The Trojan Sea by Richard Herman

for his secretary to come in. “Peggy, where the hell is Stuart? Doesn’t he know Friday is a normal workday?”
    “He signed out on leave for the day, sir. He’s going to pick up his son in Dover, Delaware.” She paused to let Ramjet’s blood pressure go up ten points. “You did approve it, sir.”
    “Right,” he said, not really remembering. He threw the offending survey across his desk. “Put a hold on this until I can talk to him.” He almost told her to throw it in the trash can but thought better of it. “No, wait. Better yet, send it back.”
    “Send it back,” Peggy murmured. “Will that be all?” Ramjet nodded, and she returned to her desk. “Send it back,” she told herself. “Now, what does that mean?” She answered her own question. “He must mean to General Butler’s office.” She glanced at the cover letter, which was duly signed by one Michael E. Stuart. She smiled to herself and dropped the survey in distribution to forward it to General Butler’s office. Then she picked up the phone and called Butler’s secretary. “Joannie, Ramjet told me to return the survey being sent to the oil companies back to your office for action. So will you send it out?” She listened for a few moments. “You’ve got that right, girl. Without us, nothing would ever get done.”
    Dover Air Force Base, Delaware
     
    Stuart drove slowly through base housing trying to find the house he had lived in as a teenager, when his father had been assigned to a staff job at the air base. It was one of William “Shanker” Stuart’s few assignments outside the tactical Air Force and away from fighters, and it had been a strange time, as his father had hated his job while his family had been most content and happy. In fact, Stuart remembered his three teenage years at Dover as among the best times in his life. It was even more ironic because Stuart had been born at Dover when his father was assigned there as a lieutenant before going to pilot training. But he didn’t remember that.
    Three good years, he thought. That’s all I got. Eric deserves more. A lot more.
    The wail of turbofan engines split the air, and Stuart instinctively looked up. A massive white transport aircraft, the sound of its four huge engines pounding his senses, flew over. Stuart stared in wonder and shook his head. It was an Antonov An-124, the Russian counterpart to the USAF’s C-5 Galaxy. How many times had he briefed pilots on that aircraft during the early years of his career in the Air Force as a young intelligence officer? But he had never seen one, and the actual sight was overpowering. He watched mesmerized as the giant plane seemed to defy gravity entering the landing pattern.
    He drove across the main highway and through the gate, heading for the passenger terminal where he was to meet his son and father. He parked his car and wandered toward the terminal, fascinated by the sight of the An-124’s tail moving slowly behind the building. For Stuart’s first eight years in the Air Force, the plane had belonged to a potential enemy, the Soviet Union, and one of his jobs in the Defense Intelligence Agency as a captain had been to track the status of AeroFlot and Voyenno-Transportnaya Aviatsiya, the Soviet Air Force’s air-transport arm. A stand down by either was considered a “trip wire” indicating that the Soviet Union was moving to an attack footing. If both stood down, the United States military would have started to move up the DEFCON as it also prepared for war.
    But things had changed. The Soviet Union no longer existed, and Russian Transport Aviation was reduced to hauling commercial cargo to earn money and landing at the bases of its former enemy. And that’s why he was there. His son was on the An-124.
    Stuart groaned when he entered the terminal. His ex-mother-in-law was standing inside the door, her arms folded tightly across her breasts, her feet apart in a boxer’s stance. A man in a charcoal-gray suit holding a