Afterburn c-7

by Keith Douglass

  So far as Brown was concerned, it didn’t matter what the aircraft looked like. It worked… flew like a dream, if a bit on the sluggish side. In fact, the flattened-dish shape created as much lift as was needed to counteract the parasitic drag of the entire assembly and neither helped nor hindered the plane in flight, even during takeoffs and landings. More important than flight characteristics, though, nothing could move on land, on water, or in the air throughout a volume of three million cubic miles and not be instantly pinpointed by the E-2C’s APS-125 radar. Through a wide-ranging suite of communications equipment, including UHF, HF, and high-speed data links, the Hawkeye could pass coded data to any of the Jefferson’s aircraft, engage in a two-way exchange with the Tomcats, and serve as the primary eyes and ears for Alpha Bravo, the battle group’s commander. So far as Lieutenant Brown was concerned, the entire air wing was structured around the Hawkeyes, like the rim of a wheel connected by spokes to the hub.

  He watched the blip crawling across the tangled web of returns off the mountains. As far as he could make out, it was about thirty miles out of Poti and moving away from the city at 150 knots. He adjusted the gain on the set, willing more information from the pulsing smears of light before him. It was hard to tell; there might be two aircraft there. According to the schedule passed to the CBG from the UN liaison office ashore, there were supposed to be a couple of friendly helos flying out of Poti this morning… but that flight had been scheduled for a couple of hours ago. And neither of these guys was showing IFF.

  Ah, no! There were two aircraft… and the leader’s IFF had just been triggered by the touch of the Hawkeye’s far-seeing radar. Sierra-Delta-Three-Tango… He checked the code group with a list on a clipboard at his side: UN Flight Two-seven, a CAT mission. Flying under radio silence.

  But who the hell was the untagged bogey on Two-seven’s tail? …

  0916 hours (Zulu +3)

  Tomcat 201

  Over the Black Sea

  Batman was holding his Tomcat steady at 25,000 feet, flying south some ninety miles off the Black Sea coast. He’d been aware of Malibu in the backseat talking with Watch Dog, but not really listening in. So far, their flight had been singularly routine. Glancing back over his right shoulder, he saw that his wingman, in Tomcat 218, was in position twenty meters off his wingtip at four o’clock. The helmeted figure in the other aircraft’s pilot’s seat must have seen the movement, for he raised one hand and touched his visor in a bantering salute.

  Lieutenant Tom Mason, “Dixie” to the other aviators in Viper Squadron, was a nugget, a new arrival aboard the Jefferson and CVW-20. The kid seemed to know his stuff. He’d been teamed up with one of the women aviators in the squadron, Lieutenant Kathleen Garrity, as his RIO, and so far they seemed to be working well together. Batman hoped, though, that this deployment wasn’t as rough as the last one; nuggets tended to get excited in real combat, like the furballs the Vipers had participated in over Norway and the Kola. They could do something harebrained, like leave their wingmen, or they could freeze up. Either way, the statistics relating to their surviving that first taste of combat weren’t all that good. Cat Garrity had proven herself over the Kola, though, and ought to provide a good, steadying influence if anything nasty went down this time out.

  He glanced left. The Georgian coast was just visible to the eye, a gray-and-purple smear on the horizon beneath the rising sun. It would be so nice if someone would explain, just once and in terms that people other than State Department policy wonks could understand, what America’s strategic interests in this part of the world could possibly be. Thanksgiving was just three weeks away, but it looked as though Jefferson’s crew was going to spend the holiday season away from homes and families. And for what? To enforce the UN’s no-fly zones in the Black Sea? It was hard to think of that as vital to the national interest.

  He wondered if the incident with the Russian sub might change things.

  Scuttlebutt aboard the Jefferson had it that the Russians fished from the sea last night might be returned home soon… and that the agreement being worked out with Russian officials might even lead to a down-scaling of the hostilities in this region. One rumor floating about VF-95’s ready room had it that the Russians were about to surrender the whole damned Crimea to the UN.

  If that happened, maybe they wouldn’t need a carrier out here anymore.

  The no-fly zones could be enforced by Air Force planes operating out of Sevastopol.

  Not, Batman reminded himself, that things ever worked out that smoothly.

  “Contact, Batman,” Malibu said from the backseat. “We’ve got a bogey in the NFZ, probable helicopter. Watch Dog is vectoring us in.”

  “Roger that.” He opened the tactical frequency with Mason. “Bird Dog Two, this is Bird Dog One. Did you copy that contact? Over.”

  “Ah, roger,” Cat Garrity’s voice came back over the radio. “We copy.”

  “And it’s about time,” Dixie’s voice added. “I was starting to doze off up here.”

  “Well, it’s time for reveille, people,” Batman said. “On my mark, come to zero-eight-five, and ready… break!”

  He brought his stick over to the left and gave the Tomcat some rudder, dropping his left wing as he slid into a hard, tight turn. Dixie and Cat followed, the two Tomcats turning into the sun in air-show perfection.

  “Update coming through from Watch Dog,” Malibu said.

  “Okay. Patching in.”

  “Bird Dog Flight, this is Watch Dog,” the voice of the Hawkeye’s air controller said. “Listen, we have two contacts now. We’ve IDED one as UN Flight Two-seven, out of Poti. He’s being followed by a bogey, designated contact Sierra One. Negative IFF on the bogey. Repeat, bogey is not transmitting IFF.”

  “Roger that, Watch Dog,” Batman said.

  IFF ― Identification Friend or Foe ― was the means by which ships and aircraft could recognize one another across distances or in conditions where visual identification could be a problem. Back in the old glory days, when air-to-air combat was a matter of getting close enough to the other guy to use your machine guns on him, target identification was a matter of recognizing a silhouette. Nowadays, though, when a Tomcat could down a target at 120 miles with an air-to-air Phoenix launch, something better than Mark One eyeballs was necessary. IFF had been part of the electronic arsenal of warfare for years and was similar in most respects to the equipment used in civil aviation to identify aircraft on air traffic control radars. When an aircraft was touched by friendly radar, a transponder aboard automatically replied with a string of coded pulses. Those pulses were picked up by the radar receiver and matched by computer to a list of known codes; friendlies could instantly be identified simply by painting them on radar. The transponder codes, of course, were carefully kept secret, as were the interrogation frequencies and any other data that might be of use to an enemy in combat. Codes were changed frequently; the distribution of those codes among all of the participants in a given mission was an important part of ops planning.

  If the UN flight was transmitting its IFF and Sierra One wasn’t, it was a good bet that Sierra One was a bad guy on the UN chopper’s tail.

  Still, in wartime nothing can be taken for granted. It would be nice if they could get a positive visual ID on Sierra One as well. It was always a good idea to know just who or what you were shooting at, especially in a situation like this one, with tangled politics and the inherent, bureaucratic confusion of a joint-service, international operation like this one.

  Ahead, the purple-gray smear of the horizon was rapidly taking form and substance. Mountains, gleaming white in the morning sunlight, rose from the azure waters of the Black Sea.

  “Mal? Better check in with Dog House. Let ‘em know what we’re at.”

  “I’M on it.” Dog House was the op’s code name for the Jefferson.

  A thought occurred to Batman. He opened the channel to the orbiting Hawkeye. “Watch Dog, this is Bird Dog Leader,” he called. “Is Sierra One trying f
or an intercept on UN Two-seven?”

  “Ah, that’s hard to say, Bird Dog,” the Hawkeye air controller replied.

  “He’s definitely trailing Two-seven and seems to be closing. Looks like he’s about two miles behind right now. It doesn’t look like a typical intercept, though. He may just be shadowing the blue-hats. Over.”

  “Roger that. We’re going to try to set up an eyeball, over.”

  “We copy that. We’ll talk you in.”

  “Thank you, Watch Dog. Bird Dog Two, this is One.”

  “Bird Dog Two,” Dixie replied. “Go ahead, Batman.”

  “Two, I want a visual confirmation on this one. We’ll go in with an extended formation. You’re the eyeball. We’re the shooter.”

  “Aw, shit, Batman. You’re saving all the fun for yourself!”

  Like hell I am. “You want to discuss this, son?” He put a growl behind the words.

  “Uh, negative,” Dixie said. “We’ll spot for you.”

  The deployment was a common one in fighter combat, especially in situations where welded wings ― wingmen sticking close together ― weren’t necessary. One aircraft, the “eyeball,” was sent several miles ahead of the second plane, or “shooter.” The eyeball could use his position to get a positive ID and could also illuminate a target with his radar for the shooter’s radio-homing Sparrows or AMRAAMS. Batman wasn’t hogging the fun, as Dixie had suggested. The fact of the matter was that he didn’t quite trust Dixie yet as shooter; if the kid launched early because he got excited or because he’d misheard a sighting report, a friendly aircraft might be downed. On the other hand, Batman trusted Cat to back up any sighting report that Dixie might call in.

  Dixie’s Tomcat accelerated, afterburners glowing briefly as he arrowed ahead and down, dropping toward the deck.

  Batman checked his time display. Zero-eight-twenty. Actually, it was zero-nine-twenty now, since they’d crossed a time zone on their way to their patrol station, from GMT plus three to GMT plus four. Air ops were always conducted in the local time zone of the carrier, however. Combat was confusing enough without bringing conflicting time zones into it.

  “Anything on the scope yet, Mal?” he asked his RIO.

  “Negative, Batman. We’re getting the track feed from Watch Dog, but the bogey’s not on our scope yet. It’s pretty rugged up ahead.”

  “You got that right.” The mountains were growing larger and sharper second by second. The Caucasus Mountains followed the Black Sea’s eastern shoreline from the Sea of Azov southeast to Gagra, then angled toward the east as the coast bent away toward the south, so the range appeared nearer and higher to the left. The highest of those peaks brushed fifteen thousand feet, a rugged stone wall separating Georgia from its war-torn neighbor to the north.

  “Let’s come right a bit, Batman,” his RIO said. “Bring her to zero-eight-eight.”

  “Rog.”

  “Bird Dog Two, feet dry,” Cat’s voice called over the radio.

  Two-one-eight had just crossed the beach and was over land now.

  Seconds later, Batman’s Tomcat was across the coastline as well, hurtling inland at just below the speed of sound. “And Bird Dog One going feet dry,” Malibu reported.

  They were now over what amounted to Indian territory.

  0921 hours (Zulu +3)

  Operations, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  The Black Sea

  “Commander? There’s been a new development on the Bird Dog patrol, sir.”

  Commander Grant joined Lieutenant Chadwick in front of the large screen that displayed tactical data relayed from the Hawkeye. Chadwick had just taken over the watch as Ops duty officer. Though he was the senior officer present, Grant wasn’t standing watch. He was in OPS this morning as an observer, part of a crash course in how to carry out his new assignment as Deputy CAG. Observer or not, however, he’d be drawn into any situation that might develop this morning, at least until Magruder arrived and took over.

  Coyote Grant had commanded a Tomcat squadron for nearly two years, now, and he’d been an aviator for a lot longer than that. Making split-second decisions and taking the responsibility for them was part and parcel of being an aviator, something you learned to deal with if you wanted to keep flying. But there was something intimidating about Air ops, about its myriad display monitors and banks of consoles and Computers, about the technicians hunched over their screens and speaking in low tones, about the crackle of static and the radio calls coming over the speaker system. This was the heart of the whole operation, and he never felt the pressures of command as keenly as when he was in this place. Sometimes, when he was standing watch here, Coyote had to tell himself that the whole compartment was nothing more than a high-tech video arcade. The technicians, most of them, were kids; the average age of the enlisted men aboard was something under twenty years. It was easy to imagine them all as bright-eyed video game fanatics feeding quarters into their machines.

  But it wasn’t a game. This time it wasn’t even a simulation.

  “What is it, Lieutenant?” he asked Chadwick, his eyes scanning the monitor. A rough map ― drawn all in straight lines and sharp angles ― showed the coast of the Black Sea. Dozens of coded lights marked radar contacts, known and unknown, scattered up and down the coast.

  “Watch Dog picked up an unknown aircraft, probably a low-flying helo,” Chadwick said crisply. He jabbed a stubby finger at the display monitor. “Here… a few miles northwest of Poti. Bird Dog is deploying for intercept and requesting instructions.”

  Grant leaned forward to study the screen. Bird Dog Two was well ahead of Bird Dog One now, arrowing across the coast toward the interior. Inland, one of the IDED blips showed a UN designation. “Flight Two-seven?”

  “Right there,” the lieutenant said, pointing again. “He’s showing IFF.

  The word from the Marine liaison ashore is that it could have an Army gunship flying escort.”

  “Could have? Does it or doesn’t it?”

  “They’re not sure. In any case, we only have the one friendly on the screen. If there are two helos there, they’re so close together we’re only getting one return from them.”

  Coyote nodded. It was a common phenomenon; often one radar blip would resolve into two or more, once you closed with the target a bit. And in rough terrain like that…

  “It’s this guy a couple-three miles to the southwest we’re worried about,” Chadwick continued. “He’s not showing IFF. Watch Dog thinks he could be a local, maybe a helo flying low to avoid the radar. If so…”

  “If so, it’s a violation,” Grant said. “What are their orders?”

  “To check ‘em out and enforce the edict. If that bogey’s a bandit, we take ‘em down.”

  In the language of naval aviation, a bogey was an unidentified target, while a bandit had been positively identified as hostile. And according to UN resolution 1026, aircraft violating the Georgian no-fly zone were to be considered hostiles.

  “Where’s CAG, anyway?” Coyote wanted to know.

  “Getting ready for a meeting with Top Hat, last I heard, sir. You want me to get him down here?”

  Coyote shook his head. “You’ve got the deck, Chad. And you’ve got your orders.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Chadwick licked his lips. “You know, Commander, it gets damned scary down here sometimes.”

  “I know what you mean, Lieutenant. I know exactly what you mean.”

  0923 hours (Zulu +4)

  Tomcat 218 UN

  No-Fly Zone, Republic of Georgia

  “Hot damn!” Mason said with boyish enthusiasm. “Just like Star Wars!”

  Lieutenant Kathleen Garrity, call sign “Cat,” smiled behind her oxygen mask with mingled condescension and amusement. Technically, the man up front outranked her. Tom Mason had made lieutenant six months back, while she’d received her promotion from j.g. to full lieutenant only three months ago, while Jefferson had been undergoing her all-too-brief refit at Norfolk. Still, Dixie was a nugget, a new arriv
al to the air wing who’d transferred in from a reserve air group Stateside. Cat, on the other hand, was a combat veteran who’d seen action in the Kola Peninsula.

  She recognized Mason’s eagerness, though. Nine months back, she’d felt the same way.

  Cat had battled to get where she was now. She’d battled harassment, battled prejudice, battled the sneers and jibes of fellow aviators to get what she wanted ― an assignment as a naval flight officer, as an RIO in the backseat of an F-14 Tomcat, instead of a routine billet as just another tech specialist in some rear-echelon base. She’d battled, she’d gambled… and she’d won.

  And now she was the old hand, the vet, listening with wry amusement to the excited edge in her partner’s voice.

  She and Dixie had a lot in common, she decided. A decade back, naval aviation had largely been a private club reserved for white males with the right connections. A few black and Asian and Hispanic officers made it into carrier air, but not many, and damned few as NFOS. Those minority Naval Flight Officers who did make the grade more often than not ended up flying CODS or other support aircraft. Things had finally started to open up, though, and if she and the other women on the Jefferson were a success story, then so was Tom “Dixie” Mason.

  Because Dixie was a black ― no, an “African-American,” she wryly corrected herself ― his battle had been at least as rough as hers, in a Navy that still sometimes had the air of an exclusive, all-white country club at the highest levels of the command hierarchy. There’d been black admirals and female admirals for some years now, but much of the Navy was still run by the old boys’ network, a network that could be damned vicious sometimes when it came to an aviator’s sex or color… or even the fact that a man’s name ended with a vowel.

  Mason had graduated near the top of his class at Annapolis and again at flight school in Pensacola. For the past four years, though, he’d been struggling against the odds to win acceptance as an aviator. Shunted into a RAG for most of his career, he’d finally managed to land carrier duty… which any flier in the squadron would insist was the one assignment that separated aviators from mere pilots.