“Ho, Stoney!” Batman said. “Help me straighten out this
guy.”
“Hopeless,” Tombstone said. “You should*ve known that when you married him.”
“Yeah, I know, but where there’s life, there’s hope, even for the brain-dead. This guy’s trying to tell me that the Russians aren’t a threat anymore.”
Malibu took a sip from a can of soda. He was, in his own words, a Coke-aholic who needed a can of the stuff to get jump-started in the morning. “Seems to me they’re having enough trouble just holding this commonwealth together without trying to project their air- and seapower all over the world,” he said.
“He’s got a point there, Batman,” Tombstone said. “When was the last time we got buzzed by a Bear?”
53
54
KflflhDougbss
“Just before Korea, but that’s beside the point The Iron Curtain was lifted for a while, but it fell again with a thud when things started going sour inside their borders, and now who knows what will happen?”
“Which means they’re too busy to bother with us or the Indian Ocean,” Malibu insisted. “Look at the record, man! They gave Cam Ranh back to the Vietnamese. Yemen decided it didn’t want Soviet ships at Socotra. They’re not even on particularly good terms with the Indians anymore. If this keeps up, they’re not going to have any overseas bases at all. I don’t think they’re going to be bothering us much from now on.”
“Yeah? Wake up and take a look at this.” Batman turned and slapped a map that was tacked up to a bulletin board on die nearby bulkhead. It was a full-color, l:4,500,000-scale map showing most of the Indian Ocean from Malaysia to Somalia. The Indian subcontinent jabbed southward like a huge, blunt dagger. A black line started at Diego Garcia far south of the dagger’s tip and extended north along the western coast of India before cutting sharply to the west. Dates written in along the way traced the battle group’s progress over the past week. Jefferson’s current position was marked, two hundred miles south of the Indian-Pakistan border.
Six hundred miles southwest of Turban Station, off of Oman on the Arabian Peninsula, another line had been roughed in, this time in red. It showed the day-by-day recorded positions of the (former) Soviet Indian Ocean Squadron, SOVINDRON. A week before, those ships had been moving slowly south down the Red Sea. Now they had rounded the corner at the Gulf of Aden and were steaming all-out toward the Pakistan coast.
Batman tapped the squadron’s last charted position. “Trouble projecting their seapower? You can say that when they have a fair-sized task force just six hundred miles over the horizon? Man, I’d call that some kind of major power projection!”
“Trying to assert Commonwealth power?” Malibu crumpled the empty aluminum can and dropped it in a wastebasket. “Or they’re looking after their people here, like we are. Mark my words, guys. We’ll be out looking for work if mis keeps up!”
“What do you say to that, Stoney?” Batman asked. “Ready for a job with United?”
The joke stung. Tombstone managed to keep the easy smile
ARMAGEDDON MODE
55
on his face. “Not just yet,” he said. “Not if they won’t let me pull an inverted dive in a 727.”
They laughed as he slumped into a seat For him, the question was dead serious.
His eyes went to the lieutenant j.g. working on the squadron’s greenie board. Every ready room had one, a large chart with the names of all of the aviators in the squadron, and squares colored in with magic markers where his performance for the past month was recorded. A green square meant the LSO had graded his trap as “OK,” the highest praise possible for an excellent pass or for timely corrections of minor deviations. Yellow was for “fair.” No color meant “no grade,” meaning the trap had been dangerous to people and planes on the deck. Red with a C stood for “Cut,” a landing so unsafe it could have resulted in disaster. The squares were divided into two or three sections for multiple passes, with a “B” signifying a bolter, or missed trap, and a “W” a wave-off. A small black triangle up in one comer meant the trap had been made at night.