briefly occupied Moscow and St. Petersburg, as Red Army units in
Scandinavia began surrendering en masse. There’d been talk of a joint
allied military government to oversee the recovery of Russian democracy.
Ilya Anatolevich Leonov and his Popular Russian Democratic Party had
made their appearance, rising from obscurity to control of the new
Russian government almost overnight. The UN forces had withdrawn, and a
breathless world had continued to watch the growth of the world’s newest
and most astonishing democracy, live from Moscow on CNN. Which was why
the news of the military coup in mid February had been so devastating.
Overnight, it seemed, the old iron Curtain had slammed down yet again.
The only news emerging from the crippled Russian giant consisted of
dark, nightmare tales of purges and people’s courts, of mobilizations,
KGB arrests, and assassinations, of a hard-liner Red Army marshal named
Valentin Grigorevich Krasilnikov who, to judge by the stories spread by
the trickle of refugees out of Russia, held close spiritual kinship with
the restive shade of Stalin.
The war begun by the Soviets in Scandinavia, it was clear now, was
resuming. News that Leonov and some of his supporters had fled Moscow
and found refuge in the southern Urals was the first word of civil war.
As former S.S.R.s chose sides, as Krasilnikov’s Red Army and Leonov’s
Blue Army clashed in a bloody meeting engagement at the Vornezh River,
it became clear that events in the former Soviet Union might well be
capable of holding the entire world hostage.
Both Reds and Blues possessed nuclear weapons. How long would it be
before one side or the other used them?
The repairs to the Thomas Jefferson had received top priority in a
nation already struggling to improve its military posture. In record
time, Jeff’s flight deck had been restored, and her normal complement of
ninety-plus aircraft in ten squadrons had been returned to her.
Now, the Jefferson was returning to the same waters where she’d been
savaged nine months earlier. She was the same ship, but many of her
people were new … and that included the majority of the air wing’s
aviators.
Casualties among Jefferson’s fliers during the Battle of the Fjords had
been atrocious, and the Navy Department had been pulling out all the
stops to get qualified personnel in to replace those losses.
“Two-one-eight, you’re lookin’just fine,” the LSO’s voice said. “Call
the ball.”
Static crackled over the speaker, and Tombstone pictured Conway in the
Tomcat’s cockpit, straining for a glimpse of Jefferson’s meatball
through that ink-black soup.
“Two-one-eight, call the ball. Acknowledge.”
“Okay, gentlemen, got it,” Conway’s voice replied. “Two-one-eight,
Tomcat ball. One … ah, make it zero point niner.”
There wouldn’t be fuel enough for another touch-and-go.
“Two-one-eight, roger ball. You’re right on the money. Deck coming up.
Power on.”
Tombstone leaned forward, knuckles white against the handle of his
forgotten cup of coffee.
“Power on, Two-one-eight! Up! Up!”
God, Conway was low, hurtling toward Jefferson’s ramp at 140 knots …
The Tomcat materialized out of the night like a gray ghost, nose high,
landing gear and arrestor hook seeming to reach ahead of the plummeting
aircraft in a desperate search for the deck. The F-14 cleared the
flight deck’s roundoff by a handful of feet, slamming the steel just
beyond with a jolt that wrenched its nose down sharply. Throttle up …
but then the tailhook engaged the number-two wire and yanked the
aircraft to a halt. The engine throttled down.
“Thank you, God,” Tombstone said. “Thank you, dear God.” A pair of
powerful 7×50 binoculars swung by their strap from a hook beside the Air
Boss’s station. Tombstone picked them up and raised them to his eyes.
Tomcat 218 was now approaching the spot left for it, guided by the
yellow shirt and his glowing wands. The rain appeared to have lessened
in the past few minutes, but it was rapidly being replaced by the first
swirling flakes of snow. The Tomcat’s wheels left tracks in a thin
slush already gathering on the black-painted steel of the flight deck.
Two-one-eight’s deck crew crowded around, ramming chocks home beneath
the wheels and beginning the complex tie-down process to secure the