Target Utopia by Dale Brown

face.
    â€œDismissed,” he told Turk.
    â€œI don’t work for you,” said Turk, rising. “Even when I’m on the ground.”
    â€œGet the hell out of my sight.”
    Turk walked from the room at a deliberate pace. He knew he was right, and he knew that Greenstreet knew it, too. The knowledge filled him with an odd if grim satisfaction, as if he were the hero in an old-fashioned western like Shane —the misunderstood good guy never given credit for saving the day.
    It was a dangerous notion, though. Different service or not, Greenstreet outranked him, and while the colonel would never in a million years sustain a charge of insubordination against him for saving the base, he surely could find a way to make things uncomfortable for him. This wasn’t the military of the Cold War, where an unreasonable officer could literally break a man just on a whim. But it was still the military, and Turk knew that by standing up to Greenstreet he was skating very close to the edge.
    Still, he was right.
    Getting brow-beaten had left him with an appetite. He went over to the tent that was serving as a mess area. Cowboy and Haydem, the Marine’s fourth pilot, were sitting at one of the tables when Turk walked in. Both men rose solemnly and applauded—albeit very lightly—when Turk went over with his coffee.
    â€œHey, Air Force,” said Cowboy. “Thanks for saving our plane.”
    â€œScrew that. Thanks for saving the base,” said Haydem. “I hear our beer supply would have been blown up if the attack went on much longer.”
    â€œIt was nothing,” he told them. “Push button stuff.”
    â€œWe’re also applauding your entry into the brotherhood of abuse,” said Cowboy. “Now you’re one of us.”
    â€œYou’ve been christened,” said Haydem. “By Greenstreet’s spit.”
    Turk laughed.
    â€œHe didn’t mean any of what he said,” Cowboy told him. “He knows you did the right thing.”
    â€œI don’t know about that,” said Turk.
    â€œHe gets his underwear twisted up,” added Haydem. “But he’s a good pilot and a decent commander.”
    â€œHe’s a decent pilot,” said Turk, aware that he might be judging him on a harsh scale. “But as a commander . . .”
    â€œHe is definitely a hardass,” conceded Haydem.
    â€œPrick’s more like it,” said Cowboy. “But it takes all kinds.”
    â€œOur squadron’s the highest rated in the wing,” said Haydem.
    â€œYou can get good results without being an asshole,” said Turk.
    â€œI’m not going to defend him,” said Haydem. “I’m just stating the facts.”
    â€œAnd the facts are, these eggs suck,” said Cowboy.
    â€œI heard that,” growled a Marine over by the food trays. “You think you can do better, you come up here and try it.”
    Haydem and Turk laughed. Cowboy jumped up. “Hey, Slugs, I thought you’d never ask.”
    Slugs—the cook—shook his head. Cowboy was well known in the unit as a wise guy with a good heart, and treated as such.
    â€œI better apologize,” he told Turk. “Or I’ll end up like Rogers. He’s still flat on his back.”
    â€œJolly got that way because he ate some of the Malaysian shit,” said Haydem. “He was bragging about it.”
    â€œOh.” Turk realized he’d eaten with them, too, several times a day. He wondered if he was also going to get sick.
    â€œYou flew pretty well,” said Haydem. “You fly F-35s a lot?”
    Turk shook his head. “Not too much.” He wasn’t sure how much to explain. “I fly a lot of different things, so, you know, variety.”
    They talked about the F-35 for a bit more. Turk avoided mentioning the planes he flew, since the details were all pretty much classified. Theywere just discussing how much faster the aircraft