Flame Out c-4

by Keith Douglass

  He remembered the prison camp, the brutal guards, the beating. They had finished with him and marched him into the yard outside, and there they had prepared him for execution. Julie … he’d held on to thoughts of Julie, and with her picture in his mind he’d accepted the idea of death, but when the guards pulled their triggers the only sound had been the snicking of bolts on empty chambers. A mock execution, designed to break him down …

  Coyote came fully awake with a start, disoriented, confused, soaked with sweat. It took a long moment to get his bearings, to realize he was still in Sick Bay, safe after being fished out of the Atlantic following the ordeal of the battle with the overpowering Russian forces.

  “Hey, Coyote, you okay?” John-Boy asked from the next bed, sitting up and looking concerned.

  “Yeah … yeah, I’m okay,” Grant replied, knowing he sounded anything but convincing. “Just … a bad dream.”

  He shuddered and turned over, unwilling to face John-Boy, but equally unwilling to go back to sleep. He had dreamed much the same dream every night for six months after the end of the Wonsan fighting. He’d spent a long time getting over Korea before finally driving himself to return to the carrier and face his fears, and in the skies over the Indian Ocean he’d proven that he still had the old edge. The dreams had come back from time to time, but over the months they had finally faded away.

  Now he was dreaming again. When his Tomcat had finally given up the ghost he and John-Boy had punched out, close enough to the carrier to make a recovery fairly easy. Still, the same chill waters that had dragged Jolly Greene to his death after the crash on the flight deck had nearly claimed Coyote as well, and would have had it not been for John-Boy’s help. This time help had been close at hand, but the parallels with Korea were still vivid.

  Someday his luck would run out. He would fly out on a mission and never make it back. Like Greene … or Baird … or Stramaglia.

  In that camp in Korea Coyote had thought he’d made his peace with death. After the mock execution, he had truly believed that he was ready to die, and that had made it easier to endure everything that had followed. But he had been given a second life, one that included not just Julie but a new daughter and the chance to start with a clean slate.

  Yet he’d come back to this life, and some day it would take him for its own. He would lose everything and the two people he cared about most would have to go on without him. He wasn’t just playing with his own life, but with theirs.

  That thought hurt worst of all.

  “Coyote?” He rolled over again. It was Tombstone, looking haggard and drawn with a uniform that looked like it had been slept in. “They say you check out fine, Coyote. You’ll be flying again in no time.”

  “Yeah?” He couldn’t muster any enthusiasm.

  Magruder took a step toward him and stopped. “Hey, look, man, I wish I’d been out there with you guys. Maybe if CAG had let me go up there things would’ve been different.”

  “Sure,” Grant said. “You’d be dead and he’d be alive. Hell of a trade, huh?”

  After their confrontation outside CAG’s office Coyote had cooled down enough to realize that Magruder hadn’t deliberately turned his back on him, but the gulf between them was still there. Even as tired as Tombstone plainly was, Coyote could see that same wistfulness in his friend’s eyes. Magruder wanted to recapture something in the past, something he’d lost … the same thing Coyote still had but would gladly have given up in exchange for the chance to live in peace with his family. That gap between the two men could only get wider the way things were going now.

  Tombstone forced a feeble smile and broke the long, awkward silence. “Hey, look, the least you can do is try to bribe me to give you a good efficiency report. I mean, what’s the good of being best buddy to your new CAG if you don’t use it, huh?”

  “Damn it, Stoney, leave me alone!” Coyote exploded. “Just leave me the hell alone!”

  Magruder took a step back, as if recoiling from a blow, and his face grew hard. “I would if I could,” he said harshly. “I’m sorry you seem to think I’ve suddenly become the enemy or something. I never wanted that.” He paused. “I came down here because I needed you. I was thinking about Korea, and I realized how much our friendship always meant to me, how it helped keep me sane sometimes. But even if I can’t have your friendship anymore, I still need you. We’re up against it, Will, and I need help sorting out what to tell the admiral.”

  “I can’t help you with that,” Grant said quietly. He wanted to say something more, to try to explain or apologize, whatever it would take to get past the empty look in Tombstone’s eyes. But Magruder didn’t give him the chance.

  “That dogfight yesterday … it was a good trap, but it didn’t work. The Russians screwed up and didn’t finish you guys off when they probably could have. I want to know why. If we end up going up against them again, I need to be able to make them screw up again and give us a chance to win. Without some kind of edge we’ll never pull it off.”

  “What do you want from me?” Coyote asked. “We fought, we got our asses kicked, the cavalry showed up. That’s all I know.”

  “Come on, Will. You were up there in that dogfight. In command, for all intents and purposes. I wasn’t there, and all I’ve got to go on are the reports from the Hawkeye and a few vague ideas. Why did the Russians pull those planes out?”

  He shrugged, unable or unwilling to come to grips with the question himself. “Ask Batman. Or Ears.”

  “God damn it, Will, I’m asking you! It’s your instincts I need. Your nose for tactics. The Hawkeye report makes it look like they pulled those planes out because our Hornets were forming up over Jeff. Was that it? Were they screening their carrier, or did they just think they didn’t need the overkill to take you guys out? Come on, you must have had some kind of feel for how they were doing. If they were screening their carrier, that means there’s at least one bastard out there who can be bluffed into pulling in his horns on cue. But if it was just a miscalculation of how much strength they needed up there …”

  Grant sat up slowly, frowning, forcing himself to relive the dogfight. “They were doing pretty good,” he said. “They frightened off Tyrone and nailed Trapper. Then the Sukhois bugged out …” He hesitated. “But we’d been doing okay ourselves. If I’d been in charge I wouldn’t have sent off a third of my planes then. Not unless I had to.”

  Magruder looked animated for the first time since he had appeared. “You don’t think it was just a mistake then?”

  “Hell, no,” Coyote answered, trying to muster a smile but failing. “Whoever was in charge up there knew what the hell he was doing. No doubt about it. That bright boy wouldn’t just let go of a whole squadron unless some bigger boy made him. And the only reason I can see for that would be to cover their carrier.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear,” Magruder said. “Thanks, Will … and, uh … I’m sorry. But I needed to know, and you’re still the one whose judgment I know I can trust.”

  “I wish I could,” Coyote muttered. But Magruder was gone, leaving him alone with bitter thoughts.

  1430 hours Zulu (1430 hours Zone)

  Admiral’s Quarters, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  In the Southern Norwegian See

  “It still doesn’t sound good, Commander,” Tarrant said heavily. Across the table, Magruder seemed to slump. The man was plainly dead on his feet, and even though he looked freshly shaven and was dressed in a crisp new uniform, it was obvious he’d been up all night.

  That made his report that much more disturbing. Tarrant knew Magruder had done his best, but he just didn’t have enough of a safety margin in his calculations to convince the admiral that they could do any good.

  It was frustrating. Magruder and his Intelligence Officer had some good ideas for pinning down a large chunk of the Soviet air arm to allow an Alpha Strike to get through, but the carrier’s slender resources just wouldn’t support it. After all, the only way to draw off the Soviet air ca
rrier involved a convincing diversion against the carrier itself, so that meant spreading American resources among at least three different missions.

  “If we could just deal with Orland,” Magruder was muttering darkly. “We might manage it then …”

  Tarrant shook his head. “That’s easy enough, Commander. I don’t even need your planes to take out Orland. No, the real problem is getting enough of a strike in on both the carrier and the landing ships without leaving us so vulnerable that we can’t hold out. We can’t count on hitting them with surface-launched missiles, because Red Banner Northern Fleet’s got enough missile defenses to handle whatever we throw their way. Our only real hope of getting to either target is to get in close with manned aircraft that have a shot at evading their ship-mounted SAMs. But if we keep a squadron to cover the battle group I just don’t see enough planes left to cover two strike forces and carry enough Harpoons and bombs to do any damage.”

  Magruder was nodding slowly. “That’s what I was afraid of, Admiral. If we just had a few more planes … Tomcats to cover the Jeff, one squadron of Hornets to bomb the troopships, one to ride cover …”

  “And you end up sending the Intruders in on Soyuz without an escort. It’s suicide.” Tarrant shook his head. “No, unless you can come up with another squadron by magic, we’re stumped. I think our only choice now is to steer toward Iceland, make it look like we’re trying to skirt their fleet and get in behind them or something. Maybe that’ll draw off Soyuz and enough of Red Banner Northern Fleet to give the Norwegians a shot at doing something themselves.” He sighed. “It was a good effort, Commander. Don’t blame yourself over circumstances beyond your control.”

  “Yes, sir,” Magruder said dully.

  “If we’re going to head any further north I’ll want the ASW patrols increased. We’ll be moving out of the SOSUS net soon and I want the sub threat covered. That means more work for your Vikings, but-“

  “Vikings?” There was a gleam in Magruder’s eyes. “Hold on a minute, Admiral. There’s one idea we didn’t explore …”

  CHAPTER 21

  Saturday, 14 June, 1997

  0759 hours Zulu (0759 hours Zone)

  CVIC, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  In the Norwegian Sea

  The folding chairs in CVIC had been taken down this morning, replaced instead by television cameras and a team of technicians from the OE Division. Admiral Tarrant watched them checking over their equipment one last time as he waited to one side of the lectern for the closed-circuit broadcast to begin.

  The director, a first class petty officer, stepped forward and started the countdown. “Ten seconds, people,” he said, pausing and glancing at his stopwatch. “And five … and four … and three …” Then he stepped back and pointed at Master Chief Petty Officer Mike Weston, Jefferson’s grizzled Command Master Chief. As Chief of the Boat Weston was a crucial link between officers and enlisted men. He hosted a daily program of announcements and general information … but today he was giving it up so that Tarrant could make his own announcement.

  “It’s 0800 hours,” Weston began. “And time for this morning’s edition of Attention on Deck. Today, instead of the usual announcements, we’ll be hearing from The Man himself, Admiral Tarrant.” He paused, stepping back from the podium. “The admiral.”

  Tarrant stepped forward and looked toward the camera. His prepared speech began to scroll across the teleprompter.

  “Most of you know by now that the situation here in the Norwegian Sea has turned serious in the last few days,” he said without preamble. “Two days ago the Soviet Union launched a major attack on the U.S. airbase at Keflavik, Iceland, and when Jefferson fighters attempted to intercept the attackers they were ambushed by Russian planes. The fighting on Thursday was a major escalation in hostilities, and proves beyond a doubt that the Soviets are willing to go to any lengths, even outright war with the United States, to pursue their Scandinavian invasion.”

  He paused. Words were hardly adequate in this situation. American lives had been lost, and it was a dead certainty that more would die in the days ahead. A discussion of global strategy and politics couldn’t convey the realities of war, the danger that each new incident would lead inevitably to the ultimate horror of a nuclear exchange. He felt he had to give these men some idea of what they faced, but listening to the bald words he wondered if anything he could say would prepare them for what was to come.

  “Our orders, confirmed overnight by the President himself, are to support the Free Norwegian forces around Bergen until other U.S. forces can be deployed there. I can’t pretend this task will be an easy one. This battle group is up against the full strength of the Soviet Union’s Red Banner Northern Fleet, a powerful force of ships and planes backed by ground-based air and lurking attack subs. The odds against us are steep, and before my discussion with the President I was forced to consider the possibility of withdrawing from these waters on my own discretion in order to protect the lives entrusted to my command.

  “But retreating in the face of Soviet aggression now would expose our allies in Norway to certain defeat, and the successful consolidation of Russian control over Scandinavia would destabilize all of Europe. As long as there is any chance that we can make a difference in this conflict I intend for Carrier Battle Group 14 to remain in the Norwegian Sea and make every effort to hamper the enemy advance. It is absolutely essential that we do everything we can in support of the President’s policy of defending Norway from aggression.”

  If the President had only reacted faster, Tarrant thought bitterly, things might not be so bad now. The President’s so-called policy had been forced on him by events, and even now, judging by what Tarrant had heard in his voice, Connally wasn’t eager to pursue this confrontation. But that decision wasn’t his to make anymore. The Russian attack on Keflavik made continued hesitation impossible.

  Magruder was going ahead with plans for an Alpha Strike, and after his talk with the President Tarrant had dispatched orders committing the battle group’s two attack subs, Galveston and Bangor, to action. There would be no turning back, not this time.

  “We will carry out this policy,” he continued out loud. “It will call for maximum effort from every man in this battle group. The Air Wing staff is even now putting together a detailed plan of operations which we will put into effect against the Soviets as soon as conditions are ripe. This could come tomorrow, or it might not happen for weeks. We have no way of being certain when the best time for a counter strike against them will present itself. Therefore we must be prepared to act on short notice, and that will require intensive preparations on the part of all of us. I want to emphasize that each of you, no matter what your rating or your job, has a vital role to play in this operation, in the very life of this ship and this battle group. There are no unimportant jobs, and I need each and every one of you to give me a hundred and ten percent in the days ahead. Together we can show the Russians that they cannot drive America from the world’s oceans. Together we will show them once and for all that no power on Earth can suffice to ruin the proud name of Jefferson.” He paused and looked straight into the camera. “Thank you all … and God keep you.”

  1215 hours Zulu (1215 hours Zone)

  Vulture’s Row, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  In the Norwegian Sea

  Willis E. Grant leaned against the rail and looked out across Jefferson’s flight deck, shivering a little despite the warm afternoon sun.

  He had been discharged from Sick Bay two hours earlier, along with John-Boy. Doctor Chapman had been reluctant to release them at first, but with the Air Wing needing every man they could muster he had eventually given in. Coyote was glad to be out of the ward, but in a way he wished Chapman had been less inclined to give in to pressure from the admiral to certify his patients as ready for a full return to duty.

  If the Medical Department had kept him out of the coming fight, Coyote would have loudly protested … but something inside him would have welcomed the excuse
not to go back up there again. Now he had to make a choice on his own, and it wasn’t a choice he relished.

  Down on the flight deck a Tomcat was roaring off the number-two catapult. He recognized the markings identifying it as one of the War Eagles, VF-97, the carrier’s second F-14 squadron. The tail number was 101, but he knew that Commander Alex Caton, the squadron’s CO, was in the squadron’s offices hard at work on his contribution to the plan of battle for the Alpha Strike Magruder was organizing.

  The activity on the deck showed just how intense the preparations for action had become. From his vantage point above Pri-Fly Coyote could see work crews in their colored jerseys swarming over a line of parked aircraft, Hornets and Intruders for the most part. Further down the flight deck more handlers were servicing all ten of the S-3B Vikings from the King Fishers. It was odd to see the whole sub-hunting squadron on deck at the same time. The carrier’s helos would be doing extra duty looking for Soviet submarines until the Vikings returned to duty again.

  The thought of helicopters made Coyote glance off the port side of the carrier, where the Ready SAR helo was keeping station. It sparked unpleasant memories.

  He turned away and watched the dance on the deck again. An EA-6B Prowler was coming in on final approach. Built on the Intruder’s versatile frame, the Prowler was an Electronic Warfare aircraft designed to jam Russian radar and communications signals. The scuttlebutt Coyote had heard below decks maintained that the five Prowlers from the VAQ-143 Sharks had been doing rotating flight duty since early the night before, doing their best to make Russian lives miserable.

  It was an all-out effort, just as the admiral had indicated in his closed-circuit TV speech. He still didn’t know any details of the plan Magruder was putting together, but he knew any fight with the Soviets would be a desperate one. And after the last fight, Coyote wasn’t sure he could face another one.