What would Moscow think if some of their Naval Aviation Migs were downed by American Sea Sparrows? Fitzgerald didn’t even want to think about the consequences.
“Admiral on the bridge.”
Fitzgerald slid out of his seat and turned to face Vaughn. “Good evening, Admiral.”
“Captain.”
Vaughn looked terrible. There were circles under his eyes, and he looked pale. He was chewing on something — an antacid tablet, Fitzgerald decided — and his eyes were focused past the bridge windscreen on something in the distance. The Russians. Of course.
“Any problem with the replenishment, Captain?”
“Not a thing, Admiral. Everything’s going smoothly. First stage refueling should be complete before it’s fully dark.” Because of the late hour, it had been decided to transfer fuel in two batches, one this evening, the rest the next morning. The dry stores and refrigerated supplies ticketed for the Jefferson, less critical at the moment than the JP-5, would be swayed across with the second refueling.
The admiral grunted, still staring at the western horizon. “So. What about the Russkies?”
Fitzgerald shook his head. “They don’t seem to be in much of a hurry, do they, sir? Captain Krylenko sent me personal greetings a while ago.
And I gather we’re due for a joint conference tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah. More damned socializing and politicking. Useless crap. These vodka-swilling bozos aren’t going to be any help to us at all.”
Fitzgerald studied the admiral, controlling his own growing worry. There was something about Vaughn. He groped for the right word. Irrational?
No … that wasn’t right. There was nothing wrong with the man that Jefferson’s captain could put his finger on. But he did seem preoccupied, his attention unfocused, and his derisive and egotistical attitude during that morning’s briefing had not helped matters.
Perhaps it was just Vaughn’s fear. Fitzgerald could smell it, could see it in the nervous way his eyes flicked back and forth as he studied the horizon, could hear it in his terse words and harsh judgment of the Russians.
There was no irrationality in fear. All of them were afraid, every man in the squadron, and there was no shame in that, not when tomorrow could find them in a war unlike any that had been fought in history.
But Vaughn’s manner worried Fitzgerald. It was almost as though the man was trying to line up the excuses before his failure, find a way to divert the blame. “It wasn’t my fault because the Russians were no good.”
“It wasn’t my fault because I wasn’t given the intel I needed.”
Fitzgerald shook himself mentally and tore his gaze from Vaughn’s face.
He would get nowhere thinking thoughts like that.
He signaled to an enlisted watch-stander nearby. “Have some coffee, sir?”
“Eh? Oh, thanks. Thanks. Everything else quiet?”
“Absolutely.” He kept his tone light, confident, and unworried. “I’d say our Indian friends have decided to bug out. Maybe the skirmish yesterday made them think twice about all this. Or maybe it was the Russians joining us. Attacking us now would be sort of like taking on the whole world, wouldn’t it?”
“No, Captain. No, it’s not like that at all.” Vaughn spoke softly, his eyes still on the horizon as though he were trying to reach out and touch the mind of Admiral Dmitriev, out there on the bridge of the Kreml. He accepted a mug of coffee the sailor handed him without looking away. “Those bastards will be back, and from where we’re sitting, it’s going to look like World War III.”
“How do you know that, sir?”
“Logistics.” He blinked, then turned away from the window. He seemed to really see Fitzgerald for the first time. “The laws of logistics, Captain. The guy with the longest supply line has his head in a noose.”
“Oh, I think we’re set all right. Peoria and Amarillo are with us now.
They have enough bullets, beans, and black oil to keep us going for quite a while.” But he knew the admiral’s thoughts were traveling the same ruts his own mind had been circling a few minutes earlier. Lose the UNREP ships and the squadron was crippled, their mission … The realization hit Fitzgerald like a blow. It was the mission Vaughn was worried about … and his image back in Washington. That fit with the little he’d heard about the man prior to his assignment to CBG-14.
He was worried about what would happen to his career if the carrier group failed to carry out its mission.
“A drop in the bucket,” Vaughn said, responding to Fitzgerald’s comment about the UNREP ships’ provisions. He raised the mug and sipped noisily. “You know as well as I do how quickly we’ll run through that stuff once the shooting starts, hey? Hell, we’re twelve thousand miles from home. Twelve thousand miles! The Russians are five thousand from their nearest port, and they don’t have our experience in long-range blue-water ops. The Indians’ supply bases are right over the horizon.
We’re dangling on a limb out here, Fitzgerald. And the Indians are going to whack it off.”
“Hell, I thought that dangling was what we’re here for, Admiral.” He laughed, trying to make it sound like a joke. “We’re what the President calls for when he needs to reach out and touch someone.”
Vaughn’s mouth quirked in what might have been a smile. “Well, we’d better hope the President decides in favor of talking instead of touching. You know damn well we can’t match the Indians plane for plane.
Count their planes ashore and they outnumber us ten to one at least.”
“No,” Fitzgerald agreed, serious now. Vaughn’s mood was gnawing at him, and he didn’t know how to reply. “No, we can’t match their planes. But we can match their pilots. I’m willing to bet we could match them ten for one in that department any day!”
“Maybe.” Vaughn sighed. “But it’s not the men who count. Not anymore.”
The words chilled Fitzgerald. He glanced at the enlisted watch-stander who was still standing a few feet away, face expressionless and his eyes fixed on the horizon forward. “How can you say that, sir?”
“God. You heard how the fight went last night. Out of control … Most of that battle was fought by computers, Captain. Do you understand that?”
“I think so, sir. But men were directing the battle, controlling the computers.”
“No, Captain. Things happen too fast for humans to manage a modern battle. All humans can do is screw things up. Remember the Stark? And the Vincennes?”
“Of course.” Stark was the Perry-class frigate that had been hit by an Iraqi Exocet in ‘87 because her combat crew had failed to take certain defensive preparations at the time. Vincennes was the Aegis cruiser that had misidentified an Indian airliner and shot it down by mistake.
“But I think we learned some things from those episodes.”
“What’s to learn? That your ship can be under attack before you even realize it. That any human decisions are going to be made too late to help when you only have seconds to react. No, Captain. If we fight, we’re going to find that it’s our mistakes that shape the battle more than our decisions. And we … we’re at a disadvantage.”
“How is that, sir?”
“Because we have the more complicated electronics, the faster computers, the more sophisticated gadgetry. That’s more stuff to break down. And because we have to haul those … what’d you say? Beans, bullets, and black oil halfway around the world, while the Indians have everything they need right here.” He shook his head. “Damn it. Washington expects the impossible. The impossible …”