Chiefs did not outrank officers in the command hierarchy, but Tombstone had found long ago that they often outranked them in sense. Almost immediately after making the assignment, he’d overheard a brief exchange between Geiger and Commander Sedgwick, who wanted to go up the beach with a party of Marines to find a place where Navy boats could come ashore and take them all off. Geiger had said, simply, “The captain wouldn’t like that, sir,” in his characteristic deep-throated rumble, and that had been the end of it.
Kardesh he kept with him as his personal translator, while Tomboy Flynn became his aide. Tomboy made herself invaluable by taking on the duties to which he had originally been assigned ― serving as his liaison with the nearly one hundred press and TV news representatives who had become his personal responsibility.
Both women carried out their assigned tasks with quiet efficiency.
Kardesh spoke excellent Russian ― her mother, she told him, was Russian ― while Joyce proved to be a born public relations expert, fielding questions and handling complaints with a light, personal touch that Tombstone knew he never could have managed… even if he’d had the time.
And he’d been working with Pamela a lot during the past few hours, too, trying to set up a radio connection with the battle group. The available Russian equipment, it turned out, didn’t have the range to reach American aircraft which were, in any case, below the horizon, and they didn’t have the codes ― for reasons that were fairly obvious ― that would allow them to tap into U.S. military communications satellites.
American Cable News, however, had equipment that was better in some respects than that of the American military. They’d originally flown into Simferopol Airport with a van-load of sophisticated electronics, including a satellite up-link that gave immediate and secure communications with ACN headquarters in Washington, D.C. It had been a fairly simple task, then, to organize a patch to HQ-NAVTEL, the Naval Telecommunications Command headquarters in Washington, which in turn routed the communications channel through a MILSTAR communications on.
It was a roundabout method of talking to the CBG’s bosses Stateside.
Tombstone was reminded of the story of Marines during the invasion of Grenada in 1983 who’d lost radio communications with the rest of their unit a few miles away and had used a credit card to place a telephone call to Camp Lejeune, South Carolina, which in turn relayed their fire-support request to the appropriate units in the field. The tale was possibly apocryphal but had enough of the ring of truth about it to make him suspect that it was at least based on a true story.
The faster they could get Tarrant and the others medevaced back to the Saipan, the better. They’d been able to stop the bleeding and to give him saline ― what medical personnel would refer to as a BVE, or blood-volume expander ― to help make up for the lost blood, but he needed more blood, and even if they’d had access to Russian blood supplies, Tombstone knew he’d be happier trusting Tarrant’s life, through cross-matches and donor blood, to Navy doctors and corpsmen who weren’t forced by necessity to recycle their disposable equipment.
“How is your admiral?” Pamela asked him, as they waited for the communications patch to go through.
“Stable. We need to get him to some decent medical facilities, though.”
“There’s a pretty good hospital here in Yalta, I hear.”
Tombstone made a face. “If we have to. But they’re crowded. Besides, ‘pretty good’ in Russia, with all of the shortages and problems they have here, isn’t even in the same league with Navy medicine.”
She sighed. “Matt, you have such complete and unbounded confidence in the Navy.”
He shrugged. “I suppose I do. It’s a confidence based on… what?
fifteen, eighteen years of experience.” He nodded toward a small group of naval personnel, including Joyce and Natalie Kardesh. Sykes was there, and Lieutenant j.g. Vanyek, looking vulnerable and scared. They were sitting on the grass talking together. “They’re good people,” he said. “Whatever you think of the organization as a whole, it’s composed of good people who know their jobs and do them.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why?’”
It was her turn to shrug. “Matt, you must know they’re abandoning you here.”
“I don’t know any such thing.”
“Come on. Step out from behind the uniform and take a whiff of the real world. Do you seriously think they’re going to risk a three-and-some-odd-billion-dollar nuclear aircraft carrier to rescue thirty-some men and women? At a risk of a hundred million per sailor? I don’t think so. You and I both know how Washington works. They’re not going to lift a finger to get you out unless they can make political capital on it, and I can tell you from personal observation that the tone back in the States right now is for us to stay the hell out of the Russian war.”
“The public usually supports military personnel in the field,” Tombstone said stubbornly. “They wouldn’t like it if Washington left us stuck out here.”
“Really?” She cocked her head. “Remember a little picnic in a place called Vietnam? They ― the people who put you here, I mean ― they don’t care. And as for John Q. Public, well, I think Norway and that battle up in northern Russia frightened a lot of people, let them see how terrible, how destructive and deadly modern warfare really is.”
“Mr. Magruder?” Tombstone turned to face one of Pamela’s ACN technicians. “Yeah, Ted?”
“We have your line. A guy named, uh, Coyote is waiting to talk to you.”
“All right! Thanks!”
He nearly sprinted to the mobile communications van, which was now ringed by determined-looking U.S. Marines. When he took a headset from another ACN tech and held it to his ear, he could hear a faint hiss of static, but the line was unusually clear. “It’s encrypted, sir,” a Navy radioman sitting at the console said. “You can talk in the clear.”
“Thanks.” He pressed the transmit key on his mike. “Coyote, Coyote, this is Tombstone. Do you copy?”
“Loud and clear, Stoney,” Coyote’s voice came back. “I gather you guys had to go around Robin Hood’s barn to get this comm hook up.”
“That’s affirmative, and I don’t know how often we’ll be able to do it, or for how long. Direct, tight-beam satellite feeds are hard to trace or jam, but there are some ugly customers hereabouts who might like to try.”
“Roger that.”
“Any ideas about getting us out of here?”
“We’re working on it, Stoney. Air superiority is a problem right now.”
“Understood.”
“So is Washington. We’ve not had any clear direction as to what we’re supposed to do. I can tell you right now that if it was up to the people here on the Jeff, they’d declare war on Russia right this minute, for knocking out the bridge, stranding you guys, taking a shot at one of our planes, wounding the admiral… and probably for conduct unbecoming, as well. But the five-sided squirrel cage is being slow just now.”
“What’s happening with the chain of command?”
“Okay. Captain Brandt, as Tarrant’s flag captain, just got a brevet promotion to admiral. Confirmed through Naples about fifteen minutes ago. He’s taking over the entire battle group, but he’ll be under the command of Admiral Collins, who’s senior.”
“Right.” Rear Admiral Frederick Collins was the commanding officer of MEU-25, together with Marine Colonel Winston Howell, who commanded the MEU’s ground troops. From what he’d heard, Howell was a firebrand who’d won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Vietnam, while Collins was a more cautious, conservative type.