CARRIER 6: COUNTDOWN By Keith Douglass

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

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