would have objected to it?and right now, sitting back there in D.C., he knows I would have been right. There were more advantages than his uncle had suspected to having a relative on the front lines, but this time the advantage was Tombstone’s.
“Tell me what you need, Stoney.” His uncle’s voice was taut, white anger lurking underneath. It was a characteristic the Magruder males shared, the icy cold exterior that masked a hot, volatile temper few of their shipmates suspected. “Tell me what you need.”
“A free hand,” Tombstone replied promptly. “Sir, the political battles and diplomacy need to be run from D.C.?not from my carrier. I suspect we’ll have evidence in the next several hours to prove that this incident was the work of someone outside of my crew or air wing. You know it was. Admiral, I’ve got twenty-eight foreign nationals on board my ship right now, half of them from a nation that already wiped out my flagship. In spite of what State says, this is not a diplomatic problem. It’s a military one. And I’m the man on the front line. I need to know now, sir?do I have your support or not?”
“Stoney, calm down.” His uncle’s voice was quiet and reasonable now, although Tombstone could still hear the anger simmering just below the surface. “I sent you out there for a reason. And no, although you didn’t say so, I didn’t tell you everything. The final details weren’t arranged when you left, but I suspected exactly this sort of ploy by the State Department, some sort of planning conference held on board your ship. I couldn’t put someone else out there, Stoney?I just couldn’t. The only one I can trust to give me a solid reaction, to do what I would have done if I were there, is you.”
“So where does that leave us, Uncle?” Tombstone asked, his own anger deflated by the anguish he heard in his uncle’s voice. “Where does that leave us?”
“With one slightly damaged but damned dangerous aircraft carrier,” his uncle replied immediately. “And it leaves me with some ammunition. If you need any scientific or forensic assistance, just say so. Otherwise, I’ve got what I need?proof that State Department’s ploy isn’t going to work. In the end, we’re going to save lives because of this, lives that would have been wasted on some NATO peacekeeping plan or cockeyed idea of a presence mission. We tried it their way?now it’s our ball game.”
Tombstone’s load suddenly slipped off his shoulders. That he’d been in conflict with his uncle had made him acutely uncomfortable. During the years that he’d followed his uncle up the career ladder within the Navy, he’d felt a growing closeness to the man, a new appreciation of the hurdles his uncle had cleared so handily as a junior admiral himself. Now, as the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Thomas Magruder held ultimate responsibility for the performance of the Navy. Tombstone knew that, no matter how hard he tried, he could never appreciate fully the pressure his uncle operated under. Sure, now that he’d had his own tours as a flag officer, he might begin to understand it?but never really understand, not unless he ended up sitting in that seat himself someday.
“Admiral, this is what I’d like to do.”
Briefly, Tombstone outlined his plan.
“Make it happen,” his uncle said instantly. “Here are your steaming orders?the formal Rules of Engagement amendments will follow, but for now I want you to know this. First, you will take all precautions necessary to prevent another attack on the carrier. I’m not there, and you’re on scene. I’ll let you make the call as to what that exactly entails. The tactical situation changes too rapidly for us to micromanage it from here. You make the call, Stoney?I’ll back you up. Second, try to stabilize the situation there.”
Tombstone started to protest, and his uncle cut him off.
“I know that’s a broad order, but again?I’m not here to micromanage. You need to start with finding out exactly what happened in the attack on La Salle and go from there. You can’t do that if you take any more damage. Those are your priorities, Admiral. Do you have any questions?”
“No, Admiral.” Tombstone’s voice was grim. “We won’t take the first hit?not ever. You can be sure of that. And I’ll do my best to get to the bottom of the rest of this tactical situation. As soon as I know anything, you’ll hear about it.”
“I expect no less.” His uncle’s voice took on a note of vicious glee. “And now I’m going to go cram your damaged catapult up somebody’s ass.”
Yuri walked back to the stateroom that he shared with the other senior Ukrainian representative. They followed a circuitous route, following behind a young seaman designated to guide them around the areas damaged by the bomb. Down two ladders, aft forty frames, then back up to the main 03 level. The acrid smell of smoke had already infiltrated the lower decks, although it was markedly less overpowering than it was on his own level.
It seemed to Yuri that his situation on board the carrier was increasingly precarious. His enemies were closing all around, both militarily and politically. The Turks as well as the Ukrainians were housed in this section of the carrier in a row of guest suites that ran partway down the corridor. He intercepted uneasy looks from them, pointedly accusing in some cases. He shook his head, trying to push away his fears. They couldn’t know?they couldn’t. There’d been no indications on his mission that he’d been detected at all, not even by his own radar.
And now the matter of the bomb. The missile, then the bomb?if the Americans uncovered any evidence, any at all, he dreaded to think what his future would hold. In his own country, there would have been a summary execution following a trial that might have lasted fifteen minutes.
Although he’d heard protests to the contrary, and seen some evidence on his own while on board the carrier, he had no real deep conviction that in the end the Americans would deal any differently with him than his own country would have.
How had he gotten involved in this?
His mind circled around that one question, trying to find a point at which to begin to think about it. All he was was a pilot, someone who wanted to strap a MiG on his ass and take huge bites out of airspace. He was a pilot. Yes, trained in tactics, trained to kill other aircraft. But in reality he suspected he had more in common with the American aviators than he did his superiors in Ukraine.
He’d seen the looks on the Americans’ faces as they walked the corridors on the way to the flight deck, watched them as they talked about the powerful Tomcat. At one point over dinner, the unreasoning impulse to join in the conversation had shook him like a strong gale. The urge to talk about airplanes, about flying, about all of the things that made life worthwhile for an aviator. From the carefully edited remarks and unclassified stories he’d heard in the mess, he knew that he had more in common with these aviators than anyone would have expected.
And the missile?God, the missile. The briefing had simply said that it was an advanced model, intended to detonate near the flagship. He’d thought it was conventional, had no reason to expect otherwise. There’d been none of the precautions he would have expected with a nuclear warhead, not the dosimeters, not the special protective gear, not the post-mission medical checks?nothing. Had that been meant to allay his fears, to deceive him?
Or was it simply evidence of what he’d come to know as a complete lack of concern on the part of his government for the people who worked around fissionable material.
It was an old joke, one grounded in cold, hard reality: Sailing on a Russian or Ukrainian nuclear submarine was never a family tradition. Too true, since the lead shielding surrounding the reactor had been cut back to minimal levels to allow more space for weapons and higher speeds. The residual radiation leaking into the submarine living spaces was enough to induce a high rate of cancer and sterility in the men who sailed in her.
And what about him?
How much had he been exposed to, flying with that thing on his wing all those hours?
Probably not much, the technical part of his mind concluded. Not too much, at least.
And what would he have done if he had known it was a nuclear weapon?
Refused the mission?
He shook his head, seeing immediately the difficulties that would have opened up. Refuse one mission and spend the rest of his life tainted with the fatal label: politically unreliable.
“Perhaps there is something we can do to assist our American friends,” Yuri said to the other Ukrainian. He glanced up at the overhead, wondering if there were listening devices planted in this area. Or perhaps the seaman escorting them even spoke Ukrainian?yes, that would have been easier to arrange than surveillance along a corridor they normally would not have used. “These last two hours?I overheard one aviator say there may be a problem with one of the catapults.”
“How can we assist?” The broad, Slavic face of his compatriot looked puzzled. He gestured at the aircraft
