"I understand that, General, but this is largely a submarine operation, right?  I gotta get Vince Gallery in on this, and you should have Sam Dodge working up at this end.  Dan and I are both fighter jocks, Pete's an ASW expert.  We need a sub driver in on this."

"Gentlemen," Harris said calmly, "for the moment the plan we have to take to the president need only deal with the Soviet threat.  Let's hold this story about the defecting boomer in abeyance for the moment, shall we?"

"I agree," Stanford nodded.  "We have enough to worry about right here."

The attention of the eight flag officers turned to the map table.  Fifty-eight Soviet submarines and twenty-eight surface warships, plus a gaggle of oilers and replenishment ships, were unmistakably heading for the American coast.  To face this, the U.S. Navy had one available carrier.  The Invincible did not rate as such.  The threat was considerable.  Among them the Soviet vessels carried over three hundred surface-to-surface cruise missiles.  Though principally designed as antiship weapons, the third of them believed to carry nuclear warheads were sufficient to devastate the cities of the East Coast.  From a position off New Jersey, these missiles could range from Norfolk to Boston.

"Josh Painter proposes that we keep Kennedy inshore," Admiral Blackburn said.  "He wants to run the ASW operation from his carrier, transferring his light attack squadrons to shore and replacing them with S-3s.  He wants Invincible out on their seaward flank."

"I don't like it," General Harris said.  Neither did Pete Stanford, and they had agreed earlier that the J-3 would launch the counterplan.  "Gentlemen, if we 're only going to have one deck to use, we damned well ought to have a carrier and not an oversized ASW platform."

"We're listening, Eddie," Hilton said.

"Let's move Kennedy out here."  He moved the counter to a position west of the Azores.  "Josh keeps his attack squadrons.  We move Invincible inshore to handle the ASW work.  It's what the Brits designed her for, right?  They're supposed to be good at it.  Kennedy is an offensive weapon, her mission is to threaten them.  Okay, if we deploy like this, she is the threat.  From over here she can range against their surface force from outside their surface-to-surface missile perimeter—"

"Better yet," Stanford interjected, pointing to some vessels on the map, "threaten this service force here.  If they lose these oilers, they ain't going home.  To meet that threat they'll have to redeploy themselves.  For starters, they'll have to move Kiev offshore to give themselves some kind of air defense against Kennedy.  We can use the spare S-3s from shore bases.  They can still patrol the same areas."  He traced a line about five hundred miles off the coast.

"Leaves Invincible kind of naked, though," the CNO, Admiral Foster, noted.

"Josh was asking about some E-3 coverage for the Brits."  Blackburn looked at the air force chief of staff, General Claire Barnes.