Bosporus. The transit agreement with Turkey called for Jefferson’s
aircraft to stay grounded while the vessel was in Turkish waters, and
that was part of what was making Tombstone uneasy. With none of her
aircraft aloft, Jefferson was completely dependent on the electronic
eyes and ears of those ships of her battle group that had already
entered the Black Sea. Shiloh was already out there, beyond the
Truesdale and over the horizon, as were Winslow and Leslie, while
Decatur brought up the rear. If Washington had guessed wrong about
Russian intentions or Russian sensitivity to an American task force
entering their traditional waters, enough of the CBG was already in
place to protect the carrier as it moved ponderously through the narrow
straits.
At least, that was what the CBG Ops Staff hoped. Tombstone, as CAG, had
been in on all of the planning sessions and knew the logistical and
deployment rationalizations by heart.
Stupid. .. stupid. .. stupid. ..
Leaning forward, he peered up at the sky, a jumbled mix of towering
blue-and-white cumulus clouds and patches of blue sky. .. as if he could
spot incoming aircraft before the battle group’s radar could. He shook
his head at the thought. An aviator’s hands-on instincts. .. and
impossible to ignore. This was a critical time for the CBG. If the
Russians were going to try something, they couldn’t ask for a better
moment than now, while the Jeff was pinned in the straits with her air
grounded.
Were they still at war with Russia? Tombstone honestly wasn’t sure, and
neither was anyone else in CBG-14. Most likely the politicians weren’t
sure either; officially a truce was on, and American forces had been
directed to fire at Russian units only if the other guy fired first. The
trouble was that things were rather confused inside Russia these days,
and no one, inside the country or outside, knew for sure who was
speaking for them. So far as Tombstone could tell, the truce was
strictly unilateral, if only because no one knew whether the people
who’d agreed to it in either the Krasilnikov or Leonov factions had the
authority to do so.
In fact, the short, hard-fought naval war that had started just after
the neo-Soviets had invaded Norway and led up to the Marine landings on
the Kola Peninsula had finally ended more through Russia’s internal
collapse and exhaustion than anything else. Prisoners taken during that
campaign had indicated that Russian morale was at zero, that their
troops were short of food, of clothing, of ammunition, of boots, of
everything, in fact, that a modern army needed in order to fight.
That was seven months ago, and things within the borders of the former
Soviet state had gotten a hell of a lot worse since then. The civil war
continued, bloody and relentless, and there was no clear-cut government
to deal with, no one to sign a cease-fire or agree to a cessation of
hostilities. The UN had been trying to bring about a truce for months
now, and the closest they’d come was in establishing a tiny enclave in
Georgia–nominally an independent nation but largely controlled now by
one or another of the Russian army factions that were battling it out
all across the length and breadth of the vast and once-powerful land of
Russia. UN officials hoped, however, that a United Nations peacekeeping
victory in those nations would open the way to a UN-bartered peace
throughout the Russian Federation.
And that, indirectly at least, was why the Jefferson and her battle
group were sailing into this land-locked potential death trap. They’d
already arranged to have a Marine Expeditionary Unit–MEU-25–moved to
the waters off the Georgian port of Poti, and now the Jefferson was
going in to add her air wing to the UN’s arguments. Whether or not
American forces should be put under the command of UN commanders was an
issue that had been debated for many years now; a group of advisers
close to the President had acquired the nickname of the
“Internationalists” because of their insistence that the long-touted New
World Order would evolve only when the UN possessed the military teeth
of a world power, while national armed forces were weakened.