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Page 80
icated soldiers, sailors, and airmen, children of the Vietnamese who fled the Communist victory.
Lieutenant Tran was delivering the newly refurbished F/A-18 Hornet to one of the squadrons waiting at Alameda Naval Air Station to be taken aboard the venerable USS Nimitz.
Lieutenant Tran had been eleven years old, and attending junior high school in Monterey, California, the year Morgan had graduated from the Naval Academy. That was something to think about, Morgan mused. He had nineteen years in with the Corps. A nuclear physics instructor at the academy had warned him, ''You're bright, Mister Morgan. Too bright for your own good. I see a long and rather unmilitary career ahead of you, accumulating university degrees and weird assignments. Anything to keep you out from underfoot when the decisions are made. Try the mud Marines, Mister. You might be able to hide out among the grunts.'' And the instructor had been right on the money.
What is certain, Morgan thought, is that now is the time to decide what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. The trouble is that I'm restless, dissatisfied, and haven't got the faintest idea what I'd like to do. This current errand, putting the fear of God into troublemakers as they appeared, did not appeal.
In his headset, Morgan heard Tran giving Air Traffic Control an estimated time of arrival at Alameda. The Hornet was outfacing the winter sun, lengthening the day.
Morgan spoke into the intercom. "Lieutenant, ask Alameda to call Mr. Cantwell at the Federal Building in San Francisco. Give him our ETA and tell him I will see him around 2100." Cantwell was the San Francisco FBI regional director. He was also a shellback who thought persons like Pierre Grau needed to be kept under tight surveillance.
"Want to take it for a while, Colonel?" The pilot's bantering voice came through the borrowed headset.
Morgan said, "I'm no Zoomie, Mr. Tran." He was rewarded with a brief chuckle and "Roger that." The face and

 
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