“I should have…” Skeeter’s voice trailed off, uncertain and wavering. He stared down at the paper, the lines delineating the Aegean Islands and surrounding waters blurring as his eyes drifted out of focus, clouded with tears. “I should have-” he tried again, searching within himself for an adequate definition of how he’d failed the ship.
“You couldn’t have.” Carey was emphatic. “He stayed outside of our engagement zone, and there was enough ambiguity in the situation that anyone might have made the same decisions. You did your best.”
Skeeter finally looked up at him. “It wasn’t good enough.”
2
Even at this early hour, the Beltway was a diamond necklace of headlights. Unmoving headlights. The attack on USS La Salle had occurred late evening Washington time, and by 0400 all roads leading into the Pentagon were tied up in what amounted to rush-hour traffic.
Rear Admiral Matthew “Tombstone” Magruder throttled his cherry GTO into neutral and set the parking brake. The traffic ahead of him had not moved in ten minutes, and he was tired of holding the powerful engine in check with the brakes. He’d spent too many hours restoring and maintaining the car over the last twenty years to take for granted the possibility of obtaining spare parts for any component in it.
Hot-and-cold-running admirals?you hear it all the time but you don’t believe it until something like this happens. Every flag staff on every deck and ring is busting ass to get in the office and show the Old Man how on top of things they are. Politicians, half of them. Wonder how much time they spend thinking about the men and women out there on the front line.
For Tombstone, the question was more than academic.
The Mediterranean was one part of the world he knew well, particularly this small corner of it. In earlier years, as CAG of Carrier Air Wing 20 on board the USS Jefferson, he’d taken his men and women into harm’s way to give air support to UN forces involved in a civil war. It had been about this time of year too?no, wait, a little later. (Carrier 7: Afterburn) October and November, if memory served. The water had taken on an icy sheen as winter approached, a harder, more brilliant shade of blue. The islands themselves were still green, basking in the warm waters that eddied and flowed around them as they had since the days of the Peloponnesian Wars. And the entrance to the Black Sea itself?the narrow funnel of Bosphorus that opened into what the Russians had once considered their own private lake.
Not that Turkey had agreed. He grimaced at the memory. The Battle of Kerch as it was now called had ended with a clear victory for the American battle group and the Marine expeditionary unit that accompanied them.
However, the odds of maintaining a permanent peace among the nations bordering the Black Sea seemed slight. To the north, there was Ukraine. Once a part of the Soviet Union, this newly independent state was suffering the ravages of decades of Communist rule. Its people were an odd mixture of European and Asian cultures. It was also the home of the legendary Cossacks he’d confronted so recently in the Aleutian Islands. (Carrier 9: Arctic Fire)
In that conflict, he’d found that the legendary savagery of their warriors had not been exaggerated.
The recent political maneuverings between Ukraine and Russia gave him no reason to feel confident about the Black Sea nation’s future.
Politically and culturally, the two nations were close. Russia had already provided some evidence of her determination to re-form the former Soviet Union, albeit encompassing a slightly smaller area. Belarus had already been reabsorbed into the Russian hegemony, and Ukraine appeared to be not far behind. Despite Ukraine’s protestations of democracy and prayers at the altar of capitalism, the tenets of socialism were too deeply ingrained in its culture for anyone to expect any miracles.
The other nations surrounding the Black Sea were just as worrisome.
Turkey held the southern coast of the Black Sea, and for that reason had been for years the recipient of massive American foreign aid. The pundits in Washington called her the gatekeeper to the back door of the Mediterranean, and permanent military missions as well as ongoing technical support were a routine part of the relationships between the two nations.
However, like many nations in the region, Turkey was moving away from the centered, global approach to politics and toward a hard-line fundamentalist Islamic approach. With it came the ever-so-subtle realignment of attitudes. While formal treaties and alliances remained in place, in recent years Turkey had begun to view American support as an unwanted and unwelcome intrusion. Not the money, not the technology?just the influx of Western culture. As a result, Turkey appeared to be moving away from the Western world and reestablishing her ties with Iraq and Iran.
Finally, the west coast of the Black Sea. Bulgaria and Romania shared that coast, and both had substantial ties to Ukraine.
And Greece. The ancient nation, with its smattering of islands and reefs, comprised the western border of the Aegean Sea, the entrance to the Black Sea, while Turkey held the east. Since ancient times, the Aegean Sea had been a naval battleground of renown. Through the Aegean and into the Black Sea via the Bosphorus was a trade route as old as history could record, and it had been the site of the final battles between the Greek and Roman empires.
No, there was no reason to be surprised that trouble was brewing again in this part of the world. History has a memory, and those lessons that nations failed to learn they were doomed to repeat.
The car ahead of him moved forward several feet. Tombstone pulled the gearshift back to Drive and closed the gap between them. Traffic stopped again. He sighed and reset the parking brake. No sense in wasting time.
He reached across the well-cared-for vinyl seat and drew a small notebook out of his briefcase. “At least some skills you learn as an aviator come in useful later,” he remarked aloud, more to keep himself company than for any other reason. “Keep up the scan?that’s the first rule.”
He positioned the legal pad on his lap and began making notes, shifting his gaze between the paper and the traffic ahead.
Thirty minutes later, following a check of his ID card by the Marine guard, Tombstone pulled into his designated parking spot near the main entrance to the Pentagon. At the entrance, he went through another ID check line, which included a check of his briefcase. The Marine Corps guard was polite, formal, but doggedly thorough.
When he finally reached his temporary office, it was almost 0500. The rabbit warren of temporary offices and cubicles that comprised the floating working staff of the Chief of Naval Operations was already lit, with at least half of the spaces occupied.
Tombstone parked his briefcase in the private office he’d been assigned for the duration of his temporary duty, and headed for the Chief of Staff’s office. Not surprisingly, the captain was already in.
“Morning, sir,” the Chief of Staff said. Tombstone noted he already looked drawn and haggard. How long would it be before he looked the same way himself?
Not long, he suspected. Along with every other officer assigned to the Pentagon, Tombstone would be living at his desk or in the command center until this crisis was resolved.
And as for Tomboy?her recall to her squadron had come only moments after his own notification of the incident in the Aegean Sea. Her flight back to Pax River would leave at 0700. Any chance they’d had of stealing some time away from their busy careers for each other had vanished as quickly as that unknown contact had blipped onto La Salle’s radar.
“Is he in?” Tombstone asked, gesturing toward the Chief of Naval Operations’ office after acknowledging the Chief of Staff’s greeting.
The Chief of Staff nodded. “He just got back from the JCS briefing. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Tombstone paused outside the paneled door, wondering how many other nephews in the world had to be announced in to see their favorite uncles.
