“The sound of freedom.”
“Yep, and for all that I get tired of following in your footsteps, I’d sure as hell rather be out here than stuck ashore like you are right now.”
“Don’t rub it in, asshole. You’ll get your turn ashore. In the meantime, why don’t you see if you can’t rustle up some evidence of what happened to that Greenpeace boat? Out there, you can always have a convenient communications failure. Back here, I can’t seem to get away from these people. Give me something I can use.” Tombstone’s voice took on an ominous, pleading quality.
“Roger that. I’ll see what we can come up with.”
Batman replaced the receiver thoughtfully and stared at it for a moment. In the twenty years that he had known Tombstone, he had never known the hotshot Tomcat pilot to sound so beleaguered. Even in the midst of the Spratlys conflict, or engaged in a dogfight over the Norwegian coast, Tombstone had had the ability to maintain an absolutely unflappable demeanor that had earned him his nickname. If shore duty had the ability to make his friend sound like a pussy-whipped lieutenant, then Batman wasn’t sure he wanted any part of it.
Batman walked out of his cabin, through the Flag Mess, and toward the far entrance to the mess. His chief of staff’s combination stateroom and office was located immediately inside the door to the mess. Batman rapped lightly once on the doorjamb. The chief of staff glanced up from a two-foot stack of paperwork, then immediately stood. “Yes, Admiral?”
“Let’s get everybody assembled in the briefing room at fifteen hundred, COS,” Batman said. “We need to do some serious thinking about this Greenpeace boat.”
COS regarded him soberly. “Admiral, you know there’s no chance that those men are still alive. Even if they made it into the rafts, the cold would have killed them by now.” COS shook his head. “A damned shame, but I don’t know what we can do about it at this point.”
“That’s not what worries me, COS. Sure, we need to make every effort we can to find any survivors. People survive under the damnedest conditions, and if those men and women have the guts to hold out in a life raft, I’ll do my damnedest to find them. But what worries me even more is why they sank in the first place.”
COS shrugged. “Sounds like a massive engineering casualty to me.”
Batman looked at him thoughtfully. “Maybe. Or they could have even struck a submerged iceberg. All of those are possible explanations. But we don’t get paid the big bucks to think of the easy solutions. I want to make sure we’re all thinking on the same wavelength.”
“You think they were attacked? By who, a coalition of angry fishermen who want to kill whales?”
Batman shook his head. “I don’t know, COS. And that’s what worries me. Until we have some evidence of what happened to them, I’m going to assume they wandered into harm’s way. And I want everybody on this ship thinking the same way.”
Tombstone heard a light rap at his door. He looked up and saw Pamela Drake framed by the doorway.
“Do you have a moment for me, Admiral?” she asked politely.
“Only if you’re not going to rake me over the coals,” Tombstone answered. “After yesterday, I’m not up to any more surprises.”
She walked across the room and settled into the chair in front of his desk with that too-familiar combination of easy grace and sensuality. She crossed her legs, not bothering to yank her skirt down when it rode up over her thighs. “Off the record, Stoney — can I still call you that?”
He nodded. “There’s a lot of history between us, Pamela. I wouldn’t change a bit of it.”
“Not even the way it ended?”
He shook his head. “Neither of us was willing to compromise. I won’t quit flying; you won’t quit hop-scotching around the world in search of the hottest story. It was inevitable. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
She smiled. “I suppose you’re right. Still, it’s good to see you again.”
“And you as well. Now,” he continued briskly, “what’s on your mind? Still off the record.”
She looked troubled. “This Greenpeace boat. It’s a tragedy, of course. There are several million of my colleagues out interviewing family members as we speak.” She grimaced, as though disgusted with the inevitable state of how-does-it-feel-to-lose-your-husband questions that were sure to be posed to the surviving families. “And as bad as it is for the men and women who were on that boat, I’m not sure why you’re mobilizing the entire ALASKCOM and a U.S. carrier battle group to look for survivors. As your operations officer said, there’s little chance that the men are alive.”
“Men and women,” Tombstone corrected. “Two years ago, you would have chided me for making that mistake.”
“Okay, men and women. But still-“
“Why are we mobilizing a full-scale SAR exercise when we’re fairly certain that no one survived?” He let his eyes rest on hers, and studied the sea-green eyes flecked with gold. There had been a time when just looking at her brought a thrill of anticipation to him, a tightening and hardening he’d never been able to control.
Now, seeing her here, he was surprised to find he still had the same reaction. Muted, perhaps, the edges smoothed away by his fascination with Tomboy, but the echoes of their long relationship still sang in his body. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to pull her toward him, run his hand over the smooth curves and sleek skin, feel her body warm to his touch and respond to him. He shook his head and tried to push the image of Pamela naked on the bed beside him out of his head. “A short lesson on governmental politics is in order,” he said, aware that his voice had softened and become more intimate.
Pamela caught the change. “It’s still there, isn’t it?” she said softly. “Me, too, Stoney.”
He sighed. “And the more senior each of us gets, the less likely we’ll do anything about it. For now, let me see if I can bore us both for a few minutes.”
She regarded him speculatively. “Maybe that’s better for now.”
“You know about NGOs — nongovernmental organizations,” he began. “They’re always a factor in policy decisions, regardless of whether the government wants to admit it or not. These groups have more power than many of the strongest lobbies in the United States. Things like the American Red Cross, the Ralph Nader groups, the nonprofit corporations-“
“And Greenpeace,” she finished. “I understand that part, but why is it important now?”
Tombstone pointed to a large map on the wall behind him. “The Aleutian Islands, that’s why. They stretch from the tip of Alaska in a long, south-curving arc over to Russia. At the closest point, the last Aleutian Island is only eleven miles from Russian soil. For centuries, the people who lived there wandered back and forth between the two countries, ignoring all the political boundaries that we set up from five thousand miles away. But during the Cold War, that changed.”
“Because they’re so close to Russia?”
He nodded. “During the days when we were concerned about Russian submarines, the Aleutian Islands contained some of the most advanced listening posts and tracking stations in the world. In addition to that, here on Adak, four P-3C Orion squadrons were stationed in case we ever escalated into full-out war. Up to the north of the Aleutian Islands, in the Bering Sea, the Soviets used to conduct regular ballistic missile patrols. With the long-range missiles on the Delta-IV and the Typhoon ballistic missile submarines, those boats damn near don’t have to leave port to strike any place in the continental United States. But they deployed them to the North Sea, under the ice, to make them harder to find.” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe what a tactical nightmare it is, trying to track a submarine under the ice. Sonar echoes off the ice overhead as well as off the ocean bottom. The water is so cold that there’s virtually no temperature gradient. Sound energy travels straight to the bottom and, if you’re lucky, might reflect back up to be detected. Add to that the noise caused by ice floes, icebergs calving, and hordes of snapping shrimp, and you’ve got a virtually sonar-proof environment.”
“So that’s the reason for the Aleutian Island stations. But how does that fit in with Greenpeace?”
“Downsizing. We can’t afford to maintain all these stations, so it’s essential that we convince the American people that they’re not really needed anymore.”
“And you’re saying that’s not true?” She reached almost reflectively for her tape recorder, and then forced herself to stillness.
“I’m not saying anything. We’re off the record, remember? And as to how Greenpeace fits into this — well, they’re a very powerful organization. In the last fifteen years, they’ve developed an array of international contacts
