Marusko was the officer in charge of Jefferson’s air wing, CVW-20, over ninety aircraft and three thousand men. His title of CAG was a holdover from the days when it stood for Commander Air Group. Recent changes in die way the Navy ran things had emphasized the administrative part of the job at the expense of flying. Nowadays, a CAG started off as an aviator, like Tombstone, in command of a carrier fighter
ARMAGEDDON MODE 9
squadron, then was rotated stateside for a tour in Washington, becoming, as Marusko put it, a prime, Grade-A desk jockey. After that he went back to sea as a carrier’s CAG.
Administrative duties or not, he was still expected to fly with his men, but the press of work—paperwork for the most part—always seemed to get in the way. Tombstone’s usual RIO, a young j .g. named Jerry Dixon, had been given a medical downcheck the day before, and Tombstone had offered CAG a ride as backseater at morning briefing. Marusko had been almost embarrassingly eager for the chance. Contrary to popular belief, Navy RIOs were neither permanently assigned to a specific aviator, nor were they “failed pilots.” Experienced aviators took the back seat of Navy Tomcats from time to time to log out some flight time, or simply to keep their hand in running the F-14’s complex radar and communications systems.
But it might not be much longer before airborne CAGs were a thing of the past The Navy was experimenting with a new way of running things, introducing the “SuperCAG” concept that would make CAG a captain’s billet and let him share responsibilities with the carrier’s skipper.
And won’t that be fun, Tombstone thought with an ironic grin beneath his oxygen mask. The poor bastard might never get to fly anything but his desk.
All of this had set Tombstone to thinking. He was the CO of the Tomcat squadron designated VF-95, socially known as the Vipers. Almost thirty years old, Tombstone had lived for carrier aviation since the day he’d shown up for flight training at Pensacola. Before long he’d be up for promotion to commander, and that Stateside billet on his way to a CAG slot of his own. All along, he’d been moving up the Navy career ladder, the goal of CAG clearly in sight. And after that . . . well, to be skipper of an aircraft carrier, you had to have served a stretch as CAG. There were only fifteen carrier command billets in the whole U.S. Navy and openings were rare, but Tombstone had never really entertained doubts that he would make it … some day.
But die doubts were with him now. Not whether he would make it, but whether he should even try. He had some tough decisions coming up.
10
“Viper Leader, Viper Two,” Batman said over the tactical frequency. “Tally-ho! Tanker ahoy at twelve o’clock low.”
“I see him,” Marusko said.
Tombstone glanced up from his controls and caught the flash of sun glint off an aircraft canopy far ahead. “Got him, Batman. We’ll take first crack. Breaking left.”
“Copy, Leader.”
Tombstone slid the F-14 into a left-hand barrel roll while CAG was still speaking, going inverted and following his starboard wing over in a long, sideways fall that bottomed out at 27,000 feet. Ahead, the KA-6D tanker plowed toward the horizon at a steady 250 knots.
“Tango X-ray One-one,” he called. “Viper Two-oh-one. Coming in for some of your basic I&I.”
“Affirmative, Two-oh-one. Come on in. We’re sweet, hot, and willing.”
I&I, intercourse and intoxication, was the Navy man’s reworking of die more traditional R&R. Much of the slang and banter associated with air-to-air refueling carried a strongly sexual content, for obvious reasons. Sweet meant they had fuel.
The KA-6D was a conventional A-6 Intruder converted into a fuel tanker, a “Texaco” in Navy jargon. With 500-gallon drop tanks slung beneath wings and fuselage plus what was carried on board, it could transfer up to 21,000 pounds of fuel—over 3,200 gallons—to other aircraft. As Tombstone approached the tanker from the rear, the tanker extended a fifty-foot boom from its belly, a slender hose tipped by a basket that resembled an iron mesh shuttlecock.