Armageddon Mode

CHAPTER 27

Tombstone watched the brown-gray blur of the coast approaching. The water beneath him lightened, then flashed into barren, sun-parched hills as he led the Vipers across the beach and into India.

“This is Viper Lead,” he said over the radio. “Feet dry.”

“Eagle Lead,” the voice of the War Eagles’ CO added. “Feet dry.”

One by one, the other strike elements called in, reporting that they were now crossing from sea to land. Desert quickly gave way to marshland as they passed over the Rann of Kutch. Smudges marred the eastern sky. The Hornets of Lucky Strike had already hit the airfields at Bhuj, Jamnagar, and Okha, misdirecting the Indians into thinking the strike’s targets were their military bases near the coast.

A pillar of smoke to the west marked the remnants of an Indian coastal radar, victim of the VAQ-143 Sharks and the HARM missiles. Those High Speed Anti-Radiation ASMS were designed to home on coastal or SAM site radars and clear a path through India’s electronic fences.

That too would help convince the Indians that the targets were air bases and coastal facilities.

“This is Gold Strike Leader,” a voice called over the tactical net.

“Passing Point Bravo.”

Bravo was the code name for the Pakistani border, close to the Nara River. The Intruders of VA-89 would be spreading out now, preparing for their strike.

Tombstone thought about the squadron leader VA-89, Lieutenant Commander Isaac Greene. A big, bluff man called “Jolly Greene” by the other men in the air wing, he was one of several legends in Air Wing 20. During Operation Righteous Thunder, he’d led a strike against North Korean armor and been hit by ground fire from Korcom ZSU-23-4 antiaircraft vehicles.

Somehow, Jolly and his Bombardier-Navigator Chucker Vance had held their shattered Intruder together long enough to reach the sea and eject. A SAR helo had plucked them from the sea and returned them to Jefferson’s deck, half frozen but alive.

Tombstone thought of the other men he’d served with during the past nine months. Coyote, shot down over the Sea of Japan by a Korean Mig and captured.

Then there were Batman and Malibu, holding position now off his port wing. They’d been downed by a SAM over northern Thailand. Ejecting over the jungle, they’d somehow hiked back to civilization, bringing with them vital intelligence.

And there were so many others, men who’d given their lives in combat missions flown, ironically, to protect the peace.

He thought of Army and Dixie, shot down while trying to save the Jefferson from a cruise missile. Despite a search by SAR helos, they’d not been found in the choppy seas just a few miles from the carrier.

They’d not fought for any particular cause or label … though both were patriots in every sense of the word. Like all of the others, Tombstone thought, Army and Dixie had believed in what they were doing but had carried on not for the sake of the mission … but because they couldn’t let down their friends, the other members of their squadrons, their shipmates.

Possibly, Tombstone reflected, that was what every soldier of every war fought for more than home or country: the men fighting with him at his side. They fought not to take the next hill or even to win the war, but because friends and comrades would suffer or die if they did not.

And after that … yeah, there was the mission. Always the mission.

“Viper Leader, Viper Two.”

“Go ahead, Batman.”

“Ho, Stoney. Looks like we’re getting ready to rock and roll. We got bogies, bearing zero-niner-five.”

“We see them,” Tombstone replied, checking his VDI. The bandits were forming up, rising from airfields despite the damage done by the Hornet strikes. Well, that was expected. No strike was one hundred percent effective … especially when the opponent was as powerful and as well-dispersed as this one. “Okay, boys and girls. Stand by to break right on my signal. Weapons are free. Good luck!”

“Listen, guys,” Batman added. “Drinks are on me when we get back to the bird farm!”

“If the bird farm’s still there,” Coyote said. “I’m not sure I like the idea of CAG’s ‘newbies’!”

“Only game in town, Coyote,” Tombstone replied. “They’ll hold the fort for as long as they can fly. Meanwhile, I think the locals are going to be way too interested in us to worry about aircraft carriers.”

“Roger that.”

Tombstone checked left and right once more. VF-95 consisted now of just six aircraft, a fraction of its usual strength: Tombstone and Batman, Coyote and Shooter, Nightmare and Ramrod. All were friends, all comrades in the sharp and bitter air engagements of the past nine months. The chances were good that not all of them would make it back to the carrier when this flight was over.

For perhaps the first time, Tombstone saw the odds and accepted them. He remembered his decision to leave the Navy, made during a string of accidents and near-misses … what? Was it only three days ago? He felt as though he’d lived a lifetime since then. He was no longer certain about that decision. Let me get through this fight, he thought.

Then I’ll decide. But right now, I’m needed here.

“Viper Leader to Vipers,” he called. “On my command … break!”

The six Tomcats of VF-95 banked right in perfect unison, angling toward the Indian fighters rising to meet them.

Captain Kurasov saw the lumbering aircraft’s approach and felt like crying with pent-up relief.

The bomber known to NATO as the Tu-16 Badger had been a mainstay of Soviet aviation for over three decades. Large, powered by a pair of massive turbojets slung close to the roots of swept-back wings, the Badger had a combat radius of nearly 2,000 miles. Nine major variants served a variety of roles with both the Russian strategic aviation forces and the Russian navy: anti-shipping, ELINT, ECM, conventional medium bomber, reconnaissance, and tanker.

This particular variant, a Badger-A fitted out for the tanker role, had taken off from the air base at Dushanbe among the mountains north of the Afghanistan border three hours earlier. Cruising southwest at its service ceiling of forty thousand feet, it had avoided Pakistan air space by violating Iran’s hostile but poorly watched Baluchistan frontier until it was over the Gulf of Oman, before turning southeast on the final leg of its 2,000 mile journey.

The decision to send the Badger had been made with uncharacteristic haste by the officers of the small Russian naval aviation staff stationed at Dushanbe. Maintained by the Department of SNA to support Russian naval forces operating in the Indian Ocean, the facility had dispatched the tanker within minutes of learning that Kreml’s flight deck was burning, and that no fewer than twelve of the new navalized Mig-29 fighters were aloft at the time.

By loitering over the area and conserving fuel, the Mig-29s had hoped to stay airborne until the tanker reached them. They had the endurance … barely. They’d used lots of fuel during their launch, and they’d not begun flying conservatively until after the cruise missile hit Kreml at 0859. After more than three and a half hours aloft, the Mig squadron was running on fumes.

Captain Kurasov looked at the fuel gauge on his console. Things were desperate. His squadron was down to ten now. Uritski and Denisov had run dry minutes ago. The first to launch, they’d been the first to run out of fuel with no place to land, ejecting into the sea close by the American carrier. Both men had been rescued by one of Jefferson’s helicopters.

That would be the fate of the rest of the Migs soon, if they could not get refueled in time. Kreml’s flight deck was still a ruin of twisted metal and debris, though the fires were out now, at last report.

Attempting to land on the American carrier was out of the question.

There were too many technical variables, too many differences in the technology. The aircraft did not have the Americans’ ILS equipment for instrument landings and didn’t know how to use American signaling and course-correction techniques—”calling the ball,” as they referred to it.

As a good atheist, Kurasov could not call the appearance of the tanker a godsend. But he was damned glad to see it approach. “Red Soldier, this is Tower,” he said, using the call sign and frequency given him by the new Soviet air control officer on board the Marshal Timoshenko.

“Tower, Red Soldier. We heard you boys were thirsty. Perhaps you would like a small drink, comrades?”

Kurasov grinned. The old communist honorific “comrade” had fallen into disfavor of late among the people of the Commonwealth. Somehow, it had managed to take on an entirely new meaning among those who served in Russia’s armed forces. Comrade. Brother.

“Indeed we would, Red Soldier. Ten baby birds with mouths open wide!”

One by one, the Migs approached the Russian tanker in order of their fuel needs. Each would take only five hundred liters, enough to remain airborne long enough for all of them to slake their thirst in turn. Then they would go through the list again, drinking their fill.

“Tower Leader, this is Tower Three,” the pilot of one of the other Migs said.

“Go ahead, Tower Three.”

“Tower Leader, we have a message from the American radar plane.”

“Read it.” Tower Three, a young pilot named Lavrov, was the only one of the ten pilots still in the air who spoke passable English. He’d been designated as the go-between with American traffic control.

“They say, “Estimated ten to twelve Indian aircraft approaching from one-six-zero degrees, range eight-five kilometers. Believed to be Sea Harriers from INS Viraat. Intercept and destroy.’”

“”Intercept and destroy,” eh?” He chuckled. “I never thought I would be flying air cover for an American aircraft carrier!”

“Da, Comrade Captain. But their defeat is ours as well.”

That, at least, had been the reasoning used by Fitzgerald, the American carrier Captain. Fitzgerald had been unable to promise the Migs a place to land if they ran out of fuel … but he had, rather eloquently, convinced the Russian aviators that to lose the Jefferson would doom their own ship. If the Indians broke through, they would find the scarred and battered Kreml a tempting target indeed.

It all would have been a moot point if the tanker had not arrived, of course. Sometimes, the fate of whole nations hung upon the unlikely, the incredible.

Like the decision by the SNA staff at Dushanbe to dispatch the Tupolev.

Or by a Russian squadron commander to defend an American nuclear carrier.

“Agreed, Lieutenant Lavrov. Reply: “Will redeploy when fueling is complete.’ They cannot expect us to attack Indian fighters when willpower alone keeps us aloft!”

Ahead, Tower Five began maneuvering toward the refueling boom suspended from the gigantic, swept-wing Tupolev. Kurasov’s orders were to cover the American ships during the strike against India. In a sense, though, he was fighting less for the Americans than for the others of the squadron. If Jefferson was burning, there would be few helicopters to spare for fishing wet Russians from the sea!

He hoped that there would be time.

For Admiral Magruder, the evening had dragged by with unmerciful deliberation. It had been four hours since the first report that Jefferson had been struck by a missile. An hour later the communications net had gone down, and for ten suspense-filled minutes, no one in the White House or the Pentagon had known what was going on half a globe away.

Then communications had been reestablished with Jefferson, and Washington learned that Vicksburg and Kreml had both been badly hit.

The President had come close to ordering Mongoose aborted. Magruder knew that, had seen it in the President’s face. When Captain Fitzgerald had come on the line, however, informing the President and the Joint Chiefs that Mongoose was still on, the admiral had watched some measure of tension ease from the President’s face. “I have this problem with my field commanders,” he’d said, grinning at Magruder. “They always tell their Commander in Chief what to do.”

“A piratical lot, Mr. President.”

“Indeed.” The President picked up a mug filled with steaming coffee, a potent brew concocted in the Secret Service office outside for just such occasions as this. “What do you think, Tom? Can they pull it off?”

“There’s a chance, sir. A good one.”

That had been two hours ago. The Indian aircraft had been beaten off.

The catapults on Jefferson had been repaired.

Now the strike force was over Highway 101, wreaking a special kind of hell on the Indian supply lines.

Members of the National Security Council had been coming and going all evening, most working in offices within the NSC complex in the White House basement. Victor Marlowe walked in, a folder in his hand. “Mr. President? These just came in from NPIC.” He glanced uncertainly at Magruder. “I … thought you’d better see them.”

“Do you want me to leave, Mr. President?”

“They’re T-K clearance, sir,” Marlowe said.

“That’s okay, Tom,” the President said. “Just excuse me a moment, will you?”

Magruder sat back, watching as the President leafed through what appeared to be a series of photographs. NPIC, Magruder knew, was the National Photographic Interpretation Center, the agency tasked with processing and producing photo intelligence from America’s chain of reconnaissance satellites. T-K, short for “Talent-Keyhole,” was the level of clearance necessary just to look at some of the photo imagery possible with the new breed of KH-12 satellites now in orbit. Magruder had heard the stories of reading newspapers over a man’s shoulder from two hundred miles up. Ridiculous, of course. And yet … “Oh my God.”

“Mr. President?”

The President looked up, his face ashen. He looked first at Magruder, then at Marlowe. “These were taken when?”

“Within the hour, sir. These are rushes. The tapes and the finished processing are on their way over now.”

“Mr. President,” Magruder said. “Perhaps I’d better wait outside while you-“

“He’s got T-K clearance, Vic. Now. Damn it, I need him!”

“Of course, sir.”

The President slid a photograph across the conference table to Magruder.

He picked it up, careful not to touch the glossy finish.

It looked like a black-and-white photograph taken, perhaps, from the roof of a building. Several men in obviously military uniforms were gathered around a bulky, oblong something partly blocked by the wing of an aircraft.

Magruder squinted at the part of the plane he could see. “It looks like an Air Force Falcon,” he said.

“Very good, Admiral,” Marlowe said. “An F-16 Fighting Falcon. But it’s not Air Force. Not our air force, at any rate.”

Magruder looked at the photo again. “Pakistan.”

“Bingo,” Marlowe said. “The weapon being loaded onto that aircraft is a fair imitation of a B-57 five-to ten-kiloton atomic bomb.”

“My God in heaven.”

“Why now?” Magruder asked. “In the middle of-“

“The battle has drawn Indian planes south,” Marlowe said quickly.

“Stripped their defenses. The Pakistanis probably see this as their one chance to get something in without having it be shot down.”

The President gestured toward the picture. “Where is this?”

“That was taken at a PAF base outside of Bahawaipur from one hundred seventy-five miles up,” Marlowe explained. “I have ground sources checking over there now, getting more data. I expect to hear more shortly.”

“I want to hear it the second you do, Vic. The second.”

“Yes, sir.”

The President took the photo from Magruder and stared at it. “Damn them,” he said. “Damn them!”

“I thought the Pakistanis promised to hold back on this,” Magruder said.

“Promised?” The President’s fist hit the desk. “You’re damn right they promised! Assurances were given-“

“They are fighting for their survival,” Marlowe said. He shrugged. “Or it may be a bluff. Another ‘message.’”

“I’ll give them a message,” the President said. “And her name is the Thomas Jefferson.” He looked at Magruder. “It seems, Admiral, that we must assume that the Pakistanis are loading an atomic device aboard one of their aircraft … and that they intend to use it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The President was quiet for a long moment. He rose from his chair, walked to the window, and stared for a time out across the Rose Garden, at the street lights of nighttime Washington. “Vic,” he said at last.

“I might have something we can try. Who do you have on tap at the American Embassy in New Delhi? Fast? I need to get a message passed on to the right person over there.”

“I think I have the man, Mr. President.”

The President turned to Magruder. “And I think now we’re going to need your people more than ever now.”