Phantom Strike

by William H. Lovejoy

  If she was still there when they got back. He was going to have to prod Wyatt some more. Though they had been best friends for so long he had forgotten the starting date, he knew that Wyatt could be pretty damned obstinate about some things. His first marriage had soured him on the emotive aspects of life.

  Barr also knew, based on his own experiences and the rotating roster of women he dated, that he wasn’t particularly qualified as a matchmaker. Maybe Wyatt knew something he didn’t know. Hell, he didn’t know what to do.

  He was sure that Kramer’s problem involved frustrated love, but he couldn’t just shove Wyatt into something he didn’t want to do.

  Life was a bitch sometimes.

  Like for some Ethiopians he had never met, but knew he’d like if he ever did. He thought about that for awhile, to get his mind off Wyatt and Kramer.

  Checked the skies around him. The lightening skies were cloudless, but were full of Phantoms, unarmed but with twin drop tanks slung beneath the wings. Wyatt and Gettman were ahead of, and a quarter-mile above, him. Zimmerman was riding his right wing, and Hack-ley and Jordan had paired off a half-mile to his left.

  At thirty-two thousand feet, he could see the dawn coming at him, shooting spears of light off the Phantoms above. It was coming up on four A.M. local, which was just a solid expanse of darkened ocean. A glance at his fuel state told him that it was also time for an F-4 breakfast. They had taken off from Maine at eleven-fifteen Eastern Daylight Time, two hours behind the Hercs, and had just about reached their fuel limit.

  The problem with this leg of the trip was that it was forty-two hundred miles long, and the F-4s, with a low-consumption cruise at 550 miles per hour, could plan on running out of fuel twice, at sixteen hundred miles and at thirty-two hundred miles. The C-130s, even with a maximum overload take-off weight of 175,000 pounds, could extend themselves to five-thousand miles and complete their share of the journey with ease.

  The Phantoms needed a couple refuellings apiece, but their tanker didn’t have the capacity to meet that need.

  Wyatt and Barr had figured it as closely as they could, poring over almanacs and meteorological studies for average prevailing winds at various altitudes. Without the drag of weapons and pylons, but with the drag of drop tanks, and with careful manipulations of the throttles, it was going to be possible. Each jet would get one full refuelling and, later, another six-tenths refuelling before the tanker’s fuel bladders were drained. Depending on tail winds, they might have to do some coasting to make Quallene on fumes.

  They would also have to hope that their penetration of the African shoreline went unnoticed. There wasn’t much tolerance for wasting fuel in radar-dodging manoeuvres. They would cross the coast low, wishfully below possible radar coverage, but those few minutes would consume fuel at high rates.

  Barr hit the transmit button. “Hey, Big Yucca, you see Thirsty yet?

  Only Wyatt was utilizing his radar occasionally, so as not to advertise six radars.

  “About thirty miles ahead, Bucky. What’s your state?”

  “I can wait a while.”

  Wyatt asked each pilot for his fuel state, and, after the replies, said, “Yucca Six, then Four, then Two, then Five, then Three.”

  A few minutes later, Ben Borman came up on the Tac Two channel.

  “I count six still with us. You see me?”

  Barr had already located the tanker, several miles ahead and a thousand feet above. She was clearly defined against a brightening sky.

  He rogered the query when his turn came.

  After Jordan and Gettman had had their chances, Barr took a sip of water from the baby bottle tucked into his harness, then eased in throttle and gently closed the gap between himself and the C-130F.

  The refuelling hose was fully extended from the port wing, seeming to float below the Hercules. The small airfoils near the tip allowed the operator to fly the tip within a short range, making the last manoeuvres to dock the tip in the receiving aircraft’s fuel receptacle. He could see Borman, though not clearly, in the Plexiglas bubble at the rear of the tanker.

  “Atta way, Bucky, come on a tad more.”

  “What the hell’s a ‘tad more,’ Ben?”

  “Up ten feet. Speed’s matched.”

  Barr was studying the end of the hose, which was just above him. He opened the refuelling receptacle, which was located on the top of the fuselage, behind the canopy.

  A bad spot of air, a misdirection with the stick or throttles, and that heavy tip could do devastating things to canopies and pilots.

  He eased back the stick a notch.

  The hose lowered on him.

  “Don’t go getting the hiccoughs, Denny,” Barr cautioned Maal.

  “Hiccough,” Maal said.

  “Easy, Bucky.” From Borman.

  Centred the stick.

  “A tiny goose of the throttle; come to Thirsty,” Borman said.

  Nudge.

  The hose slid overhead.

  “You hang tight, right there,” Borman said.

  He centred the stick and watched the wings of the C-130, ready to match any change the tanker might make.

  “Gotcha!”

  He felt the hose connector make contact with the airframe, but he kept his eyes riveted on the airplane above him, taking quick glances at Borman behind his protective window.

  “Do you want to catch the windshield while you’re at it, Ben?”

  “Sure thing. You using a credit card? I got a four percent discount for cash.”

  “Guy behind me is picking up the tab. Ask him.”

  It didn’t take long. He flicked the rotary switch to check fuel loads on the main and external tanks.

  “That’ll do it, Ben.”

  “Roger. I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

  Barr eased off the throttles and the C-130 pulled away. He closed the receptacle, did a half-wingover, and slid away from the tanker.

  “Eighteen hundred and forty gallons doesn’t go very far, does it, Bucky?” Zimmerman asked.

  “Hell, man, we’re getting almost a mile to a gallon.”

  “Don’t tell the EPA,” Gettman said. “They’ll want us to change to four-cylinder engines.”

  *

  As was typical, Martin Church arrived at his office at seven in the morning. He was barely into his third cup of coffee when the first call was passed through by his secretary at eight o’clock.

  “Good morning, Mr. Director. This is Cal Norman at the Post.”

  “Good morning, Cal. How are you?”

  “Fine, sir. I’m trying to get confirmation on an item that landed on my desk. Or my phone.”

  “What is that?”

  “There’s this guy out in New Mexico somewhere that…”

  “A guy? Does he have a name, Cal?”

  “Uh, yeah, he gave me his name, but I’m supposed to keep it confidential.”

  “That’s understandable,” Church said. “So he gave you a hot tip?”

  “That’s what he says. Something about a clandestine air force operating out of Nebraska. His guess is that the CIA has to be involved.”

  “His guess?”

  “Well, there’s not too many groups have themselves six F-4 fighters,” Norman said.

  “F-4s? Those are all but obsolete, aren’t they, Cal?” Church was fond of talking to reporters in question marks.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t looked into this too far just yet.”

  “How about survivalists? Or white extremists? Those groups are building some fascinating armouries, Cal.”

  “But airplanes?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe the FBI does. What does your informant have to do with it?”

  “He said he worked on the planes.”

  “And did what with them?”

  “Painted them, for one thing.”

  “What colour?”

  “Colour? Cream with red stripes.”

  “Those aren’t the colours I’d use on warplanes, Cal.”
<
br />   “That’s a fact, Mr. Director.”

  “What kind of ordnance did he report?”

  “Ordnance?”

  “Weapons.”

  “Well, he didn’t mention any weapons.”

  “I’m sure you’re aware of this, Cal, but your informant seems to be a little short on facts. Did he say anything about a use for the planes? Have they got targets?”

  “Well, a couple of my colleagues are checking with Nebraska and with some of the Middle East people in the city.”

  “Why Middle East, Cal?”

  “Uh, given the current world conditions, that seemed the most obvious. Don’t you have some ideas, Mr. Director?”

  “I’ve been trying to give you some leads here, Cal. How about the DEA?”

  “DEA?”

  “The drug enforcement people might use airplanes like that for interdiction. Hell, I don’t know. I’m just trying to help you out.”

  “Well, I appreciate it,” Norman said.

  “Maybe they tossed him out of the group, or something. Maybe he’s got a grudge? If I were you, I’d call him back and ask about weapons. Or if he got himself blackballed from the group.”

  “Yeah, maybe I’ll do that. Thanks, Mr. Church.”

  *

  They took on the last of their fuel two hundred miles off the coast and two hundred miles south of the Canary Islands. Wyatt then ordered all of the aircraft into a tight formation, the C-130s flying nearly wingtip-to-wingtip, and the Phantoms flying in a compressed diamond beneath the transports. On any radar in the area, they would be picked up as one blip, a single airplane on its way to somewhere.

  One unknown airplane is much less threatening than eight unknown airplanes.

  Once they were grouped up, Wyatt ordered a gradual descent, conserving fuel as much as possible.

  The formation crossed the coastline at one thousand feet of altitude, one hundred miles north of Dakhla, Western Sahara. The next northern city of relative importance, Laayoune, was nearly three hundred miles away.

  The Western Sahara Desert, once they were past the tiny bit of green along the coast, was dismal and forbidding. At their low altitude, it seemed to go on forever. Millions of square miles of rolling, undulating, almost colour-free blandness.

  Wyatt had flown in North Africa before, but never in this region. He had studied the maps, but the maps were short of landmarks and population centres. No one wanted to live here, and he couldn’t blame them.

  He checked the chronometer. 0912 hours local.

  He looked up. Jim Demion was holding the Hercules steady two hundred feet above him.

  “Wizard, Yucca One.”

  They had agreed to use only call signs after violating the airspace of Western Sahara.

  “Go, One.”

  “Give it about ten more miles, then start gaining altitude at a hundred feet per minute. We want to get up where the fuel consumption reads a little better.”

  “Roger, One. We’ll do it.”

  They were at fifteen thousand feet, idling along at 350 knots to stay with the transports, an hour and forty minutes later. The landscape hadn’t changed much at all, though the sun was higher. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and though that generally was a positive sign for pilots, Wyatt missed the clouds.

  “Yucca One, Four,” Gettman said.

  “Go.”

  “You suppose we’re within fifty miles of where it is we want to be? At that time, I begin to go into my famous panic routine.”

  “Let me check on it, Four.”

  Wyatt spun in the frequency on his Tac One radio. “Degas.”

  He waited for a count of ten, then tried again. “Degas.”

  One thousand one, one thousand two, one thou… “That you, Yucca?”

  “Roger that, Degas. I need a signal for my ADF.”

  His Automatic Direction Finder needed a radio transmitter emitting a signal in order to be useful.

  “Yucca, I hate to get mean about it, but you’re a couple days off schedule, you know that?”

  “I know it,” Wyatt said.

  “This mean I have to get rid of my harem?”

  “Just give me the damned signal.”

  “Ah, roger the signal, Yucca. Coming up.”

  Twelve

  When he heard the first faint drone of airplane engines, Neil Formsby finished his glass of iced tea, donned the shirt he had prepared, rose from his cot, and left the tent.

  There was a light breeze blowing out of the southwest, but it was not strong enough to raise a lot of dust or sand.

  For some unfathomable reason, he had been enjoying his solitude. There was nothing like being by one’s self a thousand kilometres from anywhere to enforce introspection. Jesus Christ in the wilderness. He felt as if he needed another thirty-five days, and he halfway resented Wyatt showing up early. And contrary to the careful planning, they had arrived during daylight; he would not be allowed to demonstrate his jury-rigged runway lights.

  Formsby had known Wyatt for fifteen years. They had first met when Wyatt was detached to the Royal Air Force to learn to fly Harrier jump-jets with Formsby’s squadron, and they had become good friends. Wyatt had made the arrangements which brought Formsby to the United States for a year-long course in air superiority tactics, and he had smoothed the way for Formsby to get time in F-15s and F-16s. That alone was worth a lifetime’s friendship.

  When RAF Captain Neil Formsby had lost power on his Harrier at a hovering thousand feet and jammed his foot through the firewall in the ensuing crash, he woke up in the hospital to find Wyatt in attendance. And after he was out of the hospital and in rehabilitation, Wyatt had been there with a job offer. Only for Wyatt would Formsby isolate himself in a hostile and foreign desert and come to enjoy it.

  He was impressed when he first caught sight of the approaching aircraft. The two lumbering transports were flanked on each side by three fighters. They were a thousand feet off the ground when they passed over, the roar of twenty engines thundering with an impact he could feel right down through his toes.

  One of the jets waggled his wings at him.

  Formsby truly missed, and achingly longed for, the cockpit of a fighter aircraft.

  As they went by toward the east, the C-130s fanned out wide and let the Phantoms have first chance at Formsby’s crude runway. They turned back and made their approaches quickly enough that he supposed fuel was becoming critical.

  It wasn’t until the first aircraft touched down that he considered that his efforts at levelling ground could possibly be inadequate. Wyatt had told him that they would substitute softer tires for rough airfields, but the F-4 still managed five hops before it settled in.

  His runway was almost too short.

  Sand-covered hard earth did not offer the same friction as concrete or asphalt, and excessive pressure on the brakes induced skidding.

  The first Phantom reached the end of the airstrip and had barely turned off when the next one touched down.

  Formsby ran out to meet the first plane. His running gait was a trifle lopsided because of his ankle.

  Its nose hobbled up and down in rapid little motions as it crossed the sand toward him. In the glare of the sun off the windscreen, he could not make out who was at the controls.

  He spun around, revealing the back of his shirt to the pilot. In big black letters on the white shirt were the words: “FOLLOW ME.”

  Trotting toward the tanker trailers, he led the big jet to a spot near his tent, then turned and waved his hand in a horizontal circle.

  The pilot raised his canopy as the Phantom turned ninety degrees, then braked to a stop.

  Formsby gave him a cut-throat signal, and the turbojets spun down.

  The pilot slipped his helmet off, and Formsby recognized Barr.

  “Good morning, Nelson,” he called.

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  “Oh, right. Sometimes, I forget who I am. G’day to you, mate.”

  “That’s an atrocious
accent, Nelson.”

  “We do what we can.”

  “You must have been lowest on fuel,” Formsby said.

  “I resent that, Neil. I’ve got two, maybe three litres left.”

  Formsby grinned at him, then trotted out to meet the next plane.

  In twenty minutes, he had all of the planes parked, the jets aligned with their tails toward the tank trailers, and the C-130s side by side in front of them.

  Men spilled from the Hercules aircraft, produced ladders, and helped the pilots out of their cockpits.

  He received at least a half-dozen compliments on the design of his shirt.

  Crossing to the fourth interceptor, he greeted Wyatt as the man came down the ladder.

  “Welcome to my humble air base, Andrew.”

  Wyatt threw out his hand, and they shook hands. “Outside of a demonstrated need for more practice with a bulldozer, Neil, you’ve done very well. It’s good to see you.”

  “We are meeting earlier than expected, are we not? I would hate to think my calendar has been running slow.”

  “We’re early, and I’ll tell you why in a little while,” Wyatt said. “First, we’ll visit your latrine…”

  Formsby waved his hand at the vista around them.

  “…then, if you’ve got something to drink?”

  “There’s about nine thousand gallons of water. Or, your unexpected arrival has caught me with a few bottles of unconsumed ale and champagne. It’s in the icebox.”

  “You always did know how to live in the desert,” Barr said as he approached, his hand out. “What’s for lunch, buddy?”

  “We live off the land here, Nelson.”

  “Ecch.”

  Formsby shook hands also with Demion and Kriswell, both of whom he had met before, then Wyatt took him in tow and introduced him to the others.

  The group scattered for the dunes to relieve themselves while Formsby popped the corks on his last four bottles of champagne, put out the ale, and started stacking paper plates with ham-and-cheese sandwiches. He used Swiss cheese since Americans in general had no palate for more exotic cheeses.

  Since they could not all fit inside the tent, they ate their lunch sitting on the hot earth in the shade created by a C-130 wing.

  Wyatt brought him, and apparently most of the others, up to date on the reasons for the premature initiation of their mission.