If this last, desperate thrust by the enemy could be blunted, the Americans would have to admit defeat. The old dream of an Indian Ocean free of outside influences and under New Delhi’s firm political control would become reality at last.
A klaxon blared and Admiral Ramesh looked up. “Now hear this, now hear this,” rasped from the loudspeaker. “Prepare for missile attack.
Admiral Ramesh to the Flag Bridge, please. Admiral Ramesh.”
For Ramesh it was as though the pieces of a complex puzzle had suddenly snapped into place. He’d been expecting some form of retaliation by the Americans and Russians for the damage done to their forces. Still, when Tahliani had returned in triumph from his strike, when the news had come through from Naval Headquarters at Bombay that the land-based attack had overwhelmed the American defenses and hit their command ship, he’d allowed himself to believe that the enemy might cut their losses and retreat.
But that was not to be. This would not be a matter of raid and counterraid, but of two giants, battling to the death.
“Lieutenant,” he snapped. Tahliani drew himself to attention. “Your aircraft are being fueled and rearmed. On my authority, you are to get as many aircraft off the deck as possible. I don’t want the same thing happening to Viraat as happened to the Kremlin!”
“Yes, sir! Are we to fly the Sea Harriers ashore?”
Ramesh shook his head. “No, Lieutenant. I will have special instructions for you.” He reached out and grasped the young man’s arm.
“But for now, go! While you still can!”
Then he turned and raced for Viraat’s island.
1154 hours, 26 March
Blue King Leader, flight deck, INS Viraat
Lieutenant Tahliani adjusted his helmet strap as he performed a cursory run-through of the checklist strapped to his thigh. Fuel okay … power on … stick controls okay … A deck officer was signaling. He saluted, glanced up at Viraat’s island, then adjusted the Sea Harrier’s exhaust ports, vectoring them for a rolling takeoff. One of the Sea Harrier’s many remarkable features was its short start-up time. He released the wheel brakes and was moving down the carrier’s deck toward the ski jump ramp within five minutes of the alert.
The latest reports indicated that two separate groups of antiship missiles were approaching the Indian fleet, one from the northwest, one from the southeast. Almost certainly both missile flights had been launched from enemy submarines in the area, though the northwestern group could possibly have come from the surface ships of the enemy fleet. The nearest missile was still twenty kilometers out. There was time yet.
The Sea Harrier vaulted from the ski jump and into the sky. Tahliani redirected the exhaust ports to full aft and climbed. Other Sea Harriers followed, gathering in an assembly area five kilometers southwest of the Viraat.
From the high perch of his cockpit, Tahliani had a splendid view of the Indian fleet, spread out from horizon to horizon beneath him. Viraat and the smaller carrier Vikrant were at the flotilla’s heart. Kalikata, one of the Indian Navy’s Kresta II cruisers newly purchased from the former Soviet Union, led the squadron ten kilometers ahead. And surrounding these three were the destroyers, frigates, and corvettes that made up the body of the fleet, all steaming northwest at a steady twenty knots.
“Blue King Leader, this is Viraat.” He recognized the voice. Admiral Ramesh himself was calling.
“Viraat, this is Blue King Leader. Go ahead.”
“Lieutenant … the battle may well be in your hands now.” Tahliani heard the strain in Ramesh’s voice. “Execute Plan Three.”
“Roger, Viraat. Plan Three.”
American ECM eavesdroppers might well be listening in. The melodramatic-sounding Plan Three referred simply to a series of earlier briefings, covering possible contingencies in the event of an attack against the Indian naval squadron.
Plan Three called for Blue King to fly off the Viraat and head north for friendly airfields on Kathiawar. Along the way, they were to watch for targets of opportunity — American ships or aircraft that might be attacked with a minimum of risk for the Indian Sea Harriers.
Tahliani knew that Ramesh had been saying more but had not wanted to put it into words when he knew the Americans were listening in. The admiral was expecting some special effort from Tahliani’s squadron, an attack that would make the Russian-American effort too costly for them to pursue.
A flicker caught Tahliani’s eye. Looking down, he saw — thought he saw — a ghost of motion, something flashing low across the water at the very limit of vision.
Viraat was firing her SAMS. He could see the contrails below him, like white threads against the dark water. The missiles were reaching toward the southeast. Seconds later, he saw a flash, like the popping of a strobe light, far off on the horizon. There was another … and another …
Something skimmed in from the northeast, streaking straight toward the Indian carrier. Tahliani saw it and wanted to scream warning, but it was too late. There was a soundless eruption of smoke and debris close alongside the Indian carrier, as the widening ring of the shock wave raced out from the vessel’s hull on the water. The strike was so sudden that the surprise was like a physical blow.
The carrier is hit!
Surface-to-air missiles continued to rise, not only from the stricken Viraat but from the other ships in the fleet as well. The Indian navy had nothing like Aegis, however, to coordinate the defense, and the response was sluggish, befuddled possibly by the surprise and numbers of the attack, or by the fog of enemy ECM jamming on radars and fire control directors.
Another missile was hit short of the Viraat, but a companion skimmed past the fireball and planted itself in the carrier’s side. Tahliani saw the cascade of debris spewing out of the hull opposite where the missile had struck, saw the mushrooming pillar of oily smoke shot through with flame rising from the carrier’s deck. Viraat was burning now, her deck a sheet of flames fed by burst fuel lines and exploding munitions.
It took him several minutes to realize that Viraat had gone off the air, her radio dead. He wondered if Admiral Ramesh was still alive.
The sight of his carrier cloaked in rising smoke was so shocking he scarcely noticed that other ships in the Indian fleet were hit. A pall of smoke was hanging above Vikrant where at least one missile had struck from the southeast, while the cruiser Kalikata was a blazing funeral pyre, dead in the water and listing hard to port.
There was no turning back now. Grimly, Lieutenant Tahliani gathered his squadron — eleven other Sea Harriers that had managed to launch before disaster struck — and turned toward the northwest.
The Sea Harriers, those that survived the next two hours, would be able to land in Kathiawar. But Lieutenant Tahliani was determined now that the American strike aircraft would have no place to land when they returned from their mission over India.
CHAPTER 27
1215 hours, 26 March
Tomcat 200
Tombstone watched the brown-gray blur of the coast approaching. The water beneath him lightened, then flashed into barren, sun-parched hills as he led the Vipers across the beach and into India.
“This is Viper Lead,” he said over the radio. “Feet dry.”
“Eagle Lead,” the voice of the War Eagles’ CO added. “Feet dry.”
One by one, the other strike elements called in, reporting that they were now crossing from sea to land. Desert quickly gave way to marshland as they passed over the Rann of Kutch. Smudges marred the eastern sky. The Hornets of Lucky Strike had already hit the airfields at Bhuj, Jamnagar, and Okha, misdirecting the Indians into thinking the strike’s targets were their military bases near the coast.
A pillar of smoke to the west marked the remnants of an Indian coastal radar, victim of the VAQ-143 Sharks and the HARM missiles. Those High Speed Anti-Radiation ASMS were designed to home on coastal or SAM site radars and clear a path through India’s electronic fences.
That too would help convince the Indians that the targets wer
e air bases and coastal facilities.
“This is Gold Strike Leader,” a voice called over the tactical net.
“Passing Point Bravo.”
Bravo was the code name for the Pakistani border, close to the Nara River. The Intruders of VA-89 would be spreading out now, preparing for their strike.
Tombstone thought about the squadron leader VA-89, Lieutenant Commander Isaac Greene. A big, bluff man called “Jolly Greene” by the other men in the air wing, he was one of several legends in Air Wing 20. During Operation Righteous Thunder, he’d led a strike against North Korean armor and been hit by ground fire from Korcom ZSU-23-4 antiaircraft vehicles.
Somehow, Jolly and his Bombardier-Navigator Chucker Vance had held their shattered Intruder together long enough to reach the sea and eject. A SAR helo had plucked them from the sea and returned them to Jefferson’s deck, half frozen but alive.
Tombstone thought of the other men he’d served with during the past nine months. Coyote, shot down over the Sea of Japan by a Korean Mig and captured.
Then there were Batman and Malibu, holding position now off his port wing. They’d been downed by a SAM over northern Thailand. Ejecting over the jungle, they’d somehow hiked back to civilization, bringing with them vital intelligence.
And there were so many others, men who’d given their lives in combat missions flown, ironically, to protect the peace.
He thought of Army and Dixie, shot down while trying to save the Jefferson from a cruise missile. Despite a search by SAR helos, they’d not been found in the choppy seas just a few miles from the carrier.
They’d not fought for any particular cause or label … though both were patriots in every sense of the word. Like all of the others, Tombstone thought, Army and Dixie had believed in what they were doing but had carried on not for the sake of the mission … but because they couldn’t let down their friends, the other members of their squadrons, their shipmates.
Possibly, Tombstone reflected, that was what every soldier of every war fought for more than home or country: the men fighting with him at his side. They fought not to take the next hill or even to win the war, but because friends and comrades would suffer or die if they did not.
And after that … yeah, there was the mission. Always the mission.
“Viper Leader, Viper Two.”
“Go ahead, Batman.”
“Ho, Stoney. Looks like we’re getting ready to rock and roll. We got bogies, bearing zero-niner-five.”
“We see them,” Tombstone replied, checking his VDI. The bandits were forming up, rising from airfields despite the damage done by the Hornet strikes. Well, that was expected. No strike was one hundred percent effective … especially when the opponent was as powerful and as well-dispersed as this one. “Okay, boys and girls. Stand by to break right on my signal. Weapons are free. Good luck!”
“Listen, guys,” Batman added. “Drinks are on me when we get back to the bird farm!”
“If the bird farm’s still there,” Coyote said. “I’m not sure I like the idea of CAG’s ‘newbies’!”
“Only game in town, Coyote,” Tombstone replied. “They’ll hold the fort for as long as they can fly. Meanwhile, I think the locals are going to be way too interested in us to worry about aircraft carriers.”
“Roger that.”
Tombstone checked left and right once more. VF-95 consisted now of just six aircraft, a fraction of its usual strength: Tombstone and Batman, Coyote and Shooter, Nightmare and Ramrod. All were friends, all comrades in the sharp and bitter air engagements of the past nine months. The chances were good that not all of them would make it back to the carrier when this flight was over.
For perhaps the first time, Tombstone saw the odds and accepted them. He remembered his decision to leave the Navy, made during a string of accidents and near-misses … what? Was it only three days ago? He felt as though he’d lived a lifetime since then. He was no longer certain about that decision. Let me get through this fight, he thought.
Then I’ll decide. But right now, I’m needed here.
“Viper Leader to Vipers,” he called. “On my command … break!”
The six Tomcats of VF-95 banked right in perfect unison, angling toward the Indian fighters rising to meet them.
1218 hours, 26 March
Soviet Fulcrum 515, over the Arabian Sea
Captain Kurasov saw the lumbering aircraft’s approach and felt like crying with pent-up relief.
The bomber known to NATO as the Tu-16 Badger had been a mainstay of Soviet aviation for over three decades. Large, powered by a pair of massive turbojets slung close to the roots of swept-back wings, the Badger had a combat radius of nearly 2,000 miles. Nine major variants served a variety of roles with both the Russian strategic aviation forces and the Russian navy: anti-shipping, ELINT, ECM, conventional medium bomber, reconnaissance, and tanker.
This particular variant, a Badger-A fitted out for the tanker role, had taken off from the air base at Dushanbe among the mountains north of the Afghanistan border three hours earlier. Cruising southwest at its service ceiling of forty thousand feet, it had avoided Pakistan air space by violating Iran’s hostile but poorly watched Baluchistan frontier until it was over the Gulf of Oman, before turning southeast on the final leg of its 2,000 mile journey.
The decision to send the Badger had been made with uncharacteristic haste by the officers of the small Russian naval aviation staff stationed at Dushanbe. Maintained by the Department of SNA to support Russian naval forces operating in the Indian Ocean, the facility had dispatched the tanker within minutes of learning that Kreml’s flight deck was burning, and that no fewer than twelve of the new navalized Mig-29 fighters were aloft at the time.
By loitering over the area and conserving fuel, the Mig-29s had hoped to stay airborne until the tanker reached them. They had the endurance … barely. They’d used lots of fuel during their launch, and they’d not begun flying conservatively until after the cruise missile hit Kreml at 0859. After more than three and a half hours aloft, the Mig squadron was running on fumes.
Captain Kurasov looked at the fuel gauge on his console. Things were desperate. His squadron was down to ten now. Uritski and Denisov had run dry minutes ago. The first to launch, they’d been the first to run out of fuel with no place to land, ejecting into the sea close by the American carrier. Both men had been rescued by one of Jefferson’s helicopters.
That would be the fate of the rest of the Migs soon, if they could not get refueled in time. Kreml’s flight deck was still a ruin of twisted metal and debris, though the fires were out now, at last report.
Attempting to land on the American carrier was out of the question.
There were too many technical variables, too many differences in the technology. The aircraft did not have the Americans’ ILS equipment for instrument landings and didn’t know how to use American signaling and course-correction techniques—”calling the ball,” as they referred to it.
As a good atheist, Kurasov could not call the appearance of the tanker a godsend. But he was damned glad to see it approach. “Red Soldier, this is Tower,” he said, using the call sign and frequency given him by the new Soviet air control officer on board the Marshal Timoshenko.
“Tower, Red Soldier. We heard you boys were thirsty. Perhaps you would like a small drink, comrades?”
Kurasov grinned. The old communist honorific “comrade” had fallen into disfavor of late among the people of the Commonwealth. Somehow, it had managed to take on an entirely new meaning among those who served in Russia’s armed forces. Comrade. Brother.
“Indeed we would, Red Soldier. Ten baby birds with mouths open wide!”
One by one, the Migs approached the Russian tanker in order of their fuel needs. Each would take only five hundred liters, enough to remain airborne long enough for all of them to slake their thirst in turn. Then they would go through the list again, drinking their fill.
“Tower Leader, this is Tower Three,” the pilot of one
of the other Migs said.
“Go ahead, Tower Three.”
“Tower Leader, we have a message from the American radar plane.”
“Read it.” Tower Three, a young pilot named Lavrov, was the only one of the ten pilots still in the air who spoke passable English. He’d been designated as the go-between with American traffic control.
“They say, “Estimated ten to twelve Indian aircraft approaching from one-six-zero degrees, range eight-five kilometers. Believed to be Sea Harriers from INS Viraat. Intercept and destroy.’”
“”Intercept and destroy,” eh?” He chuckled. “I never thought I would be flying air cover for an American aircraft carrier!”
“Da, Comrade Captain. But their defeat is ours as well.”
That, at least, had been the reasoning used by Fitzgerald, the American carrier Captain. Fitzgerald had been unable to promise the Migs a place to land if they ran out of fuel … but he had, rather eloquently, convinced the Russian aviators that to lose the Jefferson would doom their own ship. If the Indians broke through, they would find the scarred and battered Kreml a tempting target indeed.
It all would have been a moot point if the tanker had not arrived, of course. Sometimes, the fate of whole nations hung upon the unlikely, the incredible.
Like the decision by the SNA staff at Dushanbe to dispatch the Tupolev.
Or by a Russian squadron commander to defend an American nuclear carrier.
“Agreed, Lieutenant Lavrov. Reply: “Will redeploy when fueling is complete.’ They cannot expect us to attack Indian fighters when willpower alone keeps us aloft!”
Ahead, Tower Five began maneuvering toward the refueling boom suspended from the gigantic, swept-wing Tupolev. Kurasov’s orders were to cover the American ships during the strike against India. In a sense, though, he was fighting less for the Americans than for the others of the squadron. If Jefferson was burning, there would be few helicopters to spare for fishing wet Russians from the sea!
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