Tango Seven-niner was a Navy E-2C Hawkeye a hundred miles behind them, one of the five twin-engined radar planes of VAW-130 flown off the Jefferson to provide long-range radar surveillance for the CBG… and to provide up-to-the-minute tactical information for carrier group and fighters alike during combat.
Combat. Behind his oxygen mask, Tombstone's mouth went dry. Somewhere up ahead, just over that white sea horizon, an unfriendly someone was scrambling MiGs, and the two Tomcats were hurtling to meet them at better than Mach 1.5.
'Hey, Tombstone!' Coyote called. 'Think they're sending us in to hassle the November Kilos?'
'More likely they're sending us in to hassle us,' he replied. He hoped his voice sounded as confident over the air as Coyote's did. His heart was hammering in his chest, beneath the snug pressure of his harness. He shifted to intercom. 'Talk to me, Snowball. What are our friends doing up there?'
'Still closing, Tombstone! Range niner-three. And we're picking up all sorts of radar crap from up ahead. Broad band. They're watching us…'
'Rodeo Leader, this is Homeplate. Rodeo, Homeplate. Do you read, over?'
'Read you, Homeplate.' Here it comes, he thought. Homeplate was the call sign for the Jefferson. The voice, static-ragged, was Commander Marusko's. The Commander Air Group, better known as CAG, was overseeing the mission from the electronic arena of the Jef's Combat Information Center.
'Rodeo, we've got a problem. One of our ships has been reported under attack off the Korean coast. We've been directed to investigate.'
'One of ours?' Tombstone wondered if they meant one of the ships of Jefferson's carrier battle group. None of the CBG's escorts was anywhere near the Korean coast, however, and that was sure as hell where they were headed now. 'Which ship?'
'Rodeo, be advised ship in distress is U.s.s. Chimera, ARL 42, over.'
Which made things even more confusing. ARL was the Navy designation for a small repair ship, probably a converted WW II landing ship held together by rust and good wishes. What the hell was an ARL doing alone off the coast of North Korea?
'Ah… copy, Homeplate. Understood.' There was no use trying to get more information out of CIC, not when eaves-droppers might be listening in. The thought of eaves-dropping reminded Tombstone of another attack on a Navy ship in these waters, some twenty-five years earlier.
Could Chimera be a spook ship? It was possible. Spook ship or not, Washington wouldn't be happy at the thought of another Pueblo incident. The capture of an American spy ship by the North Koreans in 1968 was still widely viewed as a classic failure of American will.
'Tango Seven-niner will vector you on radar target at coordinates three-three-niner, zero-one-four. Be advised hostiles may be operating in area. Homeplate out.'
Advised… right. Right now, the two Tomcats were flying into the dark, with no clear idea of what to expect. If Chimera was a spy ship, there was precious little F-14s could do about it, advised or not.
'Tombstone, Coyote. Sounds like we're getting' into deep spooky shit here.'
'Could be, Coyote. Tell you what. Let's take 'em down on the deck. I'm starting to feel a bit chilly up here, aren't you?'
'Copy. Rodeo Leader, that's affirmative. After you.'
The two Tomcats edged forward into a shallow dive, plunging into misty twilight. Clouds closed around the plastic canopies, shutting off the morning sun like a door. Moments later, they broke through the floor of the clouds and into the dim clear air between cold gray sea and leaden gray ceiling at thirty-five hundred feet. Magruder could see whitecaps on the water, a tatter-edged choppiness ruffling the smooth swell of the ocean. The two F-14s continued to descend until they were two hundred feet above the water, burning through the gray sky as they chased Mach 2. Tombstone felt a bit safer, knowing he'd just compounded the problems of any North Korean radar operators trying to sort his flight out from the clutter of wave caps and spume.
'Tombstone!' his RIO shouted into the intercom. 'Two bogies just became four! They're havin' a party over there!'
'And we weren't invited. Maybe we'll get to crash their little party, Snowy.'
'If you say so, Mr. Magruder.'
Tombstone heard the tightness in his RIO's voice. Snowball Newcombe was a nugget, a rookie posted to the Tomcat's backseat in keeping with the Navy's policy of learning new men with experienced officers. That, Tombstone thought, made him the experienced officer, the old hand who knew what he was doing. At the moment he didn't feel experienced, though, just old.
Three hundred miles east of the two Tomcats, the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson, CVN-74, newest of America's nuclear-powered carriers, plowed steadily through gray seas. Over one thousand feet long, with four and a half acres of flight deck and carrying some ninety aircraft, she and her sister Nimitz-class carriers were by far the most Powerful warships history had ever seen. The Jefferson and her five escorts comprised Carrier Battle Group 14, a Naval force wielding power unthinkable only forty years earlier.
Within Jefferson's bowels, on the 0–4 level starboard, was the red-lit dimness of her Combat Information Center. Commander Stephen Marusko leaned over a console and scowled at the demon-green eye of a radar screen displaying a real-time feed from Tango Seven-niner, the Hawkeye orbiting between the CBG and Rodeo, the carrier's far-flying scouts.
'We're getting' a ton of ground clutter here, Mr. Marusko,' the first class radarman sitting before him said. 'But the gomers must be scrambling everything they got.'
Marusko nodded as he picked up a microphone. 'Admiral? CAG, in CIC. Looks like it's breaking.'
The reply was a voice of hard gravel. 'You're ready to launch?'
'Four aircraft on Alert Five, Admiral. Call sign Backstop.'
'Right. I'm on my way.' The admiral sounded like he'd been rubbed raw.
Hardly surprising, Marusko thought. Admiral Magruder knew that his nephew was flying CAP.
More than once, Marusko had felt caught between the two Magruders: Matt, the young skipper of VF-95, and Rear Admiral Thomas J. Magruder, CO of CBG-14… the younger Magruder's uncle. Hangar deck scuttlebutt had it that Tombstone Magruder owed rank and career both to the influence of the CBG's admiral.
That was one opinion Marusko could not share, He'd seen young Magruder fly, had been the one to recommend him for the skipper's slot when VF-95's last boss had exchanged his squadron for a billet with United Airlines. A recent graduate of the Top Gun school in Miramar, Tombstone Magruder was without doubt one of the hottest aviators on board Jefferson, a guy who wouldn't need his uncle's political influence until he struck for admiral himself a few years down the way.
But there were times when Marusko wondered just how closely young Magruder's high-powered relative looked after his dead brother's son.
His scowl deepened with the thought. Korea was getting hot again. The police-action war of the early fifties had never ended, never for real. Both Koreas had been armed camps since the armistice, the south supplied by the United States, the north by the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, by the PRC.
A steel door at the end of the darkened compartment opened. 'Admiral on deck,' the watch announced, but the men bending over CIC's radar displays remained unmoving, their faces stage-lit by the green and amber smears on their screens.
Marusko indicated the screen he'd been watching. 'They're trying to jam us, Admiral, but it looks like they've got at least ten in the air. Rodeo is sixty miles out and on the deck. They'll be over Chimera's last plot in two minutes.'
Admiral Magruder gave a small sigh. 'We'd better get Backstop airborne, CAG,' he said slowly. 'Our people are pretty naked out there.'
'Aye, sir.' Marusko reached for a telephone handset. The orders from Washington, relayed down the line through the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, and the 7th Fleet, had directed the admiral to vector a combat air patrol over Chimera's last reported position. It was the admiral who'd elected to put the battle group on alert… and mount the Alert Five as backup.
Now he wanted the backup launched as added insurance.
'And keep me posted,' Magruder added. 'I want to know if those NK bastards even give a sour fart in our
