Point one: Morris was dead. They mourned him now in the most banal of all possible ways: by committee. From behind his podium, Eddie informed the assembled men that the company would be sending official condolences to his family. Carter hadn’t even known Morris had one.
Point two: funeral. Ted, with his arms folded across his chest and his eyes constantly shifting to watch his flanks, said that everyone was ordered to attend a brief service for the dearly departed scheduled for later that same night. Full dress. Show off their fancies and hard hearts for the wogs. The pilots all cursed him under their stinking breath.
Point three: arrangement and disposition of forces. To be determined at some later date, unspecified. First squadron was now two men down, Danny first, now Morris. They were a weak link, to be officially assumed strong until further word and a rejiggering of the roster. Billy Stitches was to be commended on his unexpected promotion as flight lieutenant within first squadron now, please, with polite applause. That done, it was suggested that his brand-new lieutenant’s wings would count as an extra man, or something like that. Carter was paying very little attention.
At the front of the room, Ted shifted uncomfortably while Eddie spoke. When it was his turn to talk, he said as few words as possible. When Eddie stood behind the podium, Ted kept looking at him like he was waiting for a snake to jump out. He wore a look the whole time as though half his mind was going. Like it was actually trying to squirm its way free from inside his skull.
“Commander Prinzi is going to run through the details of yesterday’s action,” Eddie said. “I think there are things here that we can all learn from.”
Point four: the action. Ted took the floor. He switched on the map projector, the other electronics around him, punching their buttons with a little more force than absolutely necessary. Eddie leaned, beaming, against the podium. Ted discussed the last flight of Morris Ross, working a laser pointer like it was a club, smashing it across the three-dimensional map projection that grew out of the wall. Everywhere he pointed, map marks would light up. They would dim again as he moved on. It was a nice effect.
“Bomb-damage assessment,” Ted said, then something else, then, “First squadron here. Formation breaks east, hooks around the edge of the ridgeline here,” then something else again. Carter watched as four little blue triangles lit up on the map, altitude, heading, and airspeed indicators spelled out in even tinier blue letters beneath. The little triangles did just as Ted said, pausing when he did and moving when he spoke. “Now, two planes break to dive,” he said, and the triangles moved.
Carter was tuning in and out, watching the little blue triangles follow Ted’s merciless direction. It was all very slick, but there was a feeling like he was making Morris die all over again with his words, making the triangles break, move into position for the coming kill. Part of Carter wanted him to stop—as though interrupting the presentation could suspend the terrible thing that was coming. Carter wondered if Ted had rehearsed this, too, while he’d waited for him and Fenn to go and gather the officers. Sitting there in the audience, Carter wanted Ted to say, Happily ever after, clap his hands, and make everything right again, but he didn’t. He just droned on, moving Morris’s triangle closer and closer to death. Jack Hawker was staring straight ahead with his mouth open like he’d been hit in the back of the head with a sack of nickels and was waiting to fall. Beside Carter, Fenn was asleep. He had a knack for doing it with his eyes open, like being dead himself. Porter, the first squadron flight leader, was staring at the floor.
Ted again: “Billy and Albert here, flying high cover at six thousand. Porter, this is you and Morris, down at one thousand, dropping speed for observation of the target area, yeah?”
Porter nodded. And as if his neck were on a spring, once he started nodding, he didn’t seem able to stop.
Eddie was watching the action on the map with the vapid, distracted grin of a game-show hostess. To Carter’s eye, there was something so terribly deliberate and false about his every motion and every twitch of his pretty, pretty face. Even his teeth were perfect, and he seemed somehow to have far too many of them crammed into his sucking little mouth. He thought about Vic and had to shake his head to make her face go away. It was reflex—his body jumping at the barest scent of her presence, real or imagined. Vic leaning over him in the dark, her hair falling like curtains around them, blocking out the greasy light of the fires in the distance. Vic leading him by the hand away from last night’s festivities, turning back to look at him over one shoulder, smiling with a sadness so deep it was as if she’d swallowed an ocean.