volunteer to hot rack with him the rest of the cruise.”
Laughter broke out among the crew, although quiet, still so quiet. There would be no hot racking on this mission, Forsythe realized. That there would be little rack time at all didn’t seem to occur to them.
“All right — let’s make it three for three, shall we?” Forsythe asked. He turned to the sonar chief. “Chief, I need a recommended course and depth to intercept the next contact.”
“Due north, Captain,” the chief said, nodding in approval. “I recommend we make our approach below the layer — that seems to be working for us pretty well, I’d say.”
“Very well. Make it so.”
A sudden, gut-wrenching thought occurred to him. He drew the chief off slightly to the side, and said, “Good job. You know what I mean.” The chief nodded. “But there’s something else. There could have been survivors, Chief.” He held up one hand to forestall comment. “I know, I’m not about to surface and take a look for them. But we need to alert somebody, just in case…” He couldn’t finish to sentence.
“They were shallow when it hit,
“To whom?” Forsythe asked.
“Second Fleet. They’ll get the message to the appropriate civilian and military vessels in the area. I’m not sure whether Bermuda’s Coast Guard is going to be in any shape to respond, but there’s plenty of surface traffic in the area. And the water’s warm — they can wait it out if they’re smart.”
“Good thinking. Now, let’s go after that other one.” Forsythe turned and started to walk back into the control room. The chief cleared his throat. Forsythe turned. “Something else?”
“Yes, sir.” The chief came closer. “It’s about the crew, sir. They’re flying high now, and they will for a while. But, sooner or later, they’re going to start wearing out.” The chief passed him a piece of paper. On it were listed the most critical watch stations on the ship, with two names next each position. “Some of them are completely qualified, at least on paper. But, under the circumstances, everybody’s capable of handling most everything on each watch station. I recommend you give them about forty-five minutes, then stand half of them down for rack time. We’ll be transiting for awhile to get to the next operating area, and if there’s ever a chance to go skimpy on the watch, it would be now. Give the first group three hours off, then put the second crew down for three hours. Then restart the regular watches. We can keep that up a lot longer than if we keep everybody awake at once.”
“I’m not on here,” Forsythe said, as he scanned the list. That earned him a small wintry smile from the chief.
“No, sir. You’re not. The captain never is.
As Forsythe watched, acoustic signatures of the enemy torpedoes wavered across the screen. They moved from the right to the left, indicating that they were slowing down. Finally, they trailed off the left edge of the screen and disappeared.
“Dead in the water,” Pencehaven said softly. “We snapped the wire before they could acquire the targets on their own.”
The chief grinned and slapped him on the back. “Unbroken record, right?”
Pencehaven nodded and tried not to look too pleased with himself.
“Record of what?” Forsythe asked.
“Of not buying drinks. After every deployment, every man and woman on the carrier wants to buy him a beer. I doubt he’s spent a penny on booze or food in the last two years. Right, Pencehaven?”
“I bought my mother dinner once.”
“Yeah. But then that frigate guy came up and bought you both a drink, didn’t he?” the other sonarman chimed in. “Besides, doesn’t count when it’s your mother.”
Forsythe put his hand on Pencehaven’s shoulder. “We get home, I’m buying you one myself. Hell, I’ll buy you an entire bar!”
ELEVEN
Tombstone stared down the long, gleaming white expanse of concrete stretching out before him. The runway was comparable to any that he’d seen in the United States. Sure, there were a few differences in the placement of lights, the numbering system, but in general airfields all over the world had certain similarities. Function drove form. There had to be places to keep aircraft out of the weather. There had to be a way to fuel aircraft, a control tower, and at least some facilities for maintenance. Associated ground equipment and ground crew were another constant, and he had been impressed with how well the Armenians were trained. Had it not been for the accent of the tower controller, he would have believed that he was on an airfield somewhere in the United States.
The MiG itself was impeccably maintained. Its engines thrummed with a comforting rhythm, and even if pitched differently from a Tomcat, reassuring all the same. His aircraft wanted to fly, surged against the brakes as he held her back, coming up to military power in preparation for takeoff.
After his first lesson in the MiG, he’d come to a new appreciation of the MiG’s capabilities. Before, he’d seen MiGs primarily as adversaries with weaknesses that he memorized and exploited. Now, her weaknesses were something he had very much in mind. Primary among them was the appetite of this MiG and the relatively small size of the fuel tanks. She also carried a lighter loadout of ordinance, more on par with what a Hornet would handle than his own massive Tomcat.
On the upside, she was more nimble, quicker to turn in the air and to gain altitude. And, during ascent, she could manage a full negative angle that a Tomcat couldn’t match. Aerodynamically, she was an exceptionally stable, nimble fighter. In air-to-air combat situations, he would not have minded flying her.
But this was an air-to-ground mission, and the lighter loadout of ordinance worried him. Still, a dirt mission might be preferable to ACM. In air-to-air combat, decades of flying the Tomcat would influence his every decision, and he thought that he might miss exploiting some advantage that the lighter aircraft had. With air-to-ground, the adversary stayed the same.
“We’re very certain of this,” Russo had said. “Our intelligence sources are, well, let’s just say they are highly placed. He will be leaving Chechnya tomorrow afternoon, and this will be our last opportunity for a strike.”
“Our last chance for a ground strike,” Tombstone had corrected.
“Yes, of course. But, that’s far preferable to having to track him down after he launches. The difficulties inherent in shooting him down over a populated area are considerable. The whole point is to avoid civilian casualties, and we could help his cause more by shooting him down over a hospital or an orphanage.
Tombstone nodded. Yes, this was a way to do it, although both of them had pointedly avoided mentioning how many people on the ground at his base might be killed as well.
“Hunter, you’re cleared for takeoff. Launch at your discretion.”
Tombstone disengaged brakes. The MiG surged underneath him, hungry to be airborne. As he had every time for the last two days, Tombstone marveled at her sheer speed, her willingness to slip the surly bonds of Earth. Such a long runway, and so little of it needed.
