Viper Strike c-2, page 9
part #2 of Carrier Series
He sighed. There had to be a way to change things… had to be! If he couldn't turn things around, his next posting was going to be to Adak, Alaska… and then it would be retirement as a lieutenant commander, with precious little to show for twelve years of service. Twelve years!
The cat officer on the Cat One monitor dropped to one knee and touched the deck. Tomcat 232 lurched forward in a billowing cloud of steam as the catapult slung it off the Jefferson's bow. Almost simultaneously, Tomcat 203 hurtled off the carrier's waist. Together, the two planes grabbed for altitude, afterburners flaring orange.
Bayerly watched them turn toward the north, still climbing, and his fists clenched in anger.
2000 hours, 16 January
The Dusit Thani Hotel, Bangkok
"I don't know," Tombstone said. "I've never thought much about it, I guess."
He was perched on the edge of a comfortable settee, feeling very much out of place. The room, part of a walnut-paneled, richly furnished suite, had been provided by the hotel as an impromptu studio for Pamela Drake and her film crew. Tombstone had tried to suggest that there were plenty of studio facilities aboard the Jefferson, but she'd replied that the carrier's surroundings were too cold, too formal to come across well on American television.
Pamela was seated on a divan opposite him and slightly to his left, and a low, wooden coffee table had been pulled between them. Griffith stood several feet away, squinting into the eyepiece of his camcorder, while Baughman bent over the dials and wavering needles of his sound equipment across the room.
Several other people in Pamela's film crew hovered in the background, hidden behind the bright, standing lights which bathed him in a hot, white glare.
Tombstone could hear the whir of the camera as he tried to gather his thoughts, and he was painfully conscious of the small microphone dangling against the breast of his dress white shirt.
"Surely you've thought about it, Commander," Pamela said. She had a rich, seductive voice. It would have been sexy, Tombstone thought, if he hadn't been convinced that she was using it to set him up for the kill. "All those press conferences, your name in the headlines back home…"
She'd just asked him what he thought about being a national hero.
"I can't really say that I was a hero," he said. "I certainly wasn't any more of a hero than several thousand other guys who were there."
The subject of the discussion was the Wonsan raid three months before.
He hesitated, finding his thoughts cluttered by memories. He remembered Commander Marty French, killed while trying to land his damaged F/A-18 on the Jefferson's flight deck. And his good friend Coyote Grant, who'd been captured by the North Koreans, escaped, and ended up helping the Marines and a Navy SEAL team accomplish their mission behind enemy lines. And Batman, who had shot down three KorCom fighter-bombers before they could attack the fleet.
But how could he put across everything that he felt in a few words?
"The point is," he continued, "that all of us were just doing our jobs.
That's not very exciting or romantic, I know, but that's the way it was. An American ship and its crew had been captured on the high seas in an act of piracy, and the President sent us in to bring them out. We did."
"You are entirely too modest, Commander." She leaned forward, and Tombstone caught a whiff of perfume as she lightly touched one of the ribbons on the top row of his award display above his left shirt pocket. "Is this the Navy Cross?"
She'd indicated the blue ribbon with its single white stripe. "Yes, it is."
"And that's only the second highest decoration the U.S. Navy can award its people. Why do you think your superiors singled you out of all those thousands?"
He grinned uneasily. "If you figure that out, let me know."
"According to the official report," she said, "you refused to eject from your damaged aircraft because your copilot was wounded and would not have survived if you'd left the plane."
"RIO."
"Pardon?"
"He was my RIO, my Radar Intercept Officer, not my copilot."
"And you don't think you should have gotten a medal for that?"
"I think the guys on the carrier should have won a medal. Let me tell you, it took real guts deciding to let me bring my shot-up Tomcat down on the deck! If I'd crashed and burned, I could have done real damage."
"The report also says you managed the battle above the city of Wonsan and were personally responsible for downing six Korean aircraft."
"Yes."
"Doesn't that make you a hero?"
"I'm proud of the job our boys did. It was a job that had to be done.
I'm not particularly proud of shooting down those other aircraft, no."
As he said the words, Tombstone knew that he was lying. He was immensely proud of his ACM victories. That was the sort of achievement that every Navy pilot strove for, proof that his training and long hours of flying and practice had paid off, proof that he had the ultimate "right stuff" in a one-on-one contest with the enemy.
But at the same time, Tombstone hated to be reminded that those victories represented six dead men. Never mind that they'd been trying to kill him or his comrades at the time. Those had been men in those MiGs, all of them pilots like him, probably with families, wives, kids…
It was not something to dwell on, and he bitterly wished he knew how to steer this interview in another direction.
Pamela seemed to sense his discomfort, and turned away. "Cut!" she said.
"Okay, people, let's take a break. Save the lights."
"Looked good," Griffith said, lowering the camcorder. "Why'd you quit?"
She stood and stretched with a smooth, sinuous movement of arms and shoulders. "I'm tired. We need to regroup." She turned and smiled at Tombstone, her golden hair swirling just above her shoulders. "You're coming across very well, Matt. Was something bothering you about that last line of questioning?"
He smiled. "it showed, huh?"
"Only to someone who's interviewed as many guilty congressmen as I have."
She sat down again and laid one perfectly manicured hand on his knee. "You're doing splendidly!"
"I was a bit uncomfortable with where things were going," he confessed.
"I really don't like talking about this hero stuff."
She laughed. "Not only handsome, but modest too! How are we going to get you to open up about yourself, Matt?"
He could sense that she was trying to build him up, to put him at ease, and he felt a vague displeasure at the attempt to manipulate his feelings at the same time that he admired the way she was pulling it off.
"Miss Drake, I-"
"Please!" she said. "It's Pamela!"
"Pamela. Can't I convince you that being a hero doesn't really have anything to do with just doing my job?"
"You might convince me, but I doubt that our viewers would understand.
You're an air ace, a Top Gun. You've gone into single combat with the enemy in a silver steed with magic weapons that Buck Rogers would envy. That's the stuff heroes are made of, Matt."
"But I thought you wanted this series of yours to be about how expensive aircraft carriers are!"
She laughed again. "We'll get to that, don't worry!" She turned serious again. "What I really want to do is show the whole story, the men as well as the machines. You can't have one without the other."
"I agree. But you know, us aviator types tend to steal the show. Maybe you should show something about the ordinary guys who make Jefferson run.
Most of them are kids, nineteen… twenty. They work sixteen-hour days, and that's routine. When the pressure's on, I've seen them go all out for forty-eight hours straight. Down in engineering they're working in hundred-ten-degree heat. Up on the flight deck there's not a single man among them who hasn't come close one time or another to getting blasted over the side by jet wash, or sucked into an engine intake, or decapitated by a snapped arrestor cable. You know, the deck of an aircraft carrier may be the most dangerous work place in the world, but those kids do it, day after day.
They're the heroes, not hot-dogs like me."
"Can there really be such a thing as a modest fighter pilot?" Her lips quirked up in a thoughtful smile. "I thought all fighter jocks were supposed to be so arrogant and cocky!"
He grinned. "I guess it helps. Nowadays, though, you're better off if you have the temperament of an engineer."
"Well, I don't think I would have believed it if I hadn't seen one with my own eyes." She looked at her watch. "I'd say we've done enough for today.
Boys? Let's wrap it."
Tombstone studied her profile for a moment. Despite their differences, he felt himself attracted to her. She seemed to feel his eyes on her and turned suddenly, their eyes meeting.
"I tell you what," he said. "It's late and I haven't had dinner yet.
Know someplace in Bangkok where we could have some authentic That food?"
She pursed her lips. "I should warn you, Commander, that I don't get involved with my… subjects."
"That makes you sound like a lab technician. What am I, a rare specimen?"
"Okay, I'll tell you what. There are several restaurants right here in the Dusit Thani. There's the Mayflower… that's Chinese. Or the Shogun for Japanese food. Or the Hamilton for French cuisine. We'll have dinner, but only if it's on my expense account."
"Hey, how could any self-respecting hotdog refuse an offer like that?
Let's go!"
They settled on the Mayflower. The food was good, but Tombstone scarcely noticed it.
CHAPTER 8
0820 hours, 17 January
Thonbud Market, near Bangkok
Located across the Chao Phraya River from the capital, Thonburi was supposed to be Bangkok's sister city, but so far as Pamela could see, the area was simply a continuation of the buildings and shanties, Buddhist wats and tourist traps, dark-watered klongs and waterfront piers making up the low, oriental urban sprawl that was Bangkok.
The district's Kiong Dao Kanong carried a special reputation, however, a place where visitors to Thailand could glimpse a fragment of a largely vanished way of life, the floating markets of Thonburi.
She stole a sideways glance at her companion. During much of the interview the night before, Matthew Magruder had seemed reserved, even shy.
Now he displayed an animated, almost boyish exuberance as he studied a guide booklet and pointed out landmarks and sights along the waterway. Pamela was not a morning person, and she wondered if Tombstone's Navy hours were responsible for his break-of-day brightness.
Still, she had to admit she was enjoying herself… and enjoying his company. This expedition had been rather hastily planned, and she'd not been entirely certain at the time that it was a good idea.
It had been late enough the previous evening when Tombstone had decided to stay in the city overnight. Today was Saturday and the aviator had this weekend off, so there was no need for him to get back to the ship until Monday.
Almost… almost she'd suggested that he spend the night with her, but a final professional reserve within herself, the knowledge that mixing business and pleasure like that would only lead to trouble, had decided her against it.
He had arranged for a room for himself and not even suggested that they share her bed. Pamela felt a mild disappointment at that which bordered on regret.
It wasn't that she wanted the guy to make a pass at her… but she wasn't used to such gentlemanly discretion ― or patience ― and it left her wondering if the man even found her attractive.
She pushed the thought aside. What Tombstone had suggested instead had turned into a delightful excursion that left her feeling far closer to the man than a recreational romp in bed would have. They'd left requests for wake-up calls at the ungodly hour of five thirty A.m. ― zero-dark-thirty, as Tombstone had called it ― met in the hotel coffee shop for a thoroughly American breakfast of coffee and Danish, then made it to the Oriental Docks in time to catch a tour boat by six forty-five.
The boat had brought them to Thonburi, navigating through a klong crowded from shore to shore with native craft of all descriptions, heavily laden with tropical produce. Here, two pretty That girls in enormous lamp-shade hats, obviously sisters, jostled their skiff close to the shore to display a bountiful pile of dry fish; there an ancient man with white whiskers spread woven mats on the dockside piled high with fried bananas and noodles. Perhaps most surprising were the tourists. Farangs ― the That word for foreigners ― outnumbered the locals by a considerable margin, and most of the shops along the klong appeared to be selling souvenirs, cameras, and native crafts aimed at Western tourists. The air was thick with the sharp tang of That spices and foodstuffs. The crowd noise was loud enough that she had to lean close to Tombstone's shoulder and raise her voice to be heard.
"What are you so serious about?" she called. He'd grown quiet in the last few minutes, and she wondered what had triggered the change.
He flashed her a shy smile. "Just wondering if my dad ever came here.
He would've liked this place. He liked people."
Tombstone had told her about his father earlier that morning, about Sam Magruder's death while attacking a bridge in Hanoi. "Lots of servicemen came here for R&R back then, didn't they?" she asked.
"That's probably when Bangkok got its reputation as sin city." He stopped next to the spot where a black-eyed girl who couldn't have been more than twelve was selling custard-like sweets wrapped in banana leaves. "Here!
Let's try some of these."
Tombstone indicated he wanted two, and fished in his pocket for several baht to pay for them. "Kawpkun!" Tombstone said as she handed the bundles up from her boat.
The girl burst out laughing, though whether at Tombstone's pronunciation or in pleasure at the tall stranger's attempt at her language, Pamela couldn't tell. "You are welcome!" the That girl replied in perfect, somewhat stilted English.
"I didn't know you spoke That, Tombstone," Pamela said, trying one of the custards. It was at once sweet and tart, reminiscent of butterscotch. When had she started using his call sign? she wondered. Last night sometime. It seemed so… natural.
"Oh, was that That?" He feigned innocence, then sobered. "Actually, a wise man once said that you need to learn two words in any language in order to get along in another culture.
"Oh? And what are those?"
"Please and thank you."
"And who was the wise man?"
"My father." He shrugged. "It really helps a lot if you at least try a bit of their language. It is their country, after all."
"Matthew Magruder, the more I know you, the less likely you seem as a Navy aviator. You're supposed to be arrogant!"
"Sorry. You want to see my Tom Cruise Top Gun imitation?"
"No, the Navy has enough Tom Cruises. I kind of like you the way you are."
He shook his head. "What is it about the Navy? During the interview you were going after the Navy's carrier program like nobody's business."
She thought back to the questions she'd asked on camera, and saw what he meant. Much of the thrust for her series called into question the whole issue of the Navy, of the government spending tens of billions of dollars for a fifteen-carrier fleet it no longer needed. While drawing out Tombstone and getting him to talk about himself, Pamela had argued that carriers were too expensive and too vulnerable, useless high-tech toys in an age when nuclear confrontation with the Soviets was no longer a likely possibility, and when Third World banana republics no longer knuckled under to gunboat diplomacy.
Pamela knew she'd done a damned good job putting her message across, too.
Still, she'd liked the way Tombstone had kept the ball coming back into her court. He believed in carriers as an extension of Presidential foreign policy with an almost passionate conviction. He'd not convinced her of his side of the argument, not by a long shot, but she admired the way he stood up to her.
Maybe that was what she found most fascinating about the guy.
They finished the custards and disposed of the banana leaf wrappings in a street-side waste container.
"It's waste I don't like, Tombstone," she said after a long silence. "We don't need multibillion-dollar floating airfields anymore. Maybe back in the days when we were toe-to-toe with the Soviets, but…"
"The Russians aren't the only bad boys on the block," he said. "Besides, they're preoccupied with their own troubles right now… but there's nothing that says they might not come out of their hole sometime soon meaner and scrappier than ever."
"Nonsense." Her tone was harsher, more sarcastic than she'd intended.
"The Cold War is over, or hadn't you heard?"
He looked at her, his gray eyes like ice. "You know, Pamela, I've had the distinct impression all along that you had it in for us service pukes."
The accusation hit her in the pit of the stomach like a blow. She stopped in mid-stride, turning on Tombstone, unable to keep the fury out of her face and voice. "Don't you say that! Don't you ever say that!"
Tombstone's expression showed first confusion, then concern. "Pamela?
What's wrong?"
Slowly, she forced herself to relax, unclenching her fists, and looking away from the Navy officer to study the crowd surrounding them. As many people as there were, the surroundings felt strangely private.
Pamela took a deep breath. "Sorry, Commander," she said. "It's… what you said."
"What did I say?"
She was silent a long moment. "I'll tell you something. Something I…
don't like to talk about." She looked away, catching her lower lip between her teeth before she continued. "I had a brother once."
He gave her a hard look. "'Had'?"
Pamela nodded. The pain was still sharp. "His name was Bobby and he was three years younger than me. I was a journalism major at Pitt when he graduated from high school. Our… our family was all set to pack him off to college, but he wouldn't have any of it. You talk about conservatives! He figured the colleges were all liberal hotbeds ― this was the dawn of the Reagan Era, you understand ― and that there were better ways of getting an education without spending forty thousand dollars for a piece of paper to hang on a wall."
