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  Could Chimera be a spook ship? It was possible. Spook ship or not, Washington wouldn't be happy at the thought of another Pueblo incident. The capture of an American spy ship by the North Koreans in 1968 was still widely viewed as a classic failure of American will.

  "Tango Seven-niner will vector you on radar target at coordinates three-three-niner, zero-one-four. Be advised hostiles may be operating in area. Homeplate out."

  Advised… right. Right now, the two Tomcats were flying into the dark, with no clear idea of what to expect. If Chimera was a spy ship, there was precious little F-14s could do about it, advised or not.

  "Tombstone, Coyote. Sounds like we're getting' into deep spooky shit here."

  "Could be, Coyote. Tell you what. Let's take 'em down on the deck. I'm starting to feel a bit chilly up here, aren't you?"

  "Copy. Rodeo Leader, that's affirmative. After you."

  The two Tomcats edged forward into a shallow dive, plunging into misty twilight. Clouds closed around the plastic canopies, shutting off the morning sun like a door. Moments later, they broke through the floor of the clouds and into the dim clear air between cold gray sea and leaden gray ceiling at thirty-five hundred feet. Magruder could see whitecaps on the water, a tatter-edged choppiness ruffling the smooth swell of the ocean. The two F-14s continued to descend until they were two hundred feet above the water, burning through the gray sky as they chased Mach 2. Tombstone felt a bit safer, knowing he'd just compounded the problems of any North Korean radar operators trying to sort his flight out from the clutter of wave caps and spume.

  "Tombstone!" his RIO shouted into the intercom. "Two bogies just became four! They're havin' a party over there!"

  "And we weren't invited. Maybe we'll get to crash their little party, Snowy."

  "If you say so, Mr. Magruder."

  Tombstone heard the tightness in his RIO's voice. Snowball Newcombe was a nugget, a rookie posted to the Tomcat's backseat in keeping with the Navy's policy of learning new men with experienced officers. That, Tombstone thought, made him the experienced officer, the old hand who knew what he was doing. At the moment he didn't feel experienced, though, just old.

  1350 hours

  CIC, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  Three hundred miles east of the two Tomcats, the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson, CVN-74, newest of America's nuclear-powered carriers, plowed steadily through gray seas. Over one thousand feet long, with four and a half acres of flight deck and carrying some ninety aircraft, she and her sister Nimitz-class carriers were by far the most Powerful warships history had ever seen. The Jefferson and her five escorts comprised Carrier Battle Group 14, a Naval force wielding power unthinkable only forty years earlier.

  Within Jefferson's bowels, on the 0–4 level starboard, was the red-lit dimness of her Combat Information Center. Commander Stephen Marusko leaned over a console and scowled at the demon-green eye of a radar screen displaying a real-time feed from Tango Seven-niner, the Hawkeye orbiting between the CBG and Rodeo, the carrier's far-flying scouts.

  "We're getting' a ton of ground clutter here, Mr. Marusko," the first class radarman sitting before him said. "But the gomers must be scrambling everything they got."

  Marusko nodded as he picked up a microphone. "Admiral? CAG, in CIC. Looks like it's breaking."

  The reply was a voice of hard gravel. "You're ready to launch?"

  "Four aircraft on Alert Five, Admiral. Call sign Backstop."

  "Right. I'm on my way." The admiral sounded like he'd been rubbed raw.

  Hardly surprising, Marusko thought. Admiral Magruder knew that his nephew was flying CAP.

  More than once, Marusko had felt caught between the two Magruders: Matt, the young skipper of VF-95, and Rear Admiral Thomas J. Magruder, CO of CBG-14… the younger Magruder's uncle. Hangar deck scuttlebutt had it that Tombstone Magruder owed rank and career both to the influence of the CBG's admiral.

  That was one opinion Marusko could not share, He'd seen young Magruder fly, had been the one to recommend him for the skipper's slot when VF-95's last boss had exchanged his squadron for a billet with United Airlines. A recent graduate of the Top Gun school in Miramar, Tombstone Magruder was without doubt one of the hottest aviators on board Jefferson, a guy who wouldn't need his uncle's political influence until he struck for admiral himself a few years down the way.

  But there were times when Marusko wondered just how closely young Magruder's high-powered relative looked after his dead brother's son.

  His scowl deepened with the thought. Korea was getting hot again. The police-action war of the early fifties had never ended, never for real. Both Koreas had been armed camps since the armistice, the south supplied by the United States, the north by the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, by the PRC.

  A steel door at the end of the darkened compartment opened. "Admiral on deck," the watch announced, but the men bending over CIC's radar displays remained unmoving, their faces stage-lit by the green and amber smears on their screens.

  Marusko indicated the screen he'd been watching. "They're trying to jam us, Admiral, but it looks like they've got at least ten in the air. Rodeo is sixty miles out and on the deck. They'll be over Chimera's last plot in two minutes."

  Admiral Magruder gave a small sigh. "We'd better get Backstop airborne, CAG," he said slowly. "Our people are pretty naked out there."

  "Aye, sir." Marusko reached for a telephone handset. The orders from Washington, relayed down the line through the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, and the 7th Fleet, had directed the admiral to vector a combat air patrol over Chimera's last reported position. It was the admiral who'd elected to put the battle group on alert… and mount the Alert Five as backup.

  Now he wanted the backup launched as added insurance.

  "And keep me posted," Magruder added. "I want to know if those NK bastards even give a sour fart in our direction." He jerked his head sideways, indicating the flag bridge. "I'll be topside, waiting for Washington to make up their goddamned minds." He patted for the omnipresent pipe resting in the pocket of his khaki uniform shirt and rolled his eyes toward the overhead. "God only knows what'll happen when those bureaucratic bastards put their oar in. Call me if there's a change."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  The admiral appeared to be carrying a weight slung across his shoulders as he turned away, and in that moment Marusko decided that he wouldn't exchange places with Pops Magruder for anything on God's green earth. Sometimes, the price was just too damn high.

  1365 hours

  Flight deck, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  Lieutenant Edward Everett Wayne, call sign "Batman," shifted in his seat, trying to work the cramp out from under his left shoulder blade. He'd been on Alert Five ― sitting in the cockpit of his F-14, ready to launch from Jeff's number two catapult on five minutes' notice ― for the past hour and a half.

  His point of view from twelve feet up gave him a splendid panorama of the carrier's flight deck, of the other three Tomcats set and ready for launch, of the crewmen in their color-coded shirts milling about in what looked like confusion but was actually a precisely choreographed ballet. Beyond, endless gray ocean merged with soot-gray overcast. Up there above that lowering ceiling was air and light and the golden glory freedom of airborne speed… he wanted to go!

  Batman twisted far enough around to the right so that he could glimpse Jefferson's Pried-Fly, the glassed-in structure overlooking the carrier's flight deck from high up along the inboard side of the island. The shadowy figures glimpsed there gave no indication that launch was imminent or even that they would launch at all.

  His RIO grinned at him past the tangle of cables and equipment separating their ejection seats. Lieutenant Kenneth Blake's helmet was decorated with stars and bore his call sign, "Malibu," picked out in red. "Holy hemorrhoids, Batman," the RIO said, bantering. "I think I'd rather be surfing."

  Batman Wayne chuckled. "I just wish they'd get this show on the road!"

  As if in answer, his radio headset crac
kled in his helmet. "Backstop, Backstop, this is CAG. Time to wake up out there and earn your pay. Immediate launch. You are clear for engine start."

  About damn time, Batman thought, fastening his mask across his face. "Roger, CAG. Let's go for it. Starting engines."

  The Tomcat's port engine thundered to life, followed a moment later by the starboard. Outside, the deck crew completed their last-minute checks. "AWG 9 light is out, circuit breakers OK."

  A green shirt standing off the port side of the aircraft held up a signboard on which he'd scrawled the numerals 66,000, and Batman nodded confirmation. The exchange was crucial, since the catapult officer had to make certain the catapult was set to deliver steam enough to hurl 66,000 pounds of Tomcat and fuel to a take-off speed of one hundred seventy miles an hour. A pair of red shirts scooted from beneath the wings after a final check of the ordnance slung there.

  Batman grasped the stick, moving it forward, backward, left, and right, murmuring the traditional "Father, Son, Holy Ghost" mnemonic as he did so. Next he moved the rudder pedals with his feet, first left, then right, finishing the litany with "Amen." Outside, a pair of yellow shirts watched the aircraft's control surfaces and signaled thumbs up. Everything was working properly.

  "All set, Malibu?"

  "We've got the green light. Go for it!"

  Batman glanced back over his right shoulder at the carrier's flight deck island. The green light there showed he was clear for launch. The voice in his headphones confirmed it. "Backstop Leader, you are go for launch. Good-bye and good luck."

  "Copy, Homeplate." He opened the throttle to full afterburner, dumping torrents of raw fuel into the twin infernos in the aircraft's tail. He saluted the yellow-shirted launch officer, confirmation that they were ready to go. The launch officer gave a final all-round check, then executed a ballet-perfect gesture, leaning over and to the side, one leg extended, touching the deck with his hand. Somewhere out of sight, a catapult officer's finger came down on a red button, releasing an avalanche of steam against a huge piston buried beneath the flight deck.

  A giant's hand closed over Batman's face and chest, squeezing. He kept himself hunched forward, the better to keep his eyes on his instruments in the critical first seconds of launch. His eyes felt flattened in their sockets. The sharp rattle of wheels on steel below blended with the shriek of engines behind as sound, sight, and sensation were compressed into a single, nerve-jarring event. They hurtled forward and sailed an instant later into comparative silence, a gentle feeling of sinking as the acceleration which had slammed the Tomcat from zero to one-seventy in two seconds flat died.

  "Good shot!" Batman radioed, announcing that he had control of the aircraft and was airborne. The Tomcat seemed to hang in midair off the Jefferson's bow for one dizzying instant, then began to pick up speed. The shock of the catapult's launch was replaced by the gentler surge of acceleration as the fighter began to climb.

  Voices buzzed over his headset, announcing a second Tomcat airborne, then a third, then a fourth. Air Ops began feeding him vector information. Batman noted the figures, but automatically, without real interest. His attention, his heart was on the sky as the Jefferson's bow dwindled astern and the universe became nothing but sea and sky and airplane. His Tomcat was moving now, wings folding back along her flanks as she leaped toward the cloud deck, plunging into the leaden, prison-wall barrier between him and the crystal blue beyond. It turned dark, and then he was bursting through into morning light, free of the ship, free of the world, hurtling north toward Mach 1.

  1355 hours

  Tomcat 205

  Tombstone eased back slightly on the stick, bringing his nose up as gray water whipped past a scant hundred feet beneath his feet. This should be the place.

  He glanced to starboard at Coyote, who shook his head and gave an elaborate shrug. They'd reached their destination but the spook ship was nowhere to be seen.

  "Anything, Snowball?"

  "Clutter, Tombstone. Damn, lousy clutter. I think they're jamming us!"

  "Easy does it, son," he said. He didn't like the urgent shiver that edged his RIO's voice. "Everything's green."

  "Yeah, but it's getting' worse, Mr. Magruder! I don't think-"

  "Try to get through it. Ho, Coyote!"

  "Copy, Tombstone."

  "Coming right to triple zero."

  "Triple zero it is. Mind the sharp corners."

  "Tango Seven-niner, this is Rodeo," he called. "On target and no joy. Bogie dope! What can you give us, over?"

  "Rodeo, this is Tango Seven-niner. We're picking up heavy jamming, broad band. Suggest new heading, one-eight-zero."

  "Rog, one-eight-zero. You copy that, Coyote?"

  "Back the other way. Lead the way, Boss."

  "Here we go." They began their turn. "Tango Seven-niner, this is Rodeo. Confirm ROEs, over."

  There was a pause as his question was relayed back to the CBG, which by now was below Tombstone's radio horizon. The ROE ― Rules of Engagement ― for his patrol had been set for Hotel-Two: fire only if fired upon. It was the worst possible situation for a fighter going into possible combat since it meant the other guy had a free first shot.

  His compass reading steadied on one-eight-zero, due south. He could hear the rasp of Snowball's heavy, rapid breathing in his headset. "Right, Snowball. Keep your eyes peeled now for-"

  "Skipper!" Snowball's call was a ragged burst of noise over the intercom. "I got 'em! I got 'em!"

  "What…?"

  "Bandits, Mr. Magruder!" His voice was urgent. "MiGs! MiGs! MiGs!"

  CHAPTER 2

  1359 hours

  Tomcat 205

  The MiGs dropped like hawks stooping on their prey, four silver-gray aircraft with backswept delta wings. Tombstone had only a glimpse of the odd-looking cone-in-open-cylinder cowlings before he was on the radio. "Tango Seven-niner! Blue bandits! Blue bandits!" The code phrase had origins in the air war over Vietnam, identifying the attackers as MiG-21s.

  "Four blue bandits, three o'clock and high!" Coyote echoed.

  "Punch it, Coyote! Go to burner!"

  "I'm out of here!"

  Tombstone hauled back on the stick and his Tomcat clawed for sky, twin-throated torches of flame stabbing aft as he kicked in the afterburners. Down on the deck was no place for a dogfight, not if he expected to keep his airplane in one piece. MiG-21s had been around since the years right after the Korean War, but the modern versions were fast and mean, able to better Mach 2 and as good at dog-fighting as any fighter in the sky. His instant's glimpse had caught sight of the pair of air-to-air missiles slung under each wing.

  "Rodeo Two! Rodeo Two!" The sky went gray as they plunged into the cloud deck. "Where are you?"

  "Right with you, Boss, at your five!"

  "Level at nine point one!"

  "Rog!"

  They burst through the cloud deck and into the light. Heaven arched above him, achingly beautiful. At ninety-one hundred feet, the twin-tailed Tomcats rolled into level flight and turned west, away from the Korean coast. They were close to the twelve-mile limit here. Most likely the MiGs had been buzzing them to scare them off, and yet…

  "Tally-ho!" Coyote called, the warning for enemy in sight. Like silver arrows, the four MiGs snapped up through the clouds a mile to the east.

  "Got 'em, Coyote. Talk to me, Snowball!"

  "Yeah! I have them!" the RIO yelled. At this range the heavy jamming would have little effect and his backseater would be able to tag them on radar. "Bearing two-three-five, range twelve hundred…"

  There was a flash and an unraveling thread of smoke.

  "Launch! Launch!" Coyote yelled.

  The surprise was almost paralyzing. For all of Magruder's hours of training, his eight weeks at Top Gun school, the concept of someone actually shooting at him seemed too strange to be believed.

  The paralysis lasted only fractions of a second. "Tango, Tango! We are under fire. Engaging!" The air-to-air missile swept up from the cloud tops, moving too quickly
for the eye to follow. "Coyote! Break right! Break right!"

  "Rog!"

  That single launch might have been an accident… or the result of inexperience. A mile was long range for a decent heat-lock, and with a broadside shot at the Tomcats, there was little hope for it to latch onto the hot flare of a fighter's tailpipes. The latest intel stressed that the North Koreans were still using old-style Atolls, missiles which had to be looking up the enemy's tailpipe to get a lock. If G2 was right, the November Kilos had just thrown away their first shot.

  But then, Intelligence had been wrong before.

  By breaking right, both F-14s had swung to face the oncoming missile. That would break the lock, unless the Atoll was an upgraded all-aspect heat-seeker like the deadly AIM-9Ls slung beneath his own wings.

  Tombstone watched the oncoming MiGs and turned cold. Those pilots were not inexperienced. There was nothing he could point to, no specific clue which gave it away, but Tombstone knew aircraft and he knew good pilots. There was something about that rock-steady, welded-wing approach which told him that these four MiG drivers, at least, were the North Korean's first team. And that meant…

  "Right break, Coyote! Break, break, break!"

  "Rog, Boss!"

  Tombstone was already leaning on his stick hard to the left, cutting away from the oncoming missile as Coyote broke in the opposite direction. If the pilots were good, he had to assume the decision to fire was good… and that meant an all-aspect missile at least as sharp as his own AIM-9Ls.

  "Hang on!" he yelled to Snowball. "I'm gonna make you bleed!"

  Hard maneuvers by the Tomcat driver, felt more in the backseat than in the front, had more than once burst blood vessels in his RIO's nose, and his words were less threat than warning. The G-forces piled on as the Tomcat twisted away in a seven-G turn, then slipped into a dive to pick up speed.

  He'd lost sight of the Atoll, already past him by now. The question was whether it could turn tightly enough to stick with one of the Tomcats. "I can't see it!" Snowball yelled. "I can't see it, man!"