Chapter 72
MAJOR FROST WAS THE first one to see him.
The Free Canadian pilot was behind the controls of a CA-10 Thunderbolt and leading an attack on a combined SAM-radar station just six miles in from Panama City. His two wingmen, also flying CA-l0s and using Maverick missiles directed by PAVE PENNY laser seeker pods, had just delivered two direct hits on the enemy radar station when Frost’s short-range radar system started beeping.
“Jesus, here he comes!” Frost cried out to his partners, recognizing the F-16Xl’s unmistakable radar signature.
Immediately, Frost pulled out of his planned strafing run and put the CA-10 into power climb, his two wingmen perfectly mimicking the maneuver.
“Still got a hot SAM down there, sir,” one of his guys reported.
“I know,” Frost answered. “But it’s more important that we clear the area for Hawk.”
All three of the squat, powerful attack jets leveled off at 5000 feet and turned west.
“There he is!” one of the wingmen called out.
Sure enough, Frost could see the distinctive red-white-and-blue Cranked Arrow design going full throttle around a bend in the waterway.
“God, he must be doing Mach and a half!” one of the CA-10 pilots cried out. “I thought that was impossible at that altitude!”
“It is…” Frost told him. “But he’s doing it anyway.”
All three pilots watched in amazement at the F-16XL streaked underneath them doing at least 1000 mph, just barely above the surface of the water, all the while being shot at by enemy small arms fire from both sides of the waterway. The Free Canadians knew at that speed and altitude, if a single bullet hit the airplane anywhere crucial, the F-16XL would hit the water and disintegrate in less than 1/100th of a second.
Frost punched into Hunter’s radio frequency just as the pilot was counting down to his first underwater “target.”
“I’m at ten…” he heard Hunter say, knowing that Jones, Ben, J.T. and many others were listening in. “Nine… eight… I’m starting frequency sequencer… six… five… main pod power on… three… two… one… Zap!”
Frost could hear a buzzer going off in Hunter’s cockpit. Then he heard the F-16 pilot yell: “Got ’em! One down, fifty-two to go!”
Then he was gone—in a flash, twisting away from them and around another bend in the Canal.
“Incredible…” was all Frost could say.
The next UA forces to see Hunter was a small Texan demolition team charged with blowing up a railroad bridge ten miles into the Canal. The span, which crossed the Canal at several locations, was the Canal Nazis main line of communications with the Atlantic side reaches of the waterway, and thus was covered with SAM sites. Already several Twisted Cross troop trains had been spotted crossing the bridge and heading for the Atlantic side. A United American air strike, carried out by two A-4 Skyhawks, was successful in disabling one locomotive. But intense ground fire made it impossible for the A-4s to take down the bridge itself.
So the Texans had been dropped in by helicopter twenty minutes before. Working quickly but under intense enemy fire, the sappers attached no less man 500 pounds of explosives to the main support beams of the RR bridge. Already two of their three helicopters that were covering them had been shot down by shoulder-launched SAMs, and a tight ring of Nazi troops was slowly closing in on the 20-man demo squad.
That’s when their team leader heard a screeching sound coming from the west. His men even stopped working for a moment to look in that direction, fearing the worst. Instead, they saw the one and only F-16XL, traveling at close to 1200 mph no more than 25 feet above the water.
“It’s Hunter!” the team leader yelled.
No sooner were the words out of his mouth when the delta-shaped high-tech fighter streaked by and under the span his troops were preparing to blow up. The jet left such a whirlwind in its path, it nearly knocked two of the sappers off the under pilings of the bridge.
As it would happen, the main concentration of fire being directed against the Texans was coming from three recoilless rifle sites located at a point a half mile down the waterway from the bridge. Somehow—and the Texans never really found out just how—Hunter knew this. As soon as he darted under the bridge, his airplane’s nose exploded in a cough of fire and smoke. A quick but lethal burst of the F-16XEs six simultaneous-firing cannons completely destroyed the enemy’s recoilless rifle nest in three seconds.
Then, as quick as that, the famous airplane was gone, and so was much of the enemy fire.
The Texans successfully blew the bridge five minutes later.
As Major Dantini of the Central American Tactical Service would later tell it, he was up to his neck in smelly water when he first heard the F-16XL coming.
He had just returned that morning from his trip to Washington to meet General Jones. It was during this meeting that Jones had revealed the whole “sneak attack” scenario for Dantini, the only such briefing given to an officer outside of the United American Army Command Staff.
At the time Jones had told him that Dantini and the CATS deserved an explanation of the United Americans’ motives, especially in light of the fact that Washington had been using Radio CATS to broadcast its bogus news stories. It had taken awhile, but Dantini finally came around to an understanding of Jones’s reasoning for the deception. From that point on he worked with the UA planners, detailing for them everything he knew about the Canal and the Nazi’s defenses around it.
His only request had been that, seeing as the CATS would play a very major role during the first hours of the attack, he be allowed to be back with his unit before the fighting broke out. He was, courtesy of a balls-out chopper ride from Texas to a refueling/spyship off Mexico on to his island base off Panama.
He went in with the second wave of his choppers. Their assignment was to blow up a pump station 14 miles from Panama City. The target was high priority because it was one of several pumphouses that regulated the height of the water flow in the Canal. Should the Nazis get really desperate they could, with the turn of a few wheels, let millions of gallons of water flood into the Canal, thereby swamping and probably destroying a good part of both main lock systems.
The particular station Dantini and two of his Chinooks were gunning for was built underground, deep in the woods, about a quarter mile from the bank of the waterway. Its location underground had been strictly an engineering decision by the original builders of the Canal. However, it made the critical target just about impervious to air attack.
So the CATS had taken on the job. Landing two Chinooks about a half mile downstream, Dantini and 15 of his men slogged through a drainage stream that ran parallel to the main waterway, hauling five big rocket-propelled grenade launchers. All they had to do was destroy the small gas turbine that was located on the exposed roof of the pumphouse, and thereby deprive it of the electricity it needed to operate.
It was a job that was a little out of their league—they being primarily chopper troops, but Dantini was sure his guys could handle it.
However, four Nazi fast attack boats showed up to prove them wrong.
No sooner had he and his men dropped into the smelly armpit-high drainage ditch when the Nazi boats appeared. Using .50 caliber machine guns, as well as small rocket launchers, the Nazi sailors were plastering Dantini’s tiny strike force and succeeded in pinning it down just about 500 feet from its objective. Already five of his guys were severely wounded, the rancid water of the drainage stream making their critical wounds worse.
So it was under these circumstances, just as the Nazis were about to move in for the coup de grace on Dantini and his men, that he heard the strange screech of the approaching jet aircraft.
It was ear-splitting from ground level—a banshee-cry that was heard way before its source was seen. But when Dantini did first see it—despite the circumstances, he couldn’t help but stare in awe at the airplane.
“So that’s what it looks like,” he thought as he spotted
the red-white-and-blue fighter coming toward him at close to Mach 2 barely 20 feet off the surface of the Canal.
Dantini knew that Hunter was concentrating on deactivating the mines—in fact he knew that Washbucket #18 was just a tenth of a mile down from his present, precarious position.
So it was with complete surprise when he saw the F-16XLs nose light up as it was still a mile from him. Suddenly the Canal water started erupting as if it were being hit by a giant rain of fiery boulders. In an instant there was a lot of confusion out on the Canal. Fire and water mixed and filled the air with a strange-colored smoky vapor. Pieces of metal and wood and bodies were flying everywhere. The F-16XL streaked through this maelstrom in a nanosecond, so fast it was almost too quick to be seen by the human eye.
When the smoke cleared, all four enemy boats were simply gone.
Twenty minutes later, so was the pump station.
All along the Canal, United American troops and pilots reported seeing the F-16XL, dodging groundfire, AA guns, SAMs while blasting enemy gun positions, bridges, boat facilities, fuel barges, while at the same time deactivating the underwater nuclear mines.
That Hunter’s Mach 2 run of the Canal only took barely two and a half minutes at the most was lost in all the tales that came from it. People swore they saw the F-16XL not only blasting sites down along the banks of the waterway, but also dogfighting enemy F-4s two or three miles up, blasting SAM sites as far as ten miles from the Canal Zone, blasting a column of enemy tanks that had tried to retreat into Big Banana which was nearly 100 miles from the action. Of these things folklore and legends are made.
The wildest story to come out of that incredible day of fighting was to be told over and over by 7th Cavalry commander Major “Catfish” Johnson.
And he, above all others, would swear his story was true.
Chapter 73
THE 7TH CAVALRY, HAVING parachuted in two waves near the Atlantic side Canal locks, had been fighting a two-pronged battle against a numerically superior force of Canal Nazis for nearly five hours. Aided by the CATS gunships and the Free Canadian CA-10 Thunderbolts, advance elements of the 7 Cav finally reached the first set of locks only to find that Nazi reenforcements had made it there before them.
Now, with his entire unit pinned down just 100 feet from their objective, Catfish was considering calling in the CATS troop copters to pull the Cav out. It wasn’t that he was afraid for himself or his men. Like the original 7th Cavalry, he knew every one of them would fight to the last if necessary, especially against an enemy so repugnant as the Canal Nazis.
The reason he was considering the evacuation option was that they were fighting the area where Catfish knew the very last of the underwater nukes was located. He also knew that distance in war leads to desperation. And because they were battling the Nazis at the end of their communication line, so to speak, he knew that if anyone was going to get desperate, it would be the Cross officers charged with defending the locks. Taking the premise to its next logical conclusion, he knew if any of the nuclear bombs were to be detonated possibly by hand, it would be here, the furthest Nazi outpost from The Twisted Cross’s HQ in Panama City.
So when planning for the mission, Catfish and Jones had agreed that, should things get very rough, the 7 Cav was to pull back.
And things had just gotten very rough.
The Nazis had brought up nine T-72 tanks and a dozen “Stalin Organ” multiple rocket launchers and with them were bombarding the 7th Cavalry, most of whom were pinned down “along a highway which led to the locks.
One CA-10 was already down, crashed into the waterway, taking out a control station as it went in. Two of the CATS Chinooks were also hit and crashed landed. What was worse, scouts reported that several Nazi attack craft had moved up to the locks and that heavily-suited divers were preparing to go into the water. Catfish knew the only reason the Nazis would be going into the water was to do something nasty with the nuclear mines.
In the midst of all this, the F-16 appeared.
Looking down on the waterway from a slight rise, Catfish saw the jet fighter blazing down the Canal at 1200 mph. He watched as it neatly dodged two SAMs, all the while never diverting from its course, altitude or speed for more than a second.
But then, about a half mile from his position, the fighter ran into an incredible barrage of AA fire—a storm of AA shells that not even the Wingman could escape.
“Jesus, he’s hit!” Catfish cried out, watching the action through his electronically-powered binoculars. A burst of smoke and flame had erupted under the fighter’s left wing, probably from a 50-mm AA round. He instantly felt the pit of his stomach drop as he watched the F-16 pull up, smoke pouring from its underbelly.
Up it went—straight up, trailing flames and black vapor. Up until it was completely out of sight.
Catfish quickly checked his map and saw that the F-16 had been hit a quarter mile from the location of the very last underwater mine.
“Damn!” he cried out. “The crazy son of a bitch was able to get fifty-two of the bastards…”
Now through his own scope, Catfish could see the Nazi divers entering the water right over the last remaining active mine’s location. He considered calling up his sharpshooters, but at the same time knew they would be too far away for a shot.
At that moment, the Nazis opened up with several larger guns they had brought up to complement their tanks. At the same moment, two Twisted Cross Phantoms arrived overhead and immediately peeled off and dropped napalm at the end of his column.
That was it. Catfish had seen enough. It killed him inside to do it, but he yelled back to his second-in-command to start getting the troops ready for a pullback and evacuation by air.
That’s when he heard the strangest noise that had ever passed his eardrums.
At first it almost sounded like violins, oddly enough. Like an orchestra pit full of violins, all playing something different. Then the noise quickly changed pitch to something more electronic—almost like a blast of synthesized sound. And even quicker again, the noise took on another octave and it passed from a high piercing, oddly sweet sound to a full-throated roar…
And it was coming from straight overhead.
Catfish looked up. His men looked up. Even the Nazis on the Canal locks looked up.
Out from the sun it came. Fire. Smoke. Noise. Power.
It was the F-16XL.
“Christ, is it crashing?” the 7 Cav second-in-command cried out. “How can he make that airplane do that?”
Catfish had no idea. He couldn’t have put it into words if he wanted to.
The F-16 was coming straight down—and not nose first. It was level—like a Harrier—but dropping like a rocket. It was still smoking heavily and one wing was completely engulfed in flames. Yet it kept on coming. Right down nearly on top of the boat the Nazi divers were using. And then, almost impossibly, the F-16XL appeared to go into a hover.
Catfish was not an aerodynamics expert, but he knew what he was seeing appeared to defy the laws of gravity and flight. Only later would he learn that the maneuver was actually a combination of something called a “vertical translation” and “pitched-axis pointing”—seemingly impossible actions for any airplane other than Hunter’s Control-Configured/Supersonic Cruise and Maneuvering prototype-adapted Cranked Arrow.
All the while, just about every gun in the Nazis arsenal had turned away from the 7th Cavalry and was now shooting at the F-16.
“He’s bombarding the Goddamn thing!” Catfish yelled out, as the F-16XL just seemed to hang in mid-air for the longest time. The 7th Cavalry officer knew that the deactivator pod must have been burning red—not from the flames on the F-16’s other wing but because Hunter was cranking the power up so high, intent—to the death, if necessary—on defusing the last nuke.
In the middle of all this, one of the Nazi F-4s pulled up and peeled off toward the strangely-configured F-16. It turned out to be a big mistake. No sooner had the enemy airplane turned in its direction d
id a Sidewinder flash out from under the flames of the F-16’s wing and run a course straight and true right into the F-4’s midsection. There was the usual huge explosion, and nothing left but a cloud of burning metal fibers.
A split-second later, the F-16 pulled up and roared away at an incredible rate of speed, still smoking heavily, its rear section almost entirely engulfed in flames.
Catfish had to shake his head to believe what he thought he just witnessed. It had seemed like the fighter had just been able to freeze time itself. Yet, in reality, it had hung—or actually did a tight circle—over the crucial spot in the Canal for no more than one and a half seconds. But it had been long enough, he would learn later, to scramble the radio signals of the last nuke and thereby disarm it.
“Unbelievable…” he whispered.
Chapter 74
THEY FOUND HUNTER SIX miles away.
The pilot of a CATS Chinook, on his way to providing fire support for the 7th Cavalry, radioed back to his base that the F-16 was down, crashed in a swamp about a mile in from the shore of Gatun Lake.
A MedicVac chopper was quickly dispatched from a United American troopship just approaching the Atlantic end of the Canal. Upon landing in the swamp, the medics first reported that the pilot looked unconscious—or worse. But after slopping through the waist-deep water they found Hunter was simply sound asleep.
He refused to be evacuated. Instead he insisted on being dropped off at the CATS island base. From there he spent the rest of the daylight hours serving as a waist gunner on one of the Chinooks. He was there when troops waiting on the ships offshore finally landed and reinforced the 7th Cavalry. Two hours later, the United American flag was flying over the captured locks.
He was there when the C-141 transports finally came in for bumpy but successful landings at Panama City Airport, relieving Shane’s brave troops and spearheading the breakout toward the Pacific side locks. His Chinook was instrumental in the successful battle for the locks that followed.
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