Tombstone and several other naval personnel were huddled inside the partly wrecked stone building just below the crest of the ridge overlooking Arsincevo, not far from the spot where Tombstone had first seen the storage facility. A dead Russian lay face-up in the mud a few feet away. He was naval infantry, wearing a one-piece light-camo jumpsuit, his black beret lying by his side. His eyes, wide open and very, very blue, stared sightlessly at the sky.
Stoney had appropriated the man’s AKM assault rifle and a canvas pouch with five spare magazines, fully loaded, but his mind was full of images of the Russian he and Tomboy had killed in Kola. There’d been nothing romantic about that encounter, either, and he was not eager to get into a firefight.
Pamela and several members of her ACN crew were sitting on the ground nearby. No one had been hurt, and all were accounted for, but they seemed a bit lost now that they didn’t have their van of high-tech electronics.
He walked over and slumped down at Pamela’s side. “Sorry you came?”
“Are you looking for some kind of victory?” she asked him. “All right.
I’m sorry I came. I’m sorry I ever heard of this godforsaken place. Satisfied?”
“I wasn’t looking for satisfaction,” he told her.
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. I know I wish you’d flown out on that helo.” He hesitated, wondering if he should say it. “I still love you, you know.”
She didn’t answer, and Tombstone knew that their relationship was truly over.
Gunfire continued to bark and crackle from the east side of the ridge, Boychenko’s Spetsnaz holding off yet another charge by the naval infantry. One charge, a few minutes ago, had come close to sweeping over the defenders’ position; that one Russian marine had actually made it all the way to the American position, shouting the naval infantry’s battle cry “polundra” ― very roughly translated as “Look out below!” ― before a U.S. Marine had shot him.
It was the only time all morning that any of the Americans had actually gotten into the battle. Tombstone had ordered everyone in the group, including the Marines and the SEALS, to stay out of the fighting if they possibly could. Their small numbers could add nothing to the larger battle raging up and down the ridge around them; their participation would only guarantee that some of them would be killed.
And at the moment, Tombstone could see nothing in this desolate and war-torn country worth dying for.
He was giving a lot of thought to alternatives, just now. The SEAL, Doc, Was in a corner on the other side of the wrecked house, still trying to raise someone on the satellite communications gear, but so far he’d only been able to pick up coded transmissions. He’d hoped to reach Jefferson directly, but either the signal was being jammed, or human error had put the carrier on a different channel from the one he was trying to reach. Those channels that they were able to listen in on either weren’t picking up their transmissions, or else those transmissions were being ignored in the general confusion of the moment.
Nothing, he reminded himself, goes as planned in war.
The problem was, there were several tanks coming up the east side of the ridge, four of the odd-looking PT-76 amphibious tanks designed to swim rivers. Those tanks, along with a number of armored personnel carriers, were still positioned squarely between Boychenko’s Spetsnaz and the American beachhead. The Spets forces had not expected heavy fighting; the idea had been for them to serve as a blocking force on that ridgeline and to provide perimeter defense as the Americans pulled out, not fight a major ground action with elite forces. Boychenko seemed less than eager to press the attack.
But if he didn’t, Tombstone and Pamela and Natalie and the rest were likely to be guests in this country for quite a long time to come.
“Hey, Captain!” Doc called suddenly.
“You get ‘em?”
“Still can’t raise Ops, but I think we’re tapped into the aircraft tactical channel. I can hear the pilots talking to one another.”
“You can!” Tombstone sprang to his feet. “That’s great. Let’s hear!”
Doc led him to the wall where the satcom device had been set up, its small antenna pointed carefully at a particular patch of sky in the south. He took the headset Doc handed to him and pressed it against his ear.
“Tomboy! Tomboy!” was the first thing he heard. “You okay?”
“I’M okay, Dix,” was her reply. “Just a little singed on the outside!”
Quickly he pressed the transmit key. “Tomboy! Tomboy! This is Tombstone! Do you copy?”
There was a moment’s pause. Then, “Tombstone?” He could hear the surprise in her voice. “Is that you?”
“I see you strapped on your Tomcat, like I told you to,” he said, using the incident at the palace to positively identify himself.
“Damn it, Tombstone! Where are you? What are you doing on this channel?”
“I’m on the back side of a ridge west of Arsincevo. We’re having a little trouble getting through to the beach. Think you can help us?”
“I’ll see what I can do. Give me your tacsit.”
He began describing their situation.
0912 hours (Zulu +3)
Tomcat 207
Over Arsincevo
Tomboy was out of missiles, but she still had the Tomcat’s left-mounted M-61A1 20mm rapid-fire gun, and almost five hundred rounds remaining of her original 657. She dropped through the sky, leaving the furball of the mass aerial battle above and behind, flashing in an instant low above the row upon row of fuel tanks, and the twisted, black columns of smoke marking dozens of raging fires.
That ridge… that would be where the Boychenko Russians ― and Tombstone ― were holding off the approaching naval infantry detachment.
“Okay, Tombstone,” she said. “I see the ridge. Talk to me.”
“We’ve got three, maybe four PT-76 tanks,” he told her. “They’re on the east side of the ridge, moving toward the top in a line-abreast formation, about two hundred meters from the crest. I can see them pretty well from here. Doesn’t look like there’s too much ground cover, so you ought to have a clear shot.”
“I think…” She stared ahead through her HUD, straining to see.
“Watch it, Tomboy,” Hacker called from the rear seat. “I’ve got a Gun Dish paint!”
“Ah, Tombstone, this is Tomboy,” she called. “Your band of gypsies happen to have a Zoo in the parade?”
“That’s a negative, Tomboy. No Zoos.”
“Okay. We’ve got one in the area. If you see it, give me a yell, will you?”
“Will do.”
There they were. She could see the tanks now, four of them stretched out in a line almost directly ahead. She only had an instant to react, and she had to aim and fire by instinct. Her thumb closed on the trigger, and she felt the vibration as her six-barreled Gatling gun screamed white death at four thousand rounds per minute.
A white cloud appeared on the naked slope of the ridge just short of the first amphibious tank. Holding the aircraft steady, she walked that cloud along the slope, sending it smashing into the first tank, then adjusting slightly to the left to hit the second.
At better than four hundred miles per hour, she roared overhead so fast that the terrain was a gray-brown blur, though she had a brief instant’s impression of men in camouflage uniforms on the ground, some running, some falling, some simply standing and staring up at her with mouths agape. One tank, at least, was burning, and she thought she’d hit another one, but now she was out of sky and out of time. She pulled back on the stick, climbing hard.
0913 hours (Zulu +3)
Near Arsincevo
Tombstone and Pamela were peering over the shattered wall of the building when the Tomcat rose from behind the crest of the ridge, a huge, gray bird riding fire and thunder. An explosion fireballed on the ground beyond the crest.
“You know, Matt,” Pamela said as the F-14 clawed for sky, turning back over the Arsincevo Valley with s
un flashing from its wings, “I’m beginning to think she’s more your type. I think you must have a lot in common with her.”
Tombstone looked at Pamela, defensive… and then he saw her tired smile. He grinned, a bit ruefully. “Maybe you’re right. I do like her style!” He still couldn’t deny the feelings he had for Pamela, but he was able to accept the simple, cold fact that their relationship really did have no future. He understood, he thought, what Pamela must have been going through and why she wanted to end their relationship.
And maybe, after all, that would be best.
Tomboy was bringing her F-14 in for another strafing run.
He stood up behind the wall, exposing himself to fire from below so that he could see. Dust and smoke erupted from a third PT-76; from further down the valley, a squat, ugly-looking tracked vehicle with a low, open turret slewed quad-mounted 23mm cannons and opened fire. “Tomboy!” he yelled. “ZSU on the road-“
“I’m hit! I’m hit!” he heard her calling. White smoke was streaming aft from her Tomcat as she hurtled past the east face of the ridge, angling toward the sea eight miles away.
“Tomboy!”
“I’m… okay,” he heard her say. “We’re okay, but I don’t think we’re going to make it back to the Jeff.”
“Get some altitude!”
“Already on it.”
He could see the F-14 coming up now. It was hard to see, but he thought one of the engines was out. The smoke streaming off the aircraft’s tail was thicker now.
“Okay,” Tomboy said. “We’ve got an engine fire. We’re definitely not going to make it to the Jefferson. She’s still taking on fuel, and they’re not going to let us come anywhere near her with a dinged Tomcat. I think we can make it out over the sea, though, and eject.”
“Good luck, Tomboy,” he said. “Hey… this time try not to break your leg when you punch out, okay?”
He heard her laugh… but he also heard the worry behind it. “Don’t worry, Stoney. You take care of yourself. See you back aboard the carrier!”
“See you aboard.”
He watched her Tomcat, dwindling to a speck in the distance, still climbing, still burning.
EPILOGUE
Sunday, 15 November
0945 hours
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
Northern approaches to the Bosporus Strait
The broad, calm waters of the Bosporus spread out ahead of the Jefferson as the great carrier slowly cruised southwest into the straits. The same pilot who had guided them through weeks before, Ismet Ecevit, was again on the bridge, stoically at his place alongside Jefferson’s helm. If he felt any distress, any injury to his national pride after the events of the past weeks, he gave no sign at all.
Tombstone leaned forward in the chair, the raised, leather-backed chair that had the word CAPTAIN stenciled in bold letters across the back, and grinned.
They were leaving the Black Sea at last.
“Glad to get out of this pocket?” Admiral Brandt, standing at his side, said with a smile. “I seem to remember you weren’t too thrilled with coming in here, a couple of weeks ago.”
“Yes, sir,” Tombstone said. “It’s going to be real good to get home.”
They were going home. It still seemed hard to believe, but the orders had come through from Washington only a few hours after U.S. Army engineers and Navy Seabees had reported the Bosporus Strait clear to navigate.
The Battle of Kerch, as it was being called now, had ended in a clear victory for the American battle group and MEU-25.
Tomboy had taken a lot of good-natured ribbing once she and Hacker were back aboard the carrier. The F-14 Tomcat had been designed strictly as an air superiority fighter” not one pound for air-to-ground,” as the slogan had insisted during the aircraft’s design and testing. Still, she’d handled the big machine as an appallingly effective ground-attack aircraft, something quite outside its normal purview… and hers. Her impromptu strafing run was credited with breaking up the naval infantry attack on Boychenko’s position; the Krasilnikov forces had fled moments later, opening up the way for the evacuation helicopters off the Guadalcanal to move in. They’d touched down on the ridge above Arsincevo minutes after Tomboy’s strafing run; Tombstone had made it back to the Jefferson only ten minutes ahead of Tomboy and Hacker, who were plucked from the sea south of Kerch by one of the carrier’s SH-53 rescue choppers.
By then, the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson was underway again, cruising south at a brisk clip with her aviation gasoline tanks full once more. With another sixteen days’ worth of fuel for her aircraft, clearly any attempt to stop her would be foolhardy. Tombstone, pausing only to take a quick shower and put on a clean uniform to look the part, had assumed command from the ship’s Exec; Admiral Brandt had transferred his flag to the Shiloh, and so Tombstone had been left in command of the carrier, a command confirmed ― at least temporarily ― by Washington a few hours later.
The sea battle that had followed had been almost total anticlimax.
Dmitriev’s small and ill-prepared carrier force had been steaming around the southwestern tip of the Crimea, obviously hoping to trap the battle group at Kerch, but by the time the two squadrons came within range of one another, Dmitriev had only a handful of aircraft left, and his huge Pobedonosnyy Rodina was literally a sitting duck.
The battle was over in minutes and was resolved even before Coyote could order an air strike by A-7s and Hornets. The Los Angeles-class attack sub Orlando had been lurking unseen and unheard in the deep, dark waters south of Sevastopol and had picked up the approaching rumble of the Rodina’s screws almost as soon as she’d left port. Over one hundred miles away, four sub-launched TLAMS ― Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles ― had burst one after the other from Orlando’s vertical launch tubes, driving up through the water on rocket motors that hurled each twenty-foot-long cruise missile into the air at a fifty-degree angle. The solid motors burned out and fell away; the cruise missiles, gulping air now, steadied on course at altitudes of only a few feet, arrowing toward the distant Russian carrier at Mach 7.
The Pobedonosnyy Rodina never had a chance. Her escorts turned back even before the huge vessel capsized beneath a funeral pall of roiling black smoke.
One of the oil-covered survivors pulled from the Black Sea by one of Jefferson’s helicopters hours later had been one Vitse-Admiral Nikolai Sergeivich Dmitriev, encountering the Jefferson for the second time in his career. He’d requested asylum as soon as he was aboard.
Tombstone wondered what he and Boychenko had been talking about in the week since.
Turning in his seat, he could see a great crowd of Jefferson’s enlisted men and women stretched across her deck in a shoulder-to-shoulder line, walking slowly down the deck, their eyes on the Kevlar-coated steel at their feet. Occasionally, someone in the line would stoop, picking something up off the deck. The exercise was called a Foreign Object Damage walk-down, an FOD for short, and it was the most efficient way the Navy had come up with yet to clear the flight deck of every single dropped nut, lost tool, or anonymous chunk of metal that might be sucked into an aircraft’s jet intakes during flight ops.
Small things could do tremendous damage, all out of proportion to their size. It was literally true that a thirty-five-cent bolt sucked into the air intake of a Tomcat on the deck could ruin a thirty-five-million-dollar aircraft ― at least to the point where a set of turbine blades had to be pulled and replaced and the compressors checked for damage. A single million-dollar Phoenix could take down a thirty-million-dollar jet a hundred miles away.
A single carrier battle group could change the politics of a nation.
Strategically, the raid on Kerch had been a pinprick, inconsequential in any larger scheme of things, but it had demonstrated the resourcefulness and will that were by now defining characteristics of the United States Navy. It had also broken the air power of the Black Sea Fleet; at last report, Ukrainian landing craft had been coming ashore at Mikolaivka and Kacha, just north of Sevas
topol, and were on their way to overrunning the entire peninsula. The UN had protested, insisting that the Crimea was under UN protection, but no one seemed to be paying any heed.
The loss of the Crimea might well be the final blow to Marshal Krasilnikov’s hard-line rule of what was left of Russia. No one could know with any certainty, however, what the future held for that unhappy country.
Tombstone, however, knew exactly what was in store for him. It was the end of the twentieth century, the beginning of a new era… a new world. For a long time, he’d wondered whether technology and events had already passed him by, whether or not it would be better if he accepted that he’d gone as far in his naval career as he could. Civilian life, sometimes, looked pretty good.
But he knew now that that was not for him. The special fraternity with the men ― and women ― who sailed and flew with him was something he would not easily be able to lay aside.
He looked around the bridge of the Thomas Jefferson, caught Brandt’s eye, and winked.
The Jefferson might still have three thousand miles of open ocean between her and her home port, but Tombstone Magruder knew that he was already home.
FB2 document info
Document ID: bc2ec9f6-e74b-4d9c-ab4f-125f4d44b3c3
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Document creation date: 15.8.2012
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