I think we can make it out over the sea, though, and eject.”
“Good luck, Tomboy,” he said. “Hey. .. this time try not to break your
leg when you punch out, okay?”
He heard her laugh. .. but he also heard the worry behind it. “Don’t
worry, Stoney. You take care of yourself. See you back aboard the
carrier!”
“See you aboard.”
He watched her Tomcat, dwindling to a speck in the distance, still
climbing, still burning.
EPILOGUE
Sunday, 15 November 0945 hours U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson Northern
approaches to the Bosporus Strait The broad, calm waters of the Bosporus
spread out ahead of the Jefferson as the great carrier slowly cruised
southwest into the straits. The same pilot who had guided them through
weeks before, Ismet Ecevit, was again on the bridge, stoically at his
place alongside Jefferson’s helm. If he felt any distress, any injury to
his national pride after the events of the past weeks, he gave no sign
at all.
Tombstone leaned forward in the chair, the raised, leather-backed chair
that had the word CAPTAIN stenciled in bold letters across the back, and
grinned.
They were leaving the Black Sea at last.
“Glad to get out of this pocket?” Admiral Brandt, standing at his side,
said with a smile. “I seem to remember you weren’t too thrilled with
coming in here, a couple of weeks ago.”
“Yes, sir,” Tombstone said. “It’s going to be real good to get home.”
They were going home. It still seemed hard to believe, but the orders
had come through from Washington only a few hours after U.S. Army
engineers and Navy Seabees had reported the Bosporus Strait clear to
navigate.
The Battle of Kerch, as it was being called now, had ended in a clear
victory for the American battle group and MEU-25.
Tomboy had taken a lot of good-natured ribbing once she and Hacker were
back aboard the carrier. The F-14 Tomcat had been designed strictly as
an air superiority fighter” not one pound for air-to-ground,” as the
slogan had insisted during the aircraft’s design and testing. Still,
she’d handled the big machine as an appallingly effective ground-attack
aircraft, something quite outside its normal purview. .. and hers. Her
impromptu strafing run was credited with breaking up the naval infantry
attack on Boychenko’s position; the Krasilnikov forces had fled moments
later, opening up the way for the evacuation helicopters off the
Guadalcanal to move in. They’d touched down on the ridge above Arsincevo
minutes after Tomboy’s strafing run; Tombstone had made it back to the
Jefferson only ten minutes ahead of Tomboy and Hacker, who were plucked
from the sea south of Kerch by one of the carrier’s SH-53 rescue
choppers.
By then, the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson was underway again, cruising south
at a brisk clip with her aviation gasoline tanks full once more. With
another sixteen days’ worth of fuel for her aircraft, clearly any
attempt to stop her would be foolhardy. Tombstone, pausing only to take
a quick shower and put on a clean uniform to look the part, had assumed
command from the ship’s Exec; Admiral Brandt had transferred his flag to
the Shiloh, and so Tombstone had been left in command of the carrier, a
command confirmed–at least temporarily–by Washington a few hours
later.
The sea battle that had followed had been almost total anticlimax.
Dmitriev’s small and ill-prepared carrier force had been steaming around
the southwestern tip of the Crimea, obviously hoping to trap the battle
group at Kerch, but by the time the two squadrons came within range of
one another, Dmitriev had only a handful of aircraft left, and his huge
Pobedonosnyy Rodina was literally a sitting duck.
The battle was over in minutes and was resolved even before Coyote could
order an air strike by A-7s and Hornets. The Los Angeles-class attack
sub Orlando had been lurking unseen and unheard in the deep, dark waters
south of Sevastopol and had picked up the approaching rumble of the
Rodina’s screws almost as soon as she’d left port. Over one hundred
miles away, four sub-launched TLAMS–Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles–had
burst one after the other from Orlando’s vertical launch tubes, driving
up through the water on rocket motors that hurled each twenty-foot-long