He glanced around, then gave her a quick kiss.
Not quick enough. He felt another pilot in flight gear shuffle past him, heading for the escalator. He glanced up at the moving stairway to the flight deck. B. J. Johnson was glowering back down at them.
“Contact, Captain.”
Manilov was instantly alert. He looked over at the sonar operator, Borodin, a bespectacled young warrant. “Range and bearing?”
“Thirty-five kilometers, bearing zero-six-four. Speed fifteen knots. Frigate-size.”
Manilov nodded. A frigate was an escort ship. It was the advance vessel of the main battle group.
Manilov felt his pulse rate accelerate. At least two, perhaps three hours remained before the battle group reached the scheduled point of intended movement. He could smell a change in the atmosphere inside the Mourmetz. Ilychin, his executive officer, was sweating profusely, his shirt stained beneath each sleeve. Borodin was hunched over his control station, breathing like a man who had just run several kilometers.
Everyone in the crew knew that they were in dangerous waters. They all trusted the Mourmetz’s captain to keep them safe, to correctly assess the risks and make the right commands. To succeed in his mission, Manilov knew he must keep their trust. He must not let them know the entire truth — that he was not afraid to die. He was a man in the grip of destiny.
No one in his crew, including Manilov, had ever seen combat. Not in decades had a Russian naval vessel fired a shot in anger.
Today all that would change.
The first to launch were the Prowlers — EA-6B electronic warfare jets that would detect and jam any enemy radar. Then the KS-3 Viking tankers that would rendezvous with the Air Force KC-10s, top off their own fuel loads, then take their stations to refuel the strike group.
The HARM shooters — Super Hornets carrying high-speed anti-radiation missiles — went next. If an enemy air defense radar was foolish enough to target the inbound strike aircraft, the HARMs would lock like homing pigeons onto the emitted radar signal. Behind them went the F-14 Tomcats, climbing directly to the tankers, then heading north to their CAP stations.
Last to launch was the strike package — sixteen Super Hornets in all — led by Brick Maxwell. In rapid succession the jets sizzled down the Reagan’s four catapult tracks. Half the Hornets were loaded with thousand- and two-thousand-pound GBU-16 and GBU-24 laser-guided bombs. The other eight F/A-18s carried Mark 20 Rockeye cluster bombs, designed to decimate vehicle and ammo depots.
In addition to its bomb load, each strike fighter bristled with air-to-air missiles — an AIM-9 heat-seeking Sidewinder on each wingtip rail, and AIM-7 and AIM-120 radar-guided missiles on the wing and fuselage stations. Each carried a full magazine of twenty-millimeter ammunition for the nose-mounted Vulcan cannon.
Already on station was the Air Force E-3C Sentry AWACS ship, high in its orbit over the Arabian Sea. Though the strike into Yemen was to be a Navy show, the ACE — Airborne Command Element — aboard the AWACS would be coordinating the operation. The ACE not only maintained a datalink with the strike fighters and the Reagan’s Combat Information Center, he had a direct line to the three-star Air Force general in Riyadh who had overall responsibility for U.S. Forces in the Middle East.
CAG Boyce settled into his padded chair in CIC. The Combat Information Center was the battle nerve center of the ship, located in the command spaces in the forward part of the ship. The room was dark as a cavern, eerily illuminated by the spectral glow of the monitors and the large situational displays on the bulkhead. Sitting at their terminals, controllers and special warfare officers wearing headsets and boom mikes peered into their screens.
As he always did when he came down to CIC, Boyce was wearing his battered old leather flight jacket with the squadron patches dating back to his nugget days. Not only was the jacket a talisman — he had worn it during every combat event of his career — it was his defense against the numbing cold. The electronics geeks insisted on keeping the place frigid as an icebox to keep their precious equipment from overheating.
Boyce let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He peered over his shoulder, toward the elevated platform behind the consoles where a row of chairs lined the bulkhead. Through the red-lighted gloom he saw several observers in their padded chairs, looking down at the control room.
Claire Phillips waved to him. She had followed his advice and was wearing a parka. Claire’s press clearance, strictly speaking, would not get her through the door of CIC during a combat operation. Even her current patron, Whitney Babcock, had stopped short of authorizing her to observe the show.
So Boyce had gone to the source of almost all authority aboard the Reagan — the captain. He and Stickney had been contemporaries — and rivals — for twenty-five years. Though Stickney had an attack and fighter background, A-7s and F/A-18s, his career path had taken him to surface deep draft, culminating in command of the world’s mightiest warship, the Reagan.
“Look at it this way, Sticks,” Boyce said. “If the strike goes okay, she’s gonna make us all look good. If, God forbid, it turns into a goat rope, the woman will be objective and not write a lot of military-bashing bullshit like those guys from the networks.”
As Boyce expected, Stickney warmed up to the idea of getting fair treatment from the media. “Your call, Red. If you don’t mind a news snoop peering over your shoulder, fine. I’ve got important stuff to worry about.”
He put on the Telex headset and scanned the situational display on the bulkhead. The entire strike force was airborne now. Only one jet — a Tomcat from VF-32 — had been a no-go. The pilot reported a hydraulic fault while he was still taxiing on deck. Boyce ordered the hot spare launched, and five minutes later the replacement F-14 was thundering down the number one catapult.
From the pocket of his flight jacket he produced a fresh Cohiba. Wetting the end of the cigar, he clamped it between his teeth, then peered again at the situational display. The data-linked symbols of the strike elements were merging off the coast of Yemen like flocks of geese.
So far, so good.
He called the strike leader. “Gipper Zero-one, Alpha Whiskey.”
“Go, Alpha Whiskey,” answered Maxwell.
“Geronimo is in place,” said Boyce. It was the signal that the Tomcats of the CAP element and the HARM shooters were on station. “You’re cleared feet dry.”
“Gipper Zero-one copies. Cleared feet dry.”
Showtime. The strike force was cleared into Yemen.
A milk run, Boyce thought to himself. No enemy air opposition. No SAMs lighting up. Not even any radar-tracking AA positions locking onto the inbound strikers. The only radar emissions were coming from the air traffic control facilities at the airports in Aden and San‘a.
This strike was a walk in the park.
He saw light pouring through the open door of CIC. Whitney Babcock strolled into the room, trailed closely by Admiral Fletcher and Spook Morse. Boyce noticed that Babcock was wearing a leather flight jacket just like his. It even had an assortment of ship and squadron patches sewn onto it. Babcock was chatting with Fletcher, giving him a lecture on geopolitics.
In that instant, it came to him. Boyce knew why he had elected to be in CIC and not out there in the cockpit. These two — a pseudowarrior and a policy wonk who had never fought in a real war — had no concept of what strike fighter pilots did. He didn’t trust either of them.
Rittmann ran his hand over the leading edge of the sweptback wing. In the stark, artificial light of the underground revetment, the MiG-29 looked like a prehistoric creature. With its long beaklike nose, its sharply swept wings, it seemed poised to kill.