“Ready back there, Lieutenant?”
Fatigue perched on him like a big, obscene bird. Crow picking at roadkill. He roused himself, realized he had been half-asleep, the pilot’s voice in the comm waking him. Was he ready? Ready for one more of Suter’s punitive jobs, one more of his humiliations, one more of his demonstrations that he, Suter, was a lieutenant-commander and Alan Craik was only a lieutenant and it had been a big mistake for Alan to show that he thought Suter was an asshole?
“Yo,” he said.
“O-kay! And they’re off, as the monkey said—”
When he backed into the lawnmower, Alan finished for him. The puck dropped and the cat whacked him in the chest with Gs and the aircraft threw itself at the horizon. It was like the old days for a moment, and he felt the thrill of it, and then it was gone.
They flew into the rising sun, up toward thin strands of cloud like combed-out hair. Alan Craik looked back and saw the carrier, already small, a destroyer just visible in the haze a couple of miles away. Bitterly, he thought that he was off to do an ensign’s job, and behind him on the ship Ensign Baronik would be trying to do Alan’s job and screwing it up because he was only an ensign, and LCDR Suter would be on him like a weasel on a chicken, pleased that this nice piece of warm meat was there for him to savage. Ensign Baronik hadn’t been savvy enough to put space between himself and Alan, and so he was warm meat by association. And he was too young and too scared to tell Suter to back off, as Alan had done.
Alan sighed. God, he was tired. Four hours’ sleep in three days and now this. A lose-lose situation: if he didn’t work his ass off, Suter gave him every shit detail that came along; if he did work his ass off, Suter took the credit—and gave him every shit detail that came along. For Alan, who loved the job and for whom work was life, it was better to work himself to death and know that at least he’d done his best, but helping Suter’s career was bitter medicine. And it was made worse by Suter’s having control of his life—of his orders, of his job, of his fitness reports. And Suter hated him. “You’re supposed to be God’s wet dream,” Suter had hissed at him. “You’re supposed to be hot shit, Craik, and I know you’re not! I see through you! You’re just luck and bullshit wrapped with a ribbon, and I’m gonna untie it. People been hanging medals on you like Christmas ornaments—well, no more, mister. No more! You’re not even gonna get close to glory this trip—no way!”
What was worse, Suter was good at his job. And smart.
“You wanna sleep back there, Lieutenant, go ahead. We got a couple hours, no scenery.”
“Would you ask the stewardess to turn down my bed?” Alan said.
“Jeez, I would, but she’s busy in first class just now.”
Alan smiled, the smile of habit, the sea-duty smile. He started to think about his wife, and home, and what it would be like when this rotten tour was over. He must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he was aware of was the pilot telling him they were five minutes from going dry and he could wake up now.
“Must have dozed off.”
“Hey, I thought I had a corpse back there! Feet-dry in four minutes, man. We’re coming in over the islands now—” He started to give a guided tour but clicked off to deal with the comm. Alan consulted his own kneepad: Split was off somewhere in the haze to his left; to his right would be Dubrovnik, down along the coast that was now like a smudge from a dirty thumb. Directly underneath, the island of Brac, one of a series of former resorts that step-stoned down the coast to Dubrovnik. Not resorts now, he thought. He had no intel of fighting down there, but the war had been everywhere, the gruesome agony of a nation turned in on itself. Down there were perhaps only shuttered hotels and distrust; ahead on the mainland were horrors. He had already seen some of them. A so-called “peace accord” had been signed a few weeks before, but people who looked alike and had a common history and common problems were still killing each other, like a trapped animal chewing off its own leg.
The weather inland was lousy. Sarajevo was socked in, as usual. The UN food flights had just ended, and NATO had taken over the airfield. Alan watched the cloud tops, felt his eyes close, nodded forward—
“Cleared for landing. Check your straps, Lieutenant. You know how this goes—ejection position SOP. Make ready—” He felt the familiar turn and sink, deceleration, pressure as he came against the straps, but nothing like a carrier landing—no hook here, and a runway long enough to land a commercial jet. Alan saw the too-close bulk of Mount Igman, acres of dirty snow, low, dark cloud cover obscuring dark slopes, houses flashing underneath, a burned-out car—
A bang and a screech and they swiveled a degree and back and were down. A radar installation flashed past, two trucks angled to it in a plowed space, high snowbanks all around, a French logo. The plane was rolling now, no longer seeming to scream; they swung left into a taxiway, slowed some more and began the long taxi to the intake building. When Alan climbed down, a cold, wet wind slapped at him: welcome to Yugoslavia.
He blew out his breath. Six hours here. To do ten minutes of an ensign’s work. As he humped his pack toward the warehouse building that served IFOR as a local HQ, it started to snow.
The French officer signed for his package and gave him coffee (damned good—bitter, fresh) and asked him to stay to lunch (also damned good, probably, with wine), but a Canadian major with the worried look of an old monkey looked through a doorway and shouted, “That Craik?”
The Frenchman grimaced, winked at Alan. “Just arrived, Major.”
“In here, Craik.” The worry lines deepened and the major turned away, then looked back and said, “Welcome and—so on. Kind of a mess.”
Alan was supposed to sit for six hours and then get a lift to Aviano, sit for four hours, and then get something that might put him near the carrier. Suter’s idea. Nothing was supposed to happen here except turning over a lot of clapped-out aerial photos. “Uh—” he said stupidly at the retreating back, “—my orders have me going to—”
“Orders have been changed!” the voice floated back.
Suter again?
Alan shrugged himself deeper into his exhaustion and went through the door where the major had disappeared. There was a battered corridor, black slush on the floor, hand-lettered signs on pieces of notebook paper drooping from map pins like old flags—“G-3,” “S&R,” “Liaison.” He passed a makeshift bulletin board, most of the postings in both English and French. Well, they were Canadians, after all. At the top of the bulletin board, it said “UNPROFOR,” the acronym of the UN Protection Force that was in the process of pulling out.
“In here!” The major sat in a tiny office that had been a toilet before the sinks were ripped out. An unusable commode was almost hidden by a pile of pubs. “Francourt, Major, Canadian army. You know about all that.” He handed over some message traffic: his orders. Alan’s eyes flashed down it—“… temporary duty … CO UNPROFOR/CO IFOR Sarajevo… liaison and intelligence support and acquisition …” What was this shit?
The major was talking again. “You know UNPROFOR, what we do—?”
“I thought you were IFOR.”
The major shook his head. “UNPROFOR. We’re going, they’re coming.” He jerked his head toward the front of the building where the French officer was. “Unfortunately, some of us are still here.”
“Yes,
