squadrons. Marines on the ground looked up in something like awe as white contrails crawled and scratched across the sky, etching out twists and turns and occasional deadly plunges toward the earth on smoke trails turned black.
The twisted mass of contrails thickened, swiftly tangling into what aviators referred to as a furball.
In the skies above the Kerch Peninsula, aircraft and men were dying.
So far, the information supplied by the Russians through Captain Magruder had proven accurate. South of the naval base facilities at Kerch, and just offshore from the tank farm and refinery complex at Arsincevo, an enormous offshore fueling dock was connected to the shore by a bridge and a massive bundle of petroleum loading lines. The dock approaches had been carefully checked by the frigate Leslie, making certain that the shipping channels were clear and deep enough for the supercarrier’s ponderous draft. Two hours earlier, a shore party of fuel handlers from the Air Wing’s V-4 Division ? ”grapes” in Navy parlance, because they wore purple jerseys during flight deck operations ? together with a security detail of Marines off the Jefferson, had boarded the offshore dock and begun readying it for fueling operations.
Commander Tom Hadley stood on the starboard side of the Jefferson’s bridge, looking down at the fueling dock… and out across the water beyond to the shoreline a mile away. This was the key moment in Operation Ranger, the whole point of the raid, and the time when the huge carrier was at her most vulnerable. He’d brought her into the narrow waters between the Taman and Kerch Peninsulas, facing south with her starboard side toward the landing beaches to the west. The shore party was hooking up the fueling lines now, swaying the ends up to Jefferson’s starboard fuel ports and locking them home. A Seabee crew ashore had already identified the storage tanks containing high-octane aviation gasoline, while Lieutenant Commander Volkwein, senior officer of V-4, had pronounced the avgas “sweet” and up to Jefferson’s demanding standards.
Now all they had to do was pump nearly three million gallons ? about nine thousand tons ? of the highly flammable stuff on board.
All flight deck operations had been suspended, of course, and the smoking lamp was out throughout the ship. More worrisome, Hadley had ordered the automatic fire control computers for Jefferson’s three CIWS defense systems switched to standby mode. If something triggered the Close-in Weapons System’s radar-linked computer while it was on active, it would acquire the target and open fire by itself within two seconds, loosing a stream of depleted uranium shells at a buzz-sawing fifty rounds per second… and possibly ignite the gasoline fumes spilling from the carrier’s starboard side.
That meant, however, that for the critical thirty minutes or so necessary for the transfer of fuel from shore to carrier, the Jefferson would be relying solely on its fighter cover for defense from enemy aircraft.
Of course, the carrier always relied on her aircraft as her first and primary line of defense; CIWS, pronounced “sea-whiz” in Navy-speak, was strictly a last-ditch defense against missiles or aircraft that had “leaked” through the outer defensive perimeters and approached to within fifteen hundred yards of the carrier. But this close inshore, this close to the battle, with a defensive perimeter as tight and as restricted as this one, they were taking a terrible chance.
Hadley paced the bridge, anxiously watching the sky.
Dixie couldn’t see the enemy plane yet, but he could follow the symbol marking it on his HUD, shifting from left to right as the other pilot tried to position himself for a launch.
Tomcat 216 was momentarily alone; Tomboy and Hacker in 207 had dropped back a few miles, deploying in a “loose goose” formation that gave the defense maximum flexibility. The attackers, as nearly as Dixie could tell, weren’t even employing wingman tactics. Possibly, the volley of Phoenix missiles had so broken up the approaching formations that only scattered, individual aircraft were left.
“Damn!” Cat said from the backseat. “This bastard’s taking us head-to-head! Range five miles!”
“Going for Sidewinder,” Dixie said, flipping a selector switch. He still had two Phoenix missiles left from his original four, but he wanted to save those for a difficult shot or longer-ranged targets. The AIM-9L was an all-aspect heatseeker, meaning he didn’t have to be looking up the target’s tailpipes in order to get a solid lock. Still, head shots were risky, and in more ways than one. Since the target gave off far less heat from its forward aspects than from its tail, it was always easier to elude an incoming heatseeker by dropping flares.
“Range three miles!” Cat warned. They were closing rapidly.
He heard the warble in his headset, indicating a heatseeker lock. “I’ve got him!” Dixie yelled. “Fox two!”
Major Yevgenni Sergeivich Ivanov had been holding his Mig-27M steady, angling toward the oncoming American aircraft until he saw the flash of its launch, just three miles ahead. There was no buzzing tone warning of a radar lock, so the incoming missile had to be a heatseeker. He held steady for another three beats, then pulled back sharply on the stick, going into a steep, twisting climb as he triggered a string of flares. At twelve thousand feet, he flipped the Mig over onto its back, dropping out of a perfect Immelmann that put him well above the American, and slightly to the right. From here, looking down on the enemy, he let his port-side AA-8 Aphid missile “see” the F-14’s heat plume and triggered the launch.
As soon as the Aphid slid off the launch rail, Ivanov rolled hard to the left, trading altitude for speed as he plummeted toward the sea far below.
While the American was dealing with the heatseeker, perhaps he could slip through down on the deck.
“We missed,” Cat said. “He suckered us with a flare.”
“I’m going after him,” Dixie said. His heart was pounding, his breath coming in short, hard gasps behind his oxygen mask.
“Watch it, Dix!” Cat warned. “He’s launched!”
“I see it!” Dixie adjusted his course slightly, angling straight toward the oncoming missile, holding steady for an agonizing three seconds… then cutting back on his throttle while simultaneously popping flares.
Another few seconds passed, and then the missile streaked past, a hundred feet off; there was a loud thump from astern as the AA-8’s proximity fuse detonated the warhead, but no indication of damage. Dixie rolled hard to port, pulling the F-14’s nose around, centrifugal force mashing him down into his seat as he whipped around through sixty degrees of the compass. He’d lost sight of the other plane.
Now where the hell?..
“Tomboy, this is Dixie! Where are you?”
“About five miles behind you, at base plus five.” That put her at eight thousand feet, slightly above 216.
“We just missed a Flogger coming through the line. Did you see him?”
“Negative on that, but we’ll keep an eye out.”
“Rog.” He thought the Flogger must have dived; that’s what he would have done in that situation ? give the opposition something to think about, then head for the deck, where the ground clutter might hide him from enemy search radar. “I think he’s on the deck. What’s your warload, now?”
“We’re down to one AIM-9,” Tomboy replied. “We’re empty on the 54s.”
“Shit. Okay. If you spot him, coordinate with Cat. We have two Phoenixes left, and maybe we can take him if you can spot him.”
“I COPY.”
Dixie pulled into a turn, giving Cat a chance to probe the entire area with the F-14’s AWG-9, as well as to query the Hawkeyes that were orbiting further south, outside of the main battle area. The AWG-9 had the impressive capability known as “look down-shoot down,” meaning it could pick a target out from the background clutter even when it was mingled with returns from the sea or ground. But Cat would need time to narrow her beam
