She slipped into the chair, relieved that at least initially there wouldn’t be any wearying battles over who she worked foror who worked for her. “I got here as fast as I could. What do you know about this nuclear detonation?”
His face looked somber. “None of us knows very much at all. I swear to God, Pamela, it’s the damnedest thing. There’s been no real hint of a change in Turkish position vis-a-vis the United States. No underground rumblings, no petty sniping from our sources, nothing. Not even any unexpected military movements or ‘war games,’ like there usually are.”
He spread his hands and shrugged. “Quite frankly, we’re at a loss.”
“What’s the official reaction?” Pamela asked.
“Complete denial. In fact, if I didn’t know what the U.S. military was reporting, I’d say the Turks are as puzzled by the whole thing as we are. Worried too. We’re too close to Chernobyl for comfort. These people know what effect a nuclear problem can have on their country. We talked to the Minister of Health earlier today, and he was damned near in a panic.”
“Strange.”
More than strange, Pamela thought, downright inexplicable.
Her experience, like Mike’s, had been that every unexpected conflict was not really that unexpected. There were always murmurings, traces of political unrest, the first few harbingers of war floating around the countryside. If you knew what you were doing, had enough sources in enough countries, you could keep track of them. Keep track of them, and beat every other reporter to the story. It was one of her specialties.
“More than strange,” Mike Packmeyer said. He paused, making sure he had her full attention. “More than strange,” he repeated slowly. “There’s something going on here, Pamela, and I don’t mind telling you it scares the hell out of me. Something’s very wrong.”
Pamela stood abruptly. “I’ll need the standard support package, Mike,” she began. “Satellite time, up-link resources, and somebody to get my material out of here. With the way this thing is breaking, I don’t have time to dick around. Let me be blunt about itare we on the same team or not?”
She fixed him with a cold look.
Packmeyer shook his head. “Always the same Pamela. Listen, I live herehave for the last ten years. What I want right now is to figure out what the hell is going on.”
He paused and shot her a significant look.
“You’re the person to do it, Pamela. You’ll have every bit of support that you need and more.”
Pamela nodded, satisfied. “I appreciate that, Mike.”
And indeed she did. Now she could concentrate on the one thing that drew her on professionally, a source of endless fascination and intrigue for herthe real story.
3
The carrier was little more than a gray smudge on the horizon as seen from the cockpit of the approaching F-14. Tombstone squinted, craning his head around to see forward from the backseat of the Tomcat. Dear Lord, he hated riding backseatbut there was no way around it this time. As sharp as he still felt, he wasn’t current in the F-14 cockpit. It was hard to stay in specs flying a desk, but most of the time he managed it. It was only during the last two weeks at D.C., following his assignment at ALASKCOM, that he’d managed to get out of proficiency. So here he was, an aviator en route to fleet command, riding in the backseat. And from what he’d been briefed on the situation, it wasn’t likely he was going to get any stick time in the near future.
Maybe after this was resolved he could steal a few hours in the flight schedule. Just a few. Just long enough to feel a throbbing engine strapped on his ass, to satisfy the need for speed. It was why he’d joined the Navy some twenty-five years ago, and only an overriding sense of duty to his country and the off chance that an opportunity just such as this would arise had kept him in the service.
Sitting in the backseat with his hand itching to take the controls was like kissing your sister. Or worse, being interrupted on a couch by an irate father just as you were about to score. He longed to reach out and take control, to feel the stick in his hand and the rudder controls under his feet, to feel how the sheer raw power of the aircraft changed in response to his decisions, his control.
Being Sixth Fleet ought to be enough for any officer. It wasn’t.
“On final now,” the pilot in the front seat said. “I’ll be a little bit busy for the next couple of minutes.”
And there it was again, that classic sense of understated irony that underlay the bravado of a fighter pilot. Busy was hardly accuratetotally focused and concentrating on the pitching carrier in the sea was more like it. Studies had shown that a pilot’s pulse during a carrier-landing evolution could easily reach 160 during final approach.
“I’m all right back here, son,” Tombstone said. “Like to see a three-wire trap out of you, though,” he continued, referring to the model method of getting aboard an airfield moving at thirty knots. Two short clicks acknowledged his transmission.
The carrier was resolving itself into its shape, the familiar island jutting above the flight deck, the Fresnel lens now a pinprick of light off to his left. If his pilot stayed on flight path, the Fresnel would continue to glow green. Too high or too low, and it would look red to the incoming aircraft. As a final sanity check, a Landing Signals OfficerLSOwas stationed on a small platform that jutted out from the side of the carrier just below the level of the flight deck. The LSO would be an experienced F-14 pilot. As the approaching pilot “called the ball,” the LSO would take over direction of his approach, coaching him into the proper lineup, neither too far right nor too far left, and gently wheedling him into the proper attitude in relationship to the deck.
If he or she were dissatisfied with the pilot’s approach, the LSO could call a wave-offan order to the pilot to cease the approach, maintain airspeed, and circle around the aft end of the carrier for another try. It wasn’t a permanent black mark on a perfect pilot’s recordeven the most experienced aviators sometimes got waved off by either the LSO or the Air Boss for a variety of reasons. Gear or personnel fouling the flight deckinside the yellow lines that delineated the actual airstrip, an unacceptable degree of pitch on the ship, or simply because an experienced aviator was having an off day and was a bit off glide path. It happened. You learned from it and went on from there. Too many wave-offs, though, might warrant a close look by a FNEABA Fleet Naval Evaluation Aviation Board. The FNEAB could recommend that a pilot be stripped of his wings if his airmanship weren’t up to snuff.
They were a mile off now and descending rapidly. The air was increasingly turbulent as the massive ship plowed its way not only through sea but air as well, creating eddies and ripples that disturbed the atmosphere that buffeted the jet. The Tomcat lurched and bobbled, found its glide path, and settled firmly into it. Tombstone kept up the scan by reflex, glancing from the Fresnel lens to the needlesthe cross-hairs on the panel that indicated his position relative to glide pathand the airspeed indicator. So far, the kid was doing a good job.
Kid, hell. Tombstone snorted at his own description. The “kid” was probably thirty-five years old, a commander, and in command of one of the squadrons on board Jefferson. A two-star passenger rated no less.
The landing was, as always, a violent, controlled crash. Tombstone could feel the tailhook grab hold of the arresting wirethe three wire, if he wasn’t mistaken. It spun out eighty feet down the deck, dragging the Tomcat to a screeching halt. The nose-wheel slammed down, jarring both pilot and passenger.