immediately to the Combat Information Centers aboard both the Shiloh and
the Jefferson.
“Shit,” Mickey said. “I wish I could see! It looks like the bogeys are
inside Turkish airspace. Tango Six-one! Do you make some of those bogeys
going feet dry over the coast?”
“Ah, roger that, Two. We’re having a little trouble sorting it out.
Some of those contacts might be Turkish air force.”
“Oh, yeah. Hell, I don’t know what it is I’m seeing up here. It looks to
me like an attack run, though.”
“Roger that.”
What was happening? Dixie wondered. The nearest contact was just one
hundred miles ahead now, invisible to the naked eye but clear enough on
Mickey’s display, despite the jamming interference. Moments before,
Jefferson had alerted the BARCAP flight that a pair of EA-6B Prowlers
were on the way as well. The ECM gear on those babies would be enough to
burn through any jamming, as well as provide electronic cover for the
Tomcats. Four more Tomcats, BARCAP One, and the two aircraft covering
the Prowlers were on the way as well, but BARCAP Two would be in
position to get an ID on the unknowns long before anybody else could
reach the area.
Dixie’s Tomcat was carrying a standard Barrier CAP interception
warload–four AIM-54C Phoenix missiles, two AIM-9M Sidewinders, and a
pair of AIM-120A AMRAAMS. The Sidewinders were strictly for close-in
work, of course, and the radar-guided AMRAAMS had a killing range of
about thirty miles. At one hundred miles, however, the bogeys were
comfortably within kill range of the AIM-54s, which had the astonishing
ability to reach out and touch someone 120 nautical miles away.
But the Americans hadn’t been attacked, yet–were not even being
threatened–and so no “weapons free” had been granted by Ops. They would
need a visual identification first.
Still, Dixie thought, something must have really stirred them up back at
the bird farm, using aviator’s slang for the carrier. BARCAP Two’s
patrol area had been seventy miles southwest of Sevastopol, and about
fifty miles west of the Jefferson, positioned to spot and block any
hostile aircraft approaching from the general direction of Ukraine and
the northwest. BARCAP One, however, Batman and Libbie Bell, had been
patrolling north of the Jeff’s position, just off the Crimean coast.
Their primary mission of Barrier Combat Air Patrol included the
secondary mission of covering Boychenko’s helicopter when he flew from
Yalta to the carrier. If Ops was pulling them out of position, something
really hot must be on.
Something that was a direct threat to the Jefferson, her battle group,
and her mission.
They would know in a few more minutes.
1006 hours (Zulu +3)
Black Leader North of the Bosporus Strait Ivanov brought his Mig higher
and dropped his left wing, staring down at the destruction wrought by
Black Flight’s salvo of missiles. Perfect. .. perfect! Three-quarters of
the center span was gone; he could see pieces of the deck strewn across
the shipping channel like tumbled-down dominoes, and the northern main
suspension cable had parted like a thread, spilling a forest of hanger
cables and unraveling wire rope into the water. The southern halves of
the two towers were still standing, and the suspension cable between
them was still above water, but the northern halves were shattered, one
fallen completely, the other half gone, like a jagged, broken tooth. The
water between the towers was a seething cauldron of dirty foam,
struggling antlike forms, ragged chunks of steel deck segments, and
floating debris. Smaller craft would continue navigating up and down the
Bosporus no doubt, simply by avoiding the center channel, but larger,
deeper-draft vessels–such as the monstrous three-hundred-meter-plus
bulk of an American nuclear aircraft carrier–would be unable to pass
without risking serious damage to screws, shafts, and keel.
“Tower, Tower, this is Black One,” he called over the radio. “Come in!”
“Black One, Tower. Go ahead.”
“Seagull! I say again, Seagull!”
The word was the title of one of Chekhov’s more successful plays and was
the code for the mission’s success.
“We read you,” Tower replied. “Proceed to Uncle Vanya.”
And that code phrase: the title of another well-known Chekhov play, gave
Black Flight and Flashlight permission to engage targets of opportunity.