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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