by Dan Hampton
Now, looking across the bed at him, he seemed perfectly composed. He certainly hadn’t been upset at the nightclub. And, although he’d brought her off three times during their two-hour sex session, it had been almost mechanical. He’d been forceful, urgent . . . but not passionate.
Sidra hadn’t been asleep when he’d bolted from the bed. He’d startled her but she’d been too upset to notice. Something had frightened him. And what could do that? she wondered.
“Please, cudush, come back to bed.” Sidra patted the bed and rolled provocatively toward the edge. Like a splash of milk in coffee, her dark skin caught the faint shine of light through a crack in the heavy draperies. He should leave. But, he reminded himself, it would likely be a while until his next woman. She sat up again and stared at his dark outline.
“Please.”
The mercenary stared at her naked body, then reached down and twisted a nipple between his fingers.
“Ummm,” she moaned with pleasure. “More.”
He smiled in the darkness. He had time.
Chapter 6
Doug Truax stepped over to the edge of the dock and thought about the mercenary. He wasn’t convinced the man actually existed, or if he did, that he wasn’t a Russian or Chinese pilot. They weren’t supposed to be able to fly like that but it was possible that there was one ringer amongst all the other clueless bastards.
However, assuming it was a westerner, then who could it be? Each year alone, enough pilots retired or separated from the U.S. military to start an air force. Of course, it wouldn’t be just a pilot. To do what this guy had done meant he had to be a fighter pilot, and not just any fighter pilot. This one obviously had a low-altitude night background, among other things.
“So who could do something like this?” John Lee prompted.
Axe rubbed his chin. “Fighter pilot obviously. LANTIRN qualified.”
Low Altitude Navigation Targeting InfraRed Night. A special training program for specially equipped F-16s and F-15Es. The idea had been to penetrate enemy air-defense systems, called IADS, and strike high-value targets with precision weapons. It was hair-raising, to say the least. It had also gone out in the mid-nineties, when the Air Force decided they’d never have to fly at low altitudes again. After all, Iraq had been conquered without going low, and in keeping with the tradition of always fighting the last war, LANTIRN had been discontinued. Besides, UAVs couldn’t do it.
“Something unnatural about flying through mountains at one hundred feet at night,” Jolly said. “Never did it myself.”
“I did.”
“I know. And since that mission went away at the end of the cold war, anyone LANTIRN qualified would have to be our age, at least.”
“Not necessarily.” Axe leaned against the railing and folded his arms. “We got our NVGs in the late nineties . . . you can fly low off of those.”
“But the punks these days never fly low like we grew up doing,” Jolly persisted. “The Air Force went to the medium-altitude mind-set way back during the first Gulf War.”
“And wasn’t that a great idea . . .” Axe snorted. “They said there’d never be a reason to go low again.”
“You avoid Triple-A.”
“Anti-aircraft artillery is the least of my worries.” Truax was a Wild Weasel by trade. He was supposed to get shot at. “You force me to medium altitude and now every swinging dick surface-to-air missile can see me. Never say never.”
“Still makes sense . . . as long as we’ve got precision munitions.” Jolly was a party line kind of guy. And that was Air Force Party Line Number Two.
Axe was disgusted and it showed. “And after the fourth day? When we run out of precision bombs? What then?”
“Anyway . . . LANTIRN.”
“Yeah. But it would take more than that.”
John Lee looked at the gray patch on Axe’s left shoulder. It was shield shaped with a yellow bull’s-eye in the middle and black lettering. GRADUATE – USAF FIGHTER WEAPONS SCHOOL.
An elite school for the best fighter pilots in the USAF. At least it had been when Axe went through. Maybe two instructor pilots per year from each fighter wing were selected to attend. Jolly was well aware that the course had been cheapened when it opened up to the bomber community and to nonflyers. Why does an intelligence officer need a patch? What are bomber “tactics”? This was a typical Air Force initiative to force equality. After all, who needed fighter pilots anymore? There was always the Space Command to win future wars.
Even John Lee, party line kind of guy, had trouble with that one. So the end result was the creation of the USAF Weapons School. Everyone is happy. Right. Bottom line was that it definitely did not produce the same caliber of person it once had. Slowly but surely, the Air Force was breeding out the aggressive ones and killing the warrior spirit.
He pointed at Axe’s shoulder. “You mean a Patchwearer.”
Doug Truax nodded. “I’m thinking that way. And not one of the SNAPs.”
Jolly chuckled in spite of himself. Sensitive New Age Pilot. Gen Xers. Punks.
“So again . . . someone from our age group or thereabouts. Patchwearer, LANTIRN guy . . . probably combat veteran.”
“Most definitely,” Axe agreed. “Why would they hire a guy that hadn’t seen the Elephant?”
“They probably wouldn’t. So we’re not talking about a big gene pool here.”
“In theory. But who’s to say this guy is even an American? The Canadians and Aussies have guys technically capable of this. Dutch, Norwegians . . . lots of others fly F-16s too. Could be any of them.”
“No combat time though.”
Axe sat back down and exhaled. “Okay. But just because he’s American doesn’t mean he’s Air Force. Enough guys get out from the Navy and Marines who could fit the bill.”
Jolly opened up his satchel and removed a single piece of paper. “Defense Intelligence in D.C. was given the hot potato of tracking this down. They had help from the Office of Naval Intelligence, Security Assistance, and the CIA. The profile was a former fighter or attack pilot from any of the fast jet services.”
“Navy, Air Force, or Marines.”
“Right. We obviously discounted Army Aviation. We also threw out anyone who retired prior to 1990 . . . he’d probably be too old. We didn’t limit the search to TopGun or Fighter Weapons Grads but most came back that way. We also threw out the guys who were strictly air to air. F-15 Eagles and Tomcat drivers. They wouldn’t know a bomb if they tripped over it. And this guy put his cluster bombs through the PAC-3 door from a nighttime low-altitude pop-up attack.”
Axe shook his head. “That still leaves Strike Eagles, Harriers, all the F-18s, and even the BombCat version of the F-14.”
“So?”
“So?” Axe stood up again and walked to the railing. “So we haven’t even discussed the F-16s. Do you have any idea how many Viper drivers are out there? Just in our Air Force? How about the foreigners? How about the Guard and Reserve? Every silly state militia has its own air force and most of ’em are F-16s.”
“Hardly up to a job like this though,” Jolly replied. “National Guard and Reserve pilots are second string at best.”
“Not all of them.” Axe snorted. “Where do you think the really good dudes you and I have known over the years are?”
“Delta, American, United . . .”
Axe sighed. “Yeah . . . you know what I mean. We can’t discount them. And they’re a lot harder to keep track of than a regular air force type.” He eyed the other officer speculatively. “You have some reason for thinking this guy, if he exists, is a Viper pilot?”
Lee was staring at his shiny toes. “Yeah.”
“Well?” Axe was beginning to perspire in the sun. And few things smelled worse to him than sweaty polyester.
Jolly looked out a
t the river. “No one saw anything at the Patriot site. Or if they did, they didn’t live to tell about it.”
“How much was actually destroyed?” Axe interrupted.
“The BTOK was obliterated. Everyone was killed. The ICC van, the Engagement Control Station, missile storage facility . . . two of the three batteries were also wiped out. A fucking mess.”
Truax whistled.
Jolly nodded. “Yeah . . . the fact that someone zapped this place, from the air, and got away has all sorts of nastiness associated with it. But that’s another story. Bottom line is that he got away. Air Traffic and Early Warning had nothing leaving the target area. Zippo. Nothing showed up over the water at all except airliners.”
“And they saw nothing?”
“Closest guy was a Delta flight on final to Chiang Kai-shek . . . he was pissed off about the fireworks but landed anyway.” Lee sighed. “The only possible clue we have is from our Navy.”
He pulled a copy of a map from the satchel. “A little before midnight the U.S.S. Howard nearly got run over by a fighter jet . . . about here.” He pointed to an empty blue area southwest of Taiwan in the Formosa Straits.
“What’s the Howard?”
“Some kind of destroyer. She was screening for Carrier Group Seven out of Yokasuka, Japan. The Stennis and all her friends. Anyway, apparently this guy was below mast height and damn near took their rotating antenna off when he jinked over them.”
Axe chuckled. “And the U.S. Navy poops its pants again.” He stuck a piece of gum in his mouth and waited for Jolly to continue.
“So they start screaming at him, and get this . . . he acknowledges them.”
Truax shrugged. “If he hadn’t they would’ve really shit a brick.”
“Right,” Lee agreed. “So he knows this. Which probably means he’s American. So as cool as a fucking cucumber this guy chimes up in a deep southern accent, apologizes and gives them a song and dance about being a Viper outa Kunsan on a low-level night mission.”
“Kunsan Vipers fly low-level night missions on the Korean Peninsula.” Axe stopped chewing. “Why would one be over water, hundreds of miles to the southeast?”
“I know. But the point is he said all the right words. Only someone like you or I would know the difference. He even used a ‘Wolf’ call sign.”
“Did they track him?” Axe was interested now. “Don’t those boats have all kinds of cool AEGIS things on board?”
“Ship, not ‘boat.’ ” Jolly shook his head. “Nope. He came in on the deck and was gone the same way. Guess they had the gear secured for heavy weather and by the time they went to General Quarters he was gone. Besides, they bought his story.”
“So who smelled the rat?”
“The exec. He was on the bridge and saw the thing as it about took his head off. He remembered enough about fighter jets to know an F-16 only has one tail and one motor. Our mysterious friend here had two tails and two engines.”
Now that was interesting, Axe thought. The only twin-tailed twin-engined fighters in the U.S. inventory were the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Lightning, the F-15 Eagle and the F/A-18 Hornet. The first two were Air Force jets, the last was flown by the Navy and Marine Corps. There were no air-to-ground Strike Eagles in the Pacific. And an air-to-air Eagle driver would shit his pants at that altitude.
“Could’ve been a gray Eagle from Kadena,” Axe said lamely. It was the only other alternative.
“Could be. Except that all their jets were accounted for that night. And why would an Eagle guy give himself a Kunsan call sign?”
“Latent heterosexuality?”
It was an old joke. Back in the 1980s an F-15 pilot was caught red-handed, so to speak, getting a little nookie from his crew chief. The only problem with that was that they were both guys. And it didn’t help that the name of the fighter squadron was the Fighting Cocks. Much to the delight of every other fighter type in the Air Force, this escapade was revisited whenever possible to just thoroughly piss off Eagle drivers.
Jolly laughed a bit in spite of himself. “No . . . this guy is probably an American and almost certainly a Viper guy.”
Axe reluctantly agreed with him. It was an extremely specialized profession with training from only one place. So they weren’t talking about a big field here.
“That means we might be able to find him.”
The other pilot pulled out three dark blue folders and held them up. “We’ve got some possibilities here.”
Axe reached for them but Jolly shook his head.
“Hang on. Before you read these you should know how we got them.” He pointed to one of the covered picnic tables next to the dock. “Let’s go sit down.”
“We came up with twenty-one possibilities,” Jolly continued as they walked. “Eight Air Force, four Navy, and three Marines.” He handed Truax the three folders. “These guys made the final cut. One of each.”
They crossed into the shade and Axe sighed. Better.
“One each, huh? How ‘Joint’ of you. How did you arrive at these three?”
The armed forces did everything together, or “Jointly,” these days, even if it didn’t make sense. It perpetuated the illusion that the American military was all one big happy family. In reality, it rarely, if ever, worked at the operational level. It sounded good at D.C. cocktail parties though.
“Of the four Navy guys,” Lee continued, “You’ve got one there. One is a United pilot, so he’s out, and the other is a defense contractor . . . Northrop Grumman, I think.”
“That’s only three. Didn’t they teach you to count at National War College?”
“They didn’t teach me anything there. The other Navy guy is dead, so he’s probably not a player.”
“Probably not.”
Jolly glanced at his list. “You’ve got a Marine and the other two work on the Beltway . . . verified. So they’re out.”
“This leaves the good ol’ U.S. Air Force.”
“Right. Three of these guys are airline pilots, one works for Lockheed Martin, one is dead, and two are in the Air National Guard.” Lee pointed at the folder. “You’ve got Number eight right there.”
Swell.
“And you really believe that this guy everyone wants is one of these three?” Axe waved the folders. “Or is this just a Cover Your Ass knee jerk to get the Air Force off the hook?”
Axe’s cynicism was beginning to wear thin.
“I realize you don’t always see eye to eye with the powers that be, Doug,” Jolly snapped, “but if this maniac did come from our corner of the world, then it’s our duty to find him.”
“Why?” Axe dropped the folders on the table. “He didn’t attack us. He didn’t hurt any Americans or blow up any of our toys. If he wants rage around for the highest bidder, then how is that our fuckin’ business?”
“It’s our fucking business because this directly harms our national interests in the Pacific. All over the world too, if we look like dipshits!” Lee was mad now.
“C’mon, Jolly get a grip.” Axe shook his head disgustedly. “Our ‘national interests’ a few years ago included selling guns and plutonium to Saddam. Before that we were buddy buddy with Tehran. Before that we propped up whatever banana republic South American piece of shit suited us at the moment . . . regardless of how many drugged-out kids it cost us. Before that . . .”
“Okay, okay,” Lee held up his hands. “Let’s stick to the original thought.”
“You’ve never had one.”
“C’mon Axe . . .”
“Your thoughts come from the Joint Policy Manual . . . or from some general’s ass.”
“Fuck you.” Lee stood up and leaned on the table. One vein on the side of his forehead was pulsing.
Truax jumped up too. “No fuck YOU, Jolly. You guys sit up there and dream up wild-assed stuff like this and, once again, expect someon
e like me to make it reality. “
“Damn it, Axe,” John Lee slammed the satchel down on the picnic table. “You’re a fucking Neanderthal. There’s more to being an officer than this black-and-white tactical utopia you live in. Unfortunately we don’t spend our careers in combat. If we did, you’d be a general by now.”
“War is the only time this toy company of ours makes any real sense,” Axe interrupted. “It’s the only time I’ve ever been completely sure of what I’m doing.” Both men stared angrily at each other for a few moments.
“Maybe,” Jolly nodded and sighed heavily. He’d never admit it, but Truax was pretty close to the mark. “But this is America we’re talking about . . . and at the moment, right or wrong, this is important. It needs to be done and you’re the one to do it.”
Doug Truax exhaled and stared out at the river. He could feel the angry, impotent thumping of his heart. More than anything right now he wished he was out there on a sailboat. A nice forty- or fifty-footer. Heading out beyond Hampton Roads into the Chesapeake Bay under full sail. Two more years, he told himself. Two more years and I’m finished.
“Okay.” He gathered up the folders. “I’ll go through it.”
Lee was relieved and managed a weak smile. “The idea is to do it quick. General Williams needs an answer for the Pentagon by close of business today.”
“If General Sturgis knew anything about fighter pilots he could answer this himself.” He waved the folders. “Tell me something, Jolly. Doesn’t it bother you that the Air Force is so far gone that a bomber toad is the acting commander of Air Combat Command?”
Actually it did. John Lee agreed with him on that point. The USAF had lost a great deal when it became the unified collection of “equals” everyone pretended it was. How could a bomber guy know anything about the fighter world? And vice versa. Everyone was so transparently well-rounded these days that very few people knew anything in depth. It was mostly about looking good on paper.
“We’ll argue the fine points of that some other time. After you review it, call me. We’ll go across the street and see the general together.”