while–I doubt anything is prepositioned on that miserable piece of rock down
there. It’s not even above water most of the time, so the self-destruct
scenario isn’t going to play.”
“But you think there’ll be another incident,” CAG said. “Something
directed at the rock, not at the Hawkeye?”
“I’m betting on it,” Tombstone replied. “Intell agrees with me on this
one. China’s not likely to attack us directly, not without some excuse for
provocation. As long as Aegis stays under control, and nobody screws up, we
won’t give them that excuse. No, they don’t want to attack us–it’s a losing
proposition, this far from their shores, with their lousy air refueling
skills. Unless they get Vietnam to allow them land-launching permission,
China’s aircraft don’t have the legs to reach out and touch us hard.”
“Now if they’d bought that aircraft carrier from Ukraine like they were
planning last year, it’d be a different story,” Ops mused. “The Soviet Union
was just starting to get the hang of carrier aviation when it collapsed.
Those Flankers–I read that they were getting halfway decent at getting on
board the Admiral Kutnezsov.”
“It might be, although I’m not convinced they’d be able to operate
effectively with it that quickly. Certainly not run flight ops the way we do,
not without a sizable contingent of Russian crew members. And somehow I just
don’t see Russia getting in the middle of this, not with all the problems
they’ve got at home,” Tombstone replied.
“Still don’t like sending the Hawkeye out like that,” CAG said somberly.
Tombstone glanced at him. In a few years, CAG might have the opportunity
to find out for himself how it felt to have to order a Hawkeye out alone.
Until then, he wouldn’t know if he could do it, wouldn’t understand the true
burden of command.
Tombstone knew he hadn’t.
CHAPTER 18
Wednesday, 3 July
0800 local (Zulu -7)
USS Jefferson
The battle group settled into standard cyclic operations quickly.
Spratly Island surveillance missions by the Hawkeyes were launched every
five hours, each flight following exactly the same patrol pattern. Every
eight hours, one lone fighter left the deck, occasionally accompanied by a
tanker. The Hawkeyes went north, the fighters south, and neither intruded on
the other’s operating area. Alert birds crowded the deck, crews in cockpits
and maintenance technicians doing busywork around them, waiting.
Further north, the Aegis prowled, silently watching the unarmed E-2C’s.
Flankers cut lazy circles in the airspace between the Aegis and the carrier,
watching the E-2C that watched them.
To the east, Chinese fighters slipped down the coast from the mainland
into Vietnam, occasionally cutting across the South China Sea to the north or
south of the battle group to land in one of the other littoral nations. With
the Aegis and the Hawkeye tracking them, the battle group kept the world
intelligence community updated on the tail count.
By the end of the first full day of the operation, the aircrews were
getting edgy. The Hawkeye crews were increasingly uneasy about the Chinese
fighters and conducting surveillance without their own fighters nearby for
protection. The Jefferson’s fighter crews were unhappy about both the alert
schedule and the lack of information on exactly why they were pulling alert
instead of flying. The atmospheric conditions continued to generate ghost
contacts that flickered into existence for a few minutes, then evaporated.
Rumors and speculation raged around the carrier, each theory more
menacing than the last. RIOs and pilots argued continually in the Officer’s
Mess about the Chinese’s capability for aerial refueling, and whether or not
China could reach out and touch the battle group from the mainland as well as
from Vietnam. The RiOs insisted on drawing out the time-distance problem for
the pilots, demonstrating time and again how the fighters could not possibly
make it to within weapons range, given their fuel package. The pilots
disagreed, fundamentally unconvinced that the Chinese were not fully capable
of deploying a long-range anti-air weapon on their aircraft, or passing
locating data to the submarines. The pilots repeatedly mentioned the
possibility that the Chinese F-10 long-range fighter was operational. After
all, the pilots argued, intelligence had been wrong before.
The F-10 was something to be concerned about. Modeled on the American