knocking out Pakistan is really important to New Delhi.”
“Then what can we do?” Hall asked. “What can the President do?”
“That, gentlemen, is why the President wanted us to meet here this morning,” Buchalter said. “We are to examine Our options, and I am to report to him with the consensus later this afternoon.” He opened the folder in front of him and leafed through it to a marked page.
“Gentlemen, if you would turn in Your briefs to the National Security Decision Memorandum, NSDM-242. I direct your attention to Point Two.”
He cleared his throat and began reading. “In conjunction with other U.S. and allied forces, to deter attacks — conventional and nuclear — by nuclear powers against U.S. allies and those other nations whose security is deemed important to U.S. interests.”
He looked up and faced the men around the table. “This memorandum was formulated by the Nixon-Ford Administrations and reaffirmed by NSDD-13 in 1981. In other words, if the President says that it is in the national interest to prevent a nuclear war on the Indian subcontinent-“
Schellenberg blinked. “Are you saying we should declare war on India?”
Buchalter smiled tightly. “I think, Mr. Secretary, that the President would appreciate an option less extreme than that. But he does want an option.” He turned to Caldwell. “General, I’d like to hear more about this carrier battle group we already have in the area. Anything we do out there is going to rely on them.”
“We could take this up with the United Nations,” Hemminger said. The Secretary of Defense rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “A nuclear war in South Asia could have repercussions on lots of countries. Afghanistan, Burma, Thailand …”
“Not to mention the former Soviet Union, what is now the Commonwealth of Independent States,” Marlowe said. “I imagine that they’re burning the midnight oil right this moment in the Kremlin, trying to decide what to do about this. I assure you, the Soviet Union will not be pleased at the prospect of a nuclear confrontation so near her southern frontiers.”
“The President has already informed our representative at the UN,” Buchalter added. “I imagine Pakistan’s nuke … and the incident with our frigate … will both be pretty high on the list of topics discussed on the East River today.”
The discussion went on for three hours. In the end, it all came down to one thing.
CBG 14 was already in the area. Any other military forces short of ICBMS or long-range SAC bombers would require days or weeks to deploy.
Every man there was remembering the long buildup in the Arabian desert during Operation Desert Shield. Any short-term answer to the crisis was riding on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Jefferson.
CHAPTER 5
Tombstone walked into the Vipers’ ready room, exchanging greetings with the other aviators already there. Most of VF-95’s pilots and RIOS were there, standing about in small groups or already sitting in the rows of chairs facing a large TV screen mounted on the far bulkhead. Those scheduled for patrol within the next few hours wore their flight suits.
The others were more comfortably attired in their khakis.
Looking around the room, he spotted Batman and his rear-seater, Lieutenant Ken “Malibu” Blake, standing in one corner underneath the PLAT monitor, deep in a heated debate. He hesitated a moment, then walked over to join them.
“Ho, Stoney!” Batman said. “Help me straighten out this guy.”
“Hopeless,” Tombstone said. “You should’ve known that when you married him.”
“Yeah, I know, but where there’s life, there’s hope, even for the brain-dead. This guy’s trying to tell me that the Russians aren’t a threat anymore.”
Malibu took a sip from a can of soda. He was, in his own words, a Coke-aholic who needed a can of the stuff to get jump-started in the morning. “Seems to me they’re having enough trouble just holding this commonwealth together without trying to project their air-and seapower all over the world,” he said.
“He’s got a point there, Batman,” Tombstone said. “When was the last time we got buzzed by a Bear?”
“Just before Korea, but that’s beside the point. The Iron Curtain was lifted for a while, but it fell again with a thud when things started going sour inside their borders, and now who knows what will happen?”
“Which means they’re too busy to bother with us or the Indian Ocean,” Malibu insisted. “Look at the record, man! They gave Cam Ranh back to the Vietnamese. Yemen decided it didn’t want Soviet ships at Socotra.
They’re not even on particularly good terms with the Indians anymore. If this keeps up, they’re not going to have any overseas bases at all. I don’t think they’re going to be bothering us much from now on.”
“Yeah? Wake up and take a look at this.” Batman turned and slapped a map that was tacked up to a bulletin board on the nearby bulkhead. It was a full-color, 1:41500,000-scale map showing most of the Indian Ocean from Malaysia to Somalia. The Indian subcontinent jabbed southward like a huge, blunt dagger. A black line started at Diego Garcia far south of the dagger’s tip and extended north along the western coast of India before cutting sharply to the west. Dates written in along the way traced the battle group’s progress over the past week. Jefferson’s current position was marked, two hundred miles south of the Indian-Pakistan border.
Six hundred miles southwest of Turban Station, off of Oman on the Arabian Peninsula, another line had been roughed in, this time in red.
It showed the day-by-day recorded positions of the (former) Soviet Indian Ocean Squadron, SOVINDRON. A week before, those ships had been moving slowly south down the Red Sea. Now they had rounded the corner at the Gulf of Aden and were steaming all-out toward the Pakistan coast.
Batman tapped the squadron’s last charted position. “Trouble projecting their seapower? You can say that when they have a fair-sized task force just six hundred miles over the horizon? Man, I’d call that some kind of major power projection!”
“Trying to assert Commonwealth power?” Malibu crumpled the empty aluminum can and dropped it in a wastebasket. “Or they’re looking after their people here, like we are. Mark my words, guys. We’ll be out looking for work if this keeps up!”
“What do you say to that, Stoney?” Batman asked. “Ready for a job with United?”
The joke stung. Tombstone managed to keep the easy smile on his face.
“Not just yet,” he said. “Not if they won’t let me pull an inverted dive in a 727.”
They laughed as he slumped into a seat. For him, the question was dead serious.
His eyes went to the lieutenant j.g. working on the squadron’s greenie board. Every ready room had one, a large chart with the names of all of the aviators in the squadron, and squares colored in with magic markers where his performance for the past month was recorded. A green square meant the LSO had graded his trap as “OK,” the highest praise possible for an excellent pass or for timely corrections of minor deviations.
Yellow was for “fair.” No color meant “no grade,” meaning the trap had been dangerous to people and planes on the deck. Red with a C stood for “Cut,” a landing so unsafe it could have resulted in disaster. The squares were divided into two or three sections for multiple passes, with a “B” signifying a bolter, or missed trap, and a “W” a wave-off. A small black triangle up in one corner meant the trap had been made at night.
The VF-95 Vipers were a good squadron, green and yellow marks predominating, with a few white patches and no reds. Their overall record was not as good as that of either VFA-161 or VFA-173. The intense competitions between squadrons — recorded on a huge greenie board for the entire Air Wing in a passageway outside Pri-Fly — were nearly always taken by those squadrons, for the nimble F/A-18 Hornet was a lot easier to plant neatly on the number-three arrestor wire than the massive Tomcat.
But the Vipers were good, and Tombstone was fiercely proud to be one of them.
It would hurt to leave them.
He reached into the breast pocket of his khakis, pulled out the last letter from Pamela, and began rereading it.
