Afterburn c-7

by Keith Douglass

  “That’s the career path, Coyote.” Officers who’d actually experienced combat were preferred for promotion… and for choice assignments later in their careers. Female service personnel had long complained that men had an unfair advantage there; it was one reason why they’d been insisting all along that they should be allowed to assume combat status.

  “I know, I know. But, well, what happened to Lobo in the Kola, it could happen to any of them. Call me old-fashioned, but I can’t shake the feeling that that’s the sort of thing we’re out here protecting them from.”

  “You can take that up with Madam Secretary Reed,” Tombstone said. “I’m sure she’ll be delighted to hear your feelings on the matter.”

  “Yeah. Right. Oh, damn! Almost forgot.” He leafed through the papers on his clipboard, found what he was looking for, and passed it over to Tombstone. “This came in from the Canal today. They’re looking for aviation stores. Spare parts. Sidewinders. They’re wondering if they can scrounge some from us.”

  “Not damned likely.”

  “Yeah, well, there may be a pronouncement on that from on high. I gather there may be some problems getting enough UNREP stuff through the straits. The Turks could balk at letting all that stuff through.”

  Tombstone looked at his friend for a long moment. “Goddamn.”

  “Oh, nothing serious. Yet. But there’s talk. And I guess the jarheads are stretched pretty thin right now.”

  “You got that right. A little bird told me they’re already scraping the bottom of the barrel for equipment and spares. They got deployed short.” Magruder shook his head. “Sometimes I think our only real enemy is in Washington. The guys shooting at us are nothing but petty little annoyances, but those bastards on Capitol Hill are out for blood.”

  “A little bird?” Coyote raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re starting to play Navy politics.”

  “Nah, this was just an old friend. The skipper of the Canal, no less.

  We had a chat this afternoon.” Magruder smiled. “He wanted me to say howdy for him. Steve Marusko. Captain Marusko, now.”

  “Marusko’s got Guadalcanal? God, that makes me feel older than I felt already.”

  Steve Marusko had been CAG on the cruise where Magruder and Grant had seen action in Korea, Thailand, and the Indian Ocean. Now he’d moved further up the career ladder, skippering one of the Marine carriers. Someday he might wind up as captain of a supercarrier like Jefferson.

  “Maybe we’ll get a chance to see him before the cruise is over,” Coyote said. He looked down at his clipboard. “Well, that’s all I’ve got for now, Stoney. Anything you need me to take care of this afternoon?”

  “Just the Maintenance logs on the War Eagles. Light a fire under those guys and get those reports on my desk tomorrow morning at the latest.”

  “Or heads will roll?” Grant asked with a smile.

  “Starting with yours, so make sure they hop to it down there.” He stood up as Coyote did. “Dinner tonight?”

  Coyote shook his head. “I’m going to beg off, Stoney. I want to write a letter to Julie.”

  “Things still not so good, huh? If there’s anything I can do…”

  “Unless you can get them to send us home, there’s nothing,” Coyote told him. “But thanks, man. Thanks.”

  As Coyote left, Tombstone settled back into his chair and picked up the picture on the corner of his desk. His fiancee, Pamela Drake…

  She was a devastating combination of beauty and brains, an award-winning reporter for American Cable News. After a long and often stormy relationship, they’d finally agreed five months ago that they would set a wedding date after Jefferson’s next cruise. But then he’d received orders for an early redeployment, and Pamela had exploded. It seemed like she always saw the Navy as a rival, and she’d frequently urged him to give up his career, to settle down with a nice, safe airline job. He’d always protested strongly, saying that the Navy was his life, but sometimes, like now, he had his doubts.

  He set the picture down. Magruder was starting to wonder just where his career was really heading. Working to break in Coyote as Deputy CAG had reminded him of all the things about staff work that he hated. But even with his record, it was possible, even probable, that CAG was as high up the ladder as he’d ever get. There were a lot more candidates for the high-powered postings than there were available billets, and frequently merit gave way to politics when it came to picking people for that handful of openings. Steve Marusko had been lucky to get the Guadalcanal. Magruder had an uncle who held an important Pentagon post in Washington and had advised two presidents, but Thomas Magruder had also made a lot of enemies, people who would be looking for an excuse to keep his nephew from rising any higher.

  Well, that was the way it worked in the Navy sometimes.

  He looked at Pamela’s picture again. Marriage and career… neither one looked very solid right now. If he got stuck in some safe but dull staff position, Pamela would be happy, but Magruder knew he’d go crazy if he didn’t feel like he was doing something. But if he got a ship of his own, another tour of sea duty policing some hot spot at the ends of the earth, could Pamela put up with it?

  If Coyote couldn’t hold onto his marriage with Julie, was there any real hope for him and Pamela? Julie had started with a lot more in common with Will Grant than Tombstone and Pamela had ever had.

  Tombstone found himself thinking about Joyce Flynn, about the shared danger that day on the Kola Peninsula. Tomboy was no on-camera beauty like Pamela, but there had been a real connection there. She understood what Magruder felt when he was in the cockpit of a Tomcat, what it was like for him to really put his life on the line for his country. Things Pamela Drake would never really understand.

  He loved Pamela, maybe more now than he had in the early days of their relationship. But the women he’d come to know in the Air Wing, Flynn and Brewer Conway and the others, were something special. They shared his world, his dreams and his hopes and his fears. Sometimes Magruder wondered if love was enough.

  CHAPTER 11

  Monday, 2 November

  1047 hours (Zulu -5)

  Cabinet Room, The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  “Mr. Waring, this could be the most important opportunity we’ve seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. We’d be fools not to take advantage of it.”

  Admiral Thomas Magruder looked from the speaker, Secretary of State Robert Heideman, to the President’s National Security Adviser, Herb Waring. He was used to the Secretary’s stance on foreign affairs questions but found it hard to believe that even a dedicated liberal globalist like Heideman could be urging a policy at odds with everything the United States had stood for since the days of the Founding Fathers.

  He was even more surprised at Waring’s evident interest. The President had been taking a real beating lately in foreign policy, and the smart money said he should stick with domestic problems rather than getting involved in yet another ill-advised adventure abroad. Magruder would have expected Waring ― who always had an eye for the main chance ― to back off from another round of foreign intervention, if only to appease the growing numbers of isolationists among the President’s noisier critics.

  Clearly, though, Heideman’s presentation had struck a chord with Waring.

  “Let me see if I understand what you’re saying, Bob,” Waring said. “This Russian general, Boychenko, will surrender to the United Nations, but the UN will only go along if our carrier battle group is part of the process.”

  “That’s essentially it, Mr. Waring-” Heideman began. His measured, precise voice was overridden by another, louder and less cultivated.

  “Mr. Waring, I want to go on record as having disagreed with this entire idea. It is a mistake from first to last, and it flies in the face of everything this country has ever stood for.”

  Magruder found himself nodding in agreement. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Brandon Scott, leaned back in his chair. With
his mane of white hair and his flashing eyes, Scott looked like a biblical prophet. His angry words seemed to hang in the room.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Brandon,” Waring said slowly… and with an oiliness that warned of masked feelings. “But I think Secretary Heideman may be right, here. This situation offers some interesting possibilities we really should explore.”

  “Going along with this is tantamount to giving up our sovereignty,” Scott maintained harshly. “A U.S. carrier battle group cannot simply be loaned out to the United Nations this way, any more than we would consider loaning out part of our nuclear arsenal! It violates two centuries of policy, damned good policy. Throwing it all away is nothing short of idiotic!”

  “If I may, Mr. Waring?” Heideman cut in. “Admiral, we all know your views. You’ve expressed them often enough, and loudly enough, for all of us to know where you stand. But this is a political decision, not a military one.”

  “It means putting more American servicemen in harm’s way, Mr. Secretary,” Scott said. “And that is always a military decision, regardless of the politics involved.”

  “Damn it, Scott, this perennial foot-dragging is getting damned old!”

  Gordon West, the White House Chief of Staff, exploded. “If you can’t get with the program, for God’s sake, at least get out of the way so the rest of us can do something constructive for a change!”

  “Take it easy, Gordon,” the Security Adviser said. “I invited his opinion, and he gave it. We have enough hot spots around the world without turning the Cabinet Room into another one, okay?”

  West didn’t answer, but he visibly controlled his temper and settled back in his seat. The other presidential advisers gathered around the long oak table relaxed, but there was still an air of tension in the room. After nearly two years of this administration, quarrels like this one were an almost routine part of any foreign policy meeting. This one, though, had all the earmarks of a really serious fight ― the kind that ended in resignations offered and accepted, and in Senate hearings over new nominees for top-level government posts.

  It wouldn’t be the first time, either, Magruder thought as he glanced around the table. As a matter of fact, Admiral Scott wouldn’t have been quite so touchy if it hadn’t been for the last such argument, the one that had led to the resignation of Secretary of Defense Vane six months previously. Vane had always backed his military experts when it came to questions of foreign policy and American power projection, but those days were gone now. Scott wasn’t exactly a lone voice in the wilderness, but sometimes it must have seemed that way to the man. It couldn’t be easy working for the new secretary.

  Magruder’s eyes rested on Secretary of Defense Samantha Reed, former congresswoman from California, one-time member of the House Armed Services Committee, and powerful friend to the feminist left and champion of a liberal social agenda. Her appointment to the Cabinet had barely squeaked through the required Senate approval process despite the political pressures that made it all but impossible for many senators to vote against her. The nomination of the first woman ever considered for a powerhouse Cabinet position like Defense was one of those historic moments for women everywhere, and headline-conscious politicians weren’t about to go on record as voting against the tide of history. Too many of them remembered the “They just don’t get it” mentality engendered in the early ‘90s by incidents like the Anita Hill allegations against Clarence Thomas, and the fight over the retirement of Admiral Frank Kelso, the Navy Secretary who had presided over the Tailhook scandal.

  Even so, the vote to confirm her in her new position had been a close one.

  Tall, dignified, and with the experienced politician’s charm and ready smile, Samantha Reed turned to face the President’s chief adviser. “Mr. Waring,” she said. “As far as I can see, this could be an excellent trade. We remove a potentially dangerous military force from the Crimea, and the UN moves in and takes charge. The UN’s prestige is enhanced as a world peacekeeper. I don’t need to remind anyone here that the American public is not enthusiastic about our becoming the world’s policeman, do I?”

  “Madam Secretary,” Scott said. “With all due respect, where’s the difference? If our military is policing the world as a part of U.S. foreign policy or at the behest of the United Nations, we’re still footing the bill.”

  “Not at all, Admiral,” she replied, her voice silk-smooth behind a glacial smile. “The UN would pay the costs of the deployment. A share of that is ours, of course, ultimately, but it won’t be as though the American taxpayer is shouldering the entire burden.”

  “The bill I was referring to, Madam Secretary, was the butcher’s bill.

  The cost in American lives. Putting our people under the command of foreign officers is nothing short of a military disaster waiting to happen.”

  She seemed to consider this for a moment, then turned and spoke softly to one of the aides flanking her. The man reached inside a briefcase and produced a manila folder. She accepted it, leafing through several pages inside before finding what she wanted. “Admiral, it seems to me that our current policy of supporting UN operations but maintaining separate and distinct lines of command and communication offers an even better opportunity for ‘military disaster,’ as you put it. You’ve seen this?”

  She slid the paper across the table. Scott barely glanced at it and did not pick it up. “Of course, Madam Secretary.”

  “Gentlemen,” Reed said, addressing the entire room. “Two days ago, as any of you who watch cable news is well aware by now, one of our Navy jets shot down a U.S. Army helicopter that was flying a UN mission. No one was killed, fortunately, but the incident has pointed up the flaws in interservice operations. There were breakdowns in communication up and down the entire chain of command. It seems that the naval personnel making the decisions in the carrier battle group had not been notified that Army helicopters were operating in the no-fly zone and had not received the computer codes that let their radars recognize those helicopters as friendly.

  “The day before that, this same carrier group sank a Russian submarine, again by accident. At least fifteen Russian nationals were killed.

  “Now, it seems to me that putting all of our forces under one command infrastructure would be the best possible way of avoiding unfortunate mistakes like these in the future. Placing our forces under UN command will simplify the lines of communications. It will simplify intelligence and ensure that our military forces know who is in the area and what they are doing.

  “I must say, it also sets a worthwhile precedent for the future. If we start putting larger numbers of troops under UN authority, it would give the organization some real teeth. That would save the United States from more embarrassments like Somalia and Haiti.”

  Magruder resisted the urge to speak up, to argue against what he saw as a blatant misuse of American military forces. His position was an unusual one. At the time of the Norwegian War he’d held the post of Director of Operations for the Joint Staff, but during that crisis and the Russian Civil War that followed it, the President had come to depend on him as a personal military adviser. Now he was attached to Admiral Scott’s personal staff, a position that gave him access to these high-level meetings but no real authority. Anything he said now would be viewed as a “Me, too” echo of Scott’s position.

  Damn it, he wished the gold on his shoulder boards and jacket cuffs counted for something in this roomful of career politicians. For years globalists had been talking about increasing the authority of the United Nations and giving it control over larger and more powerful military units. They pointed to the organization’s complete helplessness during the Cold War era and to the fiascoes of the early days of the New World Order as good reasons to stiffen UN power and prestige with troops, equipment, and armaments controlled by the Security Council. They pointed out that UN attempts to engage in nation-building in Somalia in 1993 had been derailed by the U.S. decision to withdraw all ground troops from the nation after a firefight w
here American troops had been killed and their bodies dragged through the streets in front of TV cameras for all to see. And UN Haiti policy had never quite gelled because of vacillating American leadership.

  But the thought of handing over a sizable portion of American military power to the United Nations was, for Magruder, a chilling one. If the UN could send Americans into Georgia… or the Crimea… how long would it be before they sent troops into Los Angeles to quell the next round of rioting? Or into American homes to search for handguns? Or to arrest American citizens for speaking out against this dark and twisted vision of the New World Order? …

  Admiral Magruder had too fond a regard for the lessons of history to ignore the possibility ― no, the probability ― that such power, once granted, would grow, corrupt, and ultimately enslave.

  Unfortunately, he and Scott were very much in the minority at this table.

  “I’m not sure giving the UN more power is a very good idea,” Scott said, leaning forward in his chair and clasping his hands on the table before him. “In any event, this is a surrender of American sovereignty. We have never agreed to such a thing in our entire history. American forces have never been placed under the operational control of foreigners. The French tried it in World War I, and Montgomery wanted to try it in World War II, but in each case we did everything in our power to maintain control over our own people. The closest we ever came was in Somalia, and I’ll point out that it was the UN component there that got our people involved in that firefight that killed our boys… and then failed to support them when they got into trouble.”

  “Admiral,” Heideman said, “I respect your views, but I cannot agree with them. We cannot live in the past any longer. National sovereignty is a nice, high-sounding phrase, but it’s soon going to be as antiquated as Communism. Look, you know how hard it is to get Congress or the public to back an intervention effort. Even when that intervention is in the national interest.”