airplanes and maintenance crews, although it was unknown to them. He couldn’t believe it.
Unknown to the damn admiral! Each day Weed would fly a
Firebird jet in an effort to seek drug runners and execute them on the spot. It rubbed him the wrong way, as
unrestricted submarine warfare and
destroy the village to save it had in earlier times. Weed was right, though; the United States was using drones overseas to good effect, and sniper operations had valid military legitimacy. If in combat he snuck up on an enemy aircraft, he would shoot it down and be proud of it. The difference between the circumstances was whether or not there was a declared war, or at least the legitimacy of clear orders passed down from National Command Authority, open and known to the public.
He was not so naïve as to think that classified or clandestine operations were in some way morally wrong. Wilson was a realist. Why should we telegraph our every move? He didn’t lament the lack of media involvement — they always got it wrong anyway — but the cover story troubled him. He wished the United States would just say the Caribbean drug trade is going to be shut down, effective immediately, in order to give the enemy in this phony war fair warning. Then, Wilson himself would blow any blockade runners out of the water without a second thought, and shoot down, without remorse, any non-squawking, low/slow flyers. Just say it and then do it. If you are going to take Vienna, take Vienna.
It had to be the media, he surmised. For all the platitudes to the military, they did not tell America the truth about much of anything. They seemed to just fill their programming with fluff. Contempt. That’s what Wilson and many of his shipmates had for the media, and maybe that contempt was shared by National Command Authority or the combatant commander to send them 2,000 miles to do “operational testing” and to “train” with the Colombian Air Force. At some point, that story would begin to crumble, and Wilson wondered what the next training evolution would involve.
He was at his stateroom desk going over work-center audit paperwork when there was a knock at his door. “Come in,” he called.
Weed opened the door and poked his head in. “Can we talk?”
Wilson motioned to his couch. “Yeah, c’mon in.”
Weed closed the door behind him and took a seat on the couch. At night, Wilson folded it out to make a bed.
“You fly today?” Wilson asked, knowing the answer.
“Yep, just got back.”
“Successful test?” Wilson asked.
Holding eye contact, Weed nodded. “Successful test.”