which was certainly the case this morning. Kinkaid checked his watch. Pick up, he ordered. Kinkaid had waited until midnight to catch the person he was calling at seven o’clock in the morning, when he was fresh.

The man on the other end answered. “Shalom,” he said.

“Shalom,” Kinkaid responded. “How have you been, Efraim? It is great to talk to you again.” He already felt awkward.

“It has been a while.”

“Yes, it has, I . . . It’s a busy time.”

“Which is, no doubt, why you called.” His deep voice was soothing and threatening at the same time. It depended on what you were expecting.

“I am looking into the Gaza strip incident.”

“Of course.”

“We wondered if you knew who was involved.”

“We are just beginning our investigation.”

“Who do you think it was?”

“Why are you so interested?”

“It’s my job to care. You know that.”

“Yes. But this seems to be our problem.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“We’re just trying to find out who did it first. Our response would depend on that, wouldn’t it?”

“Do you have anything?”

Efraim paused. “There is so much we don’t know.”

“I’ve got to put together what we know over here. If you hear anything, or come up with anything, let me know. Anything, Efraim.”

“Yes, obviously I will think about it. Right now I must go.”

“Get back to me.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“You have no idea? Really?”

“A few.”

“Who?”

“It’s too soon.”

“Don’t wait too long,” Kinkaid warned. “If we’re going to help, we need to know who we’re dealing with.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said again.

Woods walked into the ready room fifteen minutes before the scheduled brief. The Commanding Officer of VF-103, Fighter Squadron 103, Commander Mark Barnett, also known as Bark, was sitting in the first row reading through the message board in the front of the room. He glanced down at his watch. Woods knew what every other aviator in VF-103 knew — you were late to a brief only once in this squadron. Then you got to be Squadron Duty Officer for a week. No flying, just watching.

“Morning, Skipper,” Woods said casually.

“Trey,” Barnett replied, looking closely at Woods. “You ready to go?”

“I was born ready,” Woods said.

“Right. I forgot,” Bark said. “What kind of hop you on?”

“Strafing the spar.”

“Don’t hit it.”

“Don’t worry, Skipper.”

“Did you see we got our new Intel Officer?”

“You’re kidding me. Where is he?”

“It’s a she. She’s in the back, in the briefing area. Watching a brief from the receiving end first.”

“What’s her name?”

“Charlene Pritchard.”

“She got any experience?”

“Yeah. She graduated from intel school at Dam Neck.
And
she has a gold bar on her collar.” An Ensign, the lowest officer rank in the Navy.

“Damn good thing they send these Ensigns to tell us what’s going on. Too bad Bruno had to go. He was just getting productive.”

“Come on, Trey. You know you can’t stick around here once you know what the hell is going on. That’s what triggers getting
replaced
.”

Sean smiled as he looked toward the back. “She got a call sign yet?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll give it some thought,” he said. He was one of the few officers in the squadron who could give someone a call sign and make it stick. He looked at the television. “Is she good-looking?”

“Trey,” Bark said without looking up.