Batman looked doubtful. “I don’t know about that. She looked pretty damned mad when you had that petty officer search her.”
“it wasn’t even a strip search — though now that you mention it …” Tombstone looked thoughtful.
“I don’t think you ought to press your luck on this one,” Batman said hastily. “Besides, it’s my ship now.”
Tombstone slapped him on the back. “Damned sure is. Now you see why I made you wait that extra five minutes?”
“I do — and thank you. I wouldn’t have had the nerve — and I wouldn’t have missed the expression on her face for anything.”
The two men fell silent, too tired to try to talk over the noise of the COD taking the cat shot. Finally, as the rugged little C2 started to gain altitude and veer away from the boat, Batman asked, “So what about the rest of this mess? The Cossacks, I mean.”
Tombstone shrugged. “Above my pay-grade. I imagine the State Department’s going to want a whack at them, along with every intelligence organization in the country. They’re not going anywhere, not after sinking that Greenpeace boat. The rest of the business will be written off to a misunderstanding, to engineering casualties and such. Nobody’s going to want to give up the peace dividend over the Aleutian Islands.”
Batman gazed off at the horizon. “The Cossacks — who would have thought a splinter group like that would almost start another Russian-U.S. conflict? Just a tiny group of extremists, when you think about it. Good thing we don’t have that kind of ethnic conflict in the States.”
Tombstone looked sober. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Think of the damage some of these white supremacist groups could do to our national interests. They’ve already managed to commit one atrocity, the Oklahoma City bombing. They’re there, and they’re dangerous.”
“Too bad the military can’t do anything about domestic terrorism,” Batman said thoughtfully.
Tombstone snorted. “I think we’ve got enough to do already, don’t you?”