effective. The Hawkeye had lost the contact in the clutter.
Jotunheim, Tombstone thought, the abode of the ice giants in Norse myth.
There were giants among those mountains, certainly enough. Sleek, high-tech
giants that could fly … and that could deliver fiery death to the American
carrier group if they were allowed to get within striking range.
Tombstone’s eyes stayed on the radar screen, which repeated the display
aboard the Hawkeye over one hundred miles to the northeast. The Jotunheimen
were visible, hard, bright returns stretching from north to south, the sharp
edges softened by the blurring hash of Soviet ECM. Somewhere in that mess was
a flight of Russian planes. But how many … and what kind? When first
picked up, those bogies had been 270 miles away, traveling toward the
Jefferson at Mach .9. That speed would put them close enough to launch
ship-killers at the Jefferson in fifteen minutes.
They had to find out what those bogies were, and damned fast.
Tombstone glanced at the young, sandy-haired man at his left. “What do
you think, Paul?”
Lieutenant Commander Paul Aiken studied the hash on the display for a
moment, then shook his head. “Whatever they are, they don’t give a damn about
Swedish neutrality.”
“Well, we knew that was coming. Cuts down on the flight time from the
Kola Peninsula, doesn’t it?”
“Amen to that. I wonder if Stockholm has surrendered. Or if the
Russians are just bulling their way through.”
Tombstone glanced back over his shoulder at the transparent flight board
listing the names and aircraft numbers of Jefferson’s aviators now aloft.
“Who’s on BARCAP east?” he asked. With combat possible at any time, Jefferson
was keeping at least two BARCAPs–BARrier Combat Air Patrols–in the air at
all times, positioned to block any surprise Soviet thrust from north or east.
“Two-oh-one and Two-one-eight,” an enlisted rating at the board replied.
“Grant and Crandall. Call sign ‘Icewall.'”
Commander Willis E. Grant, running name “Coyote.” Lieutenant Commander
Alex Crandall, “Scorpion.” Tombstone didn’t know Crandall well, but Coyote
was one of Jefferson’s best aviators, the skipper of Jefferson’s VF-95 Vipers.
And one of Tombstone’s best friends.
Tombstone brought the microphone to his mouth again. “Skywatch
Three-two, Camelot,” he said. “Deploy Icewall for a closer look. Tell them
to watch themselves. They have weapons clear.”
“Roger, Camelot. Skywatch copies.”
Tombstone continued to stare at the hash-streaked radar display, willing
the interference to vanish and the target to appear. The contact had to be a
flight of Russian aircraft. Norway had little air force left, and Swedish
planes would not be overflying Norwegian airspace. That left the Russians.
It was a sure bet that the Soviet high command had decided to send a strike
force against the Jefferson, routing them straight across conquered Finland
and neutral Sweden from bases in the Kola Peninsula. Battle stations had
already been sounded aboard every ship in Jefferson’s battle group, but the
sooner the American force knew what the enemy force’s strength and composition
were, the better.
He drew a deep breath. It was still a little surprising, standing here
in Jefferson’s cavernous red-lit Information Center, directing the eighty-plus
aircraft of CVW-20 in a shooting war. CAG: Commander Air Group … though the
Navy no longer had air groups and the title was a holdover from an earlier
war. Officially, Tombstone was Acting CAG. He still didn’t feel ready to
take on the job. He’d come aboard days before as Deputy CAG, only to find
himself stepping into the senior slot when Captain Joseph Stramaglia had died
in a dogfight over Iceland.
Tombstone was no stranger to warfare. During his previous tour of sea
duty, as CO of VF-95 aboard this same carrier, he’d seen more combat than most
modern naval aviators saw in their entire careers. He’d made his first kill
in the skies over Korea, then gone on to participate in air-to-air combat
during a military coup in Thailand, and in the mercifully brief so-called
“Indian War,” a police action that had brought India and Pakistan to the
negotiating table and–just possibly–stopped a nuclear war before it started.
Looking around the red-lit CIC, he knew that this, this was what he had
trained for all his life … not a police action, not a brushfire war in some
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