CARRIER 10: ARSENAL By: Keith Douglass

Twenty minutes later. Admiral Magruder was on the telephone to his

nephew. Over a highly secure circuit, he outlined the gist of the

President’s request. “Make it work, Stoney,” he concluded. “You don’t

have to like it, but make it work.” i SIX Thursday, 27 June (0800

Local (+5 GMT) Tomcat 201

With the Washington-mandated safety stand-down over, Jefferson

immediately returned to full flex-deck operations.

The Cubans continued to clutter up the sky around the ship with sponges

of Fulcrums, but popular opinion had it that Admiral Wayne was not

likely to allow that state of affairs to continue. The admiral had

made it clear that current operations had two main objectives: to

locate and retrieve Major Hammersmith and to obtain up-to-date eyeball

intelligence on Cuban air defense capabilities.

No one had to tell the VF-95 Viper squadron what the latter information

was for. They were going in. It was just a question of how and

when.

The demands on the flight schedule allowed even the staff pilots to

grab some stick time.

“You have any idea what we’re doing up here?” Bird Dog asked. His

index finger was beating out a staccato rhythm on the throttles.

“I know as much as you do.” Resignation tinged the normally taciturn

RIO’s voice. “They say launch, I launch.

They say go north of Cuba and look tactical, I give you fly-to points:

What else do we have to know?”

“What the hell we’re doing here would help,” Bird Dog snapped. He

yanked the Tomcat into a sharp right-hand turn without warning, shoving

Gator hard against the seat back.

“Hey! What the hell was that about?” Gator’s words were slightly

muffled as he forced them out between clenched teeth. “Give me some

warning next time, asshole.”

“Sorry, shipmate, just thought I saw something up ahead, that’s all.”

Bird Dog eased quickly out of the turn and turned gently to port,

putting it back on its original heading. Why the hell had he done

that? If he was honest with himself, he had to admit that Gator didn’t

deserve it. He’d known the unexpected turn would subject the RIO to

massive G-forces, and might even have caused him to black out.

There was no reason to take it out on Gator. It wasn’t his RIO’s fault

that he was being treated like a less than completely essential part of

the battle group. Hell, he ought to be grateful that he was flying,

although his orders to proceed from Jefferson to north of Cuba and to

orbit on a CAP station with two other F-14s seemed a waste of gas and

time. Time he could have better spent sleeping, dreaming about the

beautiful Callie. He sighed as images of his fiancee well, almost his

fiance erose in his mind, as they were wont to do at the slightest

provocation.

Who would’ve ever thought he’d be torn between dreaming about a woman

and flying? A year ago, flying would have won hands down.

“We’re a diversion,” Gator said. “There are four Tomcats and four

Hornets on Alert Five right now. Since when does the carrier roust

that many aviators out of bed simply to support a grab-ass mission?”

“A diversion? Why? There’s nothing going on around here.”

Gator sighed. “Of course there’s not. It’s a diversion, stupid. A

diversion happens somewhere besides the main action. Didn’t they teach

you that at the War College?”

“The War College was a bit more sophisticated than that,” Bird Dog said

stiffly.

The yearlong curriculum concentrated on operational art, with many

theories contrasted to old-style campaign planning. Students at the

Naval War College looked at the big picture: how best to use military

force to achieve political objectives, what composition of large-scale

forces were most appropriate to applying pressure to an opponent’s

center of gravity. They didn’t get down into the grass, as the

professors there were fond of saying. Individual platform

capabilities, weapon ranges, and tactics were the province of more

junior courses, such as Tactical Action Officer School or even Fighter

Weapons Course Top Gun at Naval Station Miramar. The War College

students were expected to be beyond that, to concentrate on the

high-level planning they’d be expected to do as members of a deployed

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