Ahead, the Hampton Roads Bridge stretched across the horizon, from Hampton on the right to Norfolk on the left. He ‘could see the buildings of Virginia Beach to the south, beyond the gray shape and green wake of the Lawrence Kearny.
The water on every side of the carrier was crowded with small craft, sailboats, cabin cruisers, fireboats, vessels of every size and shape and description out on a glorious April day to welcome America’s most famous nuclear aircraft carrier.
The decision had been made early on to send Jefferson home by the Atlantic route, sparing her jury-rigged hull repairs the uncertainties of a long Pacific crossing. They would be putting into Norfolk’s shipyards for repairs, and the whole crew was looking forward to reunions with families ashore. The Navy had taken care of all of the arrangements for bringing families across the country from California, a logistical evolution as complex as anything in the Indian Ocean.
Of course, sailors with girlfriends or fiancees were out of luck, for the most part. The Navy recognized only legal dependents. But they too would be reunited soon enough. Jefferson’s Exec had already announced that leave and liberty
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policy would be fairly relaxed for the next few weeks. It would be a while before Jefferson went to sea again.
A siren sounded across the water, then another. Other sailors and officers on Vulture’s Row on either side of Tombstone began cheering, waving their hats in response to the salutes from the water. The terror, the uncertainties of the Indian Ocean seemed forgotten.
Tombstone wondered if it had been worth it. So many were not coming back from the Arabian Sea. Army Garrison and Dixie. Over two hundred men aboard the Kreml, which had limped back to its Black Sea port two weeks after the battle. Thirty of Vicksburg’s men, including their Captain. Tombstone had attended the memorial services held for mem in the Med. The Vickie was still at Naples, where she’d steamed slowly into port under her own power.
That Russian pilot, Captain Ivan Andreivich Kurasov, had been honored by a multinational service at sea. He’d died trying to save the American carrier, in what had to be one of the most ironic twists of the entire history of rivalry between the U.S. and Russian navies.
And Admiral Vaughn. Charles Lee Vaughn had died within an hour after arriving in Jefferson’s sick bay, that morning off the coast of Kathiawar. Tombstone still wasn’t sure what he thought of the man. He’d made some undeniable blunders . . . but it looked like the Navy Department had already determined that he was the hero of the Arabian Sea, the strategist who single-handedly had fought superior Indian air and naval forces, and won.
Tombstone wondered how many of die established facts of history were like that, battles won through blunders and ignorance, and painted over later by the politicians and diplomats.
The paint job was still going on. The latest word from Geneva was that a formal peace was being hammered out between India and her neighbor. Tombstone didn’t know how that was going to work out and, in fact, didn’t realty care. CBG-14 had done its part to bring them to the peace table, and that was enough. The word in VF-95’s Ready Room was that the Indians had lost heavily in the raid at the Nara Bridge. While not irreplaceable, the supplies destroyed by the Intruders’ bombs, the bridges knocked out by laser-guided missiles
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; and special ordnance, had set back their timetable for an assault : MI Karachi by at least two weeks.
And after one particular incident in the skies above the Thar Desert, they knew that they did not have two weeks to spare.
Had those four aircraft, identified in satellite photos as
. Pakistani F-16s, been carrying nukes? The Indians weren’t
talking—they’d cordoned off the crash sites—and neither were
the Pakistanis. Odds were they had been, and that Tombstone
‘. and the survivors of his squadron had saved a large percentage
of the six million people living in New Delhi. It was estimated
” that a ten-kiloton nuclear warhead would have killed at least