Brink of War c-13

by Keith Douglass

  Brink of War

  ( Carrier - 13 )

  Keith Douglass

  Admiral "Tombstone" Magruder and the USS Jefferson are sent in to disperse post-Cold War tensions by cozying up to Russia with a friendly airmanship competition. Washington calls it a "cooperative engagement" and then Russia launches an all-out surprise attack on the Jefferson ― and changes the rules…

  Keith Douglass

  Brink of War

  1

  Friday, 18 December

  0900 Local (+3 GMT)

  USS Jefferson

  Off the northern coast of Russia

  Vice Admiral Tombstone Magruder.

  I could feel the cold radiating in from the steel hatch that led from Flight Control to the flight deck. The air duct overhead was pumping out intermittent blasts of hot air, but couldn't keep pace with the arctic air separated from this compartment by only an inch of steel. The enlisted aviation specialists behind the service counter were bulky and sexless in layers of sweaters, foul-weather jackets, and long underwear. All of them wore gloves and black watch caps pulled down tight over ears and forehead.

  They crowded around one point located directly under the counter, surreptitiously elbowing and jostling. From the occasional bliss on their faces, I deduced that somebody had managed to smuggle in a highly illegal, completely unsafe, and critically necessary space heater. It was cached out of view of the officers who'd undoubtedly make them remove it from the space, citing the potential for electrical fires, shock hazard, and class alpha fires should the hot filaments make contact with one of the stacks of papers cluttering their work space behind the counter. A conscientious officer would confiscate it, preventing any one of those highly unlikely risks from escalating into a problem, leaving the enlisted men and women to combat the cold as best they could.

  I studiously ignored it. An early Christmas present, guys, and probably the best one you're likely to get this year until you get home.

  "My bird ready?"

  The chief in charge of the space nodded. Chief Jabrowski, a gnarled veteran of ships and flight decks with almost thirty years in the Navy, was only four months away from mandatory retirement. His eyes were ice blue, framed by a network of wrinkles and creases that marked the face of any man who spent so many years at sea. He had a small, dark mustache, flecked now with the same stray white strands that were scattered around his temples.

  His hair was clipped close to his head, almost a Marine Corps cut. Red, windburned skin, wrinkled down to a thin pair of lips curved up in a surprisingly congenial smile.

  "Double nuts," he answered. "They're de-icing again now ― can't be too careful in this weather."

  I nodded, understanding the dangers of operating in this brutal environment. Even though the day outside was stunningly clear and bright, harsh sunlight spilling across the dark black of the nonskid on the flight deck, there was always the danger of icing as moisture from the air condensed on metal surfaces. I'd spent my share of time in cold weather ops. So had the chief.

  Besides, the double nuts bird was worth taking care of. The zero-zero tail number designated it as the CAG's aircraft, and it was usually kept in top shape. Not that that's the only one he flew, but it meant something to the squadron that they'd assigned this bird to me.

  And to me. Too many years ago, I'd been skipper of VF-95. I hadn't forgotten it ― and neither had they.

  "Any other last-minute problems?" I asked, knowing there weren't or the chief would have told me about them.

  He shook his head. "Nary a one." The odd Arkansas twang seemed alien in this near-freezing compartment.

  The handler, Lieutenant Commander Bernie Hanks, was now scurrying over to pay his respects. When I entered the compartment, he'd been deep in argument with a yellow-shirted flight deck handler, gesticulating at the carrier's flight deck mock-up behind him and tapping impatiently on the wooden cutout form of an E-2 Hawkeye. I caught the gist of the conversation in a few words, the eternal argument about how and where to place too many aircraft in too little space.

  The technician wanted to move the Hawkeye down into the hangar bay for maintenance work, and Bernie wasn't buying it. "Maybe after flight ops, yeah. But not right now. No way, not a chance in hell. And if the helmeted and goggled yellow shirt in front of him didn't like it, well then he could just shit in one hand and-"

  A pointed, entirely unnecessary cough from the chief cut the argument short before Bernie could complete the traditional Navy suggestion. No love lost between the chief and Bernie, clearly. Otherwise, the chief would have been a little bit smoother, a little bit faster with the cough and would have saved Bernie the embarrassment of not noticing my arrival.

  I let my eyes rest on the chief for a moment, twitched the corner of my mouth to let him know I was on to his game. The bland, completely innocent look I got in return was all the answer I needed.

  "Admiral, I'm sorry… didn't notice you-" Bernie began.

  I cut him off with a gesture. "No need ― Chief was just filling me in.

  I take it we're good to go?"

  Bernie nodded. "Green deck whenever you want."

  I leaned forward and rested my elbows on the service counter. "How bad is that E-2?"

  Bernie scowled. "The green shirts think everything is an emergency," he muttered. "You know how it is."

  Every specialty on the flight deck is identified by a different color jersey. Yellow, the handlers and flight deck control people, the ones who owned deck space and anything moving on it. White, safety and medics. The grapes, the purple shirts, handled the fueling, and the ordies who loaded weapons on the planes wore red ones. The green shirts were mechanics and avionics technicians, anyone working on the aircraft. Brown, the plane captains who owned the aircraft when the aviators weren't around.

  "Pretty bad, Admiral," a much-maligned green shirt spoke up from behind the flight deck mock-up. "We're going to have to pull the engine."

  I winced. Although Jefferson was no longer under my direct command ― though it had been years ago ― I took anything that affected her combat capabilities personally. Losing one of the four Hawkeyes ― an electronic surveillance bird the equivalent of the Air Force AWACS-was more critical than turning a fighter into a hangar queen. The Hawkeyes were our eyes and ears in a battle and were capable of controlling multiple flights of U.S. fighters against adversary air. Additionally, although her capabilities were more limited than the AWACS, the Hawkeye could serve as electronic intercept aircraft and provide a whole host of intelligence information.

  "What happened to it?" I asked.

  "FOD, I think," the technician answered. "Chipped rotor blade. At any rate, we're gonna have to pull the engine. Can't fly the way it is."

  Bernie broke in again, apparently not comfortable with letting the technician talk directly to me. A mistake, that ― I'd garnered some of my most important information on how the ship was doing from talking directly to my enlisted men and women.

  Batman's enlisted men and women, I should say. They were his now, had been since he'd relieved me as commander of Carrier Battle Group 14.

  "Jones, take the admiral out to his bird," Bernie ordered.

  "I can find it myself," I said gently.

  "If you like, Admiral," Bernie answered, clearly a bit miffed this his courtesy had been rebuffed.

  I hadn't meant to be rude. Sometimes the constant immediate deference to my presence and opinions, my every need and want, became entirely obnoxious. If truth be said, all I really wanted out of life in this Navy was what I'd wanted from the very beginning ― to strap a Tomcat on my ass and go screaming through the air until I damn near grayed out from my own G forces.

  But times change, and so do duties in the Navy. For me, every promo
tion meant less and less time in the cockpit, more time spent on administration or training, or any one of the other myriad duties a flag officer acquires along with the additional pay. Sometimes, you almost get nostalgic for somebody who'll tell you you're full of shit.

  Just at that moment, two of the people who might be willing to do just that walked into the compartment. One I knew would for sure ― the other would be willing to soon enough, albeit the words would be couched in the gentle euphemisms a junior used to a very senior officer.

  The first man was Rear Admiral Everett "Batman" Wayne, now in command of Carrier Battle Group 14. I'd known Batman since my earliest days in the Navy. We'd gone to Basic together, selected Tomcats out of the pipeline, and started circling around each other about the time I was a lieutenant commander. Wherever I went, Batman was there. As we got more senior ― he by some odd split of his promotion year group, one year junior to me ― the Navy had taken to detailing Batman to relieve me wherever I went. It became something of a joke to us, first when he'd showed up as my replacement as commanding officer of USS Jefferson, then later more seriously when he'd relieved me as commander of Carrier Battle Group 14.

  Batman was a little bit shorter than me, not by much, but enough to make a difference in a bar fight. He had my dark hair and dark eyes, but they were set in a face that was as mobile and cheerful as mine was impassive. Or at least that's what I've been told ― I can't see the supposed great stone face that earned me the nickname Tombstone.

  Over the past several years, Batman had fought an increasingly difficult battle against fat. Since his assignment to Jefferson, even though he spent countless hours on the Stairmaster, he was starting to thicken up around his waistline. Not enough yet to make him look ridiculous in a flight suit, although God knows he rarely got a chance to wear one of those, but enough to be noticeable to someone who'd known him for a long time.

  Batman had in tow a junior aviator, one I knew well and had been expecting to meet me up here. Lieutenant Skeeter Harmon, a fellow Tomcat pilot. I'd been on two cruises with Skeeter now, and I liked what I saw.

  He'd gotten off to a rocky start in his first few minutes onboard the carrier after I'd rescued him from a TAD assignment on another ship, and gotten into a fight on the flight deck with a kid who was trying to keep him from getting chewed up inside an inbound disabled aircraft. But he'd more than made up for it by now. There weren't a whole lot of guys who were his equal in the air ― me maybe, although that would have had to have been in my younger days. Now youth and reflexes sometimes won out over age and wisdom. That's the way it is in fighter air.

  He was a tall kid, lean and lanky. Maybe three percent body fat, if that. Black, with his hair clipped close to his skull. if his attitude was any indication, he cut a wide swath through the available women when he was ashore. I'd never heard him bragging about it, but gossip travels fast on a ship.

  "You out of here, Admiral?" Batman asked.

  "Shortly. Now that you've got my wingman here, it's looking like a sure thing. I'm not sure I really believed it before that."

  Batman's answering grin told me he understood all too well the difficulties of getting stick time for a flag officer. "I didn't want him getting held up by anything that could wait," he agreed, and gave Skeeter a gentle shove forward. "He's all yours, Admiral. Bring him back in one piece."

  Skeeter spoke up. "It's the Russians you ought to worry about, sir."

  The cocky, easy grin on his face was his trademark. "Gonna kick some serious Russian ass, I am." I almost smiled in spite of myself. The young pilot didn't even realize how sweet a deal this was. All he could think about was the flying.

  Skeeter and I were headed to a small Russian air base located at Arkhangelsk. Relationships between the United States and the former master of the Soviet Union were allegedly a good deal warmer than the weather. It had started with Russian ships making port calls in the United States, a gesture we reciprocated. Cruisers, destroyers, even submarines, all carefully sanitized ― cleared of classified material ― and open to what had once been our bitterest enemies.

  The Russians, unable to get their own primitive aircraft carriers under way due to engineering problems and lack of maintenance, had suggested this somewhat lopsided mission that we were on now ― the Jefferson would visit the port of Arkhangelsk, and in exchange, the Russians would host a professional conference aimed at both Russian and American fighter pilots. The conference was to be held at their version of Top Gun, a small, remote airfield located one hundred miles south of Arkhangelsk. A few days of professional conferences, the usual looky-loo demonstrations, then the pice de resistance ― a display of aerial combat techniques using real MiG-29s and -31s versus Tomcats. The outcome would be decided by a panel of judges drawn from other countries, and the engagements monitored by United States Navy fighter training gear, called MILES gear. It's a network of low-power lasers and tiny receptors mounted on the skin of the opposing aircraft. That data, along with cockpit-mounted cameras, would supply a complete record of each engagement.

  In addition to two Tomcats, we were taking along a C-2 Greyhound, commonly known as a COD ― Carrier Onboard Delivery ― with some maintenance technicians, radiomen and secure communications gear, and a small security force. Not that we expected to need the latter. Washington had already approved the details of the visit, which included using Russian forces to guard our aircraft. I guess the thinking was that since it was their idea to play, the last thing they'd do would be to foul up their chances of access to American markets by playing games with our aircraft. I wasn't happy about it. The in and outs of diplomacy can be frustrating, particularly when they have the potential to affect my safety in flight.

  Well, we had a few surprises for them if they tried to renege on the agreement. Not many ― but a few.

  "Let's get going," I said. Outside the steel-cold hatch, freedom waited.

  "There's a lot at stake this time, Tombstone." Batman's voice had an odd cautionary note in it that I didn't recognize.

  "Sure, baseball, apple pie, and motherhood. C'mon, Batman. This ain't even the real thing." I tried to make my voice light, but something in his voice bothered me.

  I stood watching him for a moment, suddenly aware of how much older we'd each gotten. Life at sea takes it out of you. Batman and I had had a few more advantages than the rugged chief behind the desk, but I could still see the effects of too many hours without sleep, too many missed meals, and the sheer, life-sapping stress that we operated under every day.

  Batman was shaking his head now, something clearly on his mind. I took him by the elbow and drew him off to a far corner of the compartment.

  "Is there something I don't know?" I asked.

  Batman shook his head again. "Of course not." But he wouldn't meet my eyes.

  "There is, isn't there?" I pressed. I was out of line, even if I did have one more star on my collar than he did. Command of this CVBG was his, not mine. In all probability there were things that JCS wanted him to know, tactical considerations that would make no difference to me on the ground. Still, being out of the loop bothered me.

  "What is it?" I demanded, my uneasiness overriding my sense of propriety.

  Batman finally looked up at me. "Nothing you need to know."

  Shit, I'd made him actually say it.

  "If you're certain?" I let the question hang in the air for a moment, then clapped him once on the shoulder. "Fine, we're out of here. Keep our airfield in one piece ― I don't want to get stranded in there."

  Batman seemed unwilling to let me walk away. He fidgeted for a moment, then asked, "How much longer, Stoney? What if there aren't any answers this time?"

  I considered the question, as out of line in its own way as my earlier one had been to him. "There are answers, I think. Maybe not good ones ― but answers nonetheless."

  "He's probably dead." Batman's statement was brutal.

  The anger I'd reined in over the last months swept over me now, harsh and demandin
g. If the Vietnamese and Russians had done what I thought they'd done, someone would pay. All those years of waiting, not knowing, then the final curt announcement by the U.S. that all the missing-in-action aviators that were presumed to be POWs would be reclassified as KIA ― Killed In Action. The assurances from both Vietnam and Russia that none of the men were still alive. The stone wall even a senior military officer ran into, trying to find out the truth.

  Someone was going to pay.

  But not Batman. He was on my side if anyone was, trying to shield me from the pain of too much hope.

  I put aside the anger and nodded. "Probably. But if there's a chance-"

  It was Batman's turn to nod. He sighed, then said, "I know, I know.

  In your shoes, I'd be doing the same thing. Listen, either way ― and on both counts ― good luck. We'll be waiting for you when you're done."

  Skeeter was fidgeting impatiently behind me when I turned back to him.

  "Let's go," I said.

  "I send the RIOs on out ahead, sir," Skeeter answered. "You want to get any useful work out of them, YOU got to stay on them."

  I laughed at that, hearing the classic arrogance of a pilot, letting it sweep away the last vestiges of my anger. A good RIO ― Radar Intercept Officer ― in the backseat had kept my ass from getting shot down more than once. You like to fly with the same one in combat all the time, because you get attuned to each other's moves. Skeeter was taking his usual partner, Lieutenant Commander Sheila Kennedy, along for the ride. Since it'd been years since I'd had a running mate, the skipper of VF-95 had loaned me his XO, Commander Gator Cummings. Gator was a sharp fellow, one of the best. He'd jumped at the opportunity to go. As XO, he'd be fleeting up to skipper in a year or so, and then he'd be fighting for stick time like the rest of us.

  I pushed open the hatch, stepped out into the freezing air, and shut everything else out of my mind as we preflighted the aircraft. You don't want to make mistakes when you're launching off a carrier, particularly not in weather like this. The sea that surrounded Jefferson was only a few degrees above freezing, and our survival time if anything went wrong would be counted in seconds rather than minutes. The Sea-Air Rescue ― SAR ― helo was launching while we finished up the preflight, a bit of bravado if I ever saw it. If anything went wrong, all SAR could do was recover the bodies.