the world.”
“Know what you mean. I never got a pony when I was a kid, but I got a Tomcat when I grew up.”
“At least airspace is still as unlimited as the old Texas ranches were,” COS said.
“Except that now the Chinese are starting to act like the farmers that wanted to put up fences. Maybe my old boss was right. He said the nature of conflict remained constant over the centuries.” Tombstone glanced down at the pile of paperwork on his desk and grimaced. “Wonder if Wyatt Earp had to deal with this much paperwork. It looks like I won’t get to even see one of the new birds for another two hours. Why is everything that ends up on my desk either impossible or screwed up?”
“Because I take care of the easy decisions before they get to you, Admiral. That is what’s left over.”
“All right, all right. Anything here that can’t wait a few hours?” Suddenly, the urge to break free from the confining spaces below decks shook him. How long had it been since he’d flown? At least two months, back when Jefferson was still in transit. With the recent events in the South China Sea, there was absolutely no excuse for the admiral in command of an entire battle group to be airborne. The risk was simply unacceptable.
Back when he’d been a young hotshot pilot, he’d pulled countless hours of alert five duty, sitting in his Tomcat in every kind of weather, waiting for the word to launch that rarely came. Then, it’d seemed the worst sort of tantalizing tedium — deck-bound in an aircraft preflighted, armed, and fueled for flight. If someone had told him that he’d look back on alert five longingly, he would have thought they were insane.
“Nothing easy, but nothing urgent, Admiral,” the Chief of Staff said easily. “Of course, safety is always our top concern on Jefferson. Wouldn’t hurt to have another set of eyes take a look at those tie-down chains, I imagine. Set a good example for the flight deck crew, too, seeing how their admiral had his priorities in order.”
Tombstone looked sharply at the man, but could detect no trace of humor. It was true, of course, that working on the flight deck was the most dangerous and physically demanding job on the carrier. The young men and women who spent most of their waking hours waltzing between vast, sucking jet engines, whirling helicopter blades, and dangerous propellers became almost oblivious to the constant danger. It never hurt to remind them that their admiral knew what they were up against.
“Is the admiral in?” Tombstone heard someone say out of sight behind the Chief of Staff. Tombstone recognized the voice and groaned. The Communications Officer. He silently pointed at the opposite door, the one that opened out onto the flag mess, and quietly slid out from behind his desk and headed for it. With any luck, the Chief of Staff could handle whatever it was that the communications officer wanted while Tombstone snuck out the back door.
As he put his hand on the doorknob, he glanced back and saw the Chief of Staff reading a message. The expression on COS’s face made him pause.
“I’ll see he gets this immediately,” COS said, and shut the TFCC door in the COMMO’s face.
Is there any chance I’ll get to see sunlight in the near-future? Sometimes I think that the Communications Officer has my quarters bugged. Tombstone sighed and walked back across the room.
“I can handle this, but you need to know what it is.” His Chief of Staff handed him the message. The paper was still warm from the copy machine in Comms.
FROM: COMSEVENTHFLT TO: CARGRU14 SUBJ: FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION OPERATIONS
1. CHINA RECENTLY INCREASING TENOR OF CLAIMS THAT SOUTH CHINA SEA VICINITY SPRATLY ISLANDS SUBJECT TO TERRITORIAL CLAIMS. IN LIGHT OF RECENT EVENTS, ESSENTIAL THAT THE UNITED STATES ESTABLISH CLEAR EVIDENCE OF INTENTIONS.
2. CARGRU14 WILL COMMENCE FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION (FON) OPERATIONS VIC SOUTH CHINA SEA IMMEDIATELY UPON RECEIPT. FORWARD OPERATIONAL INTENTIONS TO ORIG WITHIN EIGHT HOURS.
FON ops were intended to establish the right of any nation to travel in and operate on, under, and above international waters. The rest of the message laid out the general geographic area Jefferson was to patrol and ordered CVBG 14 to forward his intentions to Seventh Fleet immediately. Tombstone scrawled his initials on the message to indicate that he’d read it.
“I’ll have our response planned and the message drafted for your signature when you return,” the Chief of Staff said, and opened the door for Tombstone to leave. Gratefully, the Commander of CARGRU 14 escaped toward the flight deck. The Chief of Staff watched him go, amused. A surface warfare officer himself, he understood but never completely sympathized with the longing aviator admirals always felt for their aircraft. Every one that he’d ever worked with eventually seemed to wilt when kept below decks and away from the cockpit for too long. Part of the COS’s job was to keep the Admiral functioning at peak performance. If that included making sure he got to play hooky from his desk once in a while, then it was up to the Chief of Staff to make sure the Admiral got an occasional flight deck fix.
However, the CARGRU operations officer, also a pilot, was several years junior to COS. Humming quietly to himself, COS walked across the passageway and passed the message on. Not every aviator on the carrier was going to get an immediate look at the JAST birds.
Technicians and flight decks personnel crowded around the two aircraft, a rainbow of colors splashed against the dark, gritty gray of the flight deck nonskid. Each jersey color denoted the wearer’s role in the complex ballet that made up flight deck operations: brown for plane captains, red for ordnance techs, purple for fueling crews, and green for maintenance technicians. A few yellow shirts worn by the catapult officers and the aircraft handlers that directed the flow of traffic across the deck were sprinkled through the crowd. The Brown Shirts crowded close to the aircraft, taking righteous possession of it now that it was shut down on the deck. At the perimeter of the crowd, aviators in green flight suits tried to edge their way closer. But sometimes rank just didn’t count. The enlisted technicians ignored them, forming an unyielding phalanx of backs that blocked the aviators from the aircraft.
All but one aviator. The crowd parted to let Rear Admiral Magruder approach the aircraft. He walked up to it and ran one hand over a side panel, reflexively checking to see if the panel was dogged down tightly. The smooth paint gleamed, untarnished by months of sitting on the flight deck exposed to the elements like the other birds under his command. That would change soon, he knew. He touched it lightly and felt the odd ripples in the airframe’s skin.
“Admiral! They look good, don’t they?” How long had it been since he’d heard that voice, Tombstone thought. It could have been centuries, and he knew he’d still remember it. He’d heard it too many times, on too many dangerous patrols — and it’d saved his life more than once. One of the things an aviator never forgets is the voice of his regular wingman. Tombstone turned around.
“Captain Wayne,” he said, reaching out to shake Batman’s free hand. Neither man saluted, since they were uncovered, although a helmet dangled from Batman’s left hand. “Good to see you again! Was that you that boltered?”
Batman smiled. “Not on your life, Admiral. That was Mouse, there,” he said, gesturing toward a pilot surrounded by a flock of enlisted technicians. “Just a youngster out of Pax River. Three cruises under his belt, though, and a damned fine reputation as a test pilot. I caught the three-wire — think I got an okay from the VF95 LSO.”
Aircraft landings were graded okay, marginal, or fault. An okay pass was a clean trap, with the aircraft snagging one of the arresting wires without major problems on the approach or landing. A Marginal grade indicated some weaknesses in the landing that could have resulted in a mishap, while a fault was an evolution entirely below standards with great potential for disaster. Grading was conducted by the LSOs, or Landing Signals Officers, who were stationed off to the port side of the flight deck, slightly below on a catwalk.
“Who else did you bring with you?” Tombstone asked, scanning the crowd for unfamiliar faces. “We’ll have to wait on the formal introductions, I guess. Looks like your boys want to show off their new toys.”
“Well, there’s Mouse, of course. He’s a lieutenant commander, lead test pilot on the program. His RIO is that ugly fucker over by the nose-wheel. Lieutenant Connally Dershowitz. They call him Bouncer. You can see why.”
“No kidding,” Tombstone replied. The RIO Batman pointed out must be barely within the height and weight standards for flying Tomcats. “What’s he run, about two hundred and fifty pounds?”
“About that. He bench presses around four hundred pounds. I wouldn’t want to piss him off. We’ve got one other pilot-RIO team as well. They flew out on the COD.”
“Where’s your RIO?”
“I was hoping to talk to you about that. Right after I talked to you, I found out the dumb bitch broke her leg. I
