“You got that right.” The mountains were growing larger and sharper second by second. The Caucasus Mountains followed the Black Sea’s eastern shoreline from the Sea of Azov southeast to Gagra, then angled toward the east as the coast bent away toward the south, so the range appeared nearer and higher to the left. The highest of those peaks brushed fifteen thousand feet, a rugged stone wall separating Georgia from its war-torn neighbor to the north.
“Let’s come right a bit, Batman,” his RIO said. “Bring her to zero-eight-eight.”
“Rog.”
“Bird Dog Two, feet dry,” Cat’s voice called over the radio.
Two-one-eight had just crossed the beach and was over land now.
Seconds later, Batman’s Tomcat was across the coastline as well, hurtling inland at just below the speed of sound. “And Bird Dog One going feet dry,” Malibu reported.
They were now over what amounted to Indian territory.
“Commander? There’s been a new development on the Bird Dog patrol, sir.”
Commander Grant joined Lieutenant Chadwick in front of the large screen that displayed tactical data relayed from the Hawkeye. Chadwick had just taken over the watch as Ops duty officer. Though he was the senior officer present, Grant wasn’t standing watch. He was in OPS this morning as an observer, part of a crash course in how to carry out his new assignment as Deputy CAG. Observer or not, however, he’d be drawn into any situation that might develop this morning, at least until Magruder arrived and took over.
Coyote Grant had commanded a Tomcat squadron for nearly two years, now, and he’d been an aviator for a lot longer than that. Making split-second decisions and taking the responsibility for them was part and parcel of being an aviator, something you learned to deal with if you wanted to keep flying. But there was something intimidating about Air ops, about its myriad display monitors and banks of consoles and Computers, about the technicians hunched over their screens and speaking in low tones, about the crackle of static and the radio calls coming over the speaker system. This was the heart of the whole operation, and he never felt the pressures of command as keenly as when he was in this place. Sometimes, when he was standing watch here, Coyote had to tell himself that the whole compartment was nothing more than a high-tech video arcade. The technicians, most of them, were kids; the average age of the enlisted men aboard was something under twenty years. It was easy to imagine them all as bright-eyed video game fanatics feeding quarters into their machines.
But it wasn’t a game. This time it wasn’t even a simulation.
“What is it, Lieutenant?” he asked Chadwick, his eyes scanning the monitor. A rough map ― drawn all in straight lines and sharp angles ― showed the coast of the Black Sea. Dozens of coded lights marked radar contacts, known and unknown, scattered up and down the coast.
“Watch Dog picked up an unknown aircraft, probably a low-flying helo,” Chadwick said crisply. He jabbed a stubby finger at the display monitor. “Here… a few miles northwest of Poti. Bird Dog is deploying for intercept and requesting instructions.”
Grant leaned forward to study the screen. Bird Dog Two was well ahead of Bird Dog One now, arrowing across the coast toward the interior. Inland, one of the IDED blips showed a UN designation. “Flight Two-seven?”
“Right there,” the lieutenant said, pointing again. “He’s showing IFF.
The word from the Marine liaison ashore is that it could have an Army gunship flying escort.”
“Could have? Does it or doesn’t it?”
“They’re not sure. In any case, we only have the one friendly on the screen. If there are two helos there, they’re so close together we’re only getting one return from them.”
Coyote nodded. It was a common phenomenon; often one radar blip would resolve into two or more, once you closed with the target a bit. And in rough terrain like that…
“It’s this guy a couple-three miles to the southwest we’re worried about,” Chadwick continued. “He’s not showing IFF. Watch Dog thinks he could be a local, maybe a helo flying low to avoid the radar. If so…”
“If so, it’s a violation,” Grant said. “What are their orders?”
“To check ‘em out and enforce the edict. If that bogey’s a bandit, we take ‘em down.”
In the language of naval aviation, a bogey was an unidentified target, while a bandit had been positively identified as hostile. And according to UN resolution 1026, aircraft violating the Georgian no-fly zone were to be considered hostiles.
“Where’s CAG, anyway?” Coyote wanted to know.
“Getting ready for a meeting with Top Hat, last I heard, sir. You want me to get him down here?”
Coyote shook his head. “You’ve got the deck, Chad. And you’ve got your orders.”
“Yeah, I know.” Chadwick licked his lips. “You know, Commander, it gets damned scary down here sometimes.”
“I know what you mean, Lieutenant. I know exactly what you mean.”
“Hot damn!” Mason said with boyish enthusiasm. “Just like Star Wars!”
Lieutenant Kathleen Garrity, call sign “Cat,” smiled behind her oxygen mask with mingled condescension and amusement. Technically, the man up front outranked her. Tom Mason had made lieutenant six months back, while she’d received her promotion from j.g. to full lieutenant only three months ago, while Jefferson had been undergoing her all-too-brief refit at Norfolk. Still, Dixie was a nugget, a new arrival to the air wing who’d transferred in from a reserve air group Stateside. Cat, on the other hand, was a combat veteran who’d seen action in the Kola Peninsula.
She recognized Mason’s eagerness, though. Nine months back, she’d felt the same way.
Cat had battled to get where she was now. She’d battled harassment, battled prejudice, battled the sneers and jibes of fellow aviators to get what she wanted ― an assignment as a naval flight officer, as an RIO in the backseat of an F-14 Tomcat, instead of a routine billet as just another tech specialist in some rear-echelon base. She’d battled, she’d gambled… and she’d won.
And now she was the old hand, the vet, listening with wry amusement to the excited edge in her partner’s voice.
She and Dixie had a lot in common, she decided. A decade back, naval aviation had largely been a private club reserved for white males with the right connections. A few black and Asian and Hispanic officers made it into carrier air, but not many, and damned few as NFOS. Those minority Naval Flight Officers who did make the grade more often than not ended up flying CODS or other support aircraft. Things had finally started to open up, though, and if she and the other women on the Jefferson were a success story, then so was Tom “Dixie” Mason.
Because Dixie was a black ― no, an “African-American,” she wryly corrected herself ― his battle had been at least as rough as hers, in a Navy that still sometimes had the air of an exclusive, all-white country club at the highest levels of the command hierarchy. There’d been black admirals and female admirals for some years now, but much of the Navy was still run by the old boys’ network, a network that could be damned vicious sometimes when it came to an aviator’s sex or color… or even the fact that a man’s name ended with a vowel.
Mason had graduated near the top of his class at Annapolis and again at flight school in Pensacola. For the past four years, though, he’d been struggling against the odds to win acceptance as an aviator. Shunted into a RAG for most of his career, he’d finally managed to land carrier duty… which any flier in the squadron would insist was the one assignment that separated aviators from mere pilots.