Countdown c-6 Read online

  Countdown

  ( Carrier - 6 )

  Keith Douglass

  The Communist hard-liners are attempting to regain power in the former Soviet Union which has sparked a violent civil war. The United States does not want to get involved, but when it is discovered that the rebels are planning a submarine-launched nuclear strike, the U.S. decides to intervene. Carrier Battle Group 14, along with two other carrier battle groups, form a carrier battle force tasked with keeping the Russian ballistic missile submarines in port where they cannot launch their nuclear weapons. A massive air, sea and land battle ensues.

  Keith Douglass

  Countdown

  PROLOGUE

  Friday, 20 February

  The Kremlin

  Moscow, RSFSR

  Jackboots crunched through the shards of glass and splintered masonry littering a floor once richly carpeted, now charred by blast and fire. The tapestries that had covered one wall had all been torn down, as had the gilt-framed, life-sized portraits of Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and that bastard Leonov. Filing cabinets had been overturned, their contents scattered and burned. The smell of fire and high explosive still clung to the place. An ornate desk lay half buried beneath a fallen, inner wall, while windows smashed by the concussion of multiple RPG rounds gaped open to Moscow's leaden February sky, allowing a bitter swirl of snowflakes to dance across the debris.

  Marshal Valentin Grigorevich Krasilnikov surveyed the wreckage of the office for a grim moment, then holstered the Makarov pistol he'd been gripping in one black-gloved hand. The traitor had fled, but damn it, how had he known? How had he known?

  A soldier crowded past the half-opened, partly unhinged door to the shattered office. "Comrade Marshal!"

  "Yes, Sergeant Borodin."

  The soldier, an AKM assault rifle clutched at a rigid port arms, stiffened to attention. "We have searched the entire office wing, including the basement. He is not here."

  "Has Doctorov arrived yet?"

  "I do not know, Comrade Marsha-"

  "Find out. If he has not, notify me the moment he does. And put your best men to searching and guarding the prisoners. It may be that some know of Leonov's whereabouts. It would be inconvenient if they died before telling us what we need to know. Most inconvenient. Do you understand?"

  "Completely, Comrade Marshal."

  "Good. I hold you responsible, Lieutenant Borodin."

  The man clicked his heels and smartly slapped the bright orange butt of his AKM, sounding a crisp, military crack that echoed in the charred and smashed office. "Thank you, Comrade Marshal!"

  He turned, and Krasilnikov was left alone once more in the ruin of what just five hours earlier had been the command center of a democratic Russia.

  Demokratichyeskii Rossiya. Krasilnikov snorted at the absurdity of the thought. Pah!

  The anarchy unleashed across the Rodina during the past decade was unmatched by that of any period of history since the Great Patriotic War, since even the epic sacrifices of 1917. First there'd been the so-called glasnost and perestroika of Gorbachev… followed by the abortive coup of '91, the accession of Yeltsin, and the wholesale dismemberment of the Soviet Union, she whom Krasilnikov had pledged to defend with his life. The Communist Party banned, the state-run economy plundered, the Warsaw Pact vanished with the winds of counterrevolution howling from Berlin to Vladivostok.

  Krasilnikov and a dedicated handful of other senior officers had worked to set things straight, restore order where chaos reigned as a new and manic Czar. The puppet "democrat" who'd followed Yeltsin to power over the pathetic tatters of a great nation had been assassinated in Oslo ― ostensibly by western anarchists, but in fact by agents of Aleksandr Doctorov's revitalized and rededicated security apparatus ― and in the wake of that assassination, an alliance of KGB, military, and hard-liner party men had secured power once again in the capitals of the former Commonwealth of Independent States.

  That had been only the beginning, of course, as the Soviet Union rose reborn from the ashes. The operation known as Rurik's Hammer, the lightning military conquest of all of Scandinavia, had been designed to solidify popular support for the resurrected Soviet government at home despite the rationing, the purges, and the KGB crackdowns; to cow a fragmented and weakened NATO already over-extended in the war-ravaged Balkans; and to remind continental Europe of the might of Soviet arms.

  But Rurik's Hammer had failed… and failed miserably. The vaunted Baltic and Red Banner Northern fleets had suffered ignominious defeat at the hands of a single American aircraft carrier battle group operating off the Norwegian coast, and U.S. Marines had stormed ashore at Narvik, trapping an entire Soviet army above Trondheim and forcing its surrender. The twin naval engagements at the Freyen Banks and off the Lofoten Islands ― the Battles of the Fjords, as they were coming to be called ― were already being hailed as two of the classic encounters of military history. Even now, eight months later, the Red Banner Northern Fleet had not yet recovered but remained in Port, impotent and all but useless.

  The military fiasco in Norway had led to the collapse of the neo-Soviet dream, of course. Krasilnikov and his supporters had been forced to strike shameful deals with Ilya Anatolevich Leonov and his Popular Russian Democratic Party simply to maintain some voice in Russian government, and then been made to stand by helplessly and watch the inexorable disintegration of Mother Russia, the destruction of all that the glorious Revolution was and could be, begin all over again.

  Enough was enough! Not even the legendary patience of the most stolid of Russian Peasants could endure so much. The coalition of Soviet marshals and generals, KGB leaders, Communist Party hard-liners, and pro-Soviet nationalists had begun plotting the coup almost from the moment the shattered remnants of the Red Banner Fleet had limped into port at Murmansk. Their plans had culminated early this morning, as carefully screened, pro-Soviet army and KGB units stormed the Kremlin. Tanks now controlled every major intersection and boulevard in downtown Moscow, while crack Spetsnaz forces held all four of Moscow's international airports and the complex of military control and communications centers that ringed the city. This time, there would be no repeat of the Pathetic half measures and hesitancy of the leaders of the coup attempt during the summer of 1991. There would be no civilian mobs rallying at the barricades this time, no army unit defections or CNN special reports "live from Moscow."

  "Comrade Marshal Krasilnikov," a smooth, familiar voice said at his back.

  "Dobre den."

  Krasilnikov whirled. Aleksandr Dmitrivich Doctorov stood in the doorway, hands buried in the pockets of his black trenchcoat, a fur schapska perched on his balding head.

  "Doctorov," Krasilnikov said, deliberately ignoring the other's greeting.

  "The bird has flown his cage."

  "So I was informed on my way over here."

  "It would seem we have had a major failure of intelligence."

  The head of the Keomitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti ― the infamous Committee for State Security ― stiffened ever so slightly at that challenge.

  Did he hold a gun within his coat pocket? "There was no failure, Comrade Marshal. Leonov was here. If he escaped, he must have had advance warning.

  Perhaps from one of your officers."

  Krasilnikov was careful to keep his own hand away from his holstered Makarov. "That is not possible."

  Doctorov stared at Krasilnikov for a moment and then, surprisingly, he nodded. His hands came out of his pockets and he rubbed them together briskly, warming them against the bitter Moscow cold that had invaded the office of the erstwhile Russian president. "Actually, Comrade Marshal, I suspect that this time my opposite number with the Upravleniye is to blame."

  "General Suvorov? Why should he-"

  "An
army helicopter was seen leaving the city twenty minutes before your men were to move in, Comrade Marshal. The tail number was that of an aircraft assigned to the GRU command staff."

  Krasilnikov digested that. The Military Intelligence Directorate, the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye, was larger and in some ways more powerful even than the more notorious KGB. Never had there been so much as a gram's worth of love lost between the two powerful intelligence agencies, and their rivalry had caused trouble for Soviet policy and image more than once in the past. But Krasilnikov had been certain that Suvorov was solidly in the coup's collective pocket. "The helicopter's destination?"

  "South. It may have gone to a military airfield outside Orel. An airfield still under PRDP control."

  "This," Krasilnikov said softly, "changes everything."

  Doctorov favored him with a death's-head smile. "it means, my dear Comrade Marshal Krasilnikov, that our beleaguered nation's troubles are but beginning. If Leonov is alive, the democrats in the army and the nationalists in the republics will rally to him. It means what we have feared all along."

  "Da," Krasilnikov said, and his eyes were fixed on the swirl of snowflakes dancing through the shattered window of the office. "It means another civil war. A blood-bath."

  "Come, Comrade. The capital, at least, is ours. As are the northern military sectors and the bulk of the Red Army. We must compose our message for the rest of the world."

  "Yes. Before they descend on us like wolves."

  Thunder keened from the gray skies as a trio of MiG-31s roared low over the city. Krasilnikov cast another quick glance about the ruined office, then hurried after Doctorov. There was so very much yet to be done.

  CHAPTER 1

  Tuesday, 10 March

  2115 hours (Zulu -1)

  Pri-Fly, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  "Damn but the weather's dirty tonight." Captain Matthew "Tombstone" Magruder stood in Jefferson's Primary Flight Control, "Pri-Fly" to the initiated, and worked at not sloshing hot coffee down the Air Boss's back. He could feel the pitch to the supercarrier's deck as she plowed through heavy seas invisible in the darkness 120 feet below. "For once I'm actually glad I'm not up there."

  "What, am I hearin' this right, CAG?" Commander William Barnes grinned up at him from a coffee mug of his own. "AIR BOSS" was stenciled across the man's sweatshirt and the back of his chair, while his coffee mug proclaimed, "I'm the BOSS." He was the man responsible for controlling all air traffic in the carrier's immediate vicinity from this glassed-in eyrie, including all launch and recovery operations. "Man, this has got to be some kind of first.

  Usually all I hear is you bitchin' about what you wouldn't give to be able to log more hours."

  "Hours, yes. But not in that. Case Three if ever I saw it." Case Three was a bad-weather carrier approach, with a ceiling of two hundred feet and visibility of a half mile or less. In blue-water operations like this, with no friendly airfields within range, those limits could quickly drop to zero-zero, no ceiling, no visibility.

  "Hell, the Met boys say it's going to get even worse," the Boss said. He jerked a thumb toward Pri-Fly's aft windows. "We're tryin' to get these people down before it turns to snow."

  It was raining now, a cold, thin half-water/half-sleet that lashed across Pri-Fly's slanted windows. It was also pitch black save for the rain-smeared gleam of flight-deck acquisition lights and the glow from the big Fresnel lens apparatus aft and to port, where the Landing Signals officer and his crew were already talking the next aviator down. The scene was repeated in black and white on the big PLAT monitor suspended from Pri-Fly's overhead. Glancing up at the screen, Tombstone could see several members of the deck crew, bulky in their cold weather gear, trotting out of the camera's range.

  "Two-oh-seven," the LSO's voice crackled from an overhead speaker. "Call the ball."

  There was a moment of static, then a new voice sounded from the speaker.

  "Clara." That one code word meant simply that the approaching aviator could not yet see the ball… or the storm-masked Jefferson.

  In normal peacetime operations, the flight deck was shut down when Case Three conditions dropped below a half-mile visibility ― fifteen seconds' flight time for an approaching aircraft.

  "Home Plate, Two-oh-seven," the voice added a moment later. "Wait one.

  Okay, got you! Two-oh-seven, Tomcat ball. Three point three."

  The terse information confirmed for the men adjusting the tension of the five parallel arrestor wires stretching across the after part of the flight deck that it was an F-14D Tomcat coming in for a trap, that the aircraft had 3,300 pounds of fuel left aboard, and that the pilot could now see the yellow beacon, the "meatball," of the carrier's landing approach guide indicator.

  Having made countless traps himself, including Case Three landings on nights as dark, wet, and raw as this one, Tombstone could see the approach setup clearly in his mind's eye. So long as the aviator kept the ball centered between the horizontal lines of green lights to either side, the aircraft was holding the proper angle of approach for a good trap.

  The Tomcat was also being guided in by Jefferson's Instrument Landing System, "riding the needles" in on the correct glide slope. By coupling the ILS with the Automatic Carrier Landing System, or ACLS, the approach could actually be turned over to a computer, which could land the aircraft with no human hand at the controls.

  As Tombstone knew from long personal experience, Navy fliers had distinctly mixed feelings about the ACLS, and the hairier the approach, the less they liked it. Hell, no pilot liked to fly with someone else at the controls, and when that someone else was a goddamned computer…

  Had 207 sounded just a little too tight? Hell, an approach on a night like this would unsettle anyone, and Lobo, Lieutenant Hanson, was still relatively new at this. "Roger ball," the LSO's voice said, calm and reassuring. "You're looking good. Come left, just a hair… little more…

  that's good. Centerline good. Deck going down, power down."

  Tombstone was staring into the night astern of the carrier, but try as he might he still couldn't see any sign of the approaching Tomcat… and then the big aircraft exploded out of the gloom off Jefferson's stern, wings swept far forward and flaps down for maximum lift, acquisition lights at belly and tail and wingtips flashing frantically but damned near masked by the rain as the F-14 swept across the roundoff at the end of the flight deck, wheels kissing steel as the tailhook struck a skittering salvo of yellow sparks, then neatly snagged the three-wire and dragged the hurtling mass of machinery to an almost instant halt even as its two big F110-GE-400 engines howled to full throttle.

  The moment the tailhook had successfully engaged the arrestor wire and it was clear the Pilot wouldn't have to pull a "bolter" off the deck and come around for another try, the aircraft's engines spooled down again. The whole sequence, from Tombstone's first glimpse of the Tomcat materializing out of the dark to the moment it backed slightly on the carrier's roof, spitting out the wire, had taken only seconds, and he let out a small whoosh of pent-up air. Two-oh-seven was safely down, a perfect trap. Engines whining, the F-14 began nosing around to starboard, slowly following a yellow-jerseyed deck handler who backed away from the aircraft step by step, a pair of light wands waving up and down as he directed it toward an out-of-the-way spot on the flight line.

  "Two-one-eight," the Air Boss was saying into the heavy microphone on the console in front of him. "Charlie now."

  That was the command to the next aircraft circling west of the Jefferson to break from its holding pattern, or "Marshall Stack," and begin its approach to the carrier.

  "Two-one-eight, copy," another voice said from the speaker, hard-edged and professional. "We're heading in."

  "Ah, listen, Two-one-eight. Visibility on the deck's down to half a mile or less. Wind at one-nine knots from zero-four-zero, but we're getting occasional gusts at two-five."

  "Wonderful, Home Plate. Just shit-fire wonderful. Sounds brisk and refreshing."

/>   "Ah, Two-one-eight, we've got the beer chilled and waiting for you. Just bring back our airplane." Barnes released the switch on the mike and thumbed through a clipboard on his console. "Who's got the front seat on Two-one-eight tonight anyway?"

  "Conway," Tombstone said. He didn't need to check the roster. "Call sign Brewer."

  The Air Boss leaned back in his chair and glanced up briefly at him.

  "CAG, you look as shook as a rookie making his first trap. What the hell are you doing hanging around here bothering working men for anyway? Don't you have some papers to shuffle or something?"

  Barnes said the words with a crooked grin that robbed them of their sting, but Tombstone felt the stab nonetheless. God, to be skipper of VF-95, Viper Squadron, again.

  Those were Viper Tomcat-Ds recovering on the Jefferson under the Air Boss's watchful eye now. Tombstone was now the Co of CVW-20, commanding officer of Jefferson's entire air wing of some ninety aircraft, but he still couldn't help holding a special place in his feelings for the Vipers of VF-95.

  "Hey, c'mon, Bill," he said. "I just came here to do some slumming, you know that. If You Prefer, you can let it out that I'm here to boost morale and encourage the troops-"

  "I think you're scared those nuggets of Yours out there are going to get lost."

  They laughed at that, but Tombstone was more than a little nervous and had to resist the impulse to pace the narrow stretch of Pri-Fly's free deck space. An aircraft carrier's roof, her flight deck, was already the deadliest workplace on Earth, and the harsh blend of darkness, wind, and sleet transformed it into a death trap. Back in the Vietnam War, medical researchers had wired naval aviators to record pulse and respiration and other telltale physical signs, then monitored them as they carried out their missions. Nothing, not the headlong rush of a catapult shot, not SAMs streaking toward their aircraft in the skies over Hanoi, not air-to-air combat, not even the jolting instant of stark terror during an ejection, could cause the same heart-pounding, sweaty-palmed terror every aviator felt making a final approach toward a carrier at night.