down its long glide-path toward the steel deck. Closer … closer …
nose high, flaps down, gear down … With its wings extended, the F-14
was a “floater,” generating tremendous lift, and now it appeared to be
suspended, hanging almost motionless in the sky astern of the carrier.
Tombstone found himself willing the aircraft safely onto the deck …
… and suddenly it was dropping with alarming speed, plummeting after
its own shadow across the roundoff, slamming down with a shriek of
rubber on steel, sweeping ahead with a deafening roar into the
barricade. Smoke boiled from the starboard engine … and then the
nose wheel gave way, and the nose smacked onto the deck with a
shattering rasp and showering sparks, plunging through the barricade.
The fluttering straps of the barrier seemed to gather Slider’s Tomcat
in, before collapsing across the aircraft’s wings and tail.
The crash crew was already rolling, surrounding the plane in seconds,
the yellow-painted Tilly lumbering forward with its crane extended, the
sailor in the flameproof suit clinging to one of its struts.
Tombstone found he was holding his breath. In seconds, someone had the
Tomcat’s canopy up, and they were helping Slider out of the cockpit. It
took a few moments more to get Blue Grass out. From some two hundred
feet away, Tombstone could see the sickening slime of blood covering the
RIO as the crash crew pulled him free and strapped him into a Stokes
stretcher.
“My God,” he heard Tomboy say. “His legs are gone!”
Whatever had hit Tomcat 209 had slammed up through the belly and severed
Blue Grass’s legs between hips and knees. The man was dead; he must
have bled to death moments after he was hit. “You still want to go?” he
asked Tomboy over the ICS.
“Yes.” There was none of the usual imp’s humor in her voice. “But let’s
move it, okay?”
Around them, the carrier’s deck operations continued their never-ending
dance-on-the-deck. Launch ops had slowed their tempo quite a bit to
accommodate aircraft coming in for recovery, and the Air Boss was
alternating launches from the bow cats with traps astern. After the
frantic activity of earlier that morning, and with brief,
adrenaline-charged intervals such as Slider’s barrier trap, the work
load seemed almost light, the men going about their tasks with a casual
jauntiness that belied their exhaustion.
The initial checkout complete, with Tomboy reporting all circuit
breakers set and systems go, he switched on the engines. As the power
built, he felt the aircraft shuddering, as though yearning to free
itself from the confines of steel deck and sheltering hangar, to fling
itself at the sky.
“Tomcat Two-zero-zero, Air Boss.”
Uh-oh. If it was coming, here it was. “Two-double-oh. copy.”
“CAG. I got someone here wants to talk to you.”
“Put him on.”
“CAG? This is Admiral Tarrant.”
“Yes, sir.” Tombstone had been gambling that Tarrant would take no
notice of his unauthorized launch … or better, that he wouldn’t find
out until after Tombstone was away from the Jeff. Tombstone would not
refuse a direct order to stand down, but he desperately hoped that that
order would not be given.
“Stoney, Air Ops reports real heavy action over the Inlet above
Polyamyy.
Watch your ass in there, do you hear?”
“Yes, sir!”
“That’s one expensive item of machinery you’ve got there. Bring it back
in one piece.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Tombstone found himself grinning idiotically.
A plane director was backing away ahead of the Tomcat, motioning
Tombstone on. Carefully, he let up the brakes and followed, threading
the thirty-ton aircraft past Slider’s and Blue Grass’s fallen, nose-down
F-14 and toward the bow catapults.
1314 hours
Tretyevo Peschera
Near Polyamyy, Russia
Captain First Rank Anatoli Chelyag leaned out over the edge of the
cockpit, located high atop the Typhoon’s sail. Naval Infantry troops
lined the pier to which Leninskiy Nesokrushimyy Pravda had been moored,
the younger ones among them looking scared as the sounds of gunfire
continued to echo distantly through the cavern.
Line-handlers ashore had already cast off the enormous wire ropes
securing the Typhoon to the bollards. Chelyag was watching now as the
distance between pier and the sloping flanks of the behemoth he