“Somehow,” he said, “I don’t think that’s going to be good enough. If it was Dmitriev who tried to knock the general off here, he must know by now that he didn’t succeed.”
That, in fact, was the best explanation Tombstone could think of for the attack on the helicopter. Abdulhalik had said the would-be assassins were Tatars; had they killed Boychenko, the murder could have been blamed on Tatar nationalists. There would have been watchers, however, who would have reported by now that Boychenko was still alive. The air strike had probably been set as a backup plan, a way of keeping the general from escaping Yalta for the relative security of the Thomas Jefferson.
But that meant that hostiles were probably already on their way to finish the job the Tatars had botched.
“Tell the general,” Tombstone said, “that we don’t have much time. I’m going to round up the Americans and UN people. Tell him to get his army personnel assembled. I figure we have an hour, maybe less, before all hell breaks loose.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sir,” the aide, Fedorev, said, as Natalie spoke to the general. His use of the honorific was immediate and natural, unthinking. “Is there anything special you need?”
“Access to a radio,” Tombstone replied. “I’d better talk this over with the Jefferson.”
He was beginning to formulate an idea, but he couldn’t develop it further until he knew what was happening at sea.
One thing he did know: The Jefferson battle group and the men and women aboard were in a war zone once again, and God help anyone who tried to get in their way!
CHAPTER 20
Dixie frowned. “Hey, Badge? I got another problem here.”
“What is it, man?”
“My wings won’t swing forward. Can’t tell whether it’s the computer or the wing hardware, but they won’t budge.”
The F-14 Tomcat’s variable geometry wings were designed to fold back at higher speeds to increase maneuverability and decrease drag, and swing forward at low speeds to provide additional lift for takeoffs and landings. Normally, the aircraft’s central air data computer, or CADC, began swinging the wings forward when the plane’s speed dropped below three hundred knots. They were at 275 knots now as they circled in the Marshall stack, but Dixie’s wings stubbornly remained folded in the full-back position.
“Try the override.”
“I did. No go.”
“Shit. How do you feel about a negative-turkey landing?”
Dixie chuckled nervously. “I think I can handle that.”
Some Tomcat pilots overrode their computers during the final approach to the carrier, subscribing to the popular and loudly voiced belief that a Tomcat with its wings extended forward looked like a big, ugly, long-necked bird ? ”turkey mode,” as they called it. A Tomcat could land with its wings folded back but had to maintain a landing speed of 145 knots on the approach and touchdown instead of the 115 knots of a wings-out landing.
“Two-one-eight” called over his headset. “Deck clear. Charlie now.”
That was the signal for him to break from the Marshall stack formation and start his approach for the trap. They’d kept him in the racetrack-shaped loiter course for nearly twenty minutes while they brought other aircraft down; now it was just him, Badger, and Batman still up, with the other two Tomcats staying aloft both to provide security for the ship and to help talk him down if necessary.
God, he wanted to be down. His Tomcat had begun shuddering ominously during the long flight back, the vibration growing worse and worse as he descended to five thousand feet and becoming especially pronounced when he worked the flight controls, opening the flaps or spoilers. Normally, his CADC handled all such minor flight adjustments from moment to moment, as well as controlling his wing geometry, but he was having to make all corrections by hand now. According to his instrument readouts, his CADC was still operational, but its commands weren’t reaching his wings… and each manual input seemed to increase the vibration from his left control surfaces. Sweat was pooling inside his oxygen mask now; he could taste it, feel its slickness between skin and rubber. His hands were sweating, too, inside his gloves, and he resisted the temptation to pull them off and wipe his palms on his flight suit.
His entire career in the Navy, it seemed, had focused his life to this moment when everything was riding on his skill and training. He’d always told himself that because he was black he had to be better than anyone else he was flying with, sharper, more skillful, more aggressive. The problem was that a lot of his bravado had been empty. Oh, sure, he’d known he was good, but in a superficial way that had been challenged, and seriously shaken, by the helicopter incident.
This was where everything he’d learned was laid out for all to see ? bringing a crippled aircraft down onto a carrier deck at sea.
Turning to port, he came in astern of the carrier, following her wake, cutting his speed further now to 230 knots. “Two-one-eight, call the ball,” he heard over the radio. That was the voice of the Landing Signals Officer, the LSO, standing on his platform on the carrier’s port side aft, just left of the spot where Dixie wanted to set his damaged bird down. He could see the “meatball” now, the green bull’s-eye of the Fresnell landing system tower that revealed, by appearing to move above or below a pair of horizontal dashes, whether he was staying in the correct glide path or not. To the right, aft of the carrier’s island, the laser landing system beacon showed a dazzling green, giving him his choice of input. So far he was right on the money.
“Tomcat two-one-eight, ball,” he called back, identifying his aircraft and alerting the LSO that he did have the ball in sight. “Point five.” That last told them he had only five hundred pounds of fuel aboard. Prior to leaving the Marshall stack, he’d jettisoned much of his remaining fuel, as well as the missiles slung from his belly and wings. A lighter aircraft was easier to wrestle down, and if he did slam into the deck too hard, it would be easier on the Jefferson’s flight deck if he wasn’t packing almost a full warload and tanks filled with JP-5.
The carrier was riding calm seas half a mile ahead, looking terribly tiny and isolated now against a very great deal of blue.
“Roger ball,” the LSO replied. “Just bring it in nice and easy, Dixie.
Everybody’s turned out for the show down here, so let’s show them what a real hotshot aviator can do, huh?”
LSOS, Dixie had learned soon after becoming an aviator, possessed an uncanny knack for instant psychoanalysis and treatment. The best ones didn’t say very much at all, but what they did say was exactly right to correct a problem, or calm shattered nerves, or snap a pilot’s mind back instantly to where it belonged. The duty LSO had just reminded Dixie that he had a bunch of people down there pulling for him… something he’d lost touch with over the past few days.
It was a good feeling. A warm feeling.
“What’s the met rep?” he asked.
“Sea state calm, wind easterly at five knots,” the LSO replied.
“Carrier’s at fifteen knots. Easy trap.”
“Right. Keep your heads down, everybody.”
“Deck going down. Power down… just a hair.”
He eased back on the throttle and gave it a bit more flaps. Speed one-sixty… he was coming in too fast! He dropped the throttle another notch.
“Don’t over-corrects Power steady.”
The deck was rushing up at him now, much faster than he’d ever remembered in making an approach before.
