Arsenal c-10

by Keith Douglass

  He’d wangled his way out to Jefferson in the Med just in time to take part in the Black Sea conflict.

  “Well, maybe they should have,” Gator said. “If I had to guess, I’d say there’s a reason the admiral wants Cuba’s air assets worried about the north. We’re already getting I and Windications and warnings that they’re launching more of them and vectoring toward us.”

  “If I’d been planning it, I would have waited until the weather was better.” Bird Dog glanced overhead, looking for any patches of clear sky. No luck. “Where are our playmates, anyway? The ones we’re supposed to be diversioning. If we’re gonna boogie, we might as well do it.”

  “I hold a MiG on two-seven-zero at fifty miles,” Gator answered.

  “About time you switched into targeting mode, don’t you think?”

  ‘Too far away.”

  “The bad guys won’t know that, will they? No, they won’t,” Gator continued, answering his own question. “Get it through your thick skull. Bird Dog the point of being up here is not to engage another aircraft, it’s to make someone on the ground think we’re up to something interesting. That spells targeting illumination, simulating every electronic and radar signal we generate when we’re actually attacking.

  Get with the program.”

  Bird Dog sighed and switched the powerful AWG-9 radar into illumination mode. The ESM sensors arrayed along the coast of Cuba and perched on its highest peak would undoubtedly detect it within seconds. “There.

  Are you happy?”

  “I am. The question is are the Cubans?”

  0310 Local (+5 GMT)

  Fifty Miles Southwest of Fuentes Naval Base

  The small RHIB-rigid-hull inflatable boat slid smoothly up the side of one swell, picking up speed as it descended into the trough. The eight SEALs on board held grimly to the ropes around its hard rubber sides.

  Their bodies had gotten accustomed to the rhythmic movement thirty minutes earlier, and even the greenest of them was well past worrying about seasickness.

  Not that SEALs got seasick. Or that they’d ever admit to it if they did.

  A cold front had moved into the area yesterday, increasing the difference between wet-bulb and dry-bulb temperatures to less than two degrees. Consequently, dense fog was forming on the surface of the ocean, wafting up and enveloping the Special Forces platoon in a cloaking mist.

  Overhead, low clouds were rolling in, spitting short bursts of rain that left their wet suits gleaming in the low ambient light diffused about them. Each man held his weapon with his free hand, close to the chest. Not that they’d need them-at least, they wouldn’t if everything went well.

  “Three miles,” Huerta said softly. He stretched his legs, twisted his torso to loosen the muscles growing stiff from the cold and damp. “Be ready.”

  One by one, the team members flashed a silent hand signal in acknowledgment. As if it were needed. SEALs were always ready.

  The brief mission was relatively simple in planning, with the potential for unexpected complications in execution.

  They were to go ashore and take a quick sneak and peek at the Cubans’ facility on the southwest corner of the island.

  The overhead imagery revealed new construction on the base, as well as the possibility that the downed American pilot was being held hostage there. Their orders allowed them to take action, if they could do so without compromising the unit’s safety, to free him. Every one of them had firmly resolved to do just that if at all possible.

  In addition to the normal bag of tricks, Huerta carried a few extra goodies. A low-light camera, capable of concentrating the ambient light to take pictures even under the worst of conditions. Two small, portable motion detectors, each barely larger than a small tape recorder, for mounting at the entrances to their areas of surveillance.

  And finally, the piece of gear responsible for the particularly grim expression on their leader’s face a microcircuitized Geiger counter.

  The muffled hammer of the specially silenced engine attached to the RHIB soaked into the fog around them.

  Barring exceptionally poor luck, the team was undetectable.

  “Shore,” Sikes said finally. He pointed forward in the fog.

  Barely discernible was the dark outline of land. The SEALs made their final preparations for disembarking, careful to keep metal from hammering against metal and alerting a randomly patrolling sentry.

  The boat ground ashore with a harsh rasp, small pebbles and rocks digging into the thick rubber bottom. Minutes later, the boat was dragged out of the water and safely concealed under a clump of brush in a small grove of trees.

  The eight SEALs broke into two teams of four, the first headed for what satellite imagery showed as the new construction area. The second group slanted away from them toward the highly fortified encampment that intelligence specialists suspected contained the captive pilot.

  They would meet back here in two hours, with or without the pilot and with or without the information they were after.

  0320 Local (+5 GMT)

  Fifty Miles North of Cuba

  The insistent beeping of the ALR-45 radar warning and control system shattered the silence of the cockpit. Gator moved quickly to silence the alarm, then called out the identification. “MiG just watching.”

  Bird Dog swore quietly. At this range, the MiG could be on top of them in ten minutes. His orders were to avoid an actual confrontation with any Cuban aircraft. It ate at his gut to have to run, but if he allowed the Cuban to approach them, the other pilot would quickly see through their deception. Still, to let the Cubans think that the mere presence of this MiG could make the Americans turn and run was distinctly distasteful.

  “Bird Dog, get us the hell out of here,” Gator ordered.

  “We could have some fun with him,” Bird Dog suggested. He held the Tomcat steady and level.

  “I mean it. You know what our orders are.” The RIO’s voice notched up two notes on the octave. “There’s no point in being a diversion if we blow it the second they come out to take a look.”

  “But what would be a more realistic deception than to go toward the MiG? The rest of the flight can turn tail and run, but the presence of one aircraft lingering around here is bound to get ‘em interested.

  Besides, there’s only one launching, right?”

  “As far as I can tell,” the RIO admitted grudgingly. “This is one of your worst ideas ever.”

  Bird Dog reached forward and flipped off the radios.

  “Jefferson will see what we’re doing,” he continued blithely.

  “If they want us to RTB return to base they’ll let us know.”

  “Not with the radios off.”

  “Who says the radios are off? Communications problems are not unknown in the Tomcat, you know.” He could hear the RIO’s disgusted sigh over the ICS-the interior communications system.

  “You’re going to do this no matter what I say, aren’t you?” Gator said finally. “To hell with your career, my career let’s give it all up so you can play grab-ass with the Cubans. You’ve been missing that ever since we were on patrol in the Spratlys.”

  “Think of it as a diversion within a diversion,” Bird Dog suggested.

  “The rest of the flight turns away, and I’m the diversion that lets them go. It makes sense perfect sense.”

  “There’s only one thing wrong with this plan. A really critical factor.” The RIO’s voice was harsh.

  “What’s that?”

  “Somebody forgot to tell the Cubans it’s just a diversion.

  What if they take it a little more seriously than that?”

  0325 Local (+5 GMT)

  Fuentes Naval Base

  The SEALs slipped silently through the vegetation, invisible in their woodland-patterned cammies and face paint.

  They moved slowly, brushing vegetation aside carefully to prevent inadvertent rustling of leaves, watching where they placed their feet in order to avoid twigs and branches underfoot. Not that t
he woodland debris would have cracked under their feet the entire area was as sodden, and as dark, as a rain forest.

  Ahead of them, the wire-mesh perimeter fence barely reflected the ambient light in a regular pattern. The SEALs crept up to within six feet of it, still hidden by the underbrush.

  The SEAL leader motioned to his second in command, using only hand signals to convey his intentions. The other SEAL nodded, reached into his belt, and withdrew a heavy-duty set of wire cutters. Intelligence had indicated that the fence was electrified, but not alarmed, and that the Cubans lacked even rudimentary pressure sensors and motion detectors along the perimeter.

  The SEALs waited. Their luck held within a couple of minutes, a bulky Cuban patrolling sentry came into view, his presence announced five minutes earlier by his clumsy, stumbling progress along the perimeter.

  The SEALs held their breath, watched him pass by them on the interior of the fence and then disappear in the dark.

  They waited a little bit longer, until they were certain he was out of earshot. Then Sikes motioned sharply Move out!

  Garcia scampered up to the fence, slipping on his heavily insulated gloves as he moved while holding the heavy wire cutters with their rubberized handles in one hand. He crouched low, blending in with the low vegetation already struggling to reassert its domination over the trimmed area.

  He worked quickly but carefully, snipping away the heavy strands and finally tossing aside a semicircular portion of the fence. Grinning, he held it aloft for a moment for his compatriots to admire, then laid it carefully on the ground. He scuttled back to join his teammates and resumed his normal position in the formation.

  Sikes led the way, moving quickly across the open area.

  Behind him, at two-minute intervals, the rest of the team followed.

  They regrouped at the rear of a ramshackle wooden building. The short, hundred-meter dash had driven the last traces of stiffness and cold from their muscles. They paused for a minute, regrouping, then employed the same silent dart-and-wait maneuver to move steadily across the rest of the compound.

  Their target was the open field to the north of the main cluster of buildings, the one the satellite imagery had shown as under construction.

  0330 Local (+5 GMT)

  Tomcat 201

  “I need altitude,” Bird Dog said as a warning. He slammed the throttles forward, kicking the massive jet into afterburners, and yanked back on the yoke. The Tomcat rotated in the air to stand almost on end, its nose pointed toward the one clear patch of sky Bird Dog had found. Rain still spattered the canopy, the drops driven quickly aft by the jet’s wind speed to leave most of the forward part clear. Five hundred knots of airspeed was better than any windshield wiper ever designed.

  “They’ll think you’re getting into firing position,” Gator warned.

  “That’s what I want ‘em to think. Let’s see if we can get him to play our game.” Bird Dog tightened his stomach and torso muscles, forcing blood up from his extremities into his brain to prevent graying out.

  “I’m staying in search-right radar mode, so he shouldn’t have any reason to get excited.”

  “Cubans don’t need a reason,” Gator gritted.

  0345 Local (+5 GMT)

  Fuentes Naval Base

  The construction churned up the vast field to their north, raw, black dirt furrowed and rent, bearing an odd resemblance to the sea they’d just crossed. Past the square of disturbed earth, the field resumed its green march to the hot horizon, low shrubbery and tall grass surrounding the construction.

  Sikes nudged his partner and pointed. Black iron girders jutted out of the ground at improbable angles. To the right, a yellow crane sat silently waiting, poised at the edge of the disturbed surface like a praying mantis. Just to the right of the crane, a stack of neatly arranged metal and wooden boxes rested. The metal ones were at least forty feet long, and bore the scrapes and gashes Sikes associated with shipping containers. The wooden boxes were smaller, measuring merely six feet in length. Associated equipment, he supposed. Based on their intelligence, there was little doubt in his mind as to what the larger crates held.

  The girdered structure had the look of something almost complete, as though the addition of a few more support members would transform the collection into a stark, meaningful machine, one capable of handling the missiles he was certain were nestled in the longer boxes.

  He glanced to his right, and saw his partner had already extracted the portable Geiger counter from his carryall.

  Huerta pointed the probe toward the field.

  The light on the face panel, which glowed a barely discernible zerozero-zero in the dark, shivered, the movement then picked up by the other two digits. Figures mounted rapidly, rising well above the threshold of what Sikes knew was regular background radiation.

  He shivered despite the warm night. The trip to shore on the boat, the silent creep through the quiet compound, hell, even his last operation in the Middle east none of it chilled him more than those three green digits staring at him now out of the gloom.

  0350 Local (+5 GMT)

  Tomcat 201

  “He’s onto us!” Gator twisted around in his seat to try to maintain visual contact with the approaching Cuban aircraft.

  “Got a VID-visual identification?” Bird Dog queried.

  “No.” Gator rapped out the word more harshly than he’d intended as a twinge of pain spasmed through his lower back. Turning around to look over his shoulder in the cramped confines of the cockpit probably provided more business for chiropractors than he liked to think about.

  “Doesn’t matter. We know who he is.”

  “And he knows who we are.”

  “That’s the whole point of it, isn’t it?”

  “Not if that puts him in a shitty mood.”

  Gator gave up trying to see through the clouds and mist and turned back to the radar display. The other aircraft was plainly visible on the scope, a fluorescent green solid mark against the scattering of returns generated by the thicker storm cells in the area. Solid, its edges well defined and moving toward them at six hundred knots. He tried one last time. “Bird Dog, we need to rethink this.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ to think. Gator. He’s close enough now, I’m going to turn tail and let him chase us.”

  “Missile lock!”

  Bird Dog swore. Without responding, he tipped the nose of the Tomcat back toward the water and began trading altitude for speed and distance. Distance most of all with the MiG, he needed at least another five miles of separation before he’d feel even relatively safe.

  “Still no visual too much haze,” Gator said rapidly, his fingers flying over the peculiarly shaped knobs and buttons around his seat. Each one had its own special shape, one that no RIO could forget, even if there was no illumination. Bird Dog might be able to fly the aircraft by the seat of his pants, but Gator could launch weapons by the feel of his fingers.

  “We’re out of range,” Bird Dog announced. “Especially if he’s carrying” “It’s not falling off. Bird Dog,” Gator said urgently. “It should have by now.”

  “Jesus! What the hell? Hold on.” The Tomcat’s dive steepened, throwing both aviators against the ejection harnesses that held them in their seats.

  “Watch your altitude.”

  “I am, I am! Get ready with the chaff.”

  Gator’s world narrowed down to the small round scope in front of him; nothing else was important. A few small surface contacts. Fishing boats, probably, one part of his mind noted dispassionately. Then the one aft of them, the only radar contact that mattered. Indeed, unless Bird Dog was successful with his latest maneuver, nothing else would matter in the next five minutes except his view of the Almighty. Or, more important, how the Almighty viewed him.

  He knew what his pilot was planning on doing, and the idea frightened him almost as much as the approaching missile. Get down low, get near the churning, violent sea below them, and try to hide within the spatter of radar return
s generated by the ever-changing wave structure of the surface of the ocean. It was a chancy move, but that coupled with countermeasures such as chaff and flares might be enough to distract the weapon long enough for them to get away.

  “Might be.” With a regular missile, it would have been, of that he was certain. But given the extended range on this one, a range he’d never even heard hinted at during intelligence briefs, who knew what else was new? An improved seeker head? A more accurate radar capable of distinguishing between sea clutter and the sweetheart metal contact that the Tomcat would generate on its sensors? He shook his head, shuttling the fear back to some small dark compartment of his mind. He couldn’t get distracted now, when his primary task was to serve as a second pair of eyes and make sure the Tomcat stayed out of the water.

  It would really suck if we lost the missile and slammed into one of the masts on the fishing boats. He frowned, knowing how close to the water Bird Dog was likely to get and how high the antennas and booms extended from some fishing boats.

  A brief thought of his wife, Alicia, flitted through his mind. He allowed it to stay there for a microsecond, then compartmentalized it as well. No time for danger, no time for thoughts of love and family all that mattered was getting away, now.

  Bird Dog, he had to admit, was one of the best. He’d proved it repeatedly during the Spratly Islands conflict. But this scenario, with the young pilot, slightly rusty from his tour on staff duty, playing grab-ass with a missile of unknown capabilities, was more than either of them had bargained for.

  0355 Local (+5 GMT)

  Fuentes Naval Base

  The second SEAL squad had followed the same peek-dart peek transit maneuver that the other one had, with less success. Their target was still over 150 feet away, and under the circumstances, it wasn’t likely that they’d be getting any closer.