It was over now for him at least for this battle.
And maybe permanently for Gator. Every time Bird Dog crested a wave, he scanned the sea around him, looking for the distinctive orange color that would pinpoint his backseater’s location.
There was no trace of him.
He felt his mind starting to drift, lulled into an odd state of relaxation by the warm water and the release of tension following his violent ejection from the aircraft. It felt so odd, to float so peacefully on the water while to the east the rest of the squadron still battled off the Cuban aggressors.
He could hear his blood pounding in his ears, a gentle rhythmic whop-whop that he jerked violently upright in the water, shifting his gaze from the sea to the air. That was no heartbeat he recognized the sound all too well, although he’d never heard it from exactly this angle.
An odd, ungainly insect was hovering mere inches above the water-at least at first glance that’s what it looked like.
As he refocused himself out of the temporary euphoria that always followed unexpected survival, the shape resolved itself into the ungainly figure of the SAR helicopter.
He felt a wild surge of hope, a reorientation toward reality. From that altitude, he’d have an excellent view of miles and miles of surrounding ocean. They’d be able to spot Gator immediately.
At least, one part of his mind said, they would if his backseater’s seat span had deployed properly. And if Gator hadn’t impacted the canopy on the way out of the aircraft.
And if Bird Dog shoved away the myriad possibilities of what could have gone wrong with Gator’s egress from the aircraft. It didn’t pay to think about it not now, not with the helicopter inbound. He hoped if they saw Gator, they’d vector over and pull his backseater out of the water first. He watched for any jink in the aircraft’s course, hoping it would veer away to pursue some other target. But no, it bore steadily in on him.
Five minutes later, the rescue swimmer plunged into the ocean beside him. The water was spread out flat around Bird Dog, evidence of the powerful downdraft from the helicopter’s blades. As he horse-collared up into the helicopter, Bird Dog was already shouting questions to the pilot. He fumbled with the catches, flung the rescue device away from him, and stumbled to the edge of the open hatch. A crew member grabbed him, slapped a safety line on him.
“You’re not going back into the water. Not after I just hauled you out of it.”
“Leave me alone.” Bird Dog scanned the water frantically, then darted to the other side of the cabin and peered out the small window. Miles of ocean stretched out before him. Blue, solidly blue except for tiny scraps of white topping the waves.
There was no sign of Gator.
SIXTEEN
Wednesday, 03 July
0655 Local (+5 GMT)
Washington, D.C.
“You’re out of options. Admiral.” Senator Williams swiveled away from the tactical display. His presence here in the Joint Chiefs of Staff war room was unusual, but not unprecedented. As a member of the military subcommittee, he had access on a need-to-know basis. This, Williams figured, was the most need-to-know opportunity that had arisen since the original Cuban Missile Crisis incident.
Admiral Loggins’s voice got tight. “Jesus, you are insane!
Nuclear weapons? And in Cuba? If we use the UAV option, the fallout alone will have consequences in the United States.”
Williams shook his head. “Not so. If you’ve been listening to the experts, the chances of radiation reaching American soil are minimal.”
“I have pilots in the air right now,” Loggins thundered.
“What do your so-called experts say about them? Are they in any danger? You know as well as I do that the EMP is liable to knock them all out of the air! I’m not taking that chance not today, not ever.
They don’t deserve that.”
“Hard choices require hard men,” Senator Williams shot back. “You think it was easy for my predecessors, deciding to leave those POWs in enemy hands after each war? To sacrifice men and women in combat? Do you think we’re that heartless?”
And that. Admiral Loggins realized, was essentially the question. Did he really think that the good faith on the part of men such as Senator Williams was sufficient for him to entrust the safety of the men and women under his command to them? Would Williams make good decisions, decisions that would strengthen the nation rather than weaken it? Or did the larger picture” national strategy,” as Williams was fond of referring to it outweigh the safety of the men in the air, and his commitment to keep them alive?
“It’s set up now, isn’t it?” Williams asked.
Loggins nodded. “We’ve already programmed the vector to the command post. And the link between Arsenal and the missile is working well.
All we have to do is authorize the divert and it’ll be on its way. But I think we ought toNO!” Admiral Loggins grabbed at Williams’s hand, which was poised over the execute switch. The admiral’s fingers grazed the back of Williams’s hand as me senator quickly flipped the lever into execute position.
Four rows of green lights flickered on Loggins’s console as the UAV ran its self-check verifying what it had known all along, that everything was in working order and commenced executing its last given instruction.
As an additional safety precaution, the UAV was programmed to lock out further orders after it received a go signal, to prevent the possibility of enemy jamming or cryptological deception making it deviate from its course.
Loggins watched in horror as the UAV gently rolled out of its orbit, shuddered, and pitched its deadly rounded snout up. He saw the exhaust spit a whiff of black smoke, then steady into a clear, turbulent blast of hot gas. Seconds later, the missile was no longer under visual observation and could only be tracked by its small blip on the radar scope.
That, too, was intermittent, given the Stealth technology of the missile.
“Dear God, what have you done?” Loggins gasped. “You had no right to ” Williams leaned back in his chair and smiled, an ugly, twisted parody of a pleasant expression. “If you had the guts, you’d have done it yourself. Remember that, Loggins.
Remember that.”
0657 Local (+5 GMT)
Tomcat 202
“Stoney, it’s starting a rollout!” The first trace of excitement entered Tomboy’s voice.
“I see it, I see it I’ve got it now.” Tombstone identified the UAV’s green blip on his heads-up display. “How long?”
“Minutes. Stoney, if that missile detonates on target, we don’t have a chance. Neither do those men in the air to the south.”
“I know it.” Tombstone jammed the throttles forward into full afterburner. “It should be accelerating keep giving me range and bearings to it. Tomboy, as well as a vector to intercept. There’s going to be a very small window when it’s within range.”
“Sidewinder,” Tomboy suggested.
Stoney clicked the mike twice. “Roger. It’s the only one reliable enough to trust for one shot.”
And one shot is all he’d have. One chance to knock the missile out of the air, to send it tumbling helplessly to land before the nuclear warhead armed, to detonate it into a conventional explosion in the atmosphere without invoking the deadly hellfire contained in its nose cone. One chance, one shot.
0700 Local (+5 GMT)
Washington, D.C.
“You’re insane,” Loggins blurted out. Suddenly, the sheer lunacy of their position struck him full force. How had he gotten involved in this, one part of his mind wailed. To wander so far from the traditional honors and values of the United States Navy, to allow political control to assert itself over the very targeting decisions the military made? If anyone ought to know better, it should be you, he chided himself. After Vietnam, you swore you would never let this happen again. Not only did you let it happen, but you’re part of it.
“They’ll think you did it, you know,” Williams said softly. “Some sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome you s
hould be able to blame it on that. They might even let you keep your retirement.” The senator smirked. “I’ll say I tried to stop you, but if they compare our records, they’ll know who’s really behind it. You were all the way; it was all your idea.”
“No,” Loggins said, his voice strong and firm. “I don’t think so. You see, if nothing else, war has taught me a little bit about being prepared.” He leaned forward, pushed a button on the speakerphone.
“Senator, did you hear that?”
“I surely did,” Senator Thomas Dailey said. The strong Midwestern drawl was unmistakable. “So did the rest of us, Admiral.”
“And Arsenal is taking the appropriate action?” Loggins said, a savage good humor fighting its way up out of the depression that had plagued him for the last several months.
He glanced at Williams, saw the man wilting visibly in the chair. “Has it?”
“The chairman gave the order three minutes ago,” Dailey said. “The warhead is disarmed. Too bad they didn’t build a self-destruct function into it. As it is now, it will impact the target as strictly a conventional warhead.”
“Thank God for the pickiness of nuclear triggering circuitry,” Loggins said.
“You knew all along,” Williams said, his voice defeated.
“Where did I screw up? What made you think I’d really do it?”
“Just a promise I made to myself a long time ago,” Admiral Loggins said softly. “And whatever else happens, those men and women on the front line will know I kept the faith.”
0702 Local (+5 GMT)
Tomcat 202
“It’s below us,” Tomboy warned. “Altitude, two thousand feet.”
“Roger.” Tombstone nosed the Tomcat down slightly, quickly trading altitude for speed. Lower altitude, lower speed, as the air created more friction. The airspeed he’d gained by descending would be quickly bled off fighting the thicker air. Still, it wasn’t as though he had much time. Or choice.
He craned his head aft, searching through the clear bubble of the canopy for some sign of the weapon. According to Tomboy’s radar picture, it was almost on them, less than one mile aft. He’d matched altitude with it, though he had no hope of ever matching its speed.
“Twenty seconds.” Tomboy began counting down the time to intercept.
Tombstone kept his hand glued to the weapons selector switch. There it was, a tiny black speck on the horizon, barely discernible to the naked eye. His gut tightened down into a thin hard knot, and more intimate parts of his anatomy attempted to snug up to the rest of his body. The thought of the sheer destructive power contained in that tiny object that could’ve been a dirt speck on the canopy was overwhelming.
“Ten seconds.” The moments clicked by inexorably, the missile growing larger with each ticktock of eternity.
Finally, he could see it all. The slim, almost graceful looking fuselage of the missile. White, with cruciform fins standing out from the body. It was moving fast, so fast had he ever encountered anything so awesome in the air?
Even normal air-to-air combat weapons couldn’t match the sheer grace and power of this devastating land attack missile.
It was by him in a flash, almost too quick to see. His retinas shone with the afterimage of it, white against the brilliant sunrise behind him.
“Two seconds,” Tomboy said.
Tombstone’s finger tightened, then initiated launch. Two Sidewinders leaped off the wings, one from each side, and started streaking out into the empty air in front of the Tomcat Although the missile was still behind him, there was no way he would ever catch it once it was past. No, the only option was to shoot before it got to him and hope he’d calculated the intercept correctly. It was a long shot, maybe the longest one he’d ever taken. And the most important.
As the missile shot through his field of vision, he automatically toggled the weapons selector to guns and ripped the atmosphere apart with a continuous barrage of pellets from his gunport. It had little chance of downing the titanium-cased missile, but there was a chance the impact would jar some delicate triggering mechanism inside it, maybe prevent it from detonating or maybe detonating it early, it suddenly occurred to him. If that happened, he’d never know it. For a moment, the thought of the hellfire fireball that would erupt so close to the Tomcat shook him.
An instant later, he was certain that was what had happened. A brilliant flash of white light filled the air, brighter than the rising sun 180 degrees offset from it. He yelped, slammed his eyelids down, too late. The fiery incandescent ball seared his eyes, immediately invoking a protective flood of tears. He dabbed at his eyes ineffectually with one hand, wondering why it was taking so long to die.
“You did it!” Tomboy’s voice was jubilant. “Damn it, Stoney, I don’t believe it you hit the intercept dead-on.
That was the Sidewinder igniting, not the missile those poor suckers on the ground below,” she finished, suddenly quiet. “Shit, I hate to see what happens to anything underneath those two.”
“It didn’t detonate,” Tombstone said wonderingly. “I thought it might” “It was a chance we took,” Tomboy said quietly. “You made the right decision. Again.”
Tombstone drew a deep, shuddering breath, suddenly filled with a joyous exhilaration. He was alive, still alive he’d just faced down the deadliest weapon known to mankind and survived. After this little encounter, the Cuban command and control center would be a piece of cake.
“Come on, shipmate we’ve got a mission to finish.”
0705 Local (+5 GMT)
Washington, D.C.
“Lost video,” the lieutenant commander manning the weapons tracking console announced. He glanced uneasily at the two civilians and the one admiral standing next to the command console. He hadn’t tried to overhear. God knew he hadn’t.
But duty inside this war-fighting center of the most powerful nation in the world occasionally made him privy to discussions that no lieutenant commander should ever hear. So far above his pay grade that he couldn’t even begin to breathe in the rarefied air of power filling the unexpectedly small compartment. Would he survive this tour? He shook his head, not knowing. Junior officers who happened to overhear discussions not intended for their ears sometimes found themselves with an immediate, high priority posting to a billet as fuel officer in Adak, Alaska, there to languish out a three-year tour waiting to be passed over for promotion. No one ever said it, but there were ways that the admirals and generals had of communicating their desires to the promotion boards.
A flurry of angry shouts and enunciations filled the air behind him.
The lieutenant commander hunched down behind his console, desperately wishing he were somewhere else.
Finally, it was over. He heard feet moving rapidly behind him, a harsh, barked order from a Marine sentry, then silence. One set of footsteps started toward him, paused, and finished the short trip over to stand behind him. He didn’t dare look up.
A hand landed on his shoulder, squeezed it reassuringly; then a familiar voice said, “Son, none of this happened today. You understand that?”
The lieutenant commander nodded. “Yes, Admiral Loggins. Nothing happened.”
“Look at me.”
It was definitely an order, and the lieutenant commander obeyed. He tore his eyes away from the green spikes and blips still streaking across his console and gazed into the hard, craggy face of Admiral Loggins. Senator Dailey was standing two paces behind the admiral, looking grim. His urge to jump to his feet was almost overwhelming.
“You just saw me keep faith with an entire battle group out there on the front line,” Admiral Loggins said. His voice was soft and ragged.
“I know what you’re worried about hell, I sat in that chair when I was a lieutenant commander.
For the record and I have a witness,” he said, nodding at Senator Dailey, “I take full responsibility for the actions that took place here. You understand?”
The lieutenant commander struggled to find his voice.
“Yes, Admiral. Although,” he dared, “nothing happened today. I’m sure I wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”
The admiral’s face cracked into a small grin. “I didn’t think you would.”
“Some things never change, do they?” Senator Dailey added. He shifted his gaze to the admiral. “Still build ‘em like they did when I was in the Navy. Admiral, I see a lot of potential in this man. I think I’ll be taking a personal interest in his career from now on. You hear that, son?” the senator queried the young officer.
The poor lieutenant commander struggled to find his breath. One wrong move, the wrong interpretation, and “Quit messing with him, Tom,” the admiral said good naturedly. “I’ll take care of him. We always take care of our own in the Navy. You remember that.”
As the two senior officers walked away, the lieutenant commander drew a shaky breath. He looked back down at his screen, and stopped in mid-exhalation. “Admiral I think you might want to see this.” Damn it, it was the right thing to do, call the admiral back, as much as he’d been relieved to see the two men step away from him. “That Tomcat it’s inbound on the Cuban command center.”
From some yards behind him, the admiral’s voice said, “I know that, son. The senator and I are going to watch the last part of this from my console. When it’s over we’ll tell you what actually happened. You got that?”
“Aye, aye. Admiral.” The lieutenant commander hunched back up to his controls and settled in to wait.
0710 Local (+5 GMT)
Tomcat 202
The prior air strike had silenced most of the antiair batteries on the ground. A few sites spat up tracers, but the Tomcat avoided them easily. Antiaircraft fire was no big deal when there were no overlapping fields of fire and when the Tomcat owned the air.
“Time to rejoin the world.” Tombstone reached out and flicked on the communication circuitry. His earphones immediately filled with the loud tactical chatter from the furball still going on out to the east.
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