direction of the contact.
Who did the Foxtrot belong to, India or Russia? With the outbreak of war between India and Pakistan, it was important that they know. The threat of war with the Soviet Union had receded for the past several years, as Russia’s internal economic and political problems grew worse.
But if that was an Indian sub out there … Just how close was the battle group to becoming caught in the crossfire between two warring powers … the way Stark had been caught in 1986?
Farrel continued to study the ocean surface with a growing sense of unease.
CHAPTER 2
Captain James Fitzgerald shifted in the high-backed, leather-covered seat on the bridge. Golden light spilled through the broad, slanting windscreens, highlighting wiring conduits in the overhead and the gleaming brass handles of the engine-room telegraph. The enlisted men in whites, the chiefs and officers in khakis, went about their duties with the calm efficiency Fitzgerald had come to expect of them during these past, grueling eight months.
His gaze went outside the bridge and to the deck forward, where the jet-blast deflector was rising behind an F/A-18 Hornet of VFA-161. The deadly little multi-role fighter was squatting over the slot of Cat One as deck handlers in their color-coded jerseys moved about, poking, prodding, checking, readying the aircraft for launch. Steam from the last catapult launch still swirled about the handlers’ legs. A second Hornet shuddered on one of the waist cats further aft as its engines blasted against the unyielding steel of its JBD.
The voices of the Air Boss and his assistants aft in Pri-Fly could be heard over a monitor. “Cat Four, Four-oh- one, stand by!”
“Thirty seconds. Red. Green on fifteen.”
“Deck clear. Stand by! Stand by!”
“Green!” A throbbing roar sounded from the carrier’s waist, and the F/A-18 on Cat Four vaulted forward, sweeping past the first Hornet still waiting on Cat One.
“Four-oh-one airborne.”
“That’s three to go.”
The dance on the deck continued, ponderous, complex, and deadly.
Aircraft carrier flight decks were the most dangerous workplaces on Earth. Everything was in motion: men, machines, the deck itself. There were no guardrails if a jet blast caught a man, or if he took a careless step backward. Engines shrieked continually, making speech possible only through the bulky Mickey Mouse ears the directors wore. Jet intakes could suck a man to his death in an instant … or thirty tons of aircraft could break free from an improper tie-down and crush him like a runaway truck.
Fitzgerald worried about his command, about his men. This cruise had strained all of them to the breaking point, and he feared that worse was on the way.
Tired, he thought. They’re all tired. He reached up, pushed the ballcap with U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson, CVN-74 emblazoned in gold above the bill to the back of his head, then removed his aviator’s sunglasses so he could rub his eyes. And I’m tired too.
The international situation was worsening … fast. The cold war between Pakistan and India had just flashed hot.
Was this their fourth major war, or their fifth? It was easy to lose track, and it depended, Fitzgerald decided, on just how the skirmishes were counted. This current clash along the Indian-Pakistan border looked like it might blow up into something as nasty as the war of ‘7 1.
There were reports of Indian armor gathering along the rim of the Thar Desert, and air strikes at Pakistani Air Force units as far west as Karachi. Tensions in the region had been mounting for weeks, the situation serious enough that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had ordered CBG-14 north from the tiny reprovisioning base on British-owned Diego Garcia to patrol the waters west of the subcontinent of India.
Such orders were typical enough for a U.S. carrier task force, charging the battle group with the protection of American lives and property.
Similar orders had taken Jefferson into Sattahip Bay two months earlier during an attempted coup in Thailand. There were thousands of American citizens in both Pakistan and India, everything from diplomats and their staffs to businessmen to guru-chasing remnants of the ‘60s at Goa and Kovalum, the “heepies” as native Indians called them. Jefferson’s presence in international waters was a warning to both governments that the United States could consider military options in order to protect U.S. citizens.
The special orders received four days earlier had diverted Jefferson and the five other vessels of CBG-14 to an imaginary circle on the Indian Ocean three hundred miles south of Karachi, and about one hundred miles southwest of India’s broad, fan-shaped Kathiawar Peninsula. Jefferson would reach that spot, informally labeled “Turban Station,” in another twenty hours. After that … well, then things would be up to the Indians and the Pakistanis, and to the new CO of Carrier Battle Group 14.
Fitzgerald made a face as he replaced his sunglasses. He still didn’t know what to make of Rear Admiral Charles Lee Vaughn.
On the forward deck, the Hornet was revving its engines to full afterburner, sending waves of heat shimmering above the deck. The white-jacketed Safety Officer was making his final check, signaling the Catapult Officer with an upraised hand.
“Amber light,” the voice of Pri-Fly said over the speaker behind Fitzgerald’s head. “Stand by. Stand by.”
Admiral Vaughn seemed competent enough, but Fitzgerald had a suspicion that it was his political connections more than his seamanship that had brought him to the Jefferson. At the very thought of politics, Fitzgerald’s stomach knotted. It was impossible to look at Vaughn and not remember the man he’d replaced.
Admiral Thomas J. Magruder had been the carrier group’s commanding officer throughout the roughest deployment Fitzgerald could remember … and his memory included three tours off the coast of Vietnam. Nothing he’d seen then or since matched what the Jefferson had experienced in this one single tour.
In eight months, CBG-14 had twice seen combat. In September Jefferson had been deployed in support of a combined Navy-Marine operation to rescue the crew of the Chimera, a Navy intelligence ship captured on the high seas by the North Koreans. Three months later, Jefferson’s battle group had been deployed to the Gulf of Thailand to support the Bangkok government during a coup attempt. Immediately after the Thailand crisis Admiral Magruder had been hurriedly summoned to Washington, and Vaughn had come aboard to replace him.
There was a hint of scandal in that summons, and the threat of a Senate inquest. The operation in Thailand had not violated the War Powers Resolution — U.S. participation had been limited to two Marine actions ashore, air support, and two alpha strikes off the Jefferson — but it had a number of Congressmen operating in full Administration-bashing mode.
Since it had come hard on the heels of Jefferson’s intervention in North Korea, some of the President’s sharpest critics were accusing him of being trigger-happy, an accusation that had trickled down to the man in charge on the scene as well. Admiral Magruder had enjoyed a distinguished and rewarding career, but if Washington needed a scapegoat he would be elected. His advice to the White House had led directly to the Presidential order to send in the Marines and the air strikes.
Admiral Vaughn had been tapped in his Pentagon office to fly to the Far East before the last of the rebels had been rounded up, arriving only a few days after the formal awards ceremony in Bangkok. He remembered Magruder’s face during the full-dress muster on Jefferson’s flight deck that muggy afternoon while the battle group was still anchored in Sattahip Bay. The man had looked drawn, worn, possibly a little subdued as his replacement stepped off the Sea Knight helo in his crisp and spotless dress whites. Only then had Fitzgerald realized how old Admiral Magruder looked, old and … beaten.
Fitzgerald had known then that Magruder was being sacrificed in the name of Washington politics.
Something was happening on Cat One. The Safety Officer was making sharp motions with his hands, and the orange glow of the Hornet’s afterburners was fading. The captain turned in his seat to watch one of the big PLAT
