He glanced left. The Georgian coast was just visible to the eye, a gray-and-purple smear on the horizon beneath the rising sun. It would be so nice if someone would explain, just once and in terms that people other than State Department policy wonks could understand, what America’s strategic interests in this part of the world could possibly be. Thanksgiving was just three weeks away, but it looked as though Jefferson’s crew was going to spend the holiday season away from homes and families. And for what? To enforce the UN’s no-fly zones in the Black Sea? It was hard to think of that as vital to the national interest.
He wondered if the incident with the Russian sub might change things.
Scuttlebutt aboard the Jefferson had it that the Russians fished from the sea last night might be returned home soon… and that the agreement being worked out with Russian officials might even lead to a down-scaling of the hostilities in this region. One rumor floating about VF-95’s ready room had it that the Russians were about to surrender the whole damned Crimea to the UN.
If that happened, maybe they wouldn’t need a carrier out here anymore.
The no-fly zones could be enforced by Air Force planes operating out of Sevastopol.
Not, Batman reminded himself, that things ever worked out that smoothly.
“Contact, Batman,” Malibu said from the backseat. “We’ve got a bogey in the NFZ, probable helicopter. Watch Dog is vectoring us in.”
“Roger that.” He opened the tactical frequency with Mason. “Bird Dog Two, this is Bird Dog One. Did you copy that contact? Over.”
“Ah, roger,” Cat Garrity’s voice came back over the radio. “We copy.”
“And it’s about time,” Dixie’s voice added. “I was starting to doze off up here.”
“Well, it’s time for reveille, people,” Batman said. “On my mark, come to zero-eight-five, and ready… break!”
He brought his stick over to the left and gave the Tomcat some rudder, dropping his left wing as he slid into a hard, tight turn. Dixie and Cat followed, the two Tomcats turning into the sun in air-show perfection.
“Update coming through from Watch Dog,” Malibu said.
“Okay. Patching in.”
“Bird Dog Flight, this is Watch Dog,” the voice of the Hawkeye’s air controller said. “Listen, we have two contacts now. We’ve IDED one as UN Flight Two-seven, out of Poti. He’s being followed by a bogey, designated contact Sierra One. Negative IFF on the bogey. Repeat, bogey is not transmitting IFF.”
“Roger that, Watch Dog,” Batman said.
IFF ― Identification Friend or Foe ― was the means by which ships and aircraft could recognize one another across distances or in conditions where visual identification could be a problem. Back in the old glory days, when air-to-air combat was a matter of getting close enough to the other guy to use your machine guns on him, target identification was a matter of recognizing a silhouette. Nowadays, though, when a Tomcat could down a target at 120 miles with an air-to-air Phoenix launch, something better than Mark One eyeballs was necessary. IFF had been part of the electronic arsenal of warfare for years and was similar in most respects to the equipment used in civil aviation to identify aircraft on air traffic control radars. When an aircraft was touched by friendly radar, a transponder aboard automatically replied with a string of coded pulses. Those pulses were picked up by the radar receiver and matched by computer to a list of known codes; friendlies could instantly be identified simply by painting them on radar. The transponder codes, of course, were carefully kept secret, as were the interrogation frequencies and any other data that might be of use to an enemy in combat. Codes were changed frequently; the distribution of those codes among all of the participants in a given mission was an important part of ops planning.
If the UN flight was transmitting its IFF and Sierra One wasn’t, it was a good bet that Sierra One was a bad guy on the UN chopper’s tail.
Still, in wartime nothing can be taken for granted. It would be nice if they could get a positive visual ID on Sierra One as well. It was always a good idea to know just who or what you were shooting at, especially in a situation like this one, with tangled politics and the inherent, bureaucratic confusion of a joint-service, international operation like this one.
Ahead, the purple-gray smear of the horizon was rapidly taking form and substance. Mountains, gleaming white in the morning sunlight, rose from the azure waters of the Black Sea.
“Mal? Better check in with Dog House. Let ‘em know what we’re at.”
“I’M on it.” Dog House was the op’s code name for the Jefferson.
A thought occurred to Batman. He opened the channel to the orbiting Hawkeye. “Watch Dog, this is Bird Dog Leader,” he called. “Is Sierra One trying for an intercept on UN Two-seven?”
“Ah, that’s hard to say, Bird Dog,” the Hawkeye air controller replied.
“He’s definitely trailing Two-seven and seems to be closing. Looks like he’s about two miles behind right now. It doesn’t look like a typical intercept, though. He may just be shadowing the blue-hats. Over.”
“Roger that. We’re going to try to set up an eyeball, over.”
“We copy that. We’ll talk you in.”
“Thank you, Watch Dog. Bird Dog Two, this is One.”
“Bird Dog Two,” Dixie replied. “Go ahead, Batman.”
“Two, I want a visual confirmation on this one. We’ll go in with an extended formation. You’re the eyeball. We’re the shooter.”
“Aw, shit, Batman. You’re saving all the fun for yourself!”
Like hell I am. “You want to discuss this, son?” He put a growl behind the words.
“Uh, negative,” Dixie said. “We’ll spot for you.”
The deployment was a common one in fighter combat, especially in situations where welded wings ― wingmen sticking close together ― weren’t necessary. One aircraft, the “eyeball,” was sent several miles ahead of the second plane, or “shooter.” The eyeball could use his position to get a positive ID and could also illuminate a target with his radar for the shooter’s radio-homing Sparrows or AMRAAMS. Batman wasn’t hogging the fun, as Dixie had suggested. The fact of the matter was that he didn’t quite trust Dixie yet as shooter; if the kid launched early because he got excited or because he’d misheard a sighting report, a friendly aircraft might be downed. On the other hand, Batman trusted Cat to back up any sighting report that Dixie might call in.
Dixie’s Tomcat accelerated, afterburners glowing briefly as he arrowed ahead and down, dropping toward the deck.
Batman checked his time display. Zero-eight-twenty. Actually, it was zero-nine-twenty now, since they’d crossed a time zone on their way to their patrol station, from GMT plus three to GMT plus four. Air ops were always conducted in the local time zone of the carrier, however. Combat was confusing enough without bringing conflicting time zones into it.
“Anything on the scope yet, Mal?” he asked his RIO.
“Negative, Batman. We’re getting the track feed from Watch Dog, but the bogey’s not on our scope yet. It’s pretty rugged up ahead.”