Afterburn c-7

by Keith Douglass

  “On your six and low. Coming around to port. Yeah, buddy. Looks like you took a near one. No blast damage, but your belly and left wing got peppered by shrapnel. So did your left stabilizer. Looks to me like it missed you, but the proximity fuse triggered the thing right under your wing.”

  Looking left, he could see Tomcat 210 coming up from behind, just off his wingtip.

  “Can you see Mickey?”

  “We see him,” Red replied. “Head’s slumped forward a bit. Can’t tell from here how bad he’s hit.”

  “Is his oxygen mask on?” Dixie was worried about the pressure loss in the cockpit.

  “It’s on,” Red told him.

  “How’s she handling, Dix?” Badger added.

  “Okay, I think.” Cautiously, he played with his stick, testing the feedback. “I get a bit of flutter when I try giving it some left maneuver flap.”

  “Okay,” Badger said. “Let’s not try anything fancy. We’ll escort you back, nice and easy. You can punch out when you’re close to the Jeff.”

  “Not if Mickey’s still out of it,” Dixie said, determination giving his voice a hard edge.

  “Right. Shit, I wasn’t thinking. Okay, Dix. Let’s come to zero-five-five, and maintain four hundred knots.”

  “Copy, Badge. Zero-five-five at four-zero-zero.”

  “Let’s take ‘er home.”

  1014 hours (Zulu +3)

  The White Palace, Yalta

  Tombstone was alighting from the CH-53 helicopter when he heard the thunder of approaching aircraft. At first, he thought it might be BARCAP Three, which Coyote had told him was coming, but then he realized that the sound seemed to be coming from the Crimean Mountains from north of Yalta.

  The sound might be an echo. Sound did strange things between sea and Mountainside. But too many strange things were happening this afternoon for him to be willing to take chances. He waved at the helicopter’s crew, gesturing for them to get out of their aircraft and take cover. After a moment’s hesitation, they scrambled out, and together the men started running toward the White Palace.

  The jets appeared with almost magical abruptness, howling in from the mountains, passing above the White Palace complex at an altitude of less than two hundred feet. The planes were so low that Tombstone could look up and see individual pilots, could see the sun-glint of canopies and dark visors, could see the numerals painted on their noses and the prominent red stars on stabilizers and wings.

  Mig-29 Fulcrums. Some of the best fighter planes in Russia’s inventory.

  Dropping down a shallow embankment that might offer some cover if the Migs started dropping nasty stuff, Tombstone stared after the jets. They were breaking formation now, far out over the sea. He glanced at his watch. BARCAP Three wouldn’t be in their patrol position yet. He didn’t think the Migs were headed for the carrier. Where…

  Yes. Two of them were swinging around in a full one-eighty, streaking back toward the White Palace. They came in low, wingtips almost touching; he saw the flicker of their rotary cannon, tucked away at the root of their port-side wings, before he heard the shrill whine of high-speed gunfire above the thunder of their strafing run.

  An explosion sounded an instant later, a dull boom echoing from the improvised landing pad on the east side of the palace. The incoming jets lifted slightly, white vapor blossoming off their wings in the moist air as they increased their angles of attack… and then they were howling overhead, rising swiftly as they climbed the face of the mountains inland. A missile streaked into the sky after them, trailing smoke ― a Grail or other shoulder-launched antiair missile released by one of the soldiers on the ground ― but it had been fired too late… or possibly without a firm heat source lock, and it twisted away after a few seconds of flight.

  Rising from his hiding place, Tombstone jogged back toward the helicopter. As he’d feared, the Sea Stallion had been the target of that strafing run. It rested at a sharp angle now, with flames and black smoke licking from its port-side fuel tank sponson. If there’d been any doubt at all that those Migs were hostiles, it was gone now.

  There was still a lot of confusion on the palace grounds, with civilians and reporters milling about with aimless and seemingly random blunderings, and Russian soldiers standing in almost comic attitudes of readiness, obviously with no idea what was happening or what they were supposed to do. First the attack on Boychenko, and now this. The entire area was a scene of utter confusion.

  Pushing through the crowds, Tombstone made his way toward the back of the White Palace. He could see Boychenko standing there at the top of the broad stone steps, surrounded by aides and guards, hands at his sides, looking up with an almost boyish expression of slack-jawed wonder as six Migs roared overhead. Tombstone walked closer and several of the guards swung their weapons to aim at him.

  Boychenko gestured sharply and snapped something in Russian. The guns were lowered.

  “General!” Tombstone called. “Were those planes yours?”

  The general looked at him and blinked. “Nyet… no,” he said. “Not mine. Is navy.”

  “You didn’t order that overflight by those Migs?”

  “No. Did not… order.” His face creased with puzzlement. “They attack!”

  “General, hostile aircraft have just attacked one of the bridges over the Bosporus and blown it up. Did you order that attack?”

  Boychenko blinked helplessly at him a moment, and Tombstone wondered how much English the man could really understand. Then the general shook his head, a jerky side-to-side motion. Probably, Tombstone thought, he understood English better than he could speak it. “Did not order that! No!”

  Boychenko gestured swiftly to Natalie Kardesh and spoke rapidly to her in Russian. She turned to Tombstone. “The general wants me to ask you… did you just say that his aircraft attacked the bridges over the Bosporus?”

  “Tell him yes. We don’t know yet if the aircraft were Russian or Ukrainian.” He jerked a thumb skyward. “That overflight, though, was by aircraft with red stars. Russians. The general says they were navy?”

  “Mig-29s with fleet,” Boychenko said, nodding. He didn’t look happy.

  “Admiral Dmitriev’s command.”

  “Ask him,” he told Natalie, “if it’s possible that the Russian navy could have been behind that attempt on his life? Or Dmitriev?”

  “Is possible,” Boychenko said slowly, following the conversation.

  One of Boychenko’s aides, a major named Fedorev, nodded agreement. “I’m afraid that with Admiral Dmitriev, almost anything is possible. He is… ambitious.”

  Tombstone was beginning to fit the larger parts of the puzzle together, but he was still missing a lot of the pieces. This had the earmarks of an attempted coup. If this Admiral Dmitriev was trying to take over the Crimean Military District, it might make sense to combine an assassination attempt with an attack.

  But why the Bosporus bridge? That made no sense at all… unless they wanted the Jefferson and her consorts trapped in the Black Sea, and somehow that made even less sense than the attack itself.

  He cocked his head. “Tell me. Is this Admiral Dmitriev… is his full name Nikolai Sergeivich?”

  Fedorev nodded. “Yes, Captain. How did you know?”

  “I flew with a Nikolai Sergeivich once. In joint operations in the Indian Ocean. I was wondering if it was the same man.” The Nikolai Dmitriev he’d known had been a hard, resourceful, and skillful tactician. If he were now the enemy… Tombstone didn’t like that thought at all.

  “The helicopter’s totaled,” Tombstone said. “We’re not getting back to the carrier that way.”

  Fedorev wrinkled his brow. “”Totaled?’”

  “Wrecked. Finished. We have several hundred UN and American military personnel here, plus a bunch of civilian reporters from several countries. What are we going to do about them?”

  Natalie consulted briefly with Boychenko, then nodded at Tombstone.

  “The general says that when they know jus
t what Dmitriev is up to, we will be informed. Until then, at least, and obviously, we are all the general’s guests. We can stay here at the palace, or return to Yalta.”

  “Somehow,” he said, “I don’t think that’s going to be good enough. If it was Dmitriev who tried to knock the general off here, he must know by now that he didn’t succeed.”

  That, in fact, was the best explanation Tombstone could think of for the attack on the helicopter. Abdulhalik had said the would-be assassins were Tatars; had they killed Boychenko, the murder could have been blamed on Tatar nationalists. There would have been watchers, however, who would have reported by now that Boychenko was still alive. The air strike had probably been set as a backup plan, a way of keeping the general from escaping Yalta for the relative security of the Thomas Jefferson.

  But that meant that hostiles were probably already on their way to finish the job the Tatars had botched.

  “Tell the general,” Tombstone said, “that we don’t have much time. I’m going to round up the Americans and UN people. Tell him to get his army personnel assembled. I figure we have an hour, maybe less, before all hell breaks loose.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sir,” the aide, Fedorev, said, as Natalie spoke to the general. His use of the honorific was immediate and natural, unthinking. “Is there anything special you need?”

  “Access to a radio,” Tombstone replied. “I’d better talk this over with the Jefferson.”

  He was beginning to formulate an idea, but he couldn’t develop it further until he knew what was happening at sea.

  One thing he did know: The Jefferson battle group and the men and women aboard were in a war zone once again, and God help anyone who tried to get in their way!

  CHAPTER 20

  Thursday, 5 November

  1041 hours (Zulu +3)

  Tomcat 218

  The Black Sea

  Dixie frowned. “Hey, Badge? I got another problem here.”

  “What is it, man?”

  “My wings won’t swing forward. Can’t tell whether it’s the computer or the wing hardware, but they won’t budge.”

  The F-14 Tomcat’s variable geometry wings were designed to fold back at higher speeds to increase maneuverability and decrease drag, and swing forward at low speeds to provide additional lift for takeoffs and landings. Normally, the aircraft’s central air data computer, or CADC, began swinging the wings forward when the plane’s speed dropped below three hundred knots. They were at 275 knots now as they circled in the Marshall stack, but Dixie’s wings stubbornly remained folded in the full-back position.

  “Try the override.”

  “I did. No go.”

  “Shit. How do you feel about a negative-turkey landing?”

  Dixie chuckled nervously. “I think I can handle that.”

  Some Tomcat pilots overrode their computers during the final approach to the carrier, subscribing to the popular and loudly voiced belief that a Tomcat with its wings extended forward looked like a big, ugly, long-necked bird ― ”turkey mode,” as they called it. A Tomcat could land with its wings folded back but had to maintain a landing speed of 145 knots on the approach and touchdown instead of the 115 knots of a wings-out landing.

  “Two-one-eight” called over his headset. “Deck clear. Charlie now.”

  That was the signal for him to break from the Marshall stack formation and start his approach for the trap. They’d kept him in the racetrack-shaped loiter course for nearly twenty minutes while they brought other aircraft down; now it was just him, Badger, and Batman still up, with the other two Tomcats staying aloft both to provide security for the ship and to help talk him down if necessary.

  God, he wanted to be down. His Tomcat had begun shuddering ominously during the long flight back, the vibration growing worse and worse as he descended to five thousand feet and becoming especially pronounced when he worked the flight controls, opening the flaps or spoilers. Normally, his CADC handled all such minor flight adjustments from moment to moment, as well as controlling his wing geometry, but he was having to make all corrections by hand now. According to his instrument readouts, his CADC was still operational, but its commands weren’t reaching his wings… and each manual input seemed to increase the vibration from his left control surfaces. Sweat was pooling inside his oxygen mask now; he could taste it, feel its slickness between skin and rubber. His hands were sweating, too, inside his gloves, and he resisted the temptation to pull them off and wipe his palms on his flight suit.

  His entire career in the Navy, it seemed, had focused his life to this moment when everything was riding on his skill and training. He’d always told himself that because he was black he had to be better than anyone else he was flying with, sharper, more skillful, more aggressive. The problem was that a lot of his bravado had been empty. Oh, sure, he’d known he was good, but in a superficial way that had been challenged, and seriously shaken, by the helicopter incident.

  This was where everything he’d learned was laid out for all to see ― bringing a crippled aircraft down onto a carrier deck at sea.

  Turning to port, he came in astern of the carrier, following her wake, cutting his speed further now to 230 knots. “Two-one-eight, call the ball,” he heard over the radio. That was the voice of the Landing Signals Officer, the LSO, standing on his platform on the carrier’s port side aft, just left of the spot where Dixie wanted to set his damaged bird down. He could see the “meatball” now, the green bull’s-eye of the Fresnell landing system tower that revealed, by appearing to move above or below a pair of horizontal dashes, whether he was staying in the correct glide path or not. To the right, aft of the carrier’s island, the laser landing system beacon showed a dazzling green, giving him his choice of input. So far he was right on the money.

  “Tomcat two-one-eight, ball,” he called back, identifying his aircraft and alerting the LSO that he did have the ball in sight. “Point five.” That last told them he had only five hundred pounds of fuel aboard. Prior to leaving the Marshall stack, he’d jettisoned much of his remaining fuel, as well as the missiles slung from his belly and wings. A lighter aircraft was easier to wrestle down, and if he did slam into the deck too hard, it would be easier on the Jefferson’s flight deck if he wasn’t packing almost a full warload and tanks filled with JP-5.

  The carrier was riding calm seas half a mile ahead, looking terribly tiny and isolated now against a very great deal of blue.

  “Roger ball,” the LSO replied. “Just bring it in nice and easy, Dixie.

  Everybody’s turned out for the show down here, so let’s show them what a real hotshot aviator can do, huh?”

  LSOS, Dixie had learned soon after becoming an aviator, possessed an uncanny knack for instant psychoanalysis and treatment. The best ones didn’t say very much at all, but what they did say was exactly right to correct a problem, or calm shattered nerves, or snap a pilot’s mind back instantly to where it belonged. The duty LSO had just reminded Dixie that he had a bunch of people down there pulling for him… something he’d lost touch with over the past few days.

  It was a good feeling. A warm feeling.

  “What’s the met rep?” he asked.

  “Sea state calm, wind easterly at five knots,” the LSO replied.

  “Carrier’s at fifteen knots. Easy trap.”

  “Right. Keep your heads down, everybody.”

  “Deck going down. Power down… just a hair.”

  He eased back on the throttle and gave it a bit more flaps. Speed one-sixty… he was coming in too fast! He dropped the throttle another notch.

  “Don’t over-corrects Power steady.”

  The deck was rushing up at him now, much faster than he’d ever remembered in making an approach before. Then the carrier’s roundoff vanished beneath the Tomcat’s nose and he saw his own shadow flashing along the dark steel deck ahead of him.

  His wheels struck the deck, a savage clang and jolt. His hand slammed the throttle full forward and his engines thundered with
renewed life and power, ready to take him off the deck again in a touch-and-go bolter if his tail hook failed to connect.

  But at the same moment as his engines howled to full power, he felt his tail hook snag one of the cables stretched taut across the deck, and his body surged forward hard against his harness. He cut his power back to a grumbling idle as a deck director and a gang of Green Shirts ran toward his aircraft. To the side, he saw other people running toward his aircraft, including the brightly clad fire detail and a number of rescue personnel and duty hospital corpsmen. The yellow-painted mobile crane stood ready close by, but there were so many people on the deck that it would have been difficult for it to get through. That sort of display was against regs, but nobody seemed to care this morning.

  Easing back, he spit out the wire, then followed the deck director toward a waiting slot aft of the island. He cracked his canopy as a plane crew chief popped his access steps. He reached up, yanked off his mask and helmet, and gulped down cool, delicious air. It had never tasted so good.

  “Nicely done, sir,” the plane chief said as he leaned in and safed the ejection seats. “Welcome home!”

  “Give me a hand with Mickey,” he said.

  “That’s okay, sir,” a hospital corpsman said, scrambling up alongside the chief. “We’ve got him. You just take care of yourself. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” His knees felt weak, his legs shaky. Helping hands unfastened his harness and helped him out of the cockpit.

  “Well done,” someone called as he set foot on the deck. Someone else clapped him on the shoulder. “Good job, Dixie, bringing old Mickey Moss back!”

  “How is he?”

  “Can’t tell yet, sir,” a corpsman said. “He’s alive. Can’t find any bleeding. Side of his helmet’s dinged. I think a piece of shrapnel must have whacked him.” Several rescue people worked together to ease a board down behind Mickey’s back and strap him to it. With his head and neck immobilized, they began lifting him out of the cockpit and into a Stokes stretcher.