"Admiral on deck," a seaman barked out, as Magruder stepped across the hatch combing and into the glassed-in brightness of Primary Flight Control. Captain Fitzgerald was there, the inevitable blue ball cap with Jefferson's name and number inscribed on it low over his eyes, an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth. He was looking through the windows aft, watching the flight deck where a rainbow of colored shirts was closing in on the pilot and RIO who had just made their trap.
Fitzgerald turned and met Magruder's eyes. "Your boy's done well for himself, Admiral. A goddamned hero."
"That he has, Captain." Inwardly, he wondered what he should say… or should not say. More than ever, Magruder questioned the wisdom of allowing Matthew to be stationed aboard this carrier, out of all the carriers in the Navy.
He knew Matthew had the same questions. Having an admiral for an uncle could cause more problems than it was worth.
"You look worried, Admiral. What's the gouge?"
Magruder sighed. Better to say it right out. "I've already talked to CAG. Backstop is RTB. And the carrier group is to stay put for the time being."
Captain Fitzgerald was silent for a long moment. Behind him, through the Pried-Fly windows, Magruder could see one of Jefferson's angels, a rescue chopper holding station half a mile off to port. That was routine during launch and landing ops, a safety net against the chance that a plane might have to ditch. So many flight op procedures were designed to safeguard the men who launched, flew, and recovered the carrier's planes, to give them the best possible chance of returning from a mission alive.
Magruder's words might well have just condemned Coyote and Mardi Gras to death. He couldn't escape that fact… but it was damned hard to look at it too.
"Washington?" Fitzgerald asked. There was the slightest curl to his lip as he spoke the word.
Magruder looked at his watch. "Fourteen fifty-six," he said. "They've been in the water for almost an hour. Backstop lost the beeper signal forty minutes ago. How long do you think they'll survive in that cold water, Captain?"
Fitzgerald's cigar worked up and down in his mouth, the muscles in the lean face working furiously. "I'd say we still have to give it a try, Admiral. We can't just leave our boys out there, can we?"
Magruder looked away as he handed a teletype printout to Fitzgerald.
The reply to his call to CINCPAC had been routed back down the line with startling swiftness. Admiral Bainbridge had assured him that the Joint Chiefs were closeted with the President at that very moment, discussing this latest twist to the Korean crisis.
In the meantime, though…
Jefferson's carrier battle group consisted of six ships spread across nearly one hundred miles of ocean. Closest to the Korean coast was the Spruance-class destroyer John A. Winslow, now steaming north some forty miles west of the Jefferson. Even at top speed, it would be hours before the Winslow could launch her two Sea Kings, hours more before the helicopters would reach the waters where Rodeo Two had gone down.
They'd be better off getting help from the Republic of Korea. The ROKs kept helos ― Blackhawks and Sea Kings ― stationed at Yangyang and Kangnung on South Korea's east coast. Hell, they might even have a few up at Kansong, and that was only seventy-five miles south of where the action was. Seventy-five miles was thirty minutes for a Blackhawk. They could have been there already!
Fitzgerald looked up from the teletype. "Washington is sitting on the ROKs?"
Magruder nodded. "Somehow, they seem to feel the North Koreans are going to feel threatened by a fleet of South Korean helicopters coming at them up the coast." He gestured at the message. "Quote, it is imperative that no actions which can be construed as deliberately provocative be taken, unquote."
Commander Wheeler, Jefferson's Air Boss, looked up from his chair across the compartment. "And shooting down one of our Tomcats isn't provocative," he said in disgust. "Shit."
Magruder ignored him. "We've been ordered to hold our position while the Joint Chiefs study the situation," he said quietly. "We're too far out to launch a SAR of our own, and a sortie by the ROKs is out of the question. I'm afraid we've lost our people."
"You want to explain that to our aviators?" Fitzgerald asked. The faces of the other officers in Pried-Fly wore the shock which the Captain's words lacked.
"Want to? No. But there's not a hell of a lot else to do, is there? Except wait for CINCPAC and the Joint Chiefs to get off their asses and make up their minds."
"We'll be sitting out here until this time next year."
Magruder walked over to the window and looked down on the aft flight deck, forty feet below. The procession of deck crewmen had vanished with Tombstone and Snowball beneath the overhang of the island's superstructure. Matthew would be coming up shortly. The Admiral had passed the word for his nephew to meet him here.
The Air Boss walked over to stand beside him. "Pardon me, Admiral, but we can't leave those boys out there."
"What do you want me to do, Commander? Invade North Korea?"
"If that's what it takes." The muscles at his jaw worked for a moment before he added, "Sir."
There was a stir of emotion by the Pried-Fly entry, and Tombstone walked in. Lieutenant Commander Pete Lepke, the Assistant Air Boss ― "mini boss" to Jefferson's aviators ― was the first to shake his hand. "First class, Matt."
"Thanks, Pete." Tombstone turned to face Magruder and Fitzgerald. "Admiral. Captain. Reporting as ordered."
The admiral couldn't look at Matthew Magruder without seeing the boy's father ― his brother. Tombstone was tall for an aviator, as tall as Sam had been, with the same unruly brown hair, the same dark eyes. The somber, almost brooding features which had given the boy his running name were Sam's too.
"So you chalked one up for the wall at Miramar?" the admiral asked. There was a wall in a passageway at the Top Gun school at Miramar where the dates of Navy air-to-air victories are recorded on red-painted silhouettes of the kills. "Well done, Matthew."
"Thank you, Admiral. Is there any word yet about Coyote and Mardi Gras?"
The admiral kept the smile frozen in place. The older man shook his head, a slight, jerking movement. "Negative, Matthew. Backstop lost the SAR beeper forty minutes ago." He paused, unwilling to say the rest. "I've ordered Backstop RTB."
"For God's sake, why? Coyote is still alive out there somewhere! I talked to him!"
Admiral Magruder looked away. "They're out of range for SAR helos. And we're being dangled by those bastards in the five-sided squirrel cage."
"The Pentagon? What-"
"It's a touchy situation, son," Captain Fitzgerald said. He gestured with the teletype flimsy. "Coyote may have gone down inside North Korean territorial waters."
"So? They shot him down. They shot first. We go in and get him."
"I wish it were that simple," Admiral Magruder said. "But with tensions running as high as they are up here, the word is to play it with a low profile. No hostile acts."
"It was the NKs who started with the hostile acts, damn it!" He caught a warning glint in his uncle's eye, and stiffened. "Yes, sir."
"I know how you feel, Matthew, but right now our hands are tied. There's a chance the North Koreans picked him up. If so, it will be up to the State Department boys to get him out, not us."
"And if the November Kilos didn't pick him up?"
The admiral walked over to one of the windows. A rainbow of colored shirts spilled across the flight deck a telephone pole's length below. A pair of F-14s were being nudged into position on catapults two and four. Green shirts ran the cat shuttles back, locking them in place to each aircraft's nose gear as steam boiled from the deck around them. "Then it's probably too late already. That water out there is damned cold."