Read Online Final Flight by Stephen Coonts - Free Book Online Page B

a room.
    By the time he reached the stable podium placed on a
table at one end of the room, most of the men were back in
their chairs. Jake waited until everyone was
settled before he spoke. It had been over
three hours since he had a cigarette. He
noticed that there were ashtrays on the tables and several
people were stubbing butts out.
    “Good evening.” He looked at the eight
squadron skippers sitting in the front row. Have
we got about everyone?”
    “Except for the guys flying, sir.”
    “Fine.” Jake took an envelope from his hip
pocket on which he had made some notes. He
looked at the sea of faces looking at him. Most
of the faces were young, in their twenties. Just looking at
them made him feel over the hill. “How many of you
guys are on your first cruise?” Almost a third of the
men raised their hands. “Well, this is my ninth one,
and I have never before been at sea for three months
straight. We didn’t stay out like this during that little
fracas in Vietnam. Ain’t peace wonderful?”
    Titters.
    “I’m not here tonight to give you any little patriotic
pep talk. The politicians that drop in do it a
whole lot better than I could.”
    More chuckles. The ship had recently been
visited by several congressmen and a senator, and those
worthies had insisted on addressing the sailors from
their home states. As they told it, the
sailors were the equals of Washington’s troops
at Valley Forge.
    “A couple of guys died last night. We
don’t know why they died, and we may never know. But
they are indeed dead, and dead forever. No one shot them
out of the sky. The hazards inherent in naval aviation
killed them.
    “Now that doesn’t mean that we are not going to try
to find out why they died, or that we are not going to do
everything humanly possible to prevent further
accidents. We are going to do both. I had a
discussion with the squadron skippers this morning, and they
tell me they are going to conduct safety reviews
in every squadron.” Jake had ordered them to do so.
“We’re going to ensure these planes are being
properly maintained and you guys who fly them
haven’t forgotten how.
    “But what I can’t do is give you and your
sailors some time off. We’re going to have to keep our
noses to the grindstone. We’ve got to keep the
planes up, to guard this task group.”
    A hand shot up several rows back Jake
pointed and a lieutenant he didn’t recognize
stood up. “Sir, we wouldn’t have to keep flying
around the clock if we pulled off a couple
hundred miles and gave ourselves some sea room.
Then we could go to an alert status. Sitting here
thirty miles off the coast just cuts our reaction
time to incoming threats.”
    “We may be thirty miles off the coast right
now,” Jake replied, “but just before dusk we were
seven miles offshore so everyone in Lebanon could
get a good look. Every wacko in Lebanon knows
we’re here. The orders to steam seven miles off the
coast came from the National Security Council.”
    The lieutenant sat down and spoke from his chair.
“We’ll just get those fanatics stirred up.”
    “Maybe. What’s your name?”
    “Lieutenant Hartnett, sir. I just think that
if we had more sea room, we would have a little more
reaction time if and when Ahmad the Awful cranks
up his Cessna or speedboat and comes roaring out
to sink us.”
    “Do you think we can handle a threat like that?” Jake
asked with a grin.
    “We’ll send him to that big oasis in the sky,
sir.”
    “I’ll sleep better knowing that.”
    Laughter swept the room. Jake grinned
confidently, though he was well aware of the
real problems involved in defending the task group.
The admiral, his staff officers, and Jake had
spent many hours discussing alternative courses of
action in the event of a terrorist threat from
Lebanon. It wasn’t a laughing matter. The
rules of engagement under which the American ships
operated severely limited the options available.
This was the main reason Admiral Parker was