Nimitz Class

submarines, and with your approval I’ll thicken up the ASW effort for the first thirty-six hours.”

“Go ahead, Jack, we don’t wanna get caught with our shorts down. But of course you won’t forget to bias it a bit west because we’ll be flying in that direction. Their SSN’s are always gonna be our major threat. You got that right.”

010430JUN02.

Billy-Ray Howell and the newly fit Freddie had already led the eight Tomcats home after “wiping out” the entire attack force of the George Washington—caught them 250 miles out, off the Hawkeye’s radar, but held their fire until they were sure. Both the enemy submarines had been located and “torpedoed,” one still a hundred miles from the carrier. The other was dispatched by a couple of anti-submarine helicopters when it was detected on radar, at periscope depth, twenty miles out.

“Too fucking close,” growled Captain Baldridge, somewhat ungraciously, to the operators. Then turning to the admiral he said, “Sneaky pricks, submariners. Told you. Never take a chance with those bastards.”

“You don’t need to remind me about ’em, Captain,” replied the admiral. “They’ve been a preoccupation of mine for years. I’m always darn glad to get ’em out of the way in these exercises. I’m almost like you. I don’t trust ’em. But I admire them, and you plain hate ’em.”

“Bastards,” confirmed Jack Baldridge.

And now the exercise was over, and the Jefferson had scored an overwhelming victory. Radar beams had crisscrossed the sky and ocean throughout the hours of darkness, and below the surface, the underwater men in the SSN’s had searched tenaciously for each other. Both of Admiral Carson’s submarines had survived the night intact, and the big Kansan had called the operation off just before dawn. He was within one hour of taking out the opposing carrier either with missiles or torpedoes. The George Washington had only one live escort left.

“Shoulda sunk ’em all,” muttered Baldridge.

“Not necessary,” said the admiral. “The record will be clear enough. I thought our guys, specially the pilots, were damned good tonight.”

The weather had turned bad shortly after midnight. There had been a lot of wind, and low, heavy clouds were making the landings more perilous than usual. One by one the fliers had brought them thundering into the deck. The hooks grabbed and connected every time.

With the wind on the increase and rain sweeping straight down the angled deck, they waited for the arrival of the last one — the Hawkeye, lumbering in from its high-altitude tour of duty. Ensign Adams, on another night watch as Arresting Gear Officer, was at his post on the pitching deck, watching for the dim navigation lights of the big radar aircraft.

The Landing Signal Officer standing right out on the port-quarter was in phone contact with the Hawkeye’s pilot, Lieutenant Mike Morley, an ex-Navy football tight-end, out of Georgia. Morley was good in any conditions, but he was at his best under real pressure, at night, in difficult weather. Right now he was following nighttime low- visibility landing procedures. He was coming in at 1,200 feet, six miles out.

The LSO attempted to instill confidence in the incoming crew. “Okay, Mike. Four-eight-zero, you’re looking great…watch your altitude…check your lineup…”

One mile out, the big E-2C Hawkeye was still right on the landing beam, and the LSO heard Morley say quietly: “Okay, I’ve got the ball. Nine thousand pounds.” They could now see the powerful beams of the landing lights on the aircraft’s wings, rushing in toward the stern of the carrier, rising and falling with the buffeting headwind. Everyone was on edge as the last of the Jefferson’s nighttime warriors came charging home.

Jim Adams shouted into the darkness, “Groove!” And now they could hear the howl of the props on the Hawkeye’s eighty-foot-wide wingspan as it bore down on the ship, an angry, glowing alien from space, made tolerable only by the design on its rear fuselage, the old familiar white star in the blue circle, the red stripe, and the single word: NAVY.

“Short,” yelled Adams, then seconds later, “Ramp!”—and Mike Morley flew the Jefferson’s battle-line quarterback fifteen feet above the stern, then hard into the deck, poised to open the throttle as the wheels slammed in, but hauling it closed as he felt the hook grab and the speed drop from 100 knots to zero in under three seconds. The scream of the engines drowned out the spontaneous roar of applause which broke out from several corners of the flight deck. There were beads of sweat on the forehead of Mike Morley, and he would never admit his heart rate to anyone. “Came in pretty good,” he drawled in his deep Southern voice, as he walked away from the Hawkeye. “Y’all did a real fine job gettin’ me down. Thanks, guys.”

171430JUN02. 26N, 48E.

Course 040. Speed 8.

“You sure we go outside the big island, Ben? Gets real rough out there.”

“Not, I assure you, as rough as it would get if we got caught between the island and the mainland. The Pacific Fleet patrols those waters these days. I do not think there is overhead surveillance, but I cannot risk being spotted by a U.S. warship. They are extremely jumpy at best. If they did see us, they would be very curious.”

“Yankee mother fuckers, hah? We stay away from them.”

“Yes, Georgy. For the time being we stay away from them — and everyone else for that matter.”

“What about next refuel? Under half left.”

“Well, this thing will go well over 7,000 miles at this speed. We’re around 1,750 from the Carlsberg Ridge. Then another 250 to our final refueling point. We’re fine, Georgy.”

“Okay, what’s that, another ten days before we look for tanker?”

“Exactly. Are the crew all right?”

“Not bad. It long and boring, but we change that soon, eh?”

“Remember your chaps, all fifty of them, understand they are conducting a critical mission on behalf of Mother Russia. You should perhaps remind them of that.”

“High risk though, Ben. I don’t think I ever see home again. Either way.”

“Maybe not home. But you will have a new one in another place. We will take care of everything.”

261200JUN02. 21N, 64E.

Course 005. Speed 10.

On board the Thomas Jefferson.

Three weeks into their on-station time, Admiral Carson’s Battle Group was four hundred miles southwest of Karachi and six hundred miles southeast of the Strait of Hormuz, home of the Iranian Naval base of Bandar Abbas. To the west lay the coast of Oman, to the north, the deeply sinister mountain ranges which reach down to the coast of Baluchistan.

On the direct instructions of the admiral, Captain Baldridge had called a conference of the main warfare departmental chiefs. They were all there, sitting around the boardroom-sized table in the admiral’s ops room — the key operators from the Combat Information Center, the senior Tactical Action Officer, the Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer, the Anti-Air Warfare Officer, the Submarine Element Commander, Captain Rheinegen, the master of the carrier itself, Commander Bob Hulton, the Air Boss. From the rest of the group, there were six senior commanders, including Captain Art Barry, of the guided missile cruiser Arkansas, New York Yankees fan and buddy of Jack Baldridge. He had flown thirty miles, from the western outer edge of the group.

For several of them it was a first tour of duty in the Arabian Sea, and Zack Carson considered it important to let them all understand why they were there, and to impress upon their various staff officers the critical nature of this particular assignment. “Now I know it’s real hot out here, and there doesn’t appear to be that much going on,” he said.

“But I’m here to tell you guys that this is an extremely serious place to be right now. The tensions in the Middle East have never been a whole hell of a lot worse, not since 1990. And as usual ownership of the oil is at the bottom of it all — and I don’t need to tell you that every last barrel of the stuff comes right out past here — Jesus, there’s more tankers than fish around here as I expect you’ve noticed.

“The policy of the State Department is pretty simple. As long as we are sitting right here, high, wide, and