True Valor

  “Okay if I join you?”

  Grace waved her cousin into the kitchen. She saved the message and closed her phone. “As long as you don’t expect much. I’m talked out,” she whispered, fighting the hoarseness that had messed up the end of her day. She bit her lip to stop the laughter—someone, probably Jill, had given Wolf one of the white paper sailor hats. It had been autographed by a number of people, and he had one of the party toothpicks stuck in the crown.

  Wolf settled beside her at the table as she refilled her glass of ice water from the pitcher. Grace rested her cheek against her palm and felt the ring she wore cut into her cheek. She turned it back around with her thumb. The party had been a smashing success. If she gained the energy, she would go home and take advantage of having a real bed. Of everything she knew she would crave while on deployment, topping the list was a real bed and a soft pillow.

  “Good party.”

  “Thanks. I knew you’d enjoy it.” His definition of a good party was quite broad: the general denominator being “unstuffy” people and edible food. “How did Jill take the deployment news?”

  “Got quiet. Said oh.”

  Grace read between the lines. The news had stung. “It’s a long time.”

  Wolf just nodded. He returned the salt and pepper shakers to the center holder, then tugged out a napkin and shook it out. She slid him her glass of ice water. He wet the napkin and scrubbed at a spot of drying chocolate topping she had missed. Emotion swelled up inside as she watched him. She loved this man, and there was something so endearing about the boy still inside. She was two years older than he was; he’d been the brother she never had. “Going to tell me what else she said?”

  “Nope.”

  “I can get you a dishrag.”

  He wadded up the napkin.

  Grace knew the problem. For the first time her cousin was letting his heart get deeply involved. He was scared to leave. He couldn’t control what would happen to his relationship with Jill while he was gone. Grace had been there; she knew exactly what it felt like to be heading for a deployment with uncertainty on the home front. The pressure of her first deployment had been complicated by Ben’s reaction to her being gone.

  She could count on one hand the best friends in her life. Jill was at the top of the list. They’d met when she had flown into Norfolk and over one weekend had to find an apartment near the base, get her car tags for the base, and make arrangements to ship furniture. Jill had become a friend in those twenty-four hours of whirlwind decisions. Wolf had his work cut out for him to make the relationship with Jill work, but Grace had never counseled against it. She’d been the one to introduce them three years ago. The man deserved to be happy. And she knew they were both too stubborn to give up. “Why don’t you take her to a movie?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Take advantage of the time you have left stateside. Trust me, she’ll say yes.” He had no idea. For the last decade, Jill had been talking about being married by the time she was thirty. Wolf dragging his heels was making her best friend miserable. Grace was afraid Jill was going to get tired of waiting for him to reach the point he wanted to settle down.

  She had never been a civilian, never been the one left stateside, so it was hard to offer much practical advice. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand; she just didn’t know what to suggest. Wolf was not leaving the Navy, and at times that was the only solution Jill could see to the separations. Silence was hard on a relationship, and Wolf deployed places where no mail or phone for weeks at a time was common.

  “She’s still talking with Bruce, saying her normal very long good-bye.”

  “She doesn’t see him often enough.”

  “I’m not complaining. I know the feeling. I haven’t been able to see you nearly enough either.”

  “You mean you’re not tired of me yet?” she teased and he laughed as she had known he would. She knew being around to see her was one of the reasons he’d accepted a transfer from the West Coast back to the East, though Jill had been the main reason. He normally worked Pacific assignments, but the increase in military deployments over the last two years had led to the shifting around of SEAL teams to help cover the demands in Europe. But even living in the same area, they still had to coordinate schedules to see each other.

  “Are you ready for the next six months?”

  That she should have given him reason to wonder made her sad. “I’m ready. It’s too quiet here. I want to get back to sea.” She was ready to get away from the low-grade grief she felt stateside. There was peace to be found in work and she needed it. Too many places stateside had been shared with Ben, and she kept encountering reminders of what she had lost.

  “I’ve got few regrets.” The words from Bruce’s letter echoed in her memory. His letter had arrived at a vulnerable moment, catching her off guard. She’d read it many times during the last two weeks. She had regrets, so many they haunted her. If only . . . She’d been living with the words during this shore leave and they were wearing her down. She envied Bruce that peace he had about life. She had made one decision. No more regrets. It was time for better decisions. Wiser ones.

  “You can’t hide in work forever.”

  She smiled at Wolf, appreciating the fact he cared enough to push. “Another six months. You can give me the moving-on speech after this tour.”

  Wolf crossed his arms, the fabric of his shirt pulling taut against well-defined muscles, and he rocked back in the chair as he considered her. “Promise me you’ll be extra careful while you’re gone. I don’t want to have to open that letter you insisted on handing me.”

  “It’s the grown-up thing to do, writing that letter.”

  “I’m not writing you one.”

  She reached over and squeezed the back of his neck. He wouldn’t need to write one. She knew he loved her. “Write one for Jill. Just in case.”

  “Grace—”

  “Sweetheart is a good way to start it.”

  “Mushy.”

  “Relationships are designed to embarrass guys with mushy words. Go find Jill.”

  “Want to come along to the movie?”

  “Thanks but no. My feather pillow is calling my name.” Had Ben been here, she would have found the energy, but tagging along as a third wasn’t worth it. She could feel herself growing old in the little changes to her priorities. “Same plan for phone calls as last time?”

  “Yes. I’ll track you down.”

  “Good. Finding you is hard. Your platoon tends to hide.”

  “Just look where the shooting is going on.”

  She laughed. “You will come back in one piece—you owe me after Ecuador.”

  He got to his feet and ruffled her hair. “Promise. Have a good deployment, Grace.”

  “You too, Wolf.”

  * * *

  “You’re sure you don’t mind watching the mutt?” Bruce asked.

  Jill leaned through the car window to reach in and pet the dog curled up in the passenger seat. “You’re going to hurt her feelings. I’ll be glad to have Emily while you’re gone.”

  “I’ll bring her bed and food and chew toy with me. Extra keys to the car. My checkbook. What else?”

  Jill chuckled. “I like the list so far. Don’t worry about it. If I need anything else, Beth has your house keys and can forward it to me.” She stepped back from the car as the porch lights came on and Wolf stepped outside. “Give me a call when you reach Charlotte.”

  “Will do.”

  Jill waved as Bruce pulled out of the drive. He’d had a good time today; she took comfort in that as she asked him to make yet another round-trip from Florida to Virginia. He sometimes could catch a flight into Naval Air Station, Oceana, but he’d driven this time in order to bring her the old hutch that had been in their parents’ home. She’d seen him talking with Grace. This deployment was putting so many things on hold, not the least of which was a budding friendship between her brother and Grace. It was hard to play matchmaker when they were leaving
for four and six months respectively.

  Wolf wrapped her in a hug from behind and she leaned against him, enjoying his strength.

  “Good party.”

  “Great party,” she corrected, wrapping her hands around his.

  “Grace suggested I take you to a movie.”

  She giggled. “You didn’t tell her?”

  “Honey, I know better than to tell my cousin I’m taking you to look at rings.”

  “I said we could look, not that I’d accept one.”

  “I’ll convince you.”

  “You’ve been trying.” She knew how miserable she would be while he was gone. She was still trying to adjust to a relationship where bad news was inevitable, but it wasn’t easy.

  “We’ll make it through this separation. I’ll write at least every other day.”

  “I know you will.” She turned. Wolf would do everything he could to make it work. She reached up to tap his square jaw. The man was a SEAL, had the build of a boxer and a great smile in a face that was far from symmetrical. She looked into his deep brown eyes and found steadiness. She loved him. “Let’s go look at rings.” She’d know by the end of the summer if she could deal with what it meant to accept one.

  Three

  * * *

  MAY 10

  USS GEORGE WASHINGTON (CVN 73)

  MEDITERRANEAN SEA OFF WEST COAST OF TURKEY

  Her flight boots had salt whitened from months at sea, and her flight suit under the white life vest had picked up a long day’s worth of grime inherent with working on an aircraft carrier flight deck. Grace narrowed her eyes against the sun as she tracked the plane in the landing pattern.

  She wore wraparound sunglasses, ample ChapStick, and had brought thick foam earplugs to cope with the noise of jets landing a few feet away. In her left hand she held the handset putting her in open radio contact with the approaching plane. At this moment she was the most important person in that pilot’s life.

  The aircraft carrier had turned into the wind to allow for recovery of planes from the second op of the day. Grace had been flying during the first op, doing a mirror-image training flight for what she would be doing for real tonight. After the debrief, she had come up to take a rotation as the landing signal officer. This was the eleventh plane landing in this cycle. They were arriving in sixty-second intervals, and she was handling the pressure with a cool precision.

  Grace kept her right hand over her head holding up the pickle switch controlling the Fresnel landing lights, reminding all the other LSOs on the platform with her that they had a foul deck. The F/A-18 Hornet that had just landed had not yet cleared the deck. Grace resisted the impulse to turn and look over her shoulder to see what the holdup was. She had a bigger problem coming toward her. The EA-6B Prowler on approach was flown by a nugget—a new pilot in the air wing on his first sea cruise.

  The USS George Washington had been at sea two months now of this six-month deployment, and Grace worried that Lieutenant Junior Grade Ellis “Patrick” Jones was losing confidence in his flying skills, not gaining it.

  She’d mentally nicknamed him “Jittery” because he got excited easily, and from the very first meeting it was apparent he was overwhelmed with the transition to carrier operations. Unlike shore deployments, life aboard an aircraft carrier ran at high speed with only rare pauses. Every nugget had to learn to cope and there was precious little time to learn how. He was task saturated. It was showing in his landings, and she knew that would sink his career if he didn’t improve soon. The Navy didn’t have much use for a pilot who couldn’t safely land a plane on a ship.

  If he came in high as he tried to land, the Prowler’s tailhook would miss the wires, and he’d be forced to go full throttle to fly off the deck before he careened into the sea. If he drifted right, he’d take out a row of parked jets at millions a pop. If he drifted left, he’d slide off the ship. And if he came in low . . . The Navy called them ramp strikes when a pilot literally flew his plane into the back of the ship. At a hundred plus knots, the resulting fireball was spectacular. Grace was standing a few feet away from the point he would impact.

  It was her role to talk him safely down onto the deck. She would get him down alive. It was her job. And she was good at her job.

  “Clear deck!”

  “Roger, clear deck. Lights and gear set for a Prowler,” Grace shouted back to the LSO to her far right. She lowered the pickle switch back to her side. She had a radio handset and the large bank of signaling lights behind her. With them she had to work a minor miracle. She was earning her pay today. Patrick was plane number 774, and Grace listened to the radio traffic bringing him in.

  “774, three quarters of a mile, call the ball,” the air controller said.

  “774, Prowler ball, 4.5,” Patrick tersely replied.

  Patrick could see the massive glowing “meatball” light behind her. The plane was now hers.

  The big meatball light moved up and down, tracking with his plane. As long as his light intersected the horizontal line of green lights, he was on a perfect approach. If Patrick came in high, he would see the big yellow meatball light that tracked with his plane move above that line of green lights. If the light drifted below the green lights, his approach was low. If it went red, he was about to plow into the back of the ramp. He was trained to fly the meatball. She was there to remind him of that.

  A good landing wasn’t complicated. Watch the centerline, the glide slope of the approach, and the speed. Then land the plane on the centerline, catch an arresting wire with the tailhook, and be jerked to a stop. It was the same process day or night. Rather heart-stopping at night but still a routine part of a naval aviator’s job.

  “Right for center,” Grace corrected, seeing his plane drift left. The white centerline had nearly worn off the carrier deck after the months of heavy flight operations. Patrick either couldn’t see it or couldn’t get aligned.

  His wings dipped and he overcorrected. She waited two heartbeats for him to realize the error. “Left a little,” she cautioned.

  The Prowler nosed down. Her muscles tensed. “Power. You’re settling.” He was fighting left and right drifts while forgetting he was falling out of the sky. He was below the glide slope and rapidly closing distance with the ship.

  Come on, correct. “Power. Power.”

  He aggressively added power so as not to slam into the ramp and he drifted left.

  She hit the pickle. “Wave off. Wave off!” The bank of lights burst into flashing red as she ordered an abort.

  She ducked as the jet roared overhead.

  The windshield on the LSO platform rocked at the fury. Gracie forced her hand to relax its white-knuckle grip. No one in the LSO group had jumped into the safety basket, diving off the edge of the ship to avoid being engulfed in a ramp strike. If she hadn’t been holding the stick, she would have jumped.

  Never, ever, be low. Suffering the emotions of being an LSO taught her more about landings than she learned at the controls of the plane when she was the one flying the pattern.

  “Good call,” the senior carrier air group LSO said. He stood behind her with a second handset and a pickle switch backing her up. She wanted his job someday but for now was relieved to know she had him around to back her up. Grace nodded her appreciation of the quiet words as she pivoted and watched Patrick climb back into the sky. Air control gave him vectors to come around and try again. He had about two minutes to mentally get ready. She was going to need more than that. He’d been flying at her face that last hundred feet.

  She shook off the adrenaline as she wondered what Patrick’s three-man crew was thinking about now. She was grateful she flew the single seat F/A-18 Hornet and didn’t have to worry about killing her flight crew in a landing mistake.

  Turning to the LSO acting as secretary for this recover, she graded the landing. “Wave off. Left drift on approach, overcorrect and settle in the middle, not enough power at the ramp.” The no grade would sting. Patrick’s landing grades for th
is deployment were still average “fairs” with all too frequent below average “no grades.” He was heading toward a flight review board.

  The phone beside them on the LSO platform rang.

  The senior LSO picked it up. From the “Yes, sirs” she knew it was probably the air boss watching events from his perch in the tower high above the flight deck.

  The senior LSO hung up the phone. “One more try, and then he gets diverted to Incirlik. There’s no slack in the timeline for tonight.”

  Grace nodded.

  She raised her right hand with the pickle stick over her head to signal a foul deck as one of the many plane handlers used the free minute to maneuver and park an F-14 Tomcat at the edge of the flight deck. The red shirts had already begun loading live ordnance for the missions tonight. It would be a big strike. An entire air wing could only pause for one pilot so long.

  “Clear deck.”

  She lowered her hand. “Clear deck. Roger. Lights and boards set for a Prowler.” Patrick’s plane would be at a lighter weight on this approach, having burned fuel in the abort and circle. It would likely cause him to be high and fast. And given the near ramp strike, he’d already want to overcorrect high.

  “774, three quarters of a mile, call the ball,” the air controller called.

  “774, Prowler ball, 3.7,” Patrick replied. His voice sounded shaky.

  “Wind at twenty-nine knots, even keel,” she said, relieved not to have a pitching deck adding another element of complexity.

  Patrick was focusing better this time. He was above the glide path as she had suspected. “You’re long.”

  She saw him inch a little steeper angle of attack. It was a decent approach. She let the minor errors that weren’t going to kill him go without comment.