"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.
And wind and rain just made it worse, of course. Still, carrier operations went on, whatever the weather, whatever the time of day or night.
Especially now… with this undeclared war with the Russians, or whatever the hell they were calling themselves these days. Tombstone glanced across the compartment to the Pri-Fly tally board, where an Assistant Air Boss was keeping tabs on Jefferson's far-flung net of aircraft.
Storm or no storm, at this moment six S-3A Viking ASW aircraft were probing across an arc far in advance of the carrier battle group, searching for seaborne traces of Russian submarines that might be trying to use the rain and wind as cover for a stealthy approach and kill. Somewhere in the darkness a mile or so off to port, an SH-3 Sea King helicopter mounted lonely vigil, ready to attempt a rescue of an aviator who, God forbid, got into trouble during recovery and had to punch out in this soup. High up and to starboard was one of Jefferson's four E-2C Hawkeyes, providing the entire, far-flung battle group with early-warning radar that could penetrate the sleet and dark across hundreds of miles and, at need, serve as airborne combat command centers. CAP, or Combat Air Patrol, was being provided by four F/A-18 Hornets of VFA-161, the Javelins. They'd screamed off Jefferson's deck into the rain thirty minutes ago, taking up their patrol stations so that the Tomcats of Viper Squadron could return to the carrier.
As it was, except for the increased number of Viking sub-hunters aloft, it was a fairly light deployment. Jefferson and the entourage of warships comprising Carrier Battle Group 14 were currently cruising east-northeast through the Norwegian Sea two hundred miles south of Iceland. Carrier Battle Group 7, the U.S.S. Eisenhower and her consorts, was already somewhere well to the northeast, five hundred miles ahead, moving to cover the Barents Sea approaches out of Murmansk and the Kola Peninsula just in case the Red Banner Fleet elected to sally forth for a rematch after its defeat at Jefferson's hands off Norway the previous year. CBG-3, meanwhile, with the U.S.S.
Kennedy, was in the North Sea off the Skagerrak, overseeing the final collapse of neo-Soviet troops in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Kennedy and the warships with her were the cork in the Baltic's bottle, keeping any surviving Russian ships at St. Petersburg safely docked and out of action.
No, Jefferson shouldn't have to worry about Russian attacks tonight. But they did have to worry about the weather. Tombstone felt the deck rise beneath his feet, felt the slightly sickening twist of the carrier corkscrewing through the worsening waves.
"Two-one-eight," the LSO said over the speaker. "Call the ball."
"Home Plate, Two-one-eight, Clara, repeat, Clara. I'd call the damned ball if I could see it. It's getting damned thick up here."
"Is Two-one-eight the last one up?" Tombstone asked.
"Yup." Suddenly, Barnes's voice was tight and sounded as dry as Tombstone's. There was no light banter in the compartment now.
"Two-one-eight," the voice crackled over the speaker. "Tomcat ball. One point eight."
Eighteen hundred pounds of fuel left? They were damned near running on fumes.
"Roger ball. Deck coming up, power on." Tombstone found himself holding his breath…
… and then the Tomcat boomed out of the darkness, red and green navigation lights winking, arrestor hook groping for a wire, but high… high as the LSO's voice shouted, "Wave off! Wave off!" and the meatball flared red. The Tomcat hit the steel hard, sparks exploding into the night well beyond the number-five wire, too far up the deck for the tailhook to snag hold, but the aviator's hand had already rammed the throttles full forward, sending twin spears of yellow flame thundering against the night in a desperate bid to regain suddenly precious airspeed.
"Bolter! Bolter! Bolter!" someone was yelling over the intercom system, as Tomcat 218 screamed past Jefferson's island, rushing down the angled flight deck and back into the night.
Stoney was still holding his breath as he watched the twin flares of light marking the engines, like glowing eyes, stagger beyond the deck, dipping toward an invisible sea, then come up, rising… rising… struggling aloft against wind and gravity and drag.
Then the Tomcat was gone, swallowed once again by the night.
"Okay, Brewer," Barnes was saying into his microphone. "Once again around. Just like a walk in the park."
"Ah, roger that, Home Plate," the voice replied. "Just remember that the parks are getting damned dangerous. 'Specially at night."
"So, Captain," Barnes said conversationally after a moment. "What're the chances that the Russkis are gonna fold?"
It was clearly a ploy to ease the atmosphere of growing tension that filled Pri-Fly like some noxious cloud. The Russian War had been the steady, number-one topic of conversation aboard every ship in CBG-14 ever since they'd left Norfolk the week before.
"Zero to none," Tombstone shot back. His heart was pounding hard enough that Barnes could surely hear it. "The Reds don't dare show the cracks in the foundation of their coup. It looks like Leonov is going to keep hammering away until something gives. The only out the neo-Soviets have is to turn this into a general war. A world war."
"My, CAG, but you're just full of cheerful thoughts tonight," Barnes said. "Think it'll go nuke?"
"It could. I don't think anyone wants it to, not even Krasilnikov. And yet…" He shrugged. "This is the first time we've had an honest-to-God civil war in a country where both sides have nuclear weapons. And, well, fratricidal wars are always the bloodiest, the most down-and-dirty vicious wars of all."
"Hey!" Barnes said. "Remember when we all thought the world would be a safer place with the Soviet Union gone?"
"What do you want," Stoney replied, grinning. "A return to the good old days of the Cold War?"
The neo-Soviet empire had appeared to collapse in the wake of the brief, hard-fought naval campaign off Norway nine months earlier. Tombstone could close his eyes and still remember the roar and thunder of battle, the pillars of smoke climbing heavenward marking the funeral pyres of ships, the hurtling aerial combat machines jousting in tournaments of death at Mach 2 and beyond.