by Walt Gragg
Within the targeted area, nothing survived. Men and machines perished in a swirling witch’s caldron of death and destruction.
The consuming Cobras, however, weren’t finished. Always on the alert for Stinger launches, they swooped in low with flares falling. Their bulging rocket pods were filled with further agony for those intent on a beckoning paradise. The frenetic helicopters’ armor-piercing guns also soon roared.
In an instant, the combatants’ roles had been reversed. Now it was Mourad’s dazed forces facing defeat on the Alexandria highway. Yet the Pan-Arabs didn’t yield, unwilling to admit that in a handful of fleeting heartbeats certain mastery had been taken from them. They responded with everything they had. T-72 antiaircraft machine guns fired in every direction. Stinger gunners futilely attempted to break through the staunch Cobras’ defenses and lock on to the daunting attackers.
The Mahdi’s devotees were outmatched. Still they were by no means defenseless. The first of the Cobras soon discovered how much fight remained in the stunned enemy. A Stinger suddenly reached through the confusing clutter to snatch an American crew. A second Cobra went down moments later in a hail of antiaircraft fire. The crippled helicopters smashed into the desert near their own lines. An earth-shattering blast accompanied each life-ending explosion.
For the Chosen One’s disciples such victories served no tactical purpose. They were far too few, and much too late. Yet it no longer mattered.
When the Marine division’s Abrams arrived, the Pan-Arab defeat was forever sealed. The twelve tanks waded deep into the scattered survivors to obliterate and plunder. The T-72s were excellent tanks. Nevertheless, they were no match for the top-of-line American armor. The M-1s were far too advanced, and the Marine crews much too polished, to suffer even a single defeat.
What the Cobras didn’t eliminate, the M-1’s methodically dispatched. The precision of the Abrams’ kills was a thing of distorted beauty to behold. The four-man crews loaded their huge rounds, located their targets with their fully computerized systems, and fired in such quick succession it was impossible for those on the battlements to keep up. What few rounds the T-72s got off against their superior adversary failed to penetrate the foot of frontal plating protecting the technologically superior armored vehicles. The massive shells harmlessly exploded against the M-1s’ thick hulls.
The fleeting hopes of the Chosen One’s armored division forever disappeared when the five surviving Cobras from the earlier air battle arrived at the rear of the Pan-Arab lines. The flailing division was caught in an ever-constricting death grip. The lethal Americans closed in from all sides to squeeze the final, fading embers from the defeated force. Even when their loss was there for all to see, not a single one retreated. Mourad’s obsessed adherents had arrived on the bloodstained vista intent on triumph or martyrdom. They’d come within an eyelash of the first. In the end, however, they’d have no choice but to settle for the second.
The spirit-seizing slaughter went on without letup. It wouldn’t be until early evening that the final gunfire would cease. But end it eventually did.
* * *
—
The remnants of the platoon settled into the defensive positions they’d held at the beginning of the grotesque battle. At the conclusion of the day, the Chosen One’s forces hadn’t gained an inch of ground. As the unforgiving sun disappeared, fifteen thousand fresh bodies lay on the piteous landscape. The smoldering shells of their crushed armored vehicles littered the sorrowful ground. Two hundred of the Marine battalion’s men had been killed or seriously wounded during the afternoon assault. Barely half those Erickson had taken command of a few hours prior were still in the fight.
The battalion’s final four hundred would harden themselves for the next attack. With every fiber of courage they could muster, they’d attempt to hang on until help arrived.
In three days, the 1st Marine Division would reach the North African shore. Until then, all the scarred Marines could do was lick their gaping wounds and wait for Mourad to make his next move.
Second Battalion had suffered greatly. So had many of their brethren along the defensive front. It had been an extremely difficult day for the entire division.
The same could be said for the carrier battle groups sent to protect the skies above.
24
4:22 P.M., OCTOBER 18
BLACKJACK SECTION, FIGHTING SQUADRON VF-57
USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN
NEAR THE LIBYAN-EGYPTIAN BORDER
A dozen F/A-18Fs led the way. Armed with AIM-120, AIM-132, and Sidewinder missiles, they were a formidable adversary. It wouldn’t be long before the Pan-Arab pilots tasted the immense power of the American aircraft. The Navy interceptors would attempt to stun the leading edge of the attack, buying the Americans valuable time. With a dagger’s thrust to the heart, they’d fearlessly dive into the center of the fray to disrupt Mourad’s huge air assault. Chaos would follow in their wake.
A similar number of F/A-18Es, their ground attack missions aborted, were right behind. The second wave was taking a more passive posture. They’d wait to see how the battle unfolded and try to hold the line against the numerically superior enemy until help arrived. Hopefully, they could screen most of the MiGs away from the carrier fleet. They had no other choice. This first group of F/A-18Es was limping into battle with a severe handicap. Sent skyward to destroy tanks, none was loaded with a full complement of munitions for air-to-air combat. Not one of the F/A-18Es was carrying its most powerful weapons. Without their radar-guided AIM-120s and AIM-132s, the Hornets would have to work their way relatively close to make a kill. The range of their Sidewinders was limited to about twenty miles, less than one-fifth of what an AIM-120 missile would provide.
Blackjack Section, with only a single heat-seeking Sidewinder hanging from each of its pilots’ wing tips and much of its cannon shells expended, trailed the leading groups.
All were headed west at speeds of over a thousand miles per hour.
Five hundred enemy fighters smothered the skies over the southern Mediterranean. Twenty-four of America’s finest aircraft were rushing to meet them. The opposing groups were on a collision course seven miles above the ocean’s breezes.
The initial advantage belonged to the Chosen One. Still, the Americans’ chances were improving with each passing minute. They’d been caught off guard. Yet their response to the attack was measured and proficient. Every thirty seconds, another combat aircraft leaped from one of the carriers’ decks and raced to join its countrymen. Within the hour, the entire strike force would be airborne. Even with the five-to-one odds against them, they’d be more than a match for Mourad’s inferior pilots and planes.
But the Mahdi had no intention of giving the Americans an hour to prepare. His orders were to attack with all the malice his MiGs could muster before their opponent got organized. The Pan-Arab pilots didn’t hesitate. They made a headlong rush toward the oncoming Navy fighters.
The battle was joined.
The initial dogfights were scarcely under way when the first of the Chosen One’s MiGs burst into flames. The defeated fighter, the lifeless body of its vanquished pilot strapped in his seat, began a long, slow spiral toward the waiting seas. Moments later, a second crippled Pan-Arab aircraft, a French-made Mirage, followed.
Things were heating up. One by one, pairs of freshly launched Super Hornets arrived on the scene. More were on the way. By well before the dinner hour, all eighty-eight of the carrier fleet’s combat fighters would be engaging the enemy.
The expanding battle continued to evolve.
While the hot afternoon sun made its journey toward the western horizon, the match of calculating men and streaking machines wore on throughout the length and breadth of the heavens. Like a giant game of tic-tac-toe, crisscrossing vapor trails covered the distant skies.
* * *
—
The “shoot” symbol app
eared on Mitchell’s cockpit display. A MiG-25 was dead center in his kill envelope. He fired the last of his missiles. The Sidewinder dropped from the tip of his Hornet’s left wing. It raced across the sky. Six miles separated the F/A-18E from the fleeing aircraft. The Sidewinder would cover it in seconds.
There was nothing more for Mitchell to do than watch as the fire-and-forget heat-seeker closed with its target. The MiG’s radar screamed for its pilot to take evasive action. The panicked Libyan dove for the beckoning seas with the Sidewinder in pursuit. Flares poured from the diving plane. But it was no use. The Sidewinder couldn’t be fooled. At the last possible instant, the pilot hit the eject lever and parachuted from his craft. The MiG exploded. Pieces of the defeated plane, Mitchell’s second kill of the afternoon, fell into the watery world below.
Throughout the spanning blue, scores of Pan-Arab aircraft were meeting the same fate.
Mourad’s struggling fliers had one-tenth the training of their American counterparts. And it showed. Even with the initial twenty-to-one odds against them, the assured Navy pilots dominated the unanticipated air battle. As the extending heavens behind the first groups filled with Super Hornets, the contest turned one-sided. In the early stages, some of the Mahdi’s fighters broke through the twenty-four defenders. Those that did ran headlong into the rising formations of F/A-18s. Only a scattering of Mirages reached the fringes of the naval battle groups. Each of those was effortlessly dispatched by the swarming cruiser and destroyer air defenses. Not a single invading pilot got within thirty miles of the aircraft carriers.
The first desperate hour passed. With the Pan-Arabs’ superior forces, the Americans lost a few of their number in the solemn conflict spreading for hundreds of miles in every direction. A handful of defeated Navy planes plunged into the Mediterranean or crashed into the trackless Sahara. Sixty of the enemy were gone. All eighty-three remaining American fighters from the Lincoln and Eisenhower were engaged in the life-and-death drama. Not a single combat aircraft had been left in reserve. With so immense a strike, holding back even one was a luxury the defenders couldn’t afford.
The battle drifted west toward Libya. It looked quite reasonable to the F/A-18 pilots that their inexperienced rival was being pushed back by the Americans’ remarkable skills. Everything seemed perfectly natural. A slow retreat by their overmatched opponent was exactly what the Navy fliers anticipated would occur. A steady elimination of Mourad’s aircraft was under way. It wouldn’t be much longer before the Pan-Arab flight commanders would have to decide between withdrawing to their bunkered bases or facing certain annihilation over North Africa.
Things were proceeding exactly as the Americans had hoped. At least, that’s how it looked. In reality, the conflict was developing precisely as Mourad had laid it out. The Mahdi’s orders were for his planes to draw their opponent toward the sunset, away from the carrier task force. They were accomplishing just that. The closest American aircraft was one hundred miles from the fleet.
The Chosen One’s aim was to lure the swarming Super Hornets from their guardian positions surrounding the carriers. And by the end of the first hour he’d succeeded. The towering skies above the fleet were clear of friend and enemy alike.
Mourad had achieved his initial goal. He’d temporarily eliminated a crucial layer of the naval strike group’s defenses. The AIM-120 and AIM-132 missiles of the F/A-18s wouldn’t be waiting on the perimeter of the American fleet to shoot down his cruise missiles. He knew, however, that even with the soaring aircraft out of the mix, there were still no guarantees of success. The highly accurate shipborne Aegis air defense system would have to be overcome. This would be an impressive task. Most of his lethal missiles were bound to fail.
The great majority would never reach their destination. Of that, he had no illusion. Yet with one hundred launches within moments of each other, there remained a decent chance of overwhelming the two carrier battle groups and killing one or both of the giant ships.
The Chosen One’s plan was evolving right on schedule. With the shielding fighters pulled away, the carriers were at their most vulnerable. The time had come to unleash his concise executioners to seek out and destroy. At the launch sites in Libya, the crews readied their ground-hugging missiles. One hundred nearly simultaneous firings were about to take place. With a top speed of five hundred and fifty miles per hour, the unwavering American-made Tomahawk cruise missiles would need just under sixty minutes to reach the inviting aircraft carriers.
As he’d accomplish many times in this war, Mourad was going to slaughter the Americans with weapons of their own design.
The countdown began. A first missile rose from its launchpad. Following its on-board computer’s preprogrammed data, it headed straight for the open sea. Another soon followed. Still more spewed forth. It didn’t take long for the deadly pack to form. Somewhere out there, the enormous quarry awaited. The guiltless killers picked up the scent. A monumental game of hounds and foxes was taking shape. And the hounds’ sharp teeth were bared and lusting for blood. A fast and furious contest of hunter against hunted would soon be waged off the coast of Egypt. To the victor would go the spoils.
The Chosen One’s prize was the two carriers’ eleven thousand lives and the destruction of a pair of the world’s greatest warships. His ultimate goal, control of the skies over North Africa and defeat of all Allied forces in Egypt, would be at hand.
In the next hour, the Pan-Arabs’ chances for conquest and Mourad’s eventual world domination would become much clearer. Win this afternoon, and triumph over the infidels was all but assured. Lose and face the stark reality of a forever-steepening struggle to defeat those who stood in Allah’s way.
Unaware the second act in the Mahdi’s life-and-death drama was playing out, Bradley Mitchell contacted the EC-2 command and control aircraft.
“Echo Control, this is Blackjack Section. Have expended our missiles. And our Vulcan cannons are almost empty. Request permission to return to the boat to rearm and refuel.”
“Okay, Blackjack Section. We’ve got a few other Super Hornets that are low on fuel and will reach the Lincoln ahead of you. But by the time you arrive, you should be able to land immediately. Bring it on in.”
“Roger, Echo Control, we’re on our way.”
After searching the widely scattered clouds to ensure the enemy wasn’t hiding nearby, the pair of Hornets swung around and rushed back toward the east. In seven minutes, they’d reach their destination. Alert for lurking Pan-Arab aircraft, Blackjack Section closed with the fleet.
It wasn’t long before the fearsome aircrafts’ screeching wheels reached the deck and each Hornet’s hook grabbed one of the stout runway’s arrester wires, slamming them to an abrupt stop.
The tired pilots crawled from their cockpits. The maintenance and armament crews were there to meet them. Mitchell searched out his crew chief.
“How much time until we’re back in the air, Chief?” he asked.
“Normally I’d tell you an hour, sir. But with the present tactical situation, our orders are to have you strapped in your cockpits and headed to the catapults in thirty minutes.”
“Looks like there’ll be no rest for the wicked today.”
“No, sir. Word is this probably won’t be the last time in the coming hours we prepare you to launch. Fuel and weapons teams are ready and waiting. They’ll start getting your Hornets into dogfight mode before you’ve cleared the deck.”
“Thirty minutes,” Mitchell said. “Worm, we’re going to earn our paychecks today. Let’s go below, grab some coffee, and shove down a sandwich or two while we can.”
“Sounds good to me,” Sweeney said. “While we’re at it, maybe we should stop by and talk to Naval Pilot Union Local 114’s shop steward about putting us in for some overtime. That time-and-a-half money will sure come in handy with all the pretty girls in Naples who’re waiting for my handsome face to return. Ya know many of them
believe I’m some sort of deity whose every command mortal women must obey.”
“You wish. It’s not those homely features of yours that makes you so attractive to the women around the Naples piers. None of them care a lick about what you look like. It’s that fat wallet of yours they’re really interested in. But you’re right about the money. After what we’ve gone through this week, I know why on my first day in the Navy they made it clear we were being paid twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year. If they ever gave me overtime for all the hours I’ve put in during the past twelve years, I could retire tomorrow.”
Side by side, the pilots of Blackjack Section swaggered across the deck and disappeared down the stairs.
* * *
—
The Chosen One’s cruise missiles had been in the air for fifteen minutes. If not stopped, a fiery end would reach the floating cities in three-quarters of an hour.
Just a few feet from the water, the missiles skimmed the whitecapped sea. As they crossed the twenty-minute mark, each reached the outer edges of the EC-2’s three-hundred-mile radar limit. A large cluster of unexplained symbols, their outlines vague and distorted, appeared at the fringes of the controllers’ screens. The command and control aircraft was nearing the end of its five-hour shift. All three battle controllers were consumed with the enormity of guiding the intensive air combat. None picked up the images hugging the ocean’s waves.
Another ten minutes passed. Mitchell finished a first sandwich. He glanced at his watch and reached for another.
The air battle was reaching its peak. The EC-2 controllers had their hands full. Straight and steady the cruise missiles came on. They were ninety miles closer to their goal.