Phantom Strike

by William H. Lovejoy

“Wizard, Two,” Barr called. “One chem plant down in the dirt.”

  “Damage estimate?” Formsby asked.

  “Call it ninety percent, Neil. There’s still two smaller buildings standing, but I don’t think they’re part of the main plant.”

  “Good show, Bucky.”

  “Hell, Karl got two buildings. I only got one.” “How’s your structural damage?” Formsby asked. “The damage is all right. I don’t know about the plane. In any event, I’ve elected to head south. I believe I’ll skip the party at Marada.”

  “Stay with him, Four,” Demion ordered.

  “Tight as ticks on a hound,” Gettman said.

  “This is Wizard Three,” Vrdla broke in. “Your bogey’s going to leave you alone, Two.”

  “Good news,” Barr said.

  “Not so good. He’s coming after us.”

  *

  “I’ve been hit!” Jordan yelped.

  The report startled Wyatt for a moment, until he remembered Jordan wasn’t in Yucca Six. The RPV operators tended to think of themselves as being in their craft.

  Wyatt and Hackley were eleven miles from the target, past their IP, and catching up with Yucca Six, which should have been about two miles from the target.

  His radar screen was going crazy, reporting SAM radars lighting up all around the base. When he checked the windscreen, in the distance he could see antiaircraft guns opening up on Yucca Six.

  In the back of his mind, he worried about Bucky Barr. He had heard the exchanges with Wizard.

  “How bad, Six?” Formsby asked.

  “Hold a sec. I think I’m under control. I don’t think I’ve got a right aileron. Shaky as hell.”

  “Please tell me what you see, Clifford,” Formsby said. “I’m not getting much out of my role as a vicarious kibitzer.”

  Wyatt selected all of his bombs, as well as the electro-optical targeting system. All of the correct green LEDs came to life.

  “I think I’m about five hundred AGL,” Jordan said. “The altimeter’s fucked up, but my picture is clear. I’ve got the base in view.”

  “Bombs are armed?” Formsby asked.

  “I don’t know. I hit the switches, but I’m not getting feedback. I think I took shrapnel through the fuselage. I can’t tell about distance. Coming up fast. Oops. She tried to roll right. Oh, Christ!”

  “What! What do you see?” Formsby yelled.

  “Su-24s. Two of them are on roll out. I’m pulling left. She doesn’t want to go. There. Closing. Nose down. Two bombers on my screen. I…”

  “What’s up, Six?” Wyatt called.

  “It all disappeared, Andy. I probably took a SAM.” “You’re a backseater again. Start calling it.”

  It took a few seconds for Jordan to reorient himself, then he said, “Three, come right two degrees. One, back off a few hundred yards.”

  “Roger,” Wyatt answered and quickly reduced his throttle setting.

  Through the windscreen, he saw a column of dark grey smoke rising in the distance, ascending from a ball of reddish flame. That would be the wreckage of Yucca Six.

  “That’s a formidable fucking array of SAMS,” Jordan said. “Take it down five hundred feet. Let’s go to six hundred knots.”

  Wyatt backed off on the throttles some more. The altimeter read three thousand feet AGL.

  Six miles to target.

  “Yucca One, how many missiles do you have left?” Jordan asked.

  “One lonely Sidewinder.”

  “We’ve got three. Let’s launch them all, and see if we can screw up some SAM radars.”

  “Give me the word,” Wyatt said, resetting the armaments panel.

  At four miles out, with antiaircraft flak beginning to burst around them, Jordan said, “Now!”

  Wyatt launched his Sidewinder straight ahead and reselected his bomb load, taking four bombs for the first release and two for the second.

  Gettman’s missiles zipped off right behind his own.

  A few of the SAM radar operators were apparently alarmed by the sudden new echoes on their screens and half-a-dozen missiles whipped off their launchers. Missile vapour trails crisscrossed in the skies ahead. The Sidewinders swirled around, looking for the best heat sources, then dove toward the earth. Wyatt lost track of them and didn’t know where they hit.

  Wyatt worked the stick gently, jigging back and forth to the sides to put the AAA gunners off-stride. Ahead of him, Hackley was doing the same.

  “Goddamn!” Jordan called. “Look at that!”

  Wyatt rotated the thumbwheel and zoomed his video lens in on the base.

  The magnified view on the HUD showed him a single runway that appeared to be in utter chaos.

  Yucca Six must have impacted the runway right on top of the two Su-24s taking off. The whole north end of the runway was a carpet of burning chunks of fuselages and wings and engines. Rubble was spread everywhere. The separate fires contributed dark smoke to the single funnel climbing to the sky. A whitish haze was spreading quickly from the wreckage, dissipating in all directions except upward.

  He wondered what kind of gas it was.

  On the south end of the runway were another seven bombers, all lined up nicely on the runway and the taxiway. A couple hundred yards away from the taxiway were two MiG-23s being tended by fuel trucks. They were also being abandoned as figures ran away from them.

  The bombers’ route to freedom and the skyways was blocked by the destroyed aircraft on the runway.

  If the ant-like things he could see scurrying about on the screen were men, they were leaving the bomber aircraft where they sat, taking off in panicked flight for the desert, probably upwind. More ants were streaming up the ramps from the underground hangars.

  Wyatt centred the reticule on the first three bombers in the line-up and pickled the bombs off.

  The HUD reported, “BOMBS COMMITTED.”

  There was suddenly a hangar opening on the screen. He quickly locked the reticule in place, then clicked the release button again.

  “BOMBS COMMITTED,” blinked twice.

  Waited two seconds.

  Wheeled the magnification down to normal.

  Closing on the target.

  The ants became terrified men, running at top speed for the open desert.

  “Bombs away,” Jordan reported.

  The tail pipes of the Phantom ahead of him suddenly

  turned white-hot as Gettman went to afterburner and turned the nose skyward.

  Another second.

  Tha-WHUMP!

  The F-4 lurched sideways as an antiaircraft shell burst right alongside him.

  Despite his tightened harness, Wyatt was thrown hard against the right side of the cockpit.

  The first stick of bombs released.

  The Phantom tried to go over on its left side, and he fought the control stick back to the right.

  The second stick of bombs released.

  Wyatt’s ears rang from the concussion of the antiaircraft shell.

  The airplane danced a jig.

  A terrible rending noise erupted behind him on the right side.

  He glanced down at the instrument panel. His vision seemed dimmer than normal.

  The right turbojet was coming apart, spitting up turbine blades like a new-born. He had a whole bank of red lights blinking at him.

  He shut it down.

  The Phantom steadied.

  He checked the rear-view mirror.

  Marada Air Base, what was left of it, was several miles behind him. Dozens of fires raged now.

  He eased into a right turn.

  His speed was coming down drastically.

  “My God, Andy,” Gettman said, “you must have gotten a couple inside the hangar. There’s secondary explosions just rocking the ground. The desert floor is caving in in about a hundred places.”

  “How about the bombers, Karl?” Wyatt was forgetting his own fiat regarding call signs.

  His head felt thick and sluggish.

  Concussion. Mild
concussion. That was all.

  “What bombers? They got a scrap heap there. We can count eleven kills on the surface and take a wild-assed guess as to what was below ground.”

  “They’ll rename it Ramad’s Salvage and Recycling Centre,” Gettman said.

  Wyatt tried to assess the damage he had sustained. The fuselage skin on the right side was shoved into the cockpit by five or six inches.

  Down near his feet, he could see three rips in the skin. The wind shrieked through them.

  He seemed to have all of his flight controls. He carefully tested each.

  The engine monitors for the left turbojet were still operating, as was the engine. His airspeed indicator was gone, however, and he had to estimate that he was maybe holding three hundred knots.

  That wouldn’t last for long.

  No altimeter either.

  Looking through the right side of the canopy, which had a major and expanding crack in it, he saw that the leading edge of the right wing was peppered with holes. One hole, maybe two feet in diameter, went clear through the wing. The camouflage paint blended nicely with what he could see through the hole.

  He wondered if he was thinking irrationally.

  The right side of his face felt numb. The hearing in his right ear seemed to be gone.

  He unclipped the oxygen mask and felt his right cheek. There was no blood, but he had definitely just left the dentist’s chair.

  “Hey One, Three.”

  “One.”

  “You coming up here with me?”

  “I don’t think so,” Wyatt said.

  *

  Martin Church was still in Embry’s office.

  He had tired of studying Madonna.

  Embry had sent out for a large pizza, but each of them had only had one slice out of it.

  After number six, he had lost count of the cups of coffee he had poured down.

  “If I’d been thinking ahead,” Embry said, “I’d have put a descrambler into our satellite circuits so we could listen to what was going on.”

  “You think there’s much going on, now?”

  “All you have to do is look at that,” Embry said, pointing to the monitor.

  The heavy smoke over the chemical plant and Marada Air Base was very apparent in the satellite picture. After careful scrutiny of the screen and checks with the analysts at NS A, both Church and Embry were certain that none of the bombers had gotten off the ground.

  The satellite lens couldn’t capture the camouflaged aircraft in near real time, actual imagery, so they weren’t sure which airplanes were still aloft. Embry had called the NSA and had them switch to infrared tracking for a few moments, and they had been able to count five infrared tracks, all headed south. In addition, the camera angle gave them the infrared tracks of the two C-130s circling about two hundred miles south of the target zone.

  There were three alarming aspects, as far as Church was concerned.

  First, there were two apparently heavy aircraft approaching from the east.

  Second, a flight of eight aircraft, identified by their infrared signatures as probable MiG-23cs, had turned back from original courses, though they were apparently headed directly for Marada Air Base.

  Third, he was deeply saddened by the loss of two of Wyatt’s airplanes.

  “George, do you suppose we can do something for the families of those pilots? Quietly, of course.”

  Embry’s eyes narrowed, then he said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you, Marty. There weren’t any pilots in those planes.”

  “You son of a bitch!”

  Embry grinned. “I’ve got to have one card up my sleeve when I’m dealing with you, Marty.”

  Eighteen

  Nelson Barr found that his Phantom still had almost six hundred knots left in her. He used all of them, found a heading of 210 degrees, and climbed to fifteen thousand feet.

  The F-4 seemed to prefer flying in a slewed fashion, canted to the right, and he used practically all of the left rudder trim available to counter the drag of the extra three feet of wing on the right side.

  Karl Gettman moved in on his left wing and surveyed the damage.

  “What do you think, Karl?”

  “You’ll dance again, Bucky. You’re dangling some cabling and what looks like the hydraulic jack for the leading edge slat. Where the slat used to be.”

  Barr tried his navigational computer.

  Negative.

  But he had all the basics, and that was what he had learned to fly with.

  “Where’s that MiG, Dave?”

  “About sixty miles south, burning fuel like he’s got his own oil well,” Zimmerman said.

  “You guys go on ahead. The Herc may need help.”

  “You sure?” Gettman asked.

  “Go.”

  Formsby had been listening. He said, “We’re quite all right, you know.”

  “So am I,” Barr said. “Take off, Four.”

  Gettman climbed upward, got away from Barr’s Phantom, and kicked in the afterburners. He wasn’t worrying about fuel at this stage, either.

  Barr was beginning to worry about it.

  “One,” he said, “I haven’t heard from you.”

  “We’re plugging along,” Wyatt came back. “Three’s joined up with me.”

  “How plugged are you?” Barr asked.

  “There have been better days. I’ve lost the starboard turbojet, but I’m managing what, Three?”

  Hackley said, “Two-seven-oh knots. Right now.”

  “You drop all your ordnance?” Barr asked.

  “I’ve thrown away everything I can throw away.”

  “Give me some coordinates, Norm. I’ll find you.”

  “To hell with that,” Wyatt said. “You go where you’re supposed to go.”

  Barr shut up.

  He was passing south of the air base, and he wished he had brought a camera along. The damage was spectacular. There was burning wreckage all over the runway and taxiway. The ground had sagged deeply in a half-dozen spots over the subterranean hangars, and smoke and flames had broken through in several spots. A ground fog of white mist hung over everything. He saw men grouped together in clusters out in the desert away from the complex, and more people were still running, attempting to get away from the base.

  There were a number of bodies spread around also, and he tried to skip over those.

  But he couldn’t.

  *

  Wyatt had full power on his remaining turbojet and he was watching the temperatures closely. He had trimmed the controls out as far as he could to balance the aircraft, but he still had to maintain pressure on the left rudder. The calf of his left leg was going to know about it soon, he thought.

  Hackley had told him he was holding thirty-two hundred feet AGL, and he was beginning to believe he could maintain that for awhile. Fuel wasn’t a problem at the moment; he had lost half of his consumption end.

  “Can you come right a bit more?” Hackley asked.

  “Sure.”

  Wyatt released pressure on the left rudder, and the Phantom obediently swung right.

  “There you go, Andy. That puts you on two-one-five.”

  “Take off, Norm.”

  “Not on your life, which is what we’re talking about, right? When you go down, I want your coordinates, and you don’t have anything left to tell you what they are.”

  That point was difficult to argue.

  “Wizard Three,” Wyatt said.

  “Go, One.”

  “What are you showing in the area? Anything coming out of Tripoli or Benghazi?”

  “If they are, I haven’t seen them. We’re showing that MiG about a hundred out, and that’s all.”

  “You guys skedaddle.”

  “We’ve got this one covered,” Demion said. “You just pay attention to what you’re doing.”

  Wyatt concentrated on his flying.

  *

  Ramad tried calling Marada Air Base, but no one answered his call. The fools were probably
hiding under the tables. He thought about diverting Orange Squadron from its Return to Base command, but knew he would not need them for an attack on a slow-moving target.

  He thought about tuning in the Tripoli command frequency, and decided against that. He didn’t want to talk to anyone from the staff until after he had finished this.

  The altimeter read ten thousand meters.

  His airspeed was Mach 1.7.

  Abruptly, a target appeared on the top edge of his radar screen. It was thirty-five kilometres away, and it appeared to be flying in a large circle.

  It was definitely their command plane, and he would blow it out of the sky.

  He checked his armaments panel. His three remaining AA-8s were indicating availability.

  Reducing his throttle settings, he remembered someone with whom he should talk. He used the secondary tactical channel.

  *

  Ahmed al-Qati heard Ramad calling.

  After the fourth try, he responded. “Vulture, this is Colonel al-Qati.”

  Ramad ignored the use of his name. “What is your position?”

  “Colonel, the C-130s have been recalled and are returning to El Bardi. Some of the MiGs are still refuelling. Tripoli has recalled the entire operation.”

  Al-Qati did not mention that the transports he and Shummari now commanded were no longer part of the group of C-130s retreating to the coast. They were now one hundred kilometres west of the border, heading west-south-west.

  “That is impossible! I have not called off Test Strike.”

  “There is no more Test Strike, Colonel. Your bombers are destroyed on the runway. Your air base is destroyed. The casualties are high. The last report said seventy dead and many more than that wounded. Colonel Ghazi has been killed.”

  Al-Qati realized he was talking to no one. Ramad had given up listening.

  But then, he had done that many months before.

  *

  “You won’t be needing me here, will you, James?”

  “Go ahead, Neil,” Demion said.

  Formsby removed his headset and disconnected his oxygen mask, then pushed himself up out of the co-pilot’s seat.

  Demion had already taken the Hercules out of its programmed circle and was on a heading of 190 degrees. The four turbine engines were churning out one hundred percent power.

  Formsby was no more out of the seat than Kriswell was into it.