… fifty kilometers.”
“This is Red Wind Leader,” a new voice said. Red Wind was the Mig-27 squadron. Their first target was the air base at Kotri. Their second was a munitions factory north of Hyderabad. “Breaking off for target run.”
“Roger,” Ramadutta replied. He was surprised at how easily the words came. “Good hunting.”
The Pakistanis were rising now like hornets from a nest prodded by a small boy’s stick. It didn’t matter. Their destroyers were upon them.
Fleet as Indra’s heavenly steed … As the silver arrowhead shapes of Pakistani Falcons and IAF Migs clashed, swirled, and loosed their deadly payloads, Ramadutta thought briefly of the Americans. They had been much in the news of late, with their aircraft carrier battle group in the Arabian Sea off the west coast of India. The Americans had been trying to interfere with Indian interests in Kashmir, or so the news reports had claimed, and there were rumors that the Americans had threatened to attack India if their Pakistani allies were invaded.
At close quarters now, Ramadutta pulled back on his stick, following a Pakistani Falcon in a steep-climbing roll into the cloudless skies above Hyderabad. An AA-8 leaped from his wing, curving to meet the enemy interceptor in a white flash and a shower of debris.
If the Americans decided to go to war in defense of their Islamic friends, so much the worse for them. Ramadutta had no illusions about American military might … but he had no illusions either about the problems of fighting a war halfway around the world. India could deploy over nine hundred combat aircraft. The Indian navy boasted two aircraft carriers, purchased from Great Britain along with a number of Sea Harriers. It seemed unlikely that the Americans would risk intervening in a war so far from their own borders.
And if they did, that carrier battle group now lying over the horizon to the south would be a tempting target. A nuclear supercarrier, the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson … now she would be a worthy target for some eager Indian pilot!
Lieutenant Colonel Ramadutta watched the Pakistani Falcon burn as it tumbled toward the blue waters of the Indus River far below.
CHAPTER 1
Lieutenant Commander Matt Magruder, running name “Tombstone,” eased the throttles back on his F-14D Tomcat and put the aircraft into a gentle, twelve-degree port turn. Sunlight glared off the surface of the water thirty thousand feet below, a dazzling blaze of white light mirroring the tropical sun above the vast emptiness of the Indian Ocean. The sky overhead was as huge and as empty as the sea, a piercing blue impossible to describe to anyone who’d not seen it from the vantage point of an interceptor’s cockpit.
To starboard, a second F-14 hung suspended between sea and sky, its modex number 216 visible on its nose just ahead of the cockpit and the American star-and-bar insignia. Lieutenant Commander Edward Everett Wayne, “Batman” to his squadron mates, was Tombstone’s wingman for this patrol.
“Viper Two, Viper Leader,” Tombstone called over his radio, using the tactical frequency. “What do you say, Batman? Let’s tank up.”
“Roger that, Stoney,” Batman’s voice replied. “It’s going to be a long, dry morning.”
The two Tomcats had been catapulted from the deck of the U.S.S. Jefferson only minutes before. Their operational plan called for them to top off their tanks from a KA-6D, then assume BARCAP — BARRIER Combat Air Patrol — between the ships of the carrier battle group and the unseen coastline a little more than five hundred miles to the north. They would be airborne for about four hours.
Bringing the stick back to center, Tombstone switched channels and spoke into the helmet mike once more. “Homeplate, Homeplate, this is Viper Leader,” he said. “Do you copy, over?”
“Viper Leader, Homeplate,” a voice replied in his helmet phones. “Go ahead.”
“Homeplate, we’re on station Bravo Sierra four-niner at angels three-oh.
We could use a drink right about now. Whatcha got in the way of a Texaco, over?”
“Viper Leader, Homeplate. Come to heading two-seven-four at angels two-seven. We’ve got some guys up there with a six-pack waiting for you. Call sign Tango X-Ray One-one.”
“Roger that, Homeplate.” He dropped the Tomcat into a new turn, Batman’s F-14 pacing him a hundred feet off his starboard wing. “Viper now coming to two-seven-four.”
“Ah, Homeplate,” Tombstone’s Radar Intercept Officer added. “I have a single contact bearing two-seven- four at fifteen miles. Confirm that’s our target, over.”
“Roger. That’s your Texaco, boys. No other traffic. Have a cool one on us.” The voice from Jefferson’s Carrier Air Traffic Control Center sounded calm, almost bored. CATCC — the acronym was universally pronounced “cat- sea”—was tasked with keeping track of everything going on in the skies around the supercarrier beyond the radius commanded by Pri-Fly and the Air Boss.
The way things were going now, Tombstone thought, that job could quickly become more important than ever. That morning’s situational briefing had not been encouraging.
“Affirmative, Homeplate. Viper out.” Tombstone switched his mike to the Tomcat’s intercom system. “Well, CAG? How’s it feel to strap on an airplane again?”
“Pretty good, Tombstone,” Commander Stephen Marusko replied over the ICS from the back seat. “I thought I was going to forget what it was like.”
Marusko was the officer in charge of Jefferson’s air wing, CVW-20, over ninety aircraft and three thousand men. His title of CAG was a holdover from the days when it stood for Commander Air Group. Recent changes in the way the Navy ran things had emphasized the administrative part of the job at the expense of flying. Nowadays, a CAG started off as an aviator, like Tombstone, in command of a carrier fighter squadron, then was rotated stateside for a tour in Washington, becoming, as Marusko put it, a prime, Grade-A desk jockey. After that he went back to sea as a carrier’s CAG.
Administrative duties or not, he was still expected to fly with his men, but the press of work — paperwork for the most part — always seemed to get in the way. Tombstone’s usual RIO, a young j.g. named Jerry Dixon, had been given a medical downcheck the day before, and Tombstone had offered CAG a ride as backseater at morning briefing. Marusko had been almost embarrassingly eager for the chance. Contrary to popular belief, Navy RIOS were neither permanently assigned to a specific aviator, nor were they “failed pilots.” Experienced aviators took the back seat of Navy Tomcats from time to time to log out some flight time, or simply to keep their hand in running the F- 14’s complex radar and communications systems.
But it might not be much longer before airborne CAGS were a thing of the past. The Navy was experimenting with a new way of running things, introducing the “Supercag” concept that would make CAG a captain’s billet and let him share responsibilities with the carrier’s skipper.
And won’t that be fun, Tombstone thought with an ironic grin beneath his oxygen mask. The poor bastard might never get to fly anything but his desk.
All of this had set Tombstone to thinking. He was the CO of the Tomcat squadron designated VF-95, socially known as the Vipers. Almost thirty years old, Tombstone had lived for carrier aviation since the day he’d shown up for flight training at Pensacola. Before long he’d be up for promotion to commander, and that Stateside billet on his way to a CAG slot of his own. All along, he’d been moving up the Navy career ladder, the goal of CAG clearly in sight. And after that … well, to be skipper of an aircraft carrier, you had to have served a stretch as CAG.
There were only fifteen carrier command billets in the whole U.S. Navy and openings were rare, but Tombstone had never really entertained doubts that he would make it … some day.
But the doubts were with him now. Not whether he would make it, but whether he should even try. He had some tough decisions coming up.
“Viper Leader, Viper Two,” Batman said over the tactical frequency.
“Tally-ho! Tanker ahoy at twelve o’clock low.”
“I see him,” Marusko said.
Tombstone glanced up from his controls and caught the flash of sun glint off an aircraft canopy far ahead. “Got him, Batman. We’ll take first crack. Breaking left.”
