Magruder thought about it. “Can’t speak for Admiral Vaughn, Mr. President. I don’t really know him. Captain Fitzgerald might have a fit. But he’ll follow orders.”
“Will the battle group be able to work with the Russians?”
‘ ‘Depends on a lot of things.” He thought about the question for a moment. The real unknown was the Russians. Moscow, he remembered, had openly supported the Indian-Sri Lankan Peace Zone proposal in the Indian Ocean, probably because they assumed that the idea would never work and it made a convenient point of Third-World-pleasing diplomatic opposition against the United States. Of course, a lot had changed in the world since Brezhnev’s day. “I guess it’s really up to the Russians,” he added. “Their willingness to exchange codes with us, stuff like that. But for our part . . . Yes, sir. Our people will make it work.”
“Good.” The President nodded. “Good, because I’ve already told Druzhinin to put the plan in the works for his people. And I’ll have the Joint Chiefs draft orders for Admiral Vaughn this afternoon.”
Magruder nodded. He felt suddenly very small, knowing that the decisions being made in this office were those that could save or destroy thousands—or millions—of lives within the next few days. Would India feel differently about the situation if both the United States and Russians made a stand against
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their ultimatum? Somehow, he doubted it, but perhaps it would make a difference for the men, those from the Commonwealth and America, who were out there south of Karachi.
He studied the lines in the President’s face and knew again the cost of command.
CHAPTER 10
0945 hours, 25 March
Flight deck, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
Tombstone walked out onto the flight deck, accepting a helmet—a “cranial” in Navy parlance—from a sailor outside the mangier’s shack, where the deck handlers plotted each on-board movement of every aircraft in Air Wing 20. He was officially on duty in CATCC, but things were slow in Air Ops and he’d checked out for a stroll up on deck to get some fresh air.
The cloud cover had thickened during the night, bringing rain and gale-force gusts of wind, together with towering waves that had crashed over Jefferson’s bows in the darkness with the fury of an avalanche. That morning the wind had abated to a steady fifteen knots, but the sky was stiil a dirty gray overcast anchored only a few feet above Jefferson’s highest radar mast. The ocean swells were running seven feet.
The carrier had come about so that the wind was blowing down her angled deck from bow to stern. Jefferson was pitching enough in the heavy waves to make any trap a challenge, and the rolling seas had imparted an extra twist to her movements. Tombstone could feel the corkscrewing motion through his legs as he settled the helmet on his head and stepped onto the open deck.
An E-2C Hawkeye had just completed its trap and was taxiing toward the ship’s starboard side, its wings already twisting sideways and folding back along its flanks in order to avoid the twenty-four foot, frisbee-shaped rotodome above its
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back. A yellow-jerseyed deck director led the way, signaling come-ahead with his hands.
Tombstone had been following the incoming air traffic down in CATCC and knew that the next aircraft due on board was a C-2A Greyhound. A long-range twin-engine prop plane used to deliver suppliers, personnel, and mail to the battle group at sea, the Greyhound was called a COD, for Carrier On-board Delivery. Outwardly similar to the Hawkeye from which it was derived, the Greyhound had a larger fuselage than the E-2C and a rear-loading cargo ramp, and of course, it lacked the radar frisbee.
Looking aft, he could make out the COD aircraft already in the slot a mile behind the carrier, a silvery speck swelling rapidly against the overcast as it dropped toward Jefferson’s roundoff. He watched as the pilot made a slight, last-second correction, adjusting for the changing pitch of the carrier’s flight deck. Then the Greyhound swept across the ramp and its landing gear slammed onto the roof, Jhe lowered tail hook snagging the number-two wire and yanking the boxy aircraft to a halt. The propellers continued to describe brilliant silver arcs as the COD plane spit out the wire, then began creeping after the deck director toward the middeck directly opposite the island.