Tombstone grinned. 'That debate has been going on since the Falklands War. That's when the Navy suddenly realized that a cheap missile could do big-time damage to a very expensive ship.'
'And there was the Stark in the Persian Gulf,' Pamela pointed out. 'Can you really justify spending billions of dollars on something that can be blown out of the water by a single Exocet costing, oh, say a few hundred thousand dollars?'
'In the first place,' Tombstone said slowly, 'the Jefferson is not the Sheffield.'
'Sheffield?'
'A British DDG, a guided-missile destroyer, sunk by air-launched Exocet missiles during the Falklands War,' Tombstone explained. 'Look at it this way. Jefferson has over two thousand separate watertight compartments.
Sinking her… well, you might as well try to sink a piece of styrofoam.'
'That sounds ominously like the argument they used for the unsinkable Titanic,' Pamela said. Her eyes twinkled. She seemed to enjoy sparring with him. 'In a war, you'd have quite a time hiding a ship this big from Russian satellites. One nuclear cruise missile and… where would your styrofoam be then?'
Tombstone crossed his arms. 'Look, if Russia and us start tossing nukes at each other, we're going to be losing a hell of a lot more than carriers!
Jefferson can fight a nuclear war all by herself if she has to, but her main purpose is as a deterrent… and to give the President some non-nuclear options in a crisis.'
'Like Wonsan.'
'That's right.'
'Okay, what about conventional weapons then? You're still vulnerable.
An Exocet could slip right through this big doorway here, explode in there among all those airplanes and… whoosh!'
'In combat, these openings are closed off by sliding armor panels. We keep them open in fair weather and in port to keep the hangar deck aired out, but we can seal her up tight when we need to. So we won't have SSMs bouncing around on our hangar deck.
'Now, look over there.' He pointed aft toward a railed sponson extending from the hull along the ship's port quarter. 'See that grouping of six tubes, like mortars? That's Super RBOC.' He pronounced it 'are-bock.'
'For Rapid-Bloom Offboard Chaff. Anti-ship missiles like Exocet are guided to their target by radar. When CIC ? that's the ship's combat information center ? picks up incoming missiles, those tubes fire off clouds of radar- reflecting fibers called chaff, just like the chaff dispensers on my Tomcat. The missiles home on the chaff and miss the ship.
'Now, look up there.' He turned around and pointed forward, far up along the curve of the ship's hull. 'Up there on that forward sponson… see something that looks like a big, white, dome-topped garbage can? That's one of our Mark IS Phalanx systems, or CIWS.' He pronounced the acronym 'sea-whizz.'
'That's for Close-In Weapons System. It's a big Gatling gun, computer-controlled and radar-directed, which can rattle off 20-mm depleted uranium rounds at the rate of fifty per second. Each slug is two and a half times denser than steel and is moving at something like seven hundred miles per hour when it hits. The control and aiming is precise enough to target an incoming missile and blow it right out of the air. We have three Mark 5s aboard Jefferson: that one port side forward, one to starboard below the island, and one aft on the port side of the fantail.'
The deck handlers had completed maneuvering the Tomcat onto the elevator.
A klaxon blasted warning, and then the elevator gave a hard jolt and began crawling upwards.
'Phalanx,' Pamela said thoughtfully. 'Wasn't that the defense system on the Stark that was turned off at the wrong time?'
Tombstone met her cool gaze evenly. 'Yes, ma'am. It was.'
'But of course, that can't happen aboard the Jefferson.'
'No ma'am, it can't.'
The elevator rose level with the flight deck and shuddered to a halt.
From here, it was like standing on a dry land airfield, with the control tower island rising far across a very large stretch of dark-colored runway. The aircraft parked along the edge of the four-acre flight deck, the helo still resting in front of the island, the tiny figures of deck handlers going about their duties ? all served to emphasize the overwhelming size of the Jefferson.
With no flight operations going on, the flight deck was unusually quiet.
'You still haven't convinced me, Commander,' Pamela said as they stepped off the elevator and started across the flight deck. She stopped Tombstone with a hand on his shoulder and turned, facing west. Three of the other ships of Jefferson's battle group were visible scattered at widely spaced intervals across the Sattahip anchorage. Closest was the shark-gray shape of the Vicksburg, the CBG's Aegis cruiser. Astern was the DDG Kearny, and farther off still, the frigate Biddle. Winslow and Gridley, the remaining two vessels of CBG-14, were still at sea patrolling in the Gulf of Thailand. 'Look,' she continued. 'You have a nine-billion-dollar aircraft carrier… and you still need all those ships just to protect her!'
Tombstone laughed.
'What's so funny?'
'Excuse me, ma'am, but that's a pretty common misconception.'
'Those other ships don't protect the carrier?'
'Oh, to a certain extent, sure. The frigates are mostly for ASW ? that's anti-submarine work ? and they act as a screen to keep enemy subs from getting too close. But Jefferson's aircraft are her whole reason for being. Look…
think of a map of the United States. Now imagine the Jefferson sitting in Washington, D.C., okay?'
'Okay.'
'Her frigate escorts would be deployed as far apart as, oh, say, Pennsylvania and parts of North Carolina. But her F-14 Tomcats would be on patrol over Maine, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Michigan.'
'My God…'
'Her S-3 Vikings would be sub-hunting in Ohio. If there was need for a bombing run, her A-6 Intruders could hit Chicago.'
'Good Lord! I had no idea you guys covered so much territory,' Baughman said. He sounded impressed.
'Put that same battle group in the Med,' Tombstone continued. 'With the Jeff off Greece, our planes could cover places as far apart as northern Italy and Syria, Odessa on the Black Sea and the deserts of Libya.' He paused, suddenly self-conscious, then smiled and gestured at the Vicksburg. 'You see, as far as we're concerned, it's us who protects them!'
She laughed, a warm sound, and she reached out and touched his arm. 'I must say, Commander, that I admire your love for your ship. Boat,' she corrected herself. 'It certainly shows when you talk about her!'
He smiled in reply. 'If you think that's bad, wait until you get me talking about flying. That's my real love.'
Suddenly she turned serious. 'Yes, I imagine it would be.' She looked at Tombstone for a moment, then, abruptly, turned away. 'Okay, boys. You got what we need?'
'That should do it,' Griffith said, patting his camera. 'We've got five ? ten good minutes' worth.'
'We could get you back on board in the next day or two while we're conducting flight ops,' Tombstone offered. 'You could get some great shots of catapult launches… or recovery operations aft. It's a lot more exciting than miles and miles of gray steel passageways!'
'We may take you up on that,' Pamela said. 'For now, though, I think we should set up a time to meet you in Bangkok. I'll want to get some of what you said today on tape. You can be quite persuasive when you want to be, Commander.'
'I guess that's why they made me tour guide,' he replied. 'To keep your show from getting too one- sided!'
She smiled. 'We'll see. I'll take up your schedule with your admiral.
By the way, Admiral Magruder is your uncle, isn't he?'
That again. 'Yes, ma'am, he is.'
She laughed. 'Well, that must be convenient!'
