CARRIER 9: ARCTIC FIRE By: Keith Douglass

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?”

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