Flame Out

CHAPTER 7

“What’s the status on this one, Chief?” Tombstone Magruder had to shout over the din that echoed through Jefferson’s cavernous hangar deck. Stretching for two thirds of the carrier’s 1,092-foot length and fully two decks high, the huge chamber was crowded with aircraft and the men from Department V who were in charge of maintaining and outfitting them. As always, being down here gave Magruder a sense of just how small a part the aviators and NFOs really played in the operation of the carrier Air Wing. From plane captains down to purple-shirted “grapes” who handled refueling on the flight deck, these men regarded those aircraft as their own … and quite rightly. Without them, the aviators couldn’t fly.

The brown-shirted plane captain whose name Tombstone hadn’t caught over the noise of the hangar deck gestured at the wing of the A-6E Intruder in front of them and bellowed his reply. “I’m not real happy about her, sir! She was on deck the day of the big cock-up. There was some damage to the wing … here … and over here!” His finger jabbed in emphasis.

Magruder nodded slowly. He didn’t pretend to be an expert on aircraft maintenance, but CAG had ordered him to check on the readiness of the wing’s Intruder squadron. Now that Jefferson was sailing into a potential battle zone it was critical that the attack aircraft be ready for action. “Did you give it a down-check then?” he asked.

The CPO shook his head reluctantly. “Didn’t want to, sir. The damage wasn’t bad compared to the ones that really got caught in it. But I ain’t happy about it.”

Rubbing his forehead, Tombstone tried to decide how to respond. Even with the planes he’d brought in the night before Jefferson was short of Intruders, and he could understand the chief’s reluctance to order another one taken out of service. Intruders were tough birds that could take a lot of punishment and still do the job.

But if the damage was bad enough to weaken the wings, another two-man crew would be facing disaster each time they flew the bomber.

“Give it a down gripe,” he said at length. That meant the Intruder’s maintenance log would show it as unfit for use until repairs had been made. “But put the sucker at the top of the repair list, okay?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the petty officer replied. He looked happier now. “That’s the last of ‘em, Commander.”

“Good. I want all the maintenance logs on my desk tomorrow morning for review. Got it?”

“Aye, aye,” the chief repeated.

Tombstone turned away and started across the wide deck, dodging people, tractors, and parked aircraft constantly. A well-run hangar deck left very little wasted space and still couldn’t hold all of a carrier’s planes. Jefferson’s hangar deck was very well run, and hence very crowded.

He stopped beside the bulky form of an E-2C Hawkeye to get his bearings and pick out the best possible path out of the chaos. Something flapped overhead in the stiff breeze coming through the opening of the number-two elevator, and Magruder looked up. In port, the overhead of the hangar deck would be strung with dozens of flags and banners of states, territories, foreign nations, and so on. When the ship was at sea the flags weren’t supposed to be hung, but apparently someone had placed the flag of Norway, a white and blue cross on a red background, in a prominent position dominating the center of the hangar, where everybody could see it. There was little doubt of the crew’s feelings, whatever might be coming out of Washington.

Tombstone thought back to the briefing. It was clear enough from the emphasis on the military situation that Admiral Tarrant expected Jefferson to be involved in the fighting. Whether the President finally took the plunge and ordered support for the Norwegians, or whether the Soviets chose to enforce their huge exclusion zone, that looked like the most probable outcome. But what could one carrier battle group do to help the beleaguered defenders around Bergen? Land-based air could swamp the carrier’s defenses, lurking submarines would be a constant threat … and the Soviet Red Banner Fleet was out there somewhere, an awesome assemblage of naval firepower. The Americans didn’t even have their old advantage in carriers anymore. There was at least one of the new Russian CVs in the Red Banner Fleet, and even if it was smaller and less dangerous than the Jefferson, it was a carrier nonetheless, capable of challenging America’s power-projection capability in a way no enemy had been able to try since the Second World War.

It made his new assignment all the more frustrating when he thought about the odds they were up against. While men like Coyote and Batman risked their lives flying cover for the battle group, he’d be condemned to Captain Stramaglia’s idea of his proper place.

His proper place, he told himself, was in the cockpit of an F-14.

“Mr. Magruder … sir?” The voice came from behind him, loud enough to hear over the hangar deck noise but still somehow tentative and uncertain. Magruder turned to find himself looking at a young, red-haired lieutenant with pilot’s wings and an apprehensive look on his freckled face.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” he shouted over the roar of one of the tractors — a “mule” in flight-deck parlance — hauling an F/A-18 Hornet toward one of the elevators.

“Sir, CAG told me to talk with you. Said I should see you before … before I turn in my wings …”

Inwardly, Magruder groaned. What did CAG expect of him, anyway? Once a pilot decided he’d lost the edge, there wasn’t much point in trying to change his mind. In fact it could be dangerous. If this youngster had decided that he wasn’t fit to fly but tried to hide it and stay in the air, he could end up making mistakes that would kill people. Including himself.

On the other hand, Magruder remembered the times he’d come close himself to calling it quits. And he’d talked Coyote out of quitting once too. That had turned out for the best, obviously. Coyote Grant was still on his way up.

“Look, Lieutenant, we can’t talk here!” he yelled. “Come on with me! We’ll find someplace quieter!”

Someplace quieter turned out to be Tombstone’s quarters. There weren’t many places even on a boat the size of the Jefferson where privacy was possible, and if this kid was planning on spilling his guts about his problems Tombstone didn’t want a lot of witnesses. Whether he turned in his wings or not, the kid would face a mountain of scorn if he broke the unwritten aviator’s law that a good flyer never, ever let the pressure make him lose his cool.

“All right, son,” Magruder said at last as he closed the door. “What’s your name, first off?”

“Roger Bannon, sir. They call me Banshee.” Bannon hesitated. “I’m with VA-89.”

Magruder nodded and smiled encouragingly. The wing’s single attack squadron, the VA-89 “Death Dealers” flew the A-6E Intruders that Magruder was supposed to be paying special attention to in the days ahead. Perhaps that was why CAG wanted him to deal with Bannon’s problem, whatever it was. “It’s a damned good outfit,” he said aloud.

“Yes, sir.” Bannon looked uncomfortable.

“You said you wanted to turn in your wings. Want to tell me about it, son?” He was surprised at how easily he seemed to fall into the role of the father figure.

“I–I was the one who crashed the Intruder last week, Mr. Magruder. I screwed up bad on a landing … missed the wires but didn’t have enough power to make it a bolter. Skidded … God, I couldn’t do anything to stop it.” Bannon closed his eyes as if reliving the moment in his mind. “The planes … the people who died … it was all my fault.”

“You must’ve been doing pretty good to eject from that mess,” Tombstone said quietly. “Looks like you came through without a scratch.”

A spasm of pain crossed the young face. “I was … everybody says it was lucky. I wish now I’d never got clear. My chute opened and snagged on something, so I didn’t even hit the deck.”

Magruder hesitated before probing further. It looked like it wasn’t so much fear as guilt that was weighing on Bannon’s mind, but he was no expert in psychology. He wasn’t sure how to handle the kid. This was really a job for the chaplain. But chaplains didn’t always understand the way another aviator did. Tombstone felt he had to try, at least, to help Bannon. “there must have been an inquiry,” he said.

Bannon nodded. “They said … they said it was an accident, that I could return to flight status when CAG thought I was ready.” He swallowed. “But it doesn’t seem right …”

“Look, you can’t be impartial judging yourself over something like this.” Magruder groped for the right words. “You should … you should trust what CAG and the Captain had to say about the accident. They’ve had a hell of a lot more experience than you. When you’ve seen more carrier duty you’ll realize these things happen. Even if you never go into combat you’re running a risk when you serve aboard a carrier.”

Bannon didn’t answer, but he’d fixed a wide-eyed stare on Magruder’s face.

“Now the way I see it, son, you’ve got a couple of choices. If you want to turn in those wings, that’s your business. The Navy doesn’t want men flying who don’t have the confidence to pull it off. But once you do it, there’s no second chance. You won’t fly for the Navy again. And chances are you’ll find out, somewhere down the line, that it was a mistake to run away from the problem. But you’ll never be able to face it down, because you quit.” He paused. “Your second choice is to try the old ‘get back on the horse’ philosophy. A lot of people think that’s the best way to handle this kind of thing. Me, I’m not so sure.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Magruder?”

“Push too hard and you could end up getting into more trouble. Now what I think you need to do is have another little talk with CAG. Keep your wings, but see if you can get assigned as an LSO or something like that. Take it one step at a time. When you’re ready, you’ll know it … and then you’ll be able to get back in the cockpit and show yourself and everybody else that it really was an accident. A fluke.”

“Do you think Captain Stramaglia would let me do that, sir?” Bannon asked, sounding eager for the first time.

“Give it a try. I’ve served with him before, and underneath the tough shell there’s a tough guy inside … but he’s fair. And I’ll recommend it to him if it’s what you decide you want.”

“Th-thanks, Mr. Magruder.” Bannon started to say more, but Tombstone held up his hand.

“Don’t make the decision right now. Think about it. Maybe see one of the chaplains and talk it over with him. When you make any choice, make sure it’s one you can live with.”

“I will, Mr. Magruder. Thanks again.”

When Bannon was gone Magruder let out a long, ragged breath. Had he done the right thing? What if the kid really had been at fault, despite what the inquiry had found?

He decided he’d have to look into the story further before he could make any final decisions himself. That meant research, interviews, the whole wearying round of investigation.

It was hard to believe that it had been less than twenty-four hours since he’d been exalting over his liberation from paperwork and Pentagon bureaucracy, his return to the freedom of carrier life.

Like a mother duck surrounded by a gaggle of ducklings, the Soyuz led a handful of escort ships through the angry gray waters off the northern coast of Norway, heading southwest into the Norwegian Sea. Displacing sixty-thousand tons and measuring a thousand feet from ski-jump bow to stern, Soyuz represented an entirely new concept in the USSR’s naval thinking. The multipurpose aircraft carrier of the type employed so successfully by the Americans for over five decades was now an integral part of the Red Banner Fleet.

Admiral Vasili Ivanovich Khenkin winced as an aircraft thundered from the deck, probably one of the navalized MiG-29D fighters that provided aerial patrol and protection for the carrier. Khenkin was still not used to his new kind of ship, part of the legacy of Admiral Gorshkov’s bold naval expansion program. Soyuz was the second of his class — Soviet ships, unlike American vessels, were always regarded as “he”—and probably the last. Together with his predecessor, Kreml, Soyuz had blazed the way, but the latest aircraft carrier, just finishing sea trials in the Black Sea, was larger, the size of the great American supercarriers. The sixty airplanes crowded aboard Soyuz would give way to carriers with ninety or a hundred planes before long.

Khenkin looked around the cramped confines of Flag Plot at the staff of officers and seamen who managed the fleet’s operations under his command. How many of them realized the significance of this operation? He wondered if any of them realized that they were not merely embarked on the extension of Soviet control in one tiny region, but were actually reestablishing the USSR as a world power once again.

That was what it amounted to, at least. Since the middle of the Eighties Soviet power and Russian pride had taken a beating. Faced with a sagging economy, a hostile West, and a rising tide of discontent, the Motherland had barely survived intact. And at what cost? Retreat from Eastern Europe, and from the vital buffer zone that alone could prevent a repetition of Germany’s occupation of Russian soil. Compromise with liberal elements demanding reform in everything from freedom of emigration to private ownership of land and industry to the very organization and function of the government itself. Even the evidence of where it would all lead — the ethnic violence, the riots and strikes, the independence movements in states traditionally part of Russia — had not swayed the reformers from their headlong rush to virtual anarchy. It had taken the failure of Gorbachev and Yeltsin and their “new Union” to show the essential weakness of the reform movements, and just as the weak-willed Socialist Kerensky had been swept aside by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, so the democrats had been forced to return power to the hands of the only people who could maintain order, the hard-liners of the Soviet military.

Now the damage could all be undone. The death of the President had been regrettable, of course, but a necessary first step in the cleansing process. The war with Norway would end in quick victory, a needed symbol of renewed Soviet pride. The Americans had gone through the same sort of process with their short, sharp victory over Iraq, at a time when the USSR needed Western economic aid more than the continued existence of a long-time ally. Turnabout was only fair play, Khenkin thought smugly.

He wondered if General Vorobyev had considered that particular bit of symbolism while framing the campaign for Norway’s occupation. Symbols could mean a lot. The carrier, for instance. Starting out as the Riga, his name had been changed to the Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Gorshkov, in honor of the Admiral of the Fleet who had inspired the carrier program in the first place after the troubles in the Baltics and elsewhere had made the name of one of the rebellious cities an inappropriate one for a Soviet warship to bear. Now he was the Soyuz, the Union, a symbol of the rebirth of a strong central government that would carry the USSR into the new century.

“Admiral,” an aide said with a crisp salute as he entered Flag Plot. “We have an updated report on the American aircraft carrier battle group.”

“Ah, excellent. Excellent, Orlov. Proceed.” Khenkin leaned forward in his seat, fixing his eyes on the young officer. This was a report he had waited a long time for.

“Around midnight last night Greenwich time the battle group altered course,” Orlov began. “They are now moving northeast at a speed in excess of thirty knots. Our satellite data is not as complete as we would wish due to increasing cloud cover in the area, but the best estimate is that they are ignoring the warnings regarding the Norwegian Sea.” Orlov was sweating, plainly worried at how the admiral would react to the report.

“Is that all? Then you are dismissed, Orlov.” Sagging back in his seat, Khenkin closed his eyes. No one had been sure how the Americans would react, but they gave every indication of being too wrapped up in domestic affairs to care what went on in Scandinavia. The planning had relied on the new American isolationism, the call that the United States could not continue as “the world’s policeman.” In the face of American responses from Iraq to North Korea to the Indian subcontinent, caution had suggested that the plan was foolhardy at best, yet the election of a U.S. President who openly favored massive and unilateral military cutbacks, as well as reductions in all areas of foreign aid, had been encouraging. And his timid reactions, first to the reoccupation of the Baltics, and later to the border dispute between Norway and the Union, had been enough to convince even the doomsayers among the Soviets. Now the Americans were finally beginning to act.

Perhaps the declaration of the exclusion zone in the Norwegian Sea had been too much like an ultimatum. Sometimes it seemed as if the Americans believed they owned the oceans. Khenkin had been against the declaration, but his superiors had overruled his objections. Now it seemed he was being proven correct after all. Instead of backing away from the crisis in Norway, it seemed the Americans were going to challenge the Soviet proclamation directly. But even so, there were still options open. Still a few ways to make the plan work.

“If the Americans are coming, it will risk everything,” Captain First Rank Dmitri Yakovlevich Bodansky, Khenkin’s Chief of Staff, said quietly. “Success depends upon winning Norway without provoking a wider conflict.”

“It is a danger, I agree, Dmitri,” the admiral replied slowly. “But it can still be nullified if we are careful. The American President will know that there is little their people can do to assist the Norwegians before our army completes the reduction of the last remaining resistance. He ‘will be seeing this as a gesture of defiance, a symbol to the world that the great superpower does not accept the dictates of a foreign country. We would do the same, would we not? I suspect the carrier battle group is functioning under strict rules of engagement to avoid open confrontation.”

“You do not believe they are planning to support their allies, Admiral?” Bodansky sounded incredulous.

“They are in a very awkward position. Soon there will be nothing left in Norway to reinforce, and they cannot wage an effective war so far from home without a friendly nation as a base. Who will help them? The Swedes and the Danes will stay neutral if only because of the threat we pose. In fact they will most likely scramble for the best possible terms. Germany is no friend of America today. There is too much commercial competition there. The English are adhering to socialism better than many of our own republics. When that idiot Hussein invaded Kuwait the biggest mistake he made was in stopping at the Saudi border. Had he gone on the Americans would never have been able to dislodge him. It is a long, long way to America, Dmitri, and only a short way to the Rodina.”

“So this is a gesture only?”

“Yes. If the only options are backing down or trying to fight a long-range war without effective bases, the Americans will back down. They are too afraid of a nuclear exchange to risk the chance of widening this conflict further. All we need do now is make sure that there is no large-scale engagement between our forces. Let them make their cruise into the Norwegian Sea. We will watch them, remind them of their position, but we will not provoke them far enough to force a response.”

Bodansky rubbed the scar on his chin. “If the weather down there is getting heavier, satellite tracking will continue to be difficult. We cannot afford to lose them, Admiral. Even if it is only to be sure we stay clear of their ships.”

“I agree,” Khenkin said. “We must increase the aerial patrols in that direction.”

“The one we sent yesterday did little enough,” Bodansky pointed out with a harsh note in his voice. “They turned and ran as soon as American fighters challenged them.”

“Then we must see to it that the Americans do not challenge any more of our flights. I would say that a pair of escorting fighters would be most useful for these reconnaissance operations. By tomorrow we will be in position to use our own MiGs for this purpose, Dmitri. A chance to remind the generals that the Red Banner Fleet has a major part to play in this, eh?”

“Da, Comrade Admiral.” Bodansky began scribbling notes on to a pad. He stopped and looked straight at Khenkin. “Of course, Admiral, more escorts will increase the risks as well.”

“They are acceptable risks, Dmitri. As long as we keep careful control over events, we will not be stopped.” He paused. “Make arrangements for a reconnaissance flight tomorrow morning. Twice daily until there is a break in the weather.”

He turned away to consider a map of the theater of operations. Yes, the Americans would be kept at arm’s length and Norway would fall soon enough. But that was only the beginning. The strategic position and the boost in power and prestige they would gain from this campaign would position the Soviet Union to regain all the lost ground of the past decade and more besides.

American “experts” had been fond of saying that they were the only superpower now. Soon those experts would know just how wrong they had been.