Afterburn c-7

by Keith Douglass

  He stepped through the doorway and onto the flight deck; the gathering night was held at bay here by the glare of spotlights, both from Jefferson’s island and from the helicopters overhead. Most deck operations had been suspended half an hour earlier when the word had come down that a Russian sub was in trouble twenty miles to the northwest. SH-3 Sea Kings were shuttling back and forth between the Jefferson and the sub now, bringing in another handful of wet, oil-smeared survivors with each trip.

  It was a painstakingly slow process. The Sea Kings of HS-19 were ASW aircraft, their cargo compartments crammed with so much electronics gear that there was precious little room for passengers above and beyond the usual four-man crew.

  Still, there was a little space aft of the sensor suite, and each aircraft was fitted with a winch and sling to haul people out of the water. They were ferrying survivors back to Jefferson’s flight deck just as quickly as they could harvest them from the oil-slicked waters of the Black Sea.

  With a thunderous roar, a Sea King gentled itself toward the deck just ahead, guided down by a deck handler waving a pair of glowing, yellow Chemlite wands. The SH-3 touched down, bouncing slightly against its hydraulics as a dozen men hurried across the deck, heads bent low to avoid the descent of the slowing rotors. The side door was already open, and a crewman was helping the first of several black-coated men stumble off the aircraft and onto Jefferson’s flight deck. Helmeted American sailors reached him at the same moment, helping him walk clear of the helicopter. Others moved in with wire-frame Stokes stretchers to take off the men unable to walk. It took only a few minutes to off-load the survivors. Then, as deck personnel scattered and the handler raised his lighted wands, rotating them rapidly, the Sea King lifted off once more, making room on the deck for the next incoming flight.

  Thirty or forty Russian submarine crew members were gathered already on the deck in the lee of the island, some lying sprawled on oil-smeared blankets, others, unhurt but clearly in shock, sitting slumped with their backs against steel, heads cradled in their arms. Jefferson’s complement of hospital corpsmen moved among them, making those that appeared to be in shock lie down, handing out blankets, talking reassuringly to others, even though few spoke English. The more seriously injured men had already been moved below to Jefferson’s sick bay.

  Coyote spotted a familiar figure squatting next to one of the survivors and walked over. “Stoney!” he called.

  Tombstone looked up, then stood. “Hey, Coyote. How’s things in the Deputy CAG department?”

  “They were quiet until a few minutes ago. I was just getting ready to go to chow when I heard the incoming helo call.”

  Tombstone grinned. “Me, too. No rest for the wicked, I guess. When’s your watch?”

  “Twenty-hundred hours. What the hell happened?”

  “We’re still sorting it all out. As far as I can tell, though, we were playing tag with a Russki sub, pinging him hard to make him unwelcome.”

  “A concert, huh?”

  “That’s right. He popped a decoy, hoping to confuse things enough to make a getaway. Orlando was in his baffles and thought he was loosing a war shot.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Orlando’s on the surface now, taking survivors aboard. The Russian sub’s gone. It only stayed on the surface for a few minutes before taking the big dive.”

  “How many survivors?” Coyote asked.

  Tombstone shook his head. “Hell, they’re still fishing them out of the drink. A Victor III has a complement of about eighty-five. We’ve got maybe a quarter of them on board so far. But the evening’s still young.”

  Coyote nodded, then dropped to a crouch next to a Russian officer. His face, hands, and uniform tunic were coated slick-black with oil, and the stuff was thickly matted in his hair and beard, contrasting startlingly with the whites of his eyes. He scarcely looked human. “Hey, tovarisch,” Coyote said. “You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Shtoh?” the man asked. His eyes looked tired, and very, very old. “Ya nee paneemayu.”

  “You speak English?”

  “Meenyq zavoot Kapitahn pervogo ranga Aleksei Aleksandrovich Vyatkin,” the man said with quiet, exhausted dignity. “Podvodnaya lodka Kislovodsk.”

  “Did he say “Captain’?” Coyote asked.

  “Captain first rank,” Tombstone replied. “See the shoulder boards? He must’ve been that boat’s skipper.” He squatted next to the man. “Ya plane mayu.”

  “Damn, you speak Russian, Stoney? You never cease to amaze me!”

  Tombstone shook his head. “Not more than a few words, I’m afraid. I just told him I don’t speak it very well. What did you want to ask him, Coyote?”

  Coyote stood up, hands on hips. “Well, this’ll sound crazy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was just wondering if we were at war with them. With Russia, I mean.”

  “I doubt that these guys know any more about it than we do, actually. My guess is that we’re both waiting to hear from the big boys up our respective chains of command.”

  “Anybody been talking to them yet? Their fleet, I mean. About this…

  incident.”

  “I really don’t know,” Tombstone replied. “I think Tarrant’s been on the horn, but I haven’t heard the word yet.”

  “Damn,” Coyote said. “So here we don’t even know if these guys are guests or POWS.”

  “I imagine we’ll find out soon enough,” Tombstone said. He shouted, to make himself heard above the clatter of the next incoming helicopter. “Maybe sooner than we really want to know.”

  And Coyote knew he was right.

  2245 hours (Zulu +3)

  Office of the Commander, Crimean Military District

  Sevastopol, Crimean Military District

  “Come in, Nikolai Sergeivich.”

  Vice-Admiral Dmitriev entered the ornate, luxurious office. The place was richly furnished, paneled in dark red wood, and with an elaborate and expensive parquet wood floor. General Sergei Andreevich Boychenko was not known for his abstemious or purse-pinching habits.

  “You sent for me, Admiral?”

  “I did. I did. Sit and be comfortable.” Boychenko, a lean, hawk-like man with silver hair and a vast array of medals on his uniform coat, was sitting behind the expanse of his desk. An elaborate silver samovar rose from a wheeled cart beside the desk. The commanding officer of the entire Crimean Military District gestured at a glass. “Tea?”

  “Thank you, sir.” As he helped himself to the tea service, Dmitriev wondered why he’d been summoned here. He assumed it had to do with the sudden loss of contact with the Kislovodsk… and the subsequent loss of contact with the American carrier group. He tried to read Boychenko’s manner but failed utterly. The man betrayed no emotion ― if, indeed, he possessed any at all in the furst place. Boychenko had always struck Dmitriev as something of a cold fish.

  With the dark Russian tea steaming in his glass, he took a seat opposite the desk. Boychenko’s corner office overlooked the port of Sevastopol, as his did, but had larger windows and a more expansive view. The harbor was spread out practically at his feet; normally, city and waterfront together made a splendid sight, colored lights agleam on still, black water, but a blackout was in force and there was little to see now. The entire district was on full alert, of course, with the threat from Ukraine hanging over the Crimea. Too, the Crimea was suffering from a general power shortage, and the blackout helped save electricity. Dmitriev thought it a singular mark of disgrace that so great a city as Sevastopol, or the fleet anchored there, could no longer afford to keep its lights on at night.

  A third wall of the wood-paneled office was taken up by a large framed map of southern European Russia and Ukraine. Unit positions were plotted by pins bearing tiny colored flags, red or blue for Russian forces, gray for Ukrainian. The gray flags were heavily clustered along the northern Black Sea coast, from Odessa in the west to the shores of the Sea of Azov in the east. Dmitriev noted, with a cold, sinking s
ensation, the number of Ukrainian flags clustered north of the Crimean isthmus… and how few red flags opposed them.

  “We have had word from the Kislovodsk,” Boychenko said without further preamble.

  “What!” Dmitriev sat up straighter in his chair, nearly spilling his tea. “How? When?” As commander of the Black Sea Fleet, he should have been the one to hear, not Boychenko, his immediate superior.

  “About an hour ago. Ah, do not worry, my friend. You were not cut out of the chain of communications. It was not the Kislovodsk, precisely, that contacted us.”

  “Not the Kislovodsk. What do you mean, Comrade General?”

  “My office received a radio communique, in the open, from an Admiral Tarrant, aboard the American cruiser Shiloh. The Kislovodsk was sunk ― by accident ― at about eighteen hundred hours this evening.”

  “Sunk!” Dmitriev’s eyes narrowed. “An accident, you say?”

  “That is what we were told, and I am inclined to believe the story.

  Captain Vyatkin, apparently, was being urged to leave the area by antisubmarine warfare forces. He chose to fire a noisemaker torpedo in order to deceive the Americans and was torpedoed when they assumed he was firing on their carrier.”

  “Were there… were there survivors?”

  “Surprisingly, yes. Apparently the Americans initiated rescue operations as soon as they realized that a mistake had been made. At last report, sixty-eight officers and men had been pulled from the sea. Fifteen were seriously injured and are receiving treatment in the carrier’s onboard medical facility.”

  “Has this been reported to Novgorod?” The headquarters of Krasilnikov’s neo-Soviet government was currently in Novgorod, about four hundred kilometers east of embattled Moscow.

  Boychenko did not answer immediately. Though something, in his normally impassive expression put Dmitriev on his guard.

  “General?”

  “It has not been reported, Nikolai Sergeivich. Not yet. I need… I need to discuss something with you first.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Just where is it you stand in the current difficulties?”

  Dmitriev thought carefully before answering. “Current difficulties” had become the catchword recently for all that was wrong with Russia… and most especially for the civil war of Red versus Blue.

  “I would like to see them ended.”

  “A diplomatic answer. And a safe one.” Boychenko sighed. “Perhaps it doesn’t really matter. What I am about to do could not seriously be considered to be treason, no matter which side we stand on. In a way, I will be acting to save the Crimea. For Russia.”

  “What is it you intend to do, Comrade General?”

  “Nikolai Sergeivich, the Crimea is doomed. A blind man could see that.

  Novgorod has been sending us supplies and men, but not enough. Not enough by far.”

  “The Ukrainians may not attack us here, sir. Not if they see we are dug in and willing to defend ourselves.”

  “They will attack. Intelligence is convinced of that. And so am I.

  They have no option, really, if they intend to intervene in our war.” Turning in his padded chair, he gestured at the wall map with its pins and colored flags. “They could invade Russia proper, of course, but Would soon find themselves heavily outnumbered, either by our forces, or by the Blues. With luck, they might make it as far as Volgograd. And what would it profit them? Hitler made the same mistake, you may recall.” Volgograd had once carried another name, before the name had fallen out of favor ― Stalingrad.

  “They would be foolish to attack us in any case, with or without Hitler’s example.”

  “Perhaps. They would also be foolish to extend themselves too far to the east, leaving the Crimean bastion here, in their rear.” Standing, Boychenko walked to the map. He pointed to the forces near Odessa and the mouth of the Dnieper River. “You’ve been reading the intelligence reports, I’m sure. Two army groups stand ready to attack the Crimea, Nikolai Sergeivich. They have assembled over one hundred landing craft, and a large number of naval vessels … mostly small combatants, true, but enough to cover an amphibious operation on the Crimean west coast, north of Sevastopol. Intelligence believes they will move within a week.”

  “A spoiling raid, perhaps,” Dmitriev began. His fleet might be in tatters, but he could still put together a hard-hitting strike force, one that might splinter the Ukrainian invasion fleet before it was loaded and ready to move.

  “No. There is another way. A better way.”

  “Sir?”

  Boychenko hesitated. Dmitriev had the feeling that the general was studying him closely, measuring him.

  “I intend,” Boychenko said after a moment, “to surrender the Crimea to the United Nations. And you, Nikolai Sergeivich, must help me.”

  The glass slipped from Dmitriev’s fingers and shattered on the general’s parquet wood floor.

  CHAPTER 6

  Saturday, 31 October

  0801 hours (Zulu +3)

  Flight Deck, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  Commander Edward Everett Wayne completed the aircraft checkout. He was strapped into the cockpit of his F-14 Tomcat, nose number 201, parked in the early morning shadow of Jefferson’s island, and he’d just brought both engines on-line.

  “Clearance to roll, Batman,” the voice of his Radar Intercept Officer, Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Blake, said over his ICS.

  “Here we go, then.” He nudged the throttles, and the F-14 nosed forward, following the vigorous hand and arm movements of the yellow-jerseyed plane director who was guiding him out of his parking place, a holding area behind a red-and-white safety stripe painted on the dark gray deck just aft of Jefferson’s island. Their destination was Cat Three, the inboard of two catapults leading across the carrier’s angled flight deck amidships.

  “The met boys are still calling for CAVU,” Blake, call sign “Malibu,” said. “Perfect weather over the entire AO.”

  “That’s something, anyway,” Batman replied. “At least we’ll be able to see where we’re flying.”

  The Tomcat shuddered as another aircraft, an F/A-18 Hornet of VFA-161, cranked up its engines on Cat Four, ahead and to Batman’s left. Hot air roiling back from the aircraft’s twin engines made the air above the deck dance and shimmer. Deck personnel, their duties identified by the color of their jerseys and helmets, moved clear of the Hornet and crouched low on the deck. The launch director dropped to one knee, then touched thumb to deck.

  Instantly, the Hornet slid forward, accelerating to flight speed in less than two seconds as steam boiled from the cat track in its wake, a seething, straight line of white fog swiftly dissipated by the breeze coming in over Jefferson’s bow. From Batman’s vantage point in his Tomcat, the Hornet appeared to slide off the end of Cat Four and vanish, dropping off the end of the rail as though plunging toward the waves far below.

  Then, as if by magic, the Hornet reappeared, climbing up from behind the edge of the flight deck that had briefly hidden it from view, climbing higher, dwindling in seconds to a speck in the blue sky above the blue horizon.

  Launching off a carrier, Batman reflected, was the only time when the aviator didn’t have full control over his aircraft.

  Most aviators feared the trap at the end of a mission more than the launch ― night traps or recoveries during bad weather were the worst of all ― and Batman shared that common dislike with all other naval pilots. At least during a trap the aviator was in control of his machine, guiding it down the glide slope, adjusting position and speed and angle of attack in response to the LSO’s radioed commentary, and to his own eye, hand, and judgment. But the launch was the one time during the mission when the man in the cockpit was literally a passenger. Just beneath the carrier’s roof, in the catapult room, steam pressure was fed into two enormous bottles, with pistons attached to the shuttle, which rested in its track on the deck overhead. The FDO ― the Flight Deck Officer ― was responsible for calling for just the right amount of st
eam, an amount that varied depending both on the type of aircraft being launched and on its launch weight, which might vary anywhere from 42,000 to 82,000 pounds. Too much steam pressure, and the aircraft could be torn apart; too little, and it would not build up enough speed to become airborne and would trundle off the front of the catapult and into the ocean below. There wasn’t much room for error; typically, cats were set to launch aircraft at about ten knots above the minimum speed necessary to get them airborne.

  Sometimes ― not often, but sometimes ― something just plain went wrong with the equipment, and the aircraft was given a nudge instead of a kick. Batman had seen it happen more than once. On one occasion, pilot and RIO had ejected as their Tomcat fell toward the sea. The RIO had survived, but the aviator had been recovered from the sea by helicopter later, dead, his neck broken.

  Even in peacetime, flying jets off a carrier was one hairy way to earn your paycheck.

  It was always a bit unsettling then to sit and wait in line for your turn at the cat. Batman liked being in control; he was very good at what he did ― which was flying a high-performance Navy fighter ― and he disliked just sitting there, strapped into his ejection seat hoping that somebody else got their figures right and pushed the right sequence of buttons.

  He’d been giving a lot of thought to control, lately, especially as it related to his future. Aboard the Jefferson, Batman had a playboy’s rep; when he’d first checked in with the VF-95 Vipers, several years earlier, he’d been something of a hot dog, young, brash, and just a bit too eager to bend or break the regs when it suited him, especially when he was flying.

  No more. He’d met a girl two months ago, a wonderful girl… and he was seriously considering giving up the Navy and settling down.