Alpha Kat

by William H. Lovejoy

  “We’ll be all right,” Kimball assured him and climbed into the cockpit.

  The Kappa Kat took off while the fighters were being started. All six fired without complaint, and all six stayed in place and ran their engines up to one hundred percent, then idled back.

  “Anybody?” Kimball asked on Tac Two.

  “Two’s good.”

  “Three.”

  “Four.”

  “Five, yo.”

  “And Six,” McEntire said. He had elected to ride wing on Five, flown by Jay Halek.

  Kimball called ground control, then the tower, and got them airborne ten minutes later. Two minutes after that, air control allowed them to kill their IFF transponders.

  “Kimball Aero one-five, Riyadh.”

  “Go Riyadh.”

  “That’s scary, one-five. You should not just disappear like that.”

  “It’s supposed to be scary,” Kimball told him, then went to Tac Two. “Hawkeye, Bengals are up.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Billingsly came back. “Five and Six, go to Hawkeye Four on Tac Three. One through Four, let’s keep hot mikes. I want to hear you breathing.” Kimball reached for the communications panel and flipped the toggle that kept his microphone on transmit. The receiver for his Tac Two channel, carrying Hawkeye’s voice, was on a different frequency.

  “One and Two, take up a heading of one-three-five. I’m aiming you toward the coast. Three and Four, go to one-seven-five. Let’s keep ’em two hundred feet off the deck, airspeed four-five-zero knots.”

  “One. Roger one-three-five, two hundred feet, and four-five-zero,” Kimball answered for himself and his wingman, Cadwell.

  “Two. One-seven-five, two hundred feet, and four-five-zero.”

  The terrain rolled easily ahead of them, vaguely visible through the windscreen, but clearly shown on the night vision camera’s image displayed on the instrument panel CRT. The desert was green in the image, and Kimball couldn’t find one distinctive piece of geography that he would call a landmark. The big turbofan purred with a lion’s pleasure behind him.

  Sixteen minutes later, Billingsly called, “Bengal One, go to one-eight-zero now.”

  “Going one-eight-zero.”

  Kimball eased the stick to the right and pressed lightly on the rudder pedal.

  Nothing happened.

  He jiggled the stick.

  Nothing.

  Glancing down to his right side, he saw the red light right away.

  “You turning or not?” Cadwell asked him.

  “I’m showing malfunction on the control computer,” Kimball said.

  His throat had tightened up on him almost immediately.

  Instant sweat coated his palms under the flight gloves.

  The plane stayed level, but the desert scene on the screen suddenly appeared way too close. Low-level flight was normally accomplished in unexpected turbulence. The day’s heat bleeding off the desert was fairly steady now because of the flat terrain, but could change at any moment.

  “Cheetah, list for me.”

  “No rudder, ailerons, or elevators, Frog.”

  “Leave the throttle alone.”

  “Wouldn’t touch it for the world,” Kimball said, switching on his running lights so Cadwell could see him.

  “We’re way too damned low,” Cadwell said.

  “Okay,” Billingsly said. “Let’s get you some altitude. See if you can trim in some elevator and give it a bit of power.”

  Kimball gingerly touched the throttle and eased it forward. He was afraid that the turbulence of their low flight was going to destabilize the plane once he changed the setting.

  Tapping the rocker switch on the throttle handle, he fed in some up-trim on the elevator.

  “That’s it, good,” Cadwell said.

  He glanced at the HUD. The rate-of-climb readout was positive.

  “I’m showing fifty feet per minute, Frog,” he said.

  “Good, that’s enough. We’ll just work you up to altitude slowly.”

  It sounded good to Kimball.

  Until the back end of the Alpha Kat erupted in a yellow-red flash of light that erased his night vision.

  Thirteen

  Because the mikes were hot, Jimmy Gander, Bengal Three, heard one explosion and what might have been part of a second explosion before Kimball’s transmitter whistled loudly in his ears and then went dead.

  “Jesus Christ! The son of a bitching plane blew up!” Cadwell yelled.

  “Chute?” Billingsly asked.

  “Goddamn!”

  “Did you see a parachute, Two?” Billingsly asked, his voice as calm as water confined to a lagoon.

  “Hell no! I went by too fast. Took some debris hits. I’m turning back now.”

  “Hawkeye, Three,” Gander said. “Vector me in.”

  “Go to zero-nine-eight, Three.”

  Gander eased the controller over, added rudder, and took up the new heading. He flashed his wingtip guide-lights twice so Warren Mabry could stay with him, then slammed the throttle forward.

  The Gs shoved him back in the seat, and the HUD readout quickly rose through the numbers, switched to Mach, and climbed again to Mach 1.5.

  Seconds later, he saw the glow on the horizon.

  “Got visual, Frog.”

  Speedy Gonzales must have notified Bengals Five and Six because McEntire came in on Tac Two. “What the hell’s happening?”

  “Two here. I’ve got an orbit. The plane’s destroyed, scattered all over the damned desert. Fuselage is still on fire.”

  “Beeper, Two?” Billingsly asked.

  “No beeper. No chute.”

  “Bastard!” McEntire yelped. “Vector me, Frog.”

  “Hold on, troops,” Billingsly said. “I’ve got hostiles. Charlie, Delta, and Echo coming hard from the east. Fox and George high to the south.”

  “Screw ’em,” McEntire said.

  Gander searched the skies ahead for Cadwell, but couldn’t see him.

  “Two, give me some lights.”

  He switched on his own and was aware that Mabry had illuminated alongside him.

  The fire was dying as he approached, retarding his throttle and getting back down through the sonic barrier.

  He spotted Cadwell’s lights low to the south of the burning fighter.

  Slowing until the HUD readout displayed 300 knots, Gander dialed his Tac Four transceiver to the Guard channel, 243.0, where it was supposed to be anyway. Someone — himself — had missed it in the pre-flight checklist.

  “How about you, Cheetah? Talk to me.”

  Nothing.

  “Come on, Cheetah, quit horsing around. Tell the Gandy Dancer all about it.”

  “Got me, Gandy.”

  Kimball’s voice sounded weak, or maybe it was the survival radio. He eased into a wide turn.

  “Can you give me a flash?”

  A flashlight beam erupted from the dark desert floor, nearly a mile north of the wreckage. Gander rolled out of his turn and headed for it.

  Everyone tried to speak on the Guard channel at once.

  “Shut up!” Gander yelled. “Give me a rundown, Cheetah. How you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve been kicked in the ass.”

  “How about something more objective?”

  “No broken bones that I can detect. I’m not bleeding anywhere obvious. The flying suit’s a loss. Nearly burnt through in spots. The damned chute was barely open when I hit the sand. Knocked the wind out of me.”

  “Hostiles Charlie, Delta, and Echo are seventy miles out, turning for the wreckage,” Billingsly said. “They’ve spotted it.”

  “Go get ’em,” Kimball said.

  “I’ll orbit you,” Cadwell said.

  “Get the hell out of here, now! Frog, send me a chopper when it’s over.”

  Gander wagged his wings when he flew over the flashlight beam, then cut his running lights and switched back to the Tac Two radio.

  Billingsly was reporting to Vrdlicka, who wouldn�
�t have heard the Guard channel conversations because of the line-of-sight interference.

  “Zookeeper, that Saudi SAR chopper still standing by?”

  “Roger, Hawkeye. Sitrep, please.”

  “He’s fine, but scratch one Alpha.”

  “Call them all back, Frog.”

  “Cheetah won’t go for it.”

  “Neither will Irish Eyes,” McEntire cut in.

  “It’s the safest course,” Vrdlicka said.

  Gander broke in, “I’m still waiting for a vector, Frog. Fuck the recall.”

  Billingsly barely paused before reading off a set of coordinates. “Send the chopper two minutes after the exercise is completed, Zookeeper.”

  Vrdlicka obviously didn’t like it, but read back the coordinates and said, “Roger the chopper.”

  McEntire came in, “Give me Fox and George, Hawkeye.”

  “Two, join on Three and Four. Three, go to zero-eight-seven. I’ll tell you when to pop up. Five, reverse course and pick up zero-zero-nine …”

  *

  Kimball sat in the sand, still trying to catch his breath. He shut off the flashlight and laid it next to the radio beside his leg.

  Once again, he ran his hands over his whole body, and once again was amazed that they didn’t run into protruding bones or organs. The backs of his G-suit and his flying suit were scorched. He tugged at the fingers of his gloves and slipped them off.

  He realized that he still had his helmet on and unsnapped the straps, then lifted it off. The air caressing his face felt better, though it was still hot.

  Some of the hair on the back of his neck felt like it was singed.

  He rolled onto his stomach, got his knees under him, and pushed himself to a kneeling position.

  Felt a little dizzy.

  Waited.

  The dizziness passed and he stood up. The sand shifting under his feet felt like heavy seawater, and he spread his legs to keep his balance.

  Another short flash of dizziness.

  With trembling hands, he unbuckled the parachute harness and dropped it to the earth.

  He waited three full minutes before squatting to pick up the radio, flashlight, and helmet.

  He barely remembered the last minutes in the Alpha Kat. It was a safety quirk of the mind, he thought, which didn’t want to remember.

  Because he had no control of the aircraft and expected to go wing-over at any minute from turbulence, he had had his right hand lightly gripping the ejection handle between his legs. The second he heard the dull thump of the explosion, felt the heat, and was blinded by the light, he had ejected. He thought he went out at about a thousand feet AGL, tumbling over backwards. The Martin-Baker seat parted from him as advertised, and the drogue chute streamed out of his pack, tugging the main canopy behind it.

  He remembered looking upward for the canopy deployment, seeing the white nylon blossom, felt the tug, and boom … ! He slammed into the earth.

  The air whooshed out of his lungs.

  Followed immediately by the muted concussion of the fighter crashing into the earth south of him.

  He had a headache.

  His back hurt. He felt as if he were two inches shorter, his vertebrae squashed together by the ejection.

  He was going to write a long letter of appreciation to the people at Martin-Baker.

  He was thirsty as hell, but he had lost his water bottle in the ejection.

  Walking carefully in the oozy sand, he started out toward the wreckage. The dunes weren’t high, but they felt as if they were as he struggled with the shallow inclines.

  He was damned certain it was sabotage, this time. He had too much faith in the airplane. If he had been in some maneuver when the fly-by-wire went out, rather than in trimmed-out level flight, he wouldn’t be walking in the sand now.

  And he tried not to wonder if one of the other planes had also been compromised. He should have sent them all back to the airfield.

  But then, he reasoned, two similar crashes would have been too coincidental.

  He felt better.

  Mentally.

  His back still hurt, and his head was throbbing.

  *

  A.J. Soames appreciated the thoughtfulness of the prince. Before taking off with his two flights of F-15 Eagles, the prince had ordered everyone who could manage it to use English on the radio, in deference to the guests.

  He and Alex Hamilton sat in comfortable chairs, along with a dozen dignitaries, in the underground combat center. It was well outfitted with computers and radar repeater screens lined up along two walls. A huge map of the Middle East was projected onto a wall screen. Symbols moving across the southern portion of the map were identified as the aggressor Eagles. Commercial and other, flights had been routed to the north, to stay clear of the exercise.

  The aggressors had split into three groups of two aircraft and taken three different headings, circling the target wide, and then beginning to move in on it in a pincer movement. They were all above twenty thousand feet, and two of them had already identified the Kappa Kat by its radar emissions.

  He leaned over to his right and said, “What do you think, Alex?”

  “I think they’re in for a surprise.”

  The pilots’ dialogue was broadcast over ceiling speakers, and some of it was confusing when it overlapped or reverted to Arabic.

  “Blue Dart One, Sapphire One. I have visual on a fire.”

  The Sapphire flight was headed for the target from off the Persian Gulf.

  In response to a question, Sapphire One said, “On the ground.”

  “In the target area?”

  “Negative.”

  “Investigate, Sapphire. Dart One out.”

  Soames felt himself holding his breath.

  “Now, I know why we’re here, and Kim’s flying,” Hamilton said. “He couldn’t take the suspense.”

  “I can’t take it either. We may have to renegotiate,” Soames said.

  Two more Eagles, Red Fox flight, began to converge on the target from the west. One of them split off and headed for the Kappa Kat.

  Which promptly disappeared from the screen.

  “Hey,” one of the Saudi pilots called, “I have got a J-band threat. Missile locked on me.”

  “I will check your … what! Threat receiver. Missile lock on.”

  It was all over in twelve minutes. Not one of the F-15s got close to the target or to Hawkeye.

  As soon as he was shot down, the prince, Blue Dart One, began to chuckle.

  “The fire was a ruse, I think,” he said over the radio.

  “If it was, Kim didn’t bother to tell me about it,” Soames said to Hamilton.

  “It was a damned good idea, though,” Hamilton said.

  *

  Four choppers came.

  They were directed to his position by Billingsly who had moved the Kappa Kat to an orbit position some three thousand feet above him.

  The fire had gone out, but the wreckage was still hot, and Kimball had not been able to get close enough to inspect it thoroughly.

  He was pretty certain that the explosion and fire had completely destroyed any of the electronics and computer software that Kimball Aero had patented or would like to have protected. If the detonation of the fuel cell hadn’t done the job, the small self-destruct charges provided by Wilcox would have.

  Tex Brabham was the first one out of the first chopper, some three feet before it would have officially landed. He ran clumsily in the sand toward Kimball’s flashlight.

  Sliding to a stop in front of where Kimball sat, he said, “Kim?”

  “I’m all right, Tex. There’s a couple bruises and a hell of a headache.”

  Brabham went to his knees and dug into a canvas bag. He came up with three aspirin and a thermos of ice water. “Take these.”

  Kimball followed orders. The cool water tasted damned good. He swirled it around in his mouth.

  “Goddamn, boss. I should have caught it.”

  “Not necessa
rily, Tex, but yeah, I think it’s sabotage, too. But I can’t figure out how they got to the planes.”

  “Rockwell International.”

  “What!”

  “I doubt they really worked for Rockwell, but they had papers that said they did.” Brabham told him what he had learned from Dave Metger

  “Dave’s pretty shot,” he added.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Kimball said.

  Floodlights began to wink on. KAT personnel came by to check on him, then began to search for the scattered debris. Saudi air force investigators were directing everyone, shooting video and still camera shots.

  Vrdlicka showed up, shaking his head.

  “How’d it go, Mel?” he asked.

  “We downed all of them. They downed you.”

  “I don’t think we’re talking about the same enemy.”

  “Come on, Kim, there’s a chopper headed back now,” Vrdlicka said

  “I’m going to stick around here for a little while longer,” Kimball said.

  “Bullshit,” Brabham said. “I’ll be here, and you’re getting on the bird. The easy way or the hard way.”

  Kimball chose the easy way and got up to walk over to the helicopter, a twin-rotored Boeing Chinook.

  Slightly over an hour later, with his headache only mildly diminished, he slid out the helicopter’s wide doorway onto warm concrete.

  Sam Eddy McEntire, A.J. Soames, and the prince were waiting for him.

  He told them the story. It seemed as if he had repeated it a dozen times.

  In his mind, he probably had.

  “No control at all?” McEntire asked. “That system’s redundant. You don’t lose both of them at once.”

  “I don’t think the guy who set it up knew that,” Kimball said. “There’s no way it was going to look like an accident or system failure, but he thought it would.”

  “We have the descriptions of the men,” the prince said. “Unless they have already left the country, they won’t be leaving soon.”

  Soames went back to their ramp area to coordinate the investigation, and over Kimball’s objection, Sam Eddy loaded him in a jeep and took him back to the hotel.

  The prince had a doctor waiting in the room for him, and Kimball submitted to a thorough examination before stumbling into the shower.

  When he came out with a towel wrapped around his waist, feeling a smidgen better, McEntire handed him a glass.