“That is all.”
“Attention on deck!”
He strode from the room, and Chris wondered why he looked so grim. This
was what every naval aviator spent his or her whole life training for,
this moment.
She joined the others as they crowded up toward the front of the room,
examining the Kola Peninsula map and asking questions of Coyote. Her
aircraft, she saw, would be covering an Intruder strike against SAM
batteries just west of Polyamyy.
CHAPTER 21
Monday, 16 March
1610 hours (Zulu +2)
Flight deck
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
“God damn it, Ski! What the hell do you mean, ‘downgrudged’?”
Lieutenant Commander Frank Marinaro was livid, and for one moment, Joyce
Flynn thought the man was going to slam his flight helmet to the deck in
anger and frustration.
Tomboy Flynn, Nightmare Marinaro, and their plane captain, Chief Michael
Cynowski, were standing at the port-side edge of the flight deck forward
of the island. Several of VF-95’s Tomcats were parked there, folded
wings almost touching, their maintenance crews readying them for launch.
“Sorry, Commander,” Cynowski said. He had to shout to make himself
heard above the scream of jet engines, the air-hammer racket of the
buffers. He wore a plane captain’s brown jersey, and a bulky Mickey
helmet. “Your AWG-Nine’s burned out. Looks like a coolant switch
fault, most likely. We’ll have to swap it out, and that’s gonna take
time.”
“How much time?”
“What?”
“I said how much fucking time!”
“Sir, I just don’t have the manpower right now!” Cynowski held up the
clipboard in his hand. “My boys’ve been goin’ round the clock here for
longer’n I like to think. Hell, we’ve got their scheds juggled
between-”
“Damn it, Ski, I don’t want to hear your sob story! How long before
Two-oh-four is back on the line?”
Cynowski’s face hardened. “Not until we secure from flight quarters.
Sir. Two days … and that’s if the brass stays off our backs!”
Nightmare was the coolest, steadiest aviator Tomboy knew, but at the
moment he looked like he was going to lose that cool completely. She
could understand his anger. Right now, there were no spare Tomcats
aboard save for the CAG bird, and it would take time to bring
Two-double-nuts to the ready.
It looked like Nightmare and Tomboy were going to be staying put while
the squadron launched without them.
Nightmare looked like he was about to say something else, but at that
moment an A-6 Intruder taxied past the line of Tomcats, rolling slowly
toward the number one catapult. The roar of its engines was deafening,
and the wash from its exhaust battered at Tomboy’s face, slapping at her
flight suit and forcing her to turn away. Nightmare quickly pulled his
helmet on and waited until the A-6 reached the cat shuttle and the noise
abated somewhat.
Suddenly, he seemed to relax. “Okay, Chief. Forget it. C’mon,
Tomboy.”
“Where we going, Nightmare?”
“Ops. Maybe we can use Stoney’s bird.”
Together, they turned and strode aft toward the island.
1615 hours
Intruder 504, Catapult One
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
Lieutenant Commander Bruce “Willis” Payne was uncomfortably aware of the
woman seated next to him. In an A-6 Intruder, the pilot sits on the
left, with the bombardier/navigator in the narrow seat to his right and
slightly below and behind his position. According to All the World’s
Aircraft, the heart of the A-6 was the AN/ASQ-133 IBM computer which
controlled the aircraft’s Norden AN/APQ-154 multimode radar, but any
Intruder driver with more than an hour of flight time logged would
insist that the real heart was his B/N, squeezed in eyeball-to-eyeball
with the radar scope projecting aft from the console. But damn! …
Payne’s B/N so far this cruise had been Lieutenant Thelma Kandinsky,
“Sunshine” to her shipmates. She was pretty and pert and Payne loved
imagining what she’d be like in bed, but he still couldn’t accept her as
expert enough to find her way through that maze of indicators and
electronics in her face, no matter what Tombstone Magruder might think.
The tail-chewing he’d received a couple of days before still burned …
and rankled.
“Damn it, Payne,” Tombstone had bellowed into his face. “These women
are our shipmates and they’re here to stay! They can do the job as well