But at least you have some control over your own destiny. If you're just a little bit faster, a little bit smarter, or a little tougher, you know you'll make it out. And if you've got the right stuff to be a fighter pilot, you're all those things and more.
But it's entirely different watching someone else go through the same thing, unable to help or hurt them.
Brandon was talking now, his words faint over the roar of the engine and the slap of the sea against the rubber-bottomed boat. "Admiral, if you can hear me, I think we may need to move up that schedule a little bit. The devices are in place and set to go off right before the strike is on top, but I think you need to move a little quicker. They're alerted now, sir. They're gonna be searching the revetment, and they might find our little presents. Suggest you command-detonate now, get the strike airborne as fast as you can, and play the cards as they lay. We're almost home ― the helos just blinked their lights at us, and I'm turning toward her."
I turned to Lab Rat. "You bet the cards?"
He nodded. "Do it now."
One corner of the CVIC's space was occupied by a signal generator linked to a high-frequency transmitter. It had a dedicated antenna on deck right now, hard-wired for just this purpose.
I watched Lab Rat as he set the signal generator to the appropriate sequence, then thumbed the switch on. We heard nothing. At least not inside CVIC.
From Brandon Sykes's microphone, I heard a small, muffled thud. Then a scream of exultation by the SEAL. Sheer joy, followed by a hurried commentary. "Good work, guys! Hell of a light show out here. Man, did it ever go boom." The sheer, reverent wonder in his voice at the size of the explosion was gleeful.
Lab Rat handed me a microphone. He pointed at a red light on top of the SEAL receiving gear. It blinked green. "Want to congratulate them yourself?" Lab Rat asked.
I cleared my throat, then picked up the mike. "Good work, men. Now get your asses back here."
With the helo airborne, we were already at flight quarters, but now the hard rolling thunder of a Tomcat engine spooling up rattled the 03 level. Strike was one step ahead of me, as usual.
The first launch took place five minutes later, just as Brandon Sykes's headset camera swung around in a gut-wrenching panorama, briefly inverted, and then steadied on the helicopter above him. He'd just hooked the rope they were dangling to hoist him and the other SEALs up into the helo. The camera steadied on the inside of the helicopter, then turned to the open hatch on the side of it. Brandon was staring down at the water, and I saw a dull flash of light, followed by a geyser of water. He'd just blown the RHIBs.
"Admiral, we're launching the first wave." Strike's voice over the bitch box was spooled up. "J-TARPS mounted on one Hornet and two Tomcats, Admiral."
I motioned to Lab Rat. "Go ahead and switch the picture ― I think we're done with the SEALS."
How quickly we'd become accustomed to new technology, capabilities that would have seemed sheer magic just ten years before. The J-TARPS display had awed me just the day before, and now I was casually directing my Intelligence Officer to display an air battle and strike for me real time.
Lab Rat quickly complied. "They've got MiGs in the air," he warned as he glanced at another piece of gear. "Launch indications now."
"It figures." The catapult was thumping steadily now, shooting off another one of my aircraft every twenty-two seconds. Twelve aircraft airborne so far, one of which had to be a tanker. We'd agreed that the SEAL helicopter would serve temporary duty as SAR bird during launch while we shot everything we had off the deck. After the bomb-laden fighters were airborne, we'd launch another SAR helo and bring the SEALs back on deck.
The first J-TARPS was mounted under Hornet 301. "Who's flying?" I asked.
"Thor Hammersmith. You remember him," Lab Rat answered.
Indeed I did. Thor was a Marine's Marine, an infantryman on temporary assigned duty in the cockpit, as they called it. Every Marine underwent basic indoctrination in ground combat and infantry tactics, a fact that made Marine Close Air Support ― CAS ― a deadly potent capability. Marines wouldn't leave Marines, they were fond of reminding us.
The other two cameras were mounted on Tomcats configured for bombing runs ― bombcats, we called them. Once Thor got within killing range of the MiGs, however, I barely even glanced at the other two monitors.
I was raised on Tomcats, the biggest, meanest fighter in the fleet. Sure, I knew the Hornets were more maneuverable, had even seen them in action myself. But watching it from another aircraft or from the flight deck, or even on a radar scope, is nothing compared to the picture you get when you're slung onto the undercarriage of one.
The Hornet darted and whirled, playing an intricate game of cat and mouse with its MiG opponent. It was a different fight from the kind I was used to, given that they were both angles fighters. They were equally matched in thrust to wing area, giving them similar performance characteristics. The battle was not the harrowing series of power climbs and scrabbles for altitude that I was used to, but rather a close-in, parry-and-dart knife fight. Thor was closer to a MiG than I'd ever been in my life ― and closer than I ever want to be. But the movement of his aircraft was swift and sure. There was no hesitation or sudden changes of angle on the MiG that would lead me to believe he'd miscalculated or changed his mind. The Marine was a deadly fighter in his aircraft, a lethal capability that took on a whole new meaning as I watched the battle progress.
Thor's Hornet was loaded with Sidewinders and Sparrows, along with a full charge of rounds in his nose cannon. He used the Sparrow first against the incoming MiG, forcing it into a defensive position. The MiG pilot was good, but not that good. Thor had harried him into a mistake with the Sparrow, then slipped neatly into a perfect firing position behind him. Fox three, and then the MiG was a smoking fiery hole in the dark night.
Now what? Thor was down to one Sparrow and two Sidewinders.
Listening to the air battle over tactical as well as watching it through the three-camera displays was more comfortable now, the second time through. I heard the cry for help, saw Thor's Hornet bank hard to the right, the stars wheeling crazily across the camera screen through the broken cloud cover. The MiG appeared center-line, and I waited for Thor to launch one of his remaining missiles.
What the- Thor wasn't launching. I had a sinking, foreboding feeling that I knew just exactly what he was planning.
His Sparrow-Sidewinder tactic was clearly a favorite. He was planning on saving all the remaining missiles for a second shot of his own, but still needed to shake this MiG off his buddy's butt. I groaned out loud. "No, Thor, don't do it ― don't do it."
But he did. With the MiG preoccupied with jockeying into firing position on another Hornet, Thor swooped in from above like an avenging angel. There was no sound, but I saw the staccato stream of tracer fire arc out ahead of me and stitch a line across the MiG's fuselage. The Hornet it was following broke hard left, on Thor's command, and Thor pulled up and hard to the right. The J-TARPS camera caught the first microseconds of the fireball that had once been a MiG.
I slammed my hand down on the table. "Damn it, that glory-hogging-" I stopped abruptly, and reconsidered my analysis.
Sure, I was an admiral and in command of this entire battle group. I'd even flown Hornets, had qualified on them, as it was necessary to do before assuming command of this battle group. It was part of the long, tortuous process of taking this job, one that included far too long at the nuclear-propulsion training command in Idaho, command of an aircraft carrier, then requalifying on every aircraft that landed on the deck of a carrier. Hell, I even had my time in helos.
But despite my experience and the genuine qualifications I had for wrestling a Hornet down onto the deck, I wasn't a Hornet pilot. Nor was I a Marine. Thor knew far better than I the capabilities and tactics that worked with his aircraft one-on-one against a MiG. If I wanted to go along for the ride, I damned well better shut up and just watch.
I wondered how many admira
ls after me would experience this same temptation that technology now provided us, this yearning to try to coach the pilots through each air-to-air engagement. I'd almost made a fatal mistake, giving orders to Thor while he was in the air. I hoped the guy ― or woman, eventually ― that followed me would do better than I had.
Thor broke off with a dizzying series of barrel rolls that swapped open sky every other second. Then the camera steadied down, surveying the clear sky dotted with aircraft. It swung back and forth slowly as Thor assessed the current state of the battle and selected his next target. Then it steadied down again, rock hard, on a single MiG diving into the engagement from on high.
The shape grew larger quickly now as Thor kicked in the afterburner. Soon the MiG filled the camera screen, the sleek, deadly aircraft jetting gouts of its own afterburner fire out the tailpipes. The camera bobbled unsteadily as Thor hit the jet wash. He was too far away for guns and too close for Sidewinders. I could tell what he was thinking now ― trying to decide whether he should pull back and let loose the Sparrow, or simply press on in with the guns. In the end, he made the same decision I would have, pitched up in a hard, gray-out-inducing climb, then pivoted back down into position.
Not that the MiG was waiting for him. He'd cut, rolled, and gone into a long climbing loop intended to place him in position on Thor. The two craft passed each other belly-to-belly on opposite ends of the altitude-airspeed curve. Thor rolled out of the turn, converting his downward movement into a sharp, breaking curve to the right. The MiG rolled out of his climb and dove to meet him.
I groaned out loud watching it, seeing the inevitable fighter geometry take shape. The MiG was behind Thor now, closing rapidly and maneuvering so that the bright heat of Thor's tailpipes would serve as a perfect missile synch.
Thor sensed the same thing, because he broke hard in a roll, cutting inside the MiG's arc of turn and jockeying back into position himself.
That was the essential difference between a Hornet-on-MiG engagement and a Tomcat-on-MiG engagement. In the first, the battle tended to take place in a vertical plane since the aircraft were evenly matching power and agility. With the Tomcat, you use your greater power to gain a height advantage, keeping the MiG from cutting inside your turns as Thor had just done.
The MiG pitched nose-down and headed for the deck. It was a last-ditch maneuver, one designed to shake the hard lock of a Sidewinder on its tailpipes.
Thor was too quick for it. I saw first one Sidewinder, then the other leap off his wings and streak unerringly for the MiG.
The camera caught just the upper edge of the explosion, black and oily as it billowed burning fuel, shards of metal, and a few traces of the pilot into the serene sky.
So Thor was Winchestered now ― no, wait. He still had one Sparrow left. Would he go for it, without the potent Sidewinders as a close-in backup? He probably had some rounds left in his cannon too. I recalled the delicate way the rounds had traced their path across the hull of the MiG, and knew he hadn't shot his load on that.
Of course he'd find another one. No pilot comes back with weapons ― that's an unspoken rule.
The camera was back in that general to-and-fro hunting motion, a good retriever sniffing the air looking for prey. It took a little longer this time, but Thor picked out another one, one widely separated from the rest of the gaggle. A nasty, black cloud and the frantic cries over tactical told me why. The MiG had just nailed a Hornet and was rejoining the fray itself.
They were nose-to-nose now, each accelerating to well over Mach one. The closure rate was well over twelve hundred nautical miles per minute, increasing every second as the two aircraft accelerated. A game of chicken, one fought at seventeen thousand feet instead of on some dusty country road, but no less deadly.
Thor had the Sparrow selected, and I imagined he was hearing the high, wavering growl of the missile as it tried to obtain a lock. He was just inside the weapon's envelope, it appeared, judging from the appearance of the MiG. My mind automatically convened what I was seeing on the camera into distance.
A bright flash of light, then another missile off the wing, Thor's last.
"Break off," I said out loud. "C'mon, Thor ― you shot your load, get your ass back to the ship."
Lab Rat looked at me curiously, but said nothing. We both knew what the score was. A Hornet without weapons was simply a target waiting to happen.
But the camera stayed rock steady on the approaching MiG, tracking the missile as it bore in on him.
The MiG blinked. At what seemed the last possible second, it cut hard to the right, intending to break the radar lock and allowing the missile no time or distance to reacquire. It was a good move, one that should have worked. It almost did.
The Sparrow clipped the MiG on the canted tail structure, knocking off one portion of it. It was happening so quickly. All I saw was the thin, triangular shape tumbling away from the aircraft, then the fragments of missile pelting the air behind the MiG.
For a moment, I thought the MiG might make it. They were incredibly airworthy little beasts, and it was just possible that the pilot might be able to pull off a controlled descent, at least one long enough to give him a chance to eject.
But Thor had other plans. He was on him now, stitching the canopy and fuselage with the rapid-fire Vulcan cannon. I saw the MiG canopy shatter, bright shards of it reflecting in the hard sunlight.
The ejection seat fired. It must have been the pilot's last conscious act before the bullets penetrated the canopy and hit him. It slammed out of the aircraft at a forty-five-degree angle to the fuselage, hung in the air for a moment, and then the parachute deployed. By some miracle, the bullets hadn't shredded the ejection seat. It worked, just as its Russian designers had intended. But the pilot hung lifeless and inert below it. He and his aircraft both headed for the sea, one in a deadly flat spiral and the other drifting down gently.
"Now, Thor." I reached for the microphone. This time I would act, order the brash Marine back to the carrier rather than let him take on another MiG with his guns alone.
Evidently Thor had the same idea. The camera swung away from the battle, found the horizon, then hunted for a moment before settling on the massive shape of Jefferson.
"Admiral, look." I turned to see Lab Rat pointing at the large-screen tactical display. "It's Hunter 701 ― he's got a visual."
The NTDS ― Navy Tactical Data Display ― symbol made it clear just what Lab Rat was talking about. A submarine, classified as hostile by the S3 Viking orbiting above it. I could see the symbol for the aircraft almost superimposed on top of the hostile submarine mark.
"Well, it's about time," I said heavily. "They've got them, don't they? Why wouldn't they use them?"
"I'm putting up the ASW CRC ― the Anti-Submarine Coordination and Reporting Circuit." Lab Rat fiddled with the speakers and the dial-up box next to it. It crackled, then came to life in the middle of a sentence. "certain it's a Romeo," I heard a voice say. A familiar voice ― I strained to put a name to it.
Lab Rat saw my Questioning look and said, "Commander Steve 'Rabies' Grills, another Jefferson homesteader."
I nodded, calling up a face to match the voice. Rabies had been a regular mainstay of our ASW evolutions for the past several cruises. He was a lusty Texan, I recalled, one who drove his flight crews to sheer desperation by singing country-western songs on the ICS during their long hours on station. Another strong player, in his way just as good as Bird Dog or Thor.
"He's still holding it?" I asked.
Lab Rat nodded. "And from the looks of it, he's got so many sonobuoys in the water around it that we'll be able to track it just by the noise alone," he added. He tapped a few keys and the sonobuoy lines popped into being, a regularly spaced line of listening devices that would keep track of the submarine if it decided to pull the plug and go sinker.
"What's he doing on the surface anyway?" I asked.
"Maybe he's got those anti-air weapons on board," Lab Rat suggested.
&n
bsp; A nasty prospect, but one that we had to consider. The new generations of submarines all had them, a small surface-to-air missile that could be extruded through an extension to the conning tower and fired at aircraft overhead. It was particularly effective against the smaller and less maneuverable helicopters, but I'd known one or two to take a shot at fixed-wing aircraft, as well. If anything, it would keep the S3 crew on guard. Rabies had personal experience with the weapons system, and I knew he wasn't eager for another encounter.
"I guess Rabies doesn't think so," Lab Rat said. "His altitude is three hundred feet."
"If he sees anything-" I began, and then broke off. Of course he'd be watching, and of course he'd get the hell out of the area if he saw anything suspicious unfolding from the conning tower. Like a missile launcher.
Lab Rat spoke up. "I haven't heard anything about them being back-fitted on the older submarines, and I'm not sure they have the power supply for it. Or the guidance systems." He looked thoughtful. Then he continued. "But I suppose it's possible. As miniaturized as some of these circuits are these days, the space wouldn't be a problem. It would just be a matter of tacking the missile assembly onto-"
"How far from the carrier?" I asked, interrupting his train of intelligence speculation and theorizing. All very interesting, but what mattered to me was whether or not the submarine was in a position to do damage to one of my ships.
"Well out of range, Admiral," Lab Rat assured me. "Almost twenty miles."
"Not to say he couldn't close that distance eventually," I said.
"Well, now that we know she's there, we can take some precautions."
The appearance of a submarine in our area worried me. Worried, hell ― it scared the shit out of me.
There's something particularly terrifying about submarines, at least to an aircraft carrier. For sailors everywhere, ships are more than just weapons platforms or floating airports. A ship is the one little space in the world that's home, at least for months at a time. It's where your stereo lives, your spare set of civilian clothes so you can go on liberty, and those few precious possessions that you can cram into the small lockers and staterooms assigned to you. In short, it's home.
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