commander in Coyote's absence. 'You all heard the man. Let's go kick ass and take names!'
'Yeah!' Slider Arrenberger yelled back, punching his clenched fist at the overhead. 'Today we kick Russki ass!'
Arrenberger hadn't been aboard on Jefferson's last deployment, during the fiercely fought battles over Romsdalfjord or off the Lofoten Islands. The chances were all too good that, while the American aviators were kicking Russian ass, the Russians would be kicking their share of American ass as well. Some good people were likely to die today.
Batman was no more superstitious than any other naval aviator, but he suddenly remembered the date ? Friday the 13th. Bad luck for who, the Americans or the Russians?
As the squadron rose with a scraping and squeaking of chairs, Batman noticed Striker ? Lieutenant Strickland ? reach out and grab Lieutenant Hanson's arm. When she turned, he leaned over and gave her a quick, hard kiss on the mouth.
No one said anything, but Batman felt a small twist in his gut. Any PDA ? public display of affection ? was both inappropriate at the moment and strictly contra-regs. He'd already heard scuttlebutt about those two and hoped they didn't get into trouble for it.
He remembered Tombstone's concerns about sexual relationships between members of the squadron, though, and thought he understood. It was embarrassing to admit it, even to himself.
Twenty-nine years old, and Edward Everett 'Batman' Wayne was unmarried.
At the moment, he didn't even have a girlfriend, though he was notorious for his skill in acquiring attractive dates when he was ashore. Ever since his experiences in Thailand a few years ago, however, he'd found himself increasingly dissatisfied with his lifestyle and unable to pinpoint the cause.
Now he was beginning to think it was time to settle down, maybe even get married.
Well, maybe he wouldn't go that far. But he recognized a certain small, sharp pang each time he saw a couple who obviously shared a deep, mutual affection. It wasn't jealousy, not really, but it was an awareness, a reminder that his life wasn't complete.
Sometimes it hurt.
'Let's go strap on an airplane, Batman,' Malibu said, punching him in the arm and jarring him from less-than- pleasant thoughts. 'Betcha Chief Leyden's already got Two-oh-two opened up and warming for us.' Leyden was the crew chief for Tomcat 202, Batman's and Malibu's aircraft.
The passageways and decks between VF-95's ready room and Jefferson's flight deck were still crowded as the carrier's crew proceeded with their assigned battle station duties. Out on the flight deck, the scene was one of frantic, purposeful activity; of steam and thundering, brawling noise; of dozens of men in color-coded jerseys carrying out their assigned duties in surroundings that might have been lifted from one of Dante's hells.
Moving this many of Jefferson's complement of combat aircraft to the proper place at the proper time was a fantastically complex operation, one requiring split-second timing and precision to carry out. At any given time, roughly half of the carrier's aircraft were stowed on her hangar deck, and these had to be fed up to the flight deck in just the proper order and at just the proper times to replace the aircraft that were even now shrieking skyward off Jefferson's catapults.
Jefferson had four catapults and could hurl aircraft aloft two at a time, one off the bow, the other from the waist. However, it took nearly thirty minutes to ready most aircraft from a standing start, and space both on the flight deck and below on the hangar deck was sharply limited. Though the launch order for today's operation had been worked out previously in painstaking detail, Jefferson's Deck Handler and his crew in Flight Deck Control would have their work cut out for them.
The 'Mangler,' as the Handler was called, was responsible for moving aircraft from the hangar deck up to the flight deck by way of just four elevators, mapping out each movement with the aid of large maps of both decks, plus precisely scaled plan-view silhouettes of each aircraft. Getting the right aircraft to the right place at the right time, without creating bottlenecks at the elevators or while feeding into line, without brushing against another aircraft in tractor-towed maneuvers carried out with scant inches to spare, always seemed nothing short of miraculous.
Sprinting across the flight deck to Tomcat 202, Batman and Malibu saw that Chief Leyden already had the aircraft hooked up to external power cables and the 'huffer,' a small tractor that injected air through a hose directly into each engine's turbine fast enough to allow the engine to run on its own.
Though Leyden and the blue shirts working with him had already inspected the aircraft, Batman gave it a quick external, checking the fuselage for obvious damage or open access hatches, tugging on the deadly, white darts of the AIM-54Cs to make sure they were secured and wouldn't drop off during the stress of a cat launch. He traded a jaunty thumbs-up with Leyden, then climbed up the Tomcat's access steps and settled into the cockpit. He felt the aircraft rock as Malibu dropped in behind him.
Quick check… donning helmet and mask, checking oxygen lines and electrical connections, removing safing pins from the ejection seats, fastening seat belt and chest harness. He brought the canopy down.
As Batman began flipping console switches and bringing the F-14's engines on line, he thought again about Tombstone. When he'd first come on board the Jefferson, Stoney had been all but an object of worship for the young Lieutenant Wayne, despite the royal ass-chewings the younger officer had received from him a time or two for hot-dogging. Now, Stoney was a friend, and he was carrying one hell of a burden on his captain's epaulets. It would be especially rough today. As superCAG, he normally would direct the operation from Jefferson's CATCC rather than fly with his pilots, and Batman knew that was hard on the man. Worse still, today's battle would be run from Shiloh's CIC, leaving Stoney in a more or less supernumerary position.
Batman decided that he didn't want to be in the CAG's shoes for anything.
His engines were running, the blue shirts had broken down 202's chains and chocks, and a plane director was signaling for him to come ahead. Gently, Batman eased his thirty-ton charger forward, maneuvering toward the catapults.
Coyote put the F-14 in a gentle starboard bank. The BARCAP was on station now, at an altitude of 32,000 feet. Early morning sunlight sparkled off an ultramarine sea. His wingman, Mustang Davis, was holding Tomcat 206 some fifty feet off Coyote's starboard wingtip. Nightmare Marinaro's 204, and his wingman, Slider Arrenberger in 209, were about ten miles behind and to the north of Coyote and Mustang, positioned to get maximum information from their powerful AWG-9 radars.
The Russian force was close enough now to track. When set to pulse-doppler search, or PDS, the F-14's AWG-9 radar could determine range and speed on a five-square-meter target out to a distance of 115 nautical miles ? over 130 standard miles. Their radar was now showing a heavy clot of blips, crossing the Norwegian coast near North Cape and still heading toward the CBG. The nearest targets were already within sixty miles of the orbiting Tomcats.
'Hotspur, Gold Eagle One,' Coyote said, calling Shiloh's Combat Information Center. 'Request weapons free.'
'Gold Eagle, Hotspur. Negative on weapons release. Situation still confused. We need confirmation of hostile intent.'
'How much confirmation do they need?' Cat asked from the back seat.
'Yeah,' Coyote replied. 'They've already crossed Norwegian airspace, and that doesn't look like the formation for a welcoming parade.'
'Uh-oh,' Cat said. 'I've got…'
'What?'
'Wait one. Okay, we're reading J-band pulse-doppler. Coyote, I think we've got some Badger-Gs out there.'
'Shit,' Coyote said. 'Okay, send it.'
This did not sound good.
The E-2C Hawkeye was still following the massive aerial deployment of aircraft, now crossing the Norwegian
