Countdown c-6, page 10
part #6 of Carrier Series
Other crewmen, meanwhile, were making the final preparations on 201.
Red-shirted ordies yanked the safing wires from the F-14's armament stores: four AIM-54C Phoenix missiles, two AIM-9M Sidewinders, and two of the new AMRAAM radar-guided missiles that were only now slowly coming into service as a replacement for the old, less-than-satisfactory Sparrow. One of them held a handful of wires up so that Coyote and Cat could verify that all of the weapons were now ready to fire. A Purple Shirt, a "Grape" in the lexicon of carrier deck crews, held up a signboard with the numerals 65000. That was the weight in pounds of the Tomcat, its stores, and its fuel. A cross-check with Coyote was necessary to verify the figure, so that the launch crews could set their catapult to fire with the proper strength. Green-shirted hook-and-cat men crawled beneath the aircraft, attaching the catapult shuttle and making certain all was ready for launch.
"Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Amen" sounded over her headset, a murmured litany. Coyote was running through the old naval aviator's ritual, "wiping" the Tomcat's rudder and ailerons by moving his stick forward and back, left and right, then moving the rudder pedals with his feet.
"Harness set?" Coyote asked her.
"Ready to go," she said. Could he hear her heart hammering through the ICS? Her mouth was dry, her palms inside her flight gloves were wet. She heard the Air Boss speaking to Coyote over the radio, giving him clearance. A light shining from the island and visible over her right shoulder showed green. They were ready for launch. Leaning her helmet as far back into her headrest as it would go, she braced herself, fighting the tension building in her gut. Suddenly, it was as though perspective had changed for her. The length of track from the Tomcat to the bow, just visible past the console and the back of Coyote's seat in front of her, seemed now impossibly short, a few feet at most. The deck officer was making revving motions with his wands, and she felt the F-14's engines coming to full power, a volcanic blast of power shrieking scant feet behind the small of her back. The Tomcat trembled now at the head of the catapult, like a great, gray eagle poised for flight.
How Many times had she been hurled from the bow of an aircraft carrier?
She'd long ago lost count… but the excitement and the fear and the adrenaline rush were always the same for her.
Coyote saluted the deck officer, indicating he was ready. The deck officer swung his arm up in that graceful point, dropped, touched the deck…
WHAM!
The Tomcat accelerated from zero to 170 mph in two seconds, thundering off Jefferson's bow in a dizzying rush of raw power. Had something gone wrong, had the catapult failed to provide the necessary thrust, they would have plunged off the carrier's bow toward the sea… with a scant second or two to grab their ejection rings and blast themselves clear.
"Wheeooo!" Coyote shrilled from the forward seat. "Good shot!"
And then they were climbing, her seat tipping back as the nose came up… up… up… and the Tomcat rocketed into the dawn. Golden light exploded over the eastern horizon as they passed five thousand feet, a mile up and still climbing. The sky above was pure glory.
And this was why Kathy Garrity had become a naval flight officer, despite the protests of her parents, despite the grueling training and study she'd put herself through for the past four years.
"oh, God, this is beautiful!" she cried over the ICS, unable and unwilling to suppress the joy.
"Amen to that," Coyote replied. "Let's tuck 'em in and see what this crate'll really do."
The Tomcat's wings, extended straight out to achieve maximum lift for takeoff, were folding back now, turning the Tomcat into a sleek spearhead designed for speed.
Accelerating now, they kept climbing into blue-gold glory.
0630 hours
Hawkeye 761
Twenty-five miles North Of North Cape
The E-7C Hawkeye had roared off Jefferson's number-two catapult hours earlier, taking up station in advance of the carrier group as it made its way northeast along the Norwegian coast. One of four E-2Cs in VAW-130, the Catseyes, the Hawkeye was a carrier-based AEW, or early warning aircraft, thought by many to be the most capable radar-warning and aircraft-control plane in service anywhere in the world. In an age of high-performance jets, it was driven by two Allison turboprops, which gave the plane fuel efficiency enough to manage a two-hundred-mile patrol radius with six hours of loiter time on station. By far its most distinctive feature was the saucer-shaped radome, twenty-four feet in diameter, circling at a leisurely six revolutions per minute on its mounting above the aircraft's fuselage. The saucer provided lift enough to offset its own weight, and housed the powerful APS-125 radar that allowed the E-2C to track targets out to a range of 240 nautical miles.
On board was a crew of five: two pilots, a combat information center officer, an air controller, and a radar operator. Though it was now past sunrise, the aft part of the aircraft was shielded from outside light, and the only illumination came from the green-glowing screens that were the Hawkeye's entire reason for being. On the radar operator's main console, the sweep line painted smears of liquid light, stage-lighting the man as he noted the appearance of unidentified blips just entering the E-2C's range.
The CIC officer and the air controller stood behind him, peering over his shoulders at the screen. "My Lord in heaven," the air controller said. "They must be standing on each other's shoulders."
"Let's flash it," the CIC officer said. He picked up a microphone, keyed it, and began speaking in rapid, urgent tones.
"Home Plate, Home Plate," he said, using Jefferson's call sign. "This is Echo-Tango Seven-six-one. We have multiple contacts, repeat, numerous multiple contacts, from one-zero-zero to one-five-zero, range two-four-zero nautical miles."
The radar operator was Radarman First Class Richard Lee. Twenty-four years old, he'd been in the Navy for seven years and he had never, in all his life, seen such an array of aircraft except, possibly, for simulations of a mass Russian attack.
The Hawkeye was flying well in advance of the Jefferson and had now reached its patrol station twenty miles off Norway's North Cape. From that vantage point, and at the aircraft's ceiling of just over thirty thousand feet, he could see well into Russia's Kola Peninsula, painted on his display in crisp lines of light. Nothing was happening around Polyamyy or Murmansk, but the sky must be thick with aircraft over the airfields at Titovka, Pechenga, Zapolyamyy, Nikel.
This couldn't be happening…
"Sir," he said, pointing. "They're crossing the line."
It was true. Aircraft from Nikel and Pechenga, already practically on Russia's narrow border with Norway, were moving across the demarcation line between the countries. More aircraft were arriving too, from further to the south and cast, from Kola airfields not yet within range of the E-2C's radar.
"Home Plate, Home Plate," the CIC officer said. How could the man keep his voice so steady? "Echo-Tango Seven-six-one. We have a fire. I repeat, we have a fire. Bogies are assuming intercept vectors, bearing on Home Plate."
A fire ― the current code phrase meaning a possible attack in progress.
As far as Lee could tell from his radar screen, every aircraft in Eurasia was on its way.
And their destination appeared to be the Jefferson.
CHAPTER 9
Friday, 13 March
0631 hours (Zulu +2)
Viper ready room
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
Batman had already been on his way to the Viper Squadron's ready room from morning chow when the alert came over the 1-MC speaker mounted on the bulkhead. "Now General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands, man your battle stations!"
Before the announcement ended, Batman had broken into a run, forcing his way through passageways and up companionways suddenly filled with young men ― and a few women ― each of them bent on getting somewhere in the least possible time with the greatest possible efficiency. The scene was at first one of chaos, but it was soon clear that each person had a place to go and a task to perform, and there was actually very little confusion or wasted effort as six thousand people turned out in this ship-wide evolution.
Batman banged through the door to the Viper ready room at a fast jog, just ahead of half a dozen other VF-95 aviators and RIOs. Attached to the main ready room area, with its rows of wooden desks like some 1950s-era schoolhouse, was a dressing area with lockers and a small shower head, where the squadron's NFOs could stow their uniforms and don the flight suits that helped keep them from blacking out in the high-G maneuvers of aerial combat.
As he swiftly unbuttoned his khaki shirt and pulled it off, Batman was marginally aware of the fact that several of the people crowded shoulder to shoulder into the dressing room with him were women. Normally, VF-95's flight officers had shared the dressing area through an unspoken agreement, taking turns and allowing fellow members of the squadron who happened to be of the opposite sex some small measure of privacy, but in an all-hands evolution, where seconds counted, there was no time for such civilized niceties. A few feet to his left, Cynthia Thomas was just shrugging out of her bra. On his right Chris Hanson bumped against his hip as she wiggled into the lower half of her tight-fitting, cold-water survival suit, a rubberized garment worn under the flight suit, always an awkward maneuver even when there was space enough to move around.
The room was crowded, noisy, and tense, but no comment was made by anyone at the display of skin, no lewd wisecracks, not even a peremptory "Keep your eyes to yourself!" In minutes, Batman was tugging the last zipper on his flight suit shut, grabbing a clipboard with its attached checklist, pen, and notebook, and heading back to the ready room proper.
A large television monitor was suspended from the overhead at the front of the ready room next to the PLAT monitor, and someone had already switched it on. The PLAT screen was showing one of VFA-161's Hornets preparing to launch off the angled flight deck from one of the carrier's waist catapults, but the big TV showed only the crest insignia of the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson, a stylized CVN seen bow-on, with the motto "COMBAT READY."
Batman slumped into a seat next to his usual RIO, Lieutenant Commander Ken Blake, a sandy-haired guy from southern California who went by the handle "Malibu." Seconds later, Jefferson's insignia on the TV screen was replaced by Tombstone's face.
"Good morning, Air Wing Twenty," he said, speaking directly into the camera. "I'll keep this short and sweet. A few minutes ago, our AEW patrol picked up a large number of Russian aircraft taking off from military fields in the northwestern regions of the Kola Peninsula. The figures go up every time a new update comes through, but at this point we are estimating at least one hundred twenty aircraft. Several flights have already crossed the Norwegian border and are on a direct intercept course with the carrier group."
Tombstone was addressing all of Jefferson's squadrons simultaneously from the TV studio up in the Carrier Intelligence Center, the CVIC, or "Civic" for short. Batman knew him well enough to know he must wish he were here, with the Vipers, but as CAG his responsibility was for the entire wing, from the two squadrons of Tomcats to the HS-19 squadron of SH-3 helos.
"The battle group has already assumed a defensive posture along the threat axis," Tombstone continued. "Admiral Tarrant has ordered that all radar and radio traffic aboard Jefferson be shut down. CATCC will go back on the air only when we have to start bringing you in for rearming. All combat communications and command control will be handled through the Shiloh."
That particular ploy had been worked out back in the early eighties and had been used successfully on numerous occasions since. As large as it was, an aircraft carrier could virtually disappear if all of the radar and radio transmissions that could light it up on the enemy's screens like a New York City skyscraper at night were shut down. The Aegis cruiser would take over all radar and combat command control duties, making itself a target in the process, of course… but it would be a very well-defended one.
"Shiloh's call sign for this op will be Hotspur," Tombstone continued.
In concise, rapid-fire words, he outlined the entire wing's deployment. Four VF-95 Tomcats were already aloft on CAP and were being deployed into an advance BARCAP, or Barrier Combat Air Patrol, positioned 250 miles ahead of the Jefferson, squarely between the approaching enemy aircraft and the carrier. Four aircraft from VFA-161, the Javelins, that had been on Ready Fifteen, set to launch within fifteen minutes, were now being sent aloft in their air-interceptor role, leaving bombs and ground-attack rockets behind for Sidewinders and AMRAAMs.
The rest of VF-95 would launch next, moving forward to reinforce the BARCAP. It was vital to get as many Tomcats in the sky as possible since out of all the aircraft aboard, only the F-14s could carry the AIM-54C Phoenix.
The second Tomcat squadron, VF-97, was being armed at that moment with full Phoenix warloads, six AIM-54s on each aircraft. More of the Javelins' Hornets would be launched until VF-97 was armed and ready, and then the catapults would begin putting them up.
Ultimately, both of Jefferson's Tomcat squadrons would be in the air, positioned to launch their long-range Phoenix missiles against the approaching Russians. Once they had expended their munitions, they would return to Jefferson and recover for rearming, while the two Hornet squadrons moved in to take on the surviving Russians close-up. The carrier's EA-6 electronic warfare planes would be thrown far forward, to scramble the enemy's radar and communications. Her sub-hunting Vikings would be deployed to maintain an ASW screen around the battle group; her ground-attack A-6 Intruders, useless in a fight such as this one, would stand down and stay out of the way.
"I must emphasize," Tombstone said, "that we still don't know for certain whether the Russian deployment constitutes a full-scale attack, or if they're just making a feint, warning us off from their coast. BARCAP will be positioned to test them, and by the time the rest of you get airborne, we ought to know one way or the other. Until we do, however, weapons will be locked, and released only upon direct order from the Combat Information Center. Once it has been determined that the Russian force is intent on hostile action, weapons-free will be issued by the Shiloh CIC."
Tombstone concluded with several more items about deployment, and a report from the Met Office ― sky clear, ceiling unlimited, winds from the northeast at ten knots.
"That's it," Tombstone said at last. "Good luck, men. And God go with you."
Amused, Batman wondered if Tombstone's use of the word "men," obviously an oversight in the pressure of the moment, had bothered any of the women.
None of them appeared to have noticed.
Good. This was no time to let petty sexual politics interfere with the smooth operation of the squadron.
"Okay, people," Batman said, raising his voice to blanket the room. As the Viper XO, he was squadron commander in Coyote's absence. "You all heard the man. Let's go kick ass and take names!"
"Yeah!" Slider Arrenberger yelled back, punching his clenched fist at the overhead. "Today we kick Russki ass!"
Arrenberger hadn't been aboard on Jefferson's last deployment, during the fiercely fought battles over Romsdalfjord or off the Lofoten Islands. The chances were all too good that, while the American aviators were kicking Russian ass, the Russians would be kicking their share of American ass as well. Some good people were likely to die today.
Batman was no more superstitious than any other naval aviator, but he suddenly remembered the date ― Friday the 13th. Bad luck for who, the Americans or the Russians?
As the squadron rose with a scraping and squeaking of chairs, Batman noticed Striker ― Lieutenant Strickland ― reach out and grab Lieutenant Hanson's arm. When she turned, he leaned over and gave her a quick, hard kiss on the mouth.
No one said anything, but Batman felt a small twist in his gut. Any PDA ― public display of affection ― was both inappropriate at the moment and strictly contra-regs. He'd already heard scuttlebutt about those two and hoped they didn't get into trouble for it.
He remembered Tombstone's concerns about sexual relationships between members of the squadron, though, and thought he understood. It was embarrassing to admit it, even to himself.
Twenty-nine years old, and Edward Everett "Batman" Wayne was unmarried.
At the moment, he didn't even have a girlfriend, though he was notorious for his skill in acquiring attractive dates when he was ashore. Ever since his experiences in Thailand a few years ago, however, he'd found himself increasingly dissatisfied with his lifestyle and unable to pinpoint the cause.
Now he was beginning to think it was time to settle down, maybe even get married.
Well, maybe he wouldn't go that far. But he recognized a certain small, sharp pang each time he saw a couple who obviously shared a deep, mutual affection. It wasn't jealousy, not really, but it was an awareness, a reminder that his life wasn't complete.
Sometimes it hurt.
"Let's go strap on an airplane, Batman," Malibu said, punching him in the arm and jarring him from less-than-pleasant thoughts. "Betcha Chief Leyden's already got Two-oh-two opened up and warming for us." Leyden was the crew chief for Tomcat 202, Batman's and Malibu's aircraft.
The passageways and decks between VF-95's ready room and Jefferson's flight deck were still crowded as the carrier's crew proceeded with their assigned battle station duties. Out on the flight deck, the scene was one of frantic, purposeful activity; of steam and thundering, brawling noise; of dozens of men in color-coded jerseys carrying out their assigned duties in surroundings that might have been lifted from one of Dante's hells.
Moving this many of Jefferson's complement of combat aircraft to the proper place at the proper time was a fantastically complex operation, one requiring split-second timing and precision to carry out. At any given time, roughly half of the carrier's aircraft were stowed on her hangar deck, and these had to be fed up to the flight deck in just the proper order and at just the proper times to replace the aircraft that were even now shrieking skyward off Jefferson's catapults.
