Alpha Strike

CHAPTER 20

“Homeplate, they’re getting mighty damned close!” Batman radioed.

“Roger, Spook Two. No deviation from authorized plan,” Tombstone’s calm voice replied.

Batman clicked his button in acknowledgment. He’d rather be up here, where he could fight and maneuver as necessary. Whatever they paid a rear admiral — and Batman had a good idea of what that was — it wasn’t nearly enough. To have to stand by and watch fighters approach an unprotected aircraft, praying that you’d read their intentions correctly and that you wouldn’t lose aviators and an aircraft on a stupid hunch — could he have done it himself? As much as he’d disliked it initially, the political infighting and maneuvering at the Pentagon rarely got anyone killed. A career or two, maybe. It was too easy to forget, trapped in the massive rings of the Pentagon, that men and women were still out here on the front lines.

Did the Navy know somehow? he wondered. Know which aviators had the guts to make the kind of calls Tombstone was making this very second? Did they test us somehow? And have I got what it takes to risk the lives of men and women on a plan like this? Tombstone does.

This year, Batman’s record would go before the rear admiral promotion board. For years, he’d dreamed of putting on those broad gold stripes and silver stars. Now, for the first time, he wondered whether he was ready for it, and whether he’d accept it if the promotion were offered. Listening to Tombstone’s calm voice on the tactical circuit, he tried to convince himself that he would have been able to maintain the same solid presence that brought reassurance to the crew of the carrier and the Air Wing.

“They’re joining on us, Homeplate,” he heard the E-2C copilot say.

“Straight and level, Snoopy,” he heard Tombstone reply. “They’re not here to start a war — they just want a good look-see. Too close to use anything except guns where they are, if that helps.”

“Roger,” the Hawkeye aviator replied, a trace of relief in his voice.

“Watch them,” Batman growled at his RIO. “The second they look tactical, we’re on them.”

“Got them solid, sir. They’re going to know we’re here, picking up our radar, but they won’t know exactly where. We’re ready.”

For fifteen excruciating minutes, Batman watched as the Chinese fighters flew formation on the E-2C, close enough for the Hawkeye pilot to wave at his Chinese counterpart. Finally, without ever acknowledging the greeting, the Chinese fighters broke off. Batman breathed a sigh of relief and heard a few quiet oaths on the tactical net.

“Keep an eye on them, Spook Two,” he heard Tombstone say. Batman marveled at the even tone of the Admiral’s voice. The gamble Tombstone had taken with the lives of his aviators had paid off.

Could I have sounded like that? Like everything had worked out exactly as I’d planned?

Somehow, Batman doubted it.

The TAO let out a deep sigh as the Chinese Flankers turned north, and glanced at the captain at the next console. The captain ripped off his headset and tossed it on the narrow desk. “Ghosts, huh? I don’t think so! We let those bastards push us around like we were the fucking Vietnamese!” the captain snarled. “What the hell do they think this ship is — a patrol boat?”

“What is all this supposed to accomplish, Captain?” the TAO asked. He had spent the last hour with his finger poised above the button that would assign missiles to the incoming fighters. His people were tense and uneasy, and the adrenaline that the tactical situation had generated was slow to ebb away.

The ghost contacts generated by the warm, humid air didn’t help, either. Whatever the previous contacts had been, the ones he’d just been staring at for the last hour were real.

“Hell if I know,” the CO snapped. “Prove to the world that we’re a bunch of pussies, I guess, Not that we haven’t proved that often enough. TAO, first time one of those bastards wanders in within weapons release range, I’m going to plug him. Admiral Magruder can put out all the fancy rules of engagement he wants, but there’s nothing he can say or do to compromise my right to defend my ship. The first hint of hostile intent, and you’re weapons free. You got that?”

The TAO nodded. Down here in the sandbox, the captain’s plans made more and more sense. A hell of a lot more sense than the admiral’s did, as a matter of fact. He stood and stretched, feeling the bones in his back and neck pop. Politics — the Aegis did anti-air warfare a lot better than he did subtle diplomacy. And now the captain had dumped it squarely in his lap by ordering him to shoot if the fighters came within range to release their weapons.

If they did close the ship to within weapons release range, there might not be time to get the Captain to Combat. With the captain absent, the entire decision rested with the TAO. He rubbed his neck with one hand and stared bleakly at the large-screen display in the front of the packed compartment.

All the delicate maneuverings by diplomats, politicians, and admirals would come down to the judgment of one thirty-one-year-old lieutenant commander running on too little sleep and too much coffee. Well, they’d told him he’d get lots of responsibility early in the Navy.

There was something to be said for the captain’s orders. He’d been right before, when the missiles had been inbound. If the TAO had had to depend on the CARGRU’s orders then, the ship would probably be a flaming datum now.

He sat back down and glanced at the time-of-day display in the lower right-hand corner of his screen. Good thing it was in military time. He tried to remember how long it had been since he’d been out on the weather decks — or even on the bridge, for that matter. How many days had it been since he’d seen sunlight? His daily routine took him from his stateroom to the wardroom to Combat, with a pre-watch check of the engineering spaces every six hours. Without the time counter on his screen, he would have lost any sense of daily rhythm.

Weapons-free if fighters come within weapons release range, he wrote in the pass-down log. Wasn’t likely that he’d forget to tell the other TAOS, but it never hurt to write it down. He thought for a moment and then added per CO’s order and signed his initials with a flourish. It never hurt to cover your ass, either.

How delicate are the lines we walk, Ambassador Wexler thought, studying her counterparts. Around the table, the faces staring back at her were fixed in the same bland expression she held on her own. Ambassador Ngyugen looked particularly impassive, while Ambassador T’ing radiated the same pervasive low-level sense of malevolence she’d come to associate with him in the last year.

“Again, we protest the Chinese exclusionary zone declared in the South China Sea,” she said, carefully adding a note of indignation to her voice. “These are international waters, and the warships and aircraft of all nations have the right to peacefully transit and use them.”

“And has one of your aircraft or ships been denied access?” the Chinese ambassador said smoothly. “If so, perhaps you could make this committee aware of that incident?”

“Chinese fighters have flown threatening profiles against our assets in the South China Sea,” she replied. “As of four hours ago, peaceful American aircraft have been under interception by your nation.”

“Ah, but you claim every nation has free access to those areas. You must be consistent — either they are international areas, and we have every right to be there, or one nation has the right to control access to them and limit the use of others. If the latter, then I would suggest that authority would fall to those that border the body of water, not to a nation so many miles distant. Or do some rules apply only to other nations and not to America herself?”

Rules apply to restrain the conduct of nations such as yours, she thought. For a moment, she was tempted to give voice to the unspoken and politically deadly thought. It’s true — and we’ll never say it out loud — that when nations such as yours learn to act in a civilized manner by international standards, we’ll quite gladly pull back to our own playpen. But until some semblance of respect for human rights and the rights of other nations manages to penetrate your policy, you’re going to have to count on seeing us around.

She heard herself mouthing some bland reassurances automatically, requesting merely that the Council take note of the instances and posturing that a formal protest might be filed. It wouldn’t, she knew, and every other nation around the table knew it as well.

For the time being, the American forces were going to have to walk the same narrow line between peace and conflict that she did.

Tombstone and Tomboy sat side by side in the high-backed leatherette VF-95 ready room chairs. The chairs formed eight rows, taking up the front part of the ready room. Tombstone, by virtue of his rank, claimed a front row seat, and motioned Tomboy into the seat next to his.

“You ready for this mission? Might be a little boring, a quick qualification flight in a normal Tomcat, after what you’ve been flying,” he said lightly, taking the opportunity to study her face carefully.

“Hell, I’m just glad we’re on to fly instead of pulling alert. And those JAST birds aren’t all that different from a normal Tomcat, Admiral,” she said. “They do the same things, only better. The controls are the same, but the black box configurations give me a hell of a lot more gain on the radar. It’s a Tomcat with a few extra fancy toys.”

“I take it you’re enjoying the opportunity, then?”

“Absolutely! Bouncer gave me a good briefing on it, and Batman’s making sure I have plenty of opportunities to practice with it.” She smiled, and her whole face lit up.

Tombstone felt a slight twinge of disgruntlement. It felt uncomfortable to hear his old wingman’s name roll so easily off his current RIO’s lips. It wasn’t enough that Batman had to borrow his RIO — not that he got to fly that much anymore, he forced himself to admit — but he also seemed to be striking up a fast friendship with the female NFO. That hadn’t been part of the deal, had it? It was one thing to have a close connection with your regular RIO and wingman, a bond that transcended transfers and career changes, and it was an entirely different matter to go poaching on someone else’s turf.

Now what the hell? Since when did I start thinking of Tomboy as mine? Even before Batman arrived, she was flying with other pilots. I’ve heard her talk about her missions a hundred times, and I’ve never felt — what? What exactly am I feeling?

Jealousy. The word flashed into his mind and insisted on being recognized. It’d never occurred to him to be jealous before, because secretly he’d never viewed any other aviator as possible competition for her attention. He was the admiral, damn it! And a better pilot than 99.5 percent of the aviators on this ship — hell, why be modest? In the whole damned Navy.

But Batman — ah, that was a different matter. Within a year, Tombstone felt certain, his old wingman would be sporting silver stars of his own on his collar. And if any single pilot that he’d ever flown with had ever come close to matching Tombstone’s ability, it was Batman. And lately, Tombstone had to admit, Batman was probably better. Flying with the JAST program despite his assignment to the Pentagon, Batman was getting a lot more stick time than Admiral Magruder. Dare he admit it? It was even possible that the eminent Tombstone Magruder, ace aviator and key player in every conflict in the last ten years, was getting rusty.

And maybe not just in his flying skills.

“Admiral?” he heard Tomboy say anxiously. “Are you all right?”

“Fine, fine,” he muttered, now unwilling to meet her eyes. He was afraid that if he did, she might see something there that he was not entirely sure he wanted known.

“Okay, so about today’s hop,” she said, reaching for her briefing checklist.

“Um, yeah. Listen, Commander,” he said, and saw her head snap up in surprise as he addressed her formally, “I just remembered a couple of things that can’t wait. Call air ops and scrub me from the mission. We’ll try to reschedule it in a couple of days.”

“Aren’t you going to go out of qual if we wait any longer?” she asked, a note of concern creeping into her voice. “Tombstone,” she added, pitching her voice low, “is everything okay?”

“Of course,” he said, thinking quickly. “It’s just that sitting here doing the briefing, I started realizing that I had something a little off for lunch. It’s not sitting too well, and I’d hate to be airborne before I — well, you understand. It’s a little embarrassing, Tomboy, that’s all.” He forced himself to use her call sign, and to look her in the eyes.

“Ah,” she said, and her expression lightened. Pilots and RIOs became intimately familiar with each other’s gastrointestinal tracts and the workings thereof. “Gotcha. Our secret, Tombstone. Just like that time that I had to-“

“I gotta scat, Tomboy,” he interrupted. “We’ll pick this up another time, okay?”

“Yes, Admiral,” she said. As he walked to the door of the ready room, he could feel her eyes on his back. While she appeared to have been convinced by his last-minute lie, his deception had only bought him some time. Whatever was going on in his head was his problem, not hers, and it was up to him to solve it before it interfered with their working relationship. As a last resort, he could ask for a different RIO.

Wonderful solution that would be — hurt Tomboy’s feelings and get rumors started around the air wing about his relationship with Tomboy or, even worse, about Tomboy’s competence. Either alternative was unacceptable.