“Yeah, but then the target doesn’t know he’s the target,” Brown said thoughtfully. “If I were the Turkish air defense command, I’d be freaking right about now, but good.”
“Suppose it’s not for practice?” Garner asked. “What could they be after down there?”
“We have some UNREP ships coming through the straits about now,” Brown said. He punched several keys, changing the scale of the radar map display until the Turkish coast in the vicinity of the northern mouth of the Bosporus was just visible. Though the storm of radar interference extended all the way to the mainland, it was thin enough in the south for him to see strong returns from several ships emerging from the straits. Most of those would be Turkish vessels, but one bore the ID tag of an American UNREP fuel tanker, the Falcon Patriot. “I suppose if they were mad at us for some reason, they might be after our UNREP.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Garner said.
“I know. What the hell are they after down there, anyway?”
“What the hell are they after down there, anyway?” Lieutenant Brian Crosby asked aloud, and Coyote was forced to agree. As nearly as they could tell through all of the snow and clutter, a number ― possibly a large number ― of unknown aircraft were bearing down on the entrance to the Bosporus Strait. The CBG was already beginning to pick up the frantic and uncoded radio cries of Turkish air control officers and pilots, who believed themselves to be under attack. No one had yet ventured a guess, however, as to what actually might be going on.
Coyote watched the confused tangle of blips on the main display in Ops and swore softly. What, he wondered, would Tombstone have done in this situation?
But Tombstone was ashore, with the transfer ceremony well under way, and Coyote as Deputy CAG bore the responsibility for deploying Jefferson’s air assets.
Lieutenant Brian Crosby was the Ops duty officer at the moment, and he was watching Coyote now, obviously more than happy to allow the acting CAG to make the tough calls.
“Okay,” he told Crosby. “Who’s in place who could go take a look?”
“Well, we’ve got BARCAP One here,” Crosby said, indicating an oval “racetrack” path marked on the screen south of Yalta. “That’s Two-oh-one and Two-oh-five, Batman and Libbie.”
“But they’re covering the ceremony and are in place to escort the helo back here.”
“Yes, sir. Then there’s BARCAP Three, over here to the east. They’re out of the running. It’d take half an hour for them to get down to where the action is. BARCAP Two is up here, to the west. They’re in a pretty decent position for an intercept, actually. Ten, maybe twelve minutes.”
“Who is it?”
He checked the duty board. Two-one-eight and Two-one-oh. Dixie and Badger.”
Dixie! Shit. Tombstone had recommended that Dixie be kept clear of anything but strictly routine patrolling for a few days, at least until he’d had time to settle down after the helicopter shoot-down incident. But sending him to get a positive ID…
On the other hand, it would take Batman longer to reach the bogeys and there was still the need to cover that helo flight.
No. It would have to be Dixie.
And maybe, just for a backup, he could redeploy Batman and Libbie to cover Dixie and Badger. BARCAP Three could be routed north to take BARCAP Two’s place off Yalta. He glanced at the Air Ops clock on the bulkhead. Yeah, that would work. The ceremony wasn’t due to end for another half hour or so. The Yalta party could stand to be uncovered for a few minutes, anyway, especially since all of the activity seemed to be way the hell and gone off to the southwest, near the mouth of the Bosporus.
Of course, the jamming and unknowns down there could be some sort of diversion, designed to get him to leave the Yalta ceremony unguarded, but he didn’t think that was the case. It didn’t feel like a diversion ― a judgment based on a number of years of combat experience ― and, even if he was wrong, even if Yalta was the real target, BARCAP Three would be close enough to station to employ their AIM54S in… what? Make it ten minutes.
“Okay,” Coyote said, deciding. “Here’s what we do. Tell BARCAP Two to hot tail it down there and give us a fly-by ID, pronto. Nothing fancy, just a probe, shake ‘em and see what rattles. If he can get close enough to eyeball ‘em, we’ll have some answers.”
“We’ll have some answers if they take a shot at him, too.”
“There is that. Tell Batman and Libbie to leave station and fly overmatch for Two. And have Three leave station and take over for One. Got it?”
“Got it, sir.” He shook his head. “Damn, it’s getting busy this morning.”
Coyote snorted. “What I’m worried about is how much busier it’s going to get. I want to know what those-“
He broke off in mid-sentence, eyes widening. “What is it, sir?” Crosby asked, looking at him.
“I just had,” Coyote said slowly, hoping desperately that he was wrong, “a horrible thought about what those bastards might be after!”
“BARCAP Two, BARCAP Two, this is Dog House,” the voice of Jefferson’s Air Ops watch officer said over Dixie Mason’s headset. “Come left to two-two-zero and punch it.”
“Two-one copies,” Dixie replied. He brought his stick over, watching the heading numbers on his HUD flicker to the right as he swung the Tomcat into a southwesterly heading. “Coming to two-two-zero and going to Zone Five.”
“Two-two copies” sounded over the Ops channel. Tomcat 2 1 0 was flying Dixie’s wing, with Lieutenants Cunningham and Burns in the cockpit. He shoved the throttle forward through the last of the detents, reveling in the familiar surge of power as the aircraft’s afterburners kicked in, rocketing him past the speed of sound in seconds.
“What do you think the hurry is, Dixie?” his RIO called over the ICS from the backseat.
“I expect they’ll tell us when they get around to it, Mick,” Dixie said.
“Anything on your scope?”
“Someone’s still jamming the hell out of it, off to the west, somewhere.
Maybe a Hawkeye could see through this shit, but I can’t.”
Dixie’s RIO for this flight was Lieutenant Commander Kevin Moss, handle “Mickey,” a young, sandy-haired guy who nevertheless passed for what the squadron thought of as “an old hand,” since he’d been flying with the Vipers for almost a year now. For the past several days, ever since the helicopter incident when Cat had told him flatly that she wouldn’t fly with him again, Dixie had been paired off with a succession of Rios from the duty pool. He was beginning to suspect that they drew lots every day, with the loser assigned to backseating with him. The only qualification seemed to be that the man assigned as his RIO had to be more experienced than he was. It was humiliating… and unfair, and Dixie had had just about enough.
At least CAG had allowed him to keep flying. If he’d been ordered to stay on the deck, he’d be approaching critical mass just about now.
“BARCAP Two, this is Dog House” sounded over his headset. “We’ve got bogeys about two hundred fifty miles southwest of your position, and we need a positive ID. Deputy CAG wants you to go check them out.”
“Roger, Dog House,” Mickey replied. “We’re on the way.”
Dixie felt the tiniest bite of worry. A positive ID?
With the Tomcat cruising comfortably at Mach 1.5, they would be close enough to the intruders to get a visual in about twelve minutes, and this time Dixie was going to make damned sure of his target recognition.
At least this time the target wasn’t likely to be U.S. Army helicopters.