Enemies

SIX

Tombstone sat on the catapult, waiting for the launch. These were the moments he felt most fully alive, with everything on the line and waiting for that final salute from the catapult officer. Below him, the shuttle was already fastened to his aircraft, thousands of pounds of steam pressure behind it, waiting for release.

At the signal, he shoved the throttles forward to full military power. The jet blast deflectors, or JBDs, behind him shielded the rest of the flight deck and its people and aircraft from the hurricane blasting out of his engines.

It came then, that final salute from the catapult officer, who then dropped to the deck and touched his hand to the nonskid. There was a moment of hesitation, a slight thump as the shuttle took up the slack in the coupling. Then the pressure, hard and demanding, drove him back into his ejection seat. The world was noise and fury now, the Tomcat howling to be released from the unnatural confines of the deck to return to the sky.

Everything was happening too fast and too slow at the same time. The forward edge of the flight deck rushed toward him, the expanse of deck between his aircraft and the water shrinking to a thin sliver of baked black nonskid. Steam streamed out behind the aircraft as the shuttle vented, laying down skid marks of steam in the air.

And yet there was time still, time to think about the moment approaching when he’d be flung off the pointy end into the sky, time to wonder whether someone somewhere had made a mistake, forgotten to calculate the steam pressure setting on the shuttle correctly, missed a malfunction on one of his control surfaces, left the safety pins in the ejection seat points — too much could go wrong too fast, and yet there was time to think about it.

The last bit of deck slipped out from underneath him and he felt the Tomcat jolt down. A moment of panic, normal panic, as the aircraft fought off gravity, poised on the thin line between flying and falling out of the sky. He’d watched this too many times from the tower and knew what they were seeing: his Tomcat below the level of the flight deck, barely airborne, clawing for airspeed and altitude, the Air Boss holding his breath for the few seconds it took for the Tomcat to decide to fly.

He felt it then, as he always had, that odd shift in the feeling of the airframe around him that told him that he’d made it. No soft cat on this one, a launch too slow that would dribble him off the bow of the carrier like rainwater. No control surfaces sticking, no engines faltering — no, this Tomcat wanted the sky.

He kept her level for a few seconds, building up airspeed until he was confident that he was well beyond stall speed, judging the moment more by the feel in the seat of his pants than the heads-up display or the instruments arrayed before him. Then he pulled her nose up, banked hard to the right, and departed the immediate airspace of the carrier.

“Good launch,” Bird Dog said finally from the backseat. His voice was high and tight, and Tombstone had to repress the urge to rag on him. Pilots were notoriously bad passengers, particularly when they were stashed in the wrong seat — the backseat — of a Tomcat. At least Bird Dog had kept his mouth shut during the cat shot. Rank and formalities were stripped away in those moments that both men’s lives depended on the pilot keeping his head, seeing trouble before it developed, and doing exactly the right thing at the right time to keep them out of the ocean.

“Any sight of our escorts?” Tombstone asked. The Greek government had insisted on allowing their aircraft to serve as a formal honor guard for the admiral en route Tavista Air Base. The carrier had been none too thrilled at the prospect of allowing even allied fighters that close to the carrier. A compromise had been reached — the Jefferson would move fifty miles offshore, ostensibly to “pump and dump,” to dump garbage and pump sewage. American fighters would escort Tombstone to within twelve miles of the coast and the Greek fighters would take over from there. It was a workable solution, one that saved face and avoided complicated coordination for both sides.

“Yes, sir,” came Bird Dog’s voice from the backseat. Slower than a real RIO would have been, but still sounding confident. “They’re just feet wet, vectoring in our direction.”

“Good. I’m switching to button three for coordination purposes,” Tombstone answered. A few moments later, he heard a voice speaking slightly accented English come over the channel.

“Tomcat 00 this is Greek one, on station to join you for escort.”

Probably trained in the United States at some point, Tombstone reflected. Most Tomcat fighters did. Or, if not, their training facilities were built and operated by American corporations that employed former fighter pilots. It was no surprise that English was the lingua franca for free world fighters.

“Roger, Greek one. Copy you loud and clear. Request you take station on either side of me at standard distances.” Tombstone clicked off the mike and said, “I presume they know what that means?”

“Probably so, sir,” Bird Dog said, slipping back into a slightly more formal tone now that the catapult shot was over. “And if they don’t, that tells us as much as if they did.”

Tombstone nodded, pleased by the younger officer’s insight. Sometimes it was just as important to know what an allied didn’t know as what he did.

“Tomcat 00, this is Viper lead,” a definitively American voice came over button three. “Sir, we have a visual on your escorts. Recommend we move off and let them vector in without interference.”

“Go ahead, just like we briefed.” The announcement had been made to remind all parties that there was a plan — and that they were expected to follow it.

Tombstone could pick out the Greek fighters now, duplicates of the Tomcats in CVBG14’s own air wing. His own aircraft rocked slightly as his two escorts peeled off, heading for altitude to oversee the entire evolution.

The Greek fighters came in low, giving him a moment of disorientation as they disappeared from view. He could hear Bird Dog shifting in his seat, straining his neck and trying to stare down at them. They reappeared a few seconds later, on either side of him, slowly climbing and falling in the correct formation.

“Tomcat 00, Greek one on station and at your disposal, sir.”

Solid airmanship, Tombstone thought. Nothing flashy, nothing sloppy. Just good, solid, by-the-book airmanship.

Tombstone made a few small course corrections, checking the Greeks’ proficiency in staying on station. They were welded to either side of him, indicating that they were paying attention.

Two miles off the coast of Greece, Tombstone had a clear view of the land. Blue spread out below him, brilliant green land against the stark blue of the Mediterranean. At this altitude, the marks humanity had made on the land even after centuries of occupation were still insignificant against the grandeur of the earth itself.

Suddenly, a flurry of Greek questions and answers crowded the circuit. Although he didn’t understand a word of Greek, Tombstone knew what a worried pilot sounded like. He waited for a pause in the transmission, then asked, “Someone want to fill me in?” There was a moment of silence, then a new voice said, “Tomcat 00 this is ground control. Admiral, now that you’re safely over our land, I will be detaching your escorts slightly early. Please continue on this course and speed pending further approach instructions.” The voice broke back into a string of incomprehensible Greek.

First the Tomcat to his left, and then the one to his right peeled away, shucking altitude as they did. Tombstone made a minor course change to correct for the effect of their jet washes.

“Well, look at that,” Bird Dog said. “Man, these people take their escort duties seriously.”

Tombstone glanced over at the Tomcat now streaking off to the north. “Lots of escorts carry weapons, Bird Dog. It’s just symbolic — probably training loads.”

“Maybe so, sir,” Bird Dog said, but Tombstone could hear the frown in his voice. “Only thing is, I wouldn’t pick iron bombs as the ordnance to slap on a wing just to impress us. Clumsy mothers to fly with. A couple of Sidewinders would have been better, wouldn’t they?”

Iron bombs. Tombstone had seen them, of course, wondered the same thing himself at the time, but hadn’t said anything. Now, with his escort detached unexpectedly, that old feeling started to gnaw at him, that sixth sense that had saved his ass so many times before.

“It is odd, Bird Dog,” he said slowly. “And I don’t think I like it at all. Anything else in the area?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Bird Dog answered. Tomcat 00 was still in the LINK, receiving the combined picture from all the ship’s radars as well is its own sensors.

“I wonder where the hell they were going?” Tombstone asked. And, more importantly, why bombs?

The Greek pilot maintained altitude until he was well clear of the American dignitaries he’d been escorting. This mission had been briefed and rebriefed as a contingency so many times over the last several months that he thought he could fly it in his sleep. There had been a final update before they departed on this escort mission. It could happen at any time, all of them knew it.

Why me? he wondered, as he glanced over at his wing man. Why not another pilot with another section of Tomcats? After all, any one of them could have flown this mission. To break him off escort duty — even though he welcomed the interruption — to undertake this mission hadn’t been the only option. When the Americans heard of the bombing run, of course they would make the connection. How could they not?

But perhaps that was exactly what General Arkady intended. To send a message to the Americans by using the escort forces to conduct this mission.

“Two minutes,” his backseater said. “On course, on time.”

He grunted an acknowledgment. He could see the first landmark now, the small village just south of the border. There, that water tank. Just as briefed, just as he’d flown before. He descended to one thousand feet, turned east and commenced his final approach. His wingman settled in behind him. At two miles out, he descended another five hundred feet. Then he bore in, mentally checking off the landmarks as his backseater called them off.

“Five seconds,” his backseater said. He continued to count off the seconds. At precisely the right moment, the pilot toggled off the bombs. His Tomcat jolted upward, suddenly relieved of the two thousand pounds of drag.

He rolled his Tomcat out hard to the right immediately, at right angles to his earlier course. He jammed the throttles forward and went into afterburner. The Tomcat climbed quickly, putting distance between his aircraft and the target. It was only a matter of seconds now.

He ascended to five thousand then continued his turn to the right, giving him a view of the impact point. The land was still and quiet, and for one cold moment he thought they’d missed the target. Then he spotted the iron bomb, curving down in a graceful arc toward its target. He experienced a mild surge of excitement.

The white building in the middle of the clearing exploded. He had one brief second to see the structure start to crumble, then the entire area was consumed in a boiling mass of flames and smoke. It billowed up, mushrooming in clear air and rapidly expanding. A second explosion then, followed by a third and a fourth. The entire area was now a flaming mass of destruction, details invisible inside the conflagration. Then the mushrooming cloud seemed to double its rate of growth — his wingman’s weapon had found its target as well. The tactical circuit filled with cries of congratulation and victory.

There was much to be proud of, that was true. According to the intelligence reports, they had just destroyed a major covert headquarters facility operated by the rebel Macedonians. The hurried briefing from the ground controller was that the mission had been authorized as retaliation for a terrorist bombing just hours earlier in Tavista.

Destroying the HQ now would save countless Greek lives down the line, both Greek and Macedonian. After all, the Macedonians were Greek as well, weren’t they? A small segment of them were rabid nationalists, misleading the rest of the populous with their inflammatory accusations of racial cleansing. But Greece — his Greece — would never engage in such conduct. No, it was the Macedonians that killed women and children, that brought their terrorist devices into peaceful towns and cities. And while he hoped and prayed that no civilians were killed in the bombing, as would any good Christian, the fact remained that they had brought it on themselves.

“Better than baby-sitting the Americans, is it not?” his wingman cried out. “It was beautiful — did you see it?” And he rattled on with another description emphasizing the size and quality of the blast.

The pilot nodded, made the right sounds at the right moments. But something else had replaced the joyous victory he felt initially. A premonition, perhaps, of what was to come. It seemed that the future held nothing but death, dying, and more bombing runs.

The prospect of that didn’t bother him nearly as much as the fact that he enjoyed it.