pretty solid correlation,” the Admiral agreed. “What worries me is the lack
of detection on a launching platform.”
“Do the Chinese have anything like our Stealth program, Admiral?” Gator
asked. “That could be one possibility. An aircraft that we didn’t detect
launched a missile.”
“Several of the intelligence officers have suggested that possibility,”
Tombstone acknowledged. “There are a couple of problems with that
explanation, though.
“First, if the missile had been air-launched, it would probably have been
from a reasonable altitude. We’d have had a better detection on the missile,
if not the aircraft. We know it’s not a stealth missile because you two did
get a couple of hits on it. From the sounds of the contact, the reason for
the intermittent detection was low altitude, not stealth technology.
“Second, a non-stealth missile on a stealth aircraft would destroy the
low radar profile of the aircraft. Third, if it were air-launched, we’d
probably have seen a seeker head of some sort,” he said, referring to the
normal terminal guidance method of most air-launched missiles. “And finally,
there’s no evidence that China has made much progress on a stealth program.
They’re still buying fighter aircraft from the Russians, and Russia’s not
about to sell their nearest regional threat their latest in advanced
technology.”
“So it had to be launched from something else,” Bird Dog said
thoughtfully. “A submarine, maybe. Or it could be a Chinese version of our
Tomahawk missile.”
“Those are also possibilities, but they require us to make some
assumptions about their technology. According to our intell, the Chinese
don’t have a long-range land-launch strike missile, nor do their subs carry
one. Remember, the Chinese navy is still strictly a brown-water force, not a
blue-water like ours.”
Tomboy shrugged. “Well, whatever it is that they don’t have, it sure
made a hell of an explosion out there.”
Tombstone questioned the four aviators for a few more minutes. Finally,
convinced that they knew nothing else about the incident, he dismissed them.
His eyes followed Tomboy as the aviators left the debriefing room. The baggy
flight suit was pulled taut across her upper back and fell into loose folds
around her hips, concealing her figure. From what he remembered of their last
liberty together, that was a damned shame. A trickle of pure lust ran through
his body, making him uncomfortable because of the sheer incongruity of feeling
it while looking at a RIO in a flight suit. Still, despite her call sign,
Tomboy was nothing if not completely female.
“That pilot–he sounds just like Batman did at that age,” Tombstone said
reflectively.
CAG chuckled. “I see it, too. How’d you ever get him to quit playing
hotshot with those Soviet Bears?”
“I didn’t–not really. He’d still be at it if he were out here.”
Batman, known more formally as Captain Edward Everett Wayne, was a Top
Gun-trained F-14 pilot. He’d joined the VF-95 Vipers as a lieutenant nugget
when then-Lieutenant Commander Tombstone Magruder was on his second–or was it
third?–cruise. He’d been hardheaded and impulsive, and had almost gotten
himself in serious trouble hot-dogging with a Soviet Bear reconnaissance
aircraft. Later, once it hit home with him that he was killing men along with
aircraft in the sky, he’d started to doubt his ability in combat. Tombstone
had served as his sounding board.
In subsequent cruises, Batman and Tombstone had seen combat in Norway and
Pakistan. The hotheaded young pilot had grown into one of the most superbly
proficient aviators Tombstone knew.
Now Batman was flying something new, a platform that was forcing him to
grow in new and not entirely pleasant ways: a desk in the Pentagon. Tombstone
had read recently that Batman was heading up the development on JAST, the
Joint Aviation Strike Technology program.
“What about these explosions? Washington’s not going to be happy if we
don’t have some response planned,” Tombstone said to Captain Cervantes, his
CAG.
The title of CAG was a holdover from the days when a Carrier Airwing was
called a Carrier Air Group, and was commanded by a Commander. These days, CAG
was a full Navy Captain and the position carried considerably more power–as
well as seniority–than the Air Group commander had. But the old handle was