were written down on a three-by-five card and passed from one to the
other as each took his turn at the conn.
Generally, senior surface officers aboard the ship casually turned up
on the bridge, keeping a close eye on the evolutions that their seniors
in rank but not in experience strived to master. It was never an overt
thing, no. The touchy ego of a jet jock would hardly tolerate
supervision by a surface warfare officer, but Dunway damned well knew
he felt better being below decks when his colleagues were keeping a
careful eye on the Airedales.
At least it wouldn’t happen on his watch. The underway replenishment
was scheduled for 2100 that night, long after he would have gone off
duty. This was merely a briefing session to make sure all of the jet
jocks could find their way to the bridge and successfully locate the
glassed-in area from which they would supervise the evolution. He
sighed.
Life just wasn’t fair.
He looked forward and stared at the ocean in front of the carrier. The
seas were running light today, maybe a sea state of two or so, he
estimated. Just a few whitecaps, enough to make every detail of the
swells visible. Not that heavy seas would have bothered Jefferson.
she was capable of launching aircraft and fulfilling her missions in
all but hurricane force winds and seas. Even then, the ship would be
in no danger, unlike her smaller brethren.
“Sir! Ready to commence flight operations.” Dunway turned toward the
conning officer, who had just received that notification from the air
boss.
“Very well. Any contacts in the area?”
The conning officer shook his head. “A few small pop up contacts to
the south, that’s about it. Our current course puts us with thirty
knots of wind across the deck at zero-zerozero relative.”
Ideal winds for flight operations. The extra wind across the deck
would give all aircraft the additional lift they needed to get airborne
off the cat shot. Any more, and they might have control problems
immediately after the shot; any less, and the heavier aircraft such as
the Tomcats wouldn’t be happy.
“Very well,” he repeated, and turned back to the SPA250 radar repeater
located in the middle of the bridge. He was certain the conning
officer had checked with Combat, but it never hurt to verify the
tactical situation oneself.
It was as the conning officer had said. There were two intermittent
contacts to the south, carefully annotated and being tracked by the
junior officer of the deck, who was standing nervously at his side,
white grease pencil clutched in his sweaty palm.
Up ahead, the sea looked clear. Excellent. While a fine ship, even if
under the command of aviators, Jefferson was hardly as nimble and
maneuverable as her battle group escorts. The 120,000 tons of steel
took more than a few minutes to veer from her course. While she would
be flying the Foxtrot pennant to indicate she was conducting flight
operations, thus giving her the right-of-way over other ships on the
ocean, it was common for smaller foreign vessels to ignore the danger
signs. He wondered sometimes at the sanity of the other ships and
boats, tracking nonchalantly and brazenly across her path. Didn’t they
realize that this ship could no more avoid them than a train could stop
in time to miss a car parked on the tracks directly ahead?
Something caught his attention on the screen, and he looked back down
at it. What was it there. A small fleck of green flickered dead
ahead.
He frowned and motioned to the JOOD-Junior Officer of the Deck.
“What’s that?”
“It’s not very solid for a contact, is it?” the ensign said,
nervousness in his voice. “Combat’s not reporting anything.”
“Don’t rely on Combat,” Dunway said sharply. “That’s why we have a
repeater here two sets of eyes are always better than one. Get on the
horn and ask them what they’re seeing on raw video.”
The JOOD nodded and reached for the toggle switch to the bitch box. He
posed the question to the senior officer in Combat and waited for a
reply, tapping his fingers nervously on top of the gray box that housed