CVIC, dried sweat glued his Nomex shirt to his back, and it was starting to
itch. With the Admiral sitting in on the debriefing, a fresh trickle of sweat
had started down the middle of his back.
“I thought I saw a blip of something, Admiral,” Gator volunteered.
“Tomboy saw it, too, but it was there and then gone so fast, I can’t be
certain. Could have been a sea-skimmer, though–the speed seemed right, from
what I can remember.”
“We’ll take another look on the mission tapes. None of our surface ships
picked up anything, not even the Aegis. Not that that decides it one way or
the other. You boys had the advantage of altitude.” Rear Admiral Magruder
frowned slightly. “The perennial look-down problem of the AWG-9 surfaces
again. The F/A-18 Hornets and the F-14F have gone a long way toward
correcting the deficiency, but the versions of the F-14 we’re still flying in
the Fleet have a tough time on low-altitude contacts.”
The Admiral glanced back at the debriefing sheet Bird Dog had filled out.
“The rock–anything unusual about it?” the Admiral asked.
Bird Dog looked down, unable to meet the eyes of the Commander of the
Carrier Group. The Admiral’s voice had a hard-edged impatience to it. If the
lack of information irritated him, what would the highly decorated pilot say
if he knew how Bird Dog felt during that last trap? He shifted again in his
seat, certain that Admiral Magruder would be as disgusted with him as he was
with himself.
“Nothing. Still just a rock with a tank on it. I thought I saw a couple
of guys standing on the tank, but we were still fairly high. If they were
waving and cheering for the American way of life, I missed it,” Bird Dog said.
Immediately, he wished he could recall the words. Fear did that to him,
for some reason. His mouth opened before he thought, and inappropriate words
came tumbling out before he could think. But this was a serious matter, and
the admiral had a reputation for being a serious guy. Someday, Bird Dog’s
smart-ass mouth was going to get him in trouble.
“Sorry, Admiral,” he mumbled, and stared at his shoes.
Tombstone stared at him silently for a few moments. Then he said, “You
remind me of my old wingman, Batman. Same sense of humor, and same sense of
timing. I bailed him out more than once in briefings.” The barest trace of a
smile twitched at the corner of the admiral’s mouth. “Lieutenant Commander
Flynn? You saw this contact, too, I understand?” Tombstone asked the tiny
redheaded RIO.
“Yes, Admiral. The AWG-9 just got a couple of hits on it, barely enough
to paint a trace. Whatever it was–if both paints were even the same
target–it was going like a bat out of hell. Then again, it could have just
been two clots of sea clutter that happened to pop up one right after the
other.” She shook her head. “I can’t give you a solid answer, sir. I’m
sorry.”
“What’s your gut feeling about the contact?” Tombstone pressed. “You’ve
got good eyes, Tomboy. You were trained by the best, after all.”
A smile flashed across her face, quickly replaced by the more serious
look of a professional naval aviator called on to make a decision. Too often
in the intricate game of radar detection and classification the final call on
whether a contact was hostile or not depended on the judgment of the officer
on the scene.
Tombstone had good reason to trust Tomboy’s judgment. During her first
cruise, she’d been his RIO on countless occasions when he was CAG of Air Wing
14. Despite her markedly female appearance on the ground, Tomboy was a
hard-line, top-notch RIO in the air. “My gut says it was a missile, Admiral,”
she said in a clipped, incisive voice. “My radar painted something that
looked like skin. It looked solid, and it looked like the same contact on
both sweeps. I’d call it an actual contact, not a ghost. And there’s
supporting information for that as well.”
“A Chinese outpost getting blown out of the water a few minutes later is