His gaze went outside the bridge and to the deck forward, Where the jet-blast deflector was rising behind an F/A-18 Hornet of VFA-161. The deadly little multi-role fighter was squatting over the slot of Cat One as deck handlers in their color-coded jerseys moved about, poking, prodding, checking, readying the aircraft for launch. Steam from the last catapult launch still swirled about the handlers’ legs. A second Hornet shuddered on one of the waist cats further aft as its engines blasted against the unyielding steel of its JBD.
The voices of the Air Boss and his assistants aft in Pri-Fly could be heard over a monitor.
“Cat Four, Four-oh-one, stand by!”
“Thirty seconds. Red. Green on fifteen.”
“Deck clear. Stand by! Stand by!”
“Green!”
A throbbing roar sounded from the carrier’s waist, and the F/A-18 on Cat Four vaulted forward, sweeping past the first Hornet still waiting on Cat One.
19
20
Ketti Dougtes
ARMAGEDDON MODE
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“Four-oh-one airborne.”
“That’s three to go.”
The dance on the deck continued, ponderous, complex, and deadly. Aircraft carrier flight decks were the most dangerous workplaces on Earth. Everything was in motion: men, machines, the deck itself. There were no guardrails if a jet blast caught a man, or if he took a careless step backward. Engines shrieked continually, making speech possible only through the bulky Mickey Mouse ears the directors wore. Jet intakes could suck a man to his death in an instant … or thirty tons of aircraft could break free from an improper tie-down and crush him like a runaway truck.
Fitzgerald worried about his command, about his men. This cruise had strained all of them to the breaking point, and he feared that worse was on the way.
Tired, he thought They’re all tired. He reached up, cocked the ballcap with U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson, CVN-74 emblazoned in gold above me bill to the back of his head, then removed his aviator’s sunglasses so he could nib his eyes. And I’m tired too.
The international situation was worsening . . . fast The cold war between Pakistan and India had just flashed hot
Was this their fourth major war, or their fifth? It was easy to lose track, and it depended, Fitzgerald decided, on just how the skirmishes were counted. This current clash along the Indian-Pakistan border looked like it might blow up into something as nasty as the war of ’71. There were reports of Indian armor gathering along the rim of the Thar Desert, and air strikes at Pakistani Air Force unhs as far west as Karachi. Tensions in me region had been mounting for weeks, the situation serious enough that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had ordered CBG-14 norm from the tiny reprovisioning base on British-owned Diego Garcia to patrol the waters west of the subcontinent of India.
Such orders were typical enough for a U.S. carrier task force, charging the battle group with the protection of American lives and property. Similar orders had taken Jefferson into Sattahip Bay two months earlier during an attempted coup in Thailand. There were thousands of American citizens in both Pakistan and India, everything from diplomats and their staffs to businessmen to guru-chasing remnants of the ’60s at Goa and Kovalum, the “heepies” as native Indians called them. Jefferson’s presence in international waters was a warning to both
governments that the United States could consider military options in order to protect U.S. citizens.
The special orders received four days earlier had diverted Jefferson and the five other vessels of CBG-14 to an imaginary circle on the Indian Ocean three hundred miles south of Karachi, and about one hundred miles southwest of India’s broad, fan-shaped Kathiawar Peninsula. Jefferson would reach that spot, informally labeled “Turban Station,” in another twenty hours. After that . . . well, then things would be up to the Indians and the Pakistanis, and to the new CO of Carrier Battle Group 14.
Fitzgerald made a face as he replaced his sunglasses. He still cfidn’t know what to make of Rear Admiral Charles Lee Vaughn.
On the forward deck, the Hornet was revving its engines to fall afterburner, sending waves of heat shimmering above the ifeck. The white-jacketed Safety Officer was making his final check, signaling the Catapult Officer with an upraised hand.