“If I go, so do my people.”
“Are you so sure?” Arkady asked. “I think before you make such rash statements, you should consult your authorities at home. They may have other ideas.”
“Come on,” Tombstone said, gesturing to the assembled Americans. “I want talk to you — alone.”
Arkady waved them away. “You have my permission to consult with my forces, Admiral. But don’t forget who owns the firepower around here. They’re my men and women — not yours.”
The Americans, without exception, followed Admiral Magruder of the conference room and down the hall to an unused ready room that had been assigned to them for temporary usage. Away from the other nationalities, the stolid veneer they had all applied to their faces cracked and shattered. The skipper of the VF-95 slumped down in the front chair and buried her face in her hands. Tombstone sat down next to her, resisting the urge to place an arm around her shoulders. “I know how you feel,” he said softly. “Don’t worry, we’ll get them back.”
Tomboy looked up, anguish on her face. “Admiral — Tombstone — what he said is true. I chopped to his command and control yesterday — didn’t Batman let you know? Except for administrative matters. If he tells me to fly mission, I have to or face the consequences. How am I supposed to explain court-martialing Smith if I pick and choose what orders I’m going to obey?”
Tombstone nodded. “I know. But no one back home had this in mind when they did that. It was political maneuvering of the worst possible sort, an attempt to curry world favor by placing forces the Greeks can’t begin to imagine at their disposal. If they had had any idea that Arkady would be wasting lives like this, it never would have happened.”
“Are you so sure?” Tomboy shot back. “Hell, I don’t know what to believe right now. Maybe that’s all we are anymore — cannon fodder.”
Tombstone stood now, and addressed the assembled man and women. “Any of the rest of you feel like that?” he asked. A few guilty nods, eyes averted, answered him. He felt something crumple and die inside his chest. “If that’s the way you feel, that’s all you’ll ever be. But you’ve got it wrong, every last one of you.” He strode to the podium in front of the room and turned to address them. “What you are is the world’s most elite fighting unit. Sure, the Greeks have Tomcats. You’ve seen how they maintain them — and how they fly them. Is there a single pilot among you who doesn’t know deep down in his heart that he’s better than anyone they can field?”
The expressions were brighter now, the aviators leaning forward on the edges of their seat. Tombstone continued, “I won’t lie to you and tell you that I like the situation we’re in here. But it’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last time. We’ve all been in tough situations before. But what American pilots do, they do better than anyone else in the world. I don’t like the command structure we’re in here. Nor will I tolerate any of you disobeying General Arkady’s orders. It’s my job to get this mess straightened out, and I promise you, I will. Until then, I need you to hold together. Just for a day, maybe two. Once JCS and the president hear about this little incident, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
And there would be hell to pay, but not exactly in the manner that Tombstone had envisioned. Nor were the results to be anything he could’ve anticipated.
THIRTEEN
“Damn them to hell,” Wexler swore, throwing the message board down on the floor. “T’ing — he knows something about this. He knew and didn’t tell me — not in so many words, nothing I could use.”
Jack picked the clipboard up and studied the top sheet. He’d already heard the general story on CNN, but the details were even more chilling.
The commander of the UN Forces, General Dimitri Arkady, was demanding that the United States withdraw its special advisor, Admiral Tombstone Magruder. The body of the message was filled the vitriol and hate, posing as a complaint about Tombstone’s performance while embarking on a ranting diatribe against America’s foreign policy and political systems. It ended with an appeal to all member nations — and with dismay, Wexler noted that every nation was an info addee to the message — band together to force the Americans to stop using the UN as their own private rubber stamp for the American agenda overseas. It concluded with thanks to the General Assembly for taking the opportunity to achieve a lasting peace in the area, and expressed every confidence that the rest of the nations would understand the deep, grave, and sincerely held objections that Arkady had to Tombstone’s continuing presence in the region.
“What are you going to do?” Jack asked after he’d read the message twice, more to be polite and give Sarah Wexler the illusion that he didn’t already know what she’d say.
She sighed. “I’m going to see the president. I argued against this whole idea when he proposed it, but he wasn’t listening. Maybe now he’ll understand why foreign command of American troops is a pipe dream.” She stabbed on finger at the offending message. “This is just one of the things that can go wrong.”
Tombstone Magruder. Jack had met him several times, traveling in the surprisingly small circle of people whose opinions mattered, who actually had some well-thought-out views on international affairs. Smart man, for a naval officer. He didn’t pretend to have all the answers, nor did he try to fake understanding the details of how the UN and its member nations worked. That took years, and Jack was just starting to get proficient at the standard fare of back-door deals and negotiated compromises that were the UN’s stock in trade.
Even apart from his relative naivete, though, Tombstone had managed to impress both Jack and his boss with his understanding of how they worked, even if the actual details eluded him. That Tombstone had understood immediately made Jack consider the possibility that perhaps the Navy had more going on inside its senior ranks than Jack had thought before. He’d always had the impression that all senior military men and women were idealistic and ethical, a perception that had not changed since the days that his own father was a senior enlisted man in the Army. Power plays, rice bowls, personal power — he’d thought them all a little too good for the sort of down and nasty horse-trading that international politics required. You did the dirty with the other nations and called in the forces when everything else failed.
But with Tombstone, it had been different. Even back in the Spratley’s conflict, when Tombstone had forged together an alliance of unlikely allies to defeat the Chinese surge into the oil-rich islands. In Cuba, when he’d faced down the island nation supplied with nuclear warheads from Libya.
It had been Hong Kong that had made the difference, Jack decided. In tacking down the source of advanced technology used against the American forces during a period of infighting in the Hong Kong administration, Tombstone had been exposed to international intrigue on a level that few active duty military officers experienced. Coming on the heels of the admiral’s search for his father in Vietnam and Russia, it had obviously seasoned him from a superb war fighter to a potent force with a frightening insight into the realities of everyday international politics.
“What do you think the president will do?” Jack asked, aware that he’d been silent for some time as he sorted out the pieces to this particular puzzle himself.