Armageddon Mode

CHAPTER 5

Tombstone walked into the Vipers’ ready room, exchanging greetings with the other aviators already there. Most of VF-95’s pilots and RIOS were there, standing about in small groups or already sitting in the rows of chairs facing a large TV screen mounted on the far bulkhead. Those scheduled for patrol within the next few hours wore their flight suits.

The others were more comfortably attired in their khakis.

Looking around the room, he spotted Batman and his rear-seater, Lieutenant Ken “Malibu” Blake, standing in one corner underneath the PLAT monitor, deep in a heated debate. He hesitated a moment, then walked over to join them.

“Ho, Stoney!” Batman said. “Help me straighten out this guy.”

“Hopeless,” Tombstone said. “You should’ve known that when you married him.”

“Yeah, I know, but where there’s life, there’s hope, even for the brain-dead. This guy’s trying to tell me that the Russians aren’t a threat anymore.”

Malibu took a sip from a can of soda. He was, in his own words, a Coke-aholic who needed a can of the stuff to get jump-started in the morning. “Seems to me they’re having enough trouble just holding this commonwealth together without trying to project their air-and seapower all over the world,” he said.

“He’s got a point there, Batman,” Tombstone said. “When was the last time we got buzzed by a Bear?”

“Just before Korea, but that’s beside the point. The Iron Curtain was lifted for a while, but it fell again with a thud when things started going sour inside their borders, and now who knows what will happen?”

“Which means they’re too busy to bother with us or the Indian Ocean,” Malibu insisted. “Look at the record, man! They gave Cam Ranh back to the Vietnamese. Yemen decided it didn’t want Soviet ships at Socotra.

They’re not even on particularly good terms with the Indians anymore. If this keeps up, they’re not going to have any overseas bases at all. I don’t think they’re going to be bothering us much from now on.”

“Yeah? Wake up and take a look at this.” Batman turned and slapped a map that was tacked up to a bulletin board on the nearby bulkhead. It was a full-color, 1:41500,000-scale map showing most of the Indian Ocean from Malaysia to Somalia. The Indian subcontinent jabbed southward like a huge, blunt dagger. A black line started at Diego Garcia far south of the dagger’s tip and extended north along the western coast of India before cutting sharply to the west. Dates written in along the way traced the battle group’s progress over the past week. Jefferson’s current position was marked, two hundred miles south of the Indian-Pakistan border.

Six hundred miles southwest of Turban Station, off of Oman on the Arabian Peninsula, another line had been roughed in, this time in red.

It showed the day-by-day recorded positions of the (former) Soviet Indian Ocean Squadron, SOVINDRON. A week before, those ships had been moving slowly south down the Red Sea. Now they had rounded the corner at the Gulf of Aden and were steaming all-out toward the Pakistan coast.

Batman tapped the squadron’s last charted position. “Trouble projecting their seapower? You can say that when they have a fair-sized task force just six hundred miles over the horizon? Man, I’d call that some kind of major power projection!”

“Trying to assert Commonwealth power?” Malibu crumpled the empty aluminum can and dropped it in a wastebasket. “Or they’re looking after their people here, like we are. Mark my words, guys. We’ll be out looking for work if this keeps up!”

“What do you say to that, Stoney?” Batman asked. “Ready for a job with United?”

The joke stung. Tombstone managed to keep the easy smile on his face.

“Not just yet,” he said. “Not if they won’t let me pull an inverted dive in a 727.”

They laughed as he slumped into a seat. For him, the question was dead serious.

His eyes went to the lieutenant j.g. working on the squadron’s greenie board. Every ready room had one, a large chart with the names of all of the aviators in the squadron, and squares colored in with magic markers where his performance for the past month was recorded. A green square meant the LSO had graded his trap as “OK,” the highest praise possible for an excellent pass or for timely corrections of minor deviations.

Yellow was for “fair.” No color meant “no grade,” meaning the trap had been dangerous to people and planes on the deck. Red with a C stood for “Cut,” a landing so unsafe it could have resulted in disaster. The squares were divided into two or three sections for multiple passes, with a “B” signifying a bolter, or missed trap, and a “W” a wave-off. A small black triangle up in one corner meant the trap had been made at night.

The VF-95 Vipers were a good squadron, green and yellow marks predominating, with a few white patches and no reds. Their overall record was not as good as that of either VFA-161 or VFA-173. The intense competitions between squadrons — recorded on a huge greenie board for the entire Air Wing in a passageway outside Pri-Fly — were nearly always taken by those squadrons, for the nimble F/A-18 Hornet was a lot easier to plant neatly on the number-three arrestor wire than the massive Tomcat.

But the Vipers were good, and Tombstone was fiercely proud to be one of them.

It would hurt to leave them.

He reached into the breast pocket of his khakis, pulled out the last letter from Pamela, and began rereading it.

You’d think a TV news anchor would know everything that’s going on, she’d written. It seems like I’m hearing just enough to know how hairy things are getting over there. Everything coming into the network here points to a major war breaking out between Pakistan and India before the end of the month.

She’d certainly guessed right about that. Tombstone looked up, his eyes going to the PLAT monitor. An A-6 Intruder was descending toward the roof. He watched it touch steel, seeming to flatten itself to the deck, then rebounding slightly, nose down as the arrestor wire dragged it to a halt. Good trap.

He looked back at the letter, his eyes shifting down the page to what she’d written later on. I worry so about you, my darling Matt. Maybe this isn’t the best time to bring it up, but I have to admit that I’ve been thinking about us, about our future, an awful lot in the past weeks. Have you thought much about what our life together will be like?

ACN will be sending me out on special assignments every so often, and I’ll be tied down in Washington the rest of the time. And you?

Assignments at naval air stations all over the country, interspersed with nine-month deployments at sea.

We’ve talked about getting married quite a lot during our last few letters. I love you, Matt, but I think the time has come to take a hard and decidedly unromantic look at our careers and our futures.

Leave it to Pamela to be practical about all this, Tombstone thought. He turned the page to a smudged and oft-read paragraph just before the end.

You wouldn’t have to give up flying. A friend of mine at the FAA told me the other day that the airlines are crying for experienced pilots, and that Navy aviators are prime candidates. Scheduling our time together might still be a problem, but at least we would have schedules, and not be apart for so long at a time.

I love you more now than when I was with you last in Bangkok. I want to marry you. But we have to face reality. As long as you stay in the Navy, I don’t see how we can have much of a life together.

“About time for the show, sir.”

Startled, Tombstone looked up and found himself staring into the pudgy features of Master Chief Julius Fleming, the Avionics Technician assigned to the squadron. “Oh, right.” Hastily he stuffed Pamela’s letter back into his flight suit, then glanced around at the other men in the squadron taking their seats. “Put it on, Chief.”

Each squadron ready room on the carrier had a television monitor tied into the closed-circuit network. Moments after Fleming turned it on, the Air Wing 20 logo was replaced by the face of CAG Steve Marusko. With a wry flash of humor, Tombstone thought to himself that CAG looked none the worse for wear after the harrowing trap the day before. He remembered that he’d been supposed to go down to CAG’s office and talk things over. Somehow, there’d been no time since yesterday afternoon.

Well, the talk wouldn’t change his mind now. Tombstone’s mind was made up.

“Good morning, men,” Marusko said briskly. He was standing at the CVIC podium. By broadcasting his address over the CCTV system, he could speak to all of the aviators aboard Jefferson simultaneously. It saved time.

“I should start off by saying that there’s been a big change in the green sheet.” The “green sheet,” named logically enough for its color, was the daily schedule of air operations put out by OX Division, Ops Admin. “As of 0800 this morning, this carrier battle group will go to full alert.”

“Yesterday afternoon at 1655 hours, the U.S.S. Biddle was fired upon by a Foxtrot-class submarine of the Indian navy. Biddle evaded and returned fire. The Foxtrot is believed to have been lost with all hands.”

The stir grew to a subdued murmur of voices. “Knock it off, people,” Tombstone said, raising his voice. “Let’s listen up.”

“As a result of this incident,” CAG continued on the screen, “diplomatic relations with India have become seriously strained. Yesterday evening, our time, their embassy in Washington delivered a formal protest to the President and threatened retaliation if we stay within what they describe as their military interdiction zone.

“That zone, incidentally, extends three hundred miles south from the mainland to latitude twenty degrees north. That describes a line from just above Bombay clear across the Arabian Sea to the island of Masirah, off Oman. Washington has responded by declaring that we do not recognize that zone, which includes the approaches to the Persian Gulf. The Navy’s mission includes insuring free passage through those straits, something we can’t give up without serious repercussion among our allies.

“Jefferson is now well inside the exclusion zone, and we’re not leaving.

A message to that effect has been delivered by our State Department to New Delhi.

“At 0435 hours our time this morning, Jefferson received an alert order from CINCPAC.” CAG picked up a sheet of paper from the podium and began reading.

“”CBG-14 is hereby directed,”’ he read, “‘to assume a defensive stance commensurate with full combat readiness in order to safeguard the vessels of CBG-14 from possible attack by hostile forces. COCBG-14 is urged to take every precaution to avoid conflict with potential hostile forces in the area within the framework of his operating orders. Ships and aircraft of CBG-14 will fire only if fired upon. Aggressive operations which could be construed as hostile gestures are to be terminated.’”

CAG put the paper down and looked back up at the camera. “In keeping with these orders, Admiral Vaughn has directed the battle group to close up once we reach our assigned patrol station. Fighter CAPS will go as scheduled, but the patrol radius will be reduced from three hundred to two hundred miles. The strike exercises scheduled for VA-84 and VA-89 are canceled. Catseyes and King Fishers will continue their patrols as briefed. Every effort is to be made to avoid further contact with Indian forces.”

That made sense. Practice bomb runs by the Intruders of the carrier’s attack squadrons could be dispensed with. The Hawkeye radar planes of the VAW-13 °Catseyes and the sub-hunting Vikings of VS-42 would be needed more than ever to alert the battle group to an approach by hostile planes or subs. He wasn’t sure he understood the order to shrink the CBG’s perimeter, though. An aircraft carrier was an extremely large and tempting target. The best way to hide it was to spread the battle group over as much area as possible, making it harder for hostile patrols to pinpoint the carrier.

The televised briefing continued, covering other, more routine matters, but the big bomb had already been dropped. Strained diplomatic relations with India? Possible combat with Indian forces? It seemed impossible, but wars had begun over smaller things than the loss of a submarine. What made this situation deadly was the fact that the Indians were already at war with Pakistan. Any hostile U.S. move would make New Delhi think that the Americans had sided with their old ally, Pakistan.

It was even possible that the battle group could be attacked by accident.

And what the hell am I doing here, anyway? he thought. I’m not mad at the Indians, I sure as hell don’t want to get into a war with them.

His thoughts strayed to Pamela’s letter. Maybe she was right, and it was time for a change. Four more weeks and the Jefferson would be returning to San Diego. At that time, Tombstone’s current commission period would be up and he would have the option of resigning from the Navy.

Resigning from the Navy. The words carried an eerie feel to them.

For the better part of ten years he’d thought he’d known precisely his career’s future course. The Academy, flight school at Pensacola, each decision along the way had led naturally and inevitably to the next.

Memories of his father — a carrier pilot killed over Hanoi in 1969—had been one strong factor in those decisions. His uncle, Admiral Thomas J. Magruder, had been another.

If he stayed in, promotion would come within a year, and with it confirmation of his rather tenuous position as skipper of VF-95. Usually the COS of air wing squadrons were full commanders; he’d been made skipper because of a shortage of qualified aviator commanders with the fleet and, he still strongly suspected, a word or two in the right quarters from his uncle. The title of squadron skipper had rested uneasily on his shoulders for eight months now. Once he got his promotion, it would ride there a bit more naturally.

And after that? A few more years and he’d have had his shot at a CAG slot with the ultimate goal of skippering a carrier of his own.

Yeah, his whole future had been planned out in year-by-year, step-by-step detail. And now the whole thing had been wiped away. It left him feeling shaky.

But he couldn’t keep going with it, not this way. He’d lost his edge.

He was starting to hold on too tight, maybe because of Pamela … maybe because he’d come too close too many times. The air-to-air refueling incident yesterday and the near-crash on the deck afterward had convinced him that it was time to pack it in.

Usually when an aviator faced that kind of personal crisis, he had the option of turning in his wings. That meant accepting some other Navy flyer’s billet — piloting COD aircraft or transports, for instance — but escaping the deadly day-in, day-out stress of combat flying. Such a move was usually looked upon as a kind of death by the aviator’s former comrades. It excluded him from that special, inner circle that was so much a part of the mystique of carrier aviation. He knew all about that. He’d wrestled with the decision several months earlier, had nearly turned in his wings because he’d been having a rough time with the responsibility of running a fighter squadron … with giving the orders that could get other guys, his friends, killed.

He’d managed to resolve that one. This was something different, a problem that couldn’t be solved by something as simple as asking for a different assignment. What it came down to was the realization that he could have his career … or Pamela.

What kind of money was United paying for experienced pilots? Better than Navy pay, that was for sure, even with flight pay, combat pay, and Navy perks thrown in.

In another month he would sure as hell find out.

If he survived whatever it was that the Indians were about to do with the U.S. battle group trespassing in their ocean.

Rear Admiral Ajay Ramesh took his seat at the conference table as other men, admirals and generals, filed into the room. He’d been summoned to Defense Ministry headquarters with unseemly haste. The haste was fully justified, of course. He’d made certain suggestions during his report to the Ministry the day before … and it appeared that those suggestions were to be acted upon.

He glanced at the map dominating one wall of the room, showing the Indian-Pakistan frontier from Kashmir to the Arabian Sea. Arrows and the cryptic symbols identifying various military units had been marked in, showing troop movements and deployments since the beginning of the war almost thirty-six hours earlier. So far, the front had remained more or less static, though the Pakistani towns of Gadra, Nagal Parkar, and Satidara — all in the south — had been taken. Units in the Punjab, opposite Lahore and Sahiwal, were still bogged down at the border.

But slow progress had been expected. Much of India’s armor had been held back in anticipation of Operation Cobra.

The double doors at the other end of the room swung open, and a military aide strode in, calling “Attention!” He was closely followed by Rear Admiral Desai Karananidhi, commander of India’s western naval forces, and by General Sanjeev Dhanaraj, First Corps commander.

Dhanaraj took his place at the head of the table. “First of all,” he said as the other men took their seats once more, “let me say to you, Admiral Ramesh, that I’m sure I speak for all here when I offer my sincere condolences for the death of your son. He was a credit to his uniform, and his nation.”

Ramesh inclined his head gratefully. The news of Joshi’s death still burned.

“To business, then,” Dhanaraj said. “You have all read the recommendations of the Prime Minister and the directive from the Ministry of Defense. Comments?”

General Chandra Bakaya spread his hands. “Comments? Yes, sir. Has our government taken leave of its collective senses? We sit here and serenely contemplate adding the United States of America to our list of enemies? Insanity!”

Admiral Karananidhi glanced at Dhanaraj. “The Americans have allied themselves with Pakistan time and time again. Can this time be any different?”

True enough, Ramesh thought. For years India had walked a diplomatic tightrope between East and West, with an avowed policy of nonalignment with any other world power. The Americans’ inability to grasp this crucial essence of Indian foreign policy was baffling. This time, it seemed, they were openly supporting the Pakistanis, had actually fired upon and sunk an Indian warship. Joshi …!

Several officers were trying to talk at once. General Dhanaraj pounded the table with the flat of his hand, demanding order, and the noise subsided. “Admiral Ramesh has joined us today to elaborate on the plan he submitted to the Ministry yesterday,” he said. “It has been designated Operation Krait.” He paused. “Admiral Ramesh?”

The admiral stood. His knees felt weak, and he leaned forward, bracing himself on the tabletop with his hands.

“Thank you, General. Gentlemen, since Pakistan’s, ah, demonstration yesterday, it is obvious that we must win this war quickly. Cobra, once launched, must succeed within a few days of the initial assault, or we face disaster. American support for our enemy threatens that quick victory, threatens us.”

Drawing a deep breath, he crossed to the front of the room, where he pulled down a second map over the first, one with the Indian Military Exclusion Zone marked in red. Notations pinpointed American ships, and the spot where Kalvari had been sunk.

Fighting the rising lump in his throat, he reached out, his finger touching the main American battle group that had taken up positions at sea south of the India-Pakistan border. “Our target, gentlemen, for Operation Krait.”