half a million people in the crowded Indian capital, and made
millions homeless.
The whole story might never be known. The world’s leaders were not eager to broadcast how close to tragedy the planet had come. It was interesting, though, that a U.S. Navy supercarrier, long seen in some quarters as a blatant symbol of American militarism, had in fact been responsible for preventing a nuclear war.
And that, of course, had been the understanding implicit in their design all along. With the decline of what had been the Soviet Union as a world power, the world was becoming more dangerous, not less. Iraq, North Korea, Thailand, and now .India and Pakistan had all proven that. More and more countries that had been tribal states warring with their neighbors a generation ago were learning how to acquire or build nuclear weapons. Tombstone had heard that there were backroom talks underway now in both Washington and Moscow, talks that might lead to some kind of permanent multinational peacekeeping force organized along the lines of the joint Russian-American task force that had brought peace to the Indian Ocean.
Maybe the world needed a strong-armed policeman for the next decade or two . . . just until its more boisterous inhabitants grew up.
Whatever happened, Tombstone knew he’d found his place. He reached up to his jacket’s breast pocket and touched the folded letter mere that had been delivered by a COD Greyhound in the mid-Atlantic. “My darling Matt! I can’t wait to see you again. I’ll be waiting for you on the dock in Norfolk when you come in, . . .”
She was waiting for him.
324
Keith Douglass
And Tombstone still didn’t know if he and Pamela had a future together. He’d deliberately not discussed his decision in his letters to her. Better to have it out face-to-face, when he saw her again. He hoped she would still have him . . . but Matthew Magruder knew now that he was a Navy aviator, that he had a place here . . . and that it was important
His,orders had already come through. He was being reassigned to Washington. And after mat . . . well, there would be a chance at a CAG slot, maybe even aboard the Jefferson when Commander Marusko moved on to his own command. It was a bright future, a good future, and one that he was willing to fight for.
United Airlines seemed far less attractive now, now that he knew that he’d made a difference, he and Batman and Coyote and the other members of VF-95.
Tombstone hoped that she would understand.
He belonged.