A smile flashed across her face, quickly replaced by the more serious look of a professional naval aviator called on to make a decision. Too often in the intricate game of radar detection and classification the final call on whether a contact was hostile or not depended on the judgment of the officer on the scene.
Tombstone had good reason to trust Tomboy’s judgment. During her first cruise, she’d been his RIO on countless occasions when he was CAG of Air Wing 14. Despite her markedly female appearance on the ground, Tomboy was a hard-line, top-notch RIO in the air. “My gut says it was a missile, Admiral,” she said in a clipped, incisive voice. “My radar painted something that looked like skin. It looked solid, and it looked like the same contact on both sweeps. I’d call it an actual contact, not a ghost. And there’s supporting information for that as well.”
“A Chinese outpost getting blown out of the water a few minutes later is pretty solid correlation,” the Admiral agreed. “What worries me is the lack of detection on a launching platform.”
“Do the Chinese have anything like our Stealth program, Admiral?” Gator asked. “That could be one possibility. An aircraft that we didn’t detect launched a missile.”
“Several of the intelligence officers have suggested that possibility,” Tombstone acknowledged. “There are a couple of problems with that explanation, though.
“First, if the missile had been air-launched, it would probably have been from a reasonable altitude. We’d have had a better detection on the missile, if not the aircraft. We know it’s not a stealth missile because you two did get a couple of hits on it. From the sounds of the contact, the reason for the intermittent detection was low altitude, not stealth technology.
“Second, a non-stealth missile on a stealth aircraft would destroy the low radar profile of the aircraft. Third, if it were air-launched, we’d probably have seen a seeker head of some sort,” he said, referring to the normal terminal guidance method of most air-launched missiles. “And finally, there’s no evidence that China has made much progress on a stealth program. They’re still buying fighter aircraft from the Russians, and Russia’s not about to sell their nearest regional threat their latest in advanced technology.”
“So it had to be launched from something else,” Bird Dog said thoughtfully. “A submarine, maybe. Or it could be a Chinese version of our Tomahawk missile.”
“Those are also possibilities, but they require us to make some assumptions about their technology. According to our intell, the Chinese don’t have a long-range land-launch strike missile, nor do their subs carry one. Remember, the Chinese navy is still strictly a brown-water force, not a blue-water like ours.”
Tomboy shrugged. “Well, whatever it is that they don’t have, it sure made a hell of an explosion out there.”
Tombstone questioned the four aviators for a few more minutes. Finally, convinced that they knew nothing else about the incident, he dismissed them. His eyes followed Tomboy as the aviators left the debriefing room. The baggy flight suit was pulled taut across her upper back and fell into loose folds around her hips, concealing her figure. From what he remembered of their last liberty together, that was a damned shame. A trickle of pure lust ran through his body, making him uncomfortable because of the sheer incongruity of feeling it while looking at a RIO in a flight suit. Still, despite her call sign, Tomboy was nothing if not completely female.
“That pilot — he sounds just like Batman did at that age,” Tombstone said reflectively.
CAG chuckled. “I see it, too. How’d you ever get him to quit playing hotshot with those Soviet Bears?”
“I didn’t — not really. He’d still be at it if he were out here.”
Batman, known more formally as Captain Edward Everett Wayne, was a Top Gun-trained F-14 pilot. He’d joined the VF-95 Vipers as a lieutenant nugget when then-Lieutenant Commander Tombstone Magruder was on his second — or was it third? — cruise. He’d been hardheaded and impulsive, and had almost gotten himself in serious trouble hot-dogging with a Soviet Bear reconnaissance aircraft. Later, once it hit home with him that he was killing men along with aircraft in the sky, he’d started to doubt his ability in combat. Tombstone had served as his sounding board.
In subsequent cruises, Batman and Tombstone had seen combat in Norway and Pakistan. The hotheaded young pilot had grown into one of the most superbly proficient aviators Tombstone knew.
Now Batman was flying something new, a platform that was forcing him to grow in new and not entirely pleasant ways: a desk in the Pentagon. Tombstone had read recently that Batman was heading up the development on JAST, the Joint Aviation Strike Technology program.
“What about these explosions? Washington’s not going to be happy if we don’t have some response planned,” Tombstone said to Captain Cervantes, his CAG.
The title of CAG was a holdover from the days when a Carrier Airwing was called a Carrier Air Group, and was commanded by a Commander. These days, CAG was a full Navy Captain and the position carried considerably more power — as well as seniority — than the Air Group commander had. But the old handle was so firmly embedded in carrier aviation culture that Tombstone doubted it would ever disappear. Besides, CAG was a hell of a lot better acronym than CAW.
His current CAG, Captain Peter Cervantes, was an F-14 driver like Tombstone. They’d known of each other for years, although they had always seemed to be assigned to different coasts and had never worked together. CAG’s reputation within the tight-knit fighter community was golden, though.
“Until we know what that strike was, I’d consider us in harm’s way out here. And if they have a little cruise missile surprise to worry the surface ships, it makes me wonder what they’ve got cooked up for us that we don’t know about,” CAG said.
“My thoughts exactly. Stingers I’m not that worried about. But what if there’s something else?”
“We can start by shifting more of the surveillance patrols to the F-18 squadrons, and keeping an E-2C up around the clock. Let’s use what we’ve got.”
“Tomcats aren’t going to like that,” Tombstone said thoughtfully.
“They’ll have to live with it. In this particular scenario, the Hornet’s the best bet. I hate admitting it as much as you do. An AWACS would be even better,” CAG replied.
AWACS, short for Airborne Warning and Control System, was military slang for the E-3 Sentry surveillance aircraft. A modified Boeing 707, it carried extensive mission avionics packages for long-range targeting information and identification. The 11,800-pound rotodome measured thirty feet in diameter, and was mounted on two struts on top of the aircraft. Its AN/APY-2 slotted, phased-array antenna and APX103 IFF interrogator provided excellent coverage of large areas of ocean. But it had two fatal drawbacks, as far as Tombstone was concerned — it was owned by the Air Force, and it couldn’t be deployed from an aircraft carrier.
“The odds of us getting one aren’t great. Too few friendly land bases nearby. Plus, we’d have to coordinate fighter protection for it,” Tombstone said.
“I know, and I’m not counting on it. Let me tinker with the flight schedule for a few hours, then run some ideas by you. We’ve got enough power to take care of ourselves.”
“Okay, CAG. Keep me posted.” Tombstone resisted the impulse to quiz CAG on his plans. When Tombstone had been CAG, his admiral had given him considerable free rein in running his airwing, even to the point of moving his flag to a cruiser and leaving CAG Magruder as the senior officer present on the carrier. It was one of the eternal challenges of getting promoted — learning to keep one’s hands off one’s former jobs.
“Roger that, Admiral. I’ll get back to you ASAP.” CAG pulled his 230 pounds up out of the hardback CVIC chair. “Hitting the flight deck today for a run, Admiral? We’re going to have four open hours later today.”