For now, the battle group commander remains on-scene commander.
However, I want detailed plans from him regarding his proposed use of the Arsenal ship. And make it clear to him that I view this as an excellent opportunity to use our advanced technology, and to demonstrate its usefulness in any battlefield scenario.” His voice took on a firmer note. “This will work. Admiral if your people give it half a chance.”
The chairman nodded sharply. He turned to Admiral Magruder. “I’ll expect to see the plans later this evening.”
Twenty minutes later. Admiral Magruder was on the telephone to his nephew. Over a highly secure circuit, he outlined the gist of the President’s request. “Make it work, Stoney,” he concluded. “You don’t have to like it, but make it work.”
SIX
With the Washington-mandated safety stand-down over, Jefferson immediately returned to full flex-deck operations.
The Cubans continued to clutter up the sky around the ship with sponges of Fulcrums, but popular opinion had it that Admiral Wayne was not likely to allow that state of affairs to continue. The admiral had made it clear that current operations had two main objectives: to locate and retrieve Major Hammersmith and to obtain up-to-date eyeball intelligence on Cuban air defense capabilities.
No one had to tell the VF-95 Viper squadron what the latter information was for. They were going in. It was just a question of how and when.
The demands on the flight schedule allowed even the staff pilots to grab some stick time.
“You have any idea what we’re doing up here?” Bird Dog asked. His index finger was beating out a staccato rhythm on the throttles.
“I know as much as you do.” Resignation tinged the normally taciturn RIO’s voice. “They say launch, I launch.
They say go north of Cuba and look tactical, I give you fly-to points: What else do we have to know?”
“What the hell we’re doing here would help,” Bird Dog snapped. He yanked the Tomcat into a sharp right-hand turn without warning, shoving Gator hard against the seat back.
“Hey! What the hell was that about?” Gator’s words were slightly muffled as he forced them out between clenched teeth. “Give me some warning next time, asshole.”
“Sorry, shipmate, just thought I saw something up ahead, that’s all.”
Bird Dog eased quickly out of the turn and turned gently to port, putting it back on its original heading. Why the hell had he done that? If he was honest with himself, he had to admit that Gator didn’t deserve it. He’d known the unexpected turn would subject the RIO to massive G-forces, and might even have caused him to black out.
There was no reason to take it out on Gator. It wasn’t his RIO’s fault that he was being treated like a less than completely essential part of the battle group. Hell, he ought to be grateful that he was flying, although his orders to proceed from Jefferson to north of Cuba and to orbit on a CAP station with two other F-14s seemed a waste of gas and time. Time he could have better spent sleeping, dreaming about the beautiful Callie. He sighed as images of his fiancee well, almost his fiance erose in his mind, as they were wont to do at the slightest provocation.
Who would’ve ever thought he’d be torn between dreaming about a woman and flying? A year ago, flying would have won hands down.
“We’re a diversion,” Gator said. “There are four Tomcats and four Hornets on Alert Five right now. Since when does the carrier roust that many aviators out of bed simply to support a grab-ass mission?”
“A diversion? Why? There’s nothing going on around here.”
Gator sighed. “Of course there’s not. It’s a diversion, stupid. A diversion happens somewhere besides the main action. Didn’t they teach you that at the War College?”
“The War College was a bit more sophisticated than that,” Bird Dog said stiffly.
The yearlong curriculum concentrated on operational art, with many theories contrasted to old-style campaign planning. Students at the Naval War College looked at the big picture: how best to use military force to achieve political objectives, what composition of large-scale forces were most appropriate to applying pressure to an opponent’s center of gravity. They didn’t get down into the grass, as the professors there were fond of saying. Individual platform capabilities, weapon ranges, and tactics were the province of more junior courses, such as Tactical Action Officer School or even Fighter Weapons Course Top Gun at Naval Station Miramar. The War College students were expected to be beyond that, to concentrate on the high-level planning they’d be expected to do as members of a deployed staff or ashore at the Pentagon. In Bird Dog’s case, he’d had a chance to apply his new skills even before he graduated.
He’d wangled his way out to Jefferson in the Med just in time to take part in the Black Sea conflict.
“Well, maybe they should have,” Gator said. “If I had to guess, I’d say there’s a reason the admiral wants Cuba’s air assets worried about the north. We’re already getting I and Windications and warnings that they’re launching more of them and vectoring toward us.”
“If I’d been planning it, I would have waited until the weather was better.” Bird Dog glanced overhead, looking for any patches of clear sky. No luck. “Where are our playmates, anyway? The ones we’re supposed to be diversioning. If we’re gonna boogie, we might as well do it.”
“I hold a MiG on two-seven-zero at fifty miles,” Gator answered.
“About time you switched into targeting mode, don’t you think?”
‘Too far away.”
“The bad guys won’t know that, will they? No, they won’t,” Gator continued, answering his own question. “Get it through your thick skull. Bird Dog the point of being up here is not to engage another aircraft, it’s to make someone on the ground think we’re up to something interesting. That spells targeting illumination, simulating every electronic and radar signal we generate when we’re actually attacking.
Get with the program.”
Bird Dog sighed and switched the powerful AWG-9 radar into illumination mode. The ESM sensors arrayed along the coast of Cuba and perched on its highest peak would undoubtedly detect it within seconds. “There.
Are you happy?”
“I am. The question is are the Cubans?”
The small RHIB-rigid-hull inflatable boat slid smoothly up the side of one swell, picking up speed as it descended into the trough. The eight SEALs on board held grimly to the ropes around its hard rubber sides.
Their bodies had gotten accustomed to the rhythmic movement thirty minutes earlier, and even the greenest of them was well past worrying about seasickness.
Not that SEALs got seasick. Or that they’d ever admit to it if they did.
A cold front had moved into the area yesterday, increasing the difference between wet-bulb and dry-bulb temperatures to less than two degrees. Consequently, dense fog was forming on the surface of the ocean, wafting up and enveloping the Special Forces platoon in a cloaking mist.
Overhead, low clouds were rolling in, spitting short bursts of rain that left their wet suits gleaming in the low ambient light diffused about them. Each man held his weapon with his free hand, close to the chest. Not that they’d need them-at least, they wouldn’t if everything went well.
“Three miles,” Huerta said softly. He stretched his legs, twisted his torso to loosen the muscles growing stiff from the cold and damp. “Be ready.”
One by one, the team members flashed a silent hand signal in acknowledgment. As if it were needed. SEALs were always ready.