keyed it, and began speaking in rapid, urgent tones.
“Home Plate, Home Plate,” he said, using Jefferson’s call sign. “This
is Echo-Tango Seven-six-one. We have multiple contacts, repeat,
numerous multiple contacts, from one-zero-zero to one-five-zero, range
two-four-zero nautical miles.”
The radar operator was Radarman First Class Richard Lee. Twenty-four
years old, he’d been in the Navy for seven years and he had never, in
all his life, seen such an array of aircraft except, possibly, for
simulations of a mass Russian attack.
The Hawkeye was flying well in advance of the Jefferson and had now
reached its patrol station twenty miles off Norway’s North Cape. From
that vantage point, and at the aircraft’s ceiling of just over thirty
thousand feet, he could see well into Russia’s Kola Peninsula, painted
on his display in crisp lines of light. Nothing was happening around
Polyamyy or Murmansk, but the sky must be thick with aircraft over the
airfields at Titovka, Pechenga, Zapolyamyy, Nikel.
This couldn’t be happening …
“Sir,” he said, pointing. “They’re crossing the line.”
It was true. Aircraft from Nikel and Pechenga, already practically on
Russia’s narrow border with Norway, were moving across the demarcation
line between the countries. More aircraft were arriving too, from
further to the south and cast, from Kola airfields not yet within range
of the E-2C’s radar.
“Home Plate, Home Plate,” the CIC officer said. How could the man keep
his voice so steady? “Echo-Tango Seven-six-one. We have a fire. I
repeat, we have a fire. Bogies are assuming intercept vectors, bearing
on Home Plate.”
A fire–the current code phrase meaning a possible attack in progress.
As far as Lee could tell from his radar screen, every aircraft in
Eurasia was on its way.
And their destination appeared to be the Jefferson.
CHAPTER 9
Friday, 13 March
0631 hours (Zulu +2)
Viper ready room
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
Batman had already been on his way to the Viper Squadron’s ready room
from morning chow when the alert came over the 1-MC speaker mounted on
the bulkhead. “Now General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands, man
your battle stations!”
Before the announcement ended, Batman had broken into a run, forcing his
way through passageways and up companionways suddenly filled with young
men–and a few women–each of them bent on getting somewhere in the
least possible time with the greatest possible efficiency. The scene
was at first one of chaos, but it was soon clear that each person had a
place to go and a task to perform, and there was actually very little
confusion or wasted effort as six thousand people turned out in this
ship-wide evolution.
Batman banged through the door to the Viper ready room at a fast jog,
just ahead of half a dozen other VF-95 aviators and RIOs. Attached to
the main ready room area, with its rows of wooden desks like some
1950s-era schoolhouse, was a dressing area with lockers and a small
shower head, where the squadron’s NFOs could stow their uniforms and don
the flight suits that helped keep them from blacking out in the high-G
maneuvers of aerial combat.
As he swiftly unbuttoned his khaki shirt and pulled it off, Batman was
marginally aware of the fact that several of the people crowded shoulder
to shoulder into the dressing room with him were women. Normally,
VF-95’s flight officers had shared the dressing area through an unspoken
agreement, taking turns and allowing fellow members of the squadron who
happened to be of the opposite sex some small measure of privacy, but in
an all-hands evolution, where seconds counted, there was no time for
such civilized niceties. A few feet to his left, Cynthia Thomas was
just shrugging out of her bra. On his right Chris Hanson bumped against
his hip as she wiggled into the lower half of her tight-fitting,
cold-water survival suit, a rubberized garment worn under the flight
suit, always an awkward maneuver even when there was space enough to
move around.
The room was crowded, noisy, and tense, but no comment was made by
anyone at the display of skin, no lewd wisecracks, not even a peremptory
“Keep your eyes to yourself!” In minutes, Batman was tugging the last
zipper on his flight suit shut, grabbing a clipboard with its attached