At least here she wouldn’t have to rely on portable satellite up-links with their mysterious grumblings and dependence on atmospheric conditions.
Istanbul boasted a fully staffed ACN office, complete with dedicated satellite dishes bristling across the roof and enough telephone line to satisfy any reporter. Sometimes too much technology was more of a pain in the ass than a help. The main bureau in Memphis tended to clamp down during breaking stories, trying to micromanage the stories pouring out of a war.
If they could just get the politics out of the way, the interminable ACN maneuverings for status and position, she thought wearily, she might even be able to figure out what the hell was going on.
She strode into the office, chin high and carriage erect, quickly scanning the crowded room for the man she wanted. There he was, encased in his glass cubicle at the back, talking on the telephone while waving a rancid Turkish cigarette in the air. She grimaced, wishing the health-conscious mandates of the ACN Stateside offices had made it out this far. Still, his disgusting personal habits were of less concern than his approach to the current crisis.
Without asking permission, she strode to the back of the room and shoved open his door. “Mike,” she said warmly, “how good to see you again.”
The man waved one hand at her, and motioned toward a seat. He finished off a conversation in clipped, guttural Turkish, then replaced the receiver and turned to greet her. “Pamela, I wondered how long it would be till you turned up.”
He made a vague gesture toward the rest of the newsroom. “We’ve been taking bets on it, as a matter of fact. If you’d waited another two hours, I’d be eighty bucks richer.”
Pamela laughed. “It’s your own fault, Mike. You should have known better after all the times we’ve worked together.”
And he should have, she thought, studying him carefully. If not from personal experience, at least from her legendary reputation within ACN.
Anyone who bet on Pamela Drake being late to the fight was sorely misguided.
The years had been harder on Mike than they had on her, she was pleased to note. Deep furrows creased his forehead, and the curly dark hair was streaked with gray in an oddly puzzling pattern: random patches of white frost in between stretches of glossy dark hair, giving him a harlequin look.
It would be a mistake to let that mislead you, though, she thought.
His eyes were the same sharp, peculiar shade of light brown, piercing and knowing. He smiled, revealing perfectly formed teeth slightly stained with nicotine.
The ACN Istanbul office, while fully staffed, was a small operation.
There were five reporters, a handful of multitalented technicians, and Mike. He was double-hatted as both the bureau chief and the producer, overseeing all aspects of the operations in the area.
“How can we help you?” he queried, holding out his hand. “Always delighted to have you grace us with your presence, of course.”
She slipped into the chair, relieved that at least initially there wouldn’t be any wearying battles over who she worked for?or 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 it?are 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 here?have 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 her?the 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 backseat?but 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 accurate?totally 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
