“Asshole’s got it in for me,” Bird Dog muttered. “I was good for at least the four-wire, if not the three. No way I was high — no way!”
“Okay, Okay,” Gator said soothingly. “These guys are just human. They make mistakes like the rest of us.”
Gator’s well-intentioned words irritated him even more. Until this afternoon, when something had streaked undetected below him to smash the rock into gritty mud, Bird Dog hadn’t really believed he was just human. He was a Tomcat pilot, for Chrissake! Invulnerable in the air, entitled by birthright to be arrogant on the ground. Immune to the dangers of wrestling his aircraft back onto the pitching deck of the carrier, and perpetually blessed by the gods of the air.
Until now. On final approach, he’d suddenly realized how small the deck of the carrier looked, and how fast it was coming at him. His skin had prickled as it’d occurred to him what the rough nonskid on the deck could do to the skin of his aircraft, and he’d felt the tiniest quiver of — of what? Nervousness? God, could he be afraid?
Bird Dog swallowed hard and forced himself to concentrate on his instruments. He rejoined the Marshall stack, the aircraft circling on the port side of the carrier waiting for their turn to land.
Nothing was different, nothing, he insisted to himself. This was just another landing on the carrier, something he’d done at least two hundred times before.
“Piece of cake, Bird Dog,” Gator said when they finally broke out of Marshall and started their final approach. Bird Dog felt sweat bead on his forehead as he listened to the LSO and his RIO. The pitching deck rushed up at him, and he ignored the flash of unfamiliar emotion that threatened to distract him.
“Three-wire!” Gator crowed as the F-14 slammed onto the deck. “Good trap, buddy!”
Bird Dog felt the tension seep out of his body as he lifted the tailhook and released the thick steel cable. He taxied slowly toward the yellow-shirted flight deck supervisor, wondering what the hell had gotten into him up there, acting like he’d never trapped on the carrier before.
Well, whatever it was, it was gone now. And the bitch of it was, he still had to pee.
CHAPTER 2
Commander Hillman Busby glanced around the CVIC briefing room, mentally taking muster. All his key players were there. The junior officers and the chief petty officers had snagged the few chairs still left out from the morning brief. The rest of the enlisted men and women packed into the room leaned against walls or perched on plotting tables.
“Okay, people. Time to do some magic. We need some answers — or at least some informed intelligence estimates,” Busby said.
The Carrier Intelligence Center, or CVIC as it was commonly known, was the information fusion center for Carrier Battle Group 14. Pronounced “civic,” it was home to the battle group intelligence officers, enlisted Data Systems Specialists (DS) and Intelligence Specialists (IS) ratings that kept track of the world. CVIC tapped into the most advanced message and information processing computers in the U.S. Navy’s vast array, and was capable of monitoring circuits so highly classified that even admitting they existed was a federal felony. For all its resources, CVIC couldn’t create probabilities, estimates, or analysis without data. It was completely dependent on information fed to it by other sources: national assets, satellites, debriefing reports from the CIA, and tactical sensors such as the SLQ-32(V4) ESM sensors installed on the ships in the battle group.
The dependence on outside information was at the heart of Commander Busby’s dilemma. Admiral Magruder wanted intelligence’s best estimate of the cause of the explosion earlier that morning, and there was simply no data. Even with all his electronic wizardry, Busby knew no more now than he had when he was standing his watch in supp plot.
At thirty-five, Busby had been in the Navy long enough to know that admirals were not the most patient bosses. While Admiral Magruder had a good reputation for fairness, it wasn’t likely that he was going to appreciate what Busby had to tell him.
Which was absolutely nothing.
Busby sighed and ran his hands over his head. His hair was trimmed Marine-close to his head, his skull clearly visible through the pale blond fringe. For a moment, he considered shaving his head completely. Blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin detracted from his personal idea of how an intelligence officer should look as a steely-eyed professional in daily contact with secret spies and highly classified information. And his nickname, given to him at his first squadron as an ensign and boot air intelligence officer, didn’t help either.
Who wanted to get a prelaunch briefing from an officer nicknamed “Lab Rat”?
Well, after he talked to Admiral Magruder, he might not have to worry about his haircut. The Admiral was likely to rip off his head, along with several other sensitive body parts. He sighed again and stared at the yellow legal pad. The information he could give the Admiral was remarkable only in its lack of usefulness.
Item: The Chinese, along with five other nations, claimed ownership of the Spratly Islands. The Spratly Islands were barely worthy of the title “island,” since most of them were almost completely submerged, bare tips of rocks poking mere feet above the surface of the South China Sea.
Item: The ocean bed surrounding the Spratly Islands was one of the richest remaining oil fields in the world.
Item: Yesterday, one of the islands disappeared, along with the tank that had been perched precariously on it. Tomcat 205 and other battle group sensors had detected a massive explosion in the area.
Item: All of the Chinese submarines were accounted for, at least according to the satellites.
Item: The Chinese, although world-famous for the dangerous Silkworm sea-skimmer, were not known to possess a long-range cruise missile similar to the U.S. Tomahawk.
Busby studied the list for a moment and then doodled a question mark next to the last two items. He was long on questions, short on answers. For an intelligence officer, it was damned irritating.
“So Tombstone’s on the front line again,” Vice Admiral Thomas Magruder said. As Commander Seventh Fleet, he had operational command of every Navy asset west of the international date line. Right now, that included his nephew’s battle group. “I should have known getting promoted to Rear Admiral wouldn’t change his luck. When did this happen?”
“Thirty minutes ago, sir. The battle group sent the on-scene Tomcat back to take a look at the area, and then launched some S-3B’s to get a closer look. The helos followed them in after the Tomcats tanked,” the watch officer replied.
“And you mean to tell me that we don’t know what caused it? With a full battle group in the area, as well as satellite coverage? What about nuclear data? Any indication that it was something besides a conventional war shot?” the admiral asked.
“KH-11 was down, sir, but other sensors indicate that there was no nuclear involvement. It seemed like a good time for routine maintenance, according to the SpaceCom watch officer I spoke with. With a battle group in the area, and no hostilities imminent …” the watch officer let his voice trail off.
Space Command in Colorado controlled all “national assets,” the highly classified network of satellites, sensors, and other sources of information that were deemed too important to national security to be under the jurisdiction of any single service. While they were generally responsive to requests for information and observation scheduling, it was not unusual for them to take satellites down for maintenance without warning. Absent a request for special coverage, the electronic security whizzes in the secret “black” programs there felt it was better to avoid the risk of letting anyone know when the satellites weren’t looking. That had been decided in coordination with the Air Force in a series of budget battles.