As the tank veered around the destroyed lead vehicle, a bomb took out the third tank. An oily ball of fire mushroomed upward from the destroyed tank.
Another twin-finned fighter swept overhead. One after the other, long-nosed, stubby-winged F/A-18s raked theSherji positions with cluster bombs. As Gritti watched, the surviving tank backed up, reversed course, and was clanking at high speed toward the canopy cover from which it had emerged.
Another near-miss. A bomb hit three feet from the tank’s left side, kicking it sideways, destroying its left track. Seconds later the hatch flew open. The crippled tank’s three-man crew bailed out and ran pell-mell across the exposed hillside. Twenty yards from the low scrub brush, they were cut down by a hail of automatic fire.
“That’s Corporal Brady’s team earning their pay,” said Plunkett, watching the action with his glasses.
“Get the fire teams back to the perimeter,” Gritti ordered. “They have to get out of the way of the bombers.”
While Plunkett issued the instructions, Gritti heard something else—a familiar beating noise above the din of the explosions and the roar of the jets.
Rotor blades. Whopping, thrashing the air, coming from the south. A beautiful sound.
Gritti and Plunkett looked at each other. Each wore a two-day stubble of beard. A layer of grime and camo paint covered their faces. Their eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue and stress.
“Master Sergeant,” Gritti said, “it appears that the cavalry may be on its way.”
“About damn time, sir.”
The beat of the rotor blades swelled in intensity. A pair of Whiskey Cobras popped over the southern ridgeline, their noses low, the chin-mounted rotary cannons swiveling from side to side looking for targets. A second pair appeared behind them. As the Cobras swept over the marines’ perimeter, the brittle roar of the high-velocity cannon drowned out the other battle noises. From the lead Cobra’s inboard pylon a salvo of 2.75-inch rockets screeched toward a gun position in the trees. A geyser of flame and debris gushed upward from the foliage.
A deeper throbbing sound pounded on Gritti’s eardrums. Behind another pair of protective Whiskey Cobras appeared the CH-53E Super Stallions. Three of the cargo helicopters were hauling swing loads—fighting vehicles suspended in slings beneath the aircraft.
Gritti tried to count the helos. He couldn’t. They kept coming, one wave behind the other.
“Jesus,” said Plunkett, staring at the apparition. “It looks likeApocalypse Now. ”
Gritti nodded. He could feel the throb of the blades all the way up through the soles of his boots. Marines were fast-roping out of the hovering craft. The Stallions with the swing loads were lowering the heavy vehicles to the earth.
So far, Gritti observed, no SAMs. No fireballs from destroyed helicopters. No mortars being lobbed into the perimeter. The heavy guns of theSherji had fallen silent. He liked the way this was going.
His ambush teams were making their way back. The first wave of the assault force was entering the southern perimeter. Gritti heard the deep chuffing of diesel engines, and seconds later a pair of LAV-25s—light armored vehicles—rumbled over the ridgeline and into the perimeter.
In trail behind the two light tanks appeared an HMMWV Hummer. As Gritti rose to his feet, the Hummer rolled across the clearing and ground to a halt.
From the right seat of the vehicle emerged Lt. Col. Aubrey Hewlitt, Gritti’s executive officer and second-in-command of the 43rd Marine Expeditionary Unit. He wore perfectly starched desert-camo BDUs, a sidearm, and the ubiquitous Fritz helmet.
Hewlitt peered at Gritti, unsure of what he was seeing.
“What the hell are you staring at?” said Gritti.
Recognizing his boss’s voice, Hewlitt stared. “Sorry, Colonel.” He stared for another second. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, you look like shit.”
It was too good to last,thought Maxwell.Something always happened that you didn’t expect.
Now it was happening. “Runner One-one, pop-up contact! Snap vector, bearing 345, twenty, low, in the weeds.”
The warning came from the E-2C Hawkeye—the turbo-prop airborne early warning aircraft—deployed in an orbit twenty miles south of the Yemeni coastline.
Fulcrums again? From where?Had they somehow gotten across the Red Sea from Eritrea or Chad? How did they arrive undetected?
They didn’t, he decided. They would have been picked up by the Hawkeye. These guys were locals.
“Bogeys bearing 330, fifteen, weeds.”
Maxwell still had no ID on them.Bogeys or bandits? Bogeys were unidentified, while bandits were bona fide, no-shit hostiles. Theyhad to be bandits if they were coming in low from the north.
If they waited any longer for an ID, it would be too late. They were already within missile range.
“Runner flight, jettison stores,” Maxwell called on the tactical frequency. He hit the emergency jettison button and felt awhump through the Hornet’s airframe as his remaining Rockeye containers and the centerline external fuel tank were punched away. The Super Hornet was no longer a lumbering bomber. It was a slick-winged fighter.
They were low, still pulling up from a pass on theSherji positions. Above and behind were Leroi Jones and Flash Gordon, about to roll in on ground targets.
The bogeys were coming in on the deck, fifteen miles away, head-on. The merge would come in less than a minute.
“Radar air-to-air.” Maxwell switched his APG-73 radar from bombing mode to air-to-air. Within a few sweeps of the radar, he saw an EID—electronic identification—on the incoming bogey. It was what he expected—a MiG-29.
Fulcrum.
He looked again. No, not just one bogey.Damn it, there are three more. “Four bandits, twelve o’clock, ten miles low,” called the controller in the Hawkeye, confirming Maxwell’s radar display.
His RWR shrieked a high-pitched warbling sound. He was being targeted by a Russian Slotback radar.
“Runner One-one spiked at twelve, defending!” he called, rolling his Hornet and pulling hard. He hoped Pearly was staying with him. “Runner One-two, press!” he called, giving the tactical lead to Pearly.
A classic setup.The MiGs were getting the first shot. His best chance to defeat the missile—he guessed that it was a radar-guided Alamo—was chaff, a cloud of radar-decoying aluminum foil.
Rolling back to the left, he saw it. Coming up at him, trailing a wisp of gray smoke, the missile was flying a classic pursuit curve. Toward Maxwell’s jet.
“Brick, break left!” Pearly Gates’s voice was urgent. “Bandit ten o’clock low.”
Maxwell swung his head—and there it was, the cobralike shape of the lead MiG-29 silhouetted against the landscape. The MiG was in a climbing turn toward him.
But he had a more immediate problem—the incoming Alamo. The missile was in a maximum-rate turn, arcing upward.
Another barrel roll to the left, pulling hard, seven Gs. The missile was closing on him, curving toward his tail.
Whoosh.
Straining under the heavy G load, he watched the Alamo sizzling past his tail, then felt the concussion as the proximity fuse exploded the warhead a hundred yards behind him.
How close?Maxwell braced, waiting for the same sickening sensation of two days before—loss of control, warning lights, engine fire.
“You okay, Brick?” asked Pearly Gates.
“I think so. Everything is still working.”
“Runner Two, Fox Three on the lead group trailer.”
“Take him. I’ve got the leader engaged.”
“Roger. Yo-yo. Runner One-one engaged defensive with the leader.” Pearly was on his own while Maxwell fought the lead Fulcrum.
“Runner One-three and -four have the trailers,” called Leroi Jones, leading the second section of Hornets. “We’re sorted.”
Maneuvering to defeat the Alamo had cost him airspeed. The lead MiG’s nose was pointed well inside Maxwell’s turn radius, gaining a precious angle on him.
&
nbsp; The fighters passed, a hundred yards apart. As the desert-colored MiG swept past, Maxwell glimpsed the yellow helmet, a visored face watching him. Puffs of vapor were spilling off the MiG’s wings from the high G load.
Who is this guy?What was with the yellow helmet?
Was it Al-Fasr?
As the MiG passed behind his shoulder, Maxwell swung his head, keeping the fighter in sight. He hauled the nose up, up, then rolled toward the MiG.
The MiG’s nose came up, countering Maxwell. Climbing, the two fighters pulled back toward each other. Again they crossed, noses high.
Now what?Maxwell asked himself. In a one-vee-one with a MiG-29, there was no way out. The aging Russian fighter was as fast as a Hornet. If you tried to bug out, the MiG had a free shot at your tail.
Now he was in a turning fight with a Fulcrum. And the guy flying it was matching the Hornet move for move. Definitely not your average undertrained and demoralized MiG pilot who just wanted to save his ass.
It had to be Al-Fasr.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THETROUBLE WITH SAM
North Central Yemen
1305, Thursday, 20 June
“Splash One!” called Pearly Gates.
It was the brevity signal for an aerial kill. Pearly Gates watched his AIM-120 radar-guided missile slam into the right intake of the second MiG-29. The fighter split in half, spewing debris and pieces from the shattered airframe. Exactly one second later, the main fuel cell erupted in an orange fireball. From five hundred feet, the flaming wreckage tumbled to the floor of the desert.
Where were the trailers? Pearly picked them up on his situational display, then went outside again for a visual ID.
There.He saw the dark shapes of the two trailing MiGs a mile behind the destroyed fighter, fast and low in a combat spread.
He heard Leroi Jones call, “Runner One-three and -four have the trailers locked.”
Okay, the trailers were covered. But that left Brick and the lead MiG still in a furball somewhere.
“Runner Two blind on One,” Pearly called, declaring that he didn’t have Maxwell in sight.
“One’s blind on you, engaged neutral,” Maxwell answered.
Pearly called the Hawkeye. “Battle-ax, Runner Two. Vector for Runner One-one.”
“Runner One-one is ten miles, merged plot,” answered the controller in the Hawkeye.
“Runner One-two inbound.” Pearly reefed the Hornet’s nose around in a climbing turn, switching his scan from outside back to the APG-73 radar.
Then he saw the two blips—Maxwell’s Hornet and the MiG-29. The blips were nearly superimposed.
Another AIM-120 missile shot was out of the question. They were too close together. The autonomously guided missile was as likely to home in on Maxwell as the MiG.
Maybe a heat-seeking Sidewinder, which was a “fire and forget” weapon. He’d wait until he had a clear shot.
In the next second, Pearly’s blood ran cold.
“Burner six! Burner six hot!” It was Ironclaw, the EA-6B Prowler, reporting an SA-6 surface-to-air missile.
At the same time Pearly heard the warbling sound from his RWR. The SAM was airborne—locked on Pearly’s Hornet.
He saw it, bursting into the hazy sky like a fire-tailed comet. He hit the chaff-dispenser button on his throttle, releasing a trail of the finely cut aluminum foil into the wake of his jet.
“Runner One-two spiked, defending,” he yelled on the radio, declaring that he was leaving the fight. “Shit, it’s an SA-6.”
He rolled perpendicular to the missile and punched his chaff program dispenser.Make it maneuver. Make it break lock. Out-turn the sonofabitch. He pulled the Hornet’s nose down, seeing the rugged terrain of Yemen fill up his windscreen.
By modern standards, the Russian-built SA-6 wasn’t a highly sophisticated missile, but it was still deadly. Pearly guessed that the radar-guided weapon was smart enough not to be fooled by chaff or the electronic jamming being provided by the Prowler.
He was right. It was coming up in a corkscrew pattern, constantly adjusting its flight path to stay locked onto Pearly’s Hornet.
As the missile came nearer, Pearly yanked the Hornet into an orthogonal roll—a high-G, square-cornered maneuver—using the maximum G load the Hornet’s fly-by-wire control system would allow. The missile followed. Still accelerating. Still tracking him.
Pearly’s heart hammered in his chest. The goddamn missile was like a hunter from hell. He could see the nose of the thing pulling lead, making tiny directional changes as it homed in on Pearly’s jet.
Coming closer. So close now he could see the control fins on the tail. Any second now, it would detonate. Pearly saw the missile coming for him.
Wait,he told himself.Wait until . . .
Now.He jammed the stick hard into the corner, completing the last right-angle corner of the roll.
He heard the dull moan of the rocket engine as the SAM zoomed past him. Not close enough to detonate the proximity fuse.
Peering over his shoulder, he saw the missile wobbling in a ballistic arc. Without a target, the SAM was flying an unguided descent back toward the earth.
He had escaped. But just barely.
Pearly eased back on the stick, leveling the Hornet at only two hundred feet above the terrain. For the first time since he saw the SAM, he resumed breathing. The feeling of relief flowed over him like a warm bath.
But only for a few seconds. The feeling was rapidly replaced by a fresh emotion: rage.Those ragheads tried to take me out with that goddamn rocket!
The anger swelled in Pearly Gates as another thought took hold of him.They’re still down there, the bastards! Loading up another one to shoot at us.
He heard the Hawkeye calling: “Runner Two, status check. Do you have battle damage?”
Pearly’s left thumb went to the mike button to acknowledge. Then he removed it.
“Runner Two, do you read Battle-ax? Answer up.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, his fingers went to the stores page on his multipurpose display. He had no air-to-ground weapons with which to fight the SAM. Except one. He selectedA /G GUN.
Gritti sat in the Hummer and stifled a yawn. Jesus, a short nap would be heaven. He’d never been so tired in his life.
But he couldn’t sleep now.
Hewlitt was giving him a worried look. “Maybe you’d better chill out, Gus. You can keep the Hummer and run the operation with—”
“Fuck that! I’ve been fighting this asshole for three days. Do you think I’m gonna miss the last hour of the battle?”
“Just thought I’d ask.”
The sounds of the skirmish across the valley had abated. TheSherji had put up a brief fight when the marines broke out of the perimeter, trying to defend what was left of their armor and artillery. With the Whiskey Cobras and a flight of Hornets spewing high explosives on them, they quickly ran out of enthusiasm.
“How many prisoners?” Gritti asked.
“Over a hundred. Those that couldn’t haul ass quick enough.”
Gritti could see them squatting in the clearing, guarded by a couple of marines. They looked less like soldiers than frightened tribesmen. Two intel specialists, with the help of a linguist, were pumping them for information about the Al-Fasr complex and the remainingSherji force.
“Casualties?”
“One, a gunny in Delta company. A 7.62 round in the calf. He’s already been evacuated along with the wounded from the TRAP team.”
Gritti realized he had already asked that question. He removed his helmet and massaged his temples with his fingertips. Shit, he was tired. He was starting to forget stuff.
Darkness was less than three hours away, and he had no intention of spending another night in Yemen. But even more than the impending nightfall, he had another worry. At any time he expected to receive the order to withdraw. Before that happened, he intended to be inside Al-Fasr’s compound.
Pearly kept the Hornet low, a hundred feet above the deck, pa
ralleling the ridge. The high ridge protruded from the scruffy terrain like the spine of a dragon. In tactical language this was called “terrain masking”—using topographic features like the ridge to obstruct the view of air defense radar.
As he skimmed the undulating terrain, a thought nagged at him:I’m going to catch hell for this. Maxwell is gonna kick my ass from here to Bahrain.
Pilots weren’t supposed to go after a SAM site by themselves, and certainly not with guns. It was the business of the EA-6B Prowlers or another package of F/A-18s to hammer the sites with HARM missiles. The HARM—high-speed antiradiation missile—homed in on the briefest of emissions from a fire control radar. Best of all, it could be fired from a safe standoff distance.
He put the thought out of his mind. He was a man on a mission. Like all fighter pilots, he hated SAMs and the evil bastards who fired them. Enemy fighter pilots he could regard as equals—warriors with whom he shared a code of battle. But the sneaky little shits who fired missiles at you were like rattlesnakes in the weeds.
Five miles. Almost to the pullup point. He needed at least three miles to pop up, acquire the target, and roll in. The site was concealed in a patch of trees at the end of a high, twisting ridgeline.
Nudging the throttles forward, he watched the airspeed notch over five hundred knots. He wanted lots of energy when he popped up.
At this speed and altitude, Pearly’s view amounted to a narrow cone of vision directly ahead. On either side, the terrain unrolled in a brownish blur. He had to concentrate, gently moving the stick to keep the Hornet just above the earth. One second’s lapse, and he would be a grease spot in the desert.
Still no RWR warning. Either the fire controllers weren’t picking him up yet—or they had hauled ass. The launcher and fire control radar were mounted on tracked vehicles. He prayed that they hadn’t yanked up their gear and headed for cover.
Three miles. Time to unmask.
He pulled the Hornet up hard, grunting under the four-G load. With the nose thirty degrees above the horizon on his HUD, he peered through the canopy at the drab brown Yemeni landscape, looking for the SAM site.
Acts of Vengeance Page 25