Carrier

CHAPTER 10

"This may be the first good news we've got on this," the President said. He looked up from the report, stamped CRITIC at top and bottom. "The Russians backed down?"

Admiral Grimes grinned without humor. "I'd say, Mr. President, that they got the crap scared out of them when one of our pilots pulled… shall we say… an unorthodox maneuver."

"And there's been no further attempt to probe our forces?"

Marlowe folded his hands on the teakwood table. "You can bet they're watching closely, Mr. President. Three of their reconnaissance satellites have shifted to new orbits to give them better coverage of the Sea of Japan. But there are no indications that they want a direct confrontation."

The president's eyes shifted to the others at the table. He grinned at the Secretary of State. "Keep that in mind when you talk to the PRC Ambassador, Jim. It looks like it'll be just us and North Korea, with the PRC as go-betweens. Simplifies things, doesn't it?"

"Yes, sir." The secretary scowled. "We shouldn't feel too confident about Soviet motives, though, Mr. President. They've still not responded to our advances."

"Agreed." The President moved his gaze to a new face at the table. Dr. Lee Ann Chu, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, was seated across from Schellenberg. She was an attractive, older woman ― in her fifties, he guessed. She'd been put in charge of the team studying the political impact of U.S. military action on America's allies in the Far East. "Dr. Chu? I understand you have a preliminary report."

She hesitated, looking first at Schellenberg. There was some unstated struggle there, the President noted.

"Lee Ann's report isn't quite ready yet, Mr. President," the Secretary said. "Her assessment team is still considering the matter."

"Dr. Chu?" the President said gently. "We don't need a formal report. Just tell me what you think. How will our allies react to military intervention in the area?"

Slowly, Dr. Chu removed her glasses, folding them carefully and placing them on the table before her. She met the President's eyes directly. "Mr. President, you can expect the normal round of anti-U.S. condemnations. With the exception of the Republic of Korea, you will find no support, no practical help in this matter at all. On the whole, however, and in the long run, our image will not suffer badly."

Chu went on to discuss each nation in turn, beginning with Japan, pointing out that Tokyo had been pursuing a far more independent course of late and that the Japanese resented South Korea's economic competition. She spoke for ten minutes with authority and conviction. There were no surprises in what she had to say. It was exactly what the President had expected to hear.

He detected, though, that she was holding back, that there was something her boss might be suppressing.

"Thank you, Doctor," he said as she finished. "Is there anything else?"

She hesitated, looking uncertain.

"That will be all, Lee Ann," Schellenberg said. "Thank you."

"A moment, please," the President said, not certain how far he could push. "Dr. Chu, you've discussed the reactions of our friends in the area if we attack. What about those of our enemies?"

"Mr. President-" Schellenberg began.

"My question was addressed to Dr. Chu," the President said brusquely. "Doctor?"

She seemed to reach some inner decision. "Mr. President, the question might better be phrased, 'What will happen if we do not attack?'"

"And?"

"The expression 'loss of face' is dated, Mr. President. Its use has certain… racist overtones. And yet I must remind you that it is still a valid psychological concept throughout much of the Orient. If you back down before the North Koreans now, you, Mr. President, will have lost face, before your friends and enemies alike. I urge you-"

Schellenberg interrupted. "What Dr. Chu means, Mr. President, is that an aggressive stance may help us bull through this thing in the short term. But we're going to have to be very careful navigating this minefield for some time to come, and-"

"Since when did I need an interpreter for straight English, Jim?"

"Sorry, Mr. President. The Doctor is new to her job, and-"

"Save it." The President looked from Chu to Schellenberg and back again, scowling. It was clear enough now. Chu's report had held the wrong twist and Schellenberg had been trying to suppress it.

God. Did North Korea's dictator have the same problems with his own advisors, or did he enjoy the luxury of ordering them shot when the infighting got too vicious?

"Dr. Chu, I've already decided that a strong approach is necessary. We have to tell these people we mean business." He looked down the table at Caldwell. "General, as of this moment, I am authorizing a full go-ahead for Winged Talon."

The General nodded. "Yes, Mr. President."

"We'll keep the 82nd and the rest on alert, use them if we have to. But I think a measured response is called for."

"I'll give the necessary orders, Mr. President."

"Excellent." The President looked at his Chief of Staff. "George? We're going to have to prepare a statement for the press. I want Joe brought in on this."

"Yes, Mr. President."

Joseph Collins, the White House Press Secretary, had been kept busy for the past twenty-four hours, ever since the story about Chimera's seizure had broken in the press. Until now his task had been restricted to damage control ― denying reports of U.S. military intervention in Korea and insisting that the President was following events in the Far East with grave concern.

The President knew that he would have to start bracing for the storm which would follow any decision he made, and the sooner the White House press corps was brought in on things, the better.

He turned back to face Schellenberg, reading the professional hurt in the man's face. There was another problem, bad feelings that would have to be nipped early. "Jim, you still have an appointment with the Chinese ambassador this afternoon?"

"Yes, sir." He glanced at his watch. "Forty-five minutes."

"Good. Keep it." He smiled, turning on the charm which had stood him in good stead in more than one campaign. "You can win them over, get them to talk to us if anyone can. If you can open channels to the PDRK, then Winged Talon is off. You have my word on it." He turned his gaze on the others. "Meanwhile, we keep our powder dry and watch out for mine-fields. We take those steps necessary to resolve this crisis and get our people back. If they won't talk to us, Winged Talon is on. Agreed?" Briefly, his eyes met the eyes of each of the other people in the room. There was no dissent.

George Hall stirred in his seat. "Mr. President, there remains the problem of the location of our people over there. An indiscriminate strike at North Korean military installations could kill our own people."

"Victor?" He looked at the DCI. "Anything?"

"Not yet, sir. We've got satellite coverage eighty percent of the time now."

"Keep on it, and let me know the moment you've got something solid."

"Yes, sir." He didn't add of course, but the words were clear in his tone. We're all getting scraped raw, the President thought. My God, how are we going to win this one?

He wondered what more he could do for Chu. She'd probably been ordered by her boss to tow the party line. Her independence just now might well have ended her career.

He watched as the crisis management team scooped up papers and folders, and decided to say nothing.

Admiral Magruder stepped across the cables lying on the deck and found himself a spot out of the way near the bulkhead. Jefferson's Intelligence Center had been cleared of chairs and was now cluttered with the trappings of a television studio: lights, a camera, a handful of seamen in dungarees and chiefs and officers in khaki plugging in power cords and preparing for the morning's broadcast.

A small floating city in her own right, Jefferson boasted two television stations of her own, broadcasting regular programs dealing with problems and matters of interest to Jefferson's crew. At need, Captain Fitzgerald or the admiral could address the entire ship's company without the need for assembling them all in one spot… an obvious impossibility for reasons of space, work efficiency, and safety.

"Ready to go, Admiral. Are you?"

Magruder turned to face Master Chief Raymond C. Buckley, Jr., a stocky, cherub-faced man who had been in the Navy for twenty-eight of his forty-five years, a high school drop-out who'd joined the Navy at seventeen and found himself a home. Buckley was Jefferson's master chief, the chief of the boat, senior enlisted man on board. More than any other, he acted as intermediary between the ship's enlisted men and her officers.

"Ready, Chief, thanks. You're going to lead off?"

"Just like a game show host, Admiral." He seemed relaxed and at ease. Buckley's face was well known to every one of Jefferson's six thousand officers and men. He hosted the ship's nightly We'll Sea program on Channel 1, and he wrote daily articles for the ship's newspaper, the Jeffersonian Democrat.

Buckley walked to the lectern and faced the camera. The chief who was serving as director pointed at him as he gripped the lectern with both hands and beamed at the camera. "Goooood morning, Jeffersons!" The master chief had adopted as his broadcast trademark PFC Pat Sajak's well-known DJ intro from the Armed Forces Radio broadcasts in Vietnam. Buckley had served in Nam, Magruder knew, ashore at Cam Ranh Bay and later on board the U.S.S. Constellation, as had many of the older chiefs on board. It formed a small but important link with other men who had served America's interests in foreign waters.

Magruder did not listen to the master chief's opening remarks. It seemed incongruous, somehow, to be giving Jefferson's crew their orders on TV, orders which could very well lead to their deaths in a very few hours. He looked again at the printout he'd brought with him from the com center, then at the cardboard-mounted photograph which was resting on an easel under the unmoving gaze of a second camera on the other side of the room. Did wars always start this way, with step-by-step events that escalated until there was no longer any way to control them?

"And now, Jeffersons, it is my great privilege to welcome the Commanding Officer, Carrier Battle Group 14, Rear Admiral Thomas J. Magruder!"

Woodenly, Magruder walked into the blaze of stage lights, stepping behind the lectern as Buckley moved out of the way. He placed his notes before him, then looked up into the blank, glassy eye of the camera. The red light was on, putting him squarely at the center of attention for several thousand officers and men on board the carrier.

"Jeffersons," he said. It was best, he thought, to tell this one straight, without preamble. "As you all know by now, Carrier Battle Group 14 has been directed by the President to take up station at Patrol Point November, pending further orders. Yesterday, CBG-14 was augmented by the arrival of MEU-6, comprised of four Marine amphibious ships.

"At zero-five-twenty this morning, we received new orders. They were addressed through the Commander in Chief, Pacific, but the authority comes through the President. I will read you the significant parts."

Magruder pulled his reading glasses from the breast pocket of his uniform coat and perched them low on his nose. "Priority Urgent, to CO, CBG-14, U.S.S. Jefferson, on station at Point November.

"One. Carrier Battle Group Fourteen, together with Marine Expeditionary Unit Six, will henceforth be designated Task Force Eighteen. CO CBG-14 is directed to assume overall command TF-18 and of all auxiliary and support forces Op area November.

"Four. CO TF-18 will make such unit dispositions as are consistent with security of the force. CO TF-18 is reminded of recent hostile KorCom activity in op-area, and urged to take all necessary precautions to avoid unnecessary losses to his command.

"Five. TF-18 will maintain station pending further operational directives of the National Command Authority. TF-18 must be considered to be the primary arm of national foreign policy in the area, and will engage in no activities contrary to national goals or aims.

"Eight. All tactical commands under TF-18, including both Marine and air wing elements, are hereby directed to prepare final operational orders anticipating possible military interdiction at or near the port of Wonsan, North Korea, in keeping with parameters and directives outlined in op-plan designated WINGED TALON.

"Nine. Operation WINGED TALON should be considered to be a limited tactical retaliatory strike aimed at securing the safety of U.S. Navy personnel now held by KorCom forces in or near Wonsan, and at securing the release of U.S.S. Chimera seized two days ago in international waters by KorCom Naval and Air Force units. Final authorization for WINGED TALON will be the responsibility of the National Command Authority alone."

Magruder looked up from the paper and into the camera's eye once more. "These orders are signed by Fleet Admiral Wesley R. Bainbridge, CINCPAC. I needn't tell you, men, that they place a heavy responsibility on all of us, on every man in this task force.

"I have here a TENCAP photo which should be of interest to all of you." The camera's red light winked out, and Magruder knew the second camera was on, focused on the photo on the easel across the room. TENCAP ― the acronym stood for Tactical Exploitation of National CAPabilities ― was a new military adaptation of satellite technology. For the first time, commanders in the field could use their satellite links to call down up-to-the-minute photos from KH-12s directly, rather than waiting for them from Washington.

"What you are seeing, men, is the U.S.S. Chimera tied up at a pier in Wonsan Harbor. I'm told this photograph has a resolution of about three inches, which is pretty damn good from over a hundred miles up. You can see soldiers standing on Chimera's deck, wearing steel helmets and carrying AK rifles. There's been quite a bit of damage. One of the whaleboat davits has been shot away, the mast has been knocked over, and there's been some damage to the forward deck and the deckhouse. That blob you see over the taffrail is a flag… the North Korean flag, raised in the place of the Stars and Stripes.

"This photo confirms that the North Koreans are indeed now holding our ship and nearly two hundred of our men prisoner, a brazen act of modern high-seas piracy."

The red light flashed on. He was on camera once more. "Task Force Eighteen has been called upon to be the steel behind the President's words when he talks to the North Koreans during the next few hours. He will tell them to release our people and our ship. When the NKs look at us, they'll get a pretty good idea of what will happen if they refuse."

It was hot under the lights. Magruder tried to ignore the sweat trickling down inside the collar of his uniform. "This one carrier battle group carries more firepower than was expended in all of World War II. It serves as a powerful and highly visible instrument of America's political and foreign policy will. The North Koreans are not crazy, and they are not suicidal. I expect that they will listen to reason and give in.

"If they do not, then it is our responsibility to do what Congress and the taxpayers pay us to do… defend America's interests wherever in the world they are threatened, defend our people wherever and whenever they are in danger. I know that I can count on each and every one of you to do your duty." He paused. What more was there to be said at a time like this? "That is all."

He stepped back from the lectern, allowing Buckley to take his place. The master chief was speaking as Magruder strode from the CVIC, but he was not listening. Command responsibility was something Admiral Magruder accepted with the uniform he wore. He'd grown up in a Navy family, he and his brother Sam. Their father had always told them both that command responsibility was something in their blood, that they were born to command.

Maybe that was so. His father had served on Nimitz's staff in World War II; his great-grandfather had commanded one of Farragut's monitors at Mobile Bay. The honor, the crisp blue-and-gold glory of U.S. Naval tradition had been a part of the very air he breathed when he and Sam were growing up in Annapolis, Maryland.

He'd talked a lot about command with Sam, back when they were on those heady first rungs of their careers as Naval officers. "I don't mind the thought of dying so much," Sam had told him once over coffee in the flight officers' mess at Pensacola. "But giving the orders that are going to get somebody else killed, that's a real bitch."

Sam had sealed his place in the family's tradition in the skies above the Doumer Bridge in downtown Hanoi, back in the summer of 1969. He was still officially listed as MIA, though the family had long since given up hoping that he was still alive.

His brother's words had come back to haunt Admiral Magruder more than once in the years since then, but now they were taking on an urgency ― an intensity ― unlike any he'd ever known. They followed him now as he hurried down the passageway. A sudden crisis, a set of orders from Washington… and he was taking twelve thousand men into combat. The fact that it was what he'd trained to do for so many years, that it was his job, meant less than the fact that they were his men. His responsibility.

Magruder had not told the whole story during his broadcast, and that, more than anything, was what was bothering him. It was true, for instance, that the carrier group carried more firepower than had been expended in all of World War II, but that was counting the nukes stored deep in Jefferson's belly, down in the forward magazine. No way would Washington authorize a nuclear strike against North Korea; vaporizing P'yongyang wouldn't solve a thing, and the North Koreans knew that as well as he did. Despite his brave words, Magruder wasn't nearly as certain as he'd pretended to be that the Koreans would back down.

Certainly, no one could count on an air-strike being sufficient in forcing P'yongyang's hand, and it was evident that Washington knew that. The Pentagon was bracing for something more than a quick in-and-out air raid; that much was evident from some of the paragraphs in his orders which he'd not read during the broadcast. Paragraph Seven, for instance, directed him to regard all North Korean ships and aircraft as hostile until further orders, and to take appropriate action as he saw fit.

Paragraph Ten was worse. It told him that a Naval special tactical team was coming in via COD ― carrier on-board delivery ― sometime after 1700 hours. That meant SEALS, and SEALs meant that someone in Washington was gearing up for the worst, anything from a hostage rescue mission to a full-fledged Marine amphibious assault. There were over twenty-six hundred Marines aboard Chosin and Little Rock. Suppose Washington decided to send them in?

Magruder found himself thinking of the two men shot down off Wonsan two days before, Grant and Cooper. He thought about Matthew's anger and shook his head. If the PDRK didn't back down in the next day or two, quite a few more good men could join them.

Heading back toward Flag Plot, he strode quickly down the narrow, gray-painted passageway, every fifth stride a duck-and-step through one of the openings in the transverse frames the ship's crew called knee-knockers. A sailor approached him coming the other way. Framed by the receding succession of knee-knockers, he looked at first like Magruder's own reflection in a gallery of mirrors. The corridor was so narrow both men had to turn sideways to pass.

The sailor was uncovered and therefore did not salute, but he looked Magruder in the eye as he stepped aside, grinned, and sounded off with a hearty "Good morning, Admiral." Like the majority of the men who served aboard Jefferson, he looked painfully young, no more than nineteen. "Sounds like we're gonna kick some ass."

"Damned straight, son."

His men. His duty.

CHAPTER 11

Tombstone Magruder fed another sheet of paper into the aging IBM Selectric on his desk and began a two-finger hunt-and-peck as he tried once more to write his report on the previous night's Bear hunt. Try as he might, he was finding it impossible to put into words the reprimand he'd wanted to lay on Batman Wayne's record.

He held the same sour-stomached distaste for this kind of administrative work as he had for filling out quarterly fitness reports. A bad word could ruin a promising officer's career forever… or at least blight it with personal observations which would follow the guy for as long as he was in the Navy. Magruder was still angry with Batman for his hot-dogging with the Bear, but he was less certain now that he should commit that anger to Batman's record. A private talk with the man, maybe a quiet word in CAG's ear in case the situation came up again sometime would be enough.

Besides, in another few hours, Batman might well be in the air facing MiGs, SAMs, and triple A. He'd need all the self-confidence and concentration he could muster. But damn. If someone didn't curb that boy's hot-dogging pretty soon-

There was a knock at the door and Tombstone looked up. He'd half expected to see Batman there, but it was Snowball, blinking at him owlishly through his big, round glasses. "Stoney? Got a minute?"

"C'mon in. Make yourself at home." The invitation was more a matter of polite form than of practicality. The office was the size of a walk-in closet. The chair and desk, the filing cabinet, the tiny book rack on one bulkhead filled it completely. Fitting another man inside was a logistical problem as complex as moving aircraft around on Jefferson's crowded hangar deck.

Snowball stepped inside the door. "Look… I'm not sure how to say this."

"Just spitting it out's usually best. Short and sweet."

"Yeah, I suppose so. Commander, I'm scared."

Scared. The word lay between them, harsh and unforgiving. Tombstone knew he had a problem.

Within the fraternity of aviators and flight officers, admitting to fear was acceptable, but only if it was made in a joking, self-deprecating way. The ego, the machismo of combat pilots demanded it. I'm telling you, boys, a pilot might say, with the easy grin and down-home drawl of one who has been through it all. That night trap was so hairy… after that bolter I found out why the flight suits they issue us are brown!

Never, never did you simply blurt out your fear. That rule held especially true for aviators, but it applied to backseaters as well.

Tombstone shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "What's the problem? Losing the Coyote the other day? The dogfight?"

"Oh, shit, Tombstone. I don't know. I guess it's a little bit of everything. I was scared the other day, sure, but I figured I could handle it okay. It got me to thinking though."

Tombstone waited. Snowball took a deep breath and continued. "It all kind of came apart for me last night, up there in the dark next to that Bear. Look, Tombstone, can I be straight with you?"

"Shoot."

"Mostly I've been worried about flying with you."

"Me?"

"Yeah. Ever since Coyote went down, you've been so uptight… hell, everybody knows it. It's like your mind's not really on your flying anymore, and that scares hell out of me! When you tucked in close under that Bear's tail last night, and then when Batman pulled that stunt, man, I thought that was it."

"You came through okay."

"Sure. But it got me thinking, right? It's like… like I'm trusting you, trusting the guy up front with my life, know what I mean? I'm married, Stoney. Got married two months before this cruise. Right now, I've been away from her more'n I've been with her. It ain't right for me to smear myself all over Jefferson's roundoff because some other guy's not paying attention! And now the scuttlebutt is we're going up against the Koreans and there's gonna be a fight. Man, I just don't know if I can handle that!"

"Is that all?" He felt ice-cold, as though he'd just been struck.

Snowball looked like he was about to say more, then reconsidered. "Yes, sir."

"You want to swap with another RIO? You're not stuck with me, you know."

"I don't know." He looked away. For a moment, he seemed to be studying the array of papers and notes tacked to the small bulletin board on the office bulkhead. "I don't think it would be any better."

"You want to stop flying?" For Tombstone, that was the ultimate impossibility. To give up flying would be like dying.

"No. Yeah… aw, shit. Look, Stoney, right now, I'm so screwed up-"

"Damn it, that's enough!" Tombstone's palm came down on his desk beside the typewriter, scattering an untidy stack of paperwork. "Listen, mister, I don't give a shit about your piss-ant little problems! You want a shoulder to cry on, go see the chaplain. You don't like my flying, talk to CAG and get yourself assigned to another plane… or get yourself grounded, I don't care!"

Tombstone regretted the outburst at once. It was too late to take the words back, too late to back down, but he could try to control the anger. Who was he mad at, anyway? Snowball? Or himself? He stood up behind his desk, holding Snowball's eyes with his own, making himself relax. "One way or another, I suggest that you get yourself squared away."

"Y-yes, sir."

Tombstone looked down at his desktop, then picked up a neatly typed paper from among the others scattered there. "Know what this is?"

"No, sir."

"Cut the kay-det crap, Snowy. This is an order from CAG, telling me to work out the details for CAP cover for Operation Winged Talon, getting ready for, quote air operations against North Korean ground positions and air targets in the Wonsan area, unquote. Right this minute, up on the flight deck, they're arming up on the assumption that this thing is a go! Chances are we'll be launching in a few hours, and when we do, it's really going to hit the fan. I don't want you up there if you're going to freeze up on me!"

He saw a spark of anger in Snowball's eyes. "I won't freeze, sir!"

Tombstone sank back into his chair. "Get out of here, then. See CAG if you want a transfer, but don't pester me with this shit, got me?"

"Yes, sir. Aye aye, sir."

Snowball backed out of the office, hesitated a moment, then whirled upon his heel and hurried off down the passageway. A moment later, the doorway was blocked again as Marusko stepped in. "What was that all about? We heard the shouting clear down to Admin."

Tombstone rocked his chair back on two legs, his hands pressed over his eyes. "I don't know, CAG. I probably just screwed it up, that's all."

"Welcome to the club. When will you have that report on my desk?"

He sighed. "What do you want first? Report or op-plan?"

CAG grinned. "What's the matter, son? Paperwork piling up?"

"And then some."

"You should see my desk. Okay, the Bear report can wait. From the way your uncle's talking, we're going in this afternoon. An all-squadron briefing's been called for fifteen hundred, so you can figure it for yourself. I'll need the op-plan by twelve hundred if I'm going to have anything to show the admiral."

"I love how we fight wars with paper. Okay, CAG. I'll get on it."

"Good. Oh, and Tombstone?"

"Yeah?"

"Take it easy on your people. They'll respond to a light hand, voice of experience and all that, right?"

Tombstone drew in a breath. "Aye aye, CAG. You're right."

"That's all, then. See you at twelve hundred."

Tombstone stared at the empty doorway for several minutes more. He really had let his anger and frustration get away from him with Snowball. But what was he supposed to do, nursemaid the whole squadron?

He thought back to his five weeks at Miramar. Top Gun training reached more than the handful of students who attended the school. The idea was to rotate Top Gun grads back to the fleet after they completed the course, where they served as instructors with their squadrons. Tombstone had a regular weekly schedule of lectures in ACM tactics ― the high-tech waltz of Air Combat Maneuvers better known as dog-fighting.

The drill, as he'd pointed out to several other Top Gun alumni on board Jefferson, was to keep a low profile, to not come out and tell the other aviators that he'd been to Fightertown, since that would just breed resentment. It was much slicker, much more in keeping with the aviator's charisma, if he let the information slip out little by little, in the lectures, in the debriefings after missions.

It's all a part of command, he told himself. And damn it all, that's just what I can't handle. Maybe the promotions have been coming a little too fast… a little too easy.

He thought about CAG's words. Your uncle.

There was no way he could back out now, not just before a combat op, not with every man in the air wing thinking him a coward. Tombstone remembered his own acid reaction a moment earlier, when Snowball admitted he was scared. No. Not like that.

But it was time to admit that he was no leader of men. Maybe it was even a time to find a sane career, one where he didn't have to keep proving himself.

He rolled a fresh sheet of paper into the Selectric and began pecking away.

Snowball leaned against the railing and looked down at the flight deck from the railed walkway atop the island. Damn them! he thought. Damn them all!

Among the ranks of Naval flight officers there was a sharply defined sense of us and them, a camaraderie of mutual respect and fellowship which crossed the lines of rank. Somehow, though, Dwight Newcombe had never quite fit in. He stood out from the others, different, as he'd been different from the other kids in school, a loner, always on the outside. His pale and sunburn-prone skin and ash-blond hair had won him the handle Snowball at Pensacola, a hated running name which nonetheless had traveled with him to the North Island Naval Air Base at Coronado, then to his first posting at sea on board the Jefferson only five months earlier. Attempts to join the band-of-brothers fellowship had only made him stand out more, had made him feel more of an outsider than ever.

In keeping with Naval policy of assigning experienced pilots to inexperienced NFOs ― and experienced NFOs with newbie aviators ― Newcombe had been paired with Tombstone Magruder, a Top Gun graduate who'd seemed quieter than the others… and more sympathetic.

He'd gotten along well with the guy so far. In the late-night bull sessions in flight officers' quarters, Tombstone had never sounded as though he had something to prove, never rambled on about improbable sexual escapades during some past liberty, never worn the mask of the fearless and invulnerable warrior. For the past several months, Snowball had felt closer to Tombstone than to anyone else on board the Jefferson.

But now…

His ears caught the faint beat of rotors across the water. He strained his eyes and caught sight of one of Jefferson's helos patrolling off to port. Aft, he could see deck personnel and officers checking the arrestor cables and gathering in front of the Fresnel lens system. A recovery operation then. Somebody was coming in.

Tombstone was carrying a load, Snowball knew. Coyote's loss had been a bad blow to the commander. He'd watched Tombstone change in those long minutes of the flight back to Jefferson after that first, terror-laced dogfight two days earlier. But blow or not, change or not, it wasn't right that Tombstone should lash out at him like that.

Pucker-factor. It was an old flyer's term, referring to the fear that every aviator felt at one time or another… in combat, in a night trap on a rain-swept deck, in the swirl of smoke and flame and noise as the ejection seat kicked you clear of the cockpit. Belonging to the pilots' fraternity, Snowball knew, depended not on the absence of fear, but on the way a man controlled it.

He thought about the confrontation in Tombstone's office. If he quit now, every man in the wing would think he was a coward. Worse, they would feel sorry for him… or agree with one another that since he never belonged in the first place, it was obvious that he simply didn't have the right stuff.

What else could he do? Go to CAG and ask for reassignment? Who else besides Tombstone would he rather fly with?

His hands closed on the Vulture Row railing, squeezing with his building anger. He would not let this beat him! He would belong!

"Now hear this, now hear this," a voice grated over the 5-MC loudspeakers over the flight deck. "Stand by flight deck for recovery operations, COD. That is, stand by flight deck for recovery operations, COD.

Snowball looked aft. It took him several minutes to locate the inbound plane, a speck low above the horizon growing slowly into a recognizable aircraft.

The C-2A Greyhound was designed as a COD aircraft, the acronym standing for Carrier On-board Delivery. Its high wings and two turboprop engines, its odd-looking boom tail with four vertical stabilizers made it a close twin of the E-2 Hawkeye, though a thicker body gave it a heavy-built, stubby appearance, and it lacked the saucer-shaped radar housing above the fuselage. With a range of over fifteen hundred miles, Greyhounds were the principal means of delivering cargo, mail, and personnel to carriers at sea. This flight, Snowball knew, was an unscheduled one. He wondered what it was carrying.

The Greyhound swelled rapidly during the final seconds of its approach, flaps at full and nose high as it roared over the roundoff and dropped to the deck for a perfect trap on the number three wire. A good landing, Snowball thought with the detached interest of a professional. Landing one of those chunky turboprops on a carrier had always seemed more unlikely to him than landing a nimble Tomcat.

Curiously, he watched as the plane backed slightly to spit out the wire, then taxied cautiously past a row of Hornets parked shoulder to shoulder abaft of the island. The Greyhound made a final turn to face away from Snowball. Optical illusion made the spinning propellers seem to reverse themselves as they slowed to a stop.

With a whine, a rear hatch opened in the Greyhound's tail, and a ramp slowly lowered itself to the deck. Before the ramp touched steel, a line of men were filing out of the aircraft. Snowball counted fifteen of them. At first he thought they were Marines, for each wore camouflage-patterned trousers and shirts and had floppy-brimmed boonie hats on their heads. The Navy seabags each man held balanced across his shoulder made him think again. They could be Marines, but…

Snowball had seen men like that before, during his tour at Coronado: SEALS.

He found himself wondering if those men had ever been in combat. It was likely; SEALs had played an important part in the oil rig raids and recon missions off Kuwait. They might even have participated in anti-terrorist ops, the successful anti-terrorist ops that never made the evening news.

Snowball felt a sudden and unexpected lift at the thought, and a new determination. He'd been in combat only two days before, been in combat and come back to tell about it. Training and experience aside, what did those SEALs have that he didn't?

Maybe belonging had more to do with his attitude than theirs. He'd show them, show them all. He wouldn't quit. Snowball Newcombe was a flight officer!

CHAPTER 12

Coyote's situation had improved, but not by much. They'd taken him from the hole the afternoon before, questioned him one more time, then marched him across the compound to a long, narrow building guarded by flint-eyed soldiers armed with AKMs. Inside he'd found the surviving crewmen of the Chimera.

He wasn't sure why the North Koreans had herded him into the low, single-storied building with the others. Classes he'd attended during his training on how to survive as a prisoner of war suggested that POWs were nearly always segregated early on, the officers separated from the enlisted men. For some reason, their captors weren't following the usual routine, and Chimera's entire complement was present in the building which the inmates had already named the Wonsan Waldorf.

Of the American spy ship's original complement of 193, 170 were still alive ― 163 sailors, 7 officers. Coyote learned that 23 men had died, killed outright during the attack or succumbing to wounds during the three days since their capture; 61 were wounded, 18 seriously. Their captivity thus far had been little short of a nightmare, officers and men crammed together into what might have once been a storeroom or warehouse of some kind, with little food, no blankets, no sanitary facilities, and no medical treatment for the injured beyond the most rudimentary attempts at first aid.

Captain Gerald K. Gilmore was one of the wounded. HM/I Herb Bailey, a hospital corpsman, had sewn up the knee-to-thigh gash in his right leg and stopped the bleeding, but the captain was desperately weak from shock and loss of blood. Infection would kill him and a dozen others in days if they weren't given proper treatment soon.

"The big-bucks question is," one chief petty officer said in a low voice, "whether we'd be better off out there… or here."

Fifteen of them were gathered in a circle around the ragged mattress on the floor which served as Gilmore's bed. They were the officers and NCOs who had appointed themselves as the group's escape committee. As soon as he'd been able to prove he was American ― an intimate knowledge of Navy slang terms like "slider" and "pogie bait" had quickly established his credentials ― Coyote had been invited to join because his pilot training had included such useful tidbits as survival and E&E, escape and evasion.

Coyote glanced away from the circle and down the dimly lit length of the building. The rest of the men were gathered in small groups, talking, sleeping, tending the wounded, or just sitting. At intervals along both of the longer walls, several sailors were positioned as lookouts. They stood on overturned honey buckets, peering out the narrow windows set into the wall high up just under the building's eaves. Their warning that someone was approaching would turn the escape committee's whispered conversation into an animated discussion about girls and improbable sexual experiences. "Getting out won't be easy," Coyote said. "There are several hundred troops here, a battalion at least. The camp is surrounded by a twelve-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire."

"Yeah, well, if we don't get out," Bailey said grimly, "some of these men aren't going to make it." His hands clenched in front of him, the gesture revealing the man's anger and frustration. "The antibiotics are gone and we're down to dirty T-shirts for dressings. And those bastards won't give me anything better to work with."

A first class radarman named Zabelsky shook his head. "Look, even if we could get out, what would we do? Where would we go? God… a hundred an seventy men, a third of them wounded. Wanderin' around in slope city. What're we s'posed to do?"

"How far is it to the DMZ?" Lieutenant Commander Coleridge asked.

"Maybe sixty miles," Commander Wilkinson replied. "That's straight south, which means climbing the Taebaek Mountains. Follow the coast southeast and it's more like seventy-five miles. Either way, we'd have to walk past half the damned NK Army."

"Shit," someone said. "I read once they've got the fifth largest army in the world."

"Sixth," Wilkinson muttered. "But who's counting?"

"If we could get a radio," Coyote suggested, "we could call for a rescue. Jefferson must still be offshore somewhere. If they've moved in closer in the last couple of days, they could pick us up off the beach."

"Fine," a lieutenant said. He had a savage bruise across his forehead, and his eyes were puffy and blackened. "All we need is a radio, the right frequency, a lot of luck, and some way to break out of this hole."

The chief, a machinist's mate named Bronkowicz, looked across the room to where one of Chimera's officers, another lieutenant, sat alone in a far corner. "Hell, I vote we send ol' Grape 'n' Guts over there out to get a radio. I'll bet his slant buddies-"

"Belay that, Chief." Gilmore's voice was weak but held an edge to it which still carried the authority of command. "Lieutenant Novak did what he thought was right."

None of Chimera's people had been willing to talk much about the capture of their ship, but Coyote had gathered that at some point Gilmore had been wounded badly enough that he'd passed command to the only available line officer, a young lieutenant on his first tour of sea duty. Apparently, Novak had surrendered the ship, even ordered the crew not to resist, as North Korean troops had poured aboard.

It seemed the others had already judged him, finding him guilty of cowardice.

Coyote looked away from the solitary figure. He could imagine what it was like, alone on a shattered bridge, the noise, the agony as shipmates died. He remembered his own loneliness when he'd been adrift in the ocean, his horror at Mardi Gras's death.

He tried to imagine what he would have done in Novak's place. Probably pretty much the same thing.

"The way I see it," Commander Wilkinson said, "we're a lot better off here."

Bronkowicz nodded. "That's what I was wondering', sir. We don't stand a virgin's chance in a Marine barracks out there. They'd run us down before we got two miles."

"It's more than that, Chief," Wilkinson said. "The way I see it, we have two good chances to get out of here. Either Washington'll negotiate for our release, or they'll send in Delta Force and rescue us. Either way, we'll do a lot better if we stay put."

"Shee-it!" Zabelsky said with some passion. "We're supposed to wait for Washington to move its ass for us?"

"They'll probably disavow all knowledge of our actions," someone said.

"Hell, they forgot all about us already," another said.

"I don't think so," Coyote said. "Someone in Washington had us deploy to look for you guys, and it's hard to disavow a dogfight."

"So where's that leave us?" Bailey asked. His eyes were bleak. "Sit around and watch our people kick off, one by one?"

"Y'know, they negotiated with the gooks for almost a year for the Pueblo crew," Bronkowicz said. He rubbed his chin, making a sandpapery sound. None of them had shaved for three days.

"You mean we could be stuck in this hole for a year?"

"Easy, men," Gilmore said. His breath rasped. "You idiots start panicking and we'll do the Koreans' work for them!"

"The Captain's right," Coleridge said. "We've got to be patient, watch for our chance."

"And don't sign their damned confessions," Gilmore said.

"Yeah. Article Five of the Code," Bronkowicz added. He was referring to the U.S. Fighting Man's Code, a list of six articles learned by every American serviceman since the Korean War. Article Five included the statement "I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause." Many of the men in the Wonsan Waldorf had already, like Coyote, been threatened or beaten and ordered to sign unspecified papers or confessions for their captors.

So far, no one had given in, but Coyote had the distinct impression that the North Koreans were going to bear down hard on them. The gomers were impatient, even frantic to win their prisoners cooperation within the shortest time possible.

Coyote wondered why that was so.

"We still oughta start working on weapons for ourselves," Chief Bronkowicz said. "Just in case. I mean, if we see an opportunity-"

"sssst!" one of the lookouts warned, dropping down off his bucket and righting it. "Company!"

"… an' there I was, see?" Bronkowicz bellowed, slapping his ample belly. "Right there in the room with both these chicks stark naked, see? An' me with my-"

Keys rattled at the lock across the room, and the door banged open. Two soldiers in mustard-colored uniforms stepped inside, threatening the prisoners with their AK rifles. An officer, a squat, stocky little man, strode between the guards and stopped, hands on hips, surveying the room.

"I Major Po, Nyongch'on-kiji." The voice was flat, nasal, and so heavily accented Coyote had to concentrate hard to follow the words. "You sonabichi spies! Imperialist provocateurs! You admit! Tell world, sign paper! Now!" He gestured, pointing at a sailor near the wall. One of the guards strode forward, jabbing the seaman with his AK barrel and motioning the man toward the door. The major pointed to another. "An' that sonabichi." He strode down the length of the room, his boots clumping hollowly on the wooden floor. "An' that! An' that!" He reached the escape committee's circle, reached out, and grabbed Zabelsky by the collar of his dungaree shirt. "You, sonabichi! You too!"

"Don't start any good escapes without me, fellas," Zabelsky muttered as the major yanked him out of the circle. Coyote counted eight of Chimera's enlisted men being lined up.

Then they were gone, marched away at gunpoint. The door slammed shut behind them.

The latest set of photographs from the KH-12 were on display on the rear projection screen at one end of the room.

These were taken where?" the Chief of Naval Operations asked.

"Shithole called Nyongch'on," Marlowe replied. "Five miles south of Wonsan." He looked up from the brief prepared by the analysts at the NPIC minutes before. "There's a pass through the mountains there and the main road south to Anbyon. There's a village, Nyongch'on-ni, and a military base, or kiji. It's one of several in the area. Barracks, motor pool, a small airstrip."

"Damn," the President said. The poster-sized photograph showed part of a quonset-hut-type building of sheet tin, and another which looked like a concrete block warehouse, photographed from an oblique angle as though from an aircraft passing overhead. A line of eight men stood halfway between the two buildings, shepherded by other men holding weapons. While the features of individual faces hovered just beyond the tantalizing edge of visibility, there was no mistaking the uniforms: blue dungarees on the POWs, mustard brown NKPA uniforms on the guards. "Damn," the President said again. "The advances in the intelligence field, just in the last few years…"

"The boys over at NPIC say they'll be able to bring up more detail with computer enhancement," the DCI added. "Maybe even manage an ID on the faces. But I think what we have here is conclusive."

The President looked away from the photo. "Just what the hell do you mean by conclusive, Victor? Do they have all our people here, or just these? We have to know!"

"No way to tell, Mr. President," the CIA chief said. "We can see those eight. We can suppose they have more in one or more of those buildings. But…" He shrugged.

"Well, I don't know how we can even consider a military option, Mr. President," the Secretary of State said. "Especially when we Could hear from the Chinese at any time now."

Schellenberg had met with the Chinese ambassador that afternoon and again during the evening. An hour earlier he'd left Deputy Secretary of State Frank Rogers at the Chinese embassy and returned to the White House, there to wait as electronic messages bounced from Earth to satellite and back to Earth again, bridging the distances between Washington, Beijing, and P'yongyang.

"if the Chinese come through, I'll be delighted," the President said. "But we have to be ready if things go the other way." He examined the picture again. "Okay, so they have eight of our people in… where the hell is it?"

"Nyongch'on, Mr. President."

"Yeah, right. So… Winged Talon. Can that do it for us, do you think?"

"It'll show the bastards we mean business," Caldwell said. "Go in hard and fast-"

"And risk lighting off the Korean Police Action, Round Two," Schellenberg said. He shook his head. "With all respect, Mr. President, we can't cowboy this one!"

"Come off it, Jim," Admiral Grimes said. "Hell, they're already mad at us. We can't make them much madder."

"We'd be backing ourselves into an indefensible position," Schellenberg insisted. "Look, what if they start shooting our people one at a time until we call off our planes? How could we respond to something like that from a position of strength? Isn't it better to talk first, see where things are going?"

"You can't talk with barbarians," Grimes said.

"And maybe it's time we tried! Besides, if our people are scattered all over, we might hit some of them."

"And wouldn't that look grand on page one of the Washington Post?" Phillip Buchalter said. The Presidential advisor chuckled. "'Hostages killed by U.S. air attack." Hell, we need to have people left alive before we can get them out!"

"There's no better intel than this," Marlowe said, jerking a thumb at the screen. "Not without HUMINT sources on the ground."

"Could be we already have some of those on the way in," Grimes said. HUMINT ― Human Intelligence ― normally meant agents in place in a foreign country. But there were alternatives. "We've got SEALs out there now."

Marlowe frowned. "Maybe. Risky, though."

"I'd recommend against a covert op like that," Caldwell said. An old Army man, Amos Caldwell had always resented the concept of elite special forces ― Rangers, Green Berets, even the Marines ― units which stole funding from the Army's share of each military appropriations bill. "I don't care how stealthy they are, Occidentals are going to stand out over there like bugs on a plate. No place to hide, y'know?"

"Not SEALS, General Caldwell," the CNO said coldly. "Not SEALS."

Schellenberg pursed his lips. "if our people are caught in North Korean territory-"

"That's just the point, Mr. Secretary," Grimes continued. "We need intelligence from the ground. If anybody can get it without being caught, SEALs can."

The President nodded slowly. He remembered a briefing in this same room years before, when Reagan decided to launch an air strike on Libya. SEALs had been on the ground in that one too, using laser designators to help American F-111s target their smart bombs. And then there'd been the SEAL raids in the Gulf…

"When will they be in position, Fletch?"

Grimes glanced at one of the clocks on the wall. "They should be on board Jefferson now, Mr. President. Give them time for last-minute planning and preparation… they could go in tonight."

"Our ace in the hole, Fletcher," the President said quietly. "If the North Koreans don't yell uncle as soon as we send in our planes, we're going to need hard intel fast. It looks to me like your SEALs are the best way to do it." The CNO's face broke into a wintry smile. "I would have to agree, Mr. President."

CHAPTER 13

"That should do it, gentlemen." CAG's face grinned at them from the television screen. "Good luck, and God bless you all!"

"Let's saddle up!" Tombstone's voice came from across the ready room. The Vipers were already rigged out in their pressure suits. Outside, on the flight deck, their aircraft were waiting. The squadron pilots and their RIOs began filing through the door.

Batman Wayne rose from the leatherette chair and cocked a grin at Malibu. "Oh, what a thrill…" he began.

Malibu joined him in the chorus. "Gonna get us a kill!" Their hands collided in a high-five. "Batman!"

"Yo!" He turned and saw Tombstone approaching. Adrenaline was boiling in his blood. He felt as though he were riding a billowing, thundering wave of excitement. Combat! "You called, oh fearless leader?"

"You guys stick tight this time, right? No hot-dogging."

Batman swallowed his irritation. Nothing was going to spoil this for him! "Sure thing, Skipper. Strictly steak-and-potatoes."

Tombstone had already given the two of them a dressing down for hot-dogging with the Bear. Further reprimands, Batman thought, were uncalled for.

"Hey, Skip," Malibu said, grinning. "You wouldn't be just the least little bit afraid that the Batman here's gonna beat your one kill, would you?"

"I just want to know he's going to be where I want him, when I want him," Tombstone replied. The expression on his face was unreadable, a mask.

Batman gave Tombstone a tight salute. "Yes, sir, squadron leader sir!"

Tombstone looked worried. Well, Batman thought as he pulled on his helmet, why wouldn't he be? The squadron ― hell, Jefferson's entire air wing ― was being flung against the North Koreans with almost indecent haste. The final orders had come through only hours before. Tombstone's work on the squadron's op orders must have put him up against the old problem faced by every military commander since Nimrod: Good men are going to die today, and I wrote the orders that killed them.

Batman liked Tombstone, though he couldn't claim to know him all that well. The guy was a real pro, steady, quiet, always certain about his next move. Batman especially appreciated the fact that Tombstone never made a big deal about having been to Top Gun school. You had to listen close to his lectures even to pick up the fact that he'd been to Fightertown. He had the righteous stuff, no question.

Batman didn't want to lose him.

They filed through the passageway, emerging from the base of the carrier's island onto the flight deck. The entire deck was a maze of aircraft and men, alive with motion and bustling activity.

A major carrier launch was a complex process, the arming, the fueling, the movement of aircraft between hangar deck and flight deck ― a colossal ballet of men and machines. The Deck Handler ― the Mangler, as he was called ― would be at his table just off the flight deck, shifting cutouts about on a scale model of the carrier in order to orchestrate each movement as planes were shuffled about preparatory to launch, or brought topside on one of Jefferson's four huge deck elevators. Everywhere, men in color-coded jackets moved with purpose and skill. Yellow shirts were directing aircraft, one after another, into line behind the catapult blast screens forward. Close by the island, purple shirts ― "grapes" in carrier parlance ― were clustered about a line of F/A-18 Hornets attaching fuel hoses to their bellies, while red-shirted ordnancemen checked through the racks of bombs and missiles slung from wing pylons.

Batman had mingled feelings as he looked at the sleek Hornets with their red spear tail markings identifying them as planes of VFA-161, the Javelins. The Hornet was superb, the hottest, most modern of all Navy aircraft. Pilots for the Javelins and their sister squadron, the Fighting Hornets, consistently took the honors on the big chalkboard on the 01 deck which tallied each of Jefferson's aviators on their skill at carrier landings. Those standings were normally a source of constant, fierce competition among the pilots, but the Hornet drivers were always at the top because their aircraft handled so well. Batman was looking forward to the day when he could strap on one of those babies.

At the same time, though, Batman was glad he was riding a Tomcat today. The Hornet served a dual role, air superiority and ground attack. On today's raid they'd be hauling eight or ten thousand pounds of bombs all the way in. While the F/A-18s might have a chance to dogfight coming out, the F-14 Tomcats would be aloft today for one reason and one reason only: to kill enemy MiGs. And that was what Batman wanted to do, more than anything else in the world.

The piercing whine of engines revving up to full throttle shrilled from the forward deck, followed by the slam-pause-slam of a double catapult launch as a pair of A-6F Intruders clawed for sky. The raw noise was painful even through Batman's helmet. A carrier flight deck is so noisy during a launch that a man without ear protectors can die in minutes, killed by the intensity of the sound alone.

The water-cooled JBD blast shields dropped back to the deck as the Intruders dwindled into the distance and the next two planes were hauled into position for launch. A number of Jefferson's aircraft were already aloft, a pair of E-2C Hawkeyes, three of her four KA-6D tankers, several Intruders.

Batman found his Tomcat parked on the far side of the Hornets, Number 232, her tail emblazoned with the blue snake emblem of the Vipers. The crew chief signaled one of the yellow, flat-topped tractors called mules into position to hook her up. He looked over his shoulder as Batman mounted the boarding steps, grinned, and gave him a thumb's-up. "Kill us a MiG, Lieutenant," the chief yelled above the roar of another pair of Intruders vaulting off the catapults forward.

"That's why we're here," Batman replied. He swung into the cockpit and began fastening the harness. "Time to earn our pay." Malibu climbed in behind him.

Batman thought about the coming combat and felt the excitement grow.

For most of his adult life, Batman had been training and practicing for one thing and one thing only: combat! Everything ― the practice ACMs, Tombstone's lectures, the hours of study, his training at Pensacola, and later flying Tomcats with a RAG ― everything had been preparation for the moment when he would vault into the sky to face some enemy pilot one on one. He was ready, knew he was ready as he felt the jerk of the tractor pulling his aircraft forward toward its position in line aft of the catapults.

The KA-6D filled the sky, a huge gray whale seemingly only yards in front of and above Tombstone's cockpit. The F-14 looked like a fish hooked on the tanker's line as the KA-6D topped off the fighter's tanks.

"Roger, Fox Echo Two," Tombstone radioed the larger aircraft. "Casting off and breaking to starboard at three… two… one… break!"

The Tomcat detached its fueling probe from the tanker's basket and gently dropped away to the right. Each of the fighters was taking its turn refueling over Point Whiskey, waiting the final signal to go in.

The staging area for the attack was over Yonghung Bay, one hundred miles east of Wonsan Harbor. There was nothing below the slowly circling aircraft to mark the spot but empty water. It was identified as Point Whiskey. From his vantage point at thirty thousand feet, Tombstone could just make out the gray blur of Korea's east coast mountain spine, the Taebaek Sanmaek, through a low-lying, hazy murk. At this altitude, the weather was perfect, with scattered clouds below at ten thousand feet and visibility unlimited. A high, thin layer of wispy clouds rushed past overhead, close enough to touch. Tombstone ignored the spectacle.

It wouldn't be long now.

The two Intruder squadrons circled halfway between Tombstone's position and the sea. He could make out their stub-winged, cruciform shapes far below. They'd been launched first since it had taken them longer to make the almost one-hundred-fifty-mile flight from the Jefferson.

Not counting the KA-6Ds, the Hawkeyes circling farther out at sea, and the electronic warfare EA-6B Prowlers now jamming Korean radars, there were forty aircraft in the attack, five squadrons minus six planes with maintenance downchecks. The Alpha Strike, designated "Marauder" and composed of two Intruder squadrons and two Hornet squadrons, would go in with bombs and missiles. They would be covered by eight of VF-95's Tomcats flying TACCAP under the call sign Shotgun.

The remaining F-14 squadron, the War Eagles of VF-97, had drawn Homeplate BARCAP, sitting out the raid while they protected the carrier, much to their vociferous and energetic disgust. Their skipper, "Made it" Bayerly, had been furious when he'd heard. "That just goes to show what having an admiral for an uncle will do for you!" Bayerly had said to Tombstone.

The words might have been spoken in jest, but Tombstone had heard the sting behind them. Was he ever going to get clear of that Jonah?

"We're getting a good vector from the Hawkeyes, Tombstone," Snowball said over the intercom. "It's a straight shot into Wonsan from here."

"Sounds good to me, Snowy."

He was glad that Snowball Newcombe had decided to stick it out as his RIO. To have quit before this op would have been an admission of cowardice, and the decision could have finished the man's career. Snowball's next assignment would have been at the radar console of a Hawkeye… if he was lucky.

"So," Tombstone said. "Any sign of the bad guys?"

"Lots of radar fuzz," Snowball replied. "The EA-6Bs are jamming them, but they know we're here. No clear targets yet."

"Keep an eye on them. I imagine it'll get pretty busy soon."

He checked the F-14's weapon load: two Phoenix, one Sparrow, and four Sidewinder missiles, plus 676 rounds for the six-barreled M61 Vulcan cannon.

Two days ago the sky had seemed to be filled with MiGs, turning and burning above the Sea of Japan. They were probably waiting now, somewhere ahead beyond the twelve-mile limit, or spooling up their engines on the airfield outside of Wonsan. He wondered if the Tomcats' combat loads would be enough when the time came.

He turned his mind away from the thought and concentrated on his flying. It was Batman's turn to refuel now. In minutes, they should be getting the word to proceed.

Tombstone was surprised to realize that he wasn't afraid. He'd thought, after losing Coyote, that he would be.

An aide held up a telephone. "Mr. Secretary? For you. Priority and scrambled."

The Secretary of State got up from the table and walked to where the aide waited. The President watched in silence as Schellenberg identified himself, then listened.

"Right, Frank. Good work," he said after a moment. He returned the phone, then turned to face the President. "That's it." His manner was jubilant. "It came through ten minutes ago. They've agreed to talk!"

"Where?" Caldwell asked. "When?"

"Special MAC meeting this Friday. Kim's top men will be there."

"Well, that's something, anyway," the President said. The words sounded hollow in a room strangely empty. Besides the few aides and the Air Force major carrying the football, only the President, the Secretary of State, and General Caldwell remained in the Situation Room. The others were asleep or, as was probably the case with Marlowe and Grimes, working late at their own offices, waiting for word.

"Hell," Caldwell said. "A MAC meeting isn't going to settle anything."

"It's a start, General," Schellenberg replied. "We have to start somewhere."

The Military Armistice Committee had been created at the end of the Korean War, its purpose to keep lines of negotiation open with the PDRK. For almost forty years, though, it had served as little more than a conduit for P'yongyang propaganda and a forum for complaints by both sides.

There'd been plenty to complain about over the years. Since July of 1953, 89 American servicemen had been killed in various incidents along Korea's DMZ, and 132 wounded.

And now, for the second time in history, the seizure of an American intelligence ship in international waters. Nearly five hundred MAC meetings had been called over the years. Little had ever been resolved, and the President doubted that this one would be any different. The Americans would protest, the PDRK representatives would bluster and threaten and probably walk out.

"Jim, our planes are ready to go in." He looked at the clock on the wall showing Tokyo time. If Winged Talon was on schedule, the American planes were fifteen minutes from Korean airspace. "They're on the way now!"

The grin dropped from the Secretary's face. "Mr. President! You can't let them continue the attack. Call them off!"

"Good God, Jim…"

"Mr. President, this is an extraordinarily delicate situation. I told the Chinese ambassador personally… I gave him my word that we wanted a quick and honorable end to this… incident. If we attack now, we'll have lost the confidence not only of the North Koreans, but of the Chinese as well!"

"Just like the bastards to wait until the last minute," Caldwell said, glancing up at the Tokyo clock. He didn't make clear whether he was referring to the Chinese or the North Koreans. "You think they want us to attack?"

A dreadful suspicion rose in the President's mind. If the North Koreans could tell the world that the United States had launched a bombing raid after promising a negotiated settlement…

Caldwell looked alarmed. "Mr. President! You can't call them back! Not-"

"Damn it, Amos, I have to!" World opinion would not be kind if the bombers went in. The President turned to an aide. "Get me on the satellite net. I want a direct line to Admiral Bainbridge. Now!"

As he was waiting, the President closed his eyes and thought about the pilots already closing on the North Korean coast. After this, they'd be mad enough to vote Democratic in the next elections.

The aide held out a telephone. "Admiral Bainbridge on the line, Mr. President."

He accepted the receiver. "Wesley? This is the President."

Commander Marty French, CO of VFA 161 and Deputy CAG of Jefferson's air wing, touched his gloved fingers to his helmet, not quite believing what he'd just heard. "Homeplate, this is Marauder Leader. Say again your last, over."

"Marauder Leader, Homeplate," Marusko's voice crackled in his ears. "RTB. I say again, RTB."

"Return to base?" Another voice had cut in over the frequency.

The other aviators would be listening in. "What in the frigging hell are they pulling?"

"Hey, I think my radio's bad," someone else said. "Don't think I can hear any-"

"Clear the air!" French's voice snapped. His right hand tightened on the stick of his F/A-18 Hornet, feeling the nimble aircraft's responsiveness. Damn it to hell! "All Marauders, cut the chatter! The orders are:, abort mission, return to base, execute immediate!"

He heard the radioed acknowledgments from each squadron leader, some sulky, some puzzled. With a new and swelling anger, Frenchie French pulled his stick left and dropped into a broad, slow turn to port.

The Korean coast receded behind him.

"Hey, Skipper? We got company!"

Tombstone's eyes automatically flicked along the horizon. "What do you have, Snowball?"

"Multiple bogies at two-zero-three, range three-two miles. Angels twenty. Closing in excess of five hundred."

"Two-zero-three…?" That bearing put them southeast of Alpha Strike, coming in from the side instead of from behind. Tombstone had halfway expected that MiGs out of Wonsan might come out after the American strike force, but these bogies were coming from a different direction entirely.

"It's Kosong, Tombstone!" Snowball said. The edge of raw excitement was back in the RIO's voice. "They're coming from Kosong!"

"What's the count?"

"I make it… eight bogies, two-zero-three at three-zero!"

Thirty miles. Two and a half minutes at Mach 1.

"Marauder Leader, this is Shotgun Leader-"

"We have them, Shotgun!" Marty French replied. "Homeplate has been informed. Heads up, people, the gomers want to come out and play!"

"Shotgun Leader to Shotguns," Tombstone said. "Form on me for a break to starboard. Ready… break!"

Eight F-14s dipped their starboard wings in unison, swinging off their southeasterly course to align themselves with the distant, oncoming bogies, between the bombers and the oncoming MiGs. "Target lock!" Snowball said.

"Hold on, Snowball. Let's do it by the book. Marauder Leader, this is Shotgun. We have target lock. Request clearance to fire, over."

"Shotgun, Marauder Leader. Wait one."

The ROEs for this mission had been to return fire if fired upon, but that had been assuming that they would be attacked over Korea. Things were suddenly a lot murkier since they'd been called off before entering Korean airspace.

Tombstone listened in on the crackle of radio chatter as the Deputy CAG passed on the request for ROE clarification back to the Jefferson. He heard the answer come through seconds later. "Marauders, this is Homeplate. ROEs stand as given. You are clear to fire if fired upon. Over."

"You heard the man, Marauders," French said. "All units, hold your fire."

"Hey, Tombstone," Snowball said. "This ain't funny! I'm reading twelve bogies now, twelve bogies inbound, one-eight miles, five hundred twelve knots!"

"Tombstone, this is Batman!" He sounded excited. "What gives, Skipper? These guys mean business!"

"Hold position, Batman."

"I'm holding! Like a sitting duck I'm holding!"

"Shotgun, Shotgun Leader." He was surprised at how calm his own voice was. "Let's get into combat spread. Move out!"

The aircraft began drifting apart. In the loose deuce formation favored by American Naval aviators, each pair of F-14s became a team of "shooter" and "eyeball" during a head-on combat approach, flying one and a half miles apart and separated by five thousand feet of altitude.

Tombstone glanced out the right side of his cockpit. Batman's Tomcat, the number 232 prominent on its nose, drifted a few yards off his wingtip.

"Batman? Tombstone."

"The Batman copies, Tombstone."

"You take the eyeball."

There was a moment's silence. "Hey, Stoney! You got your kill-"

"Can it, Two-three-two." Tombstone had wrestled with the question already. Batman was too eager. That all-important first shot couldn't be screwed up by a too-eager shooter. "Take your position."

"Two-three-two, affirmative."

The aircraft slid apart, Tombstone dropping back behind his wingman and drifting off to the left.

"How you want to do this, Tombstone?" his RIO asked.

"Sparrow first," Tombstone replied. It was an almost automatic decision. At five hundred pounds, Sparrows were a lot heavier than the Sidewinders, and the Tomcat picked up a weight bonus each time it loosed one. Phoenix missiles were bigger and heavier still… but expensive, and best saved for targets at longer range.

And like most Tomcat pilots, Tombstone did not fully trust the cranky Sparrows and wanted to hold his more reliable Sidewinders in reserve.

"Target," Snowball said, as Tombstone heard the warble of a target lock tone in his headset. "Lead bogie now at one-three miles."

"Batman, Tombstone. Let's sweep around to the left a bit."

"Two-three-two, affirmative." Batman's Tomcat, visible now as a tiny gray toy against the sky a mile up and almost two miles ahead, began slipping sideways across Tombstone's line of flight. Tombstone matched the maneuver, maintaining the separation between the two aircraft.

So he's in a snit, Tombstone thought. Let him be. He'll have targets enough any moment now. The range closed like lightning.

"I got visual!" said Price Taggart, in the 203 Tomcat. "Blue bandits! Blue bandits! Here they come…!"

"Launch, launch!" Batman said. "Two-three-two has visual on bandit launch."

"Confirmed," Malibu chimed in. "Two missiles inbound. Two-three-two, one-zero miles."

"Shotgun Leader to Homeplate. We have been fired upon. TACCAP engaging."

"Homeplate copies, Shotgun Leader," a voice replied. "You have weapons free-"

"Bandits! Bandits!" someone yelled over the radio. "We got new bandits, closing from three-one-one!"

"What… new bandits?" Tombstone asked.

"He's right, Stoney! I got 'em too! I make it… ten bogies at three-one-one, angels twenty, nine-zero miles. Closing at five hundred plus!"

"Three-one-one? Hell, that's behind us?"

"That's what I mean, Stoney! It's our friends out of Wonsan!"

In one blinding instant of realization, Tombstone saw the trap. Twelve North Korean fighters had vectored northeast out of Kosong to engage the American planes on their way back to the carrier. And while the F-14s were dog-fighting with the Kosong group, those MiGs waiting over Wonsan had followed, coming in from the rear.

The odds had suddenly turned much worse.

CHAPTER 14

Only minutes remained before the North Korean reinforcements would arrive. Tombstone listened for the warble of the Sparrow in his headphones. "I have tone."

"Shotgun Leader, Two-three-two!" Batman's voice carried the excitement now. "You have launch clearance. You're clear for launch."

Tombstone's finger came down on the firing button. "Fox one!"

The Sparrow dropped from the Tomcat's belly. To Tombstone it felt as though the aircraft was leaping into the sky. The missile had the appearance of a dazzling flare weaving toward the horizon on the end of a twisting column of white smoke.

"Good luck," Snowball said. "He's breaking right! Stay on him!"

Tombstone moved the stick right. The worst thing about Sparrows was their passive homing system; the firing aircraft had to keep the enemy spot-lit by its AWG-9 radar so that the Sparrow could track the target.

"Shit!" Snowball snapped. "Break left, Stoney. Left!"

The Tomcat rolled to port, right wing clawing the sky. Tombstone glimpsed a pinpoint of light, wavering as it streaked toward him.

"They've got radar lock!" Snowball yelled.

Tombstone held the Tomcat's rolling plunge, trading altitude for speed. The numbers on his HUD's altimeter reading trickled away… fifteen thousand feet… thirteen… eleven…

Firing the chaff dispenser with a vicious one-two-three stab of his thumb, he hauled back on the stick. Blackness closed in on him, narrowing his vision to a tiny blob of light as the 8-G pull-away drained the blood from his head. Something streaked past his starboard wing, moving too fast to focus on.

"Snowy!" He had to grunt hard to force each word out against the G-force. "Where's… missile?"

There was no answer from his RIO. The maneuver must have put Snowball to sleep. Tombstone rammed the throttles forward to full afterburner and clawed for altitude once more.

"Snowball! Wake the hell up back there!"

"Uh! I'm here! I'm here. What-"

"Where's that missile?"

There was a pause as the RIO worked his controls. "Gone! He missed us! Take bearing… take three-one-zero!"

Tombstone swung onto the new heading, still climbing. Above him the two squadrons, MiGs and Tomcats, were merging, interpenetrating, filling the sky with aircraft and the white crisscross of contrails.

Batman swung right, picking up speed in a shallow dive. The MiG he'd been eyeballing for Tombstone jinked hard to the left, falling away in a barrel roll as the Sparrow missile streaked toward it. The Sparrow missed wide and vanished into the blue, its lock broken by Tombstone's maneuver.

Other MiGs exploded past Batman's F-14, each pair locked in a rigid side-by-side formation the Americans called the welded wing. There was no time to line up a shot now, not with the targets so close, moving so fast. The best he could hope for was to slide past the enemy planes and come down behind them. In a dogfight, every pilot's goal was to get on the other guy's six, square in the rear and looking up his tailpipe.

He saw the flash as one of the oncoming MiGs launched a missile, saw the burning pinpoint of the missile's exhaust as it dipped, then began climbing toward him.

At close range, it would be a heat-seeker. Batman triggered a flare, then pulled back on the stick, hauling the F-14 into a vertical, twisting climb straight up.

Where is it, Malibu?"

"it went ballistic! We're clear!"

"All right! Let's rock 'n' roll!"

"Where's Tombstone, man?" Malibu shouted. "I lost him!"

"I don't know! Right now we have other things to worry about!" He brought the F-14 out of its climb, completing the Immelmann with a half-twist that brought them out two thousand feet above the Korean aircraft… and behind them.

"Wheeooo!" Malibu shouted. "This is what I call a target-rich environment!"

"Roger that!"

MiGs were everywhere, twelve of them now against eight American aircraft. The F-14s were swinging around behind the MiGs, locking on with heat-seeker AIM-9L Sidewinders, engaging in earnest now that the Koreans had upped the ante. There was a radioed chorus of "Fox two! Fox two!" from several of the pilots, and white contrails scrawled themselves across blue sky.

"Let's get in the game, Batman!"

"Right, Malibu. Can you see Tombstone?"

"Negative, negative. Was he hit?"

Ahead, there was a flash, and the delta wing shape of a MiG sprouted flame and a writhing coil of black smoke. The left wing crumpled, spilling fragments in a fiery spray. "Splash one MiG!" someone called over the radio. "Two-oh-four, splash one!"

"Watch it, Price. Two on your five!"

"Whatcha waiting for, Batman?" Malibu asked.

"I want to know where our wingie is!" Batman was twisting from side to side in the cockpit, searching the sea below. "Shotgun Leader, this is Tomcat Two-three-two. Where the hell are you, Tombstone?"

"Twelve-K and climbing, Batman," Tombstone's voice replied. Batman felt an inner surge of relief. For a moment he'd wondered if the gomer missile had connected. "Comin' back in."

"Roger that, Tombstone. Do you want assist? Over."

"Negative." The word was a grunt against high-Gs. "Engage… on your own!"

"Music to my ears." Another MiG burst into flame as a Sidewinder connected. "Right, Malibu! Let's goose it!" Batman said.

"We got at least ten more bogies inbound, three-one-oh at seven-zero miles."

"Then we've got time to lower the odds a bit more before they get here. Hang on!"

After the first pass, the MiG formation had scattered in every direction. Delta shapes twisted and turned in the cold, blue sky. Contrails crawled like scrawled writing far above the sea as aircraft jockied for position.

Batman heard the sharp, sometimes shrill bursts of the Americans' radio calls. "This is Two-two-one!" That was Tom Hoffner, running name Snake. "I got two on my tail! Two on my tail!"

"Hang on, Snake!" Dragon Ashly was Snake's wingman. "I'm on him!"

"Get him off, Dragon! Get him off!"

"Too close for missiles! Going' for guns!"

"I got one," Batman told Malibu. The F-14 nosed over, picking up speed as it entered the twisting cloud of fighters. "Lining him up!"

"Batman!" Hoffner yelled. "Help get this guy off me!"

"No joy! No joy!" Army's voice threatened to break with excitement or frustration. "Guns jammed! Break left, Snake! Break left!"

The chaos ahead resolved itself as Batman closed. An American F-14, tail number 221, rolled away to the left, a MiG-21 matching him roll for roll. A second Tomcat overshot the MiG, sweeping past both aircraft in an effort to line up for a shot.

Batman dropped into the slot above and behind the MiG just as the MiG fired. A white contrail arced forward from under the MiG's wing, sliding up the F-14's starboard tailpipe and detonating in a fiery blast. Batman saw fragments of the Tomcat's engine spraying in all directions as the aircraft dropped into a hard, spiraling roll.

"I'm hit! I'm hit!"

Mayday! Mayday! Tomcat Two-two-one is hit and going down!"

"Shit, Batman!" Malibu called. They got Snake!"

"And we'll nail the bastard who did it!" He slammed the engines to afterburner and rolled in for the kill.

It took Tombstone less than a minute to reenter the fight, but in aerial combat even thirty seconds was an eternity. He'd just dropped into swept-wing, high-speed configuration and was rocketing back into the battle when he heard the mayday call for Snake.

"This is Shotgun Leader!" he called. "Did our boys get clear?"

"Tomcat Two-oh-three." That was Ron "Mee" Taggart's aircraft. "Affirmative! I see one… correction! I see two chutes! Good chutes! Good chutes!"

"Copy, Two-oh-three! Homeplate, Homeplate, this is Shotgun Leader. We have two men down, good chutes. Request SAR, over."

"Copy, Shotgun Leader. Be advised ready helo has been deployed."

Tombstone banked left and looked down toward the sea. He could see the chutes himself now, a pair of white flecks drifting toward their own shadows on the blue-gray water.

"Ho, Tombstone!" Snowball yelled. "We got a pair of blue bandits, zero-four-five, range one mile!"

He whipped his head around. "I see 'em. How much longer before the gomer cavalry gets here?"

"Range now five-one miles, Tombstone. Maybe four minutes."

Four minutes. Tombstone was genuinely torn. He could take a shot at the MiGs approaching from Wonsan now with his long-ranged Phoenix missile. But lining up the shot and locking on would take time, and his squadron needed help now.

His second decision was harder. Snake and his RIO Zombie were in the drink. Memories of losing Coyote and Mardi Gras surfaced, painful and sharp. Should he rejoin the squadron or circle the downed flyers until the SAR helo arrived?

Rugged as the choice was, he actually had little option. His running mates were outnumbered and needed every weapon they could muster for the fight. As had been the case with Coyote and Mardi Gras, there wasn't much he could do for Snake and Zombie now.

"Okay, Snowy! First things first!" He swung the Tomcat into a broad turn, sweeping in on the tails of the pair of MiGs to the northeast. "C'mon… c'mon." The pipper on his HUD tilted toward the right-hand MiG. Both Korean aircraft were turning now, twisting to starboard in an attempt to cut past Tombstone's line of flight and spoil his shot. "Lock, damn you…"

Batman held the stick hard over, tracking the MiG as it tried to turn away from him. The square of his targeting pipper slowly tracked across the HUD until it closed with the target. There was a flicker as the square became a circle, ringing the fleeing MiG and tagging it with a small "M" for "missile."

"Yeah!" Malibu shouted. "Target lock!"

Batman heard the warble in his headset. "Got him. Surprise, you gomer son of a bitch." He touched the launch trigger. "Fox two!"

The Sidewinder dropped from the Tomcat on a trail of white smoke, hung suspended beneath the wings for a moment, then rocketed ahead with a rush which left Batman's F-14 standing still. Warned, possibly, by his wingman, the North Korean aircraft began pulling up, but too soon, too soon.

"He's jinking, Batman!"

"Yeah, he screwed it. You can run, son, but you cannot hide!"

"Watch it, man. I think you made him mad!"

The MiG pilot kicked in his afterburner. It was exactly the wrong thing to do.

"The Wonsan group is closing, Admiral," CAG said. "At least ten aircraft… probably more if they're using welded wing. Looks like it was a setup."

"I agree. They figured to catch our bombers while our TACCAP was engaged to the south."

"Admiral, I recommend we let the F/A-18s engage."

"The A-6s still need cover."

"We could detach one squadron. VFA-173 can shepherd the Intruders home. VFA-161 can drop their loads and mix it up."

"Approved. Your show, CAG."

Marusko nodded. An aide handed him a microphone, which he held to his mouth. "Marauder Leader, Marauder Leader, this is Homeplate. Do you copy, over?"

Commander Marty "Frenchie" French's voice came over the CIC speakers. "Hornet Three-oh-one copies, Homeplate. Go ahead."

"You've got friends coming in from Wonsan. Javelins are clear to execute ordnance release and engage."

"Copy, Homeplate. We'll show the turkeys how it's done."

CAG and Admiral Magruder exchanged smiles. "Turkey" was a less than complimentary Naval aviator's slang term for the large and heavy F-14 Tomcats.

There was nothing the Hornet pilots would enjoy more than showing up their Tomcat rivals.

"Okay, Javelins," Deputy CAG French said. "Let's declare war on Greenpeace!"

French touched the weapons release switch and felt his Hornet leap into the sky as ten thousand pounds of ordnance dropped away, "bombing whales" as aviators referred to it, which explained the jibe at Greenpeace. The international conservation group had crossed swords and lawyers with the U.S. Navy more than once over issues like Trident missile tests and nuclear weapons aboard ships, and dropping bombs into open ocean was jokingly viewed by Naval aviators as retaliation.

"Damn the whales!" Lieutenant Gary Grabiak misquoted. "Full speed ahead!"

Jettisoning the Hornets' stores was wasteful necessity. The F/A-18s, faster, smaller, and more maneuverable than the Tomcats flying cover, had been loaded down with two-thousand-pound Mark 84 bombs, Maverick missiles, and Rockeye ordnance clusters which made ACM impossible. By dropping all of their air-to-ground weapons into the sea, however, they could now engage in the dogfight that was developing above and behind them. Each Hornet carried only two Sidewinders in wingtip pylons, but those, together with their M61 20-mm cannon, would be more than enough to even the odds against the outnumbered American aircraft. The A-6 Intruders, relatively helpless in a dogfight, would continue flying low and slow on a straight line back toward the Jefferson with the F/A-18s of VFA-173 as escort.

One by one, the Hornets of VFA-161 reported their ordnance cleared.

"Right, Javelins," Marty said. "Time to turn and burn!"

The nimble, twin-tailed single-seater vaulted skyward under his touch, afterburner flaring.

Tombstone was concentrating so hard on the MiG symbol crawling just ahead of the targeting pipper on his HUD that he almost didn't see the second MiG, barreling in at him head to head. In a flash, a dot hovering at the edge of visibility to his left suddenly swelled into the delta-winged angles of a North Korean MiG.

"Yow!" Snowball yelled into the intercom as Tombstone broke hard to the right. The two aircraft passed each other a scant hundred feet apart with a combined speed of better than Mach 2. Though the encounter lasted but a fraction of a second, Tombstone had the feeling that time was dragging out in a surreal slow motion. He had time to observe every detail of the other plane as it passed, wing down and cockpit dipped toward him, the twisting patterns of the green and brown camouflage paint scheme, the red star on a red-and-blue-bordered white disk on wings and tail. Tombstone could see the other pilot, head twisted around to look back at him. For that frozen instant, two pilots stared at each other across a narrow gulf, the shock of recognition, of unreality almost palpable.

"Tally-ho!" Tombstone yelled. "I'm on him!"

He'd lost his chance at the first MiG, so now he went for the second, holding the Tomcat in its hard-right twist, dropping his right wing sharply until he was in a hard six-G inverted turn. Snowball's breath rasped at him over the intercom in short, hard puffs. He lost sight of the enemy MiG for a moment, then reacquired it as he came out of the turn. The North Korean plane was a tiny speck over a mile away, turning hard from right to left across Tombstone's nose.

He let the F-14 drop, hauling the stick back to the left as he slipped into a split-S to bring him around and onto the MiG's tail. He concentrated on his heads-up display, watching the pipper close with the HUD's target symbol. The enemy MiG was trying to duck inside Tombstone's turn. The guy had almost made it too, but he'd put just a bit too much space between Tombstone's aircraft and his own before he made his move.

"Bad move, pal." Tombstone thumbed the firing switch and a Sidewinder streaked from under his port wing. "Fox two! Fox two!"

"Aw, for cryin' out loud, Tombstone! You didn't have a lock…!"

Tombstone realized the mistake the instant his finger closed on the firing switch. Too eager, he'd triggered the Sidewinder just an instant before its sensors had locked on the target. The heat seeker streaked into the cold air now, passing well behind the MiG and into emptiness.

For Batman, it seemed to take forever for the burning contrail of his Sidewinder to crawl the distance between his Tomcat and the targeted MiG. When the enemy pilot cut in his afterburners, though, Batman knew he had him.

Twisting as he climbed, the MiG pilot was attempting to break contact with the missile with an immelmann, flipping onto his back and then righting with a half roll. The missile followed with grim and inhumanly precise determination.

The Korean pilot must have known that death was stalking him. At the last possible moment, a dazzling pinpoint of light dropped away from the fleeing MiG, trailing behind on a streamer of smoke and falling. The Sidewinder, racing up from below, wavered for an instant as though trying to make up its tiny electronic mind. But the MiG's afterburners decided the matter. The Sidewinder ignored the flare and slid smoothly up the MiG's tailpipe.

There was a flash, and then flames were boiling from the rear half of the stricken Korean jet. The tail vanished in a fireball of exploding fuel. The remnants of the aircraft were transformed into a tumbling mass of flaming wreckage, arcing out of the sky on the end of a billowing pillar of black smoke. There was no parachute, no sign that the pilot had been able to eject.

"Splash one MiG!" Batman yelled, the excitement welling up from inside as sharp, as intense as a sexual release. "Splash one MiG!"

Malibu screeched a rebel yell on the tactical frequency. "Way to go, compadre! You hear that, everybody? Chalk one for Two-three-two! Batman got his kill!"

Batman spun his Tomcat into a tight roll, a victory roll, and watched sun, sea, and sky whip around him.

The MiG was breaking left, slipping clear of Tombstone's targeting pipper and circling inside the F-14's turning radius. Tombstone still couldn't believe he'd missed.

"Tombstone!" Snowball called. "What's the matter? Tombstone!"

"Nothing!" He pulled the F-14 left. The MiG was trying to get on his six, and Tombstone went into a tight turn to counter the move.

"Shotgun Leader, this is Homeplate," CAG's voice called over the radio. "Be advised that the Javelins have dropped their stores and are joining the party."

"Roger that," Tombstone replied. Where was that MiG? Damn, that guy could turn! "Listen up, Shotguns," he said. "We've got friendlies inbound. Don't get trigger happy and mistake them for MiGs."

"Shotgun Lead, this is Two-five-one."

Tomcat 251 was Lieutenant Gary "Dragon" Ashly's aircraft. Snake had been his wingman. "Go ahead, Two-five-one."

"Leader, I have Snake and Zombie spotted. Request permission to drop to the deck and cover them."

Tombstone checked with Snowball before replying. The radar picture was confused, and made more so by the Americans' own jamming efforts, but it appeared that the Tomcats were holding the Kosong squadron and could continue to do so until the Hornets arrived.

And the Hornets and Tomcats together would be able to take the Wonsan squadron once they arrived. "Roger, Two-five-one." It was what he'd wanted to do himself as soon as Hoffner had been shot down. His own guilt over Coyote was still riding him. "You're CAP for Snake and Zombie until SAR gets here."

"Much obliged, Tombstone. Two-five-one is going on the deck."

Tombstone checked his clock. It would be another twenty minutes before the SAR helo arrived, and 251 could refuel off a Texaco if he started to run dry…

If he could keep from screwing up again, Tombstone thought, they might just pull out of this thing in one piece.

Major Pak Dae-Lee scowled through his visor at the smeared, green-on-black hash on his radar screen. The MiG's radar, what the Americans called Jay Bird, was rugged and reliable but not particularly powerful. There were American electronic warfare aircraft in the area, the EA-6B aircraft called Prowlers, which could lay down a blanket of electronic interference that was almost impossible to see through unless you were right on top of the target.

Getting right on top of the target was precisely what Pak planned to do.

Major Pak represented the elite of his country's air force. Two years at Dushanbe and Moscow as a student, two years more with a training cadre instructing Libyan pilot trainees, and thousands of hours flying with his own countrymen had made him the very best of his country's air warriors.

He had proven that two days earlier, when his flight had jumped the American Tomcats off Wonsan. It was his missile which had opened the dogfight, his missile which had downed a Yankee interceptor. The memory of that victory drove him forward now, as Star Attack Group rocketed across the Yonghung Man in pursuit of the American planes.

As much as anything else, Pak craved recognition. He pictured the smug self-assurance, the patronizing smiles, the condescending attitudes of his Soviet instructors during his tour at Dushanbe. The unspoken, often the spoken, assumption of his Russian instructors had been that "foreign slant-eyes" like Pak were adequate as pilots… but nothing more.

Adequate! How many Soviet pilots could lay claim to flaming an American F-14? He looked to left and right, noting that the other aircraft of the attack group were still with him. Airspeed was close to six hundred knots now, their altitude eighteen thousand feet. Somewhere ahead, very close now, were the American aircraft, pinned against the sky by Moon Attack Group out of Kosong to the south.

This part of the plan had been his. The MiG-21 was inherently inferior to the Yankee F-14s, which could out-climb, out-run, out-last, and carry more ordnance than the smaller Soviet-designed, 1950s-era aircraft. The only way the MiGs could win was to gain an overwhelming numerical superiority, preferably by isolating part of the American strike force. And this Pak had proceeded to do once it was clear that the Americans were not going to penetrate North Korean air space. It had been his suggestion to launch the Kosong strike force to engage the enemy's tactical air patrol, drawing them off so that his force could hit either the bombers or the American fighters, whichever gave the Koreans the best odds. Outbound from Wonsan, he'd decided that the F-14s made the best target. From what little he could see through the Yankee jamming, the F-14s were already outnumbered in their dogfight against the Kosong MiGs.

And he could grab one other advantage as well. "Star Group, this is Leader. Prepare to execute Plan Dagger." He listened for a moment to acknowledgments from three of the other aircraft. Then, "Execute!"

Pak pushed the stick forward, and his MiG-21 nosed over, picking up speed as it headed for the Sea of Japan. His wingman and eight other aircraft, half of the entire group and the best pilots in his command, followed.

It was always dangerous dividing one's forces in the face of the enemy, and splitting into two sections risked defeat in detail. But the situation demanded daring. The Americans knew the Wonsan MiGs were coming, but their exact numbers would still be uncertain. It was just possible that ten of the Wonsan MiGs could be lost by approaching at wave-top height, hidden from the American radar planes in the scatter from the ocean surface. Perhaps this way, Pak thought, his force could retain a small edge of surprise. Then they would isolate some of the American aircraft…

CHAPTER 15

Batman's RIO opened the intercom. "Here they come. I read twelve bogies inbound at angels eighteen, eight miles, speed six hundred plus."

Still too far for Sidewinders, but that would change soon enough. "Let's drop our Sparrow. Get a lock, Malibu."

"I'm working on it… Target lock, bearing two-eight-five. You got tone."

"I hear it." He brought the aircraft five degrees right. Malibu's targeting radar covered a wide swath ahead, but he wanted to keep it simple and point his Tomcat dead on at the enemy target. His finger touched the firing switch and the heavy Sparrow jolted free of the F-14. "Fox one!"

Lieutenant Gary Ashly pulled up one hundred feet above the gray chop of the ocean, his Tomcat's wings extended straight out from the fuselage. The air was so heavy with water at this altitude that thick curls of vapor bled from his wings and tail as he circled at low speed, searching for the downed men. His RIO, Snoops Whitridge, saw the dye marker first, a yellow stain on the water half a mile to starboard.

"Shotgun Leader, Tomcat Two-five-one. We have a dye marker in sight."

"Roger that, Two-five-one," Snowball Newcombe's voice replied. "Homeplate says SAR is on the way."

"Copy, Leader." Dragon opened the intercom channel. "Snoop? Let's see if we can raise anything on the SAR channel."

"I'm on it, Dragon. This is… shit! Kick it, Dragon! Kick it!"

The Tomcat's afterburners roared in instinctive response to the RIO's shout. "Talk to me, Snoop!"

"Bandits at two-eight-five on the deck. They're on the deck!" There was a flash as one of the MiGs launched… then another. "Launch, Dragon! I have visual on a launch!"

Sluggishly, the Tomcat's nose came up…

Major Pak could not have asked for a better shot if he'd planned it out in advance. Skimming in across the sea practically at wave-top height, he'd not gotten a clear radar return from the American F-14 until he was a mile and a half away. He'd been lucky on two counts. The Yankees still seemed unaware of his group's presence, and it was pure chance which put the lone American Tomcat directly in his path.

From a mile away, Pak could easily see the F-14's large body, could clearly see the wings in their full-forward, low-speed configuration as it banked in a turn from right to left in front of Pak's MiG.

Pak had thoroughly studied American aircraft and tactics during his training assignments in the Soviet Union. Tomcats, he knew, had the attitude of their wings controlled by the aircraft's computer. While this could be overridden by the pilot, usually it was the computer which determined when the wings would be extended, a decision based almost entirely on the aircraft's speed and attitude.

While it was an efficient way of gaining extra lift in low-speed, low-energy maneuvers, this high-tech application carried with it a significant drawback. He could glance at a Tomcat's wings and take a good guess at the size and placement of the aircraft's maneuvering envelope ― that invisible cone of air in front of the plane determined by speed, lift, and handling characteristics where the aircraft would be within the next few seconds. The American aircraft was in a hard, left-hand turn at less than three hundred knots, its pilot holding it just short of a stall in a mushy, nose-up loiter.

Pak squeezed the firing trigger and an Atoll missile slid off the wing in a rush of smoke and flame. A fraction of a second later, Pak's wingman triggered a second missile. Ahead, the American fighter rolled, aware now of its sudden peril.

Too late. Pak's missile arrowed into the Tomcat squarely between the two upright tail-fins. A flash sent chunks of metal spinning as flame ballooned from ruptured fuel lines. Then the entire aircraft was a mass of flame as the fuel tanks blew; the second Atoll vanished into the firestorm and exploded, completing the destruction, scattering tiny fragments of debris across a mile-long footprint of ocean. Seconds later, Pak's fighters howled through the boiling trail of smoke which marked their second kill of the day.

"Victory to the Fatherland!" Pak yelled over the radio. The raw adrenaline throb of combat fury throbbed in his veins. "Now… with me, comrades!" Afterburners shrieking, the North Korean aircraft angled up to join the dogfight overhead.

"That's two!" Batman exulted as orange flame blossomed in the distance and Malibu abruptly lost the tracking lock on the AWG-9. In the next second, though, the savage joy was wiped away as a pair of MiGs dropped onto his tail, forcing him to cut left, then right, weaving madly.

"They're right on our six, Batman," Malibu yelled. The Tomcat's airframe shuddered and roared with its twistings. "Time to get out of Dodge."

"We're outa there!" He cut in the Tomcat's afterburners and pulled up sharply, rocketing straight up in a twisting Immelmann. The MiGs fell behind but kept following, trying for a lock. "This is Tomcat Two-three-two," Batman called over the radio. "I've got two on my tail! Two on my tail!"

"No sweat, Two-three-two," a voice replied. "The cavalry just arrived."

Batman saw the Hornet flash past half a mile to starboard, a Sidewinder already coming off the rail.

Batman cut his burners and dropped the Tomcat onto its back. He could see the MiGs half a mile below, splitting left and right as the Hornet's missile rocketed toward them, tracking the right-hand MiG. Moments later there was a flash and one of the Korean jet's wings crumpled in flame and scattering fragments. Batman saw a smaller flare of light as the MiG's cockpit blew free and its pilot ejected.

"Chalk up one for the Javelins," Batman announced. "I see a chute. Good chute."

"We have more blue bandits closing, Batman," his RIO said. "I'm reading ten bogies coming at us from down on the deck."

"What're they doing, launching them at us from submarines?"

He let the Tomcat's inverted fall accelerate. Another explosion in the distance, and the excited shout of "Splash one MiG!" marked another kill. The Hornets were arriving in force now. The MiGs, already scattered by the dog-fighting, were being caught alone or in pairs. The battle was about to become a slaughter.

But the fresh wave of MiGs could change everything. "Give me a vector, Malibu!" he yelled. Blood lust sang in his ears as he accelerated.

Major Pak knew the fight was hopeless even as his MiGs closed with the Americans. The dogfight had already scattered across ten miles of sky, a fight which the Americans with their better radars and better weapons were certain to win. His squadron might be able to overwhelm one more F-14 with numbers, maybe even two… but it was definitely time for the MiGs to retire. Aircraft and trained pilots alike were valuable resources in the PDRK, and to squander either without good cause ― or a clear advantage ― was criminal.

"One more pass, comrades," he told the other pilots tucked in close behind his aircraft. "One more pass, then scatter and make for home. I doubt that the Yankees will have the stomach to pursue."

The irony of using Mao's guerrilla tactics from the cockpit of a combat interceptor was delicious. Hit-and-run raids were designed for people's armies, untrained peasants with inadequate weapons facing a superior foe. It was strange to see the same theory applied to dog-fighting with modern jet aircraft.

He was close enough to the Yankees now that his radar was burning through their jamming with ease, tracking a target ten thousand feet above him at a range of nearly four miles. He heard the tone of a weapons lock and released another missile.

He didn't see the American Hornets until they were right on top of him.

Marty French twisted his Hornet over in a tight, inverted turn, tracking the flight of MiGs rising up from the sea. The pipper on his HUD crawled across one of the target symbols, then flashed ACQ as the warble sounded over his headset. Lock!

A Sidewinder hissed off his port wingtip. "Fox two!" he called.

"I see your fox and raise you, Skipper," Lieutenant David McConnell called from the Hornet tucked in off Frenchie's left wing. "Fox two!" Tigershark McConnell triggered a second missile an instant later. "Fox two!"

One of the MiGs in the Korean formation exploded, transformed into unfolding blossoms of smoke and orange flames as the first missile struck; the second missile hurtled through the fireball. The MiG pack scattered then as if blown apart by a bombshell. French pulled his Hornet around, maneuvering onto the six of one of the fleeing MiGs. "Okay, people," he called over the radio. "Let's show 'em how it's done."

Major Pak rolled his MiG hard. Sea and sky chased one another across the curve of his canopy, and then he cut in his afterburner and the kick slammed his seat into his back with pile driver force.

His wingman's voice was shrill in his headphones. "Yankee devil on my tail!" Captain Song Tae-Hwan shouted, panic in his voice. "Help me! Help me!"

Pak brought his aircraft right, searching the sky. There! One of the American Hornets had slipped into position behind Song, closing now for a kill. Pak knew it was too late for Captain Song, but perhaps there was an advantage here for himself. Still on full burner, he closed with the American Hornet from below and behind.

"I'm on him." The MiG filled Frenchie's HUD display, the delta form twisting wildly in an attempt to break free. The Hornet closed relentlessly. "Too close for missiles. I'm going for guns."

He flicked the weapon selector and the gunsight reticle replaced the targeting symbol on his HUD. The MiG was already well inside the outer circle which marked the cone of vulnerability. He continued to pull back on his stick, working to bring his Hornet's M61 cannon dead on target. His lead computing optical sight ― LCOS in fighter parlance ― drew a line which showed him exactly how far ahead of the target to fire.

"Almost there…"

He cut his afterburner, then popped the Hornet's air-brakes. For a moment, the F/A-18 lagged, and the fleeing MiG drifted squarely into his gunsight. French squeezed the trigger and felt the muted thunder as 20-mm shells tore into the enemy MiG.

Pak saw the orange-colored tracer rounds drifting from the F/A-18 toward the wildly twisting Captain Song, smashing into the fuselage and tail. Bits of metal chipped and scattered, and then the canopy itself seemed to explode in fragments of plastic and glass. Flame licked from a gash at the root of the left wing. Song was done for, but he'd held the American's attention just long enough.

The Hornet grew in the circle of his target reticle. The only radar input to his HUD was range, but Pak had calculated the deflection perfectly. He squeezed the trigger and the roar of his MiG's GSh-23 cannon filled the cockpit, filled Pak with a surging, drunken joy.

The American's braking maneuver almost caught Pak by surprise as he found himself closing on the Hornet much faster than he'd anticipated. He had an instant's glimpse of tracer fire tearing into the American aircraft's tail and belly, and then he was hauling the stick hard to the right to avoid colliding with the Hornet from astern. His MiG shuddered as it rode across the buffeting wake of the F/A-18.

Then he was in the clear, rolling past the stricken American aircraft.

Marty French felt the shock of the 23-mm rounds slamming into his F/A-18's hull and pulled his stick hard to the left. Orange tracers seemed to float past his starboard side as he rolled clear, and then he was plunging toward the sea.

"Hornet Three-oh-one," he said with a calmness he did not feel. "I've been hit."

He held his breath as he pulled back on the stick. If there'd been severe damage to controls or control surfaces, this was where he'd find out… it leveled off. The controls felt a bit mushy, but the F/A-18 was still flying, still in control. He took a quick look around. He'd not even seen the guy who nailed him, so intent had he been on the target.

"Hornet Three-oh-one, this is Homeplate," a voice said over his headset. "What is your condition, over?"

Gingerly, he experimented with his stick. The aircraft was sluggish, but it responded to the touch. Red and amber tell-tales flickered on his console. Compressor power was down slightly, but he could compensate. He might be losing some fuel. "Homeplate, Hornet Three-oh-one. I've been holed, but she's manageable." He worked the controls some more until he was satisfied that everything was still working. He watched the numbers flicker on his fuel readout for a moment. "I'm losing some fuel. It's not serious yet."

"Three-oh-one, do you feel it advisable to eject?"

"Negative! Negative! Anticipate no problem with a normal trap."

"Copy that, Three-oh-one. Bring her on home."

Frenchie did a fast calculation in his head. Range to the Jefferson was one hundred twenty miles… about eighteen minutes at this speed. He balanced time against the rate of fuel loss. Fine. He could hold her that long, and get her safely down on deck.

French was determined to land the Hornet. Once, three years before, he'd been catapulted off the bow of the Nimitz and something had gone wrong. The cat had failed to deliver the needed steam pressure and he'd pitched off the carrier's bow at seventy knots… far too slow to remain airborne. Endless hours of training and practice had paid off; he'd ejected… but his parachute had snagged on the tail of an A-6 parked along the port side of the flight deck, and he'd spent ten nightmarish minutes dangling between sea and sky before they'd been able to haul him in.

Only later had he discovered that he'd broken his arm during the ejection.

Commander Marty French would never have admitted that he was afraid to eject… but he knew with passionate conviction that he didn't want to ever have to go through it again. He was a man who believed in odds, who believed that it didn't pay to tempt fate by pressing those odds to the limit. Yeah, he'd hold his bird together and keep her in the air long enough to get back.

Then he'd land the bitch and walk away.

It was time to leave. Fuel was running low, and sooner or later more Yankee aircraft would arrive to swing the odds back in the Americans' favor. The battle had dragged individual aircraft farther and farther apart, until it was less a dogfight than it was many widely scattered one-on-one engagements. That was the sort of fight which MiGs could never win against F-14s and Hornets.

With a final roll, Major Pak broke clear of the contest and swung his MiG onto a bearing with Wonsan. The air, the sky were wonderfully clear, and Pak savored the heady excitement, the sheer joy of being alive. He'd survived and shot down at least one more American aircraft as well with a second kill that would almost certainly be listed as probable. This day's exploits would enshrine him as a hero of the PDRK. His training, his dedication to his craft had paid off at last. Now it was time to savor the fruits of those labors.

"Star Group! Moon Group! Disengage and retire!" he snapped over the radio. "We have beaten them!"

The North Korean aircraft were fewer in number now, and several were limping as they formed up for the homeward leg of their flight. There was no sense of defeat in their retreat, however. The Yankee aircraft were already drawing off, bloodied by the encounter. The Americans liked to boast about the ten-to-one ratio enjoyed by their flyers… ten opponents shot down for every plane they lost. Today they'd lost two, possibly three aircraft if Pak's last target had been hit as seriously as he thought… and downed only eight North Korean planes in return.

Yes, the People's Air Force had much to be proud of this day. In combat, victory was not always awarded to the side which suffered fewer casualties. Against the Americans, this battle counted as a decisive victory. Major Pak hoped that his superiors would see the action in the same light.

The North Korean aircraft were drawing off, breaking free from the dogfight and heading northwest, back toward Wonsan. "Tomcat Two-oh-five," Tombstone radioed. "It looks like the hostiles are disengaging."

"Roger that," Batman said over the tactical channel. "What say we go get 'em?"

"Negative, negative," Tombstone replied. "Check your fuel."

"Uh… understood. Looks like it's back to the bird farm for us."

Tombstone's fuel stood at just over six thousand pounds, enough to get back to Jefferson, but not enough for further combat. Sustained maneuvers on full afterburner drank fuel at an impossible rate.

Moments later a call from the carrier confirmed his decision. Homeplate wanted the attack group on deck before sundown, and that meant an RTB now.

"Hey, Stoney?" his RIO called over the ICS. "We're going home empty, no kills!"

"So?" Tombstone's response was harsher than he'd meant it to be. "What do you think this is, Snowball, some kind of game?"

"No, Tombstone. I just thought-"

"Just keep your thoughts to yourself and let me fly."

"Aye aye, sir."

Snowball sounded defensive. Let him, Tombstone thought. After today, it wouldn't really matter.

Tombstone Magruder could not remember screwing up this badly since he'd forgotten to release the brakes on the trainer at Pensacola and managed to wreck the aircraft's nose gear steering mechanism. He'd made one decision after another, and every one of them had turned up wrong.

He'd let himself be suckered by the MiGs coming up from behind and on the deck while his Tomcats were tangling with the Kosong bandits. He'd sent Dragon and Snoops in to cover Snake and Zombie when they were shot down… putting them squarely in the path of those unexpected MiGs. He'd let himself get so rattled he'd loosed a missile without getting a target lock; hell, that little display was a damned nugget trainee's goof, not the sort of thing expected of a squadron skipper fresh out of Top Gun school.

Somehow, the dogfight had reinforced his earlier doubts and fears, had left him wondering if it wasn't time to pack it in. He was getting too old to let himself get shot off the nose of aircraft carriers, too old to play cowboy in the sky, competing day in and day out with young guys like Batman Wayne.

Responsibility, that was what it was all about. He sighed. Maybe it was all true what they said about him. His promotions had come so easily. Having an admiral for an uncle could do great things for your career… but when men's lives began riding on the decisions you made, maybe those promotions weren't such a great idea. Tombstone wondered if maybe it wouldn't be better for himself, the men under him, and the Navy if he didn't find something else to do.

The image of himself as a COD pilot or hunting subs in a Viking came to mind, and he shuddered.

Marty French had missed his first shot at the Jefferson's flight deck. For a second time he'd been given the option of ejecting, but he elected instead to ride his Hornet in. The controls were still a bit mushy and his left flaps sticky. He'd also lost a bit of hydraulic pressure, and that was worrisome but not critical. He'd clearly taken some damage, but not enough to warrant ejecting and ditching the plane. The rest of the attack group would wait in a marshall stack, a holding pattern twenty-one miles astern of the Jefferson while he made his approach. Once he was down and clear, the rest of them would be brought in.

"Three-oh-one," he said, identifying his aircraft. He could see the Jefferson's ball clearly now as he drifted down the approach glide path. "Hornet ball, one-point-six." Fuel loss was his only serious problem. If he missed on this pass he'd have to refuel before he managed a second try, and that would be more time lost… more time for something to go wrong with an aircraft which was already on the verge of falling apart.

"Roger ball," the LSO replied. "Don't get too low."

He took the gentle hint, already responding as the glowing yellow eye of the Fresnel lens system began drifting below the horizontal line of green lights, indicating he was low. Gently, he nudged the throttles forward, increasing power, speed, and altitude. Jefferson's deck expanded to fill Frenchie's HUD.

Too much! The ball went high and he caressed the throttles back. The Hornet was responding slowly, too slowly.

"Deck coming up," the LSO reported. "power down."

The deck rushed to meet him. He cut back on the throttles to keep from overshooting the arrestor cables. A last check showed the Fresnel lens was still green.

He felt the arrestor hook grab. At the same moment he rammed the throttles to full military power and retracted his speed brakes in case he missed his trap. The wheels slammed onto the deck.

A damaged hydraulic line blew and French's starboard landing gear collapsed. He felt the Hornet lurch to the right, then go nose down and tail high in a savage pancake, still burning at full power as the starboard wing crumpled with the impact, scattering fragments and fuel. Dimly, he heard the LSO's voice over the radio screaming "Eject! Eject! Eject!" His hand was grabbing for the ejector handle when the universe exploded in searing flame, erupting for a split second into indescribable brilliance before darkness engulfed him.

CHAPTER 16

Tombstone was loitering in the marshall at six thousand feet when Snowball interrupted his thoughts. "Oh, God! Tombstone, did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" He'd not been paying attention to the radio chatter.

"They just called a fire on the deck."

Tombstone's blood went cold. Frenchie had been first in line for his trap. Had the damage been that bad?

"Ninety-nine aircraft!" The voice was that of the Air Boss back in Jefferson's Pried-Fly, and the call code meant the message was directed at all airborne planes. "Recovery operations are suspended until further notice. We have a fire on the deck."

"What are we gonna do, Stoney?"

"Hold in the marshall until they tell us, I guess. Just stay cool, Snowball."

Fuel's down to thirty-two hundred."

"There's a Texaco up. We'll get a drink when we need it."

Inwardly, Tombstone suppressed a shudder. It was one thing to tell Snowball to stay cool, another thing entirely to accept that advice himself.

This is it, he told himself. I don't need this. If I get back on that flight deck today, I'm turning in my wings.

Within ten seconds, the burning wreck had been surrounded by Jefferson's crash crew, men armed with fire hoses and foam dispensers. They hit the F-14 with water first to hold back the fire, then attacked the flames with foam, attempting to smother them.

"Get that wreckage cleared away, and I goddamn mean now!" Commander Dick Wheeler, Jefferson's Air Boss, held the microphone to his mouth, his face a dark mask of anger and urgency. It is an oft-stated maxim that any fire on board an aircraft carrier which lasts more than forty seconds means serious trouble. Commander French's Hornet had hit hard enough to smash the right wing and breach the fuel tank. He'd been running nearly empty when he hit, but enough JP-5 remained to ignite the fireball as the F/A-18 went tail-over.

"We're bringin' Tilly across now!" Chief Kuchinski's voice was unnaturally shrill and harsh over the Pried-Fly speaker. The damage control party chief was using one of the radio helmets called a Mickey Mouse for obvious reasons. The device transmitted words but filtered out the surrounding noise, which made it sound as though the person speaking was shouting himself hoarse against complete silence. "Fire's out. Afraid the pilot's dead, though."

Wheeler raised a set of Zeiss binoculars to his eyes, watching as the Tilly ― a combination crane and forklift ― hooked onto the wreckage and began dragging it toward the side. With Commander French dead, all that remained now was to get the flight deck back in operation. There was damage to the arrestor gear, and they would need to wash down the deck and check it for loose debris that could damage incoming planes. It would be an hour… maybe an hour and a half before they could start bringing them in again.

Urged on by the Tilly, French's Hornet teetered on the edge of the flight deck, then vanished over the side. Wheeler lowered the binoculars and looked up toward the sky. Under a rapidly thickening ceiling of clouds, the sun was casting a gold-orange smear of sunset glory across the western horizon. It would be dark in an hour, and those boys would be jittery, having endured an aborted bombing mission and a dogfight. Now they would be circling in the marshall for another hour while the damage to the flight deck was repaired, with nothing to do but think about one of their own, dead. It was going to be a long evening.

It grew dark quickly once the sun slipped below the horizon. Tombstone watched the golden light fade as he continued to loiter at six thousand feet twenty miles behind the carrier. The marshall stack was a complex aerial racecourse, with each plane a thousand feet below the plane behind, and a mile ahead. There was nothing much to do but feed Air Ops with updates on fuel and time… and think.

"Hey, Tombstone?" Snowball asked over the intercom. "Whatcha thinking?"

Tombstone didn't answer immediately. It wouldn't do to admit he'd already decided to turn in his wings. "Just going over the checklist again, Snowy. I-"

"Oops, hold it, Skipper. Message coming through."

Tombstone listened in. Jefferson's Air Ops was ordering them to begin circling out of the marshall and come on in. "Sounds like the deck is clear," he said.

"Yeah, I wonder-"

"I don't really want to think about it, Snowy. We'll find out soon enough."

One by one, the aircraft began to leave the marshall and head for the carrier, Intruders first, then the Hornets as the carrier began recovering aircraft at forty-five-second intervals. It was pitch black by the time Tombstone got the signal to begin his approach, with only a few stars showing through patchy, high-level clouds.

At five miles out, Air Ops handed him over to Jefferson's Air Boss. Commander Wheeler sounded tired as he announced the take-over. Tired and… and shaken? Tombstone shook the thought from his mind. Of course Wheeler would be shaken, along with everyone else in the recovery team, but they were professionals.

And so are you, old son, he told himself. At least until you walk in to see CAG tonight. Right now, think about this being your last night trap.

Tombstone had never liked night landings. Once during the Vietnam War, he'd heard, some doctor types had carried out a series of tests on aviators flying combat missions off carriers. They wired them up with devices to monitor breathing, heartbeat, blood pressure, and perspiration, then recorded the biological reactions as those pilots were catapulted into the sky, refueled in midair, carried out bombing runs, engaged in dogfights, and engaged in routine carrier operations. Time after time, one thing pegged out every needle, showing a level of stress which even one-on-one air combat could not match: night carrier landings.

The Jefferson was lit for the occasion, with lights outlining her flight deck, and a vertical line strung down her stern over the fantail. This was designed to create a three-dimensional effect, almost like a wire-box image on the display of a computer video game. Without it, a pilot could suffer a particularly terrifying optical illusion… the sensation that the carrier's deck was rising up vertically in front of him, an invisible wall in the sky.

At that moment, Jefferson was tiny against the sea, an impossibly small target adrift in blackness, with no other visual clues to the position of sea or sky at all.

"Roger ball," Tombstone heard over his headset. That was Lieutenant Commander Ted Craig, the Vipers' LSO, telling him that he had Tombstone's aircraft in sight, that he was controlling the approach, that it was time to call the ball.

Tombstone found the meatball, an orange light in a row of green on Jefferson's port side. "Tomcat Two-zero-five," he said. "Ball. Three-point-one."

"Looking good, Tombstone."

Normally, the LSO would say nothing unless he saw something to correct. The pilot was busy during the last ten seconds of an approach, and chatter wasted time. Those words were a measure of the stress on the flight deck… and among the pilots.

Tombstone could feel his heart pounding in his chest, as it always did during a night trap. The meatball wavered above the line of green, then below. Damn! The thing was all over the place. The black hulk of the Jefferson swept up to meet him.

He was low. "This doesn't look good," he said to no one in particular, aware of the strained silence from the backseat as his RIO held his breath.

Tombstone checked the meatball again as he corrected. It was dangerous to fasten all of your attention on the Fresnel lens, especially in a night landing. He was still low. "It's no good."

Bumer Craig had flown F-14s for five years and had served as VF-95's LSO since the cruise began. He stood on his platform just forward of the Fresnel lens system, behind a HUD and console, complete with TV screen, speaker controls, and telephone, that was raised behind a windowed barrier for landing operations. A small crowd had gathered around him, other LSOs and LSO trainees who had come to watch.

He ignored them, his attention divided between the lights of the approaching aircraft and the TV, which was tuned to the ship's pilot landing aid television. The PLAT could see in the dark and showed more detail of the approaching F-14… but like all experienced LSOs, Craig preferred his own eyes. The TV image was two-dimensional and could fool you; eyes were hot-wired to instincts and were far more reliable.

Mentally, Craig kicked himself after he told Tombstone he was looking good. Aviators were a touchy breed, and there was an inborn love-hate relationship between every Navy flyer and his Landing Signals Officer.

The LSO's primary responsibility was to grade each landing. "Okay" was best, followed by "fair." A "no grade" was dangerous to the pilot or his and other aircraft, while "cut" meant the approach could have ended in disaster. In peacetime, each pilot's standing relative to all of the other pilots in the wing was a matter of fierce pride and fiercer competition, and the aviators' frustrations could often be directed at the LSO who'd marked them down for some minor deviation on their recovery. Pilots could be incredibly defensive about their standings… and about any criticism at all, real or perceived, of their abilities.

Tombstone was an old hand and a pro, with no need for an I'm-okay-you're-okay talk-down. The best I can do, Craig told himself, is keep quiet and let the man do his Shit! The Tomcat was low… way low! "Power up," he snapped into his microphone. His fingers tightened a bit around the control box in his hands, the "pickle" which would light up the red wave-off display around the meatball and tell the pilot to go around for another try.

The roar of the Tomcat's engines rose in pitch and the aircraft's running lights seemed to float higher… higher…

No! Too high! Craig's finger closed on the pickle. "Wave off! Wave off!"

Tombstone swept in above the carrier's roundoff, knowing he'd missed. A circle of red lights flashed on, a ruby bulls-eye with the meatball in the center. "Wave off!" the LSO shouted in his ear. "Wave off!" His wheels hit the deck, but too far forward for the arrestor hook to snag any of the four cables stretched across his path.

Tombstone rammed the throttles forward, going to full burner as he fought to build up airspeed once more. For an instant he was aware of the carrier's deck lights on either side of his cockpit, of the shadowed island streaking past his right wing. Power roared, shoving him back in his seat.

Then he was in the open sky once more, the carrier's deck lights a dwindling glow on the black face of the sea behind him.

"Tomcat Two-oh-five, bolter," he heard in his headset. There was nothing wrong with missing a trap, save the embarrassment and the ribbing he'd take from the other members of his squadron, but the extra stress on top of what he was feeling already rose like a storm cloud in Tombstone's mind.

He felt an odd sensation in his right hand, the hand holding the Tomcat's stick, and he looked down. His hand was trembling, shaking, and there was nothing in the world he could do about it.

Craig chewed at the end of his mustache as he watched Tombstone's second approach shaping up. He wasn't so worried about the pilot's pride now as he was about simply getting the man and his RIO down intact.

He'd been aware of Tombstone's moodiness during the past few days, ever since Coyote and Mardi Gras had bought it. That sort of thing was especially hard when it was your buddy who cashed in. And now, with four more people in the drink this afternoon, plus French's crash-and-burn on the deck…

"Come on, Tombstone," Craig said over the radio. He knew others were listening in, CAG and the Air Boss and anyone else tuned into the PLAT channel, but his words were for Tombstone alone. "No sweat. Silky smooth, just like a virgin's ass."

"I'm okay." Tombstone sounded tight. His red and green navigation lights hovered off the stern of the carrier, three miles aft.

"Call it, son. Call the ball."

"Tomcat Two-oh-five. Ball. Two-point-seven."

"You're lined up great. Bring her on in!"

The lights descended, wavered, corrected. He held his breath as they began to drop. Too fast! Craig felt a sinking sensation in his gut. Again, he stabbed the switch.

If he'd been embarrassed after his first bolter, Tombstone felt stark terror now. Jefferson's stern looked like it was all over the sky as he raced toward the carrier at 150 miles an hour. The red bulls-eye around the meatball lit up again and he heard the shouted command to abort. "Wave off! Wave off!"

He rammed the throttles forward. With a shattering roar they skimmed above the flight deck, not even touching this time as they whipped past the island. Damn!

"Hey, Stoney, this isn't looking too good."

Tombstone guided the Tomcat into a gentle left turn. "You want to get out and walk? I can do without the backseat driving!"

The next several minutes passed in silence. Tombstone focused all his concentration on controlling the ship and himself as he circled a few times. Finally, he began circling back toward the break, lining up for another pass.

"Tomcat Two-oh-five, this is Two-three-two," a familiar voice said. "What's the story, Tombstone?"

"I keep missing the goddamned carrier." He swallowed behind his mask, trying to control his twisting gut. "I think they're moving the bastard on me."

"Well, shitfire, you know what I think? I think you just don't want to face me tonight when I talk about my two kills. You don't want to admit that I'm the new hotdog of the squadron. What do you say to that, fella?"

He recognized the banter for what it was, an effort to break the tension, to get him to laugh at himself long enough to get the Tomcat down. As psychology it was a bit primitive, but Tombstone laughed. "If I land this bitch, you'll eat your words, old son."

"Okay, Tombstone," Craig's voice said. "Let's do it this time! Call the ball!"

Tombstone swallowed a hard, cold lump. The carrier's lights wavered in front of him, tiny in the dark and the distance. His hands were sweating. "Two-oh-five. Tomcat ball," he said mechanically. "Two-point-one." Another pass and he'd need to retank before trying again. Don't let me screw it up! Not again!

Not with Batman watching. Not with his uncle watching! He realized that the trembling, strength-sapping fear had been replaced by anger. This bitch isn't going to beat me! Not now! Not when I'm goddamned through!

The lights swelled in front of his cockpit. "Real slick, man," Snowball said, but Tombstone scarcely heard him. His hand was no longer shaking.

His wheels touched steel and he rammed the throttle to full power. There was an eye-rattling jolt as the hook grabbed wire, and the Tomcat slowed from one-fifty to zero in two seconds. For an instant, Tombstone hung suspended in his harness then he was throttling down, backing the aircraft to spit out the wire, following the waving yellow wands of a deck manager guiding him to a parking slot.

It's over! The thought was exultant. It's over!

Tombstone felt as though he'd never been so alive as he was at that moment.