Arsenal c-10

by Keith Douglass

  0517 Local (+5 GMT)

  Fulcrum 101

  As his night vision started to return, Santana rolled his aircraft over inverted and looked up at the canopy now pointed down at the sea, searching the sky for parachutes.

  There was no chance, really, that the Americans had managed to escape.

  Still, he wanted to make sure that the pilot who had dared to challenge him died with his aircraft.

  Even though the man had been fatally insolent in targeting his MiG, Santana wished him a good death. One in midair, inside the aircraft, not killed by the uncertain vagaries of ejection or smashed against the hard surface of the ocean below. He wished the man a good death, but a death nonetheless.

  0517 Local (+5 GMT)

  Tomcat 202

  “Jesus!” Tombstone slammed his eyelids shut, too late.

  ‘Tomboy, lost my night vision. What’s around us?”

  “I thought you were going to stay clear of the furball,” his RIO snapped back. “One straggler dogfight in the area, and you wander into the middle of it. Didn’t I tell you to” “Where is the MiG now?”

  Tombstone demanded. “Give me a vector.”

  “He’s breaking off and RTB,” Tomboy reported after a slight pause.

  “The Tomcat it exploded midair.”

  “Any chutes?” Perhaps his RIO’s night vision had survived the fireball in front of him.

  “I think I seeyes, one. No, make that two. I’d call it good chutes, but who can tell from here?”

  Tombstone reported the engagement and the presence of two probable parachutes settling into the water below to the carrier. With any luck, Jefferson’s SAR would be on top of the aviators before Cuba could vector in any small boats to pick them up. Had he had the time, he would have stayed overhead himself, circling and providing cover from surface attack with his guns.

  But he couldn’t. Not if he intended to accomplish his mission and get the information back to the carrier in time to make a difference in this battle. He hoped the downed aviators would understand. He wasn’t so certain that he would, in the same position.

  Jefferson acknowledged Tombstone’s call for SAR, and reported that the Angel helicopter was inbound his location.

  Tombstone acknowledged the transmission with a brief click, then turned his attention back to his mission. Moments later, the verdant landscape of Cuba, now a dim watercolor engraved in black, rushed by below his aircraft.

  Feet dry.

  FIFTEEN

  Tuesday. 02 July

  0600 Local (+5 GMT)

  Western Coast of Cuba

  By the time Sikes and his cadre reached the beach, the sun was already nibbling away at the darkness that had been their primary protection. Behind them, they could hear sirens and explosions. Whether it was a new attack by the American forces, one not noted in the original plan, or simply secondary detonations of munitions lockers and stored aviation fuel, they didn’t know. And it didn’t matter, really. What was important was that the chaos on the base was providing a needed distraction while they made good their egress. Sikes glanced back at Drake and Thor. The Marine was holding up as well as he’d boasted he would, and had not even broken a sweat on the quick run-jog back to the beach. Drake now that was a different matter. She had guts, he had to admit. She was clearly exhausted, at the very edge of her endurance, yet was grimly putting one foot in front of the other as fast as she could. She had slowed down a little, but not much. Then again, sometimes “not much” was the difference between life and death.

  When they reached the point where they’d stashed their wet suits, Sikes parked the two in deep cover while the SEALs quickly slipped back into their gear. Minutes later, he rejoined them, his face mask hanging down around his chin. “As I asked earlier how well do you swim?”

  “Well enough,” Drake answered immediately. She looked over at Thor.

  He spread his hands out in front of him, palms up. “I’m a ground pounder, but I imagine I can keep up.” Unlike before, there was a small note of uncertainty in his voice.

  Sikes tried again. “Mister, play straight with me. I don’t have time for games. Can you swim or not? If you can’t, we’ll just make other arrangements.” He wondered exactly what those “other arrangements” would consist of, but put the matter off for a moment while he waited for the Marine’s response.

  “I can swim. Not real well, and I’ll never win any speed records, but I can churn my way through the water and stay afloat, at least well enough to pass the water-survival flight test.”

  Sikes groaned inwardly. While every pilot had to demonstrate the ability to stay afloat for thirty minutes, and to use his or her gear to provide flotation while waiting for rescue, the test was hardly a grueling one. But if that was the extent of the Marine’s water skills, so be it; it would have to be enough. He turned back to Pamela Drake.

  “You’ll come with me. It’s only about a mile swim, but it will feel like longer if you’re not used to it. Especially after what you’ve been through today. Don’t worry, I won’t let you drown.”

  He assessed her candidly, noting the long, smooth muscles rippling beneath her flawless skin. Yes, probably a swimmer. She had the build and the musculature for it.

  “Garcia and Huerta, you stay with the major,” Sikes ordered. As hefty as the Marine was, it might take more than one man to keep him afloat if he needed help. He saw the Marine start to protest, and cut him off with a quick motion.

  “My mission, my expertise. Major. You just do what you’re told. We won’t tell anybody when we get back to the boat, okay?”

  There was no point in wasting any further time. Sikes turned, started down to the water with Pamela Drake in tow, and let the warm ocean slip over him.

  0602 Local (+5 GMT)

  South of Cuba

  The first cramp in his gut brought him back to full consciousness. Bird Dog woke abruptly, coughing and sputtering, trying to eject the seawater from his lungs and to take a deep, shuddering breath. His brain was demanding oxygen, but the gray unconsciousness still lurking there was more than drowned out by the agonizing cramp in his gut.

  He choked, came to his senses, and leaned back into the life preserver.

  It had done its job well, keeping his head out of the water, though not by much. At any rate, he hadn’t drowned after losing consciousness, and that was good enough.

  Gator. Where was he? He must be somewhere near the two had punched out fractions of a second apart, although the RIO’s offset angle of trajectory away from the cockpit might have led to some separation when they hit the water.

  Had Gator even survived? He tried to remember whether or not he’d seen his chute open. Yes, a chute. Had there been motion below it? If there had been, it had been indiscernible from the motion generated by swaying to and fro under the canopy. Whether or not his backseater was still alive was an open question.

  The life raft where was it? Seawater on the seat pan would have activated it automatically. The theory was that the pilot would remain conscious and thus be able to swim over and grab it before it drifted out of range.

  He hoisted himself up out of the water as he topped another wave and scanned the ocean around him. There was not a sign of the bright orange life raft, nor of his backseater.

  They’re coming for us, though. He was certain of it. He fished out his emergency radio and tried to raise the carrier.

  A voice immediately answered his transmission.

  With the prospect of SAR helicopters immediately inbound his location.

  Bird Dog curled up in a ball, let the life jacket support him, and tried to massage the cramp out of his gut.

  0615 Local (+5 GMT)

  West of Cuba

  Sikes heaved himself into the boat first, then reached over the gunwale, lying flat on his stomach, and grabbed Pamela Drake by the waist. He heaved back, dragging her over the rigid inflated side and onto the cold, clammy deck-On the opposite side of the boat, the other SEALs and Thor were executing the sam
e maneuver.

  They took a SEAL rest period, approximately two seconds of stopping, orienting themselves, and taking three quick, deep breams to flush carbon dioxide out of their systems. The immediate influx of oxygen generated a temporary feeling of well-being, but Sikes knew that the draining effect of the swim out from shore could not be avoided indefinitely. They needed to get moving now, back to the carrier, back to safety.

  As the small boat topped a wave, he could see the carrier outlined against the rising sun to the east, just barely visible above the horizon. Fifteen miles, he decided maybe a bit more. Twenty minutes to safety, if all went well.

  But so often it didn’t, not in the final stages of a mission.

  The prospect of safety, the illusion of relative security, tempted SEAL teams into mistakes. Mistakes that were likely to be fatal at this point.

  Garcia slipped into the stern of the boat and gunned the muffled, sound-suppressed engine. It caught the first time.

  The other men settled into their accustomed spots in the boat. Drake and Thor sat on the deck, holding themselves steady by grasping the lines that ran around the gunwales.

  “Let’s get going before it’s full daylight,” Sikes ordered.

  The boat surged beneath his feet.

  The unexpected struck when they were halfway back to the carrier. The massive floating airfield had grown from a gray, semisolid haze to the massive floating fortress that it was.

  Sikes could even catch glimpses of the combatants and escorts around her, identifying them mainly by their running lights.

  The seas were running smooth, with the morning winds picking up, flecking the swells with whitecaps. Sea state two or three, he decided. Uncomfortable, but not dangerous.

  Ahead in the water he noticed a log. No, not a log. He turned to shout at Garcia to throttle back. Whatever it was, they didn’t need to run over it. If the impact didn’t kill them, it would most assuredly toss them all into the ocean, thus necessitating rescue by the carrier.

  As the boat slowed, he faced forward again and studied the anomaly carefully. It looked like part of a dry dock that had broken loose somehow and floated out to sea, or maybe the rusted remains of an old houseboat, oroh, hell.

  The rest of the submarine emerged from the sea, and figures appeared on the conning tower. He noticed them scampering quickly up, mounting stanchions and machine guns on brackets on the conning tower, and quickly bringing the focus on the SEALs’ boat. By the time he had turned to give the order to Garcia to get them the hell out of there, the submarine had them covered.

  0618 Local (+5 GMT)

  Tomcat 202

  “Stoney, break off, break off!” Batman’s voice was commanding.

  “What the hell?” Tombstone reached over to flip his communications switch to tactical. “Roger, copy RTB.

  What the hell?” Tombstone asked.

  “Not RTB, but you’ve got a new primary mission. That SEAL team I sent in a couple hours ago they’ve run into some problems on their way back to the carrier. I need you to get in there and cover them. Stoney, there’s no one else close around it’s got to be you. We’ll vector you back to the primary mission when you’re done with them.”

  “A SEAL team? But what good will” “It’s a guns mission. They were headed back to the carrier when the Cuban Foxtrot surfaced and held them off at gunpoint. Now there’s two small Cuban boats inbound on them, and it looks like the Cubans are planning on taking them hostage.

  The SAR helo’s still somewhere off chasing down Bird Dog, and I don’t have anything else in the area.

  Here, I’ll have the TAO give the coordinates to your RIO.”

  Tombstone wanted to scream. It seemed that everything in the world was working to prevent him from accomplishing his primary purpose for being there. But still, he’d left Batman in command of the carrier battle group, and implicitly placed himself under Batman’s command by undertaking to fly this mission. And if the battle group commander thought there was a more valuable use to be made of his aircraft, then it was up to Stoney to toe the line.

  He sighed, then swung the Tomcat around in a hard, tight 160-degree turn as Tomboy fed him new fly-to points.

  It took only three minutes to cover the distance between him and the SEAL boat. At once, in his first overflight, he saw the nature of the problem.

  The SEAL boat was bobbing uneasily in the stiffening wind, held at gunpoint by the submarine-mounted machine guns to the west. Two small boats were approaching from the east. Cuban patrol boats, no doubt unreasonably pissed off after the destruction of their communications, command, and control vessel earlier that day. If the Cubans got ahold of the SEALs, Tombstone wouldn’t give a plug nickel for their chances of survival.

  He stayed high on the first pass, five thousand feet, staring down to assess the scene before making his decision.

  Batman had been right this was a guns-only mission.

  Good thing he probably wouldn’t need them for the rest of it.

  He swung the Tomcat around and dove for the deck, picking up speed as he descended. He stayed to the west of all participants, hoping to avoid silhouetting himself against the rising sun. He stopped his descent barely one hundred feet above the churning ocean, made a small course correction, and arrowed in toward the submarine.

  Four hundred feet away from the Foxtrot, he fired his first short burst, made another small course correction, then walked the guns in toward the submarine. There were men running around the fo’c’sle frantically, trying to clear the conning tower and decks in response to his gunfire. However, a Tomcat traveling at three hundred knots covers a lot of ground quickly. The first of them had barely started down the ladder into the interior of the submarine when the rounds stitched their way down the submarine’s hull. He saw two men crumple and fall to the deck and another one topple off the narrow flat surface into the sea.

  With the decks cleared, the SEAL boat immediately kicked it in the ass and took off for the carrier. Tombstone watched them go, made sure that the submarine crew stayed out of sight long enough for them to escape, then turned his attention back to the approaching small boats.

  The SEALs could probably outrun them, but there was no point in taking chances. Two low-altitude passes, four sharp sparks of gunfire, and the small boats were out of action.

  “Mission complete,” Tombstone radioed back to the carrier. “Now, may I please get back to my original mission?”

  “Permission granted,” Batman said crisply. “And when you get back to the boat, I think you’re going to find there are a couple of SEALs on board who want to buy you a beer.”

  0630 Local (+5 GMT)

  South-southwest of Cuba

  Her face slammed into the side of the boat as an unexpectedly rough portion of chop caught the small rubber craft sideways. She yelped, then quickly stifled herself.

  Huerta had taught her the value of silence. She wondered if she’d ever be able to scream again without experiencing an anticipatory dread of that steel-banded hand closing over her mouth.

  No, her time with the SEALs on this mission had been singularly unrewarding. They’d done nothing but abuse her, gag her, try to run her into the ground and drown her, and now, batter her against the side of a small boat that had no business skimming across waters as quickly as it was. She felt anger well up and something else.

  For a moment, Pamela paused, her hand gingerly resting on her aching cheekbone, her body a mass of lactic acid laden muscles and bruises, and thought. What was it that she actually felt about this? Hate for SEALs? Yes, that certainly but something more. Underlying it all was a grudging respect, the beginnings of an understanding as to why these men were the way they were, and what their purpose in the world was.

  She didn’t like their tactics to be honest, she didn’t like their tactics when they were applied to her but after watching them in action, she was beginning to understand the necessity for them.

  She glanced across the boat at Thor. He was large enough t
o brace himself midships, his ribs resting on one side of the craft, his feet planted snugly against the opposite side for security. The pilot he would have been dead by now, had it not been for the SEALs.

  And would she herself have survived? She tried to believe that her Cuban captors/friends would have freed her from her cell, would have warned her of the incoming attack.

  Tried, and failed. In the three days she had been in their country, they had shown no more concern for her safety or well-being than a spider does for a struggling fly caught in its web. They’d used her, steered her toward sights and sounds they wanted broadcast to the world, tried to subvert her from her true purpose of getting the facts out.

  And she’d let herself be used, she admitted. She had thought she’d be able to play the delicate cat-and-mouse game with them, pretending to do what they wanted while managing to sneak such shots to her audience as her cunning and wile would allow. In the end, they’d come out almost even, she suspected.

  She suddenly realized with a chill that if she’d stayed at the compound she would have been dead by now. The SEALs had saved her life, and more than that, earned her grudging respect.

  Not that that meant they’d be getting favorable coverage for this little episode. Oh, no, far from it. But she’d find a way to bring some balance to the picture, to show the necessity for such men in a world like today’s, and to explore the political considerations and checks and balances that held their deadly power in leash.

  She turned to Sikes suddenly. “The dog did you kill it?”

  He gazed back at her, eyes a dark steel blue, face carved out of granite. There was no way that she could make him answer, none at all.

  But something must have shown in her face. Finally, he nodded his head frantically. “Didn’t like to do it, but there was no other way.”