practice touch-and-go aboard the Jefferson … or a bolter, where his tailhook
missed the arresting cables and he roared full-throttle past the island. It
was worse than a night pass, though, for he was almost completely blind,
engulfed in a shroud of smoke.
He sensed, rather than saw, the carrier’s island flicker past on his
right, and felt the thud of small chunks of metal striking his fuselage and
wings. Grimly, he held the aircraft flat and straight as it burst through the
ink-black smear of smoke and emerged in the clear air beyond.
It took a moment for the reality of what had just happened to penetrate.
The Fulcrum had disintegrated, smashing into the carrier’s stern, and he’d
flown right through the explosion. Warning lights flickered on his console.
His Hornet had been damaged … though apparently not badly.
He held the Hornet in a long, straight climb, gaining altitude and
distance from the Soviet carrier. Each second he expected to be his last, as
missile or CIWS round slammed into the aircraft … but the sky, for the
moment, was miraculously free of hurtling bits of death. Other aircraft
approached from north and east … Batman leading the Tomcats of VF-95, more
Harriers from the Marine carriers in Vagsfjord.
But the Soviet battle fleet appeared to be finished. Irkutsk was clearly
in bad trouble and appeared to be making its way slowly toward the west. The
other Kirov and a smaller Kresta II had come about again and were heading
northwest, pursued by Harriers and Intruders. Boiling columns of smoke, like
erupting volcanos, marked Kreml and the sinking destroyer. Other Soviet ships
were scattering toward the west.
Continued fighting was useless with Kreml, heart and soul of the Russian
carrier battle group, aflame and helplessly adrift.
Only gradually did Tombstone allow himself to realize, with a cool, inner
flood of relief, that the battle was over … that they had won.
Victory …
It scarcely seemed credible.
Turning south and descending, Tombstone approached the American fleet.
The exultation of victory was soon tempered by the realization of just how
badly CBG-14 had been hurt, by how dear a price had been paid. One of the
frigates–Kearny, he thought–was gone, nothing showing of the ship but the
sharp angle of her bow probing above the water. Oil blackened the sea around
her, and Tombstone could see the bobbing specks of hundreds of heads, men
swimming for their lives or clinging to life rafts, as a handful of boats
moved about them. Helicopters drifted and hovered.
One battle was over. Another–the fight to rescue the survivors of
marine disaster–had begun.
Continuing south, Tombstone turned his attention to the motionless cliff
of smoke that hung in the sky ahead. Jefferson had been hit, and hit bad.
Even now, the battle could still be lost. With Jefferson hurt, the Russians
might reorganize, might strike again.
From his vantage point high in the crystalline sky, Tombstone looked down
and willed the great carrier to live.
1030 hours Zulu (1130 hours Zone)
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
The Norwegian Sea
Aboard Jefferson, her officers and crew had long since given up the fight
with the Soviets to face a new and more implacable foe, the firestorm that was
raging out of control in the forward third of the hangar deck, in the area
called Hangar Bay One.
Large sliding doors had already divided the hangar bay into three
sections, a process much like dogging watertight doors, to keep fire or
flooding in one part of the ship from spreading. In Damage Control Central,
one deck below the aft hangar bay, the Damage Control Officer watched the
spreading pattern of damage as presented by the array of three-dimensional
charts across one entire bulkhead, charts showing every compartment and
passageway, every fuel or water line, fire main, power line, and telephone
circuit on the ship.
Fires had broken out on the 0-3 level, above Bay One, where temperatures
were soaring and all personnel were being evacuated. Cats Three and Four were
gone, of course, and there’d been extensive damage to the superstructure, but
the Bay One fire was the real bitch.
Fortunately, the carrier’s fire-control systems were still intact. Water