Jeneral2885: Yep…had to give Skates the DFC…after flying in Harm's F/A-18F and getting the you know what scared out of her…she deserves it.
jpstar57:Given the choice between allowing Sadik the chance to launch the SS-25 with 600,000 deaths resulting or removing the threat, well, Webb didn't have a chance. But even so, it was better that the RAF guys took out the missile threat, rather than our boys. But it's still going to affect both Harm and Animal. Mac's not going to be happy either at losing Webb in such a grisly fashion.
NAS Oceana, Virginia Beach, VA 1540hrs
Scooter picked up Mikey who squealed joyfully at his "Unca Jimmy" and threw his arms around the big Naval Flight Officer. "Mommy"…he said.
"Yeah. Mommy made a hand sign, you don't wanna do for many years to come, squirt." Harm was laughing uproariously as Scooter said that to the little toddler who nodded gravely. Skates was shaking her head wondering how she ended up with a group of nutcases.
"Are you through telling my child what a bad girl Mommy is?" Maegyn said archly as she slipped her left arm around Animal's waist. "Scooter?" Scooter looked over at Animal who grinned widely. Maegyn hadn't lost her edge despite having become a mother and she still looked at her beloved fast jets with a gleam in her eye even though she wasn't able to fly any more. She was pushing up on the flag rank and flag officers didn't fly any longer unless they were assigned to command NSAWC and then only for evaluation purposes on curriculum.
"I think so…" Scooter responded with an unrepentant smile as he put Mikey down, resisting Mikey's protestations of up-up and taking him by the hand as they walked through the building looking for operations.
Director CIA's Office, CIA Headquarters, Langley, VA, 1540hrs
"Norm, we've got a Presidential directive telling us that we need to go into the site and clean up the debris." Kershaw notified the Director who nodded. "DoE needs to send a NEST team in to clean up and secure the site before nuclear materials get removed."
"DoE got notified, Harrison." Director Watts indicated as he showed Kershaw the letter from the Department of Energy to the CIA. "They left from Andrews two hours ago along with a battalion of US Army troops via six C-5s and are enroute now. You don't want to know just how much of a nightmare that it'll be if the Libyans get a hold of fissionable materials. As much as Gaddafi cooperated with us on this matter, I don't want to think about Gaddafi and his cronies getting a hold of materials that could be used to create a WMD."
Kershaw paled at the thought. Gaddafi had always been a thorn in the side of the United States Government and it had been a surprise that Gaddafi had cooperated, but could it have been that Gaddafi wanted the nuclear materials? Was the President going to have to send a battlegroup in? A battlegroup could inflame tensions in the area, but how was he going to secure the materials with potentially the Revolutionary Guard Corps surrounding the area or was Gaddafi going to be cooperative with allowing the materials to be cleaned up, removed from the area and the site sanitized. "So who's protecting the C-5s?"
"The USS Eisenhower will be sending in a squadron of F/A-18s along with the C-5s as soon as they rendezvous overhead with the Eisenhower and the Hornets will escort them into Libyan airspace to the point of landing at Tobruk Airport. From there, the troops and NEST team will convoy to the contaminated site and commence removal of the materials." Dir. Watts indicated. "At least that's what I've been briefed by Brigadier General Stanford of the 20th CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosive) Command, The 192d stationed at Fort Bragg flew in two days ago to Andrews AFB in preparation for the attack on the missile and subsequent deployment of their unit to the affected site."
"I hope that works, because the last thing we need is a firefight going on at the site and no way to get them out." Kershaw replied.
NAS Oceana, Virginia Beach, VA, 1610hrs
After signing their aircraft back to the squadrons from where they came, the group went out to the parking lot. "Sir! It was a pleasure flying with you." Skates said as she braced and saluted Animal. Animal saluted Skates back.
"Congratulations, Skates on the DFC." Animal grinned back at her.
"With all due respect, sir. I'm going to go head back to my rack after hitting the showers and grabbing a bite to eat at the mess."
"Dismissed, Lieutenant Commander." Animal nodded. He understood all too well how quickly the fatigue would hit and he wanted to be home before it did." Scooter also excused himself for the very same reason. Harm turned to Animal as Animal grinned at him and said. "Well, I guess we did it, shipmate."
"That we did, shipmate." Harm looked startled as Catherine looped her arm around his waist. He was surprised that Catherine would initiate such an intimate gesture especially in the company of people that she wasn't familiar with.
"Saved the world again, Hammer." Animal looked up at the sky, complaining. "I'm getting too fucking old for this."
"You're only as old as you feel, sir."
"Right now my bones tell me that I'm eighty-five." Surely he didn't feel like this, this morning when he strapped on that Super Hornet. "Well, I'm heading home with my wife and son. You take care, Hammer."
"Aye that!" Harm replied enthusiastically. "Back to JAG tomorrow." He called as he saw Animal nod head towards his car with Irish and Mikey in tow.
Animal tossed back over his shoulder. "If Mac says something to you about us not rescuing Webb, just let me know. In the meantime tell her it was my decision not to rescue him. She already knows the reasons why and she doesn't need to bust your chops over it."
Harm nodded quietly understanding that Animal was still playing the role of his flight leader, the duty of him being to protect his wingmen. He and Catherine watched Animal get his family into the car and drive off.
Catherine sighed softly, "He's a good man, isn't he?" as she contemplated the retreating back of Animal's car as it left the Oceana parking lot.
"The best, he and I flew through some of the hottest dogfights of the Gulf War. He never let me down, nor have I ever let him down. That's why we call each other shipmate." Harm had a faraway look in his eyes. "That's how come I'd fly with him to hell and back and I don't say that about a lot of people. He and his wife are two of the best fighter pilots I've ever seen; Instinctive sticks and consummate airmen. Same with CAG and Keeter though he's now with you guys; they were topnotch F-14 aviators just like Animal and Irish." He asserted. "I've had the privilege of flying with some damned good naval aviators."
"Let's go home." Catherine said, thinking in the back of her mind just what Harm would say if he knew just how much time Catherine had been spending at his place. Harm looked at her for a long moment as he tried to digest just exactly what Catherine meant by home.
North of Union Station, Washington DC 1940hrs
Harm looked on in amazement as Catherine took out her keys from her purse and slipped the spare key into the doorknob. Catherine had pulled up just behind him as he had parked waving away his inquiring look until they had managed to ride up in that shaky freight elevator of his. She just held onto him quietly, the newness of the close intimate gesture making him wonder at this new side of Catherine. When she opened the door and ushered him into his own apartment, his jaw dropped open at Catherine's briefcase by his couch and a closed laptop on his coffee-table and he turned for a moment to Catherine who explained. "I hope you don't mind. I was lonely and couldn't sleep…so I stayed in your place." She said hoping that Harm wouldn't take offence at her presumptuous move.
"No…not at all, I don't mind at all…" Harm replied, his thoughts whirling at the revelation.
She stepped firmly into his embrace, leaned up and kissed him. "I'm not normally this clingy. I'm usually a hell of a lot stronger emotionally than this. I don't know why." She looked confused. "But for some reason, chalk it up to hormones or something, I needed to feel your presence and the only thing I could rationalize doing was moving into your place, while you were off flying." The cuteness of her pout brought out the mischievousness of Harm and he grinned.
"Well…so when do you move the rest of your stuff in?" he asked.
"Maybe tomorrow? Would tomorrow be all right?" Catherine grinned turning the joke back around on him.
"Sure…I can ask Admiral Chegwidden if I can take the day off tomorrow and start hauling your stuff from your place to here. I think we can get it done in a day. Then we can grab a bite to eat…are you in preference of anything in particular because I was planning on Chinese…" He went off on a long soliloquy of the things that they needed to do and Catherine's eyes grew wider and wider.
"Harm…" Catherine began, "I was just joking…uh…" she stammered. "I…mean…it was presumptuous of me to bring my stuff in here…"
"Catherine…" Harm said "I don't mind at all. Sit down with me." He gestured to the couch. "While I was flying, I was thinking." His face took on a grave expression. "I realized that if I bought it while on this mission, there'd be no one other than my mother and step-dad to mourn my loss." He snorted bitterly, "Maybe that was a good thing…but I realized just how much I was missing."
"So…you're not wanting a relationship with me because you get an instant family and gratification out of it?" Catherine asked. "It's something deeper?" she prompted.
"It's because I realized that the only thing that went through my mind while we were waiting on the go for the mission, was getting out of the situation that we were in, alive. The only reason why we were able to was because we came up on them without them knowing. We surprised them. They didn't get a chance to use their anti-aircraft defenses." He paused for a long moment. "We surprised them and took them out in one attack. I had no time to be scared, I just reacted." He paused. "I wanted nothing more than to come back alive, because of you. Because when it all boiled down to it, you were the most important thing in my life." He looked at Catherine, fearful, wary of her reaction to his disclosure, but he didn't need to worry. Catherine was in his arms, her head tilted up to him, her lips inviting a tender kiss.
"Harm…kiss me…" she whispered softly.
As they broke apart for air, she whispered. "Mac certainly isn't going to like this new development."
"I could care less about Mac's opinion." Harm said fervently, tired of Mac's attempts to yank his chain and play tetherball with his heart and he was snapping the string. "I'm committed entirely to you."
"Oh…good." Catherine replied as she grinned at him. "So…when we getting some dinner?" she asked defusing the tension in the room.
Animal & Maegyn's home, 511 Brackenridge Avenue, Norfolk VA, 1940hrs
"So, how'd you and Harm do?"
"Unfortunately the info's classified. Can't discuss it." Animal said "Other than the fact that we came home alive."
"I hope to hell the guy who got you guys into the mess isn't around any more or I'm going to skin the bastard alive." Maegyn snarled heatedly, her Boston Irish temper getting the best of her. "Isn't the guy that got you into this mess the same guy that got Mac down to Paraguay and nearly killed her? And she then turned around and started dating him? Was she absolutely mental in the head?"
Animal couldn't tell his wife that he had to make the tough decision to allow the RAF to bomb the missile truck that was carrying Webb. Sadik had forced his hand and it was the cold decision to either allow the SEALs to take out Sadik and risk the missile being launched, gambling six hundred thousand lives in the process or take the missile truck out and sacrificing Webb at the same time – it was no easy decision. But as a famous movie saying went – the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or the one as this particular scenario went.
Would he be able to sleep at night knowing that his decision sent one man to a horrifying death? He sat for a long moment contemplating that and came to the decision that if he had to he would do it all over again. The rationalization of his action was that he, himself, had sent many men to their deaths, his role was that of a military commander, that he ordered his men on alpha strikes, consequently some of them didn't return. Some of his men died in operational accidents, but they were all his responsibility, but they were a Navy at war. Men were fighting in Afghanistan and in Iraq and many of those men wouldn't come home in anything other than a body-bag.
Webb was warned that his job was dangerous, to watch the contacts that he made and to ensure that the contacts that he made were legitimate. If anything Webb had slipped up, made a mistake at the airport at Cairo and ended up paying the consequences.
It was compartmentalize and continue on, one had to in the business of war-fighting. He still had a job to do and as Commander, Naval Air Forces, Atlantic Fleet (COMNAVAIRLANT) he had to make sure that he did the job well or he'd be replaced. Animal looked over at his wife. "Well, I have a feeling that won't be much of a problem any longer." Opting to let the news come out when it was supposed to, not through his lips.
Given that Maegyn knew about operational security, she knew when Animal couldn't talk about things so she didn't ask, but she knew that something happened on the mission that affected her husband deeply and as his wife, she was concerned.
JAG HQ, Falls Church, VA 0700hrs
Harm stepped through the office to RADM AJ Chegwidden's office. Knocking on the door, hearing the requisite "ENTER" bellow from AJ, he grinned and opened the door.
"What the hell are you doing here?" AJ growled, eyeing Harm with a frown. "I thought you needed a personal day?"
"Well, sir. I just needed to update my NAVPERS 1070/602 Page 2. Sir."
AJ's mouth dropped open; this was a bombshell of the highest magnitude and that bastard Rabb had too big of a grin on his face – damned that sonofabitch, he's given me white hairs out of the few that I have left on my head, but none like this…before. "Since when has there been a change in your personal life?" AJ snapped out. "I thought you were single, Commander!"
"Well, sir. If you recall the Angelshark case…sir. Well, it just so happened…that I…um…sir…"
"Spit it out, Rabb!"
"Well, sir, just before Paraguay, we, meaning Catherine Gale and I, decided to get married."
"WHAT!?" AJ roared as Harm winced at the volume. "YOU…and the CIA's Attorney?!" AJ rubbed his hand across his bare scalp as he snarled this. "COATES!" he bellowed not utilizing the phone then saying quietly and ominously "And was this a formalized marriage or was this some common-law thing. Because if you recall, Commander Rabb, that the state of Virginia does not recognize common-law marriage. If the latter was the case, I suggest you two formalize it immediately at the justice of the peace. I will await your formal marriage certificate before submitting the amended Page 2s to BuPERS."
Legalman Two Coates was at the door inside of 5 seconds. "Sir?"
"Coates, would you get me Commander Rabb's NAVPERS 1070/602? A glass of water and a couple Tylenol, thank you." AJ growled in a less strident voice. Harm restrained a grin. AJ was taking this a bit better than he thought. Legalman Two Coates was back in the office with the folder, a glass of water and two Tylenol tablets inside of three minutes. "Thank you, Coates." Handing the folder to Harm he growled. "You go with Legalman Two Coates and get your personnel record changed and then ask Coates to bring the file to me. After you are done updating your Page 2, you can secure and leave. I'm sure that you don't want the majority of your personal day taken up by paperwork."
As he walked to his office, Harm noticed that Mac's office was still dark. That concerned him as Mac usually was punctual in her arrival at the JAG office, but he shrugged his shoulders and went to his office. As he entered the office, the door shut behind him without him having touched anything. Whirling around he saw Mac shuttered behind the door, now fully in his view. She looked haunted.
"He's dead, isn't he?" she asked, her voice hollow.
"The mission's classified, Mac, you know I can't say anything." Harm replied sensing that she was distraught.
"Goddamnit, Harm, I need to know! Who killed Webb? Was it you? Was it the Admiral? Which one of you pulled the trigger?"
"Dammit, Mac." Harm frustratedly shouted. "No, I didn't pull the trigger, neither did the admiral…we both went after Sadik…the RAF guys got the missile truck. Are you fucking satisfied?" He slammed his fist on the desk.
"Why?!" Mac yelled back, "Didn't you have the guts to do it? After all that, you got the Royal Air Force to do your dirty work?"
Harm growled ominously in his voice. "I'd suggest you recant that statement, Mac." His voice was low and threatening, a voice he'd never used at Mac before. "If I had to, I would have put a JDAM right down the centerline of that missile truck. So would the admiral. It was either six hundred thousand people in Washington DC or Webb. It just so happened that events didn't allow us to take out the missile truck and the RAF did the job instead. Don't ever question my motivation again."
"You cold-hearted bastard…" Mac snarled. "Webb had every right to come home…"
"…and you'd trade six hundred thousand lives to bring him home?" Harm's voice was even colder. "You'd allow Sadik to blow up Washington DC so you could have Webb?"
"JUST WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!? I thought I told you to update your personnel records to record your spouse? Rabb! And what the hell are you doing in Rabb's office? Lieutenant Colonel!" AJ thundered as he threw open the door. "Come see me when you're done in here, Lieutenant Colonel!" he growled as he turned around and headed back to his office.
Mac paled as she heard AJ mention something about a spouse and as she watched AJ depart she snarled. "So now making the playing house official?"
"Something I should have done before Paraguay." Harm snapped back.
"So where's your wife? I thought she'd be with you to sign her signature on the Form 2." Mac sniped knowing full well the Part II didn't require a signature.
"I'm right here…" a voice from the door said as Mac whirled around. "Did you need my signature?"
"Good timing, Catherine." Harm replied, smirking as Mac's color rose and it seemed as though steam was starting to come out of her ears. "I'm just in the process of filling out the form. I should be done in a minute."
"I need to have you fill this in too…darling." Catherine said, smirking at Mac, while handing a form to Harm, "It's my Dependent Verification Form that I need to submit to Kershaw. Oh, he's going to love this." She grinned as Harm returned her smile. Mac on the other hand was getting even angrier.
"Did you have something else to discuss, Lieutenant Colonel? Harm asked, his tone dismissive.
Mac snarled something unintelligible and headed for the admiral's office.
"I think she's annoyed." Catherine stated the obvious. Harm coughed into his sleeve to disguise a laugh. "By the way, on the way home, can we stop by Langley; I want to give Kershaw a myocardial infarction with this Dependent Verification Form." Harm burst out laughing.
By the time Mac came out of AJ's office pale, white and shaking with a newly inserted Letter of Reprimand in her personnel record, Harm and Catherine were long gone.
Animal's Office, COMNAVAIRLANT, NAS Norfolk, Norfolk, VA, 0730hrs
"Elias. CARSTRKGRU 3, need their files." Animal barked while picking up a telephone to phone RDML Davis.
"Rear Admiral Davis." The CarStrkGru3 commander answered the phone on the third ring.
"Jeff, I need your aircrew guys on a three month turnaround schedule." Animal stated knowing internally that Jeffrey Davis wasn't going to like this. "We've got some major shit happening out in the Mediterranean and Ike has been on station for four months. I need you guys to start getting your guys ready because I'm sending you out in three months. I'm going to have to extend Ike for one more month before they come back. You guys are going out for a seven too. You'll be taking the full battle group, DESRON21 and all the CGs as well. You guys are going out to Libya for coverage."
"I know, sir, VADM Kennedy let us know that a week ago, since you were away. I've told our air wing commander and squadron commanders that they need to make sure that they're ready for deployment."
"Good work, Jeffrey. I'll be dropping in on the squadrons to make sure that they're all up to snuff."
Getting off the phone with COMCARSTRKGRU 3, he looked over some more files and then gathered up his files and put them in his desk, grabbing his ballcap from his desk, he walked out into the office bullpen. "Chief Trebalos, I'm going to take a walk and go talk to some of our guys. I'll be back at about 1400hrs."
"Aye, sir." Animal grinned at Trebalos' response, pushed open the door to his office, and headed down the hallway of the nice red brick building and headed out the main front doors into the nice sunny morning. Grabbing sight of his vehicle he grinned. Time to surprise some of the squadrons down at the flightline.