Countdown

CHAPTER 28

Twenty minutes later, helmets in hand, Tombstone and Tomboy strode side by side across the flight deck toward Tomcat 200, parked on Jefferson's port side just aft of the island. The "CAG bird," normally reserved for Tombstone when he wanted to log some hours, was being readied by several men in green shirts with black stripes, the air wing men who performed aircraft maintenance.

Before boarding, Tombstone and Tomboy both circled the aircraft, checking for faults, open access panels, and tugging at the weapons to make sure they were secure. Four Sidewinders and four AMRAAMs were slung beneath its belly and wings. Stores of AIM-54Cs had been running low, and in any case, the fighting over the Kola had mostly been close-in combat, a real waste of the high-tech, million-dollar Phoenix missiles. As Flynn settled into the rear seat and pulled her helmet on, Tombstone finished his walk-around, then clambered up the ladder and swung into his seat.

"You're already checked out and on the flight plan, CAG!" the plane chief, a burly man in a brown jersey, called up to him. "They're squeezing you in on Cat One right behind a KA-6."

Tombstone saluted his acknowledgment, then began running through his preflight list. He wasn't entirely sure why he was doing this… except for the obvious fact that his people had taken some heavy losses so far, and maybe he could help fill in.

Morale was still bad, and it would be worse when they started realizing their losses. More of them might be tempted into stupid stunts like the one that had killed Striker and K-Bar.

Maybe if the Old Man put in an appearance, it would help pull things together.

Hell, he was guessing and he knew it. Coyote and Batman were doing fine out there without him. But he wanted to be there. With them. With his people.

"Now hear this" blared from a 5-MC speaker on the carrier's island. "Now hear this. Rig the barricade. That is, rig the barricade. Crash crew, fire and medical personnel, stand ready on the after deck."

Uh-oh. Tombstone twisted in his seat, studying the hazy sky aft of the Jefferson. That would be Shotgun One-three coming in. He'd been following the damaged plane's progress down in Ops, and he'd reluctantly agreed to Arrenberger's request that he try to trap on Jefferson's deck rather than eject over the sea. There was still no response from his RIO. If Blue Grass was still alive, the violence of an ejection ― or of plummeting unconscious into ice-cold water ― would almost certainly kill him. Slider wanted to bring his crippled F-14 in ― a risk, certainly, but the only way to save Blue Grass's life. Tombstone had been in the same position once, years before, trying to get down on the deck with a wounded RIO.

Just aft of where Tombstone and Tomboy were sitting ― a fifty-yard-line seat if ever there was one, he thought ― two lines of deck personnel were busily erecting the crash barricade, a horizontal ladder of wire and fabric strips designed to stop an aircraft that, for whatever reason, could not make a normal arrested landing. Tomcat 209 had one engine out, and if his tailhook failed to engage an arrestor wire, he wouldn't have the power necessary to complete a touch-and-go and would bolter off the forward end of the flight deck again. For that reason, Slider and Blue Grass would be making a barrier landing.

Nearby, men in red jerseys with black stripes stood ready to go, fire extinguishers in hand, some of them crouched atop deck tractors rigged out as fire-fighting vehicles. Men in white with red crosses were hospital corpsmen, standing by with first-aid kits and wire-frame Stokes stretchers. The ungainly struts and braces of the four-wheeled aircraft-handling crane known as "Tilly" loomed above them in the lee of Jefferson's island. One man standing on the crane was completely anonymous, clad head to toe in brightly reflecting flameproof silver. He had one job only. If Shotgun One-three crashed and burned, he would be the one to brave fire and exploding fuel in an attempt to pull Slider and Blue Grass from the wreckage.

Looking aft again, Tombstone saw the Tomcat, dropping toward Jefferson's roundoff. Across the deck from him, the LSO and his crew were at their station in front of Jefferson's meatball, guiding the crippled aircraft down its long glide-path toward the steel deck. Closer… closer… nose high, flaps down, gear down… With its wings extended, the F-14 was a "floater," generating tremendous lift, and now it appeared to be suspended, hanging almost motionless in the sky astern of the carrier. Tombstone found himself willing the aircraft safely onto the deck…

… and suddenly it was dropping with alarming speed, plummeting after its own shadow across the roundoff, slamming down with a shriek of rubber on steel, sweeping ahead with a deafening roar into the barricade. Smoke boiled from the starboard engine… and then the nose wheel gave way, and the nose smacked onto the deck with a shattering rasp and showering sparks, plunging through the barricade. The fluttering straps of the barrier seemed to gather Slider's Tomcat in, before collapsing across the aircraft's wings and tail.

The crash crew was already rolling, surrounding the plane in seconds, the yellow-painted Tilly lumbering forward with its crane extended, the sailor in the flameproof suit clinging to one of its struts.

Tombstone found he was holding his breath. In seconds, someone had the Tomcat's canopy up, and they were helping Slider out of the cockpit. It took a few moments more to get Blue Grass out. From some two hundred feet away, Tombstone could see the sickening slime of blood covering the RIO as the crash crew pulled him free and strapped him into a Stokes stretcher.

"My God," he heard Tomboy say. "His legs are gone!"

Whatever had hit Tomcat 209 had slammed up through the belly and severed Blue Grass's legs between hips and knees. The man was dead; he must have bled to death moments after he was hit. "You still want to go?" he asked Tomboy over the ICS.

"Yes." There was none of the usual imp's humor in her voice. "But let's move it, okay?"

Around them, the carrier's deck operations continued their never-ending dance-on-the-deck. Launch ops had slowed their tempo quite a bit to accommodate aircraft coming in for recovery, and the Air Boss was alternating launches from the bow cats with traps astern. After the frantic activity of earlier that morning, and with brief, adrenaline-charged intervals such as Slider's barrier trap, the work load seemed almost light, the men going about their tasks with a casual jauntiness that belied their exhaustion.

The initial checkout complete, with Tomboy reporting all circuit breakers set and systems go, he switched on the engines. As the power built, he felt the aircraft shuddering, as though yearning to free itself from the confines of steel deck and sheltering hangar, to fling itself at the sky.

"Tomcat Two-zero-zero, Air Boss."

Uh-oh. If it was coming, here it was. "Two-double-oh. copy."

"CAG. I got someone here wants to talk to you."

"Put him on."

"CAG? This is Admiral Tarrant."

"Yes, sir." Tombstone had been gambling that Tarrant would take no notice of his unauthorized launch… or better, that he wouldn't find out until after Tombstone was away from the Jeff. Tombstone would not refuse a direct order to stand down, but he desperately hoped that that order would not be given.

"Stoney, Air Ops reports real heavy action over the Inlet above Polyamyy.

Watch your ass in there, do you hear?"

"Yes, sir!"

"That's one expensive item of machinery you've got there. Bring it back in one piece."

"Aye, aye, sir!" Tombstone found himself grinning idiotically.

A plane director was backing away ahead of the Tomcat, motioning Tombstone on. Carefully, he let up the brakes and followed, threading the thirty-ton aircraft past Slider's and Blue Grass's fallen, nose-down F-14 and toward the bow catapults.

Captain First Rank Anatoli Chelyag leaned out over the edge of the cockpit, located high atop the Typhoon's sail. Naval Infantry troops lined the pier to which Leninskiy Nesokrushimyy Pravda had been moored, the younger ones among them looking scared as the sounds of gunfire continued to echo distantly through the cavern.

Line-handlers ashore had already cast off the enormous wire ropes securing the Typhoon to the bollards. Chelyag was watching now as the distance between pier and the sloping flanks of the behemoth he commanded gradually widened.

"We're clear to port now," he said, speaking into a telephone handset.

"Ahead slow."

"Ahead slow, Captain" came the reply from the officer at the helm in Pravda's control center.

The huge submarine picked up momentum, gliding through the filthy water with a sullen chug-chug-chug of her enormous screws. Chelyag remembered again Karelin's voice as he'd ordered the Pravda out of the cavern and into the hellfire outside. Reach the Barents Sea? They would be lucky if they cleared Polyamyy Inlet and made it to the main channel. Admiral Marchenko had been sending down hourly reports. That last one had spoken of Marines on the hillside directly above Pravda's hiding place.

But there was no refusing Karelin's orders. Chelyag would do as he'd been commanded, clear Tretyevo Peschera, then fire missile number one, already targeted on Chelyabinsk. After that… well, their survival depended entirely on the Frontal Aviation units now closing on Polyamyy from the south.

He brought the telephone to his mouth again. "Commander Mizin. Pass the word ashore to open the cavern doors."

"Yes, Comrade Captain." There was a pause. "Captain? We have a message from Admiral Marchenko."

"Read it to me."

"He says… 'Good luck, Pravda. Go with God.""

Chelyag could almost see the sneer, the curl to Mizin's lip, as he recited the message. His First Officer was a good atheist, a man who'd hoped with an almost religious passion that the return of no-nonsense hard-liners to power in Moscow would mean an end to the religious mania that had exploded throughout the nation during the days of Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

Evidently, he'd been disappointed.

"Tell Admiral Marchenko, 'Thank you. Message received and very much appreciated.""

And what, he wondered, did Mizin think of that?

"We're coming up on the coast," Tomboy said over the ICS. "Feet dry."

"More or less," Tombstone replied. "We're not over land yet."

He'd swung far out to the east of the carrier battle force, skimming past the Marine amphibious fleet, then cutting south down the Kola Inlet itself.

The mouth of the gulf was four miles across here. East were the low, rounded hills of the island of Ostrov Kildin. Military-looking settlements were scattered along both coastlines, among bare-faced cliffs and gleaming patches of ice and snow. Ice still sheeted over much of the waterway, though the center of the narrow gulf had been kept open by icebreakers.

Smoke coiled away into the sky to the right. The western shore of the inlet at this point was held by American forces, the east by Russians. A large ship ― Tombstone thought it might be a destroyer ― lay half-submerged in the shallows near the west bank, beneath a greasy pall of smoke and surrounded by ice. Beyond, helicopters darted, insect-like, beneath the writhing tendrils of high-altitude contrails.

"Ninety-nine aircraft, ninety-nine aircraft" sounded over the tactical frequency. "This is Echo-Whiskey Two-one. We're picking up large numbers of bogies coming in from the south, probably from the airfields at Kirovsk and Revda. This could be a general attack."

"What, more bandits?" Tomboy asked. "You'd think they'd be running out of MiGs by now."

"Haven't you heard, Tomboy? They've got an inexhaustible supply.

Somewhere they've got factories cranking out MiGs as fast as we can shoot them down. Check weapons."

"Hot and ready. Shame the bird farm was out of AIM-54s."

"That's okay. We'll just have to sucker them in close."

"Wonderful plan, CAG. You have anything else in mind?"

Tombstone was scanning the surface of the water. Sunlight flashed from a silvery something skimming over the inlet. "Yes, actually. Let's ride in with that A-6 flight down there."

"That'll be Red Hammer One," his RIO told him. "Some of our boys off the Jeff."

"Good enough. We'll ride shotgun for them for a ways. Call the leader and let him know we're here."

"Rog."

More Russian aircraft, mustering to the south. Obviously, the hammer-blow air and cruise-missile strikes over the past twenty-four hours had not been as successful as originally thought. That was often the pattern in modern warfare; high-tech weapons were wonderfully destructive and accurate… but the enemy always seemed to have reserves, an adaptability, a cleverness, not accounted for in the original planning. Too, weapons thought to give ninety-per-cent-plus accuracy were later found to be sixty-percent accurate or less. Men grew tired or careless. Or discouraged.

Of course, the same morale problems would be affecting the other side as well. One of the real challenges of military strategy was knowing when the enemy had reached the end of his reserves, to the point where one more small push might topple his seemingly faultless defenses and bring them crashing down.

Which side, he wondered, would break first in this contest?

"CAG?" Willis Payne twisted in his seat, trying to see behind and above the low-flying A-6. "What the shit is he doing out here?"

"Slumming?" Sunshine replied, her face buried in her radar scope. "Or maybe they're really getting hard up back in Ops. They're sending in the REMFs."

"Hey, lady, from what I've heard, Magruder's no rear-echelon mother-"

"Aw, shit, he's a four-striper, ain't he? Sits at a desk, writes up fitness reports, fills out requisitions, wipes noses. Coming up on nine miles to Polyamyy. Weapons armed. Pickle's hot."

"Rog. Listen, I hear that guy was flying the Hornet that took down the Kreml last year. You know, the big Russian carrier? The guy's got more medals than you could push with zone-five burners, and a combat record as long as Jefferson's flight deck. He's not a prick and he's a damned hot aviator.

That makes the son of a bitch fuckin' A-okay in my book!"

"I COPY."

"Why're you so bitter about four-stripers anyway?"

"Oh, I don't know. The morale aboard the Jefferson's gotten pretty grim lately."

"The morale aboard the Jefferson sucks."

"Like I said. Maybe I just figured it was his fault."

"Shit, guys like him may be all that's holding Jefferson's people together right now. You should've seen him at the Blue Nose initiation last week."

"The what?"

"Uh, never mind. Old news. Whatcha got on the scope?"

"Lots of stuff coming up. Inlets to the right. You should be seeing some smokestacks up ahead. That'll be Polyamyy."

"Got it. God, there's a lot of smoke."

"That won't stop us. I'm switching to FLIR."

The Intruder shrieked south toward Russia's most vital submarine facilities.

The huge, massive barrier separating the Third cavern from the outside world had slid ponderously up and out of the way. Beyond, sunlight danced on the waters of the Polyamyy Inlet.

Holding his binoculars to his eyes, squinting against the dazzling light, Chelyag picked out some of the submarines that had been moored outside the sheltering rock walls of the cavern. That was Kolosov's boat, a humpbacked PLARB of the type known to the West as a Delta IV. The boat was listing thirty degrees against its pier and had settled somewhat by the bow. It looked like a cruise missile had arrowed in just ahead of the sail.

Damn! Over there was Lovchikov's boat, one of the fast-attack subs.

Known as the Alfa in the West, those high-technology boats were so expensive the Russians called them Zolotaya Ryba, the Golden Fish. God, what had they done to it? The sail crumpled, the periscopes bent like matchsticks. That Golden Fish would never swim the ocean depths again. And Leninskiy Nesokrushi Pravda would be in no better condition very soon, if Karelin did not honor his promise to send additional Frontal Aviation interceptors.

"Clear the weather bridge," he snapped. "Everyone below."

A spiral staircase, incongruously trimmed with wooden railings, led down from the weather bridge, through massive double hulls and all the way to Pravda's attack center, which rested between and astride the Typhoon's side-by-side inner hulls like a saddle on a swaybacked horse.

"Captain on deck!" a rating cried as Chelyag stepped off the ladder.

From consoles around the compartment, pale faces watched him, some expectant, some fearful. "Missile Officer!" he barked.

"Sir!"

"Missile status."

"Hatch number one is open, Captain. Prelaunch check is complete, and all codes have been verified and authenticated. The missile is targeted and ready to fire."

"Very well. Stand by. We will launch as soon as we are clear of the mooring bay." He at least wanted water enough beneath him that the shock of launching the sixty-ton missile would not slam his keel against the bottom.

On a television screen above the helm officer's station, the entrance to open water was looming larger.

"Bandits, Tombstone! Multiple bandits!"

"How many and where?"

"Ten… twelve… A hell of a lot, coming in at low altitude, from one-six-oh to one-eight-oh! Range, five miles!"

"Here's one," Tombstone said, choosing one target out of many displayed on his HUD. He flipped a selector. "Going with AMRAA.M." There was a pause, then the satisfying warble of a radar lock in his earphones. "Lock! And that's a fox one!"

Below him, the Intruders had spread out but were still bearing south, arrowing scant yards ahead of their own shadows on the water. Elsewhere, the sky was empty, save for wisps of contrails far overhead.

"This is Tomcat Two-zero-zero," Tombstone called. "Coming in north of Polyamyy. I've got a flight of Intruders that could use some help about now."

"Two-double-oh, this is Shotgun One-one. Tombstone, what the hell are you doing out here?"

"Getting my ass into trouble, Coyote. Where the hell are you?"

"Retanking at angels base plus ten, Delta Three-five-five, Charlie One-eight-one." Tombstone glanced at his map. That put Shotgun about eighteen miles to the northwest. "We're on our way back to the Jeff after covering White Lightning."

"Any of you already tanked up?"

"That's a roger. Three of us are anyway."

"If you're still armed, we could use you at Polyamyy. Multiple bogies coming out of one-eight-zero."

"I see 'em. Okay, Tombstone. Cavalry's on the way."

"Good to hear that, Coyote." Tombstone locked onto a second target, then squeezed the trigger. "Fox one!"

"Hey, leave a few for the rest of us."

But as the MiGs exploded out of the southern sky, Tombstone knew that Coyote needn't have worried on that score.

In seconds, MiG-29 Fulcrums were everywhere, sleek aircraft with twin stabilizers, clutching deadly pods of weapons beneath their wings.

Then Tombstone and Tomboy were fighting for their lives.