Afterburn

CHAPTER 15

God, I’m not ready for this, Pamela told herself as they rode in the backseat of the car up a winding, cliff-top road. Why did he have to be here? Why was I so stupid as to agree to meet him for dinner?

She really wasn’t ready for the confrontation she knew was coming.

Looking sideways at his profile, she had to admit that she still liked him… a lot. Hell, she loved him, but love wasn’t always enough. It would have been great if they could’ve made things work out, but by now Pamela knew that they wouldn’t be able to. She wasn’t about to give up her career, and though she’d been trying for years now to convince Matt that his career was a dead end, she’d finally woken up and realized that the man was simply never going to change.

Matt Magruder was married to the U.S. Navy. It had been that way since she had met him, and so far as she could tell it was always going to be that way. Sometimes she thought the guy had saltwater in his veins instead of blood. Or jet fuel; he loved flying as much as he loved the sea, though he didn’t get to fly as much these days as he had in the past. Still, she’d found the combination of sea and flying impossible to compete with.

And Pamela knew that she was simply not cut out to be a Navy wife.

“You’re awfully quiet,” he told her. He sounded worried, on edge. Maybe he’d already guessed what she was thinking. He’d always been pretty quick on the uptake.

Except when she was trying to get him to see the futility of his continuing career with the Navy.

“I’m pretty tired,” she told him. It wasn’t entirely a lie. “They’ve had us on the run ever since the Georgia thing came up.”

“Is that what you were coming over to cover in the first place?”

“Sort of. The UN peace initiative was being covered okay by Mike Collins and some of our other field people. But then that Army helicopter got shot down.

He nodded. “Big news Stateside, huh?”

“Navy jets shoot down Army helo? I should say so. Those were your planes, weren’t they?”

“They were off the Jefferson, yes. Remember Batman?”

“Of course.”

“He pulled the trigger.”

“God. What happened?”

“is this an official interview?”

She sighed. He tended to get so touchy when she asked probing questions.

“Strictly off the record. I was just wondering.”

“It was an accident,” he said.

Well, she’d known that. She made a face. “I didn’t think you’d done it on purpose.”

“Someone screwed up between Washington and the Black Sea,” he said, looking away at the landscape passing outside. “The IFF codes for that Army helicopter didn’t get delivered. We’re taking steps to make sure the same mistake doesn’t happen again.”

She glanced up at the driver, sitting behind the wheel of the Zil. He was obviously listening in on the conversation.

Tombstone saw her look and smiled. “Don’t worry about the driver. He’s just the FBS’s local spy. Isn’t that right, Abdulhalik?”

“Hey, I just work here,” the swarthy man said, flashing a dazzling grin.

“Your secrets are safe with me!”

“Right.” He turned back to her. “I assume he’s FBS, anyway. But what happened to that helo’s no secret. They probably know all about that. Right, Abdulhalik?”

“Low-grade stuff,” the driver replied. “Doubt that they pay me more than eight, ten thousand ruble. Now, if you want to tell me how many nuclear weapons are on aircraft carrier…”

“Not a chance. Drive, okay?”

“I drive!”

Pamela looked away in disgust. Silly macho games. Those two were actually enjoying their banter!

It was growing dark by the time the aging Zil rental car got them to the cliff-top aerie known as Lastochinko Gnezdo, the Swallow’s Nest, perched high atop the rocky cliff overlooking the sea.

“It looks like a German castle,” Pamela said as Tombstone held the car’s door open for her. “Or someone’s twisted idea of what a German castle should look like.”

“It is,” he said, grinning. “It was built for Baron Steingel, a rich German oil magnate, back in 1912. Photographs of this place must grace every Crimean travel brochure printed since World War I.” He turned to the driver, pulling his billfold from his jacket and extracting some bills. “Here you go. You’ll pick us up?”

“I be right here, Tombstone.” He dug an elbow against Tombstone’s ribs.

“Hey, don’t know how you American Navy do it,” he continued, lowering his voice… apparently on the assumption that Pamela couldn’t hear his conspiratorial semi-whisper. “Two girls in one day! A-okay, man!”

“Never mind the performance critique,” Tombstone told him brusquely.

“Give us a couple of hours, right?”

“A-okay! I be here!”

Pamela pretended to study the architecture. It really did look a little like a fairy-tale castle, perched on the very edge of the cliff. The western sky, beyond the town of Gaspra and the peaceful waters of the sea, was turning pink and blood-red. “It looks familiar,” she told him.

“Did you ever see the movie Ten Little Indians? Agatha Christie?”

“Yes.”

“This is where it was shot. There’s a cafe and restaurant here now.” He took her arm. “Come on.”

And that, Pamela thought with a tightening of her lips, was exactly like the man, always sweeping in and taking charge, as though she and everyone else were just more aviators in his air wing.

The interior was overdone, heavy on the schmaltz and red carpeting. “The people at the hotel said they get a lot of tourists here,” Tombstone told her. “If we get a waiter who only speaks Russian, I’m going to be lost.”

“Well, it’s nice to know you’re not perfect at everything.”

“Sorry?”

“Never mind.”

The waiters did speak English ― or at least the one who served them did.

Most Russian food was actually rather bland, but the Turkish influence in the Crimea could not be missed. They both had shashlik ― chunks of seasoned lamb grilled on a skewer, like Turkish shish kebab. Conversation was limited to news topics ― the new woman Secretary of Defense, the UN mission in Georgia, the return of the Russian submariners to the Crimea.

They stayed away from anything personal, as if by mutual consent.

“So the Russian submarine sailors are all back in Sevastopol?” she asked him, spearing a chunk of lamb.

“As far as I know. They started ferrying them in from the Jefferson early this morning and were scheduled to be finished up by now. I haven’t heard one way or the other, though.”

“And that was really an accident, too? Like the helicopter?”

His fork paused halfway between his plate and his mouth, then completed the trip. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment before answering. “Kind of,” he said. “Our sub was acting within its rights, and within the limits of its orders. Its sonar picked up what sounded like a torpedo launch.”

“Wasn’t it already too late, then? Sinking the Russian sub was just vengeance by that time, wasn’t it?”

“Not really. If it had fired a torpedo at that range, it probably would have been wire-guided, which meant that sinking the sub would stop the torpedo. Our people acted exactly right.” He hesitated again, then tried a disarming grin. “You’re not accusing me of being a warmonger now, are you?”

“No, of course not. But it does make me wonder what the Navy is doing out here. You chalk up two kills, and both of them are mistakes.”

“Believe me, I’ve been wondering the same thing.”

“You sound bitter.”

“I guess I am. There are people in Washington, our defense secretary among them, who still want to use the U.S. military for social experimentation. That’s wrong. They want to loan U.S. troops out to the UN for humanitarian projects.”

“Like Georgia and the Crimea.”

“Like Georgia and the Crimea. Why don’t they loan us out to the Red Cross and the Camp Fire Girls as well?”

“What’s wrong with humanitarian programs?”

“Nothing. Except that that’s not what we’re for, not what we’re trained for. It’s a waste of resources, misusing us this way. It’s also dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” She thought he was exaggerating. “How?”

“Because each warm and fuzzy mission like this one, each make-work deployment, extends our resources a little farther. Weakens us a bit more. And because somewhere back in Washington, someone is trying to hammer our square peg into his round hole. When mission parameters are vague, when orders are jumbled or self-contradictory, when there’s more politics involved than fighting, well, that leads to mistakes. Bad ones.”

“Like the one that got the helicopter shot down.”

“Exactly. It also means that someday a real crisis is going to come up, one that only the military can solve. And we won’t be able to do it because we’re going to be tied down with relief efforts in Mongolia, or carrying out a UN mission in Uzbekistan, or God knows what else.”

She shook her head. “It won’t get that bad.”

“Won’t it? Reagan wanted to build a fifteen-carrier, six-hundred-ship Navy. He wasn’t able to, and his successors in office, along with Congress, managed to gut the Navy building program, especially once the Soviet Union fell apart and everybody was looking for the so-called peace dividend.”

“It was decided twelve would be enough.”

“Who decided?” He shrugged. “Congress, I guess. We’ve never had more than twelve carriers, and with the need to send them in for refit and modernization every so often, what’s called the SLEP program, we usually don’t have more than ten on active duty at any one time. Ideally, half of those carriers are deployed around the world, while the other half are home-ported, engaged in training exercises, taking on new personnel, and so on. So we have what, five? Five carriers at any one time to handle crises from the Med to the North Sea to the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf to the Far East. In fact, we often have to cut the Stateside rotation short, like we did for the Jeff last time in Norfolk. Anyway you cut it, though, we’re stretched way, way too thin. Tie up just one of our supercarriers with something like delivering food to Ethiopia, and we could have big problems if some two-bit tyrant somewhere decides he’s going to take us on.”

She shook her head. “I’m still not sure I understand why you’re upset.

I mean, a mission’s a mission, right? And it’s not up to you to worry about the politics of the thing. The military is supposed to stay separate from politics.”

“Pamela, the five-thousand-and-some men and women aboard a carrier can’t just turn their personal feelings off. We’re not allowed to, oh, stage a protest in front of ACN cameras, say, or call the President a scumbag on national TV, but there’s nothing that says we can’t have our own opinions. About the decisions that hang us out to dry in impossible situations. And about the politicians who put us there.”

“But surely you don’t have to-” she began, then cut herself off. It was always the same whenever they talked about politics, particularly politics as they affected the military. They were worlds apart in their ideas, and while there was nothing that said that husband and wife had to always agree on things, when the things they disagreed about affected their daily lives… Well, it was just another indication of how this relationship would not, could not work.

“Matt,” she said, looking across at him and then quickly down at her plate. She’d been avoiding this all evening. She couldn’t put it off any longer. “Look, Matt,” she said. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since you left last time. I just… I just don’t think it’s going to work out for us.”

He said nothing, and when she looked up and met his eyes, she saw only a carefully maintained mask, with no emotion whatsoever. “I am not Navy-wife material,” she continued. “I need a relationship, not an occasional house-guest. I need a person, not letters that leave me wondering if I’m ever going to see you again. I need someone who’s there for me, not some guy who just shows up on my doorstep once every six or eight months for a quick bang and maybe breakfast the next morning.” She stopped, breathing hard, her fists clenched. Now that she’d started letting out the anger and the hurt and the gnawing frustration, it was almost more than she could do to hold the flood in check. Damn, she hadn’t realized there was so much bitterness penned up inside of her!

“I never thought that what we had was just a ‘quick bang,’ Pamela.” He sounded hurt. There was no petulance there, but she could hear a coldness, a hardness that she’d never heard in his voice before.

“How do you think it is for me? You’re home for maybe six months. I’m just getting used to having you around, and then I blink twice and poof! You’re gone. For six months. Maybe nine months. Damn it, Matt, I can’t live like that!”

“Pamela, I-“

“A friend of mine, Mike Berrens, did a human-interest story last spring when your battle group got back from the Kola. On the wives and sweethearts waiting at home. And on what a hell their lives were, particularly the wives, trying to run their homes, trying to keep their families together, when their men were gone half the time or more. I took another look at that story after you left, and that’s when I knew I could never live like that.”

“But, Pamela, it’s different with us-” He put up a hand as she started to continue. “Damn it, let me get a word in! I know most Navy wives have a really hard time. Coyote’s marriage is pretty rocky right now, and for just the reasons you’ve been talking about. I was best man at his wedding, and it really hurts to see things falling apart for them.

“But, look, you’re different from Julie. I mean, she’s a wonderful woman, but she has nothing outside her family. You have a career, and you’re damned good at what you do. I would never ask you to give that up, you know that. Yet you expect me to be willing to give up my career for you!”

His voice was rising as he spoke, and growing more and more angry. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d been bottling things up.

She shook her head, the worst of her own anger already drained. “I’m beyond that, Matt. I know you won’t give up the Navy. It’s a part of you, and you wouldn’t be who you are, wouldn’t be the… be the man I love, if you were the kind of guy who could give it up easily. But it’s one of the things that just makes us completely incompatible.”

He looked up sharply, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “You still love me?

Then…”

Pamela took his hand and held it for a brief moment. “Sometimes…

sometimes love just isn’t enough, Matt.”

She released his hand and sat back. “Matt, I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other while you’re here in Yalta, but I really think it best if we not see each other… that way again. It’s… it really has been wonderful knowing you, and I’m sorry it has to end this way. But it does have to end. Now.”

The rest of the dinner was completed in an uncomfortable near-silence and was cut short before dessert or the obligatory after-dinner tea.

All the way back to the hotel, she could feel the tension winding up inside of him.

Tombstone was still digesting what had passed between him and Pamela that evening. He didn’t know what to say, was afraid to say anything for fear that either he or she would explode.

He’d known she was hurt by his frequent absences, knew she didn’t like them, knew she’d rather he left the Navy… but he’d never imagined it coming to this.

“Good night, Pamela,” he told her in the hotel lobby. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, sailor,” she said with something approaching her old twinkle. “It has been fun. At least until recently.”

“Yeah.”

She turned and walked away toward the elevator.

Tombstone turned and started for the stairwell, less because he still mistrusted Russian elevators than because the thought of riding up several floors in close proximity to Pamela was suddenly unendurable. The prostitutes were gone, at least, he was relieved to see.

As he started up the first flight, however, he was aware of a sudden movement at his back.

“Stoy! Nee sheeveleetes!”

Tombstone turned, looking down at a young man ― he probably wasn’t out of his teens ― with long, wildly disheveled hair and a knife held threateningly in his right hand.

“Rukee wayrh!” His right hand held the knife, weaving it back and forth at Tombstone’s throat. The left was extended, palm up. “Ya hachu den’gee!”

“I don’t speak Russian,” Tombstone told the youth, keeping his voice cold and level. “Understand? La plaha, uh, ya plaha gavaryu!”

“Money!” the boy repeated, and he rubbed the fingers of his left hand together in a universal sign. “Money! Dollar! You give!”

It was almost ridiculously easy, given that he was already on the first step of the stairway, and the kid was waving the knife carelessly less than a foot away, well inside Tombstone’s reach. Had it been a pistol the kid was waving, Tombstone would not have considered doing what he did next. He was neither a brawler nor a practitioner of martial arts, but he outweighed the kid by at least thirty pounds, and his reflexes were those of an aviator.

Besides, he was in no mood to be pushed around.

“Da,” he said, nodding and reaching up with his left hand to open the front of his jacket. “Da. I give.”

The kid’s eyes gleamed and he stepped closer as if to grab the expected wallet from the inside jacket pocket himself. Instead, Tombstone lashed up and across with his left forearm, blocking the knife hand and smashing it aside; he pivoted left with the movement, shooting his right fist up and hard against the underside of the kid’s jaw.

The blow smashed the would-be mugger backward and into a cement-block wall. Tombstone was on him an instant later, slamming him twice more against the cement, hard, as the knife clattered to the floor. He threw another punch and the kid’s head lolled to the side.

He let him slide to the floor then, face bloody. Tombstone picked up the knife, rammed the tip hard into a crevice between two concrete blocks, then applied pressure until the blade snapped with a sharp, metallic report.

He dropped the useless hilt on the unconscious kid’s chest. “Sorry, fella,” he said. “But I’ve had a really bad day.”