Intruders could hit 590 knots plus … and the Tomcats were having to loiter
to stay with them. But Harrison’s enthusiasm for his risky mission disturbed
Tombstone.
Not for the first time, he wished he could be in the cockpit of one of
those aircraft, piloting a Viking … or better yet, one of his beloved
Tomcats. Coyote was piloting the CAG bird right now. Damn it, he wanted to
join them …
But modern combat was a team effort, with thousands of men pulling
together to get the fighters armed and airborne, tracking them, seeing the
mission through to its close. CAG had no special perogatives. His place was
here, making the decisions that would result in the brightest and the finest
going in against impossible odds.
He already knew, with an acid gnawing in his stomach, that a lot of those
boys weren’t coming back. He’d set the plan in motion. Now it was up to them
to carry it out.
On the screen, Dealer and Viper were again closing the gap with Fisher.
A cluster of blips, three distinct contacts, marked their destination, now
seventy miles ahead.
Soyuz would be in sight of the Vikings in minutes. Tombstone ignored the
burning in his stomach and watched the dance on the electronic display
continue.
0610 hours Zulu (0710 hours Zone)
Flag bridge, U.S.S.R. Aircraft Carrier Soyuz
The Norwegian Sea
Admiral Khenkin stood at the huge, outward-slanting windows of his flag
bridge, staring at the dazzling interplay of light, clouds, and water to the
south. When they came, they would be coming from that direction.
Soyuz was plowing northward against a stiff and unseasonably chilly
breeze. East, off the carrier’s port beam, Marshal Timoshenko, one of two
escorting Kresta-II cruisers, took spray over his bow as he plunged along on a
parallel course.
Other men were on the bridge, staff and aides, but there was no sound
save the hushed roar of the wind outside the bridge, and the sounds reaching
them from the flight deck. Soyuz was preparing to launch interceptors,
assembling a force to probe the literal cloud of ECM noise that seemed to be
spreading across the southern horizon. Other aircraft were in the process of
recovery aboard the carrier. As he watched, a MiG-29 floated toward the
Russian carrier’s stern, nose-high, tailhook dangling. For a breath-holding
moment it seemed to hang there in the sky … and then with a rush it slammed
into Soyuz’s aft flight deck, engines shrieking, wheels screaming against
steel. Dragged to a halt by the arrestor gear, the MiG paused to spit out the
cable, then began following a deck director toward a free space to starboard.
Khenkin’s eyes narrowed as he noted gouges in the thin, flexible metal of the
MiG’s right wing.
That plane had been in a fight. He sighed. They should have had the
Jefferson cold. That they did not said less about the quality of the men he’d
sent against the Americans than it did about the sophistication of the
American defenses. He heard his chief of staff come up behind him. “Enemy
aircraft are attacking from the south, Comrade Admiral. Range now one hundred
ten kilometers.” Bodansky seemed agitated, almost afraid. That would never
do.
“Easy, Dmitri Yakovlevich, my friend,” Admiral Khenkin said in a voice so
low that only the two of them could hear. “The men must see you calm. If
they smell your fear, they become afraid themselves.”
“D-da, tovarisch Admiral.” He drew himself up, glanced around the
bridge, and licked white lips. “But perhaps it would be best if you came down
to CIC, Admiral, where you can better direct the battle.”
“The men know their jobs, Dmitri.” He patted the binoculars hanging
around his neck. “They do not need their admiral leaning over their
shoulders, managing every decision. I shall remain here.”
Indeed, Khenkin had long believed that the most serious weakness of the
Soviet military system was the inefficiency of the rigid hierarchy that had
subordinates relaying requests for direction up the chain of command at every
turn. He had drilled his officers hard during the past month, however,
creating in them a willingness to make decisions, to take initiative, wherever