Phantom Strike

by William H. Lovejoy

Kriswell lost both of his seats.

  Maal took the co-pilot’s seat and Barr, now in jeans and a blue golf shirt, but still wearing his flight boots, took the engineer’s seat.

  Jordan had wanted to fly the transport, but Demion told him he was suffering from shock, which may have been true, Formsby thought. Demion had consigned both Jordan and Hackley to sleeping bags in the cargo bay.

  Formsby elected to hold onto a grab bar on the flight deck, so he could see through the windshield.

  “You ought to tie yourself up, Neil,” Demion said.

  “I have an inordinate amount of faith in you, James.”

  He leaned over so he could see through the windscreen. They had something of a narrow alley to traverse between the two F-4s on the left and Hackley’s crashed Phantom on the right.

  Barr looked at his watch, and Formsby knew he was thinking about the timers on the explosives.

  He checked his own watch. Thirty-two minutes before the three F-4s transformed themselves into shrapnel.

  Demion advanced the throttles.

  The turboprops increased their pitch.

  The Hercules began to move.

  Rolled twenty feet, picking up speed.

  And the nose settled.

  The nose gear sank into a soft spot, and the transport lugged down, slowed, stopped.

  Demion goosed the throttles.

  Nothing.

  Demion tugged the throttles back.

  “Shit!” Barr said. “Okay, everybody grab a shovel and get outside.”

  *

  Kramer called again.

  Church took it on Embry’s phone. He was glad his wife didn’t sit by a telephone with an automatic dialler through every crisis in his office.

  “There’s nothing to report yet,” he said.

  “I can count minutes,” she said. “Fuel states are critical.”

  Church looked over at the monitor, which was now back on real time, since the infrared returns had disappeared. The small silver shape of the C-130 sitting on the ground was visible, though the camouflaged F-4s were not. The transport had started moving, then stopped. Embry was trying to figure out why. It hadn’t moved in fifteen minutes.

  Also visible were two C-130s approaching from the east.

  “They’re all on the ground,” he told her reluctantly. He didn’t mention that the NSA had reported that one Phantom had crashed seventy-three miles north of the others.

  “Where?”

  “In the host country.”

  “But that’s not right!”

  “Fuel may have been a factor. But it appears that they’re changing aircraft now.”

  “Call me,” she said and hung up.

  Church wasn’t certain he wanted to make the next call.

  *

  The column of smoke grew larger as the C-130 lost altitude and centred its nose on the funnel. Ahmed al-Qati stood behind the pilot’s seat and studied the ground.

  When they finally came into range, their radar had tracked this airplane until its demise. Captain Rahman had yelled triumphantly the second it went off the screen.

  The radar had also followed another aircraft which had been flying with this one. It had split off and flown farther to the south and then also went off the screen. Al-Qati had elected to examine this one before chasing after the other.

  “There!” the co-pilot exclaimed.

  Switching quickly to the windows on the other side, al-Qati peered downward and saw the parachute canopy spread on the ground.

  “He got out of the airplane before it crashed,” the co-pilot needlessly explained.

  They passed over the burning wreckage. Al-Qati thought that the pilot was a very lucky man. He had not seen an aircraft that had suffered so much destruction in a crash. There were thousands of small pieces spread over a half-kilometre diameter. It was impossible to tell from here what kind of airplane it had been.

  “Land the airplane, Lieutenant,” he told the pilot.

  “I cannot, not here.”

  “Find the best place.”

  The transport rolled to the right, and al-Qati was forced to brace his feet.

  “Sundown?”

  Pushing himself back to the opposite bulkhead, al-Qati switched to the tactical radio channel.

  “Moonglow, we are going to land now and deploy the helicopters.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  They had to fly almost fifteen kilometres north before they found a place where the pilot would attempt to land. The landing was quite rough and could have been better, al-Qati thought, but it was certainly superior to that made by the intruder’s fighter aircraft.

  When the transport finally came to a stop, he, Rahman, and the Strike Platoon’s commander, Lieutenant Hakim, were the first to deplane, exiting the crew compartment hatchway. The ramp was lowered next, and the soldiers of his First Special Forces poured out. Many of them appeared relieved.

  Shummari’s transport touched down two minutes later, and almost before it stopped, the ramp started to lower. His crews were already unfastening the cables holding down their helicopters. The Strike Platoon soldiers loped over to help disembark the Mi-8s.

  The officers met in the space between the two airplanes. The dust raised by the landings hung in the air, coating their faces, but not protecting them from the heat.

  “Khalil, we will want one helicopter for Lieutenant Hakim and the Strike Platoon. I will go with them to find the pilot of this airplane. The rest will go with Captain Rahman in the other helicopter and search for the other bomber.”

  Shummari said, “I will fly this one myself, Ahmed.”

  Within ten minutes, the first Mi-8 had rolled down the ramp, unfolded and locked its rotors, and the platoon embarked. Al-Qati tossed his CW gear aside, checked the magazine of his pistol, found a canteen, and climbed aboard.

  Major Shummari strapped himself into the pilot’s seat and went through the sequence of starting the turbine engines.

  They lifted off in a swirling cloud of hazy dust, and the nose swung around and dipped toward the south.

  They would find the pilot, and al-Qati would soon know the names and nationalities of the people who had created so much havoc in his homeland.

  He could be brutal when it was necessary.

  *

  Wyatt had first heard the welcome sound of C-130 engines, stood up, and turned to face the direction from which they came, the east.

  The smoke from the burning Phantom was beacon enough, he had decided, and he had left the survival radio and the locater beacon in his survival pack.

  He had then heard the blended roar of additional turboprops and considered that discretion might be in order. Slipping to the ground again, he eased his legs over the lip of the wadi, rolled onto his stomach, pushed backward, and let himself slide downward.

  Pressing himself tightly against the side of the crevice, he waited. His back ached from the ejection. His face felt burned by the sun. He was getting thirsty again.

  The thunder out of the east approached quickly, then washed over him.

  Two Hercs, and both of them carried Arabic ID.

  Not good, he thought.

  They flew over the wreckage a mile away then banked toward the north.

  They didn’t come back.

  But surely they had seen his parachute canopy.

  The sound of their engines died away, and he didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.

  He did think that it might be better to make up his mind in another place.

  Not closer to the wreck.

  He turned to his left, stepped out to the middle of the wadi, and headed east, trotting even though the concussive jarring of his heels hitting ground was transmitted directly to his lower back.

  The bottom of the wadi was irregular, catching his heels at odd moments, and forcing him to stumble. Its width varied, as he ran, from ten to fifteen feet wide. Dried-out armatures of old shrubbery clung to the sides of the trench. It was deep enough that he couldn’t quite see
over it.

  He couldn’t help remembering one of the first movies he had seen as a child. The Bridges at Toko Ri. William Holden and Mickey Rooney in a ditch, fighting off Chinese Communist soldiers.

  There hadn’t been a happy ending.

  And then he heard the thrupp-thrupp of rotors.

  And picked up his pace.

  *

  The pilot placed the Mi-8 on the ground near the parachute canopy, and al-Qati and his first platoon spilled out of it.

  They spread out in a loose circle, moving warily away from the helicopter, sensitive to some sniper in the wadi or the hills to the south.

  Nothing moved in that barren landscape.

  Al-Qati examined the canopy. Fresh dirt had been piled on it to hold it down. This pilot was expecting a rescue. The prospect held promise.

  They might just greet the rescue party with open and tracer-spitting arms.

  He went back to lean in the pilot’s side window and yell over the roar of the engines.

  “Khalil, they might attempt a rescue. Go back to the transports and wait.”

  Shummari nodded, and after al-Qati bent his head and trotted out of the rotor’s arc, lifted off. The helicopter was soon gone.

  “Lieutenant Hakim, take the first and second squads and work your way toward the wreckage. Notify me immediately if you find anyone. He is to be taken alive.”

  The platoon commander nodded, signalled his men into a skirmish line, and started toward the west.

  The earth here was hardened into a surface that did not often leave the imprint of passage. In spots, however, there was a softness that gave way to heavy boots. In the area where the parachutist had landed, for instance. The ground was trampled there from the landing impact and, apparently, from where the man had fallen to the ground.

  The wadi was, naturally, suspect. It offered the most cover in the near proximity. The man could have run for the low hills to the south, but if he had, he would still be there when the search teams reached the hills.

  Al-Qati walked to the rim of the wadi, then along it until he found a place where the earth had crumbled and clods had fallen to the bottom. He saw no footprints, but he did not think they were necessary.

  “Sergeant,” he said to the first squad leader, “take your men to the other side of the wadi. We will walk both sides of it to the east.”

  “Right away, Colonel.”

  He ordered three men from the remaining squad to walk the bottom of the dry streambed, and spread the remaining four out to his right.

  They moved out at double time, assault rifles at the ready, with purpose, and with some urgency.

  This intruder was not going anywhere very far or very soon.

  *

  They used the broken vertical tail plane from Hackley’s F-4 to lodge under the pair of nosewheels and form a ramp back to the level of the desert. It took quite a bit of digging under the wide fuselage in order to get it in place. They couldn’t dig a wide hole without endangering the track of the main gear.

  Barr was getting anxious about the timers in the F-4s. Being thorough professionals, they had designed them so they couldn’t be shut off and so that, if someone messed with them, a premature detonation occurred. The closest Phantom, his own, was less than thirty feet from the left wing of the Hercules. If it went up, the debris would slice through the wing fuel cells, and it would be all over.

  Winfield Potter said, “We aren’t going to get it better than that, Bucky.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  As the men scrambled back aboard, Bucky asked Demion, “Jim, would you take it as a personal insult if I wanted to take the controls?”

  Demion stopped with his right foot inside the hatch. “What are you getting at, Bucky?”

  “No criticism. This is a mission I want to fly. Need to fly.”

  Demion shrugged. “No sweat. You want me in the second seat?”

  “Damned right.”

  They climbed inside and Borman was there to close the hatchway. As he passed behind Vrdla, Barr said, “Sam, as soon as I get a generator going, fire up the radar and see what we’ve been missing.”

  “Roger that, Bucky.”

  He climbed to the flight deck, eased around the control pedestal, and lowered himself into the left seat. Dennis Maal gave up the right seat in favour of Demion.

  “Neil,” Barr said, “I know you like to look through the windows, but I want everyone down in the crew compartment, on the deck, backed up against the bulkhead, until after I get this mother off the deck.”

  Formsby didn’t argue. He and Kriswell dropped down the ladder. Maal took the flight engineer’s position.

  They went through the start-up procedure as fast as they had ever done before.

  Barr checked his watch.

  Nine minutes to detonation.

  Hackley’s plane would go first. That was on his right, a quarter-mile down the makeshift airstrip. If the Herc was going to bog down again, he had to make damned sure he got way beyond Hackley’s crashed Phantom.

  “You’ve got nice power,” Maal said over the ICS.

  “How much can I have, Denny?”

  “You can have it all, Bucky. Don’t sweat it. Take an even strain, as Cliff would say.”

  “Jim, run ’em up.”

  Demion set the pitch on the Hamilton Standard propellers, then took hold of the bank of throttles and moved them smoothly forward.

  Barr stood on the brakes as the power came up. He watched the tachometers. He felt the airframe shuddering, the wings vibrating, the brakes struggling to hold.

  Eighty percent.

  Ninety percent.

  “That’s a hundred,” Demion said.

  He released the brakes.

  The Hercules hesitated at her new freedom, lurched forward, and the nose came up.

  A few hollers rose from the men in the compartment behind him.

  Lunging forward, the nose threatened several times to dip again.

  The whole airplane leaned to the left as the left main gear crunched through the surface. The outboard prop came dangerously close to touching down.

  The airplane bounced over a rise.

  Levelled out.

  “Twenty-fucking-miles-per-hour!” Maal yelled.

  And forty.

  And eighty.

  “That’s one-ten,” Demion said.

  He was getting enough lift to take the pressure off the landing gear.

  The speed came up quickly then, though the plane was rising and falling with the uneven terrain.

  “Rotate,” Demion said.

  Barr eased back on the yoke, and the nose gear broke free. The main gear followed.

  When he had ten feet of clearance, the airspeed still building, Barr said, “Pull the gear, Jim.”

  Demion retracted the landing gear.

  At three hundred feet, he started a left turn.

  “Una problema,” Vrdla said.

  “What’s that, Sam?”

  “We’ve got a UFO on our ass.”

  “Shit.”

  “No shit. It’s a slow-mover. Put some knots on her, Bucky.”

  The throttles were already at their forward stops. Barr lowered the nose a trifle to increase his rate of acceleration, then went into a shallow right turn.

  He waited for the missile.

  But none came.

  They came around 180 degrees, and Demion, watching through his window, said, “It’s a goddamned helicopter! Where’d that come from?”

  “Can you tell if he’s armed, Jim?” Barr asked.

  “I don’t think so. It’s a Hip.”

  Mi-8. If they were armed, they carried rocket pods on fuselage pylons.

  “Make your circle wider, Bucky,” Maal said. “We can outrun this bastard.”

  Barr levelled off from the turn, then eased the yoke back again, searching for altitude.

  “He’s turning inside us, but he’s losing ground,” Demion reported.

  “Damn,” Maal said, “who e
xpected that?”

  “I’ll tell you, maybe,” Vrdla said. “Those transports from the east disappeared off my screen. I’ll bet he came off one of those.”

  “If there’s one,” Barr said, “there’s more. What do you see around Andy’s location? And give me a damned course, Sam!”

  “Go three-four-five. Nothing flying up there. Wait. I’ve got some faint return, but it’s in the ground clutter. I’m guessing when I say the transports are on the ground near Andy. Give me a couple minutes and some more altitude, and maybe I can tell you more.”

  “All right,” Barr said. “We’ve got to keep our eyes open. Everyone take up stations. Neil, get on the direction finder and see if Andy’s transmitting a locater signal. Give me a time line, Sam.”

  Vrdla said, “Twelve minutes to the zone.”

  *

  They had to take him alive.

  If they wanted to learn from him.

  That was some consolation.

  But not much.

  Alive, he’d scream more.

  Wyatt’s mind bounced a linked thought with each slap of his boots on the earth.

  He tripped and went down, his face scraping the hard, gritty soil. His back was aching fiercely, his right ear still felt numbed from the antiaircraft shell. His breath came in sobbing gasps.

  He sat up. Blood oozed from a laceration in his cheek, forming drops, and dripping from his jaw.

  Got to his feet.

  Started trotting again.

  He had heard the helicopter put down, but then it had left immediately. He didn’t think they were giving up; he thought they had a ground search underway.

  His mouth was dry, and still running, he levered the canteen from his survival pack, twisted the cap off, and splashed a couple ounces in his mouth.

  He slowed to a stop, catching his breath.

  They would follow the wadi. There was just no other cover for him, and no other trail to follow for them.

  Unless he could make a break for the hills to the south. He estimated that they were a couple thousand yards away. Fine at night, but not during the day.

  Then again, he could sit down and shoot the first one or two who showed up.

  He’d get two for their one.

  At the moment, he didn’t think his chances were much better than that.

  About to take off running again, he heard the pounding of feet behind him.

  A couple of muted yells in a language that was not English.