gotten to sleep when an alert had been sounded, had just gotten to sleep
again when the Russians had launched this latest attack. She and her
RIO, Lieutenant McVey, had catapulted off Jefferson’s deck, and been
aloft for over an hour. They’d made two Phoenix kills, then had a
narrow scrape with a Fulcrum over the Norwegian coast. On the way back,
they’d used their last two Phoenix missiles downing a couple of
sea-skimming cruise missiles.
God, she was tired.
She looked across at the young, black-haired man slumped in the seat
beside her. Roy G. McVey was about as young and raw as they came.
Somehow, they’d all started calling him Vader, playing on his last name.
His head was back, his eyes closed, his lips parted. He looked like he
was asleep.
“Hey, Lobo.”
She looked up. Striker was standing behind her, his hands on the back
of the chair.
“Hello, Steve.”
He bent over, so his lips were close by her ear. “Listen,” he said,
whispering so no one else could hear. “I was wondering about tonight?”
“Uh-uh,” she said. “Uh-uh! If they let me, I am going to sleep for
about five hundred years. Call me in 2500.”
He smiled. “Actually, I had the same thing in mind. This watch-on,
watch-off stuff is-”
“Attention on deck!”
The men and women in the room rose to their feet as Tombstone walked in,
Coyote close behind him. “At ease. At ease.” He took his place behind
the podium at the front of the room. “Sit down and listen up. We don’t
have much time.”
At his back, Coyote was tacking up a large-scale map of the Kola
Peninsula. Lines of bright red quarter-inch tape had been stretched
across it, all starting at Bear Station, reaching along several distinct
paths through several doglegs, and terminating at various points inland.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Tombstone said. “The air phase of Operation
White Storm.”
Chris’s exhaustion faded back, replaced by intense excitement. An alpha
strike, an all-out assault against Russian targets in the Kola
Peninsula!
And the Vipers were going to be in it up to their necks!
“The lead attack elements will be Jefferson’s VAQ-143 and Eisenhower’s
VAQ-132. They’ll go in first, using HARMs to hit the radar sites at
Ozerko, Titovka, and Port Vladimir. Right behind them will be our
attack squadrons, VA-89 and VFA-161, plus VA-66 from the Eisenhower.
Their targets will be those SAM sites and radar installations we’ve been
tagging with our Hawkeyes, plus naval installations up and down the Kola
inlet.
“VF-95 will fly close escort on the Intruders.”
There were several groans in the room. “Aw, CAG!” Arrenberger said from
the back. “Why us? We’ve been at full throttle for the last
forty-eight hours!” Other voices chimed in, agreeing with him.
Tombstone gave Slider a long, gray stare. “You have a problem, mister?”
“Yeah, I got a problem! How long are we supposed to keep pumping at
this pace?”
“We can’t keep going like this, CAG,” Mustang Davis put in. “The
squadron’s beat.”
Chris held her breath, wondering just how close to mutiny the squadron
might be. If everyone in the squadron just refused to fly …
Tombstone kept his eyes on Slider. “You want to stand down, Slider?
Turn in your wings?”
Slider paled. “No, CAG.”
“I don’t want one man or woman up there who can’t take the strain. If
you can’t take the heat, Arrenberger, I want to know it.”
“I can handle it.”
“What about the rest of you people? I’ll fly this mission by myself if
I have to.”
Chris joined with the others in a low-voiced murmur that filled the
compartment. “We can do it, CAG.”
“We’re okay, Tombstone.”
“We’re with you, CAG.”
Tombstone waited a moment, hands on hips. Then he nodded. “Okay.
That’s the way professionals handle it. I know you’re tired. We’re all
tired, right down to the thin ragged edge. But Washington thinks this
one is damned important. Today, it’s up to us to start hammering away
at the northern Kola defenses. Tomorrow morning, it’ll be the Marines’
turn.”
That got their attention, Chris thought. There wasn’t a sound in the
compartment now, save the faint, faraway boom of a catapult launch.