CARRIER 3: ARMAGEDDON MODE

“Yes, sir. His intelligence officer has things well in hand, sir.”

“He’d damn well better. I don’t want these Russian bastards using diis as an excuse to get their prying claws on Aegis.”

“They’re coming, sir,” die officer with the Mickey Mouse helmet called. There was a stir among the officers and men waiting in the lee of Jefferson’s island. Vaughn could hear a distant, muttering sound in the air that rose rapidly above the calls and last-minute shufflings of the greeting party.

Vaughn moved to where he could see past Bersticer and looked through the open door. The morning sun was still low, and the carrier’s island cast a deep and moody shadow across the middeck where the Russian helo was supposed to land. A mackerel sky still tinged with the reds and oranges of a fiery dawn glowed above the horizon. The thuttering grew louder, more insistent.

The helicopter was one of the new Ka-27s, a boxy-looking machine with the NATO code name Helix. Like other Russian naval helos, it used two counter-rotating main rotors, one set directly above the other, eliminating the need for a tail rotor or boom. Instead, it had a stubby tail with two massive stabilizer fins that, to American eyes, gave it an oddly unbalanced, incomplete look.

144

Keith Douglass

Vaughn watched as it drifted out of the early morning light and was eclipsed by the island’s shadow. The machine hovered for a moment, then settled to the deck with a bounce on four landing wheels, following the guidance of a yellow shirt who brought it in with crisp movements of a pair of bright-colored wands. The red star painted on the stabilizer looked very much out of place on an American carrier deck. Curiously, the machine also had the Aeroflot logo picked out in Cyrillic lettering on its hull. Vaughn remembered that the national airline of the former USSR had close connections with the Russian military services.

“Wait, boys,” Vaughn said as his aides made last-moment adjustments to their uniforms and began to move toward the door. “We’ll let them show themselves first. It’s our carrier, after all.”

As the rotors whined to a halt, U.S. sailors in dress whites were already unrolling a red carpet across the steel deck. The Helix’s cargo compartment door slid open with a bang, as a chief boatswain’s mate raised a bosun’s pipe to his mouth and sounded a piercing, welcoming shrill. Behind him, die ranks of Jefferson’s Marines, resplendent in their red-and-blue Class As, snapped to present arms, and as the pipe’s notes died away, Jefferson’s band crashed into an unrecognizable clashing that the tone-deaf Vaughn could only assume held some meaning for the Russians.

A Russian crewman appeared in the open cargo door, unfolding a metal ladder that extended to the Jefferson’s deck. The helo looked fairly roomy inside. The Helix normally served in the ASW role and would have had little space aboard for passengers. This one, evidently, had been refitted for use as a personnel carrier.

A heavyset man with steel-gray hair and a scowl to match Vaughn’s own stepped down the ladder and onto the carpet, planting his feet on Jefferson’s deck as though defying anyone present to move him. He wore a blue uniform with one large and one slender gold bar on his sleeves and the insignia of a Russian naval kontr-admiral. Three other officers with less gold on their uniforms and caps, with fewer medals on their breasts, emerged from the helo and took their places behind their admiral.

“Show time, Admiral,” Bersticer said.

ARMAGEDDON MODE

145

“Right. Let’s get on with it.” Settling a facsimile of a smile in place, Vaughn followed his chief of staff out through the door and onto the flight deck.

Flight operations had been suspended for the time being, of course, and Jefferson’s roof was strangely quiet and still as Vaughn marched those long twenty yards to where the Helix was parked. He was conscious of the eyes on him. Vulture’s Row, the railed open area high atop Jefferson’s island below the billboard tangle of radar antennae and masts, was crowded with those sailors who’d managed to jockey a ringside seat for themselves. Others watched silently from the walkways around the flight deck’s borders, from the catwalks set along the island’s sides, from vantage points on and under the A-6 Intruders and F-14 Tomcats parked wing by folded wing along the edge of the roof.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *