Terror At Dawn c-21

by Keith Douglass

  Now, the trick was to stay that way. He let her grab the air and pick up speed before putting her in a steep climb, heading for altitude to wait for his wingman to join on him. Ten seconds later, he heard the announcement that his wingman was airborne. Precise, exactly as scheduled — just the way the Marine Corps liked it.

  They joined up with the ease of two pilots long used to working with each other and headed for the fighter sponge. It was a designated bit of airspace where the fighters would assemble in an orderly stack, waiting till the flight was at full composition, then breaking off into fighting pairs to seek out and engage the enemy. It took far less time to actually execute than explain, and soon Hornets were peeling away from the stack.

  “Hornet 102, vector. Bearing zero-seven-zero, range ten. Probable Forger. Good hunting.” The E-2’s voice reeled off initial vectors for the rest of the flight, disbursing them along different angles of the approaching wave of aircraft.

  “Going to be hot,” Red Tail remarked. “Damned SAM sites. They ought to let Special Forces loose on them.” Understood, but not voiced, was the assumption that if Marine units had been ordered to destroy or neutralize the SAM sites, there would have been no question about it.

  “Just like playing dodge-’em ball in grade school,” Thor said. “You ever play that?”

  “No, not that I recall. What was it?”

  “You take about thirty of those damn red bouncy balls, you know, the kind you never see anywhere except grade school. Maybe a volleyball or two. Put them all in the center of the gym and divide the kids up into two sides. At the whistle, everybody races out and grabs a ball, streaks back to the line, and then does his damnedest to nail somebody on the other side with a ball. Hell of a lot of fun, as long as you keep moving.”

  “I like the sound of that,” his wingman said, his voice studiedly casual. They both knew they were simply making conversation for something to do while they waited. “Maybe we should get a gang up on the flight deck to play.”

  “No. Have to be the hanger bay. We’d lose too many balls over the side.”

  “Good point. Still, it sounds like fun.”

  The topic of childhood games exhausted for the moment, both fell silent. On their HUDs they could see the array of Hornets, the spacing between them increasing as they headed toward feet-dry. Once they were dry, they didn’t know exactly what waited. They thought they did, but you could never be certain until you were actually in the middle of a furball.

  “Tallyho,” Red Tail said, his voice tight. “You see it?”

  “Yeah, I got it. Take high.”

  Red Tail peeled off and ascended, dropping back into the classic fighting-pair position. Thor descended slightly, the two targets heading for them now visible.

  Most of the world’s combat air fleets had learned their tactics from watching the United States Navy and Marine Corps, so it was no surprise when opponents assumed a similar disposition. Thor felt a hard sense of amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You may know what it looks like but you ain’t got a clue how to use it,” he said softly. “Come on, asshole. Bring it on.”

  Forger One

  0110 local (GMT +3)

  Abdul’s gut tightened as he surveyed the line of American aircraft heading toward his shore. He felt a moment of shame and then dismissed it. It did not matter what he felt — what matter was what he did. And, whatever else happened, he expected there to be a lot fewer Hornets in the air when he was done.

  “Wait,” the ground-intercept controller snapped over the common circuit. “Maintain your positions. They must be within range of our support forces. Do not engage over open water.”

  The line of death, the pilots had taken to calling it, even though the commander had indicated it was to be called the line of glory. But all of them knew what would happen if they ventured over that line themselves. The shore-based missile operators were not sufficiently skilled in telling the difference between enemy aircraft and their own, and there was every chance they would be taken out with friendly fire. Any Iraqi pilot who wanted to stay alive had better plan on staying behind the line of death.

  Oh, but in front of it — that was where the glory would be. It troubled him on some level that his commanders felt that they needed to rely on missile sites rather than the fighters. There had been some discussion of the Republican Guard during Desert Storm and Desert Shield, and how they’d had cut and run at the first contact with the enemy.

  But we are not ground forces. We are pilots, born, bred, and trained for this mission. We will not run.

  Hornet 102

  0111 local (GMT +3)

  Without being entirely aware of it, Thor absorbed the information displayed on his HUD. There was something about the formation that bothered him, bothered him on a level he couldn’t entirely grasp. There was a long line of antiaircraft sites along the coast, spaced with a regularity that resembled the Maginot Line. Then, just behind that, a line of aircraft laid out in a straight-line geometric pattern. Their intent was obvious — have the shore installations take the first shot, then follow up with their fighters to take out whatever made it through that line. The entire concept of layered defense was something United States Navy had worked on for decades.

  It’s too even. That’s the problem. Well, that won’t last. As soon as the fur starts flying, even the best plan goes out the window. But, as they say, an average plan executed immediately and violently is better than a great plan executed too late.

  “Little shits,” Red Tail said conversationally over tactical. “Guess we scared them, huh?”

  “Yeah. Looks like they’ve got orders to stay well back. I wonder what we could do that would get them out here.”

  “Don’t know, man. Maybe we’ll have to go in and drag them out.”

  Drag them out. Easier said than done. For all of his bravado, Thor knew that getting past the overlapping shore antiaircraft sites would take some doing.

  The shore sites themselves were marked with black Xs, each one labeled with the target designation. Shaded green circles radiated out from each X, some quite regular, others irregular. Those represented the detection ranges of the radars as corrected for terrain, atmospheric conditions, and other known obstructions. Within the green, there was a smaller area crosshatched in red, indicating the kill zone. Within the red area, the radars had an eight-percent chance of being able to put a missile in your vicinity. Of course, whether you were there when the missile arrived at the spot was another matter altogether. Finally, just outside the green area, about half the distance from the side, was a yellow dotted line. This represented the counterdetection range, the range at which Thor could expect to detect pulses from the shore radar before the radar detector saw Thor. In general, counterdetection ranges were one and a half times as large as detection ranges.

  Overall, the shore sites provided a solid interlocking stretch of green along the coast. There was no way to avoid going into it unless you went far to the north and came in that way, and that wasn’t going to happen.

  Fortunately, there was an answer. Two Wild Weasel teams armed with antiradiation missiles were leading the pack, going in slightly ahead of the conventional fighters. Each one carried missiles that would home in on the shore-site radar signals. Even if the transmitters were then turned off, the missiles would remember their location and head directly for the antennas that were radiating signals. In theory, at least, the antiradiation — or HARM — missiles would cut a swath of destruction through the antiaircraft installations, enabling Thor and his cohorts to get inland.

  “I hold you on course, on time,” the voice of the E-2 Hawkeye backseater said. “Estimate thirty seconds until you’re within range.”

  “Roger,” Thor acknowledged. “Stand by, boys and girls — Mom has the keys to the playground.”

  Viking 701

  0120 local (GMT -7)

  Sure enough, as they descended through the cloud cover, Rabies’ radar picked up a small lozenge of a contact. He ba
nked, spiraling around down toward it, and caught the glint of sunlight reflecting off a metal hull. “Some gunboat,” he complained. “Well, that’s too bad.”

  “I don’t think so, sir. This isn’t sound from a surface ship. No way.” Greenberg’s voice was confident. “It’s way too deep.”

  “You sure, Greenie?” Rabies asked doubtfully, playing the wet blanket even though his pulse was already beating faster at the tone of Greenberg’s voice. “Lots of merchant traffic down there.”

  “This is not a merchant,” Greenberg said, his voice not the slightest bit defensive. “It’s a submarine. And it’s mine.”

  “All right, then!” Rabies turned to his copilot. “Call it in!”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” she said. She glanced wistfully at the controls in his hand, sighed, then picked up the mike.

  “Okay, okay,” Rabies grumbled. “I did promise, didn’t I? Your aircraft.” He waited till her hands were on the controls and she had positive control of the Viking.

  “My aircraft,” she acknowledged. Rabies picked up the mike.

  It was his own damned fault, wasn’t it? He had told her she could fly the next pattern. After all, that was why they put a senior pilot together with a new pilot, wasn’t it? To give the youngsters some experience, to let them practice under an expert pilot before sending them out with a green team. That’s the way it was in the Navy — you trained your own replacement.

  And Lord knows, if anyone deserved a chance, this kid did. She had good reflexes and even better airmanship skills, not to mentioned a healthy dose of common sense. She even knew a fair amount about submarine acoustics, and that was saying a lot. Most Viking pilots like to emphasize the fact that they were pilots — jet pilots — not four-eyed geeks who read intelligence summaries and studied sound-velocity profiles. They were jet pilots, by God, and nobody was going to forget it.

  But she’d always been interested in the technical details of acoustics and classification, so much so that Rabies was almost embarrassed for her. Rabies had even begun to suspect that at heart she was just as much of a geek as Greenberg was.

  Rabies called the carrier, filling them in on the detection although the data was already flooding onto their screens via the secure link. The TAO on the carrier already knew exactly where each one of the Viking’s sonobuoys were, and they could even get real-time transmission from each one via a link with Viking to display the contact in the ASW module.

  But there was nothing like eyes on a target to get a good, accurate picture of what was going on. Even in the data link, sometimes the details were lost, some of the fine details that had alerted Greenberg to the presence of a submarine.

  As he spoke to the carrier, Rabies kept an eye on his copilot and the progress they made between the fly-to points. Just as he anticipated, she handled the aircraft as though it was an extension of her body, deftly maneuvering from point to point with minimal fuel usage and popping out sonobuoys at precisely the right moment to land exactly where the TACCO wanted them.

  “All buoys sweet and hot,” Greenberg sang out, no trace of smugness in his voice. Rabies understood — as did Greenberg — that there had never been actually any question about whether or not there was a submarine there. Rabies was just doing his job, and Greenberg had known indisputably that he was right. There had been no contest.

  “Roger, Viking,” the carrier acknowledged. “Maintain firing solution on contact at this time. I repeat, maintain firing solution.”

  “What the hell?” his copilot asked. She glanced over Rabies, the question plain on her face. Why they hell weren’t they putting a couple of fish in the water to take the bastard out? After all, they had a strike inbound on the shore installation, didn’t they? Did anyone actually believe that this little bastard was just out here for a walk in the park? Not possible, not this close to the carrier. Although the minisub was still too far to attack, it wouldn’t be long before it was within range of the carrier, and that was assuming that the information they had about weapons ranges was accurate.

  “There are a couple of nations around here that have minisubs,” Rabies said, distaste in his voice. “It’s possible it could be somebody else’s. They’re going to verify that there are no neutrals or friendlies in the area through some top-level channels. If they don’t get an all-clear, we don’t get weapons-free.”

  It was his copilot who summed up what they were all feeling. “If they close within weapons range of Jefferson, we don’t have a choice.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Iranian shore station

  0130 local (GMT +3)

  Hamish pulled the thin T-shirt away from his body, stretching it and then letting it snap back. The movement of the air over his skin at least gave the illusion of a cooling breeze, though nothing could be further from the truth. With the humidity hovering around ninety percent and the temperature still higher than ninety degrees, there was no way the sweat on his body was going to dry.

  Given a choice, Hamish preferred the dry baking heat of the interior where he’d grown up. Although temperatures could soar dangerously high before you realized it, the fact that you were sweating reminded you to stay hydrated. Here, the climate defeated the body’s natural cooling mechanism.

  But it wasn’t like he had a choice, was it? The orders from the mullah had been clear — every man over the age of fourteen was to report to the nearest military commander for mobilization. The very young and the very old were left behind to watch over the women. Hamish felt a pang of envy that he tried to shut away. Even the youngest male child had authority over any woman he might see. With the older men gone, he would have been a veritable god in his house, his every whim obeyed. His mother would not have dared to give him those long, deep stares that she sometimes gave him when he tried to exercise his God-given authority over her. She would not move so slowly, but quickly, like she did for his father. And his sisters — well, without being more specific, it would be a long time before either one of them saw the outside of the house.

  And for more reasons than just petty vengeance, he assured himself. It was not right that they should be out in public, even clad in their heavy veils and burquas. There were too many bad influences about, foreigners who roamed the streets as though they had a right to be there, imported from other countries to do the hard labor and distasteful tasks. Not so many now as there had been before, before the days of war with America. But still, sufficient.

  Sufficient to ruin lives.

  His oldest sister’s face flashed into his mind, the way he remembered it when he was young. Dark hair, darker eyes, skin so translucent that it seemed impossible it could contain a body like his. Indeed, he was convinced that her body was nothing like his, not with the dirt and grime and sweat that clung to him and the other men every day. She was faintly scented, always cool and gentle. When his mother was not available, it was from her that he sought comfort. Nothing had been the same since she had left.

  Since she had died.

  She had been outside the house, coming home from the market, with his two other sisters. Their mother had not gone that day, and he blamed the old woman for what had followed. The evil crone would have known to stick to the busy streets, to have been home before evening started. As it was, as the sky grew dark, the family had started to worry.

  Finally, just before full darkness set in, his two younger sisters stumbled into the door. Their burquas were torn and a shocking expanse of skin showed. They had lost their veils, and pale white ovals of faces stared out at him from the black robes. His youngest sister had a bruise showing on one cheek, and the other had a split lip, a few drops of dried blood still on her neck and hand.

  The two girls were rightly terrified of being punished, and it took a while to get the story out. Finally, when his father had forced the details from them, he picked up his gun and left, taking Hamish’s two older brothers with him.

  They had left him in charge, but there seemed to be precious little he could do to maintain control. He w
as outnumbered now with the older men gone, and the appearance of the servants on the scene served only to add to the cacophony. He tried to shout, to be heard above the screaming, but his mother had rounded on him, stared at him for a moment, then, without speaking, slapped him smartly across the face.

  He had never seen a woman strike a man, nor even heard a woman raise her voice to one. The shock stopped him where he stood, and he could do nothing except stare in disbelief as his mother gathered up his sisters and the female servants and retreated to the women’s quarters. The door shut firmly behind them.

  For a few moments, he felt like crying. His sisters — one missing, two clearly hurt, all the men gone — and now, to be barred from whatever else was going on. It was almost too much for a nine-year-old boy to take. His eyes filled with tears and he felt the beginnings of a sob shake his body.

  But what if his father came home and saw him like that? The humiliation and pain he suffered at his mother’s hands would be nothing compared to what would happen then. So, he regained control of himself, forcing his features into the stern, angry mask he’d seen so often on his father’s face, and settled down to wait. The more he thought of it, the more he convinced himself that he had sent the women to their own quarters to deal with things. Yes, that’s what his father would have done. The memory of the stinging slap across his face retreated.

  Two hours later, his father and his brothers returned. They brought with them the lifeless body of his older sister. He almost started to cry again when he saw her hanging limp and lifeless over his older brother’s shoulder, a rag doll who apparently weighed no more than a sack of grain. His brother pushed open the door to the women’s quarters and tossed his sister’s body inside. Then he shut the door behind him and returned to stand by his father.