After all, if she’d had a chance to get on board Shiloh, she would have jumped at it and he wouldn’t have begrudged her that opportunity.
Would he?
Suddenly, the full implications of his deepening relationship with a hot-running surface-warfare officer in the United States Navy started to hit him. How would he feel if it were Callie who was out on the front lines, if she were the one in the middle when missiles started flying?
The thought was a sobering one. Bird Dog considered himself a model of equal opportunity, and certainly he’d flown with women in his squadron. Commander Flynn, for instanceTomboy to her squadron mates. One of the finest RIOs he’d ever met, and an aviator he’d be proud to have in his backseat.
But that was different, wasn’t it?
He wasn’t dating Tomboy FlynnAdmiral Magruder was, although that particular fact was a well-kept secret within the Tomcat community. But if it were Callie instead of Tomboyall at once he wasn’t so certain.
“You’d just walk away from us?” Callie asked acerbically. She tossed her notebook and a few reference sources down on the couch. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Bird Dog felt himself go on the defensive, although for the life of him he couldn’t figure out exactly why.
“It’s the C word, isn’t it? Commitment.”
Callie spat the word out as though it tasted foul in her mouth. “We start getting serious, and all at once you’re afraid I’m going to tie you down. Well, hell, buddy, you can just forget it.”
She stormed out of the room, leaving a puzzled and confused Bird Dog in her wake. Just what the hell had he said?
“The American embassy,” Pamela ordered. She leaned back against the rich leather cushions, keeping a tight grip on the center console as the car darted and weaved through Istanbul traffic. Mike had provided her with the car, as well as a driver and a cameraman. He’d tentatively broached the possibility of occasional updates, but had quickly shut down that line of inquiry when he saw the cold gleam in her eyes.
“We talk to the embassy every hour or so,” the cameraman offered hesitantly. “Do you really think we’ll learn anything there?”
Pamela turned slowly toward him and impaled him against the seat with a cold glare. “What are you, some sort of cub reporter? Or a spy for Mike?”
The cameraman stuttered and stammered, “No, not at all, Miss. Drake. I was justI mean sometimes it’swe know the way things work around here, you know. I was just trying to be helpful.”
She held the glare until he looked away. “Thank you. When I need some help, I’ll let you know.”
She turned to face forward again, and was quickly lost in her own thoughts.
Of course, the cameraman was right. There would be nothing new to be learned at the American embassy, not without some personal contacts who would be willing to work off the record with her. But it had been too long since she had been in this area of the world, and she tried to summon up the faces and names of the last two men she’d known at the embassy. How long had it beeneight, maybe nine years?
There was little chance they would still be there.
Nevertheless, she resolved to at least ask if they were. Hell, they’d remember her. Who wouldn’t?
“Where is the USS La Salle headed?” she asked suddenly. She turned to the cameraman. “Do you know?”
Sensing a chance to redeem himself, the cameraman said, “I heard it was Gaeta. There’s no official word, but that would make sense.”
Pamela nodded. “It does make sense.”
She filed this bit of information away as a potential lead, or as possibly a sidebar assignment for one of the lesser lights with ACN.
How to cut to the heart of this conflict?
When Ukrainian Cossacks had seized the Aleutian Islands, she’d hired a commercial helicopter pilot to ferry her out from Alaska to the location of the USS Jefferson, then convinced him to simulate engine problems. The Jefferson had been forced to let her land, and she’d been privy to a good firsthand look at the United States Navy’s operations. It hadn’t hurt anymore, now that she’d reflected on it, helpedthat her old fiance, Tombstone Magruder, had been in command of the carrier battle group.
Tombstone. Now there was a subject best left untouched. If she’d had the slightest doubts that their engagement was fully and finally terminated, they’d been dispelled in the Aleutians. Never had she seen him so cold, so completely focused on his job to the exclusion of even her best efforts to distract him. In a way, she’d come to admire him more during those days than she had at any time in the past. Admire him, and realize he was lost to her.
No matter. Rumor had it that he’d taken up with some female chippy off the ship, an aviator at that. She mulled that over for a few moments, contemplating with some satisfaction the thought of Tombstone hitched up with someone just as driven and career-oriented as he was himself.
“Take me to the airport,” she said suddenly. In thinking about Tombstone and his new chick, an idea had occurred to her. A relationship with two people so alike could lead to bitter battles. Who, then, was Turkey’s equivalent in international politics?
The Islamic nations to the east?
Possible, but she had her doubts. Turkey had spent too many centuries as an open, internationalized society with close ties to the United States to revert so easily to the social tenets of fundamentalist Islam. And certainly not Greece to the west. No, the border skirmishes between the two countries had created too much permanent ill will. But there was one other option, one she hadn’t heard discussed publicly yet, though certainly some think-tank pundit had floated it in closed meetings.
The northUkraine, the fertile breadbasket of both Eastern Europe and Asia. For centuries battles had been fought over Ukraine and her resources, and since the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had been increasingly vulnerable to outside influences.
But what could an attack by Turkey on U.S. forces have to do with Ukraine?
She didn’t knownot yet. But something was niggling at her, insisting that she look at the relationship between Turkey and Ukraine more closely. There was no rhyme or reason for it, not reallyyet some of her most insightful forays into investigative reporting had come from just such strange connections as the one she’d just made.
She quelled the questioning look the cameraman shot her with a glance.
The cameraman repeated her request to the driver.
Twenty minutes later, the car pulled up outside the Istanbul International Airport. Guards ringed the perimeterset every two hundred yards or so, she estimated. There was no traffic, none, and the parking lot surrounding the airport held only a few civilian cars, scattered amongst several platoons of drab official-looking cars and police vehicles.
“Nothing comes in or goes out,” the cameraman said finally. “The Prime Minister announced that yesterday.”
“Oh, really?” Pamela said scathingly. “Then what’s that?”
She pointed at the horizon, at the commercial cargo ship now on final approach.
As it swept by them, touching down lightly on the runway into its roll-off, she noted the name emblazoned in Cyrillic letters on the tail finAeroflot.
“A good job, Yuri.”
The Naval Aviation commander gave him an approving look. “Superb flying in a difficult platform. Your tactical decisions were entirely appropriate.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Yuri tried to relish the compliment, but felt only a sense of mounting frustration. The endless hours and days of familiarization flights, tactical drills, and training for the mission were over. Consequently, with fuel always in short supply in Ukraine, he was grounded. There was no longer any need for him to maintain flight proficiency, so scarce resources were allocated to other units. The possibility that he might be given another mission to fly was almost nonexistentnot until his superiors decided they needed his special talents again. Then, and only then, would they waste fuel bringing him back into currency.