“Like Georgia and the Crimea.”
“Like Georgia and the Crimea. Why don’t they loan us out to the Red Cross and the Camp Fire Girls as well?”
“What’s wrong with humanitarian programs?”
“Nothing. Except that that’s not what we’re for, not what we’re trained for. It’s a waste of resources, misusing us this way. It’s also dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” She thought he was exaggerating. “How?”
“Because each warm and fuzzy mission like this one, each make-work deployment, extends our resources a little farther. Weakens us a bit more. And because somewhere back in Washington, someone is trying to hammer our square peg into his round hole. When mission parameters are vague, when orders are jumbled or self-contradictory, when there’s more politics involved than fighting, well, that leads to mistakes. Bad ones.”
“Like the one that got the helicopter shot down.”
“Exactly. It also means that someday a real crisis is going to come up, one that only the military can solve. And we won’t be able to do it because we’re going to be tied down with relief efforts in Mongolia, or carrying out a UN mission in Uzbekistan, or God knows what else.”
She shook her head. “It won’t get that bad.”
“Won’t it? Reagan wanted to build a fifteen-carrier, six-hundred-ship Navy. He wasn’t able to, and his successors in office, along with Congress, managed to gut the Navy building program, especially once the Soviet Union fell apart and everybody was looking for the so-called peace dividend.”
“It was decided twelve would be enough.”
“Who decided?” He shrugged. “Congress, I guess. We’ve never had more than twelve carriers, and with the need to send them in for refit and modernization every so often, what’s called the SLEP program, we usually don’t have more than ten on active duty at any one time. Ideally, half of those carriers are deployed around the world, while the other half are home-ported, engaged in training exercises, taking on new personnel, and so on. So we have what, five? Five carriers at any one time to handle crises from the Med to the North Sea to the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf to the Far East. In fact, we often have to cut the Stateside rotation short, like we did for the Jeff last time in Norfolk. Anyway you cut it, though, we’re stretched way, way too thin. Tie up just one of our supercarriers with something like delivering food to Ethiopia, and we could have big problems if some two-bit tyrant somewhere decides he’s going to take us on.”
She shook her head. “I’m still not sure I understand why you’re upset.
I mean, a mission’s a mission, right? And it’s not up to you to worry about the politics of the thing. The military is supposed to stay separate from politics.”
“Pamela, the five-thousand-and-some men and women aboard a carrier can’t just turn their personal feelings off. We’re not allowed to, oh, stage a protest in front of ACN cameras, say, or call the President a scumbag on national TV, but there’s nothing that says we can’t have our own opinions. About the decisions that hang us out to dry in impossible situations. And about the politicians who put us there.”
“But surely you don’t have to-” she began, then cut herself off. It was always the same whenever they talked about politics, particularly politics as they affected the military. They were worlds apart in their ideas, and while there was nothing that said that husband and wife had to always agree on things, when the things they disagreed about affected their daily lives… Well, it was just another indication of how this relationship would not, could not work.
“Matt,” she said, looking across at him and then quickly down at her plate. She’d been avoiding this all evening. She couldn’t put it off any longer. “Look, Matt,” she said. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since you left last time. I just… I just don’t think it’s going to work out for us.”
He said nothing, and when she looked up and met his eyes, she saw only a carefully maintained mask, with no emotion whatsoever. “I am not Navy-wife material,” she continued. “I need a relationship, not an occasional house-guest. I need a person, not letters that leave me wondering if I’m ever going to see you again. I need someone who’s there for me, not some guy who just shows up on my doorstep once every six or eight months for a quick bang and maybe breakfast the next morning.” She stopped, breathing hard, her fists clenched. Now that she’d started letting out the anger and the hurt and the gnawing frustration, it was almost more than she could do to hold the flood in check. Damn, she hadn’t realized there was so much bitterness penned up inside of her!
“I never thought that what we had was just a ‘quick bang,’ Pamela.” He sounded hurt. There was no petulance there, but she could hear a coldness, a hardness that she’d never heard in his voice before.
“How do you think it is for me? You’re home for maybe six months. I’m just getting used to having you around, and then I blink twice and poof! You’re gone. For six months. Maybe nine months. Damn it, Matt, I can’t live like that!”
“Pamela, I-“
“A friend of mine, Mike Berrens, did a human-interest story last spring when your battle group got back from the Kola. On the wives and sweethearts waiting at home. And on what a hell their lives were, particularly the wives, trying to run their homes, trying to keep their families together, when their men were gone half the time or more. I took another look at that story after you left, and that’s when I knew I could never live like that.”
“But, Pamela, it’s different with us-” He put up a hand as she started to continue. “Damn it, let me get a word in! I know most Navy wives have a really hard time. Coyote’s marriage is pretty rocky right now, and for just the reasons you’ve been talking about. I was best man at his wedding, and it really hurts to see things falling apart for them.
“But, look, you’re different from Julie. I mean, she’s a wonderful woman, but she has nothing outside her family. You have a career, and you’re damned good at what you do. I would never ask you to give that up, you know that. Yet you expect me to be willing to give up my career for you!”
His voice was rising as he spoke, and growing more and more angry. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d been bottling things up.
She shook her head, the worst of her own anger already drained. “I’m beyond that, Matt. I know you won’t give up the Navy. It’s a part of you, and you wouldn’t be who you are, wouldn’t be the… be the man I love, if you were the kind of guy who could give it up easily. But it’s one of the things that just makes us completely incompatible.”
He looked up sharply, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “You still love me?
Then…”
Pamela took his hand and held it for a brief moment. “Sometimes…
sometimes love just isn’t enough, Matt.”
She released his hand and sat back. “Matt, I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other while you’re here in Yalta, but I really think it best if we not see each other… that way again. It’s… it really has been wonderful knowing you, and I’m sorry it has to end this way. But it does have to end. Now.”
The rest of the dinner was completed in an uncomfortable near-silence and was cut short before dessert or the obligatory after-dinner tea.
All the way back to the hotel, she could feel the tension winding up inside of him.
Tombstone was still digesting what had passed between him and Pamela that evening. He didn’t know what to say, was afraid to say anything for fear that either he or she would explode.