"Uh-uh," Brewer replied, and Batman heard her chuckle. "No changing the bet. Score's nine to six, women's advantage."

  "I think we're being taken, Malibu. These women nowadays. You can't-"

  "Gold Eagles, Gold Eagles, this is Eagle Two-oh-one," Coyote's voice said, cutting in. "Gather in, chicks. Time to head for home."

  "Two-oh-one, Two-oh-two," Batman called. "Hey, Coyote! What's the gouge?"

  "Batman, Coyote. We're going back in by squadrons for refuel and rearm, and we're up first in the Marshall Stack."

  "On our way. Are the bad guys gone?"

  "Most of 'em. But we're leaving the ones that're left to the Ike and the Nimitz. We've got other fish to fry."

  "Two-oh-one, Two-one-one," Strickland called. "What fish did you have in mind?"

  "The skipper's got a job for us, Striker," Coyote said. "And man, if you've been having fun so far, you're gonna love this!"

  1535 hours

  Viper ready room

  U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  Lieutenant Chris Hanson slumped back into her chair in VF-95's ready room, aware of the rustle and thump of other NFOs filing in, aware of the murmuring conversations around her, but mostly aware only of how tired she was. It seemed like the Vipers had been on alert for years. She'd been aloft on CAP last night until 0730 that morning, had just gotten to sleep when an alert had been sounded, had just gotten to sleep again when the Russians had launched this latest attack. She and her RIO, Lieutenant McVey, had catapulted off Jefferson's deck, and been aloft for over an hour. They'd made two Phoenix kills, then had a narrow scrape with a Fulcrum over the Norwegian coast. On the way back, they'd used their last two Phoenix missiles downing a couple of sea-skimming cruise missiles.

  God, she was tired.

  She looked across at the young, black-haired man slumped in the seat beside her. Roy G. McVey was about as young and raw as they came. Somehow, they'd all started calling him Vader, playing on his last name. His head was back, his eyes closed, his lips parted. He looked like he was asleep.

  "Hey, Lobo."

  She looked up. Striker was standing behind her, his hands on the back of the chair.

  "Hello, Steve."

  He bent over, so his lips were close by her ear. "Listen," he said, whispering so no one else could hear. "I was wondering about tonight?"

  "Uh-uh," she said. "Uh-uh! If they let me, I am going to sleep for about five hundred years. Call me in 2500."

  He smiled. "Actually, I had the same thing in mind. This watch-on, watch-off stuff is-"

  "Attention on deck!"

  The men and women in the room rose to their feet as Tombstone walked in, Coyote close behind him. "At ease. At ease." He took his place behind the podium at the front of the room. "Sit down and listen up. We don't have much time."

  At his back, Coyote was tacking up a large-scale map of the Kola Peninsula. Lines of bright red quarter-inch tape had been stretched across it, all starting at Bear Station, reaching along several distinct paths through several doglegs, and terminating at various points inland.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," Tombstone said. "The air phase of Operation White Storm."

  Chris's exhaustion faded back, replaced by intense excitement. An alpha strike, an all-out assault against Russian targets in the Kola Peninsula!

  And the Vipers were going to be in it up to their necks!

  "The lead attack elements will be Jefferson's VAQ-143 and Eisenhower's VAQ-132. They'll go in first, using HARMs to hit the radar sites at Ozerko, Titovka, and Port Vladimir. Right behind them will be our attack squadrons, VA-89 and VFA-161, plus VA-66 from the Eisenhower. Their targets will be those SAM sites and radar installations we've been tagging with our Hawkeyes, plus naval installations up and down the Kola inlet.

  "VF-95 will fly close escort on the Intruders."

  There were several groans in the room. "Aw, CAG!" Arrenberger said from the back. "Why us? We've been at full throttle for the last forty-eight hours!" Other voices chimed in, agreeing with him.

  Tombstone gave Slider a long, gray stare. "You have a problem, mister?"

  "Yeah, I got a problem! How long are we supposed to keep pumping at this pace?"

  "We can't keep going like this, CAG," Mustang Davis put in. "The squadron's beat."

  Chris held her breath, wondering just how close to mutiny the squadron might be. If everyone in the squadron just refused to fly…

  Tombstone kept his eyes on Slider. "You want to stand down, Slider?

  Turn in your wings?"

  Slider paled. "No, CAG."

  "I don't want one man or woman up there who can't take the strain. If you can't take the heat, Arrenberger, I want to know it."

  "I can handle it."

  "What about the rest of you people? I'll fly this mission by myself if I have to."

  Chris joined with the others in a low-voiced murmur that filled the compartment. "We can do it, CAG."

  "We're okay, Tombstone."

  "We're with you, CAG."

  Tombstone waited a moment, hands on hips. Then he nodded. "Okay.

  That's the way professionals handle it. I know you're tired. We're all tired, right down to the thin ragged edge. But Washington thinks this one is damned important. Today, it's up to us to start hammering away at the northern Kola defenses. Tomorrow morning, it'll be the Marines' turn."

  That got their attention, Chris thought. There wasn't a sound in the compartment now, save the faint, faraway boom of a catapult launch.

  "So, let's look at the mission profile," Tombstone continued. "You can expect heavy triple-A and SAM fire. The Hornets will be tasked with opening a corridor through for the Intruders, but we all know that they're going to miss a hell of a lot. The Russians will keep lots of their stuff in reserve, switched off so they can surprise us later. With luck, though, their local fighter defenses will have been whittled down a bit by the actions of the past couple of days. Our satellite reconnaissance of their bases shows they're pretty weak in aircraft. But don't let yourselves get complacent. There're sure to be several regiments of Soviet Frontal Aviation still on tap, hidden somewhere in camouflaged casements, and you can expect them to throw everything they have against us.

  "We've got the first watch. By tomorrow morning, the Marines will be going ashore. They'll be covered by the Tomcat squadrons off the Nimitz, and by their own Harriers. You should be able to stand down then, or at least take a little breather." He hesitated, then gave a haggard grin. "At least, we can hope so."

  Chris had never seen the CAG looking this beat. Judging from the condition of his khaki uniform, he must have been up all night… and probably most of the previous few nights as well. Did the man have a breaking point?

  Tombstone continued with the briefing, laying out the specifics of VF-95's part in the mission. The first elements of the raid would start launching within the hour, and VAQ-143's Prowlers, armed with HARM and Tacit Rainbow antiradar missiles, would make their turn toward the Russian coast at 1715 hours, launching at stand-off distance to begin clearing the way for the squadrons to follow. Mixed flights of Tomcats, Hornets, and Intruders would fly through the radar-blind corridor, accompanied by Prowlers providing ECM cover and flying "close enough to the ground to sandblast your bellies," as Tombstone put it. Each flight would be vectored in by Hawkeyes orbiting offshore, which would also warn them of enemy aircraft in the vicinity.

  Combat. Lobo shook her head. She was going to be flying into combat.

  Oh, she'd had her fill of combat flying CAP over the carrier group during the past few days. They'd all had. Somehow, though, the thought of taking the fight to the enemy, attacking him over his own territory, was intensely exciting, exciting enough to banish her fatigue in a warm flush of adrenaline.

  Both of her kills so far had been at a range of ninety miles; hell, she hadn't even pushed the button. Vader McVey had done that, trackin the targets and launching the big Phoenix missiles when he had a lock. That engagement with the Fulcrum had been scary, but anticlimactic; the MiG had just tagged her with his radar when Slider and Blue Grass dropped in on the bad guy's six.

  There'd been a confused few moments of high-G maneuvers… and then the MiG was dead and she and McVey were in the clear. And the cruise missiles they'd downed could hardly shoot back.

  Chris loved the idea of danger, though she'd kept her feelings carefully hidden throughout her Navy career. Hot-dogs and thrill-seekers never made it far as aviators. But ― she could admit it now ― it was the danger that had led her to try bungee jumping and rock climbing back when she was a teenager, then flying, and skydiving after that. She'd joined the Navy when she heard the Navy was accepting female aviators. To learn how to fly jets…

  Now she was flying jets, F-14 Tomcats, and she loved it. But the thought of hitting the Russians inside their own territory left her feeling warm and weak, her heart hammering inside her chest.

  This was why she'd worked and trained and fought to become a Navy aviator!

  "Okay, people," Tombstone said, ending his briefing. "You know your jobs. Fly safe, stick close with your wingmen, and don't be heroes. We don't care about you, but your airplanes are extremely expensive pieces of equipment. Your plane captains will have your heads if you get them dinged up. So bring 'em back! And God fly with you all!

  "That is all."

  "Attention on deck!"

  He strode from the room, and Chris wondered why he looked so grim. This was what every naval aviator spent his or her whole life training for, this moment.

  She joined the others as they crowded up toward the front of the room, examining the Kola Peninsula map and asking questions of Coyote. Her aircraft, she saw, would be covering an Intruder strike against SAM batteries just west of Polyamyy.

  CHAPTER 21

  Monday, 16 March

  1610 hours (Zulu +2)

  Flight deck

  U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  "God damn it, Ski! What the hell do you mean, 'downgrudged'?"

  Lieutenant Commander Frank Marinaro was livid, and for one moment, Joyce Flynn thought the man was going to slam his flight helmet to the deck in anger and frustration.

  Tomboy Flynn, Nightmare Marinaro, and their plane captain, Chief Michael Cynowski, were standing at the port-side edge of the flight deck forward of the island. Several of VF-95's Tomcats were parked there, folded wings almost touching, their maintenance crews readying them for launch.

  "Sorry, Commander," Cynowski said. He had to shout to make himself heard above the scream of jet engines, the air-hammer racket of the buffers. He wore a plane captain's brown jersey, and a bulky Mickey helmet. "Your AWG-Nine's burned out. Looks like a coolant switch fault, most likely. We'll have to swap it out, and that's gonna take time."

  "How much time?"

  "What?"

  "I said how much fucking time!"

  "Sir, I just don't have the manpower right now!" Cynowski held up the clipboard in his hand. "My boys've been goin' round the clock here for longer'n I like to think. Hell, we've got their scheds juggled between-"

  "Damn it, Ski, I don't want to hear your sob story! How long before Two-oh-four is back on the line?"

  Cynowski's face hardened. "Not until we secure from flight quarters.

  Sir. Two days… and that's if the brass stays off our backs!"

  Nightmare was the coolest, steadiest aviator Tomboy knew, but at the moment he looked like he was going to lose that cool completely. She could understand his anger. Right now, there were no spare Tomcats aboard save for the CAG bird, and it would take time to bring Two-double-nuts to the ready.

  It looked like Nightmare and Tomboy were going to be staying put while the squadron launched without them.

  Nightmare looked like he was about to say something else, but at that moment an A-6 Intruder taxied past the line of Tomcats, rolling slowly toward the number one catapult. The roar of its engines was deafening, and the wash from its exhaust battered at Tomboy's face, slapping at her flight suit and forcing her to turn away. Nightmare quickly pulled his helmet on and waited until the A-6 reached the cat shuttle and the noise abated somewhat.

  Suddenly, he seemed to relax. "Okay, Chief. Forget it. C'mon, Tomboy."

  "Where we going, Nightmare?"

  "Ops. Maybe we can use Stoney's bird."

  Together, they turned and strode aft toward the island.

  1615 hours

  Intruder 504, Catapult One

  U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  Lieutenant Commander Bruce "Willis" Payne was uncomfortably aware of the woman seated next to him. In an A-6 Intruder, the pilot sits on the left, with the bombardier/navigator in the narrow seat to his right and slightly below and behind his position. According to All the World's Aircraft, the heart of the A-6 was the AN/ASQ-133 IBM computer which controlled the aircraft's Norden AN/APQ-154 multimode radar, but any Intruder driver with more than an hour of flight time logged would insist that the real heart was his B/N, squeezed in eyeball-to-eyeball with the radar scope projecting aft from the console. But damn!…

  Payne's B/N so far this cruise had been Lieutenant Thelma Kandinsky, "Sunshine" to her shipmates. She was pretty and pert and Payne loved imagining what she'd be like in bed, but he still couldn't accept her as expert enough to find her way through that maze of indicators and electronics in her face, no matter what Tombstone Magruder might think. The tail-chewing he'd received a couple of days before still burned… and rankled.

  "Damn it, Payne," Tombstone had bellowed into his face. "These women are our shipmates and they're here to stay! They can do the job as well as any man, maybe better, you read me, mister? They've already had to work ten times harder than any man aboard just to get where they are now, and if I hear you're giving any one of 'em a bad time I am personally going to have you keel-hauled… and on an aircraft carrier that's one hell of a damned serious threat!"

  Fuck. Women had their uses, but they didn't belong aboard ship or flying combat aircraft. Oh, sure, he'd heard all the technical shit about how they could take more Gs than men, how their endurance was higher, how they could handle multiple tasks better than men could. Willis didn't believe that bullshit for a minute. The fact of it was the Washington REMFs were out to screw the little people, again, all in the name of progress.

  Payne gave the array of flight instruments in front of him a final check.

  What the hell was Washington playing at anyway? It seemed fitting, somehow, that the venerable A-6 was on the way out, just as all this new crap was coming on-line.

  He loved the A-6. America's premier strike aircraft was coming up on forty years of service. Butt-ugly, blunt end up front, eel-skinny tail aft, with the permanently fixed refueling probe stuck on the nose like a rearing snake. The Navy had hoped to replace the Intruder with the ultra-stealthy A-12 Avenger in the 1990s, but the Secretary of Defense had scrapped the project when budget overruns had reached scandal proportions. Later, during the Clinton Administration, proponents of a streamlined military had actually suggested that, since the Air Force had bombers, there was no need for bomb-carrying aircraft in the Navy.

  And there was real shit-for-brains thinking. Strike aircraft ― the Intruder and the half-bomber, half-fighter Hornet ― were the sole reason for even having aircraft carriers in the first place. Jefferson's Intruders were her big guns; her Tomcats were nothing more than armed protection for the carrier group and for her strike planes. Do away with Navy bombers and there was no reason for carriers.

  So far, the Navy had managed to hold off the reconstructionists, at least to that extent. Until someone came up with a replacement for the A-12, though, Intruders and Hornets would be carrying the Navy's strike-mission load. Like the A-7 Corsair before it, though, already phased out save for reserve squadrons ashore, the A-6 had about reached the end of its operational life. Pretty soon, there'd be only the F/A-18s left to carry the war to the enemy's home ground, and Payne remained convinced that Hornets were neither fish nor fowl, half-breeds that did neither job well. How could they? Even with their twenty-first-century cockpits, one man was just kept too damned busy flying the aircraft to handle all the radar-intercept and bombing work as well with any kind of efficiency.

  Man, the Navy should've stuck with upgraded Intruders.

  And all-male combat crews.

  And screw the damned politicians.

  He'd heard scuttlebutt that Sunshine had been trying to get another partner, and that suited Willis just fine. He had to admit that, so far at least, Sunshine seemed to know her shit. But now they were about to launch into combat, and her life and his would be riding on how well she performed her duties as B/N. Hell, they wouldn't even be able to find the target if she couldn't untangle that gee-whiz video-game imagery on her screen into solid coordinates and vectors.

  Besides, she was a goody-two-shoes bitch. When he tried to be friendly, she acted like he was coming on to her. Once, he'd stepped aside to let her enter a compartment first and she'd given him a look to freeze a snowman's balls. And then there was the smoking incident. Willis had once been a heavy smoker. He'd been cutting back a lot lately, but he always carried an extra pack still in the cellophane tucked away in the shoulder pocket of his flight suit. The first time he'd offered Sunshine a smoke, though, just trying to be friendly, she'd looked up at him like he'd just crawled out from under a rock.

  "Filthy habit," she'd said. "Get those things out of my face."

  The pace accelerated as they completed their final pre-flights. He glanced over at her as she completed the last of her BIT checks, the built-in test batteries that verified the A-6's radar and computer systems were operational.

  Screw her. If she wouldn't even try to be friendly…

  "System's hot," she said. "Ready to roll."

  "Roger." A green light was showing from the island as a safety officer gave a last thumbs-up. Willis was all professional now as he looked out the cockpit to where the deck officer was standing ready, and gave a crisp salute.

 

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