The F-16XL disappeared as quickly as it had materialized, the rest of the pilots in Mausser’s flight watching as the airplane performed the seemingly impossible maneuver of staying level yet shooting straight up and disappearing high above.
At this point the Fitter pilots broke radio silence. Their leader gone, a South African pilot named Jooge took over command.
“Stay level!” he instructed the others, knowing that a successful air raid meant he’d get the departed Mausser’s share of gold. “Continue in on the target …”
But suddenly the strange airplane was back again. It streaked through their formation from the east, traveling at terrific speed. Its nose was firing so many cannons it appeared as if it were on fire. First one, then two Fitters simply vaporized in the furious fusillade from the F-16XL. Once again, the jet roared off—this time disappearing over the western horizon.
The remaining Fitters were now just 90 seconds from landfall and under two minutes from their target. Yet a hot debate had erupted among the pilots.
“Did you see the speed of that plane!” one pilot asked, his voice filled with panic.
“It is not like anything I have ever seen …” another said.
“We must turn back!” a third cried. “It is this American Hunter in that airplane …”
“No …” Jooge said. “The man you refer to—this American Wingman—is dead. I know that for a fact. This is not him. We must continue the mission.”
Two of the pilots didn’t agree with Jooge; they simply dropped out of the formation and headed eastward.
“He was spotted during the air raid on Syracuse,” one of the remaining pilots. “This Wingman lives …”
“No!” Jooge shouted. “You have been listening to rumors and it is now affecting your performance as pilots. Keep in formation. We are going in …”
No sooner had the words left his lips when Jooge was suddenly aware of a dark shadow filling up his cockpit. He looked up and nearly vomited at the sight of the large arrowhead-shaped aircraft underbelly that was screeching along with him, no more than 10 feet above. There was a large W painted on it …
Suddenly he felt something hit the rear of his airplane with a sharp bang. An instant later his Fitter was spinning out of control. He twisted around and saw that his starboard rear stabilizer and most of his tail wing were gone.
He couldn’t turn the airplane left or right, nor could he dive out from under the frightening airplane above him. He reached for the ejection button, but knew that if he yanked it, it would be blown upward and smashed into the plane’s underbelly.
He was helpless …
The others in the flight who were watching the incredible aerial encounter were shocked to see the arrowhead fighter force the Fitter right into the lake. As before, the fully-armed Kerry missile exploded, destroying the Soviet-built airplane and its pilot.
That was enough for the six remaining Fitters. As one, they jettisoned their missiles and banked eastward in an attempt to get away from the F-16XL. But five of them would not be so lucky. The Cranked Arrow pursued them, getting position on each of the slower airplanes’ tail and blasting it to kingdom come with the awesome Vulcan Six-Pack.
Soon there was only one left. The F-16XL rode right up the pilot’s ass, and closed to within firing range …
But he didn’t fire.
Instead, the fleeing pilot heard the F-16XL pilot come on his radio frequency.
“Do you speak English?” the voice demanded.
“Yes,” the pilot, an Austrian fascist, answered nervously. “Some …”
“Then return to your base and tell your comrades what happened here,” the almost unearthly voice said. “Tell them what you saw. Tell them they will meet the same fate if they keep flying for The Circle …”
The enemy pilot was trembling so much, he could hardly push his radio button to transmit. “But who should I say was responsible?” he finally managed to ask the voice.
There was a burst of static. Then the voice said: “Tell them it was The Wingman …”
With that, the flying arrowhead suddenly rose, streaked right over his head, then turned and disappeared off to the west. The Austrian pilot wiped the sweat from his brow, vowed to give up flying altogether then quickly steered a course back to the Syracuse Aerodrome.
CHAPTER 58
THREE DAYS LATER THE ground attack on the Circle forces at Syracuse began …
It started in the early morning hours when a fleet of lake barges and ferries commenced landing United American troops at the port of Oswego, just 40 miles north of Syracuse. The Americans crushed what little resistance the Circle-aligned troops guarding the city offered, and within two hours, 20,000 men were ashore and moving toward the enemy lines.
Meanwhile, another 8,000 men—most of them from units of the Pacific American Air Corps ground forces—had been moved through the night to a point just 22 miles west of the Syracuse Aerodrome. Their deployment was masked by another daring midnight air raid carried out by the UA A-7s on the Aerodrome itself. Once again, 500-pound “Ironman” runway busting bombs had been used with great effectiveness. By the time the 20-minute air strike was over, three of the Aerodrome’s five working runways had been knocked out.
The rest of the UA force, 2500 elite PAAC paratroopers, were waiting inside a variety of aircraft—from Texas C-141s Starlifters to PAAC C-130s-back in Erie.
The Circle Command Staff had been anticipating attacks from several directions and had deployed units around the city as well as the air base. Circle fighter jets were warmed and waiting alongside the Aerodrome’s runways, waiting to launch and intercept any United American aircraft spotted on the Circle’s still-operating radar net. Its few attack jets were also standing by, waiting to give ground support when the Circle troops went into action.
The first clash between the UA and Circle troops happened just outside of the small village of Skaneateles, just 17 miles from Syracuse. A Circle artillery base was suddenly overrun by the advance unit of the PAAC 1st Infantry. The Americans, under the direct command of Captain “Bull” Dozer, kept right on going. Using a squadron of large PAAC Chinook helicopters—known as the “Crazy Eights”—the democratic troops leap-frogged up through Marcellus, through Navarino and across the Onondaga Indian Reservation. The Circle troops in their way collapsed under the weight of the attack. By the time the Americans stopped just before noon, they were sitting atop Howlett Hill, a 600-foot cliff that overlooked the southwest side of Syracuse.
The Circle command dispatched six Fitter attack planes to bomb the Americans on the hill, but a combination of shoulder-launched SAMs and two prowling F-4 Phantoms chased away the Fitters. Within an hour, the Americans were raining artillery shells and rocket fire onto the city itself.
High above it all was Hunter …
He hadn’t slept or eaten in days, standard working conditions when he was on a combat buzz such as this. But, like never before, he was taking out his misery—his deep-down hurt—on the enemy. He loved the F-16XL—the way it flew, the way it performed, the way it felt. And he had shared nothing but success with it since it arrived from the GD factory, the strange incident with the gold APC notwithstanding.
But although the airplane had filled a certain need within him—and a selfish one at that—it still couldn’t dissipate the emptiness inside him resulting from his meeting with Dominique. He knew that he could go anywhere, win any war, bed any woman—and he still would never forget what he had lost in her.
His friends knew it, too. He was almost unapproachable around the Erie base most of the time. All business the rest. He wasn’t mean and brusque—that would have been too out of character. He was just quiet, and giving out a lot of “please-leave-me-alone” vibrations. Jones, Dozer, Fitzgerald and the others knew better than to go against his wishes.
Besides, there was a war to be fought …
So Hunter had loaded down his F-16XL with a gaggle of munitions and weapons and joined the fray. He carried six S
idewinders—two on each wing tip and two more close in under his fuselage. He carried two Paveway laser-guided bombs, one on each wing next to the fuel tanks, plus a Mk 117 750-pound bomb under his portside. To balance this out, he had installed a LAU rocket launcher under his starboard wing, and a AGM-45A Shrike anti-radar missile next to it. To top it all off, he was lugging a AGM-109 MRASM cruise missile that was packing 2000 lbs. of high explosive, plus six Mk 82 500-pound general purpose bombs.
It all added up to 17,890 lbs. of ordnance fixed to the 18 hard points on his arrowhead wing frame, not counting the six Avenger cannons in his snout.
The 750 bomb went first. American troops moving down from Oswego ran into a roadblock some 11 miles outside of the town. Some Circle troops had blocked the main highway, Route 481, with a movable iron pillbox being hauled on the back of a flatbed trailer, that was in turn being pulled by two souped up tractors.
The pillbox had effectively slowed down the Americans’ advance as its controllers had placed it in a narrow pass on Route 481 around which there was no alternate route. The pillbox contained three Bofors 88-mm artillery pieces, plus a number of .50 caliber machine guns. Already it had chopped up the Americans’ advance units and now, several Fitters were napalming the stalled force.
Enter the Wingman …
He blasted both Fitters from the sky without warning, using his Six Pack and a quick vertical translation to give the illusion that he appeared out of nowhere. Then he flipped the XL over and came straight down the pike. Twisting and turning to avoid the pillbox’s .50 caliber ground fire, he laid the 750-pounder right at the base of the flatbed. There was an earth-shaking explosion and when the smoke cleared, all that was left was a crater and a few pieces of burning scrap metal.
The next obstacle was a line of Stalin Organs—mobile units which carried multiple rocket launchers—that the Circle had placed on one side of Route 481. Hunter came in low and hard and emptied the LAU rocket launcher into the eight vehicles, destroying five of them and damaging another. Mortar fire from the advancing Americans took out the remaining two launchers.
A line of captured M-1 tanks provided Hunter’s next target. Strategically placed on top of six rolling hills just three miles from North Syracuse, Hunter made short work of the armor via his half dozen Mk 82 500-pound bombs.
Another 40 minutes of strafing followed and by two that afternoon, the American amphibious troops were within shelling range of the Aerodrome itself. Only then did Hunter take a break and rendezvous with a KC-135 tanker to fill up with gas.
The second round of fighting started around three-thirty that afternoon.
United American sappers had blown a number of bridges around the city, thus preventing the Circle troops from half their means of easy escape. A combined A-7 and A-10 attack was launched against the Aerodrome around four, with the Football City F-20s shooting down three Fulcrums which had risen to challenge the slower attack planes. A single A-7 was lost in the raid.
At 4:30, Dozer’s troops left Howlett Hill and began fighting their way into the Syracuse city limits. Enemy troops began retreating back toward the former Syracuse University grounds and bitter house to house fighting ensued.
Hunter had teamed up with two Texas F-4 Phantoms and provided air cover for the advancing United American troops. When Dozer’s scouts reported that the Circle was using a tower on the campus as an observation post, Hunter laid his Paveway laser-guided bomb at the base of the steeple, destroying its foundation and toppling it altogether.
Hunter was moving in a controlled frenzy, providing a kind of “flying artillery” for the advancing American troops. Every Circle fighter that dared to fight him was quickly dispatched. Any SAM crew that chose to fire at him was instantly perforated with Vulcan cannon shells. When he got a call from the commander of the troops advancing into North Syracuse that a large concentration of howitzers were pounding his troops from the edge of the Aerodrome, he programmed his AGM-109 MRASM cruise missile to the coordinates and let the “fire-and-forget” rocket fly. It was more than ten minutes later when he heard from the commander that the missile had found its target and destroyed more than a dozen big guns in the one, long-range, shot.
By the time night had fallen, the Americans had forced the enemy troops into two large pockets—the northside of the university campus and the perimeter of the Aerodrome itself. A day of bitter fighting had finally come to an end. Casualties on both sides had been heavy; close to 6000 dead and wounded for the Americans, more than twice that for The Circle.
Now as a large orange full moon rose in the sky, both sides hunkered down to contemplate their next move.
CHAPTER 59
THAT NIGHT BACK IN Erie, a council of war was held in Jones’s trailer. Hunter, Fitz, Ben Wa, J.T. and Dozer were in attendance as well as the various unit and air corps commanders. Each person had a glass of whiskey before them.
The topic of the meeting was simple: How best to knock out the enemy troops before they were able to break out of their encirclements. It was a grim discussion, because it centered on the most efficient way to kill some 30,000 humans.
“We can’t let them escape wholesale,” Jones said, not at all relishing his role as head executioner. “Between the problems we still have to face in Washington and with the mercenary fleet, I’m afraid this is no time to be magnanimous …”
The five others solemnly nodded in agreement. Unlike their continental enemies, these men detested war, detested the taking of a single human life. But they also shared the near-religious belief and devotion to the preservation of what used to be the great country of America. Blood had been shed to bring this idea into being, blood had been shed to maintain it. Now more blood would be shed to preserve it.
“I don’t think we have any choice but to launch major air strikes on both targets,” Jones said. “The priority being the Aerodrome where the largest concentration of their forces are now gathered.”
He turned to Fitzgerald. “I’m sorry about this, Mike,” he continued. “I feel I have to send in the heavy stuff over your place …”
Hunter thought he could see tears well up in his friend’s eyes. The Aerodrome was Fitzie’s life. He had built it up from a one garage airplane repair shop to one of the most profitable enterprises in the post-New Order world. Now he would have to not just witness, but actually participate in its destruction.
He accepted his fate well. “Won’t be the first time that something has to be destroyed in order to preserve it,” he said. “We can always build again, if not there, then somewhere …”
Jones took a strong belt of his drink—they all did.
Dozer spoke next. He was still dressed in his battle fatigues, having been shuttled back to Erie by one of the Crazy Eights. “I think our first priority is to knock out their Central Command Center. They run everything from there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a bunch of Soviet techs doing the brain-work. If we put the kibosh on it, then, the chicken will be without its head. Our northern units can sweep into the Aerodrome and our southern guys can move on the encirclement at the university.”
“Do we even know where this CIC is?” JT asked.
“We just have to look where they’ve got all their SAMs stacked,” Ben Wa said. “I’d guess it’s somewhere in the main terminal building at the air base.”
“It’s probably under the control tower itself,” Fitz said. “There’s a bunker we put in underground to keep our state secrets, codes, important stuff like that. I’m sure that’s where they set up shop. And I have to agree with Ben, they’ve probably got the SAMs three deep around it right now.”
Jones rubbed his chin in thought. “Well, we all know there’s only one way to take it out then,” he said. He turned to J.T. and Ben. “Will you guys handle that, please?”
They both nodded.
“And how about the university?” Dozer asked. “They’ve got a lot of guys packed in there, and frankly, we’re very thin around the lines. They could concentrate on
one side and break out with not much problem. If they do, we’ll lose them again.”
“Then we won’t give them the chance,” Jones said firmly. He turned to Fitz. “Mike, you know what to do …”
Fitz nodded and took another good stiff belt from his drink.
All during the meeting Hunter had kept silent. He was simply listening, watching, preparing himself for the next day’s battle. And wondering what Dominique was doing at that moment …
The next morning dawned crystal clear and warm.
The Circle troops that had spent the night within the university grounds were now preparing to break out to the east and retreat from the city. Each infantryman was issued a full ration of ammunition, and given a small breakfast. By 0700, the breakout would begin, led by the two dozen tanks that had withdrawn to the campus the afternoon before.
But it was just 0630, as the Circle troopers were finishing their morning meal when they heard a strange whining noise coming from the west. Most of them had no idea what the racket was. But the troopers who had retreated to Syracuse from New Chicago knew the sound represented a flying death …
They saw the vapor trails a few moments later. Two thick ones, cutting across the deep blue morning sky, trailed by a half dozen thinner ones. Someone, somewhere on the campus fired, a SA-7 shoulder launched SAM at the aircraft, but they were much too high for the missile to be effective. Several larger, longer-range SA-2s were then launched, their flight being controlled by the mobile radar station the Circle commander had placed out on a playing field at the university. But these missiles too fell short, stopped no doubt by intensive ECM being put out by the airplanes.
Suddenly one of the thinner vapor trails disappeared, indicating that the airplane was diving out of the cooler air that caused the icy crystals to form in the first place, to the warmer air below. Suddenly another streak was seen crossing the sky. Its tail was spitting fire—the tell-tale sign of an incoming air-to-surface missile.
Those Circle soldiers who had been watching the aircraft pass over now rushed for cover. The missile—an AGM-45A Shrike, launched from the F-16XL—flew right over their heads and impacted square on the mobile radar station, destroying it. The Circle AA teams on the campus were now effectively blinded.
Thunder in the East Page 23