flights.
They went back a long way, Magruder and Grant, all the way back to flight
school. Over the years the two of them had been rivals in almost everything,
and a lasting friendship had grown up between them along the way. Grant had
won their competition for the heart of Julie Wilson, but Tombstone had been
best man at their Navy wedding. Then Magruder had won the coveted assignment
to Top Gun, narrowly beating out Grant in the squadron competitions for the
honor. Tombstone had been a step ahead of Grant when it came to promotions,
making lieutenant commander and squadron leader of VF-95 after his graduation
from Top Gun. It hadn’t changed their friendship, though. Far from
begrudging Magruder his advancement, Grant had been delighted for his friend.
He had secretly wondered, though, if he himself hadn’t been the lucky one of
the pair. What he had with Julie was something he wouldn’t have given up for
all the stripes in the Navy, and by the same token there had always been a
restless, questing part of Matt Magruder that was never entirely at ease no
matter how much he achieved.
They’d been reunited in the Vipers for Jefferson’s Pacific deployment,
and it was that cruise that had changed them both forever. While Tombstone
was scoring ACM kills over North Korea and starting on the hero’s path, Grant
had been shot down in the first engagement of the confrontation. Captured by
the enemy he’d been thrown into a prison camp alongside the crew of the
American spy ship that had triggered the crisis. The Marine rescue mission to
Wonsan had freed him along with the others, but afterward Grant had come close
to turning in his wings. He had come too close to death to ever take
anything, especially his happiness with Julie, lightly again.
The one thing that had pulled him through that time of crisis had been
Magruder’s unyielding faith in him. In the fraternity of naval aviators there
was little sympathy for the men who cracked under the strain, who showed even
a hint of human weakness. But Tombstone Magruder hadn’t turned his back on
Grant, and in the end, recovered from his ordeal, Grant had returned to VF-95
in time to fight side by side with Tombstone again in the skies over the
Indian Ocean.
It was a debt he would never be able to fully repay. Grant loved flying,
and looking back now he knew that he would never have forgiven himself if he’d
gone through with that first impulse to quit.
A plane captain clad in a brown shirt had joined Magruder, and was
nodding sagely at something Tombstone was pointing out to him. The Tomcat’s
RIO, looking painfully young and unsure of himself, lingered for a few moments
looking uncertainly at Tombstone before he finally started for the carrier’s
island.
Then Tombstone was finished with his inspection and starting off in the
younger officer’s wake, heading toward Grant but apparently not aware of him.
Grant stepped in front of him, drew up to attention, and tore off a snappy
salute. “Deputy CAG, Sir!” he said. “VF-95 welcomes you aboard, Sir!”
The look on Magruder’s face was a joy to behold. Bewilderment, then
surprise, then sheer joy spread across his features in quick succession.
“Coyote!” he said, using Grant’s well-worn call sign. “God damn, Coyote, what
a perfect welcoming committee! I didn’t even know you were still on the
Jeff!”
“There’s still a few of us here, Matt,” Grant told him, grinning.
Despite the best of intentions they’d lost touch over the past two years.
Magruder wasn’t much of a correspondent at the best of times, and Coyote could
imagine how easy it had been for him to put off writing letters in the face of
day after day of piled-up paperwork. Though he’d tried to keep up his end,
eventually Grant had started letting the contact slide as well. That had been
about the time Julie Marie had been born. “Batman and Malibu would’ve been
here too, but they had a Bear hunt tonight. We were afraid we’d lost you to
the old five-sided squirrel cage forever!”
Magruder’s smile faded. “Biggest mistake I ever made, letting myself get
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