CARRIER 7: AFTERBURN By Keith Douglass
CARRIER 7: AFTERBURN By Keith Douglass
Synopsis:
For the first time in U.S. naval history, an American carrier battle
group–CBG-14–is cruising in the Black Sea. Its mission, although
vague, is to help keep the peace in the Crimean as the Russian civil war
rages on. But the admiral of the Black Sea fleet is not at all pleased
that an American naval force is in the Black sea–his own backyard–and
makes plans to destroy it. Meanwhile, the General in charge of the
Crimean Military District decides to turn the whole area over to the UN
in an attempt to keep the peace and, before long, fighting breaks out
between various factions of the Soviet military and CBG-14 is trapped in
the middle of it. 7th novel in the “Carrier” series, 1996.
Jove Books New York Copyright (C) 1996 by Jove Publications, Inc.
Also by Keith Douglass
The CARRIER SERIES:
CARRIER CARRIER 2: VIPER STRIKE CARRIER 3: ARMAGEDDON MODE CARRIER 4:
FLAME-OUT CARRIER 5: MAELSTROM CARRIER 6: COUNTDOWN CARRIER 7: AFTERBURN
THE SEAL TEAM SEVEN SERIES:
SEAL TEAM SEVEN SPECTER NUCFLASH THE CARRIER NOVELS CARRIER The North
Korean Navy has captured a U.S. Intelligence ship in international
waters. They dare Washington to retaliate. The U.S. response? The
ultimate military power play. ..
VIPER STRIKE A renegade Chinese fighter group punctures Thai
airspace–the spearhead of a giant invasion force streaming across the
Burmese border. The skies are about to blow wide open. ..
ARMAGEDDON MODE India and Pakistan are on the verge of nuclear
destruction, and Carrier Battle Group Fourteen must shift into
Armageddon Mode–the ultimate battle by land, air, or sea. ..
FLAME-OUT After a hard-line military takeover, the Soviet Union is
reborn. Norway is invaded. Finland is crushed. And the President orders
Carrier Battle Group Fourteen to smash the Soviet strike force at all
costs. ..
MAELSTROM The Soviet occupation of Scandinavia continues as Carrier
Battle Group Fourteen struggles to keep up in conventional weapons
combat, and avert all-out war. ..
COUNTDOWN Carrier Battle Group Fourteen must launch marine and aerial
assaults to prevent the deployment of Russian Typhoons. They are the
largest submarines in the world. And they may have nukes. ..
PROLOGUE
Friday, 30 October 1047 hours (Zulu +3)
Office of the Commander, Black Sea Fleet Sevastopol Naval Base, Crimean
Military District Vitse-Admiral Nikolai Sergeivich Dmitriev looked up
from his desk as his aide slipped into the office without knocking. The
young Starshiy-leytenant looked tired, drawn, like a man who hadn’t
slept for a week. That might well have been true, Dmitriev reflected as
he studied the man. There weren’t many loyalists left with the Black Sea
Fleet these days, and the officers who had stayed at their posts were
all working double and triple shifts to try to keep the fleet in
something approaching a state of readiness.
A losing cause, Dmitriev thought bitterly. Transfers, desertions, and
outright mutinies had left the Black Sea Fleet crippled.
“Comrade Admiral,” Starshiy-Leytenant Anton Ivanovich Kulagin said
formally. “There is word from the Krimsky Komsomolets. The American
battle group is entering the Dardanelles.”
Dmitriev looked away. “So it has finally happened,” he said quietly, not
bothering to hide his own fatigue. Even though he’d expected the news,
the confirmation was bitter medicine indeed, confirmation that the
Motherland had fallen yet another notch in power and prestige. An
American aircraft carrier battle group would soon sail where no such
force had ever sailed before, in the waters of the Black Sea.
Once, the Chemoje More had been a Russian lake. Not even the Nazis had
placed a fleet of any importance in those waters. To find a comparable
time in history would require looking back a century and a half, to the
days when British, French, and Turkish invaders had besieged Sevastopol
in the Crimean War.
It was the end of an era. The West might have proclaimed that the Rodina
was no longer a superpower after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 1991
coup against Gorbachev, and the end of Lenin’s Soviet Union, but this
was the final, the undeniable proof of the fact, when the Motherland
could no longer even defend these waters that had for so long been her