'Okay, Paterowski,' Senior Chief Hansen said. He looked bored, sitting back in the room's command chair with a mug of coffee in his hand, his headset perched at an angle to uncover one ear. 'Tell 'em we're ready to pick up.'
'They're going to launch the helo first.'
'Makes sense.'
Bayerly glanced over at the status board, where a young third class was writing backwards on the transparent plastic. The Sea King's mission was listed as Bangkok, a run to the That Airlines helipad in the city and back.
That would be Tombstone Magruder's helo.
Damn the man, anyway. Bayerly's thought was raw pain and anger. The word had quickly spread throughout the ship that the three civilian visitors to the carrier the day before had been from a high-powered Stateside news program, and that one of them, a real looker of a woman, had asked specially to interview Commander Bigshot Magruder. So now the lucky bastard was on his way to Bangkok.
Bayerly glanced to his left. Several other naval flight officers from various squadrons were there, standing in various attitudes of relaxation or boredom. It was standard practice for NFOs to stand stretches of duty in Air Ops, where they could be asked for advice during a crisis, especially one involving a man in their unit. Since he'd been relieved of flight duty, it was natural that Bayerly put in more than the usual duty time for VF-97. He didn't like it, though. He didn't like it one bit.
The other officers had been all but shunning him since his suspension, almost as if he'd already lost his wings. Even now, McConnell, Rostenkowski, and the others seemed to be avoiding his eyes, and he could imagine their pointed comments behind his back.
The pain burning in Bayerly's gut felt like jealousy, though he knew it wasn't. It was despair for a career slowly but surely closing down. He'd known it, felt it for months. Back during the Wonsan operations three months ago, it hadn't been coincidence which had led CAG to assign the hotshot missions to Tombstone Magruder while posting Bayerly to routine CAP flights over the carrier.
Magruder had downed six MiGs and won the Navy Cross. Bayerly had sat it out on the sidelines. And all because of what had happened over a year ago…
'Helo away,' a radarman said. Several television monitors about CATCC showed the gray bulk of the Sea King lift off the mid-deck, hover for a moment, then dip its blunt bow and angle off toward the north. Other monitors showed the view forward. Aft of two of the four catapults, JBD shields rose slowly behind the two Tomcats readying for launch. A deck officer gave the hand signal to bring the engines up to full power.
Bayerly wondered how Batman Wayne felt about being snagged to cover for Magruder. The rumors about his escapade last night had been spreading about the ship as well.
He sighed. There had to be a way to change things… had to be! If he couldn't turn things around, his next posting was going to be to Adak, Alaska… and then it would be retirement as a lieutenant commander, with precious little to show for twelve years of service. Twelve years!
The cat officer on the Cat One monitor dropped to one knee and touched the deck. Tomcat 232 lurched forward in a billowing cloud of steam as the catapult slung it off the Jefferson's bow. Almost simultaneously, Tomcat 203 hurtled off the carrier's waist. Together, the two planes grabbed for altitude, afterburners flaring orange.
Bayerly watched them turn toward the north, still climbing, and his fists clenched in anger.
'I don't know,' Tombstone said. 'I've never thought much about it, I guess.'
He was perched on the edge of a comfortable settee, feeling very much out of place. The room, part of a walnut-paneled, richly furnished suite, had been provided by the hotel as an impromptu studio for Pamela Drake and her film crew. Tombstone had tried to suggest that there were plenty of studio facilities aboard the Jefferson, but she'd replied that the carrier's surroundings were too cold, too formal to come across well on American television.
Pamela was seated on a divan opposite him and slightly to his left, and a low, wooden coffee table had been pulled between them. Griffith stood several feet away, squinting into the eyepiece of his camcorder, while Baughman bent over the dials and wavering needles of his sound equipment across the room.
Several other people in Pamela's film crew hovered in the background, hidden behind the bright, standing lights which bathed him in a hot, white glare.
Tombstone could hear the whir of the camera as he tried to gather his thoughts, and he was painfully conscious of the small microphone dangling against the breast of his dress white shirt.
'Surely you've thought about it, Commander,' Pamela said. She had a rich, seductive voice. It would have been sexy, Tombstone thought, if he hadn't been convinced that she was using it to set him up for the kill. 'All those press conferences, your name in the headlines back home…'
She'd just asked him what he thought about being a national hero.
'I can't really say that I was a hero,' he said. 'I certainly wasn't any more of a hero than several thousand other guys who were there.'
The subject of the discussion was the Wonsan raid three months before.
He hesitated, finding his thoughts cluttered by memories. He remembered Commander Marty French, killed while trying to land his damaged F/A-18 on the Jefferson's flight deck. And his good friend Coyote Grant, who'd been captured by the North Koreans, escaped, and ended up helping the Marines and a Navy SEAL team accomplish their mission behind enemy lines. And Batman, who had shot down three KorCom fighter-bombers before they could attack the fleet.
But how could he put across everything that he felt in a few words?
'The point is,' he continued, 'that all of us were just doing our jobs.
That's not very exciting or romantic, I know, but that's the way it was. An American ship and its crew had been captured on the high seas in an act of piracy, and the President sent us in to bring them out. We did.'
'You are entirely too modest, Commander.' She leaned forward, and Tombstone caught a whiff of perfume as she lightly touched one of the ribbons on the top row of his award display above his left shirt pocket. 'Is this the Navy Cross?'
She'd indicated the blue ribbon with its single white stripe. 'Yes, it is.'
'And that's only the second highest decoration the U.S. Navy can award its people. Why do you think your superiors singled you out of all those thousands?'
He grinned uneasily. 'If you figure that out, let me know.'
'According to the official report,' she said, 'you refused to eject from your damaged aircraft because your copilot was wounded and would not have survived if you'd left the plane.'
'RIO.'
'Pardon?'
'He was my RIO, my Radar Intercept Officer, not my copilot.'
'And you don't think you should have gotten a medal for that?'
'I think the guys on the carrier should have won a medal. Let me tell you, it took real guts deciding to let me bring my shot-up Tomcat down on the deck! If I'd crashed and burned, I could have done real damage.'
'The report also says you managed the battle above the city of Wonsan and were personally responsible for downing six Korean aircraft.'
'Yes.'
'Doesn't that make you a hero?'
'I'm proud of the job our boys did. It was a job that had to be done.
I'm not particularly proud of shooting down those other aircraft, no.'
As he said the words, Tombstone knew that he was lying. He was immensely proud of his ACM victories. That was the sort of achievement that every Navy pilot strove for, proof that his training and long hours of flying and practice had paid off, proof that he had the ultimate 'right stuff' in a one-on-one contest with the enemy.
But at the same time, Tombstone hated to be reminded that those victories represented six dead men. Never mind that they'd been trying to kill him or his comrades at the time. Those had been men in those MiGs, all of them pilots like him, probably with families, wives, kids…
