'Home Plate, Home Plate,' the CIC officer said. How could the man keep his voice so steady? 'Echo-Tango Seven-six-one. We have a fire. I repeat, we have a fire. Bogies are assuming intercept vectors, bearing on Home Plate.'
A fire ? the current code phrase meaning a possible attack in progress.
As far as Lee could tell from his radar screen, every aircraft in Eurasia was on its way.
And their destination appeared to be the Jefferson.
CHAPTER 9
Batman had already been on his way to the Viper Squadron's ready room from morning chow when the alert came over the 1-MC speaker mounted on the bulkhead. 'Now General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands, man your battle stations!'
Before the announcement ended, Batman had broken into a run, forcing his way through passageways and up companionways suddenly filled with young men ? and a few women ? each of them bent on getting somewhere in the least possible time with the greatest possible efficiency. The scene was at first one of chaos, but it was soon clear that each person had a place to go and a task to perform, and there was actually very little confusion or wasted effort as six thousand people turned out in this ship-wide evolution.
Batman banged through the door to the Viper ready room at a fast jog, just ahead of half a dozen other VF- 95 aviators and RIOs. Attached to the main ready room area, with its rows of wooden desks like some 1950s-era schoolhouse, was a dressing area with lockers and a small shower head, where the squadron's NFOs could stow their uniforms and don the flight suits that helped keep them from blacking out in the high-G maneuvers of aerial combat.
As he swiftly unbuttoned his khaki shirt and pulled it off, Batman was marginally aware of the fact that several of the people crowded shoulder to shoulder into the dressing room with him were women. Normally, VF-95's flight officers had shared the dressing area through an unspoken agreement, taking turns and allowing fellow members of the squadron who happened to be of the opposite sex some small measure of privacy, but in an all- hands evolution, where seconds counted, there was no time for such civilized niceties. A few feet to his left, Cynthia Thomas was just shrugging out of her bra. On his right Chris Hanson bumped against his hip as she wiggled into the lower half of her tight-fitting, cold-water survival suit, a rubberized garment worn under the flight suit, always an awkward maneuver even when there was space enough to move around.
The room was crowded, noisy, and tense, but no comment was made by anyone at the display of skin, no lewd wisecracks, not even a peremptory 'Keep your eyes to yourself!' In minutes, Batman was tugging the last zipper on his flight suit shut, grabbing a clipboard with its attached checklist, pen, and notebook, and heading back to the ready room proper.
A large television monitor was suspended from the overhead at the front of the ready room next to the PLAT monitor, and someone had already switched it on. The PLAT screen was showing one of VFA-161's Hornets preparing to launch off the angled flight deck from one of the carrier's waist catapults, but the big TV showed only the crest insignia of the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson, a stylized CVN seen bow-on, with the motto 'COMBAT READY.'
Batman slumped into a seat next to his usual RIO, Lieutenant Commander Ken Blake, a sandy-haired guy from southern California who went by the handle 'Malibu.' Seconds later, Jefferson's insignia on the TV screen was replaced by Tombstone's face.
'Good morning, Air Wing Twenty,' he said, speaking directly into the camera. 'I'll keep this short and sweet. A few minutes ago, our AEW patrol picked up a large number of Russian aircraft taking off from military fields in the northwestern regions of the Kola Peninsula. The figures go up every time a new update comes through, but at this point we are estimating at least one hundred twenty aircraft. Several flights have already crossed the Norwegian border and are on a direct intercept course with the carrier group.'
Tombstone was addressing all of Jefferson's squadrons simultaneously from the TV studio up in the Carrier Intelligence Center, the CVIC, or 'Civic' for short. Batman knew him well enough to know he must wish he were here, with the Vipers, but as CAG his responsibility was for the entire wing, from the two squadrons of Tomcats to the HS-19 squadron of SH-3 helos.
'The battle group has already assumed a defensive posture along the threat axis,' Tombstone continued. 'Admiral Tarrant has ordered that all radar and radio traffic aboard Jefferson be shut down. CATCC will go back on the air only when we have to start bringing you in for rearming. All combat communications and command control will be handled through the Shiloh.'
That particular ploy had been worked out back in the early eighties and had been used successfully on numerous occasions since. As large as it was, an aircraft carrier could virtually disappear if all of the radar and radio transmissions that could light it up on the enemy's screens like a New York City skyscraper at night were shut down. The Aegis cruiser would take over all radar and combat command control duties, making itself a target in the process, of course… but it would be a very well-defended one.
'Shiloh's call sign for this op will be Hotspur,' Tombstone continued.
In concise, rapid-fire words, he outlined the entire wing's deployment. Four VF-95 Tomcats were already aloft on CAP and were being deployed into an advance BARCAP, or Barrier Combat Air Patrol, positioned 250 miles ahead of the Jefferson, squarely between the approaching enemy aircraft and the carrier. Four aircraft from VFA-161, the Javelins, that had been on Ready Fifteen, set to launch within fifteen minutes, were now being sent aloft in their air-interceptor role, leaving bombs and ground-attack rockets behind for Sidewinders and AMRAAMs.
The rest of VF-95 would launch next, moving forward to reinforce the BARCAP. It was vital to get as many Tomcats in the sky as possible since out of all the aircraft aboard, only the F-14s could carry the AIM-54C Phoenix.
The second Tomcat squadron, VF-97, was being armed at that moment with full Phoenix warloads, six AIM- 54s on each aircraft. More of the Javelins' Hornets would be launched until VF-97 was armed and ready, and then the catapults would begin putting them up.
Ultimately, both of Jefferson's Tomcat squadrons would be in the air, positioned to launch their long-range Phoenix missiles against the approaching Russians. Once they had expended their munitions, they would return to Jefferson and recover for rearming, while the two Hornet squadrons moved in to take on the surviving Russians close-up. The carrier's EA-6 electronic warfare planes would be thrown far forward, to scramble the enemy's radar and communications. Her sub-hunting Vikings would be deployed to maintain an ASW screen around the battle group; her ground-attack A-6 Intruders, useless in a fight such as this one, would stand down and stay out of the way.
'I must emphasize,' Tombstone said, 'that we still don't know for certain whether the Russian deployment constitutes a full-scale attack, or if they're just making a feint, warning us off from their coast. BARCAP will be positioned to test them, and by the time the rest of you get airborne, we ought to know one way or the other. Until we do, however, weapons will be locked, and released only upon direct order from the Combat Information Center. Once it has been determined that the Russian force is intent on hostile action, weapons-free will be issued by the Shiloh CIC.'
Tombstone concluded with several more items about deployment, and a report from the Met Office ? sky clear, ceiling unlimited, winds from the northeast at ten knots.
'That's it,' Tombstone said at last. 'Good luck, men. And God go with you.'
Amused, Batman wondered if Tombstone's use of the word 'men,' obviously an oversight in the pressure of the moment, had bothered any of the women.
None of them appeared to have noticed.
Good. This was no time to let petty sexual politics interfere with the smooth operation of the squadron.
'Okay, people,' Batman said, raising his voice to blanket the room. As the Viper XO, he was squadron
