And if they did, that carrier battle group now lying over the horizon to the south would be a tempting target A nuclear super-carrier, the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson . . . now she would be a worthy target for some eager Indian pilot!
Lieutenant Colonel Ramadutta watched the Pakistani Falcon burn as it tumbled toward the blue waters of the Indus River far below.
CHAPTER 1
0945 hours, 23 March Tomcat 201
Lieutenant Commander Matt Magmder, running name “Tombstone,” eased the throttles back on his F-14D Tomcat and put the aircraft into a gentle, twelve-degree port turn. Sunlight glared off the surface of the water thirty thousand feet below, a dazzling blaze of white light mirroring the tropical sun above the vast emptiness of the Indian Ocean. The sky overhead was as huge and as empty as the sea, a piercing blue impossible to describe to anyone who’d not seen it from the vantage point of an interceptor’s cockpit
To starboard, a second F-14 hung suspended between sea and sky, its modex number 216 visible on its nose just ahead of the cockpit and the American star-and-bar insignia. Lieutenant Commander Edward Everett Wayne, “Batman” to his squadron mates, was Tombstone’s wingman for this patrol.
“Viper Two, Viper Leader,” Tombstone called over his radio, using the tactical frequency. “What do you say, Batman? Let’s tank up.”
“Roger that, Stoney,” Batman’s voice replied. “It’s going to be a long, dry morning.”
The two Tomcats had been catapulted from the deck of the U.S.S. Jefferson only minutes before. Their operational plan called for them to top off their tanks from a KA-6D, then assume BARCAP—BARrier Combat Air Patrol—between the ships of the carrier battle group and the unseen coastline a little more than five hundred miles to the north. They would be airborne for about four hours.
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Keith Douglass
Bringing the stick back to center, Tombstone switched channels and spoke into the helmet mike once more. “Home-plate, Homeplate, this is Viper Leader,” he said. “Do you copy, over?”
“Viper Leader, Homeplate,” a voice replied in his helmet phones. “Go ahead.”
“Homeplate, we’re on station Bravo Sierra four-niner at angels three-oh. We could use a drink right about now. Whatcha got in the way of a Texaco, over?”
“Viper Leader, Homeplate. Come to heading two-seven-four at angels two-seven. We’ve got some guys up there with a six-pack waiting for you. Call sign Tango X-Ray One-one.”
“Roger dial, Homeplate.” He dropped the Tomcat into a new turn, Batman’s F-14 pacing him a hundred feet off his starboard wing. “Viper now coming to two-seven-four.”
“Ah, Homeplate,” Tombstone’s Radar Intercept Officer added. “I have a single contact bearing two-seven-four at fifteen mites. Confirm that’s our target, over.”
“Roger. That’s your Texaco, boys. No other traffic. Have a cool one on us.” The voice from Jefferson’s Carrier Air Traffic Control Center sounded calm, almost bored. CATCC—the acronym was universally pronounced “cat-sea”—was tasked with keeping track of everything going on in the skies around the supercarrier beyond the radius commanded by Pri-Fly and the Air Boss.
The way things were going now, Tombstone thought, that job could quickly become more important than ever. That morning’s situational briefing had not been encouraging.
“Affirmative, Homeplate. Viper out.” Tombstone switched his mike to the Tomcat’s intercom system. “Well, CAG? How’s it feel to strap on an airplane again?”
“Pretty good, Tombstone,” Commander Stephen Marusko replied over the ICS from the back seat. “I thought I was going to forget what it was like.”
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.