laughed. “You love to crack yourself up, don’t you?”
“Someone’s got to do it.” Chris added somberly, “Especially now that we’re leaving. Wish I could take you to Patuxent River, Maryland, to be a test pilot with me.”
“I should learn how to fly the Cobra before I try testing stuff that hasn’t even been built yet.”
“You’re right,” Chris said. “I’m going to miss you, though, and I don’t say that to very many people. I can tell that someone in San Diego is going to be the luckiest guy alive.”
“Flight attendants, please take your seats for landing.” The captain’s voice brought Patrick out of his thoughts. Going to the beach that beautiful day in Pensacola had changed his life forever. As he looked out onto sunlit Coronado Bay and the palm-tree-lined streets below, he couldn’t help but wonder what other surprises—maybe some lucky guy—were in store for him.
4
“Captain Pfeiffer, how did you get the callsign ‘Jungle’?”
“Good question, sir. My first squadron commander pronounced my name like ‘fever’—”
“‘Jungle fever.’” Leonard laughed. “Clever.”
“I was a wild lieutenant back in the day. He said I made him sicker than a case of malaria. So ‘Jungle’ stuck.”
“‘Back in the day’? Christ! How old are you? Twenty-nine? Thirty?” The two men carried their helmets, notepads and maps as they walked across the tarmac from their Cobra into the squadron’s hangar at Camp Pendleton. The maintenance area smelled of aircraft fuel, grease and machinery, a mixture that made Leonard feel at home.
“Thirty-two, Colonel. Makes me an old man in the Corps. But thank you.”
“Thirty-two?” Leonard feigned shock. “That old?” As he and Jungle climbed the steps to the second floor, he hoped the power of suggestion emanating from their discussion of age made him feel winded and not age itself. This evening he felt all of the fifty years he’d be this year.
“How’d you get the callsign ‘Royal’?”
“My father was British and I grew up in London. He died when I was sixteen and my mother and I returned to her native New York. I suppose I still had a trace of an accent when I joined the Marines. My first squadron commander was from Texas—”
“—and to him anyone with an accent must be part of the monarchy. No wonder we always carry a special love for our first commanding officer.” Jungle laughed. “I hope I fly half as well as you do when—”
“When you’re my age?” Leonard asked. “Captain, if I were you, I’d stop talking now.”
Jungle’s faced reddened several shades. “I admire the way you flew the aircraft today, sir. I don’t know many pilots who can handle a helicopter as skillfully in fierce Santa Ana winds.”
“Do you know where the name ‘Santa Ana Winds’ originated?”
“The Santa Ana Mountains? Or—is it because they blow down the Santa Ana Canyon?”
“That’s what most people believe,” Leonard said. Jungle stepped forward to open the door. “The truth is we Anglos mispronounce it as we do many things. The correct term comes from the name the Spanish missionaries used centuries ago: ‘Vientos de Santanas.’”
Jungle followed Leonard into the pilots’ “ready room.” “I don’t know Spanish, sir.”
Seeing Leonard, Lieutenant Colonel Hammer leapt to his feet and shouted, “Attention on deck!” The twelve or thirteen officers in the ready room jumped to the position of attention.
“‘Winds of Satan.’” Turning to the group, Leonard said, “At ease!” He stepped to the chair they’d left vacant for him in the center of the front row. “Please, please, take your seats.”
Despite Leonard’s order, the officers in the room waited until he was firmly in his seat before they moved. Sledge waved and a Marine delivered Leonard an ice-cold bottle of water from the back of the room. He thanked the officer but kept his eyes firmly on Sledge, one of six squadron commanders who reported directly to him. Leonard had flown today primarily to evaluate Sledge’s performance as squadron commander, a fact of which Sledge was no doubt aware.
“Let’s begin,” Sledge said from the lectern, “as we have a lot to talk about and I’m sure everybody has a better place to be on a Saturday night than here. I know I do.” The pilots laughed, nodding their heads. Leonard smiled but mentally prepared for the looming confrontation. “Let’s begin with our favorite pastime—beating up on intelligence. Intel officer? Where are you? Since you were our first total fuck-up of the day, you get to go first.”
A woman shouted from the back row, “Here, sir!” She made her way to the front of the room as Sledge stepped to the side. She had a determined look on her face despite the badgering by her squadron commander, treatment that probably wasn’t new for her. “Good afternoon—or evening, gentlemen.” She smiled, nodding toward Leonard and Sledge. “I’ll engage in a pastime we enjoy even more than beating up on intelligence. Because this was a joint training mission, we were required to rely on intelligence gathered and provided to us by Army units from Fort Huachuca, Arizona.”
The men howled in agreement. “Fuckin’ Army—sticks it to us every time!” a pilot shouted. No matter how much the Corps evolved, some things, like Army-bashing, never changed.
She continued. “Field units reported the ‘enemy’ shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles—in actuality our own Marine Stinger teams from Camp Pendleton—should’ve been thirty miles east of the hills where they ‘shot down’ Colonel Spencer and Jungle. The winds delayed our launch, giving the Stingers time to relocate further west. The intelligence wasn’t updated.”
The debrief ended almost an hour later. After the other officers left the room, Leonard said, “Sledge, Jungle, can you stick around for a few minutes?”
“Yes sir!” Jungle shouted.
“Sure—Colonel.” Sledge seemed annoyed that his Saturday night plans would be delayed even further.
Leonard looked at Jungle, “How many rounds were you able to fire out of the 20-millimeter machine gun before we were ‘killed’?”
“Enough to wipe out one of the teams.” Jungle spoke with the typical overconfidence of a Marine Corps captain. “If it hadn’t been for the faulty intelligence and the ‘phantom missile team,’ sir, we would’ve won the day. I’m absolutely sure of that.”
Sledge was more subdued. Looking at the captain, he nodded with satisfaction. “I believe Captain Pfeiffer is correct, sir. If we’d received proper intelligence—and if we’d spotted that first team—we wouldn’t have had any problems.”
“Captain Pfeiffer,” Leonard said, “may I see the logbook for that particular machine gun?”
The captain hesitated then realized what he had to do. “Yes sir!” He darted out of the room, heading for the stairwell to the maintenance department.
Sledge gulped and sweat beaded on his forehead. “Why do we need that, Colonel?”
“I’m not sure,” Leonard answered. “Perhaps we don’t.” Now that he and the squadron commander were alone, Leonard said, “You questioned my order during a hostile engagement. When I restated your instructions, you pretended to follow them. When you were out of my sight, you went against my command. Why did you disobey my order?”
Sledge braced. “You know as well as I do that the best way to counteract shoulder-fired infrared heat-seeking missiles is to position the aircraft between the missile and the sun.”
“That’s not what I asked. Flying toward