Just then, a voice called from TFCC. “Admiral Wayne? I think you might want to see this.”
The two admirals exchanged glances, then stood as one and walked into the TFCC. A new symbol had just popped into being on the large-screen display, something that had been happening all too often in the last three hours. With one big differencethis one bore the symbology of a friendly unit.
“Who the hell-” Batman started to say. He fell silent as the name of the ship flashed up beside the symbology: La Salle.
“Jefferson, this is La Salle,” a voice said over tactical.
Batman reached for the handset, paused, and then handed it to Tombstone. “Your ship, AdmiralI’ll let you sort this out.” Batman’s voice was grim. “I’ve got an air battle to win.”
He turned his back on Tombstone, and his attention back to the large-screen display.
“Captain?” Tombstone said, his voice sliding up the scale in incredulity. “What are you doing out here? I thought-“
“Pardon me for interrupting, Admiral, but you did give me a free hand,” said a familiar voice. It was the captain of La Salle, the man to whom Tombstone had given complete discretion in getting the ship back into the ball game. “You wanted your ship backwell, here she is.”
Tombstone glanced at the telephone, making sure that the light indicating secure transmissions was lit. “What are your capabilities?” he asked, still not believing that the flagship was cruising toward him. “God, man, you’re an answer to a prayer.”
The La Salle had just entered the tactical link, transmitting its positioning data to the aircraft carrier and all other units. It was still in the Mediterranean, headed for the Aegean and the eastern coast of Turkey.
“We’ve been following the battle from your transmissions, Admiral,” the captain continued. “I can offer you the surface-search radar and six Harriers.”
“How in the world are you even steaming?” Tombstone demanded. “From the condition of that ship that I saw, there’s no way you should even be underway.”
“New challenges demand special solutions,” the captain replied, satisfaction in his voice. “We had enough spare parts on board to cobble together some electronicswe’re not fully mission-capable, but I’ve got my close-in weapons systems operable, a surface-search radar, and all of my Link capabilities. And as for powerAdmiral, did you have a chance to tour the ship? The entire ship, I mean.”
Tombstone thought for a minute. “Not all of it,” he said finally. “Mainly the flag spacesthat and the flight deck.”
“With all due respect, you missed a very important part of the ship. Underneath the flight deck that you aviators think so much about, there’s something called a well deckit’s open to the ocean, and it’s where we keep all of our amphibious vehicles. Plenty of room in there for a couple of tugs.”
Tombstone was speechless for a moment. “Tugs?” he said finally, not believing what he was hearing. “You can’t be serious.”
“Well, it’s not that radical a solution. We use tugs for propulsive power all the time, don’t we? It’s just that they’re usually made up to the outside of the ship, getting us off a pier or into port. Fortunately, as we’ve just proved, a couple of oceangoing tugs can handily fit inside the well deck. They push as well as they pull. Besides, Harriers aren’t all that picky about wind across the deck for flight operations.”
Tombstone began laughing. “I don’t believe it. You mean to tell me you’ve got two tugs inside your well deck? And they’re shoving you around so that you can get underway?”
He laughed again, shaking his head in disbelief. “Captain, of all the-“
“Creative solutions you’ve ever seen, Admiral?” the captain finished. “Thank you very much, sir. After all, you did tell me to get the ship squared away.”
“Okay, you’re here,” Tombstone said. “Get those Harriers ready to launchI’m going to need them for backup in case Turkey needs some additional convincing.”
He spent the next five minutes reeling off a set of orders, directing the La Salle to take station on the west coast of Turkey. Finally, after a last congratulatory comment, Tombstone replaced the receiver. He stared at it for a moment, then started laughing again.
“It’s done, Captain.” The fire-control technician looked up at him with bleary, battle-worn eyes. “I’ve downloaded a complete retargeting package.”
“Let’s hope it works,” Captain Heather answered. He walked out of Combat up and forward to the bridge. Normally his station during a missile launch would be in Combat, but this one he wanted to see himself.
Could the vertical launch tubes take it?
He shook his headthere was still no real answer on that. The flooding had been contained, and the tubes appeared to be structurally sound, but there was no way to really tell how much damage the mine explosions had done. The delicate circuitry of the missiles might have been fatally jarred, the tubes cracked somewhere they couldn’t see and unable to maintain the air pressure that they needed to lift the missiles out of their tubes. He stared down at the hatches on the deck, wondering just how much of his combat capability he had left.
Finally, he turned to the Officer of the Deck. “Weapons free. Fire when ready.”
“Weapons free, fire when ready, aye, sir,” the OOD echoed. He picked up the bitch-box speaker and relayed the order to Combat.
The captain held his breath and waited. A slow rumble shook the ship, deepening and spreading throughout every structural member. The square cover on the first tube popped open, and the captain gazed down into the blackness inside it. The sound built, higher and higher, until it encompassed his entire world. Finally, with a final shriek, a Tomahawk missile burst out of the vertical-launch cell, then seemed to hover over the deck for the barest instant before its motor ignited. It splashed fire down on the deck, charring the nonskid, then tipped over and streaked away from the ship at speeds almost impossible to imagine.
Moments later, the scenario repeated itself. In all, four Tomahawk missiles lifted out of their cells and headed for Ukraine.
The captain released his breath, giddy from pain and lack of oxygen.
“Good job, people.” He let his voice convey more than words ever could. “Someone find me the corpsman. I think-“
The engineer caught him as he crumpled to the floor.
“Here they come,” Batman said as he glanced at the Plat camera. “First thirsty Tomcat on board.”
With the carrier now in open water, the fighters that had taken the initial brunt of the raid were coming back on board for refueling and rearming. La Salle’s Harriers took over the air battle, decimating the already thin ranks of Turkish fighters while the American air base steamed threateningly toward their coast.
Batman kept his eyes moving quickly between the large-screen tactical display and the Plat camera. As fast as the technicians were working, it looked like it might not even be necessary. One by one, starting immediately after the missile attack on Ukraine, the Turkish fighters were breaking off and heading for home, escorted by La Salle’s Harriers and the remaining Tomcats.
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