Now at seventy miles, the bomber turned back to Coral Sea and headed right at it. Olive wondered what type of targeting information it was receiving. Stabilized, she eased underneath and crept up its left side while Dusty provided “cover.” The bomb bay doors were now closed as they approached the ship at nine miles per minute.
At 55 miles from Mother, the bomber rolled hard left and pulled, steadying on an easterly heading that would take them south of Puerto Rico. Olive reported the development just as a section of Blue Lancer FA-18Fs showed up to relieve the two thirsty Firebird jets. Olive set a course for the tanker as Dusty joined on her right wing. The Blackjack transited without incident along the southern coast of Puerto Rico, staying twenty miles off the coast, before it veered right and headed south to Venezuela, some 400 miles away.
The Blackjack landed in Caracas an hour later. It was soon joined by the other bomber that had transited down the Lesser Antilles chain.
As the ship secured from General Quarters, the confrontation was reported within minutes up the chain of command in Key West, Miami, Norfolk and Washington. While the world’s media attention was on the diplomatic crisis in Caracas, SOUTHCOM was trying to make sense of the Cuban and especially the Russian military behavior. Flying a Bear down the American seaboard at high altitude, with a wingtip just outside the 12-mile territorial limit, was a routine Russian tactic. However, a formation of modern and capable ship-killing Backfires just did not “pop up” out of the mid-Atlantic ocean from low altitude, considering the fact they required extensive in-flight refueling coordination. Neither was it normal for nuclear-capable Blackjacks to make aggressive movements and open bomb-bay doors minutes from an American carrier. Air Force fighters and early-warning assets were sent to Iceland, and military professionals everywhere concluded the diplomatic “crisis” in Venezuela was a manufactured sideshow.
While the National Security Council at the White House directed military movements and assessed courses of action, USS Coral Sea was at the end of the whip. And, at the very tip, the business end, were the Firebirds of VFA-16 led by Commander Jim Wilson.
Wilson watched the PLAT in the ready room as Olive and Dusty recovered from their eventful intercept. Around him, the other Firebird pilots were busy: preparing to stand alerts in the cockpits, waiting, dressed and ready, for their call, studying charts of Venezuela and Cuba. The word was out — things were heating up all right — and Wilson knew CAG would be calling the COs together soon to fill them in on the course of action Washington was devising for them.
Coral Sea transited south of Puerto Rico, and Wilson could feel the vibration of the deck plates as the carrier’s four giant screws, positioned almost 100 feet below him, propelled it through the water at thirty knots. Would they go into the Atlantic? Stay in the Caribbean? Who would they fight first? Cubans? Venezuelans? Wilson knew they had to be ready for any tasking with a few hours notice. And the fact Theodore Roosevelt was departing Norfolk to join them meant something could happen, soon.
And the Russians? Would they send more aircraft down the coast of North America and into the Caribbean, to see how high and how often the United States would jump? Wilson knew Coral Sea could now expect around-the-clock alerts. With live weapons. How far out would they have to intercept them? How would they intersperse themselves with “white” airline traffic? With tensions high in the region, would someone make a mistake? One of his young pilots? Would he?
Wilson’s mind drifted to thoughts of Mary and the kids. He realized he had not emailed Mary, or even thought of her, in days. Or the kids. Brittany was still playing with dolls, but Derrick’s sullenness and obsession with violent video games troubled him. Like father, like son. How Wilson wished he and Mary could raise them safely into adulthood, away from the poison of drugs and digital images offered to them on a daily basis, away from the pressures of hyper-sexualized music and dress that would have his daughter pining for heels and makeup before she turned ten. That would expect Derrick to have a “notch-in-his-belt” before he could drive. At least Weed and Mongo had done something about it. They had killed to keep drugs away from his kids. So what if it was a finger-in-the-dike effort. It was something, more than Wilson was doing for his family. He thought again about his children, wishing they could stay kids in a happy childhood as long as possible.
BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG…
Wilson jerked his head up and again sensed the others looking at him as the GQ alarm sounded over the 1MC. Now what?
“General Quarters, General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations! Up and forward on the starboard side! Down and aft on the port side!”
With the alarm blaring and the sounds of hundreds of sailors stamping forward and aft past the Firebird ready room to their stations, Wilson felt the ship heel to port. On the PLAT he noted the canopy close on a Super Hornet positioned on Cat 3. He could see flight deck personnel moving around it as if they planned to launch it on alert.
“This is the TAO. Now launch the alert fighters, initial vector zero-four-zero.”
Pilots came into the ready room — their battle station — and Wilson watched the duty officer mark them off as accounted for.
“Vampire inbound! Fifty miles!”
Holy shit! Wilson thought. A cruise missile coming at us? Fifty miles? It will be here in minutes, he thought. Coral Sea was defended by the missile-shooting cruiser and destroyers on the horizon and by the carrier’s own defensive missiles and close-in weapons system Gatling guns. Who is shooting at us — from Puerto Rico?
As the crew dogged down watertight doors and hatches, they all listened to the Tactical Action Officer call down the range. The first Rhino went into tension and launched, followed by another on Cat 4. Both jets whipped it over to the left as soon as they cleared the deck and pulled to the northeast 200 feet above the waves in full afterburner
Aboard Coral Sea, in the Combat Decision Centers of the strike group ships, and in the cockpits of the two Super Hornets, watchstanders moved switches to arm missiles that would fire when commanded. With trepidation, they watched as the range to the contact decreased. At first, the watch officers on the carrier had thought the contact was a cruise missile inbound, put the Aegis ships identified it as an aircraft. Those in the CDCs breathed a sigh of relief at the momentary reprieve, while thousands of sailors at the battle stations listened to the 1MC speakers and prayed this was all a bad dream.
The two Rhinos were ordered to identify the bogey and escort. While he set up for an expeditious rendezvous, the flight lead, a lieutenant, had his fellow lieutenant go straight at the bogey to identify it. The bogey was right on the deck and moving at a high rate of knots. The wingman bore down on the contact and surprised everyone when he identified it while thundering past at 500 knots.
“Alpha Whiskey, the bogey is identified as a business jet, heading two-two-zero approximately 300 knots at 200 feet! Looks like a Citation!”