'Mostly I've been worried about flying with you.'
'Me?'
'Yeah. Ever since Coyote went down, you've been so uptight… hell, everybody knows it. It's like your mind's not really on your flying anymore, and that scares hell out of me! When you tucked in close under that Bear's tail last night, and then when Batman pulled that stunt, man, I thought that was it.'
'You came through okay.'
'Sure. But it got me thinking, right? It's like… like I'm trusting you, trusting the guy up front with my life, know what I mean? I'm married, Stoney. Got married two months before this cruise. Right now, I've been away from her more'n I've been with her. It ain't right for me to smear myself all over Jefferson's roundoff because some other guy's not paying attention! And now the scuttlebutt is we're going up against the Koreans and there's gonna be a fight. Man, I just don't know if I can handle that!'
'Is that all?' He felt ice-cold, as though he'd just been struck.
Snowball looked like he was about to say more, then reconsidered. 'Yes, sir.'
'You want to swap with another RIO? You're not stuck with me, you know.'
'I don't know.' He looked away. For a moment, he seemed to be studying the array of papers and notes tacked to the small bulletin board on the office bulkhead. 'I don't think it would be any better.'
'You want to stop flying?' For Tombstone, that was the ultimate impossibility. To give up flying would be like dying.
'No. Yeah… aw, shit. Look, Stoney, right now, I'm so screwed up-'
'Damn it, that's enough!' Tombstone's palm came down on his desk beside the typewriter, scattering an untidy stack of paperwork. 'Listen, mister, I don't give a shit about your piss-ant little problems! You want a shoulder to cry on, go see the chaplain. You don't like my flying, talk to CAG and get yourself assigned to another plane… or get yourself grounded, I don't care!'
Tombstone regretted the outburst at once. It was too late to take the words back, too late to back down, but he could try to control the anger. Who was he mad at, anyway? Snowball? Or himself? He stood up behind his desk, holding Snowball's eyes with his own, making himself relax. 'One way or another, I suggest that you get yourself squared away.'
'Y-yes, sir.'
Tombstone looked down at his desktop, then picked up a neatly typed paper from among the others scattered there. 'Know what this is?'
'No, sir.'
'Cut the kay-det crap, Snowy. This is an order from CAG, telling me to work out the details for CAP cover for Operation Winged Talon, getting ready for, quote air operations against North Korean ground positions and air targets in the Wonsan area, unquote. Right this minute, up on the flight deck, they're arming up on the assumption that this thing is a go! Chances are we'll be launching in a few hours, and when we do, it's really going to hit the fan. I don't want you up there if you're going to freeze up on me!'
He saw a spark of anger in Snowball's eyes. 'I won't freeze, sir!'
Tombstone sank back into his chair. 'Get out of here, then. See CAG if you want a transfer, but don't pester me with this shit, got me?'
'Yes, sir. Aye aye, sir.'
Snowball backed out of the office, hesitated a moment, then whirled upon his heel and hurried off down the passageway. A moment later, the doorway was blocked again as Marusko stepped in. 'What was that all about? We heard the shouting clear down to Admin.'
Tombstone rocked his chair back on two legs, his hands pressed over his eyes. 'I don't know, CAG. I probably just screwed it up, that's all.'
'Welcome to the club. When will you have that report on my desk?'
He sighed. 'What do you want first? Report or op-plan?'
CAG grinned. 'What's the matter, son? Paperwork piling up?'
'And then some.'
'You should see my desk. Okay, the Bear report can wait. From the way your uncle's talking, we're going in this afternoon. An all-squadron briefing's been called for fifteen hundred, so you can figure it for yourself. I'll need the op-plan by twelve hundred if I'm going to have anything to show the admiral.'
'I love how we fight wars with paper. Okay, CAG. I'll get on it.'
'Good. Oh, and Tombstone?'
'Yeah?'
'Take it easy on your people. They'll respond to a light hand, voice of experience and all that, right?'
Tombstone drew in a breath. 'Aye aye, CAG. You're right.'
'That's all, then. See you at twelve hundred.'
Tombstone stared at the empty doorway for several minutes more. He really had let his anger and frustration get away from him with Snowball. But what was he supposed to do, nursemaid the whole squadron?
He thought back to his five weeks at Miramar. Top Gun training reached more than the handful of students who attended the school. The idea was to rotate Top Gun grads back to the fleet after they completed the course, where they served as instructors with their squadrons. Tombstone had a regular weekly schedule of lectures in ACM tactics ? the high-tech waltz of Air Combat Maneuvers better known as dog-fighting.
The drill, as he'd pointed out to several other Top Gun alumni on board Jefferson, was to keep a low profile, to not come out and tell the other aviators that he'd been to Fightertown, since that would just breed resentment. It was much slicker, much more in keeping with the aviator's charisma, if he let the information slip out little by little, in the lectures, in the debriefings after missions.
It's all a part of command, he told himself. And damn it all, that's just what I can't handle. Maybe the promotions have been coming a little too fast… a little too easy.
He thought about CAG's words. Your uncle.
There was no way he could back out now, not just before a combat op, not with every man in the air wing thinking him a coward. Tombstone remembered his own acid reaction a moment earlier, when Snowball admitted he was scared. No. Not like that.
But it was time to admit that he was no leader of men. Maybe it was even a time to find a sane career, one where he didn't have to keep proving himself.
He rolled a fresh sheet of paper into the Selectric and began pecking away.
Snowball leaned against the railing and looked down at the flight deck from the railed walkway atop the island. Damn them! he thought. Damn them all!
Among the ranks of Naval flight officers there was a sharply defined sense of us and them, a camaraderie of mutual respect and fellowship which crossed the lines of rank. Somehow, though, Dwight Newcombe had never quite fit in. He stood out from the others, different, as he'd been different from the other kids in school, a loner, always on the outside. His pale and sunburn-prone skin and ash-blond hair had won him the handle Snowball at Pensacola, a hated running name which nonetheless had traveled with him to the North Island Naval Air Base at Coronado, then to his first posting at sea on board the Jefferson only five months earlier. Attempts to join the band-of-brothers fellowship had only made him stand out more, had made him feel more of an outsider than ever.
In keeping with Naval policy of assigning experienced pilots to inexperienced NFOs ? and experienced NFOs with newbie aviators ? Newcombe had been paired with Tombstone Magruder, a Top Gun graduate who'd seemed quieter than the others… and more sympathetic.
He'd gotten along well with the guy so far. In the late-night bull sessions in flight officers' quarters, Tombstone had never sounded as though he had something to prove, never rambled on about improbable sexual escapades during some past liberty, never worn the mask of the fearless and invulnerable warrior. For the past several months, Snowball had felt closer to Tombstone than to anyone else on board the Jefferson.
But now…
His ears caught the faint beat of rotors across the water. He strained his eyes and caught sight of one of
