“Then what can we do?” Hall asked. “What can the President do?”
“That, gentlemen, is why the President wanted us to meet here this morning,” Buchalter said. “We are to examine Our options, and I am to report to him with the consensus later this afternoon.” He opened the folder in front of him and leafed through it to a marked page.
“Gentlemen, if you would turn in Your briefs to the National Security Decision Memorandum, NSDM-242. I direct your attention to Point Two.”
He cleared his throat and began reading. “In conjunction with other U.S. and allied forces, to deter attacks — conventional and nuclear — by nuclear powers against U.S. allies and those other nations whose security is deemed important to U.S. interests.”
He looked up and faced the men around the table. “This memorandum was formulated by the Nixon-Ford Administrations and reaffirmed by NSDD-13 in 1981. In other words, if the President says that it is in the national interest to prevent a nuclear war on the Indian subcontinent-“
Schellenberg blinked. “Are you saying we should declare war on India?”
Buchalter smiled tightly. “I think, Mr. Secretary, that the President would appreciate an option less extreme than that. But he does want an option.” He turned to Caldwell. “General, I’d like to hear more about this carrier battle group we already have in the area. Anything we do out there is going to rely on them.”
“We could take this up with the United Nations,” Hemminger said. The Secretary of Defense rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “A nuclear war in South Asia could have repercussions on lots of countries. Afghanistan, Burma, Thailand …”
“Not to mention the former Soviet Union, what is now the Commonwealth of Independent States,” Marlowe said. “I imagine that they’re burning the midnight oil right this moment in the Kremlin, trying to decide what to do about this. I assure you, the Soviet Union will not be pleased at the prospect of a nuclear confrontation so near her southern frontiers.”
“The President has already informed our representative at the UN,” Buchalter added. “I imagine Pakistan’s nuke … and the incident with our frigate … will both be pretty high on the list of topics discussed on the East River today.”
The discussion went on for three hours. In the end, it all came down to one thing.
CBG 14 was already in the area. Any other military forces short of ICBMS or long-range SAC bombers would require days or weeks to deploy.
Every man there was remembering the long buildup in the Arabian desert during Operation Desert Shield. Any short-term answer to the crisis was riding on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Jefferson.
CHAPTER 5
0730 hours, 24 March
Viper Ready Room, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
Tombstone walked into the Vipers’ ready room, exchanging greetings with the other aviators already there. Most of VF-95’s pilots and RIOS were there, standing about in small groups or already sitting in the rows of chairs facing a large TV screen mounted on the far bulkhead. Those scheduled for patrol within the next few hours wore their flight suits.
The others were more comfortably attired in their khakis.
Looking around the room, he spotted Batman and his rear-seater, Lieutenant Ken “Malibu” Blake, standing in one corner underneath the PLAT monitor, deep in a heated debate. He hesitated a moment, then walked over to join them.
“Ho, Stoney!” Batman said. “Help me straighten out this guy.”
“Hopeless,” Tombstone said. “You should’ve known that when you married him.”
“Yeah, I know, but where there’s life, there’s hope, even for the brain-dead. This guy’s trying to tell me that the Russians aren’t a threat anymore.”
Malibu took a sip from a can of soda. He was, in his own words, a Coke-aholic who needed a can of the stuff to get jump-started in the morning. “Seems to me they’re having enough trouble just holding this commonwealth together without trying to project their air-and seapower all over the world,” he said.
“He’s got a point there, Batman,” Tombstone said. “When was the last time we got buzzed by a Bear?”
“Just before Korea, but that’s beside the point. The Iron Curtain was lifted for a while, but it fell again with a thud when things started going sour inside their borders, and now who knows what will happen?”
“Which means they’re too busy to bother with us or the Indian Ocean,” Malibu insisted. “Look at the record, man! They gave Cam Ranh back to the Vietnamese. Yemen decided it didn’t want Soviet ships at Socotra.
They’re not even on particularly good terms with the Indians anymore. If this keeps up, they’re not going to have any overseas bases at all. I don’t think they’re going to be bothering us much from now on.”
“Yeah? Wake up and take a look at this.” Batman turned and slapped a map that was tacked up to a bulletin board on the nearby bulkhead. It was a full-color, 1:41500,000-scale map showing most of the Indian Ocean from Malaysia to Somalia. The Indian subcontinent jabbed southward like a huge, blunt dagger. A black line started at Diego Garcia far south of the dagger’s tip and extended north along the western coast of India before cutting sharply to the west. Dates written in along the way traced the battle group’s progress over the past week. Jefferson’s current position was marked, two hundred miles south of the Indian-Pakistan border.
Six hundred miles southwest of Turban Station, off of Oman on the Arabian Peninsula, another line had been roughed in, this time in red.
It showed the day-by-day recorded positions of the (former) Soviet Indian Ocean Squadron, SOVINDRON. A week before, those ships had been moving slowly south down the Red Sea. Now they had rounded the corner at the Gulf of Aden and were steaming all-out toward the Pakistan coast.
Batman tapped the squadron’s last charted position. “Trouble projecting their seapower? You can say that when they have a fair-sized task force just six hundred miles over the horizon? Man, I’d call that some kind of major power projection!”
“Trying to assert Commonwealth power?” Malibu crumpled the empty aluminum can and dropped it in a wastebasket. “Or they’re looking after their people here, like we are. Mark my words, guys. We’ll be out looking for work if this keeps up!”
“What do you say to that, Stoney?” Batman asked. “Ready for a job with United?”
The joke stung. Tombstone managed to keep the easy smile on his face.
“Not just yet,” he said. “Not if they won’t let me pull an inverted dive in a 727.”
They laughed as he slumped into a seat. For him, the question was dead serious.
His eyes went to the lieutenant j.g. working on the squadron’s greenie board. Every ready room had one, a large chart with the names of all of the aviators in the squadron, and squares colored in with magic markers where his performance for the past month was recorded. A green square meant the LSO had graded his trap as “OK,” the highest praise possible for an excellent pass or for timely corrections of minor deviations.
Yellow was for “fair.” No color meant “no grade,” meaning the trap had been dangerous to people and planes on the deck. Red with a C stood for “Cut,” a landing so unsafe it could have resulted in disaster. The squares were divided into two or three sections for multiple passes, with a “B” signifying a bolter, or missed trap, and a “W” a wave-off. A small black triangle up in one corner meant the trap had been made at night.
The VF-95 Vipers were a good squadron, green and yellow marks predominating, with a few white patches and no reds. Their overall record was not as good as that of either VFA-161 or VFA-173. The intense competitions between squadrons — recorded on a huge greenie board for the entire Air Wing in a passageway outside Pri-Fly — were nearly always taken by those squadrons, for the nimble F/A-18 Hornet was a lot easier to plant neatly on the number-three arrestor wire than the massive Tomcat.
But the Vipers were good, and Tombstone was fiercely proud to be one of them.
It would hurt to leave them.
He reached into the breast pocket of his khakis, pulled out the last letter from Pamela, and began rereading it.
You’d think a TV news anchor would know everything that’s going on, she’d written. It seems like I’m hearing just enough to know how hairy things are getting over there. Everything coming into the network here points to a major war breaking out between Pakistan and India before the end of the month.
She’d certainly guessed right about that. Tombstone looked up, his eyes going to the PLAT monitor. An A-6 Intruder was descending toward the roof. He watched it touch steel, seeming to flatten itself to the deck, then rebounding slightly, nose down as the arrestor wire dragged it to a halt. Good trap.
He looked back at the letter, his eyes shifting down the page to what she’d written later on. I worry so about you, my darling Matt. Maybe this isn’t the best time to bring it up, but I have to admit that I’ve been thinking about us, about our future, an awful lot in the past weeks. Have you thought much about what our life together will be like?
ACN will be sending me out on special assignments every so often, and I’ll be tied down in Washington the rest of the time. And you?
Assignments at naval air stations all over the country, interspersed with nine-month deployments at sea.
We’ve talked about getting married quite a lot during our last few letters. I love you, Matt, but I think the time has come to take a hard and decidedly unromantic look at our careers and our futures.
Leave it to Pamela to be practical about all this, Tombstone thought. He turned the page to a smudged and oft-read paragraph just before the end.
You wouldn’t have to give up flying. A friend of mine at the FAA told me the other day that the airlines are crying for experienced pilots, and that Navy aviators are prime candidates. Scheduling our time together might still be a problem, but at least we would have schedules, and not be apart for so long at a time.
I love you more now than when I was with you last in Bangkok. I want to marry you. But we have to face reality. As long as you stay in the Navy, I don’t see how we can have much of a life together.
“About time for the show, sir.”
Startled, Tombstone looked up and found himself staring into the pudgy features of Master Chief Julius Fleming, the Avionics Technician assigned to the squadron. “Oh, right.” Hastily he stuffed Pamela’s letter back into his flight suit, then glanced around at the other men in the squadron taking their seats. “Put it on, Chief.”
Each squadron ready room on the carrier had a television monitor tied into the closed-circuit network. Moments after Fleming turned it on, the Air Wing 20 logo was replaced by the face of CAG Steve Marusko. With a wry flash of humor, Tombstone thought to himself that CAG looked none the worse for wear after the harrowing trap the day before. He remembered that he’d been supposed to go down to CAG’s office and talk things over. Somehow, there’d been no time since yesterday afternoon.
Well, the talk wouldn’t change his mind now. Tombstone’s mind was made up.
“Good morning, men,” Marusko said briskly. He was standing at the CVIC podium. By broadcasting his address over the CCTV system, he could speak to all of the aviators aboard Jefferson simultaneously. It saved time.
“I should start off by saying that there’s been a big change in the green sheet.” The “green sheet,” named logically enough for its color, was the daily schedule of air operations put out by OX Division, Ops Admin. “As of 0800 this morning, this carrier battle group will go to full alert.”
“Yesterday afternoon at 1655 hours, the U.S.S. Biddle was fired upon by a Foxtrot-class submarine of the Indian navy. Biddle evaded and returned fire. The Foxtrot is believed to have been lost with all hands.”
The stir grew to a subdued murmur of voices. “Knock it off, people,” Tombstone said, raising his voice. “Let’s listen up.”
“As a result of this incident,” CAG continued on the screen, “diplomatic relations with India have become seriously strained. Yesterday evening, our time, their embassy in Washington delivered a formal protest to the President and threatened retaliation if we stay within what they describe as their military interdiction zone.
“That zone, incidentally, extends three hundred miles south from the mainland to latitude twenty degrees north. That describes a line from just above Bombay clear across the Arabian Sea to the island of Masirah, off Oman. Washington has responded by declaring that we do not recognize that zone, which includes the approaches to the Persian Gulf. The Navy’s mission includes insuring free passage through those straits, something we can’t give up without serious repercussion among our allies.
“Jefferson is now well inside the exclusion zone, and we’re not leaving.
A message to that effect has been delivered by our State Department to New Delhi.
“At 0435 hours our time this morning, Jefferson received an alert order from CINCPAC.” CAG picked up a sheet of paper from the podium and began reading.
“”CBG-14 is hereby directed,”’ he read, “‘to assume a defensive stance commensurate with full combat readiness in order to safeguard the vessels of CBG-14 from possible attack by hostile forces. COCBG-14 is urged to take every precaution to avoid conflict with potential hostile forces in the area within the framework of his operating orders. Ships and aircraft of CBG-14 will fire only if fired upon. Aggressive operations which could be construed as hostile gestures are to be terminated.’”
CAG put the paper down and looked back up at the camera. “In keeping with these orders, Admiral Vaughn has directed the battle group to close up once we reach our assigned patrol station. Fighter CAPS will go as scheduled, but the patrol radius will be reduced from three hundred to two hundred miles. The strike exercises scheduled for VA-84 and VA-89 are canceled. Catseyes and King Fishers will continue their patrols as briefed. Every effort is to be made to avoid further contact with Indian forces.”
That made sense. Practice bomb runs by the Intruders of the carrier’s attack squadrons could be dispensed with. The Hawkeye radar planes of the VAW-13 °Catseyes and the sub-hunting Vikings of VS-42 would be needed more than ever to alert the battle group to an approach by hostile planes or subs. He wasn’t sure he understood the order to shrink the CBG’s perimeter, though. An aircraft carrier was an extremely large and tempting target. The best way to hide it was to spread the battle group over as much area as possible, making it harder for hostile patrols to pinpoint the carrier.
The televised briefing continued, covering other, more routine matters, but the big bomb had already been dropped. Strained diplomatic relations with India? Possible combat with Indian forces? It seemed impossible, but wars had begun over smaller things than the loss of a submarine. What made this situation deadly was the fact that the Indians were already at war with Pakistan. Any hostile U.S. move would make New Delhi think that the Americans had sided with their old ally, Pakistan.
It was even possible that the battle group could be attacked by accident.
And what the hell am I doing here, anyway? he thought. I’m not mad at the Indians, I sure as hell don’t want to get into a war with them.
His thoughts strayed to Pamela’s letter. Maybe she was right, and it was time for a change. Four more weeks and the Jefferson would be returning to San Diego. At that time, Tombstone’s current commission period would be up and he would have the option of resigning from the Navy.
Resigning from the Navy. The words carried an eerie feel to them.
For the better part of ten years he’d thought he’d known precisely his career’s future course. The Academy, flight school at Pensacola, each decision along the way had led naturally and inevitably to the next.
Memories of his father — a carrier pilot killed over Hanoi in 1969—had been one strong factor in those decisions. His uncle, Admiral Thomas J. Magruder, had been another.
If he stayed in, promotion would come within a year, and with it confirmation of his rather tenuous position as skipper of VF-95. Usually the CO
S of air wing squadrons were full commanders; he’d been made skipper because of a shortage of qualified aviator commanders with the fleet and, he still strongly suspected, a word or two in the right quarters from his uncle. The title of squadron skipper had rested uneasily on his shoulders for eight months now. Once he got his promotion, it would ride there a bit more naturally.
And after that? A few more years and he’d have had his shot at a CAG slot with the ultimate goal of skippering a carrier of his own.
Yeah, his whole future had been planned out in year-by-year, step-by-step detail. And now the whole thing had been wiped away. It left him feeling shaky.
But he couldn’t keep going with it, not this way. He’d lost his edge.
He was starting to hold on too tight, maybe because of Pamela … maybe because he’d come too close too many times. The air-to-air refueling incident yesterday and the near-crash on the deck afterward had convinced him that it was time to pack it in.
Usually when an aviator faced that kind of personal crisis, he had the option of turning in his wings. That meant accepting some other Navy flyer’s billet — piloting COD aircraft or transports, for instance — but escaping the deadly day-in, day-out stress of combat flying. Such a move was usually looked upon as a kind of death by the aviator’s former comrades. It excluded him from that special, inner circle that was so much a part of the mystique of carrier aviation. He knew all about that. He’d wrestled with the decision several months earlier, had nearly turned in his wings because he’d been having a rough time with the responsibility of running a fighter squadron … with giving the orders that could get other guys, his friends, killed.
He’d managed to resolve that one. This was something different, a problem that couldn’t be solved by something as simple as asking for a different assignment. What it came down to was the realization that he could have his career … or Pamela.
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