Cauldron

by Larry Bond

  Wojcik glanced down at the map board strapped to one knee, mentally tracking his position as ground controllers fed them course changes. The men controlling this intercept had first swung them east, then almost straight south. They were trying to bring the four F-15s in from the enemy’s two o’clock, so that the Eagles wouldn’t have a tail chase. Careful positioning was vital, but it all took more time and fuel than he liked.

  At least coming in from slightly to the side would help them detect the enemy aircraft. German Tornados had radar-absorbent material on their engine intakes and gold-coated canopies to make them tougher to see on radar, but those stealth modifications would only help from the front.

  Tad glanced at his fuel gauges. Even with drop tanks, they were going to have to be careful if they wanted to make it back to Brno. Any Hungarian air base could refuel them, but landing at one would put him smack in the middle of a shooting gallery. It was dangerous enough up here.

  He returned to his careful scan of the sky, the symbols on his HUD, and back down to his cockpit instruments again. Even when racing to an intercept and certain air combat, attention to detail was vital. He forced himself to follow procedure, to think ahead. “Buck fever” was a real threat, especially on his first combat mission.

  His four F-15s were each armed with four Sparrow and four Sidewinder missiles, along with a centerline drop tank. Although the Eagles could carry the new and better AMRAAM missile, there were only a few of those “silver bullets” in the Polish inventory at the moment. And the brass had ordered them retained for the defense of Polish territory. Their decision made sense, Tad guessed, but right now he was more worried about the piece of Polish territory inside his cockpit.

  The flight moved south at 750 knots. They were flying at ten thousand meters, well above a solid cloud layer. Below the clouds, rain and low visibility made it a dirty night for flying, but that was perfect intruder weather. The Polish planes had their radars off, to avoid alerting the enemy to their presence. Part of Wojcik wanted his fighter’s “eyes” on, but he knew they were too far away to pick out fleeting contacts flying only a few dozen meters above the rolling landscape.

  “Blue flight, raid is seventy kilometers, bearing one seven five.” The intercept controller’s voice was perfectly calm.

  Tad felt his own heartbeat starting to speed up. It was almost time to energize their radars. His four aircraft would be in radar guided missile range in another thirty kilometers — only minutes at their present closing speed. The idea was to turn on the radar, lock up quickly, and fire Sparrows before the Tornados could react. Although they’d be firing at extreme range, the first salvo should break up the EurCon formation and force them to maneuver, wasting precious fuel. Right now the enemy pilots were outbound and tired, anxious to escape unfriendly territory, maybe even damaged or short on fuel. In other words, vulnerable. The fact that they were Germans was icing on the cake.

  Minutes passed, seeming slower now as adrenaline pulsed through his bloodstream and altered his time sense. He glanced down at the clock on the F-15’s control panel. They should be within range. But his threat receiver was still quiet, so Tad continued on silently. The closer to the enemy, the better. He risked a glance aft, but the other three Eagles spaced out at half-kilometer intervals and staggered altitudes, were invisible in the darkness.

  Another minute brought him a dozen kilometers closer to the enemy’s estimated position, close enough for his tastes. He keyed his mike. “Blue flight, energize.” Microphone clicks acknowledged his order.

  The first few radar sweeps showed only a hash of dots as the F-15’s computer tried to sort out ground clutter and weather effects. On the third sweep, though, Wojcik saw a cluster of dots in a regular pattern. There they were — three pairs of enemy aircraft and one singleton trailing slightly behind.

  In a long-range, radar-guided attack like this the trick was to avoid wasting missiles by having two aircraft engage the same target. Believing that the simplest methods were always best, he’d briefed the other pilots before takeoff to engage their opposite numbers, left to right. Tad’s wingman for this hop, a young rookie pilot named Milan Rozek, was flying to his left and slightly back, so he would take the leftmost German jet. Wojcik would fire on the Tornado just to the right of that. Training made target selection automatic, and it could be done without time-consuming radio chatter.

  He thumbed a button on his stick, designating one of the distant EurCon aircraft as his target. A box appeared around the symbol on his radar screen. The enemy plane was too far below him for any kind of a cueing box to appear on his HUD, but he was ready to shoot. Wojcik waited one beat for the rest of his flight to finish locking up, then squeezed the trigger on his stick.

  A whoosh and the sudden bright flare of missile exhaust from under his starboard wing told him he had a good launch. His peripheral vision caught the glare as his number three launched at almost the same time. The small, gleeful boy inside Tad who had always loved Fourth of July fireworks wanted to watch the missiles flashing away and down into the night, but he forced himself to concentrate on the scope. It was just as well. The German planes were already starting to maneuver — alerted by their own threat receivers.

  The Eagle’s weapons computer had already selected and tested another Sparrow and Tad pulled the trigger again. Firing two missiles against a long-range target like this was standard doctrine, to increase the chance of a hit. An alert and skillful enemy pilot might dodge the first incoming missile, but he might not even see the second one.

  Ahead, the missiles arced up, climbing to thinner air where they could fly at almost four times the speed of sound. When their motors burned out, they vanished into the darkness, coasting through the rest of their trajectory. They would dive on their targets from above, at blinding speed.

  Tad clicked his mike again. “Go to cruise.” He throttled back, not only to save fuel but also to slow his rate of closure with the enemy aircraft. The otherwise excellent Sparrow had one major flaw — the attacker had to keep his radar pointed squarely at his target, “illuminating” it for the missiles in flight. Sparrows needed to “see” those reflected radar beams to home in on their target. Even at this range, missile flight time was only a minute, but that was an eternity under combat conditions. And for that relative eternity, the four Polish F-15s had to fly a relatively straight and level course. Only the absence of EurCon fighter escorts allowed them to attack this; way.

  The radar display was getting mushy again. The Tornados were using jammers and bundles of chaff as they maneuvered, trying to break the radar lock. Tad’s own target acquisition box flickered, then disappeared. He swore, then swallowed his string of curses a half second later when his target vanished, too. Unguided but still ballistic, his missile must have gotten close enough for its proximity fuse to detonate before the Tornado could change course. A wave of satisfaction washed over him, and again he forced himself to concentrate on the job at hand. He had his first kill, against an old enemy.

  They were close to the frantically maneuvering EurCon jets now, only a dozen kilometers away. The Tornados, flying in pairs, reacted differently to the attack. One pair turned away, trying to outrun the ambush. Four more were turning toward their attackers — attempting to increase the closure rate and break past the Poles before they could fire again. This was going to get down and dirty real fast.

  Tad was already selecting his Sidewinder missiles when two more radar contacts disappeared. Yes! At this range, loss of detection meant almost a sure kill. Three German strike planes down and only four more to go. He grinned under his oxygen mask. They were cleaning up!

  Wojcik continued to scan the sky around him, but he could see neither his friends nor his enemies. Still, his radar showed German aircraft in front of him. That was good enough.

  “Break into pairs, turning left.” He banked the fighter left and pushed down on the stick. They would have to dive under the clouds before his Sidewinders could lock…

  A lin
e of fire passed his right side. Shit. He slammed the stick to starboard, straining against his harness, craning his neck around to see aft. Nothing. “Fighters aft! Break right!”

  In that same instant, another missile sliced through the darkness, off to the left this time. This one exploded. Tad caught one brief glimpse of an F-15 in flames and tumbling out of control toward the ground. The second missile had hit his wingman. “Blue Two! Eject!”

  Only static answered him as the burning Eagle fell. Oh, Christ. Wojcik swallowed convulsively, fighting down the burning taste of vomit creeping up his throat. Milan Rozek was gone.

  He continued his own tight, diving turn, now seeing the clouds as cover instead of a barrier. One hand chopped his throttles still further, instinctively reducing the F-15’s infrared signature. Then he stabbed the chaff and flare release, spewing decoys out behind him in case there were other missiles closing in.

  Urgent calls from Blue Three and Four indicated that they didn’t hold any other contacts, but were also maneuvering frantically while searching for the enemy planes that had sneaked up behind them.

  His Eagle continued to corkscrew down, the clouds a dark gray mass below him. Tad’s mind worked fast, trying to get the measure of his unseen opponents. He hadn’t heard a peep out of his own radar warning gear. They must have been using an infrared scanner then, after being cued by Blue flight’s own radar emissions. A totally passive attack. Understanding dawned. The MiG-29 mounted such a device. And the Germans had Fulcrums — two full squadrons they’d inherited during the reunification.

  It was wildly, almost insanely, ironic. Here he was, serving in a former Warsaw Pact air force and flying an American-made fighter in battle against a former NATO ally flying Soviet-made Fulcrums. He controlled a sudden, maddening urge to laugh and concentrated on staying alive.

  His threat receiver was still blank, so the Germans weren’t using their radars yet.

  The clouds engulfed him, and Tad let his fighter descend another five hundred meters before leveling out. Inside the mass, he was screened from infrared detection. They’d have to turn on their radars if they wanted to find him.

  His plane raced northeast through almost total darkness, toward the origin point for the missiles that had narrowly missed him and killed Rozek. The F-15 rattled and shook, buffeted by turbulence inside the storm clouds.

  There. Two blips appeared on his radar screen, out in front and turning toward him. Neither showed friendly IFF and both were inside Sparrow range. Even as he locked up, his threat receiver came on, showing a Slot Back radar on a bearing that matched with the bogeys. They were Fulcrums, then, activating their radars now that they had lost him on their IR scanners. They were too late.

  Tad’s finger squeezed the trigger on his stick. His third Sparrow dropped off his starboard wing and ignited. It vanished, leaving a glowing trail through the clouds.

  He advanced the throttle, closing on the German MiG coming at him head-on, and selected Sidewinder. As his missile streaked out of the clouds, the enemy plane suddenly turned hard and climbed. Perfect.

  Wojcik pulled back on his stick, climbing himself. Suddenly the F-15 broke out into clear air. A growling tone in his headphones indicated that the missile he’d selected could see its prey. The Fulcrum, trying desperately to evade the Sparrow he’d fired, was using full power — maybe even its after-burners.

  Tad pulled the trigger again.

  The heat-seeker leapt off its rail, racing toward the enemy fighter now just two miles ahead of him. A cueing box appeared on his HUD, centered on the fleeing MiG. The Sidewinder’s bright exhaust merged with the box and then vanished in a bright orange fireball. A hit! Glowing shards and pieces of debris cartwheeled out of the explosion, already spinning downward.

  Wojcik circled, checking for the second German Fulcrum without success. It was gone — nowhere in sight and nowhere on radar. So were the four surviving Tornados. Worse, Blue Three and Four were also missing. And his increasingly frantic radio calls to them went unanswered.

  Alone in a black sky, over a battlefield, Tadeusz Wojcik decided it was time to head for home. What had started out as a turkey shoot had all too quickly turned into a fight for his own personal survival. He didn’t like being ambushed. It was time for a change in tactics. Even his own two kills couldn’t balance the guilt he felt for losing his inexperienced wingman.

  SITUATION ROOM, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Huddled for their second emergency session in two days, the men and women who served on America’s National Security Council still looked stunned to Ross Huntington. He shared their dismay. Despite all of EurCon’s threats and menacing troop movements, none of them had really expected an armed invasion of Hungary.

  General Reid Galloway put down the phone he’d been using and looked straight at the President. “That was Tom Foss, sir. Our liaison with the Polish Air Force. He confirms those early reports. Polish aircraft flying from Czech and Slovak bases have engaged EurCon planes over Hungary.”

  “My God.” Harris Thurman turned pale. “Do we have airmen stationed at those bases?”

  “No, Mr. Secretary.” Galloway shrugged. “But we do have training groups at some of the Polish airfields being used as staging and repair areas for the squadrons they’re sending south.”

  Openly appalled, the Secretary of State faced the President. “We have to get our air force people out of there! Right away!”

  “Why?” the President asked quietly. Of all those in the room, he seemed the least surprised by recent events.

  Thurman stared back at him, trying to calm down. “Isn’t it obvious? If they stay, the French and Germans can accuse us of playing a part in this war.”

  “A war they started,” Huntington felt compelled to point out. The pompous Secretary of State never failed to irritate him.

  The other man ignored him, focusing instead on the man he wanted to sway. “Mr. President, there is only one prudent course. We must immediately and publicly withdraw all U.S. military personnel from Poland and the Czech and Slovak republics. It’s the only way to make sure that we aren’t dragged into this thing.”

  “And just how do you suppose EurCon would interpret a move like that, Harris?” the President asked flatly. “Not to mention the rest of our allies?” He answered his own question. “They’d believe we were abandoning the Poles. That we were cutting and running at the first sign of trouble.

  “And I believe that would be the worst imaginable signal we could send.” The President shook his head decisively. “The best deterrent against even more EurCon aggression is a strong, visible American presence on the ground in Poland.” He turned to Galloway. “Tell Brigadier General Foss and the others to stay put.”

  Huntington nodded slowly. The President’s decisions made sense. He just hoped the men in Paris and Berlin were still able to think rationally.

  MAY 31 — FORWARD HEADQUARTERS, EURCON IV CORPS, NEAR FERTOD, HUNGARY

  Two centuries before, the elegant, horseshoe-shaped Esterhazy Palace had been the summer home of Hungary’s princely family and their court composer, Joseph Haydn. Now, tracked and wheeled armored vehicles festooned with radio antennas crowded the cobblestoned courtyard and neatly landscaped gardens. Staff officers in French and German battle dress conferred in small groups against the backdrop of the building’s elaborate yellow and white Baroque façade. EurCon’s IV Corps, its invasion force, had established its forward headquarters at this chateau popularly known as the Hungarian Versailles.

  Near the palace’s wrought-iron main gate, Général de Corps d’Armée Claude Fabvier stood looking down an access road leading to the main highway. More armored vehicles were parked in the tall, uncut grass to either side — squat, powerful-looking LeClerc main battle tanks of the 2nd Dragoons and tracked AMX-10P APCs belonging to the 51st Infantry. Soldiers, stripped to the waist in the late spring heat, lounged in the shade provided by their vehicles and by the tall trees that lined the road. Both French regiments were resting after spear
heading the EurCon drive across the border.

  Fabvier’s new leading elements, German panzer and panzergrenadier battalions from the 10th Panzer Division, were fighting on the outskirts of the tiny village of Szarfold, twenty kilometers to the east. Smoke from burning houses and tanks stained the eastern horizon. The general could hear a steady, muffled thumping in the distance as his corps and divisional artillery softened up Hungarian positions along Highway 85.

  He shook his head, irritated by the signs of continued heavy fighting. Two days after storming across the frontier, the four divisions under his command were already fifty kilometers inside Hungary. But even though his troops and tanks were advancing at a fair clip, this campaign was already proving far more difficult than he’d anticipated. The Hungarian Army’s antiquated T-55 tanks and PSZH-IV personnel carriers were no real match for his four hundred LeClercs and Leopard 2s — especially at long range. God only knew, there were enough smoldering wrecks strung out along the roadside from Sopron on to prove that. Still, the Hungarians were putting up fierce resistance wherever and whenever they could. Clearing their dismounted infantrymen out of the woodlots and small villages along the highway usually meant close-quarters combat. And that meant taking casualties.

  From the moment they’d crossed the frontier, the French corps commander had watched a steady stream of ambulances heading west — carrying his dead and wounded. Maintenance units were swamped with salvage and repair work on damaged or destroyed tanks and APCs.

  Fabvier gritted his teeth. Very little of this heavy fighting would have been necessary if the flyboys had achieved air supremacy over the battlefield — as they had promised. After dealing the first night’s death blow to the enemy air force, French and German warplanes were supposed to be ranging overhead on call, swooping in to smash the Hungarian tank and motor rifle battalions hurrying to block the IV Corps’ path. Other planes were supposed to be busy escorting French airmobile regiments on raiding missions deep into the enemy’s vulnerable rear areas.