Jefferson had four catapults and could hurl aircraft aloft two at a time, one off the bow, the other from the waist. However, it took nearly thirty minutes to ready most aircraft from a standing start, and space both on the flight deck and below on the hangar deck was sharply limited. Though the launch order for today's operation had been worked out previously in painstaking detail, Jefferson's Deck Handler and his crew in Flight Deck Control would have their work cut out for them.

  The "Mangler," as the Handler was called, was responsible for moving aircraft from the hangar deck up to the flight deck by way of just four elevators, mapping out each movement with the aid of large maps of both decks, plus precisely scaled plan-view silhouettes of each aircraft. Getting the right aircraft to the right place at the right time, without creating bottlenecks at the elevators or while feeding into line, without brushing against another aircraft in tractor-towed maneuvers carried out with scant inches to spare, always seemed nothing short of miraculous.

  Sprinting across the flight deck to Tomcat 202, Batman and Malibu saw that Chief Leyden already had the aircraft hooked up to external power cables and the "huffer," a small tractor that injected air through a hose directly into each engine's turbine fast enough to allow the engine to run on its own.

  Though Leyden and the blue shirts working with him had already inspected the aircraft, Batman gave it a quick external, checking the fuselage for obvious damage or open access hatches, tugging on the deadly, white darts of the AIM-54Cs to make sure they were secured and wouldn't drop off during the stress of a cat launch. He traded a jaunty thumbs-up with Leyden, then climbed up the Tomcat's access steps and settled into the cockpit. He felt the aircraft rock as Malibu dropped in behind him.

  Quick check… donning helmet and mask, checking oxygen lines and electrical connections, removing safing pins from the ejection seats, fastening seat belt and chest harness. He brought the canopy down.

  As Batman began flipping console switches and bringing the F-14's engines on line, he thought again about Tombstone. When he'd first come on board the Jefferson, Stoney had been all but an object of worship for the young Lieutenant Wayne, despite the royal ass-chewings the younger officer had received from him a time or two for hot-dogging. Now, Stoney was a friend, and he was carrying one hell of a burden on his captain's epaulets. It would be especially rough today. As superCAG, he normally would direct the operation from Jefferson's CATCC rather than fly with his pilots, and Batman knew that was hard on the man. Worse still, today's battle would be run from Shiloh's CIC, leaving Stoney in a more or less supernumerary position.

  Batman decided that he didn't want to be in the CAG's shoes for anything.

  His engines were running, the blue shirts had broken down 202's chains and chocks, and a plane director was signaling for him to come ahead. Gently, Batman eased his thirty-ton charger forward, maneuvering toward the catapults.

  0710 hours

  Tomcat 201

  Over the Barents Sea

  Coyote put the F-14 in a gentle starboard bank. The BARCAP was on station now, at an altitude of 32,000 feet. Early morning sunlight sparkled off an ultramarine sea. His wingman, Mustang Davis, was holding Tomcat 206 some fifty feet off Coyote's starboard wingtip. Nightmare Marinaro's 204, and his wingman, Slider Arrenberger in 209, were about ten miles behind and to the north of Coyote and Mustang, positioned to get maximum information from their powerful AWG-9 radars.

  The Russian force was close enough now to track. When set to pulse-doppler search, or PDS, the F-14's AWG-9 radar could determine range and speed on a five-square-meter target out to a distance of 115 nautical miles ― over 130 standard miles. Their radar was now showing a heavy clot of blips, crossing the Norwegian coast near North Cape and still heading toward the CBG. The nearest targets were already within sixty miles of the orbiting Tomcats.

  "Hotspur, Gold Eagle One," Coyote said, calling Shiloh's Combat Information Center. "Request weapons free."

  "Gold Eagle, Hotspur. Negative on weapons release. Situation still confused. We need confirmation of hostile intent."

  "How much confirmation do they need?" Cat asked from the back seat.

  "Yeah," Coyote replied. "They've already crossed Norwegian airspace, and that doesn't look like the formation for a welcoming parade."

  "Uh-oh," Cat said. "I've got…"

  "What?"

  "Wait one. Okay, we're reading J-band pulse-doppler. Coyote, I think we've got some Badger-Gs out there."

  "Shit," Coyote said. "Okay, send it."

  This did not sound good.

  0712 hours

  Hawkeye 761

  Twenty miles north of North Cape

  The E-2C Hawkeye was still following the massive aerial deployment of aircraft, now crossing the Norwegian coastline near Tanafjorden, less than one hundred miles to the southeast.

  "Echo-Tango, this is Gold Eagle One," sounded in the air controller's headset… a woman's voice. Gold Eagle One must have a female RIO.

  "Gold Eagle, Echo-Tango Seven-six-one. Copy."

  "Echo-Tango, we're picking up attack radar from the bogies. I've got steady J-band transmissions. Sounds like Shorthorn."

  Shorthorn was the NATO code for a particular type of Soviet weapons/navigation radar. It was carried by naval aircraft armed with AS-5 and -6 antiship missiles.

  The Hawkeye's radar operator flicked a dial, narrowly watching several of his dials. "That's confirmed, sir. J-band, weapon control radar. I think we're tracking Badger-Gs."

  "Send it," the CIC officer said. Holding his headset mike to his lips, he said, "Gold Eagle, Echo-Tango Seven-six-one, we confirm Shorthorn. BARCAP is clear to go to Tango-Whiskey-Sierra. Let 'em know you're there."

  TWS ― shorthand for track-while-search ― was the AWG-9 radar mode that allowed the F-14 to track enemy targets. When switched on, it would light up Russian threat warnings up to ninety nautical miles away.

  On the radar display, meanwhile, the blips marking approaching Russian aircraft began to spread out, to resolve into clusters of three and four separate targets in tightly grouped formations. Suddenly, the radar operator leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "Sir! I have a launch!"

  The CICO had already seen the same thing, smaller blips detaching themselves from the larger ones.

  If the firing aircraft were Badger-Gs, the missiles slung under their wings were AS-5 or AS-6 air-to-surface missiles, ship-killers with one-ton HE warheads.

  "Hotspur! Hotspur! Echo-Tango!" he called. "Launch, we have cruise-missile launch!"

  "Ninety-nine aircraft" came the call back from the Aegis cruiser Shiloh, using a code phrase meaning all aircraft. "Ninety-nine aircraft, Hotspur.

  Weapons free. I say again, weapons are free!"

  The message was instantly relayed via data link through the E-2C to every American plane already in the air. The Battle of North Cape had begun.

  CHAPTER 10

  Friday, 13 March

  0713 hours (Zulu +2)

  Tomcat 201

  Over the Barents Sea

  "Let's go with a Phoenix launch first," Coyote told Cat. "We've for damned sure got targets enough to choose from."

  "Definitely what they call a 'target-rich environment,' Boss," Cat replied. "We're tracking on four."

  In all the arsenals of all the world's powers, even in the arsenals of other U.S. military services, there was nothing like the AIM-54C Phoenix. A 985-pound missile with a range of over 120 miles and a speed of better than Mach 5, the weapon could be fired only by the F-14 Tomcat with its advanced AWG-9 radar guidance system, and was therefore available only to the U.S.

  Navy. The Tomcat's radar, set to track-while-scan, could lock onto six separate targets while simultaneously guiding six missiles at once.

  Coyote was carrying only four AIM-54s, so Cat had selected four targets, tagging them on her radar screen in the back seat.

  "Let 'er rip, Cat," he told her.

  "That's fox three," she replied, using the aviator's code for a Phoenix launch.

  Cat hit the launch button and the Tomcat lurched higher as it was freed of nearly a half-ton weight slung beneath its belly. Igniting beneath the F-14, the missile speared forward into a crystal-blue sky, a cotton-white contrail streaming astern.

  "And firing two," Cat said. "Fox three!"

  "Gold Eagle One, Eagle Two." That was Mustang Davis, Coyote's wingman.

  "We've got track-and-lock. Fox three!"

  One of Mustang's white Phoenix darts dropped clear, ignited, and swooshed into the distance.

  "Hey, Coyote!" Mustang called. "What about those cruise missiles?"

  "We'd have to backtrack to get a lock," he told him. "We'll leave them for the follow-up crew. Or Jeff's CIWS."

  "Okay, copy. Here's another fox three."

  The sky was rapidly becoming filled with the twisting white streamers of missile contrails arcing toward the southeast.

  0715 hours

  Off North Cape

  The basic tactics of modern aircraft carrier warfare had been laid down in World War II, when Admiral Chester Nimitz took on a far larger Japanese force with three aircraft carriers, their air groups providing both offensive strike capability and defensive CAP over the fleet, plus eight cruisers and seventeen destroyers dedicated to providing close-in antiaircraft defense for the carriers. His tactics ― and the luck that blesses or curses every plan of battle ― won the Battle of Midway, and the concept of hard-hitting, well-protected carrier groups quickly became the guiding combat doctrine for the U.S. Navy's Pacific War.

  During the next fifty years, the aircraft became larger, faster, and farther-ranging; the weapons became smarter, more destructive, and capable of superb accuracy across ranges unthinkable in 1942. The Nimitz doctrine, however, remained essentially the same.

  The modern aircraft carrier battle group, variously called CBG or CVBG, was built around the supercarrier. Some, like Jefferson or Eisenhower, were nuclear-powered. Others, like the Kennedy and the America, had originally been designed for nuclear power but, thanks to Congressional budget cuts, were driven instead by conventional, fuel-oil-fired boilers. Depending on their class, their flight decks stretched from 990 to 1,040 feet long, just six feet less than the height of New York City's Chrysler Building. Their full-load displacement ranged anywhere from 80,000 to 96,000 tons ― compared to the 19,900 tons of the U.S.S. Enterprise at Midway.

  The rest of the battle group was devoted to protecting the carrier and consisted of one or two guided-missile cruisers, a mixed force of four to seven frigates and destroyers, and one or two Los Angeles-class attack submarines. As it approached its patrol area off North Cape, Jefferson's battle group included the Aegis cruiser Shiloh; three guided-missile destroyers, John A. Winslow, William B. Truesdale, and Alan Kirk; four Perry-class guided-missile frigates, Dickinson, Esek Hopkins, Stephen Decatur, and Leslie; and the attack subs Morgantown and Galveston.

  It was a powerful force. CBG-14, already understrength by the time it reached Romsdalfjord nine months before, had been badly hurt during the Battles of the Fjords, and the decision had been made to reinforce it big-time. The Truesdale, Kirk, Dickinson, Leslie, and Morgantown all were new additions to the battle group.

  In modern warfare, a carrier battle group is deployed across an incredibly vast stretch of open ocean. If CBG-14 could have been magically transported to the eastern seaboard of the United States, with the Jefferson herself planted on the Mall in downtown Washington, D.C., her escort ships would have been ranging as far afield as central Pennsylvania, southern Virginia, and West Virginia; her defensive air units would have been patrolling the skies over Maine and South Carolina, Kentucky and Michigan; and her attack subs and S-3 Vikings would have been searching out enemy submarines somewhere in Ohio. Her attack planes, meanwhile, could have struck targets as far off as Chicago.

  As the first wave of Russian bombers entered Jefferson's outer defensive ring, Tomcat-launched Phoenix missiles drew the first blood. Russian longand medium-range bombers ― Bears, Badgers, and Backfires ― began exploding in flames as far off as the Russia-Norway border.

  As Tomcat after Tomcat locked on and fired, the losses within the approaching Russian horde mounted. In the first five minutes of the battle, eighteen Tomcats launched ninety-six AIM-54Cs. The Phoenix had a reliability rating of about ninety percent, meaning that in ideal conditions, nine out of ten would hit what they were aimed at.

  In warfare, conditions are never ideal. Badger-J electronic-warfare aircraft were accompanying the bomber formations, and they were able to kill or blind a number of AIM-54s before they reached their targets.

  Seventy-eight struck, however, all but annihilating the first wave of bombers.

  0718 hours

  Tomcat 201

  Over the Barents Sea

  All four Phoenix missiles were gone, but Coyote still had two Sidewinders and two AMRAAMs slung beneath the wings of his Tomcat. Pushing his throttle forward, feeling the click of each detent as he went all the way to zone-five afterburner, Coyote hurtled toward the southeast. His F-14's computer automatically slid the aircraft's wings back, adjusting drag and lift for maximum speed. A moment later they slipped past the sound barrier with scarcely a shudder in the big Tomcat's airframe.

  "That's… a… kill!" Cat called from the back seat, her words and breaths coming in short bursts as she labored against the transverse-Gs pressing her back against her seat. "Splash… four!"

  "Send it," Coyote told her, cutting back the F-14's power and dropping below Mach 1 again. Ahead, the ragged gray coastline of Norway was stretched along the sea at the horizon. Numerous threads of white crisscrossed the blue sky, Phoenix contrails from a dozen F-14s. "Mustang, where the hell are you?"

  "Coyote, Mustang. I'm on your five at six miles. Going for Phoenix launch!"

  "Okay. Dump your load, then close up. I'm naked up here."

  "Roger that, Two-oh-one. Here we go. Lock and… fox three!"

  Coyote switched to ICS. "Cat! Gimme a vector! Gimme something to shoot at!"

  "Shit, Coyote, take your pick. Ah… come right five. Looks like a large target at angels ten, range four-two miles."

  He picked out the target on his own display. "Got it. We'll take it with AMRAA.M."

  The AIM-120A, also called the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile or AMRAAM for short, had been a long, long time in coming. With Phoenix to hit targets up to a hundred miles away, with the Sidewinder heat-seeker to take on close targets out to ten miles or so, a medium-range missile was needed to fill the gap between the two extremes. Since the 1950s, the Navy's medium-range missile had been the AIM-7 Sparrow.

  For the men who'd had to rely on them, the AIM-7 had never been entirely satisfactory. They were SARH-guided ― semiactive radar-homing ― which meant they homed on radar energy reflected off the target by the firing aircraft.

  That meant that the aviator who locked on to an enemy target and fired a Sparrow at it had to keep his aircraft flying straight and level, continuing to paint the target while his missile completed its flight ― as much as sixty-two miles in later versions of the AIM-7.

  And while he was doing that, he was vulnerable, unable to maneuver without breaking the radar lock and wasting his shot.

  Coyote switched his heads-up display to medium-range-missile mode, selecting an AIM-120. On his HUD, a small rectangle drifted across his field of view, the target designator. To the left, beneath the vertical line of his airspeed indicator, ARM M2 appeared, showing he had two missiles ready, while to the right, just inside the altitude scale, a vertical line gave the target's closing speed and range. The target was twenty-five nautical miles away now, closing at 512 knots.

  Dragging his stick over, he merged the designator box with the target pipper; the letters ACQ let him know that the target had been acquired by the missile's radar. There was a beat as computers calculated firing conditions, angles, and probabilities… and then the rectangle blinked to a circle embracing the letter m.

  A tone shrilled in his ear. "Radar lock!" Cat called from the RIO's seat.

  "Fox one!" Coyote answered, and he squeezed the firing trigger.

  AMRAAM represented a whole new type of air-to-air missile, carrying its own radar-guidance system as well as extremely sensitive infrared sensors for terminal homing. Cost overruns and unexpected technical difficulties had delayed the missile's production for the better part of a decade, and with the first production models going to the Air Force, the new missile had been slow to reach Navy combat units.

  With a roar, the AIM-120 detached itself from the Tomcat, boosting on a trail of flame to Mach 4 in seconds. On Coyote's HUD, beneath the altitude scale, the characters IN RNG and 28 glowed in silent affirmation. The AMRAAM would reach the target in another twenty-eight seconds.

  With the missile away, Coyote immediately brought his stick hard to the right, dropping into a starboard turn away from the target that would have been impossible with the old AIM-7.

  "I've got a target," CAT told him. "Bearing one-eight-five at three-one nautical miles."

  Coyote pulled back on his stick, easing out of the turn. "Got him!" he said. "Set the next one for AMRAA.M."

  0719 hours

  Off North Cape

  At first, as the long-range Phoenix missiles streaked in from the U.S.

  fighter screen, the Russian fighters escorting the bombers couldn't even hit back. The best air-to-air missile they possessed was the semi-active radar-homing AA-9 "Amos," carried as a stand-off interceptor by the MiG-31 and having a range of about eighty miles. Production of the AA-9 had been plagued by problems even worse than those endured by the AMRAAM, however, and they were not as reliable as the AIM-54 Phoenix they'd been designed to emulate ― especially in a hostile ECM environment.