CHAPTER 2
“Launch the Alert aircraft! Launch the Alert aircraft!” The launch order rang out from the ship’s 1-MC loudspeakers.
“We’re on!” Lieutenant Commander Edward Everett Wayne, running name “Batman,” set his magazine aside and checked the lacing on his boots carefully before standing up.
Lieutenant Terry Powers was already on his feet, zipping up his heavy flight-survival vest and reaching for his helmet in eager anticipation. “Finally some action!” he said, sounding excited and impatient. Batman thought he detected an underlying current of nervousness as well. Powers hadn’t been on carrier duty long, and there was a big difference between training flights with a RAG back in the States and genuine blue-water ops off a carrier deck.
“Whoa there, kid,” he warned. “Throttle back and level off.”
Powers looked at him uncertainly. “Sir?”
“Alert Fifteen means we launch fast,” Wayne continued. “But it doesn’t mean we launch dumb. Don’t be in such a hurry you forget about safety precautions, kid, or you’ll cut off a promising career before you’re properly started.” He pointed at the lieutenant’s feet. “Lace up those boots tighter. If you have to eject, you don’t want them catching on something in the cockpit on the way out.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Powers said, looking sheepish. He crouched to do as he had been told. “I guess I’m just excited, sir.”
“Two things, Tyrone,” Batman said. “First off, lay off the ‘sirs’ for a while. Makes you sound like a midshipman who can’t find his way home. When there’s nobody here but us aviators I’m Batman. Got it?”
“Yes, sir … uh, Batman.”
“Secondly, chill out a little, kid. Take a leaf from Malibu here.” He pointed to his Radar Intercept Officer, Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Blake, whose running name of Malibu had been bestowed because of his blond good looks and carefully cultivated California-surfer persona. “He’s so cool we use him to keep the beer cold.”
Malibu flashed a careless grin. “Maybe so, dude,” he said with a deceptively laid-back drawl. “But that just means I always have a supply close by.” Despite the banter and the casual tone, Blake was ready to go, helmet under one arm, flight suit zipped up tight.
The fourth man in the ready room of the VF-95 Viper Squadron looked irritated. “Come on, let’s get moving.” Lieutenant William “Ears” Cavanaugh, who was assigned to fly the RIO position with Powers tonight, could never be described as a patient man. Every word, every motion, was quick and decisive, and the man had trouble dealing with anyone who wasn’t in tune with his particular rhythm of life.
The four men left the ready room, not running but moving briskly through the door and toward the flight deck. They emerged on a steel catwalk on the starboard side of the carrier, hanging right out over the angry black sea below.
Batman followed the others up the ladder that led up to the wide expanse of the ship’s “roof,” the flight deck, thankful for the moonlight that glinted off metal and made it unnecessary to unclip the flashlight hanging from his belt.
As he reached the flight deck he heard Powers enthusing. “Tonight’s the night for some action, Ears. We’re gonna go out there and get us some Bear!”
He could hear the eagerness in the young voice, and remembered the first time he’d been on one of the flights the Navy called a “Bear hunt.” That had been almost three years back now, during the crisis in North Korea. He could still remember his own enthusiasm that day … and the chewing out his squadron commander had given him after he had pulled a foolish stunt that had almost resulted in a collision between his Tomcat and the Russian bomber they were investigating.
“Hold on, there, nugget,” Batman said. “This isn’t a game, Tyrone. You fly this by the book, got it?” He heard Malibu snort, a comment on Batman telling anyone to fly by the book, but ignored it.
But Powers was suitably deflated. “Aye, aye, sir,” he said. “By the book.”
I’m starting to sound like old Tombstone, Batman thought with a grin. He could still remember Matt Magruder’s harsh words after that Bear hunt over the Sea of Japan. I don’t have room on this team for a goddamned hotdog! the squadron leader had said, We’re already in the middle of one crisis. The last thing we need now is dragging the Russians into it!
It had been a rough beginning, but he and Magruder had come out of the mess in North Korea as friends. Now Batman was Executive Officer of VF-95, a graduate of the Navy’s famous Top Gun school, and for all of his showmanship he had learned the value of caution and teamwork. If he really was starting to sound like Tombstone, he thought, then he really had made something of himself as an aviator after all.
Caution and teamwork … that would have to be the watchword tonight. Bear flights over the Atlantic were nothing new. They’d been a familiar routine all through the Cold War and well after the day the Berlin Wall came down. There had been times in the past when American pilots would swap signals with the Russian Bear crews, even talk on the radio. Some old-timers told about incidents where one side or the other would obligingly move their aircraft around so their opponents could take home photographs for their intelligence people.
This time, though, things were liable to be different. For the past five days Soviet troops had been engaged in hostilities against Norway, a one-time NATO ally and still a good friend of the United States.
That first time over the Sea of Japan Batman hadn’t really given much thought to the crisis brewing in North Korea or how the Russians might react to it. Like a lot of people he’d gotten out of the habit of thinking of them as the enemy. After those exciting days near the end of 1989 when the Cold War had suddenly come to an end, decades of fear and hate had turned overnight into new feelings of optimism and friendship. Soviet-American cooperation had made the victory in Operation Desert Storm possible, and the failure of the hard-line coup in August 1991 had seemed to mark the end of Communism and the beginning of a brand-new era of world history. Even after the Communists staged a successful military takeover the following year, after harsh winter weather and widespread famine had totally discredited the reform movement, it had seemed that the Soviet Union would never again be able to occupy center stage in world affairs. Communist or not, the new rulers had seemed willing enough to get along with the West. Just a few months after his first Bear hunt Batman had found himself flying alongside Soviet naval aviators of the aircraft carrier Kreml during the UN intervention in the war between India and Pakistan.
America had been too wrapped up in domestic affairs to stop the Soviets when they renounced the agreements recognizing the independence of their breakaway republics, and just as slow to react to the invasion of Norway, but now tensions were running high. And Batman now understood the lesson Tombstone Magruder had taught him back on that first cruise. The crisis in Norway had brought Russia and America to the brink of war. Batman Wayne didn’t plan to be the man who pushed them over the edge.
He shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind as they reached their planes and started on the serious business of checking the Tomcat over before they entrusted their lives to it. Chief Bergstrom, the brown-shirted plane captain responsible for maintaining and inspecting the aircraft, joined Batman and Malibu as they circled the big interceptor. Bergstrom was a good man, and Batman trusted him, but not to the point of going up without making sure there wasn’t some careless mistake by one of the maintenance crewmen just waiting to be overlooked.
Satisfied, they moved to the left side of the Tomcat. Bergstrom folded down the cockpit ladder. “Good hunting, sir!” he shouted over the din of the flight deck.
Batman gave him a quick thumbs-up and climbed into the front of the cockpit. Malibu settled into the backseat a few moments later, while Wayne was still settling his kneeboard into place on his leg.
He went carefully through the pre-flight checklist, suppressing a grin at the thought of how conscientious he’d become in the last three years. It all went back to the tour with Tombstone Magruder, who’d taught him that it didn’t always take glitz and glitter to make a first-rate fighter pilot.
The checklist finished, Batman powered up the Tomcat’s two General Electric F110-GE-400 engines, first the
