Jefferson time to prepare, seeing as how I’m such a hotshot aviator. You know, I hate to embarrass the admiral by showing up before he’s ready for me.”
Carey stifled a snort. The lieutenant was a good guy, better than most of the black-shoe surface officers that inhabited the amphibious command-and-control ship. You could talk to him, and he didn’t get all bent out of shape over the small stuff, like the “shoes” did. That made the mid-watch hours more endurable, a fact for which every member of Watch Section Two aboard the Sixth Fleet flagship was grateful.
Still, there were times when Carey wondered whether the newly minted aviator had any idea of what he was getting into. Sure, he knew Skeeter had been through the training pipeline, and had already completed the required carrier qualifications while assigned to the RAG?the Replacement Air Group?that gave the nuggets their first practical look at the intricacies of landing on board their floating airfields. And from what he’d heard, Lieutenant Harmon was supposed to be one damned fine pilot.
Mess-decks intelligence?MDI?had it that he had graduated at the top of his class, both in basic and at the RAG. The enlisted troops liked him, about as much as they were prepared to like any junior officer who hadn’t yet proved his worth on a six-month cruise. Sometimes it was better not to get too attached to officers until you knew what they were really made of. How much of his own growing reputation did the lieutenant himself believe? Carey wondered. All of it? He shook his head, and his congenial expression clouded over. He hoped not. After two years in the Navy, Petty Officer Carey knew what Lieutenant Harmon had yet to learn?that the sea held surprises of its own for the men and women who sailed on her.
“I expect they’ll be glad to get you on board,” Carey said finally. “There’s bound to be some junior officers who are getting tired of pulling Alert 15 sitting on the flight deck.” He glanced slyly at the lieutenant j.g. “You’ll be the ‘George,’ won’t you, sir?”
Lieutenant Harmon frowned. “Yeah, and I’m not looking forward to it.”
Being the most junior officer in a squadron carried with it a host of collateral duties that took away from flying and sleeping time. Movie officer, welfare and recreation officer, and general all-around shitty-little-jobs officer?that was the domain of the George.
“I think they call it an opportunity to excel, an OTE,” Carey said, affecting the slight drawl that so many pilots used when airborne. Even aviators born in the northernmost sections of Maine sounded like Chuck Yeager over tactical, and the enlisted technicians who supported them picked up the habit.
Harmon shrugged. “They can load me up with all the collateral duties they want to, but I joined this man’s Navy to fly. And once they see me…” The aviator let his voice trail off and shot a significant look at the young operations specialist. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“Now, sir, I didn’t-” Carey started to protest.
Skeeter cut him off with a lazy wave of his hand. “That’s all right. You haven’t flown with me. And neither have they.” He pointed at the large-screen display that dominated the forward part of the compartment. “VF-95 doesn’t know it yet, but I’m about to set a Tomcat record for most consecutive good traps on board. Mosquitoes don’t bolter?and neither do I,” he said, referring to the maneuver a carrier aircraft executed when it missed catching the wires on the aft of the flight deck.
“I’m sure they?what the hell?” Carey’s head snapped forward to stare at the large-screen display. “What’s that?”
Skeeter spun around in his swivel chair to face forward, and his fingers reached for the trackball to position his cursor over the new air contact flitting across the upper edge of his screen. His fingers fumbled for the right buttons, and finally the relevant tactical information appeared on the small screen at the side of his desk. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Damn, Carey?you’re gettin’ jumpy. Nothing but a commercial air flight.”
Carey shook his head, his frown deepening. “They’re not scheduled for one, sir. This is dead time?the ninety- minute gap when there’s not any civilian flights scheduled.” He took a quick look at the status display. “And it’s moving too fast.”
“Five hundred knots? That’s well within speed range of a commercial aircraft,” Skeeter countered. “Besides, IFF indicates it’s a commercial air flight.”
“Like I said, he’s not on my schedule. Besides, they’re usually at four hundred and fifty knots,” Carey said, “not five hundred. Why would he be going fifty knots faster than every other COMMAIR flight that out-chops Turkey?”
Skeeter shrugged. “Fast is good.”
“It’s out of parameters, Lieutenant,” Carey said stubbornly. “Recommend we designate it as a contact of interest and ask the cruiser what they think.”
“Might as well, seeing as how you’ve got a bug up your ass about it. Besides, it’ll give those shoes something to do besides play video games on that Spy I system. I’ll designate it as a contact of interest?if I can find the damned?ah, there it is.”
The display changed the symbology associated with the contact and sent the data out to the other ships over Link II, the tactical net that allowed the ships in the battle group to share information. “But the cruiser is net control. When she starts howling, you’re going to have to talk to them.”
“Be glad to. The track supervisor on Shiloh is an old shipmate of mine, and he’ll be thinking exactly the same thing.”
Skeeter glanced up at him. “Bet?”
“You got it, sir. Loser buys an espresso machine for the winner’s mess.”
Skeeter smacked his lips. “Can’t wait.”
Yuri extended the retractable infrared pod housed under the cockpit and stared at the display, Useless, as he’d suspected it would be. Still, the admiral had been quite adamant about conducting an IR search before activating his radar. Soviet tactics, Soviet thought processes. He sighed. Until they overcame this institutionalized mandate to control every small tactical detail on a mission, Ukrainian air would continue to be hampered. Especially on missions like this. What was the point of even trying the IR sensor in fog as dense as this?
None.
Moreover, the aircraft was already adequately configured to search for the Sixth Fleet flagship without revealing its own identity. The Flashdance radar had been meticulously modified to provide an alternate operational mode, one that closely simulated the ubiquitous Furuno surface-ship search radar found on most other world ships. At five hundred feet, he could easily be mistaken for any one of the thousands of tugs, fishing boats, or other commercial vessels that plied these waters. And the contrast between a radar blip emitting the characteristics of a Turkish commercial air flight and an electronic signature mimicking a civilian surface craft would undoubtedly add to the confusion. In theory, the flagship’s electronic-warfare Specialists would simply assume that the target- processing algorithm had inadvertently attached the electromagnetic signature to the wrong blip.
In theory, at least.
And really, all he needed was four minutes. Four minutes of precious time to close within range of the amphibious flagship, fire his weapon, and get the hell out of there.
Yuri felt the adrenaline flooding his system, noticed the tingling in his fingertips and the light, giddy feeling of over-confidence it generated. It was an all-too-familiar sensation, one that he’d learned to ignore in Afghanistan while flying more primitive Soviet fighters.
He glanced over at the GPS?the Global Positioning System indicators?and watched the green luminescent digits slowly click over.
Based on the Ukrainians’ best intelligence and the Americans’ public announcements of their own deployment schedules, the flagship should be located within one hundred miles of a point immediately in front of him.
One hundred miles, Still a hell of a lot of ocean to search, and visual and infrared would certainly be useless today. He reached over and toggled on the radar, flipping the switch into the commercial-air-simulation position.
Even better than being part of his deception, the radar would actually work in this mode, providing a complete look-down/shoot-down picture of the water below him.
He eased back on the yoke, gaining altitude. Eight thousand feet, he decided. A brief foray up to that altitude to get a good, solid picture of what was around him, then pop back down out of counterdetection range.
With any luck at all, it would all be over in ten minutes.
