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By Root 1121 0

the Secretary of Defense. The SecDef was the one who gave the orders to the area CINCs - commanders-in-chief. SACLANT-CINCLANT-CINCLANTFLT might have been an awkward, cumbersome, and generally bloated command, but it was a command. Painter owned real ships, real airplanes, and real marines, had the authority to tell them where to go and what to do. Two complete fleets, 2nd and 6th, came under his authority seven aircraft carriers, a battleship - though an aviator, Painter rather liked battleships, his grandfather had commanded one - over a hundred destroyers and cruisers, 60 submarines, a division and a half of marines, thousands of combat aircraft. The fact of the matter was that only one country in the world had more combat power than Joshua Painter did, and that country was no longer a serious strategic threat in these days of international amity. He no longer had to look forward to the possibility of war. Painter was a happy man. A man who'd flown missions over Vietnam, he'd seen American power go from its post-World War II peak to its nadir in the 1970s, then bounce back again until America once more was the most powerful country on earth. He'd played his part in the best of times and the worst of times, and now the best of times were better still. Robby Jackson was one of the men to whom his Navy would be turned over.

"What's this I heard about Soviet pilots in Libya again?" Jackson asked.

"Well, they never really left, did they?" Painter asked rhetorically. "Our friend wants their newest weapons, and he's paying with hard cash. They need the cash. It's business. That's simple enough."

"You'd think he'd learn," Robby observed with a shake of the head.

"Well, maybe he will soon. It must be real lonely being the last of the hotheads. Maybe that's why he's loading up while he still can. That's what the intel people say."

"And the Russians?"

"Quite a lot of instructors and technical people there on contract, especially aviators and SAM types."

"Nice to know. If our friend tries anything, he's got some good stuff to hide behind."

"Not good enough to stop you, Robby."

"Good enough to make me write some letters." Jackson had written enough of those. As a CAG, he could look forward on this cruise - as with every other he'd ever taken - to deaths in his air wing. To the best of his knowledge, no carrier had ever sailed for a deployment, whether in peace or war, without some fatalities, and as the 'owner' of the air wing, the deaths were his responsibility. Wouldn't it be nice to be the first, Jackson thought. Aside from the fact that it would look good on his record, not having to tell a wife or a set of parents that Johnny had lost his life in service of his country possible, but not likely, Robby told himself. Naval aviation was too dangerous. Past forty now, knowing that immortality was something between a myth and a joke, he had already found himself staring at the pilots in the squadron ready rooms and wondering which of the handsome, proud young faces would not be around when TR again made landfall at the Virginia Capes, whose pretty, pregnant wife would find a chaplain and another aviator on her doorstep just before lunch, along with a squadron wife to hold her hand when the world ended in distant fire and blood. A possible clash with Libyans was just one more threat in a universe where death was a permanent resident. He'd gotten too old for this life, Jackson admitted quietly to himself. Still as fine a fighter pilot as any - he was too mature to call himself the world's best anymore, except over drinks - the sadder aspects of the life were catching up, and it would soon be time to move on, if he were lucky, to an admiral's flag, just flying occasionally to show he still knew how and trying to make the good decisions that would minimize the unwanted visits.

"Problems?" Painter asked.

"Spares," Captain Jackson replied. "It's getting harder to keep all the birds up."

"Doing the best we can."

"Yes, sir, I know. Going to get worse, too, if I'm reading the papers right." Like maybe