He checked the bulkhead clock with mild surprise. Less than five minutes had passed since battle stations had been sounded. The first Indian missile strike had smashed into Jefferson’s defenses and been broken.
Now, though, the stakes were rising. Once Coyote and Shooter were airborne, the launch procedure for the rest of the carrier’s Tomcat defenders would begin. Tombstone could see more F-14s moving up into line behind Coyote’s and Shooter’s planes, and other aircraft were already being lined up on Cats Three and Four.
The Air Boss and his crew would be working flat-out to get the remaining Tomcats up as fast as possible. On the battle board, the Indian aircraft were moving southwest from Kathiawar, an unstoppable wave of machines. Against them were eighteen Tomcats, eight from VF-95, ten from VF-97. Four Vipers were already aloft; the rest would be joining them soon.
They looked slow-moving and clumsy on the deck. Turkeys. Once in the sky, though, it was a different story.
Tombstone studied Coyote’s plane as though trying to memorize each detail, every line and marking. The numerals 204 on the nose were faint, hard to make out against the glare of the morning sun to starboard. Since the early 1980s, the Navy had been using a low-contrast gray-and-gray scheme called low-viz, eliminating the garish paint schemes and squadron markings favored by aviators during the Vietnam era.
Gone were the grinning shark mouths, the stripes and badges and crests.
Even the numbers and nationality emblem were muted to near-invisibility.
It had been discovered during air trials in the late seventies that these bright markings not only made a big difference in sighting an opponent, they actually helped provide the heat contrast necessary for all-aspect heat- seekers to achieve a lock.
The wings on the two ready birds were swung forward into launch position. Green shirts completed the final check of the shuttle links.
White shirts went around the aircraft’s bellies one last time, then signaled the launch director with thumbs up.
The jet-blast deflectors rose on hydraulic pistons from the deck behind the ready aircraft, protecting planes parked to the rear from the exhaust. Both pilots were throttling up now, as the launch officer rapidly spun his upraised fist.
“Deck clear,” the Air Boss’s voice said over the CATCC speaker. “Launch ready aircraft. Now launch ready aircraft.”
The engine nozzles on the two F-14s glowed orange as Shooter and Coyote went to Zone One burner. Tombstone could not hear the shriek of the jets in the noise-muffling soundproofing of CATCC, but he’d been in the cockpit or on the deck through enough launches to imagine the pulsing throb of raw power.
The Safety Officers gave their final all-clear signals. At each cat, the Catapult Officer returned the pilot’s salutes, raised one hand, and looked toward the shooter, the man with his finger on the button.
Silently, Tombstone counted down the seconds. Go, Coyote, he thought fiercely. Go … The officer at Cat One spun his hand and dropped to one knee, his thumb touching the deck. There was a hesitation … and then Coyote’s Tomcat hurtled down the deck, trailing steam from the shuttle slot beneath its belly. A pair of heartbeats later, the Cat Two officer touched the deck, and Shooter’s aircraft followed, leaping toward the carrier’s bows ahead of twin spears of flame.
“Two-oh-four airborne,” the Air Boss’s voice announced. “Two-four-eight airborne. Let’s get it the hell moving down there, people! We’ve got aircraft to launch!”
Tombstone shifted uneasily. He wanted to be out there! In the cockpit of 201, vectoring toward those hostiles!
With burning eyes, Tombstone watched the pair of Tomcats banking starboard off Jefferson’s bow in choreographed unison, his squadron mates, his friends. Damn, he wished he was going with them.
Silently, he cursed Admiral Vaughn, the Navy, and himself.
0746, 26 March Tomcat 216
Batman glanced at his VDI. The radar screen was becoming increasingly fuzzy, and it was difficult to tell the true targets from random smears of light. Somewhere out there, Batman concluded, an enemy electronic Countermeasures aircraft was doing its thing.
“Hey, Malibu. You see Army anywhere?”
The two Tomcats of BARCAP One had separated to launch their attacks on the incoming Styx missiles. Now the jamming was so bad it was difficult to see anything beyond a range of a few miles.
“Negative, Batman,” the RIO replied. “I’m getting a lot of fuzz on the scope. Someone’s doing some serious jamming.”
“Yeah,” Batman replied. His VDI showed broken patches of glare that partly obscured the oncoming bogies. “It’s the ECM boys’ war now.”
“Viper Two-one-six, this is Victor Tango One-one,” the Hawkeye called at last. “We have a target for you.”
“Copy, Victor Tango.” A target? The sky was filled with targets, or at least it had been when he could still see!
The Hawkeye air controller began passing on new information. “Come to new heading zero-four-one at angels base plus one-niner.”
“Roger that, Victor Tango. Zero-four-one at base plus one-nine thousand.”
He stood the Tomcat on its tail, grabbing for the sky. The “base” of the controller’s orders had been set during Batman’s preflight briefing that morning: eleven thousand feet. By saying angels base plus nineteen, the Hawkeye was telling Batman to go to thirty thousand feet without giving potentially useful information to an enemy who was almost certainly listening in.
The simple code was used only on combat missions, and then only when there was a real threat to ships or aircraft from what the enemy might learn.
Its use reminded Batman of how serious their situation was.
“Tomcat Two-one-six, Victor Tango One-one,” the Hawkeye controller called. “New target now at your zero- four-two. Range six-eight miles.
Do you have him, over?”
“Nothing, Batman,” Malibu said. “That’s the center of the worst of the ECM.”
“Zap him, Mal.” By pouring more power into the beam, the AWG-9 radar might burn through the enemy radar interference, at least across a narrow area. The disadvantage, of course, was that the added power made their aircraft light up like a Christmas tree on the scope of any watching enemy plane. “Fry the son of a bitch with a goddamn microwave oven if you have to!”
“Okay!” Malibu said. “Pegged him, I think. Hard to read through the clutter.”
“Roger that bogie at zero-four-two,” Batman called, reading the display duplicated off Malibu’s screen. “Range six-eight at angels three-five.”
Using the base code this time could have given it away to the Indians.
“That’s the one. Two-one-six,” the Hawkeye controller replied. “Target is probably Eye-el Thirty-eight, suspected hostile ECM aircraft. Engage with Phoenix and destroy. Over.”
“Copy, Victor Tango.” Well, I’m not going to ask him to dance, he thought. “Commencing run.”
An Illyushin. The Indians used the IL-38, code named “May” by NATO, for reconnaissance. This one must have been outfitted as an ECM and EW aircraft.
He could hear Malibu in the backseat, muttering range and bearing to himself as he readied the Phoenix for launch. The RIO had forgotten to switch off the ICS.
“Take it down nice and cool,” Batman said. “We have time.”
“Rog,” Malibu said. “Okay, we have AWG lock and are tracking.”
“Let ‘er rip!”
“Fox Three!” The radar-homer ignited beneath the Tomcat’s belly and streaked into the sky, climbing to reach the target’s altitude.
Batman checked his VDI. It was difficult to make out anything through the hash on his screen, but he could see that a number of antiship missiles were still on their way northwest, closing on Jefferson. To the north and west, unidentified aircraft were gathering, apparently still milling about at marshaling points as more and more aircraft joined them.
