Countdown

EPILOGUE

The SH-3 helicopter settled gently to Jefferson's deck. Tombstone unsnapped his harness and, clutching at his cranial with one hand, jumped through the open door to the deck. Ducking to avoid the still-spinning rotor blades, he trotted across the flight deck toward the carrier's island.

Admiral Tarrant, Captain Brandt, Coyote, and several aides stood there, waiting for him.

The fighting ashore was winding down, though God alone knew how much longer it would continue. The last word he'd heard was that the Marines now held a twenty-five-mile perimeter from Polyamyy to Port Vladimir, but that they would be pulled out soon. The Marines who'd picked him and Tomboy up off the tundra had regaled him with stories of the fighting, including a hand-to-hand gunfight inside one of the huge, underground Russian sub pens.

For the Most part, it seemed, the Russian defenses were collapsing.

Dozens of their ICBM subs had already been seized, dozens more crippled or destroyed by the constant bombing raids. Everywhere, Russian troops were surrendering. The civil war had had a terribly demoralizing effect on them, and the situation had been complicated by continuing problems with logistics and poor communications. Morale throughout the Red Army was virtually nil, and some POWs brought with them tales of food shortages, of corruption or cowardice among the officers, even of mutiny and defection among the enlisted men. The crew of the Jefferson might have been facing morale problems, but nothing as serious as that.

He'd learned something else while he'd been with the Marines ashore.

Late during the previous afternoon, a Marine patrol had entered the town of Sayda Guba after a sharp, short firefight with some rather raggedly undisciplined MVD troops. There, they'd found a wire cage with Lieutenant Hanson locked inside. Gang-raped and badly beaten, she was still alive. The Marines had flown her out to the LPH Iwo Jima, which had an excellent and well-equipped three-hundred-bed sick bay. Tomboy had been heloed out to the Iwo as well, as had a badly wounded female RIO from VA-89 called Sunshine.

At last report, all three women were going to be fine… although some wounds might take longer to heal than others. Chris Hanson, he'd been told, might never recover fully, though Tombstone wasn't willing to take odds on that. Naval aviators were tough ― they had to be ― and if anyone could find the strength and resiliency and sheer willpower to bounce back from an experience like that, Tombstone thought Lobo could do it.

But… had the Great Experiment been worth it? He wondered. Women in combat. They'd proven they could take stress as well as men, or better in some cases. And in the acid test of combat, they'd shown that they were just as capable as any man they flew with. God knew they'd earned the right to fight for their country. Tombstone had never disputed that.

Balancing all of that, though, were the undeniable problems sexual integration had raised. The morale problems alone had put his entire air wing at risk, and possibly the entire battle group. If he'd learned nothing else from this episode, it was that the U.S. military was not the place for social experimentation by politicians or by liberal activist groups like DACOWITS or NOW. The Navy, for all the scandals uncovered during the past decade, for all the problems it had endured, was still America's first line of defense, the projection of America's military might that kept the ambitions of nuclear-armed madmen like Krasilnikov at arm's length.

Any nation that tampered with the efficiency and combat readiness of its military services in this day and age did so at its peril.

Tombstone reached the silently waiting commanding officer of Carrier Battle Group 14 and the men waiting with him. He saluted, then addressed Brandt. "Permission to come aboard, sir."

"Granted," Brandt said. "Damn you, Stoney, I ought to give you permission to visit the brig."

"I get him first," Tarrant said. "Tombstone. What did I tell you about bringing back your airplane?"

"I guess I misplaced it. Sir."

Tarrant shook his head, then laughed. "I ought to make you walk back and get it. Well, welcome aboard anyhow. And welcome back!"

"Good to be back, Admiral."

"How'd you like playing with the grunts?" Coyote asked.

"Oh, not bad. Marines are almost human, once you get to know them."

"I see you also lost your RIO," Tarrant added. The twinkle in his eye told Tombstone the admiral knew that Tomboy was safe aboard the Iwo. "What happened, Stoney, you decide you have enough of women in your air wing and leave her in the Kola?"

"Terrible thing, sir," Coyote said, grinning. "But you know what they say. Women and salt water just don't mix."

"I don't know about women or salt water," Tombstone said. "But Tomboy, Lobo, and Brewer and the rest are aviators!" He grinned widely. "They can fly with me anytime!"