been her idea, but she made no move to break away.
“I’m sorry, Pamela,” he said. “I had no idea …”
“How could you?” She took a step back and looked up into his face,
searching. “Tombstone, I … I really was interested in you during the
interview. Not as a hero. Not as some kind of target in a campaign
against government waste. As a person. I can disagree with a national
policy and still see you as a … as a person, can’t I?” She’d almost
said “friend,” and wasn’t sure why she’d changed the word at the last
instant. Pamela had not felt this confused in a long time, and it
embarrassed her.
“I wish you would,” Tombstone said. He grinned. “Why do you think I
went to all this trouble to be with you someplace where we didn’t have a
camera staring at us?”
She looked around and was suddenly aware that several Thais nearby were
casting dark looks in their direction. “Speaking of staring …”
Tombstone followed her glance and smiled. “That custom,” he said. “They
disapprove of public displays of affection between the sexes. Even
holding hands.” He was still holding hers.
“Hey! I’ve seen guys holding hands in public here.”
“That’s different. Friends are a lot more demonstrative with each other
in public here than back Stateside. But boys and girls have to watch
their step.”
She pulled her hand free. “Maybe we should watch ours, then.” She
looked at her watch. “I should get back,” she said. Why did the words
hurt so? “They’ll think I got kidnapped or something.”
“We can catch a water taxi over here.” He pointed along the pier. There
were fewer boats now, and the remaining waterside vendors were starting
to pack up their wares. Western tourists continued to wander along the
street, though, wandering in and out of the shops and store fronts
facing the klong like brightly-colored ants on an anthill. “Come on.”
She didn’t want to go back to the hotel.
1245 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 232, over the border thirty miles northwest of U Feng
Batman sat back in his ejection seat, shaking his helmeted head sadly.
“C’mon, Malibu. Give me a break. You think I like being out here in
the boonies? Playing tag with crawlies as long as my arm?” He
shuddered. That tropical centipede he’d seen legging it across the
floor in his barracks at U Feng the night before hadn’t been quite that
big, but …
“Hey, dude,” his RIO said over the ICS. “All I know is I was enjoying
liberty call in the big B, and then I find out there’s been this here
change in orders. If they want to punish you by sending you to Siberia,
fine, but what did I do to deserve this?”
“Guilt by association, my man. You hang out with the wrong people.”
“Next time I’ll know better. Watch it. Coming up on the first TARPS
run. Switch on … cameras running.”
To Batman’s eyes, the jungle canopy below remained unbroken, mysterious
and secret. To the high-tech eyes of the camera pod slung beneath his
aircraft, however, the trees were far more transparent.
The TARPS pod consisted of a flattened, streamlined canister attached to
one of the F-14’s weapons mounts and tied in with the aircraft’s
navigational computer. TARPS could be fitted to a Tomcat in a matter of
hours and was used by the Navy to convert standard F-14 fighters to the
reconnaissance role as necessary. The pod contained a KS-87 high-speed
frame camera, a KA-99 panoramic camera, and perhaps most useful of all,
an AAD-4 infrared line scanner.
Fitted with TARPS, an F-14 could overfly suspected enemy positions and
take high-resolution recon photos which, more than once, had caught the
surprised expressions of antiaircraft gun crews as the Tomcat flew
overhead.
The lateral panoramic camera could photograph in telescopic detail broad
stretches of terrain clear to the horizon in a format which allowed
extreme enhancement and enlargement.
The AAD-5 created a line-by-line heat image of the terrain unfolding in
a continuous strip with photographic clarity, revealing everything in
the aircraft’s path within a swath which ran very nearly from horizon to