I was right about him. Based on his reputation, I’d lay odds Captain Jouett’s the only man more pissed off over this ship than I am.
“Any problem with that?” Tombstone continued.
“No, Admiral. Not now.” Jouett’s voice was grim.
Tombstone glanced around the room, and caught a couple of sets of eyes glancing furtively his way. “In my cabin,” he said abruptly.
Once inside the admiral’s cabin, which still felt like alien territory to him, he turned to the ship’s CO. “You had a problem with my predecessor, I take it?”
Jouett nodded. “With all due respect, Admiral-“
Tombstone cut off the preliminary and pro-forma disclaimers with a sharp gesture of his hand. “I don’t have time for this now, Captain. You know what I’m up against. I have one question for youwhat happens to this ship after I leave?”
“If you take your staff with you, conditions will improve one hundred percent.”
He stood a little taller, looking Tombstone straight in the eye. “I’m a surface sailor, Admiral. I know how to run a ship.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“I can do my job without an aviator trying to grow surface-warfare wings,” the captain replied bluntly. “Admiral, I don’t try to fly your aircraftno aviator ought to be telling me how to run my ship.”
Tombstone nodded sharply. “Agreed. Captain, you’ve got between now and the time you pull into port at Gaeta to get this ship into proper shape. I’ll be back to take a look at her. You’ve got my support to do whatever is necessary to transform this hulk into my flagship. You run into any problems, you get on the horn to me. Other than that, I’ll leave you alone. That satisfactory?”
The captain smiled. “Oh, I think that will work out quite well,” he said quietly. “Admiral, I’d be honored to have you take a look at this ship in about four weeks. She might not be back up to spec by then, but I think I can show you what a warship ought to look like by then.”
“Then get me the hell out of here. And while you’re at it, manifest that young aviator my predecessor was trying to string up,” Tombstone said.
He pointed at the radio speaker. “You heard Admiral Waynewe’ve got a war to fight. And if you want to be part of it, you’ve got to get this ship back in shape to fight.”
Forty minutes later, a second CH-46 lifted off La Salle, with another one standing by to rotate and radiate in short order. Tombstone’s Sixth Fleet staff was spread out between the two helos along withwell, what the hell was Skeeter?
A little lost lamb?
Tombstone shook his head, almost smiling at how the young Naval aviator would have reacted to that description. Skeeter Harmon had neither the demeanor nor the appearance to make a very good little lost lamb. Maybe a black sheepno, that wouldn’t do it either.
He looked across the fuselage at the aviator, noting that the man was already dozing in the web seat running fore and aft in the helicopter. If the young man was as good as he thought he was, then Tombstone was doing him a favor by getting him away from the black-shoe command early and onto where he belongedon board an aircraft carrier.
“You current?” Tombstone shouted, getting Skeeter’s attention.
“Yes, Admiral. I need a couple of night traps, but that’s about it.”
“So do I.”
Tombstone gazed levelly at the young man. Best to get him back in the aircraft as soon as possible, to wipe out the taste of failure that must surely linger in his mouth over the successful attack on La Salle.
Not that it had been his fault. But Tombstone knew that if he had been in the young man’s shoes, there was nothing in the world that could have convinced him that he couldn’t have prevented the attack. Nothing at all.
And the only way to well and truly get over it was to strike back. If there were any way at all to do it, Tombstone would give him the chance to do just that.
1630 Local
Flight Deck
USS Jefferson
It wasn’t the gentle thump of the helicopter setting down on the flight deck that finally woke him up, but the change in vibration that radiated up through his seat as the pilot disengaged the rotor and the helicopter began to spool down. Skeeter flinched, emerging from the endlessly repetitive daydream/nightmare of the La Salle’s engagement. His eyes jerked openhe stared across the aisle into the somber face of Admiral Tombstone Magruder.
“We’re here,” Skeeter said unnecessarily, for lack of anything better to say. He disengaged his seat harness, stood, and stretched. The admiral, he noticed, was moving with a laconic efficiency, snugging his cranial down and repositioning his goggles over his eyes. Skeeter, halfway through taking them off, decided to follow the older man’s example.
“You probably haven’t spent much time on the flight deck,” Tombstone said. “Fly out, trap, get shot back off during CQ. That about it?”
“One hot-swap crew change,” Skeeter admitted. “They kept me in the handler’s office until I could get a hop back out.”
Tombstone nodded. “You heard it in the RAG, but let me tell you again. The flight deck of an aircraft carrier is the most dangerous place on earth. Your head stays on a swivel, you hear? Because you can’thear, that is.”
He moved toward the forward hatch in the fuselage and paused at the rim.
Skeeter moved tentatively up to stand beside him.
“You see that Tomcat turning?” Tombstone asked. “Never turn your back on an aircraft that’s turningnever. Son of a bitch will suck you down and spit you out as puree faster than you can think. And listen to the yellow-shirts.”
He saw the skeptical look in Skeeter’s eyes. “They’re enlisted men, but they know what they’re doing. And they’ve logged more hours on this deck than you’ve logged in a chow line. So if one of them screams at you to get the hell out of the way, you do it. Ask questions later, but don’t even stop to think about disobeying.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
Skeeter tried to look appreciative over the brief refresher training. Hell, it was somethinggetting chewed out by an admiral before he’d even had a chance to screw up. He ought to appreciate it, the fact that the old guy cared. Still, it wasn’t like he was the admiral’s age. Youth and reflexes still had the advantage over age and experience. Besides, if they let the young enlisted guys hang out around the flight deck, then there was no way an officer was going to get in trouble. Not a chance.
Tombstone disembarked from the aircraft first. As soon as Skeeter took another step toward the hatch, he felt a hand grab the back of his collar. “Not so fast, youngster.”
He looked up into the face of a lieutenant commander.
“Senior officer’s always last on, first off.” A look of amusement crossed the officer’s face. “Seeing as you’re a lieutenant j.g., I’d bet that puts you back toward the ass end of the line somewheres.”
He pointed back toward the rear of the fuselage. “Don’t start pissing us off before you’ve even had a chance to check on board.”
“But the admiral-“
“You fly with us, not the admiral. Now get your happy ass back to the end of the line.”
Skeeter shot the older man a surly look, then did as he was told. All this seniority crapwell, when the fighting started, he’d show them what counted.
But you didn’t before. You frozehell, if you’d been thinking, you could’ve been a hero. A little faster reaction to what the operations specialist told you, maybe a request for air supportnone of this had to happen. And it’s all your fault.
Another part of his mind wailed in anguish. It was a goddamned nuclear weapon. What the hell was I supposed to do? I barely knew how to handle the buttons on the console, let alone
Results count. That’s all that matters. Even before he’d reported to his first carrier, before he’d even been assigned to a stateroom, he’d fucked up big time. And from the looks of the commander who’d just shooed him away from the hatch, nobody was going to forg
et it anytime soon.
Skeeter took his place at the end of the line and retraced his steps toward the front of the fuselage. It moved along quickly, and he was delayed maybe two minutes from disembarking, but that wasn’t what mattered.
It was the point of the thing.
Finally stepping down from the aircraft, he followed the line of officers tracking across the flight deck toward the island hatch. Lost in his own surly thoughts, he neglected to do the one thing that Tombstone had just cautioned him aboutkeep up his scan.
Halfway across the flight deck, the officer in front of him turned abruptly, ran back toward him, and tackled him around the waist, driving him to the deck. His cranial banged painfully against the tarmac, and Skeeter reacted instinctively. During his days at the University of Tennessee, he’d been a star member of the wrestling team. So what if he was a couple of years out of practicethe old skills so long ago memorized during his youth came back quickly. Two seconds later, he had the older officer virtually bound and gagged on the flight deck. He put a little pressure on the back of the other man’s cranial, driving it down across the gritty tarmac.
Suddenly, the two men were surrounded by yellow-shirts. Two of them grabbed Skeeter by the arms and jerked him up off the officer, while a third helped Skeeter’s assailant up off the deck. They lifted Skeeter’s feet clear of the tarmac and carried him toward the edge of the flight deck.
Fuckers are gonna throw me over the side. Shit, what is this?
Skeeter flailed violently, trying to break the grip on his arms, and succeeded only in earning himself an excruciatingly painful armlock. His original assailant, he noted, was following peaceably though quickly.
As they neared the edge of the flight deck, Skeeter saw a short flight of metal steps leading down to a catwalk that ran directly below the level of the flight deck. He heard an increasing roar, and a stiff wind fluttered the legs of his pants. He looked over to his leftthe helo that had brought them in was already rotating, easing up and over the side of the deck.
Skeeter quit fighting as the two men shoved him toward the steps. He clattered down them, rage boiling in his veins now that he was finally free. He turned at the bottom of the platform to face them as they came down.
“You dumb shit! Don’t you listen to the Air Boss?”
Skeeter’s hand shot out and he nailed the yellow-shirt on the left side of the man’s face. The blow drove him back and left him sprawled against the metal steps he had just descended. The three other yellow-shirts immediately jumped him and drove him down to the deck, reinstalling the armlock as a permanent part of his anatomy. He might have been a hell of a wrestler, but it was a one-on-one sportno way he could take all three of them, not unless he could get free.
With his face pinned down to the metal grating, Skeeter saw a pair of brown shoes appear in front of his face. A swath of khaki cloth followed as an officer knelt next to him.
“Before I have them throw you overboard, you might want to consider listening to me for a minute,” a voice said dangerously. “My money is on making you fish food right now, but the chief here thinks there might have been a misunderstanding.”
Skeeter saw an arm gesture over in the direction of one of the yellow-shirts.
“Do you have any idea of what’s going on?”
A slow, cold dread started to seep into Skeeter’s gut. Within ten minutes of embarking on his first real aircraft carrier, he’d managed to get rousted just as though he were still back on the streets of Knoxville, Tennessee. This was the Navy, he reminded himself. It wasn’t a white town that thought that all black boys were up to something they shouldn’t have been, probably a couple of felonies.
Skeeter tried to shake his head, found his cranial still pinned to the deck. “No, sir.” It seemed the only possible answer.
“There’s a Hornet inbound that’s declared an in-flight emergency,” the voice continued coldly. “If you’d been paying attention, you would have seen the yellow-shirts motioning at you to clear the flight line in the fastest manner possible. They were pointing out this ladder to you, my friend. That Hornet’s only two miles out, and if you’d kept going the way you were walking, you’d end up in the engine. And,” the officer added almost as an afterthought, “you’d be dead. Real dead.”
The screaming shriek of a Hornet built to almost unendurable volume, and the entire ship rang as though it had just run ashore. The catwalk beneath Skeeter vibrated, and for one panicky moment he thought it might toss him off and over the side. He heard the Hornet’s roar crescendo, and knew that the pilot was slamming the throttles forward to full military power in case of a bolter. The sound went on and onfor hours, it seemedand then finally began spooling down. A harsh klaxon sounded.
“Let him up,” the officer said. “Good trap, even if it was the four wire.”
There was one sharp, upward jerk on Skeeter’s trapped arm; then the pressure eased off slowly. A hand stayed on his forearm as though to maintain control in case he continued to act like an idiot.
Skeeter stood slowly and tried to regain some measure of dignity. The four yellow-shirts and one officer were staring at him with grim condemnation. “I didn’t know.” Skeeter tried to make the words sound believable.
The lieutenant nodded. “That was obvious. In the future, keep your head out of your ass.”
The officer turned to the yellow-shirt chief petty officer and said, “Find out where the hell this nugget is supposed to be, and take him there.”
He turned back to Skeeter. “And as soon as you check in, you go directly to your Executive Officer and explain to him or her exactly what just happened out here. If they’ve got any questions, they can call me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Skeeter drew in a deep, shaky breath. God, but he’d screwed the pooch on this one. “And who shall I tell the XO to contact, sir?”
He raised his chin and stared directly into the other officer’s eyes, meeting their glare.
“Lieutenant Commander Bird Dog Robinson,” the other officer said shortly. “I’ll be assigned to the admiral’s staff.”
“Yes, sir.”
Skeeter turned as the chief tugged on his flight suit.
Two other yellow-shirts fell in on either side of him and behind him.
“Aren’t you forgetting something, sir?” the chief asked. He pointed back at the senior officer. “It’s traditional on this shipwhen somebody saves your life, a thank-you is in order.”
Skeeter turned back to the other officer. “Thank you, sir.”
The other officer shook his head. “Just stay the fuck out of my way, asshole. I’m not getting killed by some nugget while I’m technically still on shore duty at the War College.”
1640 Local
TFCC USS
Jefferson
“How bad is it, Stoney?”
Batman’s face was almost as grave as that of his old lead. “Can she make it to Gaeta?”
Tombstone nodded. “She’s got power and she’s making way. She’s got a couple of tugs alongside as well. If the weather will hold up, I don’t see any problems. The electronics are the main problem, although the EMP damaged some of her engineering-control surfaces as well. Captain Jouett’s worried about the shaft toosays he’s got a bad shaft bearing he thinks may go out soon. Latterly wouldn’t let him keep the ship in port long enough to get it looked at.”
He let loose a deep, gut-wrenching sigh.
“But shipmate, the problems are worse than that.”
Batman looked bitter. “Tell me about itI’ve been living with that asshole for months now.”
Darkness crossed Tombstone’s face. “Why didn’t you say something?”
Batman snorted. “Would you have, in my shoes? Whine to your old lead about having an asshole for a boss? I don’t think so, Stoney. We didn’t grow up that way.”
“But that shipJesus, Batman, you should see it.”
“Captain Jouett is a good man,” Batman answered. “You give
him a chance, he’ll give you a ship that can fight.”
“It’s not going to be up to him. Don’t you see, there’s too much damage to her. She hasn’t got a single combat system left intact. The only reason she has any radar at all is they had a spare Furuno stashed below the waterline. Her communications, her data link, her self-defense measureseverything gone.”
Tombstone’s voice was bitter. “Why didn’t we expect this, Batman? We’ve known for years how much damage an EMP blast can dowhy weren’t we prepared?”
“Well, the newer ships are, of course. All the Aegis platforms incorporate heavy EMP shielding.”
“That’s not good enough!”
Batman fell silent in the face of his old lead’s rage. It was clear that the specter of the shattered, silent ship had cut deeply into Stoney, and nothing Batman could say or do would change that. As he always had, Stoney would have to puzzle things out for himself. He would, eventually.
But in the meantime, he was sure as hell going to be hard to live with.
“Why don’t we take a look at the things we can do something about?” Batman said to break the uneasy strain in the room. “You’ve brought your staffI’ve got my people finding them spaces right now.”
Tombstone shook his head slowly. “You’re right, old friend.”
He gestured toward TFCC. “Want to give me a rundown?”
“Now that you mention it.” An odd smile quirked Batman’s face. “I just happen to have a situational brief ready to go.”
“Give it to me in a nutshellhow bad is it?”
Batman drew out a laser pointer and used it to highlight specific contacts on the large-screen display. “Air traffic has resumed between Turkey and Ukraine, though thus far it’s all been inbound from Ukraine to Turkey. The flight plans filed indicate they’re inbound to provide reliefgiven their expertise after Chernobyl, that makes sense to me.”
“What about that Falcon our Tomcats took a shot at? Is Turkey ready to resume regular freedom-of-navigation operations?”
Batman shook his head. “Lab Rat’s not entirely certain. He’s got some indications that they’re moving to a higher state of readinessone that we would have expected to see before the shot, not after. But there’s nothing definitive. You know how intel isif it’s good gouge, it’s too sensitive to tell us.”
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