Batman clenched his fists and glared at the large-screen display.
“Libyans. It’s got to be. Five years ago, you and I would never have
fallen for that feint.”
“Five years ago, we wouldn’t be on some wishy washy presence mission
constrained by political considerations in our own backyard,” Tombstone
snapped. “Damn it. Batman, we blew it. Face it.”
Batman shook his head. “Not yet, we didn’t.” He pointed at the flight
of Tomcats and Hornets inbound on their objective. “Do the
time-distance problem. They’ve got time to dump their ordnance and
engage. It ain’t over until it’s over. Admiral.”
The use of his title snapped Tombstone back to reality. He shifted out
of his emotional reaction to the sudden appearance to the inbound raid
and focused strictly on the tactical scenario. What Batman said was
true. And, with their ordnance dumped, he’d match his flight of
tomcats up against any raid of MiGs.
That the Cubans had surprised him frustrated him no end.
Perhaps what he’d said in anger was true maybe he was too old to be in
command of operational forces. God knows he’d certainly had his taste
of combat, in missions ranging from fighting the Soviets during the
Cold War in the skies of Norway to his most recent foray against them,
repelling a missile launch crew from the Aleutian Islands. Maybe it
was time to step down, give the younger men a chance.
Maybe it was “Admiral Wayne. We need to talk now.” Tombstone drew his
old friend aside to a quiet corner of TFCC. He steepled his fingers in
front of him and gazed at his old wingman, his dark, unreadable eyes
now backlit with frustration. “What’s the first principle of
command.
Batman?”
“Lead from the front,” Batman said promptly. “Don’t ask your troops to
do something that you aren’t willing to do yourself.”
Tombstone nodded. “I’m glad you remember that. Maybe you won’t think
I’m completely crazy, then. Listen, it’s your air wing can I borrow a
Tomcat?”
Batman’s jaw dropped. “Hell, no, you can’t have an aircraft! How long
has it been since you’ve been behind the controls, anyway? Two
years?”
Tombstone shook his head. “Not that long.” He managed a grim smile.
“A three-star draws enough water to catch an occasional refresher FAM
flight, even in SOUTHCOM.
Two weeks, max.”
“But what the hell for?” Batman’s voice had ratcheted up three
notes.
What his old lead was proposing was crazy absolutely insane. Admirals
didn’t fly combat flights they stayed in TFCC and kept the big picture,
drawing on their experience and training to coordinate the many
measures that could and often did go wrong in combat. “You’re of more
value right here than you are in the air.”
Tombstone shook his head again. “No. We’ve got two admirals on board
as it is. You and I both know that I should never have been ordered
out here as task force commander.
You’re more than capable of running your own carrier group, whether or
not it includes an Arsenal ship.”
“But what do we gain by putting you in the air?” Batman asked, tacitly
acknowledging the truth of Tombstone’s statement. “I’ve got a dozen
pilots sitting in ready rooms ready to man up those birds. I hate to
say it, old friend, but they’re a helluva lot sharper in the cockpit
than you are now.
You could have taken them back when we were both flying regularly, but
not now.” Batman shook his head. “No. I can’t see any justification
for this. With all due respect. Tombstone, no.”
“Think about this. Batman.” Tombstone pointed back toward the
large-screen display, then fished in his pocket and pulled out a laser
pointer. He toggled it on and then circled the symbols for the
incoming raid aircraft with a red dot. “We’ve got what looks like
Cubans inbound, right?
Only you and I both know that they’re probably Libyans.
How the hell our satellite surveillance missed them is something we’ll
puzzle out later. But for now, there’s a lot more on the line than
merely air battles and losing aircraft.
We’ve got a whole new foray by a foreign nation into our bathtub down
here, and however this ends up, it’s not going to be pretty. I’m not