The thunderous shock wave raised a geyser of water against the sky. Before the geyser had collapsed, the sky was alive with the contrails of more missiles, still bearing on the carrier. Phoenix missiles sweeping in from the north connected with the ship-killers, one by one. There were more explosions, and missiles died.
But they weren’t dying fast enough.
0741 hours, 26 March
CATCC, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
“That’s a grand slam! Splash another one!”
Tombstone looked up as Batman’s voice rasped over the CATCC speaker. He could imagine the tension in the cockpit of the F-14 now, as the RIO monitored the horde of airborne targets.
“Tomcat, Two-one-six, roger your kill,” a CATCC controller said. But more missiles were coming in fast.
“Two-oh-one,” Army Garrison’s voice added. “Phoenix away.”
Hurt twisted at Tombstone’s gut. Although carrier aviators did not always fly the same aircraft, one plane in the squadron was generally thought of as “theirs.” Further, there were no hard and fast rules to the practice, but tradition reserved the “01” aircraft to the squadron’s leader. As skipper of VF-95, Tombstone generally flew Tomcat 201. Today, with his XO standing in for him, Army was flying the 201 bird.
He looked across die room at CAG. Marusko had just replaced a telephone handset and was now holding a microphone to his mouth. “Now hear this,” he said, his voice sounding over the bulkhead speakers. “I’ve just had word from
182
Kettti Douglass
ARMAGEDDON MODE
183
Commander Barnes. The admiral is about to touch down on the Vicksburg and will be assuming control of the battle from there momentarily. Meanwhile, he has confirmed weapons free. As of now, the squadron is on full Battle Alert Status. Current ROEs are suspended and weapons are free. That is all.”
“BARCAP Two is ready to fire,” a sailor reported. “They’re at extreme range.”
“How long before they get into position?”
“A few minutes, sir.”
“We don’t have a few minutes. How long before the Alert Five gets up?”
Tombstone glanced up at the PLAT camera suspended from the CATCC overhead. The view was forward from the island, toward Cats One and Two on the bow. Deck crewmen were prepping a pair of Tomcats for launch, “Shooter” Rosten-kowski in his 248 bird, Coyote in the Tomcat Army usually flew, number 204. The squat, boxy, yellow-painted tractors called mules were hauling the F-14s up to the catapult shuttles.
“Another two-three minutes on the Alert Five,” Tombstone called.
“Closest missile now at twelve miles,” a technician at one of the consoles said. “We now have four positive Phoenix locks, closing. …”
“They’re suckering us,” CAG said suddenly, as though die thought had just struck him. “Damn them, they’re suckering us into eating up our outer line!”
Tombstone had already arrived at the same conclusion. Each of the four Tomcats aloft on CAP had been armed with six long-range Phoenix missiles. Two of the F-14s—the planes of Barcap Two—were far to the north, badly positioned to defend against the Osa-launched attack from the southeast.
The Osas carried four Styx ship-killers apiece. Jefferson’s CAP could knock out those first sixteen missiles easily enough, but they would then have just eight AIM-54-Cs left between them if the Indian aircraft launched a major assault. Besides the Alert Five, the carrier was preparing for an emergency launch, hoping to get every Tomcat it could into the air before the attackers could get close enough to fire more ship-killers, but the first wave of Styx missiles would arrive long before all of the carrier’s defenders could get aloft.
And even for missiles not yet launched, it would be a deadly
race, and with the numbers arrayed against the CBG, it was a race that the Americans were certain to lose.
Modern naval strategy placed the all-important aircraft carrier at the center of the task force inside a series of concentric rings. Each ring defined a volume of airspace, called a task force air defense zone, extending from sea level to 90,000 feet. The outer ring, reaching out to one hundred nautical miles from the carrier, was designated the aircraft defense zone. The middle ring covered an area out to forty miles from the carrier and was called the missile defense zone. The inner ring, a speck of sea only two miles high and reaching five nautical miles from the carrier, was the point defense zone. The Tomcat CAP was responsible for the air defense zone. The missile defense zone was covered by missile fire from the ships. Point defense was handled by short-range missile fire and by the Phalanx Catling guns mounted on each vessel.