He could hear the eagerness in the young voice, and remembered the first
time he’d been on one of the flights the Navy called a “Bear hunt.” That had
been almost three years back now, during the crisis in North Korea. He could
still remember his own enthusiasm that day … and the chewing out his
squadron commander had given him after he had pulled a foolish stunt that had
almost resulted in a collision between his Tomcat and the Russian bomber they
were investigating.
“Hold on, there, nugget,” Batman said. “This isn’t a game, Tyrone. You
fly this by the book, got it?” He heard Malibu snort, a comment on Batman
telling anyone to fly by the book, but ignored it.
But Powers was suitably deflated. “Aye, aye, sir,” he said. “By the
book.”
I’m starting to sound like old Tombstone, Batman thought with a grin. He
could still remember Matt Magruder’s harsh words after that Bear hunt over the
Sea of Japan. I don’t have room on this team for a goddamned hotdog! the
squadron leader had said, We’re already in the middle of one crisis. The last
thing we need now is dragging the Russians into it!
It had been a rough beginning, but he and Magruder had come out of the
mess in North Korea as friends. Now Batman was Executive Officer of VF-95, a
graduate of the Navy’s famous Top Gun school, and for all of his showmanship
he had learned the value of caution and teamwork. If he really was starting
to sound like Tombstone, he thought, then he really had made something of
himself as an aviator after all.
Caution and teamwork … that would have to be the watchword tonight.
Bear flights over the Atlantic were nothing new. They’d been a familiar
routine all through the Cold War and well after the day the Berlin Wall came
down. There had been times in the past when American pilots would swap
signals with the Russian Bear crews, even talk on the radio. Some old-timers
told about incidents where one side or the other would obligingly move their
aircraft around so their opponents could take home photographs for their
intelligence people.
This time, though, things were liable to be different. For the past five
days Soviet troops had been engaged in hostilities against Norway, a one-time
NATO ally and still a good friend of the United States.
That first time over the Sea of Japan Batman hadn’t really given much
thought to the crisis brewing in North Korea or how the Russians might react
to it. Like a lot of people he’d gotten out of the habit of thinking of them
as the enemy. After those exciting days near the end of 1989 when the Cold
War had suddenly come to an end, decades of fear and hate had turned overnight
into new feelings of optimism and friendship. Soviet-American cooperation had
made the victory in Operation Desert Storm possible, and the failure of the
hard-line coup in August 1991 had seemed to mark the end of Communism and the
beginning of a brand-new era of world history. Even after the Communists
staged a successful military takeover the following year, after harsh winter
weather and widespread famine had totally discredited the reform movement, it
had seemed that the Soviet Union would never again be able to occupy center
stage in world affairs. Communist or not, the new rulers had seemed willing
enough to get along with the West. Just a few months after his first Bear
hunt Batman had found himself flying alongside Soviet naval aviators of the
aircraft carrier Kreml during the UN intervention in the war between India and
Pakistan.
America had been too wrapped up in domestic affairs to stop the Soviets
when they renounced the agreements recognizing the independence of their
breakaway republics, and just as slow to react to the invasion of Norway, but
now tensions were running high. And Batman now understood the lesson
Tombstone Magruder had taught him back on that first cruise. The crisis in
Norway had brought Russia and America to the brink of war. Batman Wayne
didn’t plan to be the man who pushed them over the edge.