CHAPTER 22

Monday, 16 March
1705 hours (Zulu +2)
Air Ops
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

Chalk this one up to tired men, Tombstone thought.

The flight deck of a supercarrier had often been described as the most lethal working environment in the world, a place where mistakes or carelessness routinely killed people. Thirty minutes after a chain and chock man had stumbled into a Prowler's intake, the fire was out and the aircraft safely evacuated, but hurtling fragments from the Prowler's turbine fan might have damaged some of the Cat Three equipment. Worse, those scattered fragments continued to pose a risk both for Cat Three and for Cat Four next to it. Bits of metal or other debris the size of a bottle cap might still be lying on the deck, hazards that could get sucked into the intakes of other aircraft, damaging them in turn. FOD, or foreign object damage, was the bane of all carrier operations.

In peacetime, the alpha strike would have been cancelled and further catapult launches halted until an FOD walk-down could be carried out, with hundreds of sailors walking in line abreast down the entire length of the flight deck, picking up each bit of debris they found. But this was not peacetime, and a delay now would cripple the operation. Half of Jefferson's aircraft were already headed into Russia at this very moment.

Tombstone reached out and picked up a telephone, punching in the number for the Air Boss. "This is CAG in Ops," he said when Barnes came on the line.

"What's your assessment, Boss?"

"Shit, Stoney. Cat Three's down until we can get that Prowler cleared away," the Air Boss replied.

"Okay. How long? What's the downtime gonna be?"

"They're working on it. Maybe an hour before we can walk-down the area."

"And Four?"

"Piece of cake. They're starting a walk-down on Four now. Call it thirty minutes."

Tombstone juggled the numbers in his head. White Storm's flight operations, as laid out in that mountain of paper transmitted from the Pentagon the day before, had allowed for the possibility of two cats going down for that long… but only just. They would have no additional time to spare.

"Okay, Boss," Tombstone said. "Put the Prowler over the side. Yeah, munitions and all. Do your walk-downs, but make 'em damned fast. I need those catapults at four-oh ASAP."

"We'll do our best, CAG."

"What are you talking to me for, then? Get on it." He hung up the receiver. On the PLAT monitor covering the waist catapults, deck crewmen were already scurrying across the deck, together with one of the ubiquitous tractors or "mules" used to tow aircraft.

The accident had crippled the EA-6B, but not destroyed it. Still, time was more precious now than equipment. The Prowler, and the millions of dollars' worth of sophisticated electronics aboard, would be tipped over the side rather than allow it to further delay the mission. Too long a delay in the launch schedule, and Jefferson's aircraft would be returning after dark.

Night landings were always far more hazardous than recoveries made during the day, and while bombing strikes were planned throughout the night, the plan called for a reduction in the number of missions in order to keep the hazards associated with night ops to a minimum. Rather than face the drastically heightened risks of a night mission, he would have to scrub the alpha strike until tomorrow, and that meant the Marine assault would be going in with a lot more enemy hardpoints and radar sites operational than would be the case otherwise.

Pilot fatigue was Tombstone's principal worry now. Tired men made mistakes, as had just been demonstrated on Cat Three. And every military officer tasked with planning long-range bombing strikes always had to keep in mind what had happened during Operation El Dorado Canyon.

El Dorado Canyon was the code name of the American bombing raid against Libya in 1986, launched in retaliation for Libyan terrorist activities. Part of the assault had been assigned to Air Force F-111 Aardvarks attached to the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing based at Lakenheath, England.

It was a large and complex mission, involving both Air Force planes out of England and Navy aircraft launched from carriers in the Gulf of Sidra, attacking five separate targets, three in and around Tripoli and two at Benghazi. In all, eighteen F-111s had been assigned to the objectives at Tripoli, and of those, nine had been slated to hit the two-hundred-acre compound of Libya's leader, Muammar al-Qaddafi.

But the planning for the El Dorado Canyon had been intense, a strain on pilots and crews that robbed them of sleep for the forty-eight hours preceding the mission. Then, Spain and France had both refused overfly privileges for aircraft participating in the raid, forcing the entire contingent out of England to go the long way around, down Europe's Atlantic coast and past the Strait of Gibraltar, a flight of three thousand miles that took six and a half hours.

That flight had been an epic nightmare, requiring multiple midair refuelings and continuous, nerve-wracking close-formation flying, a tactic designed to make several planes appear as one on enemy radar. One of the pilots became disoriented during refueling and, "flying on automatic," followed the tanker halfway back to England. By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late to rejoin his flight. Four more scrubbed the attack because of breakdowns with the aircraft's electronic systems, especially with the F-111's radar, which proved to have a disturbing tendency to break down during long flights. A sixth Aardvark went down at sea just off the Libyan coast, the only American plane lost in the operation. The cause of the crash was unknown, but pilot error was a definite possibility. A seventh F-111 aircrew probably misidentified a checkpoint on the Libyan coast, though equipment malfunction was also a possibility; whatever the cause, the bombs missed Qaddafi's compound and landed near the French Embassy. Civilians died, including French nationals, in what was ironically and with bitter black humor referred to later as retaliation for the French refusal of overflight privileges. Of the nine original aircraft tasked with the mission, only two actually hit the target. Damage to the compound had been relatively light.

Adding injury to the insult, one of the casualties, unfortunately, had been Qaddafi's adopted daughter.

The bombing of the Libyan dictator's compound had not been a direct attempt to kill Qaddafi ― it was known that he only intermittently stayed there ― but it had been intended to deliver a strongly worded warning against continuing his terrorism campaign against the West. In that, probably, the raid had succeeded, but the poor performance of the Aardvarks in that part of the mission had been a shock. During the planning, it had been estimated that at least four or five of the nine F-111s would be able to complete their bombing runs; two aircraft had simply not been enough to ensure the raid's success.

In fairness, it was important to remember that the other elements of Operation El Dorado Canyon had carried out their parts of the mission flawlessly, causing heavy damage to the other targets.

Tombstone signaled for an enlisted man standing nearby to bring him a cup of coffee. On the PLAT monitor, the Prowler's curiously flattened stabilizer tipped suddenly into the air as its nose went over the side. It hung there a moment, suspended, then vanished below the edge of the flight deck. The deck crew were already lined up along Catapult Three, walking their way slowly aft as they searched for bits of debris. Other men were using fire hoses to wash down an area of the deck astride the rear of the cat, sweeping away mingled gasoline, oil, and blood.

He wondered if the accident had badly shaken the men of the deck crew.

Coming on top of a sailor's suicide, an incident like that could further erode morale, might even cause further carelessness and more accidents.

On another PLAT monitor, this one showing activity forward at Cats One and Two, an EA-6B Prowler howled off the port catapult, while hookup men locked the cat shuttle to the undercarriage of an F/A-18 Hornet to starboard.

Steam boiled across the deck, obscuring the crowds of color-coded men hurrying about their elaborate choreography of readying, inspecting, and launching aircraft. The checkers, men in white jerseys and with black-and-white checked helmets, were especially evident as they combed each aircraft for downgrudges, open access panels, and loose weapons. In the background, over a communications channel, Tombstone could hear the Air Boss bellowing radio orders from his crows'-nest perch up in Pri-Fly. From the sound of it, there'd been a fault in the "mouse" worn by one of the plane directors, the distinctive earphone headset also affectionately called a Mickey Mouse, and the director hadn't noticed yet that he was off the air. That was another bit of human error. Every man who had one was supposed to frequently check his personal radio. It took several moments to get another deck officer with a mouse on to go over and physically grab the man and alert him to the equipment failure.

How many more were going to die before this thing was done, either from enemy action or from damned, stupid carelessness born of grinding, bone-weary exhaustion?

Maybe I've just seen too damned much of this, he thought. Pamela had been after him to give it up for a long time, though recently they'd managed to arrive at a kind of uneasy truce between his dedication to his career and their love for each other. Damn, maybe she'd been right all along.

Right now he felt tired ― not physically, though that was certainly a part of it, but exhausted in spirit, in his mind. He was tired to the very core of his being, but unlike those teenagers still hard at work full-out on the deck with no sleep, he was ready to pack it in. He thought of the faces of the men and women of Viper Squadron earlier, when he'd told them that they'd be flying shotgun for the Intruders this afternoon. Slider and some of the others had looked like they were ready to mutiny there for a moment… but by the time he'd gotten past the initial resistance and started filling them in on their mission, the newer hands had actually looked eager, rousing from their exhaustive torpor, positively glowing when they heard they'd be spearheading an attack wave into Russian territory.

Well, he could remember feeling the same way himself once, when he'd been assigned a challenging or exacting mission. But that was a hell of a long time ago.

Had he made a mistake, ordering the Air Boss to expedite the cleanup on the waist cats? That tired hookup man had merely killed himself and delayed the launch schedule; if Jefferson's CAG screwed up, a lot of people would die.

He didn't like the heavy, clammy feeling that thought carried with it.

The Hornet was ready. The deck director gave the aviator a thumb's-up, and the man in the aircraft saluted. The director whirled, dropped to one knee, touched the deck, pointed ahead…

… and the Hornet screamed off the catapult on a line of steam, dipping slightly as it cleared the bow, then rising steadily into the blue afternoon sky, its landing gear folding neatly away.

Tombstone had made his decision. There was no turning back now.

1724 hours
Intruder 504
Approaching the Kola Peninsula

In tight formation with two other Intruders and a Prowler ECM aircraft, the A-6 boomed low across the water, low enough that salt spray pattered across its windscreen. It was as though they were flying through fog or a light rain, with the windshield wiper ineffectually batting away at the moisture almost as quickly as it collected.

Willis ignored the water, keeping his eyes glued instead to the glowing screen of his Kaiser AVA-1 Visual Display Indicator as he concentrated on keeping his heading and his altitude precise. At an altitude of 100 feet and at a speed of 550 knots, there was no margin for error.

He still felt uncomfortable with Sunshine at his side. Damn it, if she screwed the pooch on this one…

Not that she'd screwed up so far. But there was always a first time, and this was when a mistake would get them both killed. Glancing up, he caught the blur of a gray shoreline coming up fast, half-glimpsed through the swish-swish of the wiper. His VDI showed the coast, painted in radar. An instant later, the land exploded around them, replacing the featureless blue-gray blur of the sea.

At his side, Sunshine keyed her radio mike with her left foot.

"Terminator 1.504, feet dry, feet dry." They were over land now. Over Russia.

"That's Point Yellow-Delta, mark number two," she said. "Come left to zero-nine-three."

He saw the radar profile of a promontory on his screen. "I got it.

Zero-nine-three it is." He nudged the stick to the left. Each Intruder had its own precisely calculated, zigzag path to its target, a path through space and time designed to keep it clear of active enemy SAM and gun batteries, as well as letting it avoid occupying the same airspace at the same time as some other American aircraft.

"Terminator 2.500" sounded over his headset. "We're feet dry, feet dry."

That was the voice of Commander John "Thumper" Hargraves, the Death Dealers' squadron leader, coming in a few miles behind 504, and a bit to the east.

"This is 3.505. Feet dry."

"Jammer 4.703." That was the EA-6B Prowler accompanying the Terminator flight, providing electronic countermeasures for the three Intruders as they made their run. "Feet dry, feet dry."

Antiaircraft fire appeared to his left, tracers rising from the ground, like gently drifting specks of orange light. They were past so quickly he didn't even have a chance to see where the fire was coming from.

"We're coming up on mark three," Sunshine said over the ICS. Her helmeted head was still pressed up against the rubber shield of her radar scope. "Point Red-Sierra."

"Okay, boys and girls," Terminator 500 told them over the tactical channel. "That's Red-Sierra, on the money. Time to break. Terminator Five-oh-four, you have the honors."

Red-Sierra was the southern tip of a long island in the mouth of a ragged-edged inlet. There was a fishing village there, Port Vladimir. Willis and Sunshine's flight plan called for a sharp dogleg to the south now, as each aircraft maneuvered independently to come at their objective from a different direction, breaking up the enemy's defensive fire and keeping him guessing about where the next strike was coming from.

Willis brought his stick to the left, veering clear of Port Vladimir and heading sharply south away from the coast. He started climbing too, rising to his attack altitude of six hundred feet.

"Roger that," Sunshine said over the tactical channel. "We're climbing to attack altitude. See you boys over the target."

"Yeah," Willis added. "You guys can eat our dust."

"Launch! Launch!" sounded over his headset. "This is Terminator Five-oh-five! I've got a SAM launch at zero-eight-five!"

"Copy, Five-oh-five," Thumper called. "I see it."

Willis saw it too, a pillar, like a telephone pole painted white, balancing skyward on smoke and flame a mile to the east.

"Looks like they're finally waking up down there," Willis told Sunshine.

A threat warning lit up on his console. They were being tracked. "It's about damn time, huh? I was beginning to think they didn't care."

"Three miles to the last turn," Sunshine said, ignoring his banter. Her voice was cold, all business. The Intruder jolted once, turbulence from a near-miss. "Weapons armed. Safe off. Pickle's hot."

The miles flashed by. "Okay," Sunshine said. "Mark. Come right to one-seven-two."

"Rog." The aircraft's wing seemed to skim the blurred earth as the Intruder swung to the right.

"We're in the groove for our approach. Range twelve miles." More seconds dragged past. Willis's hands were wet beneath his gloves. "C'mon, c'mon. You see 'em yet?"

"Negative. Ten miles."

"Christ, we'll be on top of-"

"Got it! Lots of static from jamming, but I've got a solid lock. Come right a bit. See it?"

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I've got it. Going to attack." His VDI changed to attack mode, the graphics now more complex, feeding him more data. He scanned it all: time to target, drift angle, steering point. Where was that missile headed? Damn, he'd lost it when they'd made that second course change, and it was behind them somewhere. Okay. The threat warning was off.

The Prowler piggy-backing on the Intruder flight must have jammed the thing or seduced it out of the way.

"Not all that much in the way of anti-air defenses," he said. Tracers continued to flash and flicker across the ground below them, and the puffy, deceptively peaceful-looking cotton balls of triple-A were scattered across the sky. "Not as bad as I thought it would be this close in, anyway."

"Looks to me like their air defense is pretty much off the air," Sunshine replied. "Thank the Sharks for that."

The Sharks, the EA-6Bs of VAQ-143, had delivered the first blow that afternoon. Their stand-off HARM and Tacit Rainbow missiles homed on enemy radars, even targeting radar sources that were switched on briefly, then turned off. Of course, the enemy was sure to have kept a lot of his radars off the air completely, as a combat reserve.

The A-6 gave another hard jolt, slamming Willis against Sunshine's leg.

"Hang on!" He keyed the tactical frequency. "Terminator Five-oh-oh, this is Five-oh-four. I've got my primary. Going in hot."

"Terminator Five-oh-four, Terminator Five-double-oh. Copy that. We'll be right behind you. Good luck!"

"Roger that, Five-oh-four," a different voice said. It sounded like Lucas, in Five-oh-five. "Don't get greedy now. Save some for us poor tag-alongs."

"Copy." Willis pushed the stick over, picking up speed as the Intruder's nose dropped below the horizon line.

"Picking up some heavy triple-A here," someone said. Willis didn't catch who it was. "Aw, shit! Shit! I'm hit!"

"Abort your run, Five-oh-five! You're on fire."

"I see it. Engine light. I'm losing my starboard engine. Shit! Fire in the aircraft! Fire-"

The hiss of static chopped the transmission off in mid-sentence. Willis felt cold. Mike Daniels and his B/N, Frank Lucas, had been good friends.

Somehow, he managed to keep his concentration locked on his VDI. The Intruder was sometimes described as possessing a heads-down display, for the aircraft could be flown by an aviator who never needed to look up through his canopy. When Willis did look up, it was into nightmare. Puffs of smoke were scattered thickly across the sky ahead, mingled with the rising, twisting white threads of SAM contrails. His missile-threat warning was flashing again, coupled with a plaintive, chirping warble in his headset.

"Steady," Sunshine warned him. "Steady! You're drifting left!"

On his VDI, his targeting pipper was climbing steadily up the screen toward the release point. Something hit them, a loud thump aft like someone kicking the fuselage.

"I'm taking it in on manual," he said, flipping the selector. If the A-6 had been hit by gunfire, he didn't want to risk going in on auto-release, flying over the target, then finding out they'd failed to release.

The release pipper crawled relentlessly toward the bottom of the display.

When it winked out, Willis slammed his thumb down on the pickle switch. In the same instant, the brown and gray ground outside gave way to pavement, runways, dozens of tightly clustered buildings, parked vehicles, and aircraft resting in high-walled revetments. He thought he even glimpsed men down there, dashing wildly for cover.

Then the Intruder lurched heavily upward in a series of thumping jolts.

Its warload consisted of thirty five-hundred-pound retarded bombs, four groups of three clamped to A/A 37B-6 multiple eject racks beneath each wing, and two groups more mounted one in front of the other on his centerline, and they were dropping from the aircraft six at a time, in a pattern designed to scatter them across as much real estate as possible.

Relieved of some fifteen thousand pounds of ordnance, the Intruder rocketed into the sky. Willis helped it along, going to full throttle and hauling back on the stick. The shock wave struck them from behind as they climbed.

Willis twisted in his seat, trying to see aft past the Intruder's port wing. The center of the airfield was engulfed in boiling flame, and several buildings were erupting in pulsing, flaming blasts, contributing to the ongoing mass detonations as he watched. "Secondaries!" he yelled, excitement hammering at him. "We've got secondaries."

"Roger that, Five-oh-four," Thumper called. "I think you dropped one into their missile stores! Look at that sucker blow!"

"Goddamn!" Willis enthused. "We did it, Sunshine, we did it!"

"Did you have any doubts about that, Willis?" For the first time in long minutes, she had her face out of her radar screen and was looking at him. The eyes visible between her visor and her oxygen mask were very blue, and sparkled with something that might be amusement.

Or possibly it was just pride at a job well and professionally done.

"No!" he said, laughing. Willis felt as though a tremendous weight had been lifted from his shoulders. There was something almost magical in the shared camaraderie of combat that wiped away doubt, replacing it with trust.

"No, God damn it! I didn't!"

He brought the Intruder around, heading north toward the coast.

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