Vortex

by Larry Bond

  Suddenly, his radar warning receiver sounded, emitting a pulsed buzzing noise. Stegman stabbed a button that silenced the alarm and glanced at the bearing strobe on the dial. It showed a narrow fan of lines off to the northwest. Each line represented the bearing to an aircraft fire-control radar whose pulses were being picked up by sensors on the

  Mirage’s fins.

  “Klaus, bandits at three two zero!”

  Stegman heard de Vert’s mike click twice in acknowledgment as he turned toward the incoming enemy planes. Stegman knew that his wingman was already maneuvering one hundred meters below to form line abreast with a half-mile spacing, all without any verbal order or discussion. In air combat, there wasn’t time for lengthy consideration or long orders.

  Anything over one short sentence was long.

  Every flight leader and his wingman spent long hours beforehand, working out a mutually agreeable set of air-to-air tactics and maneuvers. The Air

  Force recommended certain general procedures and tactics, but any realistic agreement also had to measure the skill levels and personal fighting styles of the two pilots flying together. Their agreement, hammered out over many days and sorties, described exactly what each pilot would do in dozens of situations, automatically and without exception. A pilot would risk death rather than use an undiscussed maneuver, because to do so meant risking his wingman’s life instead.

  Stegman’s own radar screen was blank, so the enemy

  planes were at least thirty kilometers out. The Mirage’s French-designed

  Cyrano IV radar could see larger aircraft at fifty klicks, but cargo aircraft didn’t carry fire-control radars. These bandits were fighters.

  He checked his radar warning screen again and noted that the enemy radar pulses were gone. Interesting. Either the bandits had turned off their radars or they’d gone home.

  Stegman hoped they hadn’t gone home. He wanted more kills.

  The South African thumbed his radio mike, switching frequencies.

  “Springbok, this is Panther Lead.”

  A fighter controller sitting eight hundred kilometers south at Upington Air

  Base answered promptly.

  Stegman sketched the situation in a couple of terse phrases and acknowledged Upington’s promise that two more fighters would be launched as backup. The promise was nice, but meaningless. They were more than fifty minutes’ flight time out of Upington. He and de Vert were on their own.

  He decided against closing at high speed. Fuel was too precious, and his duty was to cover Windhoek. This could be some sort of diversion, designed to pull them away from the airfield long enough for still-undetected cargo planes to land or take off.

  There. Four glowing points of light appeared on his radar screen. Enemy aircraft. He squinted at the screen, trying to extract more information from the tiny blips. The bandits seemed to be flying at lower altitude, and they were moving fast. Damned fast. Even with his relatively low cruising speed, they were closing at over two thousand kilometers per hour! Then he realized the bandits must be coming in on afterburner.

  “Closing to engage. Drop tanks!” Stegman shoved his own throttle forward and locked his radar onto the lead aircraft. As the Mirage’s engine noise increased, he thumbed a button on the throttle-jettisoning the empty drop tanks attached to his wings. Normally the empty tanks were saved for reuse at base, but their size and weight slowed down a fighter. Going into combat with the tanks still attached would be like fighting a boxing match wearing a ball and chain.

  He checked his armament switches and selected his outer portside Kukri missile-a heat-seeker optimized for dogfighting, not for long range. He’d have to get close to use it. The Mirage carried four of them, plus an internal 30mm cannon.

  His radar warning receiver warbled again. The bandits had switched their radars back on. Since they’d probably detected him earlier, the radars were almost certainly on this time for one thing only-a long-range missile launch.

  Time to warn de Vert.

  “Windmill! Evading!”

  Stegman took a quick, deep breath and jammed the throttle forward all the way to afterburner. Windmill was the code for incoming missiles. He felt a mule kick through his seat back and heard a thundering roar behind him as raw fuel poured into the jet’s exhaust and exploded. His own speed quickly increased to over twelve hundred kilometers per hour while his fuel gauge spun down almost as fast.

  He swept his eyes back and forth across the sky, looking for the telltale enemy missile trails and trying hard to remember the important pieces of dozens of intelligence briefings. Angolan MiG-23s carried Soviet-made

  AA-7 Apex missiles. They were only fair performers, and the intel boys said that they were susceptible to a combination of chaff and a high-9 turn.

  Hopefully, Stegman’s own speed, plus that of the missile, would make for such a high closing rate that the missile couldn’t react fast enough to a last-second turn. Add some slivers of metallized plastic that would give false radar returns and the missile should break lock every time.

  Or so they said.

  There! He could see white smoke trails now, coming in fast from below.

  His finger was already resting on the chaff button, and he started pressing it at half-second intervals. At the same time, he threw the

  Mirage into a series of weaving turns, always starting and finishing each turn with the smoke trails at a wide angle off his nose.

  He glanced over his shoulder to check de Vert and was relieved to see his wingman spewing chaff and corkscrewing all over the sky.

  High g forces on each turn pressed him down into his seat,

  forcing him to fight to hold the incoming missiles in view. He could see four trails now. Two aimed at him.

  Stegman yanked the Mirage into another turn, even tighter than his first series. Come on! Miss, damn you. One missile failed to follow him and flashed past-heading nowhere.

  But the second smoke trail visibly bent and curved in around toward his plane. Shit. Only seconds left. He pressed the chaff button again and turned again, pulling six or seven g’s, almost hearing the wings creak with the stress. He lost the missile and in that moment thought he was dead.

  A rattling explosion behind him. But no accompanying shock wave, fire, or blinking red warning lights. Thank God! The missile must have been decoyed away at the last moment. Stegman breathed out and leveled off, glancing to either side for de Vert’s plane. Nothing above or to port.

  Then he saw it. A ball of orange-red flame tumbling end over end out of control toward the ground. De Vert hadn’t been lucky. And now he was dead.

  Stegman didn’t waste time in grief. That could come later. Right now he’d have trouble just saving his own life.

  He started looking for the enemy, tracing back along the wispy, dissipating smoke trails left by their missiles. The bandits should be in visual range … he’d covered a lot of distance during those few seconds on afterburner.

  There they were. Stegman spotted the small specks-faint gray against a faint blue sky-there were his enemies, ahead and to the left. There were four of them, breaking in pairs to the left and right, crossing over each other.

  He smiled thinly. That was a mistake. He wasn’t going to panic just because he was outnumbered four to one. Instead, he’d even the odds by concentrating on a single aircraft. And with four planes swerving all over the sky, he’d have a much easier time finding an enemy vulnerable to attack.

  Stegman pushed the nose down a little to unload the wings, then yanked the Mirage over hard, into a high-g port turn. He noticed something strange about the bandits as he turned toward them. MiG-23 Floggers were bullet-shaped, single tailed swing-wing fighters. In combat position, a

  Flogger’s wings should have been tucked back against its fuselage like those of a falcon making an attack. These aircraft looked totally different. They had wide, flattish fuselages, twin tails, and clipped swept wings.

  The near pair was turning away from him, probably tryin
g to lure him into a squeeze play. Fat chance.

  He stayed in his turn for a few seconds more, using his helmet sight to line up a Kukri shot. The bandit slid inside his aiming reticle and into the path of the Kukri’s infrared seeker.

  Tone! As soon as he heard the missile’s seeker head warble, Stegman pulled the trigger on his stick and then broke hard right. A jolt signaled that the Kukri had successfully dropped off its rail and was on its way.

  The two farthest fighters were swinging in on him fast, and he saw flame sprout from under the lead jet’s starboard wing. Jesus. He turned toward them and barrel-rolled, spiraling across the sky to break the lock of the incoming missile, whatever it was.

  A fiery streak flashed past his cockpit and vanished.

  Racing toward one another at a combined speed of more than twelve hundred knots, the three adversaries zipped by in an eye blink-giving Stegman his first clear view of his opponents. MiG-29 Fulcrums! But even more interesting were the markings. They had gray air-superiority camouflage and carried a blue-and-red roundel. Angolan aircraft were usually sand and green colored, and their insignia was black and red. What the hell was going on?

  He rolled right and dove, hoping to be harder to see against the desert landscape so he could gain a few seconds to select another target. A gray-white ball of smoke and orange flame appeared off to one side, with a spreading line of smoke leading to it. His Kukri shot had hit! Scratch one MiG. One for de Vert.

  Stegman kept his eyes moving, roving back and forth across the sky.

  In fastmoving fighter combat, a pilot’s most important asset is “situational awareness—the ability to visualize his

  own plane, those of his allies, and those of his opponents in three-dimensional space, their paths and their possibilities, while using that knowledge to kill the enemy.

  He knew two of the MiG-29s were curving around behind him, and he could see the third just visible to his left and rear. He snarled. Having one opponent behind you in air combat was dangerous enough, but three was big trouble. As if to confirm his evaluation, his radar warning receiver sounded again-signaling another long-range missile inbound.

  Stegman yanked the stick right, rolling the aircraft so that it was inverted, then pulled up hard. The nose of the Mirage pointed straight down, toward the ground, air speed increasing dramatically as both its jet engine and gravity worked together. As the Mirage maneuvered, he released still more chaff, as a precaution.

  He was trading altitude for speed, applying the old fighter dictum that “speed is life.” At the same time, he rolled the Mirage, trying to locate the enemy.

  He found them, first a single dot and then two more, with fuzzy white trails from the pair that seemed to go straight for a while before wandering aimlessly about the sky. The signs of radar-guided missiles that had missed-confused by his sudden dive into ground clutter. All three MiGs were about four thousand meters above him.

  Stegman felt pain in his ears and yawned to equalize the pressure. He’d lost a lot of altitude, and he had to decide in a single instant how to spend his remaining energy. Fight or flee?

  He wanted to go back and send the three MiGs crashing to the earth one by one. But it just wasn’t on. The enemy pilots weren’t making enough mistakes. They still outnumbered him. No, it was time to be discreet.

  Stegman rolled his aircraft a few more degrees, so that its clear plastic canopy pointed southeast, and started to pull out of his turn. G forces pinned him to his seat, but he forced his head up against the extra weight so that he could watch the altimeter. Three thousand meters. Two thousand.

  Fifteen “

  hundred. The spinning needle’s progress slowed, and he leveled off at a thousand meters-flying southeast at more than a thousand kilometers per hour.

  He glanced over his shoulder, watching for signs of pursuit. If the MiGs wanted to catch him now, they’d have to increase their own throttle settings, burning more fuel, and all the time moving farther from their base.

  Stegman throttled back to cruise and looked at his own fuel gauges. He scowled. The verdomde MiGs may get another kill after all, he thought.

  Upington was still more than seven hundred kilometers away, and he’d burned way too much fuel in combat. He pulled back on the stick, more gently this time. He was out of danger, and it was time to climb to a higher altitude. That would stretch out his remaining fuel.

  With luck, his Mirage might fly on fumes long enough to reach the emergency field at Keetmanshoop.

  Cursing continuously under his breath, Stegman reached for his map and started plotting a new course due south.

  All in all, this hadn’t been one of his better days.

  FULCRUM FLIGHT, OVER WNDHOEK

  Fifty kilometers back, three MiG-29 Fulcrums orbited at eleven thousand meters, wings rocking in triumph. The surviving South African Mirage had lived up to its name, quickly disappearing from combat after the initial exchange. Capt. Miguel Ferentez tried to restore order on the radio circuit.

  “Quiet! Lieutenant Rivas, you are a pilot, not a gladiator! And Jorge, this is a tactical net, not a sports arena loudspeaker! Be silent!”

  No one responded, and Ferentez knew that they were all chagrined over the amateurish whooping and cheering that had filled the circuit seconds earlier.

  “The loss of one of their flight mates barely tempered their enthusiasm. They had won an important victory.

  None of them had seen combat before. Even Ferentez, who had flown a tour in Angola on MiG-21s, had never engaged

  enemy fighters before. Still, he was professional enough to curb his elation over a successful combat. There was work to do. He checked his gauges.

  Satisfied, he changed frequencies, reporting in to the controllers based at

  Ondjiva Air Base, six hundred kilometers north-just inside Angola.

  “Windhoek is clear. And we have fuel for another ten minutes’ patrol.”

  Another flight of four MiGs were minutes behind him, screening the transports, and would relieve him before he had to return to base.

  Ferentez was sorry the second Mirage had escaped. Eliminating South

  Africa’s entire air patrol in one fell swoop would have been a smashing first victory. Nevertheless, he and his fellow pilots had accomplished their mission. Lumbering Soviet transports from Luanda, with close fighter escort, were now just thirty minutes away. Transports crammed with troops, weapons, and supplies to help bolster the defense of Windhoek. They would land without interference-thanks to his Fulcrums.

  Ferentez smiled slowly. Pretoria couldn’t possibly ignore Cuba’s challenge to its aggression. This afternoon’s successful combat over Namibia’s capital was sure to be only the first of many.

  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Edward Hurley’s office was lined with books. Most were about Africa, but they included every topic. He tried to keep the room neat, but there were always about five projects under way at the same time. Papers spilled off a side table and lay in heaps on the floor, like bureaucratic land mines for an unwary visitor.

  The morning light illuminated his desk, also covered with papers, but of a much more immediate nature. It also shone down on Hurley’s form as he bent over them, trying to build a coherent picture of what was going on in South

  Africa.

  Hurley rubbed his eyes. Nobody he knew had gotten much sleep since the

  Namibian War began. He’d spent the last three nights trying to build up a decent picture of what was going on. In addition to being cranky from lack of sleep, Washington needed answers.

  Thankfully, he might be able to provide some. A picture was building, although most of it was inferred from scraps and rumor. Trying to get it right, quickly, was always risky. Based on satellite photos, embassy reports, and news reports, it looked as if Vorster’s government was succeeding in taking back Namibia-violently.

  He smiled silently to himself. All their fears had come true. Remembering his unwilling prediction, Hurley w
ondered if this was the trigger that would tear South Africa apart. Still, at the moment it was just another foreign war. Find out as much as you can, then fit the pieces together. See if it will affect the U.S.” and keep out of it as much as possible. It was a job he’d done many times before, and he was good at it.

  Hurley looked at his watch. There was an NSC meeting in about two hours.

  That was enough time to have his notes typed, and for him to wash and get something to cat. He started assembling his briefing, making notes for the typist and arranging the papers in proper order.

  He had almost finished when a staffer knocked on his open door. Bill Rock, a lanky Virginian, was his assistant. He had been awake almost as long as his boss and showed it. Now he handed Hurley another handful of papers.

  “You’d better check this out, Ed. Hot stuff.”

  Hurley took them, reluctantly, and looked for a place to set them on his desk. It was too late to add any more details to his brief, and ..

  .

  Rock noticed his intention and quickly spoke up.

  “I mean it, boss. Some of our signals spooks are picking up a lot of Spanish radio transmissions-south of the Angolan-Namibian border. I checked at the Cuban desk, and there’s been activity-a lot of it.”

  Sighing, Hurley started leafing through them, at first turning the pages slowly, but speeding up as he progressed, until finally he did little more than scan the heading on each page.

  Half-abstractedly, he looked at Rock and said, “Get me more,” as he reached for the phone. Punching a four-digit number, he listened to a ring, then an answer.

  “This is Assistant Secretary Hurley. I need to speak to the secretary immediately. “

  CHAPTER

  Roadblock

  AUGUST 23-20TH CAPE RIFLES, NEAR BERG LAND 40 KILOMETERS SOUTH OF

  WINDHOEK

  Motor Route I ran straight through the small village of Bergland and continued, climbing steadily upward deeper into the rugged Auas Mountains.

  Just north of Bergland, the South African construction crews who’d built the road had chosen to go through rather than over a steep boulder-and brush strewn ridge running from east to west. Armed with dynamite and bulldozers, they’d torn open a fifty-meter-wide gap, laid down the road, and moved on-never considering the difficulties their handiwork might create for a future invader.