westernmost territory.
But not now. He felt the aircraft rock under his butt, and
compensated for the turbulence automatically. The F-14 Tomcat responded
smoothly to his touch, the low growl of its engines almost a satisfied
purr. Despite his foul mood, Bird Dog smiled with the sheer pleasure of
feeling 61,000 pounds of aircraft respond like an extension of his own
body. The marriage between a fighter pilot and his aircraft was the
closest thing to heaven he’d ever experienced with his clothes on. And, he
had to admit, it lasted a lot longer than most anything else that came
close. At least in a Tomcat you could always refuel and stay airborne.
Not that he was all that certain he wanted to right now. Fifteen
minutes earlier, one of the infamous williwaws had blown in. The wild
northern storms, born of the interaction between the relatively warm
Japanese current and the frigid arctic waters it flowed into, generated
fearsome brutal winds capable of reaching a hundred knots in minutes. The
battle between the two masses of water also generated the thick,
impenetrable fog already curling up the sides of the rocky islands. Now,
only the highest cliffs peeked out of the white blankness below him.
The lousy weather wasn’t the only reason for his foul mood. Even if
he did prefer flying to almost anything else, there were some limits to his
obsession. “Damn, Gator, why the hell did we get stuck pulling Alert Five
on Christmas Day?” Bird Dog asked for the third time.
“You ought to be out here, shipmate,” Lieutenant Commander Charlie
“Gator” Cummings said wearily from the backseat. “Me–I’m senior to most
of the other NFOs in the squadron. If I weren’t stuck with such a junior
pilot for a partner, I’d still be in my rack sleeping off that huge meal
last night.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, that line’s getting real old,” Bird Dog snapped.
“You think it’s fun being a lieutenant?”
“You think it’s fun flying with one?”
Bird Dog sighed. There was no way he could win this argument. Gator
was right–the junior members of the squadron did pull the worst duty on
the ship.
“Whales,” he said out loud. “I joined the Navy to fly against MiGs,
not to stand by to buzz Greenpeace boats.”
“Would have thought you’d gotten enough of that on our last cruise.”
“That was something, wasn’t it?” Bird Dog said reflectively.
“MiG-29s, F-11 Chinese fighters–hell, that’s the most fun I’ve ever had
with my clothes on.”
And it had been. On their last cruise, his first deployment on board
a carrier as a full-fledged naval aviator, the USS Jefferson had intervened
in a nasty eastern Asian squabble over oil rights to the Spratly Islands.
The North Koreans and the Chinese had teamed up to conduct an impressive
exercise in operational deception. The Chinese had attacked and destroyed
several of their own base camps perched on the tiny rocks and shoals that
made up the Spratly Islands, hoping to convince the rest of the Pacific Rim
nations that the United States was behind the aggression. Fortunately,
Rear Admiral Matthew Magruder, “Tombstone” to his fellow aviators, had
figured it out, and managed to put together a coalition of fighter
squadrons from the other nations to expose and repel the Chinese marauders.
“Bet Tombstone is freezing his ass off right about now, too,” Bird Dog
said. “ALASKCOM–colder’n hell up there, too, isn’t it?”
“I’ve got a radar paint on the Greenpeace boats,” Gator announced.
“Should be about fifty miles ahead of US.”
“Well, let’s go give them their daily taste Of naval aviation.
Probably the most fun they have while they’re out here in this godforsaken
ocean.”
Bird Dog yanked the F-14 into a sharp turn.
“Hey, was that really necessary?” Gator asked sharply, grunting as he
Performed the M-1 maneuver, designed to force blood into the extremities of
an aviator during high-G operations. The sudden turn had caught him by
surprise, and his vision had started to gray out at the edges.
“Sorry. Just trying to remind you what it’s like to be tactical.”
“Yeah, well, we’re sure as hell not going to need it against a
Greenpeace boat.”
“That’s what we thought about that tank in the Spratlys, isn’t it?”