The White Vixen (12 page)

Trying to control his anxiety, Ernesto walked back through the house to the study. Keeping the door open, he took one more look around and then, satisfied he was alone, went to the desk. Going around behind, he nudged the leather chair aside and began flicking the feather duster over the dark teak surface of the desk. The file Rudel had been examining lay in the center of the desk. It was closed.

His vantage point gave him a clear view of the doorway and part of the hallway, and he could also clearly see through the French doors to his left that the side veranda was empty. No one could disturb him without announcing their presence by heels clicking on the hardwood floor of the hallway. Still flicking the duster with his left hand, he opened the file with his right. The first page, bearing the crest of Baumann Enterprises as its letterhead, contained a list of six names. Alternating his gaze between the page and the doorway, Ernesto committed the names to memory, then quickly riffled the remaining pages. Photographs, service records, letters of commendation. Ernesto knew a military service jacket when he saw one. The names were the important things. Giving the front page one last glance, he closed the file and resumed his dusting, moving on to the credenza behind the desk.

Five minutes later, he left the study and went to his own quarters at the rear of the house, a small bedroom and a sitting room with a view of the rear grounds of the estate. Closing his door and locking it, he retrieved a blank piece of paper from his small desk and jotted down the six names. They were all German surnames, although none he recognized in particular. That was all right. Someone else would know who they were, and perhaps what significance they carried. Folding the paper into quarters, he slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Eglin Air Force Base, Florida

December 1981

“Another difficult decision,” Jo Ann Geary said, frowning.

“Those captain’s bars tend to weigh you down with responsibility,” her companion in the line said. “But making tough calls is why Uncle Sam is paying us the big bucks.”

“Yeah, sure,” Jo said. She made up her mind. “Apple, please,” she said to the white-aproned private behind the counter. “No ice cream.”

“Certainly, ma’am,” the E-2 said, sliding the slice of apple pie onto Jo’s plate. “Fresh baked, ma’am, taste just like your mama’s, I’ll bet.”

Jo smiled at the young man’s drawl. Arkansas, probably. Well, her own mother had never done very well with traditional American baking, but this boy’s mom had probably filled him with pie and a lot more before sending him off to Air Force basic training, and by the look of him that had happened not too long ago. “Thanks, airman.”

Stepping aside, she let Kate take a look at the dessert offerings.

“Lemon meringue, hot damn. I’ll take that good-sized piece there, Mr. Dowling.” The young man happily served up the slice. Kate was a regular visitor to the dessert section, so she knew every worker by name. Yet those visits didn’t seem to add up to any extra inches on her thighs or midriff. Jo sighed with envy. The women found two empty chairs at a nearby table.

As usual, Kate dug right in, taking a big bite out of her ham and cheese sandwich. Jo used her knife and fork almost like a surgeon, picking at her chicken breast before cutting off a small piece. “Eat up, girl,” Kate said after chasing her first bite with a swig of milk. “We got a lot of work to do yet today.”

Jo smiled as she ate. In a profession that seemed designed to foster intense friendships and then yank them apart on the whim of some nameless Pentagon bureaucrat, she had found it made good policy to avoid getting particularly close to anyone. Kate Simmons was the one exception she’d made to that rule over the years, and Kate’s effervescent personality had a lot to do with that. You couldn’t help liking Kate, and Jo supposed they made an odd pair: the slender Oriental woman with the exotic looks, and the tall, solidly-built black woman with the loud laugh and merry eyes. Nobody would call Kate a beauty, and yet she’d had her share of boyfriends. And a few girlfriends, too, Jo knew, but she didn’t let that bother her. Kate sure didn’t seem to mind.

Perhaps Jo liked Kate so much—and the feeling was surely mutual—because of the way they’d met. Nearly seven years ago, Jo reflected now, the air-conditioned comfort of the officer’s mess clashing with her memory of the cold rain on that spring morning in 1975 when an even one hundred women, apprehensive and a little bit scared, disembarked the olive-drab Army buses at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Jo slipped in the mud and dropped her duffel bag, only to find herself hauled upright by a powerful hand. Kate’s other hand held Jo’s duffel, her own bag was slung on her back, and she was laughing. “You be careful, girl,” Kate said then. “You drop in the mud here, you be liable to splash me, and I ain’t aimin’ to get down and dirty till I have to.” Jo’s inauspicious introduction to the Diana Brigade had led to the start of her most enduring friendship.

She thought of that now as Kate chatted away about the training schedule that lay ahead of them in the afternoon, what they should do this weekend in town, and isn’t that new Lieutenant Kittoe a real stud muffin? The three months at Bragg, a good deal of that time spent in the surrounding countryside, had shaped their lives like no other experience possibly could. One hundred women began the training, designed to see if women could withstand the same rigorous Special Forces training as men, and the sixty-three who survived the ordeal formed a unique bond. To this day, when Jo saw the Diana Brigade ribbon bar on the uniform of another woman soldier, sailor, airman or marine, she immediately recognized the face, put it with a name, called up a shared memory, and felt the strength of the bond. Sometimes the women would only be able to share a special nod and a smile, but usually they found time to exchange greetings, talk a bit about old times and new, maybe plan to have dinner together. Jo would always try to find time to spend with a fellow Huntress.

She and Kate had gone off to different postings after Diana, but the vagaries of military life had brought them together twice since then, most recently here, at Eglin, in the 6th Special Operations Training Squadron, 1st Special Operations Wing, 9th Air Force. Jo had arrived on the base nearly a year ago, just days behind Kate. The women quickly renewed their friendship and had worked together closely since then. Their duties consisted primarily of training new Special Ops troopers, not an easy task since most of them were men and women’s liberation, despite the results of projects like Diana, was still finding the going pretty hard in this man’s Air Force. But a good portion of their duty was learning new things themselves, retraining on skills already learned, and the occasional tasking for special assignment. Jo had gone overseas three times since arriving at Hurlburt. Kate had returned from an assignment in Kenya just a week ago.

Jo enjoyed the military life, but it was slow going sometimes. She was in her tenth year of active duty and still only a captain; some of the male officers she’d known, younger than her and with fewer years, had already made major. Kate had three fewer years in the service and was a grade below Jo, at first lieutenant. Jo felt Kate deserved more, but her friend’s sometimes too-cavalier attitude might have held her back as much as her gender. And yet, Kate seemed to have fun wherever she went, and often kidded Jo as being too serious. Jo had heard the scuttlebutt among some male officers, too; Kate was considered a good time on a date, while Jo got her share of offers but few follow-up invitations. With a few exceptions, Ian Masters being the most recent, she thought with a smile.

Ian. His last letter had reached her a week ago, posted two weeks earlier from Tahiti. He certainly missed her, and she fought to keep herself from blushing now as she recalled some of his steamier paragraphs. She made a mental note to write another letter to him that evening.

The women finished their lunch and began the walk across the base from the mess hall to their unit headquarters building at Hurlburt Field. They could have taken a jeep but Jo preferred to walk, and the Florida weather was good today, mid-seventies, very nice for two days before Christmas. Kate, as usual, carped about the walk but went along with the idea. They were halfway to the unit when a blue jeep with a sergeant at the wheel pulled alongside them. The man snapped off a salute. “Captain Geary?”

Jo and Kate returned the salute. “Yes, Sergeant?” Jo asked.

“Just went looking for you at Officer’s Mess, ma’am. Colonel Reese wants to see you right away. Be happy to give you a lift.”

Jo knew that the offer of a ride wasn’t just a friendly suggestion. When the colonel wanted to see someone, he wanted him, or her, in his office yesterday. “Thanks, sergeant,” Jo said. “Kate, I’ll see you later.” She climbed aboard.

“Betcha this means we won’t be going to the Beach this weekend,” Kate said over the roar of the engine. Jo waved goodbye as the sergeant wheeled the jeep around and headed back down the road. A summons to the colonel’s office could mean a lot of things, but for Jo it likely meant her planned weekend with Kate down at Fort Walton Beach would be canceled. They intended to drive there Friday afternoon, returning Sunday evening. Well, there would be other weekends for golf and a night or two on the town.

Maybe she was being deployed. There had been scuttlebutt on the base about a move against Iran; many of the airmen had been in on the disastrous Operation Eagle Claw, the failed attempt to rescue the hostages in Tehran, nearly two years ago now. But somehow Jo doubted this had anything to do with Iran. She kept a close eye on political developments and figured
something was about to happen in El Salvador or Nicaragua. Good thing she had been brushing up on her Spanish.

The office of Lieutenant Colonel Brian Reese, the squadron’s commanding officer, was in one corner of the wing’s headquarters building on the eastern perimeter of Hurlburt. Jo was shown in by Reese’s aide, a female tech sergeant. She came to attention and saluted. “Captain Geary reporting as ordered, sir,” Jo said.

Looking up from the papers on his desk, Reese rose to his feet and returned the salute. “At ease, Jo Ann,” he said. “Have a chair.” That in itself was a bit unusual. Reese was a good C.O., but in the year she’d worked for him, he went strictly by the book and tended to be a bit formal. Maybe a little more than he should, sometimes, but she knew that Reese had a legacy pushing him: his father had flown thirty missions in P-51 Mustangs escorting B-25s for the Air Corps over Germany, and before that his grandfather went aloft over France in spindly Spad biplanes for the Lafayette Escadrille in World War I. Reese himself flew Phantoms over North Vietnam, and between them the Reese men had accounted for seventeen enemy pilots going down.

Reese was around forty, with specks of gray clouding his close-cropped dark hair. He picked up a paper from the file on his desk. “I have received a rather interesting letter from a member of Congress,” Reese said.

That couldn’t be good. “Which one, sir?”

“Lacey Chamberlain, Representative from Maryland. Heard of her?”

Jo’s spirits sagged. “Yes, sir. She’s…not been too terribly friendly to the military.”

Reese smiled. “Your discretion is admirable, Jo Ann. The congresswoman has been pretty outspoken on the subject since her days in college. She was one of the anti-war movement’s leaders, if I recall.” He glanced at the letter again. “She’s chair of a pretty important committee in the House and is going to conduct hearings right after the holidays about women in the military, and she wants you to testify.”

That was a surprise. “About what, sir?”

“Evidently, as much as she dislikes the military, she does like military women, and she believes they’re not being promoted quickly enough, by comparison to their male peers. You’ve made a bit of a name for yourself in the Special Ops community with the Fonglan Island mission, not to mention your earlier missions. She found out about Fonglan, and apparently wonders why you’re still a captain after ten years’ service and a pretty impressive record.”

Jo’s head whirled a little bit, and she forced herself to focus. “First of all, sir, that op was classified Top Secret, and as important as this lady is in Congress, I don’t know how she could’ve been brought into the loop on it, even after the fact.”

“She wasn’t, at least officially, I’m pretty sure about that,” Reese said, “but leaks do get out of the Pentagon now and then. Something we have to live with. And your second point?”

“Sir, if I go before a committee of Congress, then whatever cover I might have for future missions is blown. Even if Fonglan Island isn’t brought up, which I’m sure it would be, if she wants to showcase my record as an example of a female officer who hasn’t been—“ Jo stopped herself. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to imply—“

“That’s all right, Jo Ann. For the record, after I reviewed your report on that operation, I put you in for a commendation. Also for promotion to major. They haven’t come through yet, but I’m pretty sure both of them will.”

Jo blinked in surprise. “Thank you, sir.”

“No thanks necessary. I recognize good work and a good officer when I see them. Now, about this thing with Chamberlain. I could ask my superiors here and in Washington to lean on her to have you removed from the witness list for this hearing, but I think it would be better for you to make that case yourself. The hearing is set to begin January eleventh. I’m sending you up to D.C. next week, to meet with some people at the Pentagon about some routine matters concerning your unit, and then to sit down with the congresswoman, privately. You can convince her that having you testify would be a bad idea all the way around.”