the light show, Malibu,” Batman ordered. Blake acknowledged the instruction
and flicked on the Tomcat’s navigation lights, the signal to the deck crew and
the Air Boss watching from Pri-Fly that Tomcat 204 was ready to launch.
Batman bent his head forward and tensed, anticipating the thrust of the cat
shot.
Dropping to his knee, the catapult officer touched the deck with the
green wand, the “go” signal to the crewman who controlled the catapult.
Acceleration shoved Batman back into his seat as the plane surged forward and
rose from the flight deck, leaping skyward.
“Hound Two-oh-four,” he said, opening a radio channel to the carrier.
“Good shot. Good shot.”
“Two-oh-four, good shot,” the radio confirmed.
A few moments later the second Tomcat pulled alongside. “Two-one-oh,”
the pilot announced. “Good shot.”
“Hound Two-oh-four, this is Tango Two-fiver,” another voice said, cutting
in. “Vector left to zero-three-nine, angels eighteen, and go to buster.”
That was one of the Jefferson’s E-2C Hawkeyes, using its sophisticated suite
of detection equipment to track the incoming Russian bomber and direct Hound
Flight to intercept it. Batman set his throttles to full military
power–“buster” in aviator’s lingo–and banked his Tomcat to the left to take
up the new heading. “Roger, Tango Two-fiver,” Batman replied. “Coming to
zero-three-nine, angels eighteen, buster. You copy, Tyrone?”
“I copy, Two-oh-four,” Powers replied crisply. He sounded professional
enough now, but Batman glanced across at the other plane through narrowed
eyes. He found himself wishing it was Tombstone back in that old, familiar
position off his wing.
But it wasn’t. This time out, it was Batman Wayne who was the veteran,
flying with an eager young hotshot who might not understand just how deadly
serious this Bear hunt could be.
He wasn’t sure he was fit for his new role.
2310 hours Zulu (2110 hours Zone)
Tomcat 109, Mercury Flight
Over the North Atlantic
Welcome home, Tombstone.
The tanker pilot’s words kept coming back as Tombstone guided the Tomcat
through the darkness. A layer of low, thick clouds blocked his view of the
ocean, but he knew that Jefferson and the other ships of CBG-14 awaited him
somewhere below. Soon he would see the carrier again, feel the deck beneath
his feet once more.
For two long years he had thought of little else. Now Tombstone Magruder
was coming home.
What would it be like, he wondered, to be back aboard the Jeff again?
He’d served in plenty of duty stations over the years, but none of them had
been like that last tour aboard the carrier in those exciting days of the
confrontation with North Korea and the intervention in the war between India
and Pakistan. As squadron leader of VF-95, the Vipers, Tombstone Magruder had
flown his Tomcat into action time and time again, earning an unprecedented
string of air-to-air kills in the process. His promotion and reassignment to
a Pentagon staff post had been inevitable, the accepted next steps in a
professional naval career. But that hadn’t made the transition any easier.
A glint of pale moonlight on the wing of one of Mercury Flight’s two A-6E
Intruders caught Tombstone’s eye. It was what naval aviators called a
“Commander’s moon,” bright enough to help older pilots–the ones who held
ranks of commander and higher–compensate for less acute vision in difficult
night carrier landings. Commander Matthew Magruder hadn’t really thought of
himself in that category until tonight, but the difficulty with the tanker had
made him all too conscious of the fact that he wasn’t the hotshot Top Gun
pilot who’d joined the Jefferson three years back. Three years could be a
lifetime to a fighter pilot.
It also made him realize that this could be his last chance to recapture
that old life. And the long ferry mission had made him aware all over again
of just how much open skies and thundering jets really meant to him. Coming
back to the Jefferson again was only part of what was driving him tonight.
The carrier was special, of course, but Magruder would probably have jumped at
the chance for an assignment anywhere beyond the confines of Washington,
Anywhere he could recapture the feeling of freedom this long flight out of