by Robert Gandt
But not yet. This was still his life. His only life.
He was about to tell her this, when he noticed the C-2A COD on the flight deck. The aft doors were open, and two men were walking from the island to the waiting aircraft.
“Look who’s leaving,” Maxwell said. “You just missed him.”
“Who?”
He nodded toward the gray C-2A parked below them. “Your husband.”
“Chris?” She peered over the rail. “What’s he doing here?”
“He’s with Bronson, the CIA chief. Not much doubt about who he works for now.”
“Why are they out here?”
“Are you asking as a reporter or a wife?”
She glowered at him. “Don’t start, Sam. I have to deal with this the best way I can.”
He wanted to ask what way that was, but he didn’t. He just nodded, aware of the old burning in his gut. Tyrwhitt. All it took was the mention of him and it was back.
“Sorry,” he said, but it was too late. The spell was broken.
< >
Bronson took the only free window seat on the starboard side of the C-2A. He finished strapping himself in, then looked over at Tyrwhitt. He looked like an alien in the cranial protector and float coat. He was fumbling with the harness fasteners, wearing the expression of a man going to his execution.
The sight gave Bronson a secret pleasure. He rarely saw the supercilious Australian so unsure of himself. Tyrwhitt had no experience with military airplanes, particularly those in which you sat backwards and were catapulted like a cannon shell from a carrier deck.
The crew was in the cockpit, getting the Greyhound ready to launch. Bronson could hear whirring noises—inverters, hydraulic actuators, gyros coming to life.
The trip to the Reagan had been a colossal waste of time. Bronson’s only role was to hand over the intel data, then stand there like a stuffed dummy while that windbag navy captain with the cigar took over the strike briefing. He could just as well have sent the data over the encrypted message net and stayed in Bahrain. But then he wouldn’t have gotten to watch Tyrwhitt sit through a catapult launch.
“First time on a carrier, huh?”
“And the last, I hope.” Tyrwhitt looked nervous.
Bronson waited a moment, savoring the next item. “Your wife is aboard the Reagan.”
Tyrwhitt’s face froze and he stared at Bronson. “Claire? How do you know that?”
“I saw her in the wardroom about half an hour ago. She arrived on this same COD that we’re taking back to Bahrain.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Bronson shrugged. “What for? We were on our way down here to board the COD.”
Tyrwhitt peered through the window at the gray mass of the Reagan. “What’s she doing here? How did she get clearance to come aboard?”
“How do you think? Connections.”
“Her pilot boyfriend? He’s only a commander. He doesn’t have that kind of pull.”
“She’s got a great ass. Women like that know how to get what they want.”
“What are you suggesting?” Tyrwhitt’s voice was strained. “That Claire used—”
“You said it yourself, the other night in Bahrain. We’re all whores. She’s just more traditional about it.”
For a long moment Tyrwhitt stared at Bronson. “You know something? It’s a good thing for you that you’re my boss.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if you weren’t, I’d smash your fucking face.”
Bronson flashed a humorless smile, pleased that he had found Tyrwhitt’s weak spot. As he suspected, Tyrwhitt’s wife, or soon-to-be ex-wife, was still an issue in his life. It was useful information.
He turned his attention back to the activity outside the cabin window. Yellow shirts were scurrying around the aircraft, releasing tie down chains, removing equipment. The C-2A would be taxiing toward the catapult in another minute.
Tyrwhitt was a liability, he reflected. The man didn’t belong in an elite organization like the Central Intelligence Agency. He had no special education, no qualifications for being an agency operative except that he knew his way around the whorehouses and cesspools of the Middle East. It was a sign of the times that the agency had to recruit people like him.
Back in the seventies and eighties the CIA had rid itself of the rogues and thugs and sleazy criminals it used to infiltrate enemy networks. The new generation of leaders favored “surgical” military operations and spy satellites that could read license plates from low earth orbit, 250 miles up.
But then came the attacks on America and the embarrassing revelations about America’s intelligence failures. Until a new cadre of professional spies could be recruited, trained, and deployed, the agency was forced to rehire its corps of undisciplined amateurs.
Amateurs like Christopher Tyrwhitt.
Much as Bronson hated to admit it, Tyrwhitt was able to come up with useful information. He had already been shot and incarcerated by the Iraqis, and then released through a secret negotiation. He had connections throughout the Middle East—in the souks and the black markets and inside the training camps. He spoke Arabic, and he managed to get people to pass information to him.
Someday, if Bronson had his way, the CIA would return to its purest form—an elite corps of dedicated professionals like himself. They would not be answerable to know-nothing busybodies in the White House or Congress. They would not be forced to associate with loudmouthed bar flies and foreign nationals like Tyrwhitt.
Both turbine engines were rumbling at idle RPM now. The C-2A was taxiing toward the catapult. Through the cabin window Bronson could see the deck moving beneath them. The gray mass of the ship’s island came into view. Bronson looked up. On the aft viewing deck, he saw two people watching the COD trundle across the flight deck. He recognized them. The woman was Tyrwhitt’s wife, the reporter. The other was Maxwell.
Another useful tidbit.
Bronson felt the C-2A’s nose wheel bump over the catapult shuttle. The engine noise swelled to a crescendo and, seconds later, the COD hurtled off the bow of the Reagan.
Chapter 12 — Tomcats
USS Ronald Reagan
Quebec Station, Persian Gulf
2145, Wednesday, 17 March
“Lock the door behind you,” said Boyce.
Maxwell secured the door of CAG’s stateroom. He blinked his eyes in the gray cloud of smoke that filled the room. “How do you breathe in here, CAG?”
“This is the only place on the ship where I can light a cigar. Goddamn tree-hugging clean air freaks have ruined the Navy.”
Everyone knew that Boyce didn’t mind breaking certain rules. The smoking prohibition was one of them.
“Want a drink?” said Boyce. That was another one—the ban on drinking. He opened the safe on his desk and slid out a tray of bottles. Boyce believed in the value of a late night libation in his stateroom.
“No, thanks.”
Boyce shrugged. “It’s bad luck not to have a medicinal drink the night before a combat mission.” He shoved the tray back into the safe. “You got any problems with the strike package the way we set it up?”
“Deep strikes never work out exactly the way we plan them. I keep wondering what’s going to bite us in the butt this time.”
“That’s why you’re leading the strike and I’m staying in CIC to run the show.”
Maxwell nodded. He’d been through these night-before sessions with Boyce before. Boyce had something on his mind, and this was his way of getting it out.
Boyce’s cigar was dead, and he paused to re-ignite it. He wreathed himself in another bank of gray smoke and said, “I could have picked one of the other squadron skippers, Rico Flores or Gordo Gray, to lead the deep strike. They’re senior, and they’ve both got solid experience.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“There’s something about this operation that’s bugging me.”
“You think Al-Fasr will try to suck us into another trap?”
> “Not this time. We’re gonna smoke his ass once and for all. It’s the bigger picture I’m worried about. The environment we’re in.”
“You mean Iran?”
Boyce nodded. “They may be a raggedy-ass country without indoor plumbing, but they’ve got an air defense system and an air force with real fighters. It’s not like Iraq, when they parked all their jets and turned over the sky to us. If the Iranians decide to get involved, it will turn into a cluster fuck.”
“Why would they want to get involved?”
“They don’t want Al-Fasr on their property any more than we do, but they most definitely don’t want us Yankee imperialists doing their job for them. They got a good look at how that works when we invaded Iraq. They’ll go through the motions of fighting, even if it means getting their ass kicked.”
“If they come out and fight, what am I supposed to do?”
“You know the Rules of Engagement. We’re not supposed to shoot unless we see hostile intent.”
“Does that mean we give them the first shot?”
“Officially, it means you comply with the rules of engagement.”
“Unofficially?”
Boyce clamped the cigar between his teeth. Squinting through the smoke, he gave Maxwell a look that he had come to recognize. “I tagged you as the flight leader because you’re a guy who can think outside the box. In Iraq you passed up a shot at a MiG because it wasn’t necessary to kill him. When a so-called friendly fired a missile at you, you killed him because the sonofabitch needed killing.”
Boyce paused to waft a cloud of smoke into the air. “When you’re out there tomorrow, I want you to do whatever has to be done.”
Maxwell nodded his understanding. Some things never changed.
< >
0730, Thursday, 18 March
The catapult officer watched Maxwell with his sad brown eyes. He was wearing the standard shooter’s flight deck outfit—cranial protector, radio headset, and survival float coat.
Sitting in his cockpit, Maxwell had to laugh. Through the Plexiglas canopy, he could see the shooter’s name plainly stenciled on the front of his float coat: Dog Balls.
Dog Balls Harvey, who came to the Reagan from the patrol plane community, had made the mistake one day of letting the Roadrunners give him a call sign. Then he learned one of the essential truths about Navy call signs. They were like Super Glue. The more you resisted, the more they stuck.
Poor Dog Balls, thought Maxwell. The Roadrunners had raised their tormenting of him to a new level by by howling like depraved hounds whenever he made an appearance in the officers’ wardroom.
Nobody said life on a carrier was easy.
The pale morning light reflected off the surface of the Persian Gulf. Beyond the bow of the ship waited empty space. On the deck beneath Maxwell’s cockpit, Dog Balls was giving the power up signal.
Maxwell shoved the two throttles up to the detents.
One last glance at the displays—no warning lights, no faults. The Hornet’s airframe was rumbling like a freight train under the full thrust of the two GE engines. Ahead lay the three hundred feet of the number one catapult track.
In the center of the deck, between the two bow catapults, he could see the shooter waiting for his ready signal. Maxwell gave him a smart salute, then waited.
His left hand gripped the throttles, holding them at full power. His right hand was on the “towel rack”—the grip on the canopy rail that kept his hand from instinctively grabbing the stick and interfering with the computer-controlled inputs to the flight control system.
Two seconds elapsed. The ritual never failed to stir his blood.
He felt himself rammed into the back of his seat. The force of the acceleration caused his eyeballs to flatten, warping his vision. The deck of the carrier swept past him in a gray blur, vanishing behind the canopy as the Super Hornet hurtled off the bow.
Abruptly, the stroke of the catapult ended. He was flying. Sixty feet below lay the slick water of the Gulf.
The rest was standard. Right hand on the stick, nudge the nose up to a climb attitude, left hand on the gear handle, then the flaps. Even with its load of ordnance, the F/A-18E was accelerating like a runaway horse.
The strike package from the Reagan was launching at fifteen-second intervals from the Reagan’s four steam catapults. A mix of twelve Hornets and six F-14 Tomcats formed the package. Maxwell would lead the fighter sweep, a pair of Super Hornets teamed with two Tomcats from VF-31. Their task was to clear the area of all intruders, then maintain air supremacy.
Gus Gritti’s 43rd MEU was lifting from the Saipan in an armada of helicopters—CH-53s and CH-46s—preceded by a wave of AH-1W Super Cobra gunships and half a dozen AV-8B Harrier jets. That was something the veteran Gritti had been emphatic about. Never again would his Marines go into Indian country without their own air cover.
Already on station was a pair of EA-6B Prowlers, whose mission was to jam Iranian air defense radars and command centers. Also in an orbit over the Gulf was the E-2C Hawkeye command and control aircraft, with its rotating radome mounted atop the fuselage. The Hawkeye was data linked with the Reagan and the jets of the strike package, and was also linked to the Purple Net, a real-time feed from Navy EP-3, Air Force Rivet Joint intelligence-gathering aircraft, and current national asset data.
Today the Hawkeye had an extra mission. One of the three controllers was broadcasting on all the common civilian and military frequencies.
Attention, all ships and aircraft. A U.S. military operation is underway in the northern Persian Gulf Area. Any aircraft that enters this airspace without clearance may be intercepted and fired upon.
Every five minutes the controller in the Hawkeye repeated the warning, both in English and Farsi, on the VHF and UHF guard frequencies and on every published air traffic control frequency in the northern Persian Gulf.
Maxwell was still joined with the KC-10 refueling ship when he heard a voice in his earphones. “Gipper One-one, this is Battle Axe.” “Battle Axe” was Boyce’s call sign as the Air Wing Commander.
“Gipper One-one, go ahead Battle Axe.”
“Your signal is Slamdunk, Gipper. Repeat Slamdunk. Acknowledge.”
“Gipper One-one copies Slamdunk. Here we go.”
Slamdunk was the go-ahead signal. The strike was on.
Maxwell knew that Boyce was hunched over his tactical display in the Reagan’s CIC—Combat Information Center—with a chewed up cigar clenched in his teeth. Somewhere close by, peering around like a mother hen, was Rear Adm. Jack Hightree, the Battle Group Commander, who had overall command of the operation.
The Hornets of the strike package finished topping off from the orbiting KC-10 tanker, then regrouped in their assigned formations. In addition to being the overall strike leader, Maxwell was leading the BARCAP—barrier air combat patrol. His mixed flight of two F/A-18Es and two F-14D Tomcats would sweep the area a hundred miles inland from the target area, establish air supremacy, then wait for any intruders.
Maxwell called the Hawkeye. “Sea Lord, Gipper One-one checking in as fragged. Say the picture.”
“Gipper One-one, picture is clear.”
The controller in the Hawkeye—call sign Sea Lord—was Lieutenant Commander Ralph Bunn, a naval flight officer and operations officer of the E-2C squadron aboard the Reagan. He was confirming that the radar picture was clear—no bogeys in the area.
Maxwell swung the nose of his Hornet toward the north. Ahead he could see the dark, irregular coastline of Iraq and Iran, the fan-shaped delta of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. To the east, the high range of Iran’s Zagros mountains jutted up like the spine of a serpent.
He inhaled deeply in his oxygen mask and forced himself to relax. The picture was clear, the controller had said. For how long? Where were the Iranians? Maybe the warnings were working. Maybe they were smart enough to stay home.
< >
Shatt-al-Arab Waterway, Southern Iraq
You didn’t have to sign
up for this one, Gritti.
Memories of other amphibious raids raced through Gus Gritti’s mind as he stared at the approaching land mass. Through the open hatch he could feel the dank air from the marshes ahead. The rumble of the CH-53E’s turbine engines swelled up from the cabin deck, through his boots, giving him that old familiar tingling sensation.
Another goddamn assault. Another shot at a posthumous medal.
He should be in Washington by now, sipping martinis at the club, letting all the other 0-6s suck up to him because they knew he was going to pin on a star. His relief as CO of the 43rd MEU, Col. Chris Parente, was already on the Saipan, perched now at a console in the Landing Force Operations Center on the O-2 level. He would direct the battle with the cyber tools of the twenty-first century while Gritti went to war the old-fashioned way. On the ground, with guns and grunts.
Parente’s voice crackled over Gritti’s radio headphone. “Grits, Battle Axe confirms that our signal is Slamdunk. Acknowledge.”
“Grits copies. We have Slamdunk.” “Grits” was the call sign he had selected as commander of the assault force. Parente had just passed the go signal to him.
He knew the drill. Go find the gomers, kick in the door, ruin their day. Then get your people out of there alive. Simple. He’d done it a dozen times.
And it never came off exactly as he planned it.
He gazed around the cabin of the assault helo. Thirty grease-painted faces peered back at him. Before they launched from the Saipan, his Marines had been full of themselves, grinning and shouting “Ooh-rah” and “Semper Fi,” slapping war paint on their faces, checking their equipment, exuberant at the prospect of action.
Now they looked tense and sober. It was the look of men about to enter combat. Many of them had fought in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Some had been with him during the Yemen operation. They had lost buddies there in the hills of Yemen because some misguided official in a high place had restricted the use of all their firepower. Some dumb shit who thought he could do business with terrorists.
