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.
2000 hours, 16 January
The Dusit Thani Hotel, Bangkok
“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