the first blast, gouging through to the pillar’s hollow core. With a vast and thunderous shudder, the northern leg of the tower shattered, cross struts crumbling, suspension cables writhing, hangers snapping apart like rapid-fire gunshots. Three more missiles arrowed in out of the north in rapid succession, two striking the span near the eastern side, the third hitting the western pylon once again. The deck tilted even more precipitously to the north, spilling vehicles and people into the yawning gulf below.
With the failure of the northern half of the suspension rig accelerating, the southern half began to go, too. The eastern tower sagged heavily toward the north, an avalanche of splintering concrete cascading into the water. The entire thousand-meter-plus center span of the northernmost of the Bosporus bridges whipsawed back and forth, the oscillations building until the main cables snapped, spilling the box sections of the deck into the strait far below.
The navigable channel up the center of the Bosporus was not wide, a few hundred yards across at most, and as the smoke and spray cleared, observers aboard nearby vessels could see that it was almost completely blocked by fallen deck boxes and a vast and incoherent tangle of wire rope. Miraculously, there were survivors, struggling in the wreckage as small craft moved in to begin rescue efforts; the screams of the injured mingled with the continuing splash and crack of falling concrete, and the mournful hootings of ship horns.
Almost immediately, a Turkish naval vessel, the guided-missile patrol boat Gurbet, moving toward the center of the channel at high speed, shuddered, then slewed to a dead stop, two of her four propeller shafts fouled by the unraveling strands of wire rope that stretched above and below the surface of the water like a deadly trap designed expressly for ships.
Clearing out that tangle of debris would require a major engineering effort… and weeks, possibly months of time.
And until the wreckage of the fallen bridge could be cleared, no vessels would be passing between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara… or to the Aegean Sea beyond.
At eight thousand feet, Dixie and Mickey flashed southwest between the impossibly blue sky above and the deep, ultramarine sea below. Glancing right, he could see “Badger” Cunningham and “Red” Burns off his starboard wing in Tomcat 210.
“I’m making multiple bogeys ahead,” Mickey said. “At least ten… ah, make that twelve contacts in three groups.”
“Roger that, BARCAP Two,” Watch Dog replied. “We’ve got them.”
The radar picture ahead was clearing slightly as the Tomcats drew closer to their contacts, until the F-14s, AWG-9 radars gave a better picture than the more powerful but far more distant electronics of the orbiting Hawkeye. With the onboard data link, Tomcats and Hawkeye could share an incredible volume of two-way data, all of which the Hawkeye was relaying immediately to the Combat Information Centers aboard both the Shiloh and the Jefferson.
“Shit,” Mickey said. “I wish I could see! It looks like the bogeys are inside Turkish airspace. Tango Six-one! Do you make some of those bogeys going feet dry over the coast?”
“Ah, roger that, Two. We’re having a little trouble sorting it out.
Some of those contacts might be Turkish air force.”
“Oh, yeah. Hell, I don’t know what it is I’m seeing up here. It looks to me like an attack run, though.”
“Roger that.”
What was happening? Dixie wondered. The nearest contact was just one hundred miles ahead now, invisible to the naked eye but clear enough on Mickey’s display, despite the jamming interference. Moments before, Jefferson had alerted the BARCAP flight that a pair of EA-6B Prowlers were on the way as well. The ECM gear on those babies would be enough to burn through any jamming, as well as provide electronic cover for the Tomcats. Four more Tomcats, BARCAP One, and the two aircraft covering the Prowlers were on the way as well, but BARCAP Two would be in position to get an ID on the unknowns long before anybody else could reach the area.
Dixie’s Tomcat was carrying a standard Barrier CAP interception warload ? four AIM-54C Phoenix missiles, two AIM-9M Sidewinders, and a pair of AIM-120A AMRAAMS. The Sidewinders were strictly for close-in work, of course, and the radar-guided AMRAAMS had a killing range of about thirty miles. At one hundred miles, however, the bogeys were comfortably within kill range of the AIM-54s, which had the astonishing ability to reach out and touch someone 120 nautical miles away.
But the Americans hadn’t been attacked, yet ? were not even being threatened ? and so no “weapons free” had been granted by Ops. They would need a visual identification first.
Still, Dixie thought, something must have really stirred them up back at the bird farm, using aviator’s slang for the carrier. BARCAP Two’s patrol area had been seventy miles southwest of Sevastopol, and about fifty miles west of the Jefferson, positioned to spot and block any hostile aircraft approaching from the general direction of Ukraine and the northwest. BARCAP One, however, Batman and Libbie Bell, had been patrolling north of the Jeff’s position, just off the Crimean coast. Their primary mission of Barrier Combat Air Patrol included the secondary mission of covering Boychenko’s helicopter when he flew from Yalta to the carrier. If Ops was pulling them out of position, something really hot must be on.
Something that was a direct threat to the Jefferson, her battle group, and her mission.
They would know in a few more minutes.
Ivanov brought his Mig higher and dropped his left wing, staring down at the destruction wrought by Black Flight’s salvo of missiles. Perfect… perfect! Three-quarters of the center span was gone; he could see pieces of the deck strewn across the shipping channel like tumbled-down dominoes, and the northern main suspension cable had parted like a thread, spilling a forest of hanger cables and unraveling wire rope into the water. The southern halves of the two towers were still standing, and the suspension cable between them was still above water, but the northern halves were shattered, one fallen completely, the other half gone, like a jagged, broken tooth. The water between the towers was a seething cauldron of dirty foam, struggling antlike forms, ragged chunks of steel deck segments, and floating debris. Smaller craft would continue navigating up and down the Bosporus no doubt, simply by avoiding the center channel, but larger, deeper-draft vessels ? such as the monstrous three-hundred-meter-plus bulk of an American nuclear aircraft carrier ? would be unable to pass without risking serious damage to screws, shafts, and keel.
“Tower, Tower, this is Black One,” he called over the radio. “Come in!”
“Black One, Tower. Go ahead.”
“Seagull! I say again, Seagull!”
The word was the title of one of Chekhov’s more successful plays and was the code for the mission’s success.
“We read you,” Tower replied. “Proceed to Uncle Vanya.”
And that code phrase: the title of another well-known Chekhov play, gave Black Flight and Flashlight permission to engage targets of opportunity.
“Affirmative, Uncle Vanya,” he replied. He nudged the rudder pedals and felt the sudden pile-on of positive Gs as the Mig-27’s nose swung toward the west. Pulling back on the stick, he sharpened the turn as he passed over land once more, bleeding off both velocity and altitude as he brought the aircraft around 180 degrees. He was traveling north once more, flying less than a hundred meters now above the gray-brown, building-dotted terrain.
“Black Leader, Bastion,” a voice called. “We have red intercepts incoming, bearing zero-nine-five, range three-zero kilometers. Blue intercepts incoming, bearing zero-one-eight at one-five-zero kilometers.”
“Black Flight reads you, Bastion. Take out red intercepts first. The blues can wait.” The color codes referred to nationalities ? the red of the Turkish flag, the blue of the American Navy.
“Black Leader, this is Flashlight. Secondary target is illuminated.”
He checked his readouts, confirming target acquisition and lock on his second AS-14. Range ten kilometers… “Firing missile!”
Again, the Mig-27 bucked skyward as though kicked from below and behind as the three-hundred-kilogram
