Alpha Strike c-8 Page 3

  Add to that worrying about new Chinese weapons systems, ones the intelligence communities might have missed … Tombstone stared at the screen. “If they do have something equivalent to the Tomahawk then we’ve got a serious problem. If the Vincennes is half as capable as she thinks she is, it might be enough — just barely. “Get me a secure line to Commander, Seventh Fleet. I have a feeling he’s not going to be too happy about this.”

  1015 local (Zulu -7)

  Tomcat 205

  It couldn’t have been more than a minute after I saw them. The guy standing outside the tank, one just getting out. One second they were there, then BOOM! It seems like they ought to have known they were going to die. That’d be only fair — some sort of premonition, or something. Bird Dog tried to concentrate on the deck of the carrier, repressing the train of thought that was making him distinctly uneasy.

  After taking on more fuel from the KA-6 tanker, Bird Dog and Gator had circled overhead for two hours while slow-flying S-3B conducted a detailed search of the area where Island 203 had been located. Neither the Lockheed Viking nor the SH-60F helicopter had found anything of interest, although both reported an oil slick and small amounts of floating debris in the area. There was no trace of the two men Bird Dog had seen earlier on the rock.

  The flight of Tomcats headed back to the carrier. Spider trapped first, catching the three-wire neatly. Finally, it was Bird Dog’s turn to descend from the Marshall stack and make his approach.

  The controlled crash that passed for a successful landing on an aircraft carrier stimulated the highest readings of blood pressure and muscle tension of any profession ever measured. For Bird Dog, moving his hands, feet, and eyes in the intricate patterns necessary to land, coupled with the expected stress, always acted like a strong dose of caffeine. Time slowed down — except when the approach went wrong — and he found his mind racing over myriad details unrelated to the landing.

  “Wave off, wave off!” the LSO yelled over the circuit. “Go around, Viper 205. Let’s give it another shot. And this time, when I say you’re high and fast, I damn well better see you bleeding off some frigging airspeed and altitude! You got that, Bird Dog?”

  “Roger,” Bird Dog acknowledged, suppressing the impulse to swear at the landing signals officer. He hadn’t been high on final approach to the carrier; he hadn’t! What the hell did the LSO know? He wasn’t flying this Tomcat!

  The LSO was stationed on the port side of the aircraft carrier, slightly below the level of the flight deck and in front of the meatball. It was his job to guide the landing aircraft into the perfect approach profile, supplementing the visual clues that the Fresnel lens, or meatball, provided to the approaching pilot. Too high or too low, and the pilot’s lineup with respect to the meatball would make the lighted signal appear red. In the groove, at the right altitude and range from the deck, and the meatball glowed green. The meatball provided guidance, but the LSO, an experienced aviator himself, was the final word on whether an approach was safe or not.

  “Take it easy, Bird Dog,” Gator said quietly. “Little off, that’s all. You’ll snag it next time.”

  “Asshole’s got it in for me,” Bird Dog muttered. “I was good for at least the four-wire, if not the three. No way I was high — no way!”

  “Okay, Okay,” Gator said soothingly. “These guys are just human. They make mistakes like the rest of us.”

  Gator’s well-intentioned words irritated him even more. Until this afternoon, when something had streaked undetected below him to smash the rock into gritty mud, Bird Dog hadn’t really believed he was just human. He was a Tomcat pilot, for Chrissake! Invulnerable in the air, entitled by birthright to be arrogant on the ground. Immune to the dangers of wrestling his aircraft back onto the pitching deck of the carrier, and perpetually blessed by the gods of the air.

  Until now. On final approach, he’d suddenly realized how small the deck of the carrier looked, and how fast it was coming at him. His skin had prickled as it’d occurred to him what the rough nonskid on the deck could do to the skin of his aircraft, and he’d felt the tiniest quiver of — of what? Nervousness? God, could he be afraid?

  Bird Dog swallowed hard and forced himself to concentrate on his instruments. He rejoined the Marshall stack, the aircraft circling on the port side of the carrier waiting for their turn to land.

  Nothing was different, nothing, he insisted to himself. This was just another landing on the carrier, something he’d done at least two hundred times before.

  “Piece of cake, Bird Dog,” Gator said when they finally broke out of Marshall and started their final approach. Bird Dog felt sweat bead on his forehead as he listened to the LSO and his RIO. The pitching deck rushed up at him, and he ignored the flash of unfamiliar emotion that threatened to distract him.

  “Three-wire!” Gator crowed as the F-14 slammed onto the deck. “Good trap, buddy!”

  Bird Dog felt the tension seep out of his body as he lifted the tailhook and released the thick steel cable. He taxied slowly toward the yellow-shirted flight deck supervisor, wondering what the hell had gotten into him up there, acting like he’d never trapped on the carrier before.

  Well, whatever it was, it was gone now. And the bitch of it was, he still had to pee.

  CHAPTER 2

  Saturday, 22 June

  1100 local (Zulu -7)

  Carrier Intelligence Center (CVIC)

  USS Jefferson, CVN 74

  Commander Hillman Busby glanced around the CVIC briefing room, mentally taking muster. All his key players were there. The junior officers and the chief petty officers had snagged the few chairs still left out from the morning brief. The rest of the enlisted men and women packed into the room leaned against walls or perched on plotting tables.

  “Okay, people. Time to do some magic. We need some answers — or at least some informed intelligence estimates,” Busby said.

  The Carrier Intelligence Center, or CVIC as it was commonly known, was the information fusion center for Carrier Battle Group 14. Pronounced “civic,” it was home to the battle group intelligence officers, enlisted Data Systems Specialists (DS) and Intelligence Specialists (IS) ratings that kept track of the world. CVIC tapped into the most advanced message and information processing computers in the U.S. Navy’s vast array, and was capable of monitoring circuits so highly classified that even admitting they existed was a federal felony. For all its resources, CVIC couldn’t create probabilities, estimates, or analysis without data. It was completely dependent on information fed to it by other sources: national assets, satellites, debriefing reports from the CIA, and tactical sensors such as the SLQ-32(V4) ESM sensors installed on the ships in the battle group.

  The dependence on outside information was at the heart of Commander Busby’s dilemma. Admiral Magruder wanted intelligence’s best estimate of the cause of the explosion earlier that morning, and there was simply no data. Even with all his electronic wizardry, Busby knew no more now than he had when he was standing his watch in supp plot.

  At thirty-five, Busby had been in the Navy long enough to know that admirals were not the most patient bosses. While Admiral Magruder had a good reputation for fairness, it wasn’t likely that he was going to appreciate what Busby had to tell him.

  Which was absolutely nothing.

  Busby sighed and ran his hands over his head. His hair was trimmed Marine-close to his head, his skull clearly visible through the pale blond fringe. For a moment, he considered shaving his head completely. Blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin detracted from his personal idea of how an intelligence officer should look as a steely-eyed professional in daily contact with secret spies and highly classified information. And his nickname, given to him at his first squadron as an ensign and boot air intelligence officer, didn’t help either.

  Who wanted to get a prelaunch briefing from an officer nicknamed “Lab Rat”?

  Well, after he talked to Admiral Magruder, he might not have to worry about his haircut. The Admiral was likely to rip
off his head, along with several other sensitive body parts. He sighed again and stared at the yellow legal pad. The information he could give the Admiral was remarkable only in its lack of usefulness.

  Item: The Chinese, along with five other nations, claimed ownership of the Spratly Islands. The Spratly Islands were barely worthy of the title “island,” since most of them were almost completely submerged, bare tips of rocks poking mere feet above the surface of the South China Sea.

  Item: The ocean bed surrounding the Spratly Islands was one of the richest remaining oil fields in the world.

  Item: Yesterday, one of the islands disappeared, along with the tank that had been perched precariously on it. Tomcat 205 and other battle group sensors had detected a massive explosion in the area.

  Item: All of the Chinese submarines were accounted for, at least according to the satellites.

  Item: The Chinese, although world-famous for the dangerous Silkworm sea-skimmer, were not known to possess a long-range cruise missile similar to the U.S. Tomahawk.

  Busby studied the list for a moment and then doodled a question mark next to the last two items. He was long on questions, short on answers. For an intelligence officer, it was damned irritating.

  1215 local (Zulu +12)

  Operations Center Commander, Seventh Fleet

  Honolulu, Hawaii

  “So Tombstone’s on the front line again,” Vice Admiral Thomas Magruder said. As Commander Seventh Fleet, he had operational command of every Navy asset west of the international date line. Right now, that included his nephew’s battle group. “I should have known getting promoted to Rear Admiral wouldn’t change his luck. When did this happen?”

  “Thirty minutes ago, sir. The battle group sent the on-scene Tomcat back to take a look at the area, and then launched some S-3B’s to get a closer look. The helos followed them in after the Tomcats tanked,” the watch officer replied.

  “And you mean to tell me that we don’t know what caused it? With a full battle group in the area, as well as satellite coverage? What about nuclear data? Any indication that it was something besides a conventional war shot?” the admiral asked.

  “KH-11 was down, sir, but other sensors indicate that there was no nuclear involvement. It seemed like a good time for routine maintenance, according to the SpaceCom watch officer I spoke with. With a battle group in the area, and no hostilities imminent …” the watch officer let his voice trail off.

  Space Command in Colorado controlled all “national assets,” the highly classified network of satellites, sensors, and other sources of information that were deemed too important to national security to be under the jurisdiction of any single service. While they were generally responsive to requests for information and observation scheduling, it was not unusual for them to take satellites down for maintenance without warning. Absent a request for special coverage, the electronic security whizzes in the secret “black” programs there felt it was better to avoid the risk of letting anyone know when the satellites weren’t looking. That had been decided in coordination with the Air Force in a series of budget battles.

  The Air Force, the most junior of all the military services, coveted all the satellite programs. Senior Air Force staffers continually pointed out that the outer reaches of the earth’s atmosphere were still within their area of expertise. Space-based sensors, weapons — indeed, anything that flew — ought to belong to them. In one series of white papers, they’d argued that satellites could be used as forcefully in a “presence mission” as any carrier battle group.

  Satellites in presence missions. Vice Admiral Magruder snorted in disgust. According to the officers that wore light blue suits, the mere rumor that a satellite was focused on a particular region would give a two-bit dictator reason to worry. They’d immediately stop slaughtering their own populations in the name of ethnic cleansing and become peaceful members of the world community.

  For some strange reason, the rest of the military community failed to agree that a satellite could be as visible a symbol of U.S. intentions as a carrier battle group or amphibious task force sitting within view of the coast. While all services agreed that air superiority was a necessary precondition for a successful land campaign, no service except the Air Force believed that air power could eliminate the need for ground combat.

  What would the “Air Farce” want next? Satellites flying in formation like F-14’s? A satellite equivalent of “Top Gun” school? Vice Admiral Magruder smiled at the thought and wondered if he could hornswoggle some junior Air Force officer into seriously proposing the concepts. The resulting flame war and embarrassment would be worth watching. Now that he was safely out of the Pentagon and back in an operational command, the political machinations and aspirations of others were a good source of flag-level jokes.

  No, despite the invaluable information that satellites provided, they were far too vulnerable and weather-dependent to replace the Navy in presence missions. Besides, assuming that satellites would serve as a deterrence to hostilities depended on one assumption of doubtful validity — that the country supposedly being deterred knew that satellite was there. And for the third-world countries that currently teetered on the edge of violence, that was a mistake.

  On the other hand, China was hardly a technological backwater. While its society was rigidly stratified, with millions of people living in unimaginable poverty, the most populated country in the world had devoted a large percentage of her GNP to military advancements. Along with her purchases from Russia, Japan, and Korea, she was quickly developing a high-tech military-industrial complex of her own. Analysts at highly classified briefings had speculated that China’s international intelligence network was becoming a significant concern, particularly in light of the United States’ relatively lenient policy of granting political asylum to almost any Chinese national who claimed it. Undoubtedly, China had the means for determining when U.S. satellites were providing surveillance on the area, and Vice Admiral Magruder wouldn’t rule out the possibility that they were also tapped into the satellites’ maintenance schedule. Maybe satellites could deter the burgeoning regional — and soon, international — power.

  But deterrence required understanding why a country was doing whatever it was doing, and unraveling the chain of logic that underlay China’s political and military decisions was an almost futile task. Steeped in centuries of military tradition, and following the tenets of such brilliant military-political thinkers as Sun Tzu, the Chinese agenda was undoubtedly a subtle one.

  “Get me a secure line to General Emberfault,” the senior Magruder said, referring to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “He’s probably already gotten reports on this from other sources, but I want him to hear it from us. It’s my battle group that’s on the line out there, and I need to know what I can do to protect it.”

  1215 local (Zulu -7)

  CVIC, USS Jefferson

  “I didn’t see it myself, Admiral, but I sure felt the blast.” Bird Dog Robinson shifted uneasily in the hard plastic chair. The buzz of adrenaline from the bolter and his trap was starting to fade, leaving him feeling dopey and slow. He was tempted to rest his elbows on the government-issue table and support his head with his hands. He was still in his flight suit, although he’d ditched his ejection seat harness in the Handler’s office on his way down to CVIC for debriefing. Despite the air conditioning in his Tomcat and in CVIC, dried sweat glued his Nomex shirt to his back, and it was starting to itch. With the Admiral sitting in on the debriefing, a fresh trickle of sweat had started down the middle of his back.

  “I thought I saw a blip of something, Admiral,” Gator volunteered. “Tomboy saw it, too, but it was there and then gone so fast, I can’t be certain. Could have been a sea-skimmer, though — the speed seemed right, from what I can remember.”

  “We’ll take another look on the mission tapes. None of our surface ships picked up anything, not even the Aegis. Not that that decides it one way or the other. You boys had the advantage of
altitude.” Rear Admiral Magruder frowned slightly. “The perennial look-down problem of the AWG-9 surfaces again. The F/A-18 Hornets and the F-14F have gone a long way toward correcting the deficiency, but the versions of the F-14 we’re still flying in the Fleet have a tough time on low-altitude contacts.”

  The Admiral glanced back at the debriefing sheet Bird Dog had filled out. “The rock — anything unusual about it?” the Admiral asked.

  Bird Dog looked down, unable to meet the eyes of the Commander of the Carrier Group. The Admiral’s voice had a hard-edged impatience to it. If the lack of information irritated him, what would the highly decorated pilot say if he knew how Bird Dog felt during that last trap? He shifted again in his seat, certain that Admiral Magruder would be as disgusted with him as he was with himself.

  “Nothing. Still just a rock with a tank on it. I thought I saw a couple of guys standing on the tank, but we were still fairly high. If they were waving and cheering for the American way of life, I missed it,” Bird Dog said.

  Immediately, he wished he could recall the words. Fear did that to him, for some reason. His mouth opened before he thought, and inappropriate words came tumbling out before he could think. But this was a serious matter, and the admiral had a reputation for being a serious guy. Someday, Bird Dog’s smart-ass mouth was going to get him in trouble.

  “Sorry, Admiral,” he mumbled, and stared at his shoes.

  Tombstone stared at him silently for a few moments. Then he said, “You remind me of my old wingman, Batman. Same sense of humor, and same sense of timing. I bailed him out more than once in briefings.” The barest trace of a smile twitched at the corner of the admiral’s mouth. “Lieutenant Commander Flynn? You saw this contact, too, I understand?” Tombstone asked the tiny redheaded RIO.