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  “It’s the left brain—right brain thing,” volunteered a lieutenant commander and instructor in the F/A-18 RAG. “Women see things differently than men. They see things in a more abstract way. And there’s nothing abstract about air-to-air combat, or low level weapons delivery. The rules out there are hard and fast.”

  “Women don’t have situational awareness,” declared another instructor, a Marine captain. “In the three-dimensional arena out there, they’ll lose it and get disoriented. Women pilots are like women drivers.”

  “We’re still old-fashioned enough to think we ought to protect our women,” said a graying Marine colonel. “With a woman flying on your wing in combat, you’ve gotta worry about her. It’s just natural. You’re gonna feel a need to keep her from getting shot down. It’s gonna take away the combat edge.”

  Ah, the combat edge. There it was. No evidence existed that women were any less qualified than men to fly airplanes. But you could still argue that they couldn’t fly in combat because, well. . . they just weren’t killers.

  That’s what it always came back to. Women couldn’t perform in combat. Women couldn’t kill.

  All of this sounded like a replay of the arguments heard back in the seventies when women began integrating into big city police forces around the country. Women aren’t tough enough. . . women can’t kill. . . women won’t back you up when the going gets rough. . .

  After a few years passed, you stopped hearing such talk. Women did prove themselves to be tough and capable police officers. And they even proved that they could kill. No problem.

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  All of this Angie Morales and Sally Hopkins and the women of the Terrific Trio had heard many times. They heard it in every happy hour bull session they attended. They heard it in hushed dialogues in the ready room. They saw it in anonymous notes on the bulletin board. They felt it in the company of their male peers.

  “We’re trailblazers,” said Sally. “The women who come along after us will have it easier. They’ll be more and more accepted until the time comes when no one even thinks about it any more. Women are here to stay. But for us, it’s sometimes very lonely.”

  Lonely indeed. The loneliness went with the job. Every woman aviator knew what it was like to walk into a ready room full of guys in flight suits. The pilots would be drinking coffee, talking about flying, laughing at somebody’s wisecrack, and suddenly—silence. It was as though someone had hit the mute button. Their space had been violated. A woman. She was the intruder, the outsider, the unwanted. A woman in the ready room was as welcome as a cat at a dog show.

  That was the hard part. Some women in the Navy couldn’t deal with it, the loneliness and isolation, and they left the service as soon as their contract was up. It just wasn’t worth it, being a trailblazer.

  Sally couldn’t contain her feelings. In her exasperation she would sometimes remind everyone in the ready room that she could be making a hell of a lot more money doing something else. After all, with her credentials in astronautical engineering she could be working somewhere in the aerospace industry where at least she’d feel welcome.

  “Well, why don’t you?” someone would say from across the ready room. “Do everyone a favor and quit.”

  “I’d miss you guys too much,” she would say. “This is like a home to me.”

  When Sally got into one these exchanges in the ready room, her female colleague, Angie Morales, ducked for cover. A gulf was widening between the two women strike fighter students. Angie Morales was making it clear that when it came to being a cat at the dog show, Sally Hopkins was on her own.

  Sometimes Sally would come back to her little rented bungalow after a twelve hour day at the squadron. She would feel like a zombie, numbed from the strain of the intense concentration. Even more numbing was that cold sense of. . . aloneness. The silent hostility of the ready room. It was dispiriting.

  When she had peeled off the sweat-soaked flight suit and settled into the hot bath, the thought would sometimes flit through her mind: Why am I doing this?

  Why? Sometimes she had to think. And then she’d remember: Because you have a goal. Remember? You’re going to the stars.

  Sally Hopkins had aspirations that extended far beyond the range of an F/A-18. It was an ambition as huge as the universe. And even in her normal outspokenness around the squadron, it was something she didn’t talk about. It was a dream she had clutched to her like a talisman since she was a kid in high school.

  Sally Hopkins wanted nothing less than to fly off into space. She wanted to be an astronaut.

  So far she was on track. In high school she had earned the grades and taken the courses that would gain her an appointment to the Naval Academy. At the academy she’d done the tough courses—not something easy like the political science route—majoring in mathematics and the sciences, graduating in the top of her class.

  And that had earned for her the assignment to flight training. And then selection for jets. And then orders to F/A-18 training. And along the way, she picked up that most golden credential for astronaut status, the M. S. in astronautical engineering.

  Sally Hopkins was a real rocket scientist.

  She was right on schedule, qualifying in the most advanced jet in the Navy’s inventory. After a squadron tour in F/A-18 Hornets, she intended to apply for the Navy’s Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland. After she had qualified as a test pilot, then she would become a candidate for the astronaut corps. The prize would be won.

  Yes, thought Sally Hopkins, soaking in the hot bath after a twelve hour day at the squadron, that was why she was here. Nobody said it would be easy. Sometimes it was a bitch. But it was worth it.

  Still, it was very damned lonely.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE DUPES

  Everyone in the squadron went through the same initial experience with the McCormack brothers. You walked into a ready room, and there was this freckled, grinning, redheaded guy in a flight suit making wisecracks and laughing at his own joke. Then your eyes would catch an image of another guy—an identical freckled, grinning, redheaded guy, wisecracking and laughing at his jokes.

  The reaction was always the same: Whuhhh? Is this some kind of act . . . until it sunk in that the two grinning redheads not only looked alike, they were identical. The McCormack twins, Russ and Rick, were as identical as carrots from the same patch. So alike, in fact, that even their mother back in California used to have trouble distinguishing which of her hell-raising kids to wallop for any particular offense.

  The McCormacks team-laughed like Heckle and Jeckle, the duplicate magpies in the old movie cartoon. One of the duplicates would crack a joke. The other would cackle at his brother’s joke: Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh. To which the first would respond: Haw-haw-haw-haw-haw. Back and forth, like Heckle and Jeckle: Heh-heh-heh-heh. Haw-haw-haw-haw. Heh-heh-heh-heh. . .

  It was catching. The whole room would crack up, not so much at the corny jokes but at these two redheaded clowns cackling like magpies.

  But it soon became apparent that the sameness went beyond team-cackling. After a while, everyone in the class reported having a similar experience with the McCormacks. You’d be talking to one of them, Rick or Russ, discussing something—an airplane matter, or an instructor, or just telling a joke. And then you’d become aware of the other twin, well out of earshot across a huge room, looking at you, knowing what you’d just said to his brother.

  It was uncanny. The twins were data-linked, as though they communicated through the ether on their own private bandwidth. And as their classmates found out, the data-link reached beyond the classroom. It extended into the sky.

  Not even the saltiest sailors around Cecil Field could reach back in their Navy experience and recall such a thing. Many sets of siblings, even twins, had gone through naval aviation, and several had even managed to be at the same station, aboard the same ship, or in the same theater together. But never could anyone recall identical twins who not only went through fighter training togethe
r—they had done everything—boot camp, the Naval Academy, flight training, then strike fighter training together. Always together. Russ and Rick McCormack were inseparable.

  They grew up in a place called Canyon Country, California. Their mother was a nurse and a single parent. It had been tough, making ends meet, working forty hour weeks, raising a set of replicated hellions like Rick and Russ McCormack. Her method was to apply a mixture of tough love and an Irish faith that if she could just somehow keep them out of jail until adulthood, they’d be all right. She even hoped that at least one of them might follow her into the medical profession. It was her fondest wish: My son, the doctor!

  It didn’t happen. Although they stayed out of jail, neither wanted to be a doctor. Worse, they didn’t even want to go to college. In high school, neither McCormack had been a superstar. The twins were into typical California-kid pursuits: sports, girls, beer drinking, cars with pin stripes and glass-pack mufflers.

  When they graduated from high school, they announced that they were enlisting in the Navy. Together, of course.

  It was the worst possible news to a mother whose hopes were pinned on watching a son take the oath of Hippocrates. The Navy? Not only were her sons not becoming college-educated, white-collared professional somethings, they were going to be. . . enlisted men. She figured the ungrateful termites would probably even get tattoos.

  While the twins were still in boot camp at San Diego, the Navy learned something about them that had escaped everyone’s notice, with the possible exception of their mother: These were smart kids. So smart, in fact, that they were selected for the Navy’s nuclear energy school, the toughest technical course in the military. The McCormacks graduated from the year-long course at the top of the class. Russ was number one. Rick was number two.

  It was about then that the notion of being something besides a high tech enlisted man entered the realm of possibility. There was even a chance, maybe, for them to become officers. And way out there at the far rim of possibility was a chance, an unimaginable long shot, that they might be considered for an appointment to the Naval Academy.

  “Forget it,” said the counseling officer at the technical school. He was a Navy lieutenant—and a Naval Academy graduate himself—whose job was to screen applicants for officer training. He took his screening job very seriously. “Your SAT scores from high school are too low. It’s obvious that you couldn’t do the work at the academy. You’d never make it.” As far as the lieutenant was concerned, that was it. How presumptuous it was of the McCormack brothers to even hope for such an appointment.

  The twins looked at each other. Their data-linked brains exchanged a wordless message: “Ignore this asshole. We’ll do it anyway.”

  They ignored the lieutenant. They went ahead with the application process. They took all the tests, underwent the physical exams, obtained the required references and endorsements.

  When the selection list came out, it sent a seismic shock through the counseling office. Both McCormacks were on the selection list. The Heckle and Jeckle twins each received orders to the Navy’s academy prep school, where potential academy appointees are groomed and prepared for the arduous four year curriculum.

  The prep school turned out to be a screening ordeal in itself. About half the candidates were civilian, and about half, like the McCormacks, were military enlisted personnel. Of the 360 students who began the course, only 160 finished. Most of the finishers were the enlisted students from the Navy and Marine Corps. Among the finishers were Rick and Russ McCormack, still inseparable.

  Four years later, each McCormack graduated—with honors—from the U. S. Naval Academy. They were ten numbers apart in class ranking. Each received the same degree—a bachelor of science in oceanography. Each became a commissioned officer in the U. S. Navy.

  With their degrees and commissions in hand, new gold stripes glistening on their sleeves, the brothers had one unfulfilled fantasy: It would be wonderful to go back and visit the technical school. They would walk into the office of the counselor—the asshole who told them they would never make it. They’d be wearing their new officer’s uniforms, gold stripes glinting like neon on the sleeves. Hello, Lieutenant. We’re the McCormack brothers, the ones you said would never make it. Remember us. . .?

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  Somewhere along the way, the McCormack brothers had changed. They had metamorphosed from roustabout teenage kids to collegiate scholars. In less than five years they had been transformed from civilians to sailors to naval officers. With their success came a new confidence. They could be anything they wanted.

  What they wanted now was to be fighter pilots. They wanted to do it, of course, the same way they had done everything in their lives: together.

  They applied for flight training. After half a year’s wait, each received orders to the U. S. Navy’s Air Training Command in Pensacola, Florida. When they commenced training, they were one class apart. A year and a half later, when they finished the last phase of jet training and received their wings of gold at the Naval Air Station, Kingsville, Texas, the twins were together again. They graduated on the same day, same class.

  The identicalness went even further. In total scores, which amounted to several hundred cumulative grade points over the year-and-a-half course, the McCormacks were, incredibly, three points apart.

  Their mother was there to pin on their new wings. By now she had gotten over the fact they would never go to medical school. She had an immense pride in their accomplishments. After all, they had gone to college. They became naval officers. Now they were naval aviators.

  And to the best of her knowledge, neither had gotten a tattoo.

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  It took another redhead to separate the McCormack twins. Her name was Peggy, and she entered Rick McCormack’s life while the twins were still in advanced jet training out in Kingsville, Texas. She was auburn-haired, had flashing green eyes, and in a short skirt she could stop traffic. After a fast-paced courtship, in between training stints and Rick’s graduation from flight training, Rick and Peggy were married.

  Which made the McCormack duo a trio, of course, because twin brother Russ was never far away. It made them, actually, a foursome, because Peggy brought with her a son by her previous marriage. And then after a year they became a fivesome, when Rick and Peggy produced a son of their own. And the McCormack kids had the same problem everyone else did with the Heckle and Jeckle pair: Was that red-headed guy who cackled like a magpie their father or their uncle?

  When the McCormacks landed in Jacksonville for F/A-18 training, Russ, the bachelor, was smitten by a petite, smashing brunette whom he met one night at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station officers’ club. Her name was Tracy. They were married in December, 1994.

  Rick and his little family moved into a house in a shady suburb in Orange Park. So did Russ and Tracy, of course, in a nearly identical house, just around the corner.

  The twins were back in symmetry.

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  Five members of Class 2-95 were married—Road Ammons, Angie Morales, J. J. Quinn, and both McCormacks—lived with their spouses in Jacksonville. They knew they would be there for at least six months—the minimum time it would take to complete the strike fighter curriculum—and possibly as much as a year, depending on uncontrollable matters like health, weather, and airplane availability. And, of course, how they performed in training.

  Road was the only who elected to live in base housing, right there on the base at Cecil Field. He and Lowanda, his wife, reasoned that they would only be in Jacksonville for the six or so months it took him to complete strike fighter training. Like all the Marine families, they expected orders up to Beaufort, South Carolina, where the Marine Corps stationed its F/A-18 squadrons. They would skip the hassle of moving in and out of a short-term rental in a Jacksonville suburb.

  Most students’ wives didn’t like the cloistered military residential communities, with the noise of the jets and the constant presence of uniforms and gray-painted vehicles. Lowa
nda Ammons didn’t mind. She and Ilya (she was almost the only one who ever called Road by his real name) lived in one of the tract homes in the wooded neighborhood set aside for junior officers. What she liked about living on the base was the facilities: fitness center, golf course, base exchange, officers’ club, and a day care center for their year-and-a-half old daughter, Jasmine.

  Lowanda already had a degree in communications from Tennessee State. Now she was going back to college to earn a degree in nursing. “Why not?” she told everyone. “It’s a transportable skill. Anywhere the Marine Corps sends us, I’ll be able to find a job as a nurse.”

  Captain J. J. Quinn lived in town, in a leased house in Orange Park. J. J., too, was expecting to be assigned up to the Marine base at Beaufort. But he and Dorothy had three school-age children. It was important, they figured, to give the kids as much a semblance of a permanent home as they could. They would keep them in school there in Jacksonville until the end of the spring semester, which was when J. J. expected—fate, God, and the Marine Corps willing—to be done with strike fighter training.

  Angie Morales lived with her husband, Roger, in a neat, three-bedroom home in a suburb of Jacksonville called Mandarin, near the St. Johns River. The neighborhood suited them, with quiet streets and good paths for running and bicycling. Roger was a teacher and a psychologist. While Angie spent her days in strike fighter training, he was taking a sabbatical, learning the craft of screenwriting. “Someday you’ll hear about him,” Angie told everyone.

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  They were a demonstrative bunch, the nuggets of 2-95. They laughed a lot, argued among themselves, picked on each other’s foibles like monkeys hunting fleas. When they assembled in a room, it didn’t take long before the din reached street riot proportions. You’d hear the McCormack dupes Heckling and Jeckling—Heh-heh-heh-heh, Haw-haw-haw-haw. Burner Bunsen would be issuing some cogent speculation on the secret sex life of a barmaid he had met at Hop’s bar downtown. Shrike would be lambasting someone about the latest male sexist pig outrage. They would all be talking at once, at and around and through each other.