CARRIER 4: FLAME-OUT By Keith Douglass

have to find out if I’ve still got the guts to do it or not. And it’s

something I can only work out on my own.”

As Lee left, Magruder’s thoughts went back to North Korea. Back then

issues of right and wrong, action or inaction, had all seemed so clear-cut.

Now they didn’t seem so easy to resolve.

Yet that was exactly what he had to do.

1308 hours Zulu (1308 hours Zone)

Sick Bay, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

In the southern Norwegian Sea

Fatigue and numbing cold … gray skies and an angry gray sea … those

were Coyote’s world. A part of him thought he was trapped in a dream, in the

old familiar nightmare, but another part insisted that it was all too real.

The water had been icy, sucking the warmth right out of him as he

struggled into the life raft and fought to control his panic. He needed a

cool head to stay alive, a cool head and his survival training.

Coyote remembered cradling his RIO to him, seeing the striped helmet

hanging at an impossible angle, knowing that the man was dead yet unwilling to

accept it. But no … John-Boy had helped him into the raft out there in the

rolling waters of the Atlantic, had helped him later when he couldn’t get his

hands to work to attach the harness so that the SAR copter could hoist him

aboard.

Two dreams, then … that was it. His RIO had died in the waters off

North Korea, but John-Boy had lived through it to help him when he needed it.

Through the fog of a half-dream other memories played against one another.

The harness cutting into him as the SAR copter lifted him aboard … the

mustard-colored uniforms of the Oriental soldiers dragging him onto the deck

of the North Korean patrol craft … One dream blended with another until

Coyote no longer knew which was which.

He remembered the prison camp, the brutal guards, the beating. They had

finished with him and marched him into the yard outside, and there they had

prepared him for execution. Julie … he’d held on to thoughts of Julie, and

with her picture in his mind he’d accepted the idea of death, but when the

guards pulled their triggers the only sound had been the snicking of bolts on

empty chambers. A mock execution, designed to break him down …

Coyote came fully awake with a start, disoriented, confused, soaked with

sweat. It took a long moment to get his bearings, to realize he was still in

Sick Bay, safe after being fished out of the Atlantic following the ordeal of

the battle with the overpowering Russian forces.

“Hey, Coyote, you okay?” John-Boy asked from the next bed, sitting up and

looking concerned.

“Yeah … yeah, I’m okay,” Grant replied, knowing he sounded anything but

convincing. “Just … a bad dream.”

He shuddered and turned over, unwilling to face John-Boy, but equally

unwilling to go back to sleep. He had dreamed much the same dream every night

for six months after the end of the Wonsan fighting. He’d spent a long time

getting over Korea before finally driving himself to return to the carrier and

face his fears, and in the skies over the Indian Ocean he’d proven that he

still had the old edge. The dreams had come back from time to time, but over

the months they had finally faded away.

Now he was dreaming again. When his Tomcat had finally given up the

ghost he and John-Boy had punched out, close enough to the carrier to make a

recovery fairly easy. Still, the same chill waters that had dragged Jolly

Greene to his death after the crash on the flight deck had nearly claimed

Coyote as well, and would have had it not been for John-Boy’s help. This time

help had been close at hand, but the parallels with Korea were still vivid.

Someday his luck would run out. He would fly out on a mission and never

make it back. Like Greene … or Baird … or Stramaglia.

In that camp in Korea Coyote had thought he’d made his peace with death.

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