In any case, she’d gone back to the World and her newscaster career,
while Jefferson had continued her deployment. The crisis in India a few
months later had added to strains. Pamela had once had a brother, a young
Marine who had died in the 1983 truck bombing of his barracks in Beirut.
Apparently she’d been afraid of losing another loved one to the military, and
had been pulling all kinds of strings Stateside to find Tombstone a career, a
safe career, driving jets for a civilian airline.
But India had convinced Tombstone once and for all of the necessity of
what he was doing. Not that some other young Navy aviator couldn’t do the job
as well, but he knew that if he turned his back on Navy aviation, he would
always feel, deep down, that he’d somehow faced the ultimate challenge of
manhood and character … and failed.
And Tombstone hated the idea of failure.
So when he’d returned to the States, he’d told Pamela that he’d made up
his mind. If she married him, she would be marrying a Naval aviator, not a
pilot for United.
Bad tactics, he’d decided later. She’d turned him down cold. He’d seen
her a time or two after that while he’d been stationed in Washington, but the
spark, the promise had been gone. Since then … nothing.
So why did he continue to keep the damned picture on his desk? Angrily
he picked it up and tossed it into a drawer. Just thinking about those
striking eyes of hers, the way she could look into his soul …
There was a knock on his door. “Enter.”
The door opened and Coyote walked in. He was wearing khakis, his
commander’s oak leaf insignia gleaming silver at his collar in the overhead
lights. “Commander Grant reporting as ordered, CAG.”
“Pull up a chair, Coyote,” Tombstone said, gesturing to the only other
chair in the compartment. Coyote looked terrible, worn and drawn. “How are
you feeling, guy?”
“Dr. Wainwright certified me fit for duty, CAG.”
“I know. I saw his recommendation. But how are you?”
Coyote drew a deep breath, let it go. “Okay. A bit shaky, but okay.”
“That was quite a landing.”
He smiled weakly. “I think I got a cut on that one.” The LSO graded
every trap aboard a carrier. The possible scores, recorded for all to see on
the squadron’s greenie board, were “okay” and “fair” for acceptable
approaches, “no grade” for a pass that could have endangered the pilot or his
aircraft, and “cut,” which meant the trap could have ended in disaster.
“Well, you know what they say about any landing you can walk away from.”
“But I didn’t walk. I was carried.” Coyote’s face fell. “And
John-Boy-”
“They say he was killed by one of those Fulcrums,” Tombstone said.
“Piece of a thirty em-em went through his seat and cut his aorta, just below
his heart. The doc says he bled to death internally in a few seconds. There
was nothing you could’ve done.”
“Yeah.” Coyote’s expression was dark. “Maybe so. Sir.”
Tombstone studied the man a moment. Coyote was wearing a suit of armor,
armor so thick he couldn’t read him. Once the two of them had been best
friends, stationed together in California, dating the same girl … hell, he’d
been best man at Coyote’s wedding. Tombstone had always been able to tell
what Coyote was thinking.
No more. Somehow, their friendship had never been the same since
Tombstone had returned to the Jeff as Deputy CAG. There was a distance now,
as though Coyote resented him.
It was true what they said, that there was a loneliness that came with
command. Maybe, Tombstone thought, a CAG couldn’t afford to get too familiar
with the men he commanded. His orders that afternoon had sent three men to
their deaths and had very nearly killed Coyote as well. Hell, that bad
touchdown on the flight deck this afternoon had come that close to killing a
dozen men and badly damaging the Jefferson herself. It had been God’s own
luck that no one on the flight deck had been injured, or that the 201 bird
hadn’t slid into the parked Intruders in a spectacular fireball, or that the