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 the sun was your second decision and one I understand—you thought you’d be safer, even though you were mistaken. What I don’t understand was the decision you made first—the decision to disobey my order!”
Leonard was near his boiling point when Jungle returned with the maintenance records. “Here you are, sir,” he said, stopping to catch his breath.
“Do you mind if I look at that?” Sledge asked.
“Go ahead.” Leonard passed the unopened logbook to the squadron commander.
Sledge opened the book, glanced at its pages and slammed it closed. “Goddamn it, Pfeiffer!” He thrust the book at the captain. “Look at this. Tell me what you see.”
The captain opened to the most recent entry. Confused, he flipped back several pages. “Sorry, sir. Don’t see anything.”
“That’s just the point, Captain!” Sledge snarled. “The most dangerous threats are the ones you don’t see. What I don’t see in this logbook is any evidence that the maintenance department replaced the rotor and breech bolts in that gun by the end of fiscal year ’ninety-two as required by DoD specifications. You know what that means?” Jungle looked at the floor. “It means that you, supposedly my best flight instructor, took a gun out flying today—with the group commander no less—that was defective. When you simulated firing that gun, not only did you not kill the enemy, you blew yourself and the colonel all the way from the halls of goddamned Montezuma to the shores of fucking Tripoli! I mean you would have, except that a phantom Stinger team had already blown you to pieces. I’d say we all had one hell of a day, wouldn’t you, Captain Pfeiffer?” Sledge screamed so loudly that the sergeant of the guard popped in to check on things.
A look of realization crossed Jungle’s face. “But Colonel Spencer—you told me to go ahead and use the 20-millimeter gun instead of the rockets and missiles.” Leonard nodded, satisfied the captain had learned a valuable lesson. “So you knew that the gun had a defective part—before the flight. You did that to make
