First Strike c-19

by Keith Douglass

  Tombstone knew Greene was right. That was their target flying the other MiG. It was close, so close — only one minute separated them. They were within range even now.

  “Forget our load out?” Tombstone snapped.

  Greene swore violently, directing his oaths equally at the Russians and the Armenians, and the ordnance techs who’d loaded the MiG only with ground attack weapons. Short of dropping an iron bomb on top of the other aircraft or ramming it, they had no way to attack. Even the nose gun had not been loaded.

  Just then, a hard tone cut through the cockpit. It was louder and more insistent than the earlier ESM alarm. Tombstone glanced at the frequency and pulse rates on the alarm display, and knew immediately what it was.

  “SAM! Get us out of here!” Greene shouted. “Tombstone, it’s got a seeker head and—”

  Tombstone broke hard to the right, and kicked the MiG into afterburner. He glanced down at his fuel gauge, keeping up his scan, absorbing all the information from all the sources immediately, integrating them into a coherent threat picture, and calculating his options without even being conscious of it.

  He knew instinctively he could not outrun the missile. They were too close, and had too little time. And, if he used the afterburner now, there was a good chance they would not be able to return to base.

  “Do you see it?” Tombstone demanded, keeping his attention on the terrain ahead. They were now at 500 feet and still descending.

  “No, I — yes! I got it, ten o’clock low. It’s got a lock!”

  “That’s what they’re supposed to do. Options?”

  “Faster!”

  Tombstone didn’t answer. Ahead of them were the low hills that had shielded them from the air search radar as they were approaching. Now, they would serve a similar function, only in reverse. But the descent angles would have to be calculated perfectly. Since the missile was rapidly gaining altitude, it would have a look-down capability that would negate the masking effect of the hills. If he could just entice it down, then cut back behind the terrain, it might work.

  “What are you doing?” Greene screamed. “You’re heading back toward it!”

  “Tell me when it turns!” Tombstone demanded. He pulled the MiG into a tighter turn, decreasing the range to the missile, dividing his attention between the HUD, the terrain, and the missile. This close to the ground, a hill could kill him just as fast as a missile.

  “It’s got us, it’s got us.” The tone sounding in the cockpit increased in frequency and pulse rate, indicating the missile had a lock on them.

  “Hold on!” Now the trick would be to see if he could shake it.

  Tombstone put the MiG nose down, still in afterburner, and headed for the deck. Eighty feet, seventy feet — Tombstone yanked up hard at forty feet. He maintained level flight for a few moments, and watching for the missile to react.

  “It’s coming after us,” Greene said, his voice disbelieving. “Damn you, you—”

  Tombstone dropped the MiG’s nose down hard again, grunting to maintain the blood flow to his brain, then jerked the MiG back up. Already he could feel the G forces eating away at his vision, threatening to rob him of the only sense that would keep them alive. Greene was unprepared for the new maneuver, and let out a moan of protest.

  “Stay with me!” Tombstone snapped. The missile was closing, only 200 feet behind him now, and just for a moment he felt despair. It wouldn’t work — there wasn’t enough time — they would have to punch out, take their chances on the ground, which was no chance at all, not at this altitude, not in Chechnya.

  “Oh,” Greene moaned. “It’s — it’s still coming, Tombstone.” His voice, while slightly fuzzy, contained none of his earlier panic.

  “Hold on. This is our only chance.” Tombstone dropped the nose of the MiG down and headed for the hill in front of him.

  The area around base was composed of a mixture of ridges and valleys, with hardwood trees and pines dominating the hills. The hardwood trees had already started to lose their leaves, but the evergreens formed a solid line thirty to forty feet above the cold ground. Tombstone aimed directly at a group of pines. At max speed, the deciduous trees were little more than sticks against the gray sky, and the evergreens were easier to see.

  “No!” Greene howled. “No, you can’t—”

  “I can’t,” Tombstone screamed, shouting not only at his backseater but against the Fates as well. “I can!”

  The trees were so close, too close. At the last second, he yanked the MiG over on her side and pulled her up hard. Almost too late — the aircraft jolted violently as the top branches smacked against her wingtip. She started to cartwheel, but for the first time Tombstone was part of her, melded to metal as he’d never been before. Her wings part of his body, her hydraulics lines and cables his blood vessels and ligaments. He reacted without having to think, countering the aircraft’s insistence that she must rotate, had to, pulling her out of it by demanding more of her control surfaces and engines than anyone had ever done before.

  In a Tomcat, he would have been dead. He knew that with cold certainty. And even in the MiG, so light, so responsive, so willing, it was a close thing. Time stopped and the trees seemed to creep past him. He had time to examine each branch, each needle, it seemed.

  Greene was screaming, no words just inchoate sounds of terror and protest, scrabbling forward with his hands as though to reach for the controls but too panicked to remember that he was strapped in. As the MiG careened past—through—the trees, Tombstone felt nothing but cold, utter, focused peace. If it was to end here, it would end. If not, it wouldn’t. Nothing else mattered, not Tomboy, not the screams coming from the back seat, and least of all his own body. All that mattered was that he fly, right now, right this second, better than he’d ever flown before.

  Suddenly, they were clear of the trees, climbing hard, the dense cold air caressing the fuselage and urging the aircraft to fly, fly. Time resumed its normal progression, and the feeling of detachment started to disappear. He noticed dispassionately that his hands were trembling ever so slightly at the fingertips, the only sign of the adrenaline that was flooding through him.

  A hard blast of air rocked the aircraft, threatening to destroy her precarious aerodynamic stability. He calmed her as he would an unsettled horse, letting his hands and feet form the words on her controls.

  “It detonated! It hit the trees! Or the ground! I don’t know which — oh, dear God.” Greene was almost sobbing. “There was nothing I could do. I was — I was—” Greene’s voice dissolved into sobs.

  It struck Tombstone at that moment precisely what Greene’s problem was. It had nothing to do with courage or with his confidence in Tombstone. No. That wasn’t it at all.

  The problem was simply that Greene was a pilot. And no pilot, no matter how good or how bad, no matter how brave or how timid, ever tolerated being a passenger.

  A pang struck Tombstone. He had done this. He had asked another pilot to fly back seat, to go against every instinct and reflex in his body.

  Would he have done it, if asked?

  I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have lasted as long as he has. No way.

  “As soon as we get back on the ground, I’m getting you an aircraft,” Tombstone said, pretending that Greene had not been crying. “I should never had done this, asked you to fly back seat this long. And we’re heading for the Jefferson. You want a fight, I’ll get you a fight.”

  No answer. Tombstone didn’t expect one. Words were cheap, but he’d prove he meant what he said as soon as they were back on the ground.

  TWELVE

  Washington, D.C.

  The White House

  2200 local (GMT-5)

  Sarah Wexler stormed down the passageway to the Oval Office, past Secret Service agents and the chief of staff and the press secretary and past a group of Boy Scouts waiting in the hallway. The head of the president’s protection details stepped in front of her. “Just what the hell are you doing, Madame Ambassador?” h
e asked.

  She stood with a steely glare. “Going to see the president. As is my right.”

  “He’s not free right now,” Leahy replied, trying to gently ease her away from the door, and applied more force. “Come on — you know the drill,” he cried, exasperated, as she resisted.

  “The drill doesn’t count today,” she snapped.

  Leahy motioned to the other agents now standing behind the Ambassador, wrapped his arms around her, and lifted her off the ground with a groan.

  Enraged, Wexler twisted her body and snapped her leg back, flexing it at the knee. She connected. Leahy let out the strangled yelp, stumbled, but didn’t put her down.

  “What the hell is the meaning of this?” the president said, stepping out of the Oval Office and shoving his way through a crowd of Secret Service agents who were increasingly convinced that the Ambassador to the United Nations had lost her mind. “Sarah, would you mind explaining yourself?”

  “Tell your goons to put me down,” she snapped.

  “Put her down, Jim. The Ambassador isn’t going to assassinate me.”

  “Maybe.” But, with a grateful sigh, Leahy deposited her on the floor, “You might want to talk to her about protocol, Mr. President.”

  “Among other things.” The president motioned her into the office and stepped aside to allow her to proceed him. Two Secret Service agents followed them and positioned themselves rather more closely to Wexler than was usual.

  “Mr. President, you’ve got to turn Jefferson loose on Bermuda, and you’ve got to do it now. They’ve already got one squadron on the ground. Once they build up air superiority, we’re going to have a bitch of a time taking the island back.”

  The president shook his head. “That would put all those tourists at risk.”

  “All those American tourists, you mean.”

  “If it comes to that.”

  She studied him for a moment, disgusted by what she saw. She had known that the president had a strong political side, but never had it been so obvious. Over the last year, as the time for his re-election grew closer, she sensed a shift in his values, a cold distancing from what was actually right and wrong in the world. She had ignored it — had made her staff ignore it, too, because it would have been impossible to acknowledge what he was becoming — or whom he had been all the time — and continue to be his representative in the United Nations.

  But now, it comes down to this. “It would be very difficult for you to be re-elected if that many tourists were killed during your term of office, wouldn’t it?” She said it carefully, with no rancor, her words precise and clear.

  Anger flashed on his face, to be replaced immediately by a blank expression. “Now, Sarah. That’s a bit unfair, don’t you think?”

  She shook her head. “Not from where I stand. But suppose I grant you that this is purely a military decision. And suppose I assume that this is a decision you made after consultation with your secretary of defense and secretary of state — not after talking to your campaign manager.” She held up one hand to forestall comment. “This is how I read it. There’s a squadron of MiGs on the ground in Bermuda. I learned this morning that another is on its way. If you allow them to establish a couple of squadrons on the island, along with their antiair defenses, there will be no way we can gain air superiority immediately. And without air superiority, there’s little hope of dislodging them. Bermuda will become a frontier for Russia, a base like the Philippines was for us. Now, if that happens before the election, how do you think the American people will react?”

  “There will be no strike on Bermuda,” he said at last, looking away as he did so. “Don’t you think I have discussed these options with my staff?”

  “Yes, I think you have. And I think you have made the wrong decision.”

  He stood suddenly, turned his back to her to the window overlooking the Rose Garden. A few blooms still flourished among the bushes, but most had shed their flowers as well as their leaves in preparation for the winter. Were there specific orders to pick up all the rose petals as they fell, she wondered. And where did all the flowers go — were they used for special presentations, to honor those visiting this seat of power? Or, were they merely for show, never used, simply allowed to bloom and die?

  “Mr. President,” she said, a new note of formality in her voice. “You and I have seen what our military forces are capable of. Sir, we spent a lot of time and money developing the most potent systems in the world. Use it now, Mr. President. Whatever they launch from Bermuda, the Aegis cruiser can take it out. I’m sure your advisers have told you that the resulting explosion will neutralize antibiological or chemical threat. The nuclear material would be dispersed harmlessly over the sea. Send in the SEALs, disarm what you can, and let the Navy take care of the rest. That’s the way it’s got to be, Mr. President.”

  “And if I disagree?” he asked, his back still to her.

  “Then you will be remembered as the antithesis of John F. Kennedy,” she said grimly. “You have been an excellent president in peace — yes, even when regional conflicts have broken out I know you have the mettle to withstand this, to react appropriately, Mr. President. I’ve seen you in action before. And I don’t understand why you have taken the wrong path now — no, that’s not true. I understand what is on your mind, I think. But I’m asking you to reconsider your decision. I have no leverage, no way to force you to. But you know I’m right.”

  He turned then, and she was struck by the anguish on his face. “If I lose the election, there is no hope. You know who the other party has nominated — can you see him in this White House? Making the decisions that you and I have had to make over the past three and a half years?” He shook his head. “No, for the good of the nation, I must consider my re-election.

  “Then, you will be remembered as a president who failed to act. Who allowed a hostile government to establish an outpost virtually off our coast. And what will be next — Cuba? Once you have established this precedent, it will be impossible to back down from it. That will be your legacy, Mr. President. But if you do what is right, the people will understand.”

  The president turned to Leahy. “I suppose you agree with her?”

  Leahy looked as though he wished desperately to be anywhere else except where he was. But he cleared his throat, fixed his gaze on the president, and said firmly, “Yes, Mr. President. I do.”

  A long, contemplative silence settled over the four. Wexler felt no pressure to speak. She had said her piece, done what she felt was best for the nation, and she recognized that Leahy had taken a similar risk. Now it was up to the one man the people had trusted to preserve their nation.

  “Get me the secretary of defense and the secretary of state,” the president said finally. “Now.”

  USS Jefferson

  500 miles west of Bermuda

  1000 local (GMT-4)

  Sunday, September 12

  The message arrived simultaneously at all the ships in the battle group. The USS Jefferson and her battle group commander were the only action addees. The rest of the ships were addressed for information purposes only, but it was information they greatly appreciated getting. Knowing now what the admiral would be planning would help them prepare for their own part.

  The message flashed first over the computer system, ahead of informal traffic, warning of formal traffic to follow. The message was brief and to the point.

  DO NOT ALLOW ANY MORE RUSSIAN AIRCRAFT TO LAND IN BERMUDA. COMMENCE PLANNING TO DEFEND AGAINST MISSILE LAUNCH FROM BERMUDA, FOLLOWED BY ESTABLISHING AIR SUPERIORITY AND RETAKING THE ISLAND WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF BRITISH FORCES. SPECIAL OPERATIONS PLANS FOLLOW BY SEPARATE MESSAGE.

  Coyote was in his cabin, having a late lunch, when the message arrived in TFCC. He frowned as he heard howls coming from his watchstanders, and was just about to go see what the hell was happening when his chief of staff burst in, a grim expression on his face. He handed Coyote the message. “We’re going in, Admiral. Finally.”

 
; “About time,” Coyote grumbled, as he scanned the brief message. “Let me know when the detailed order comes in. In the meantime, I want all department heads and COs on board in my conference room, thrashing out final details. We knew this was coming. Now, it’s just a matter of making sure we’ve covered all the bases.”

  “He’s putting a lot of faith in the Aegis, isn’t he?” his chief of staff asked.

  Coyote nodded. “With good reason. It flies, it dies, according to the Aegis community. I don’t think the stakes have ever been quite so high, but if I know those cowboys over on the ship, they’re just itching to take a shot at this.”

  Coyote went back to his lunch, figuring that the oldest adage of warfare still applied: Eat and sleep when you have a chance, because you won’t later on. He just polished off the last of his hamburger and contemplated a second order of french fries — his cooks, he knew, would make them, but it would take a few minutes. What if he didn’t want them by the time they were done? Was he really prepared to deal with the slightly reproachful look on the chief’s face if he wasn’t?

  No, he decided, he was not. He patted his stomach, still flat and ridged. He was determined not to gain weight on this cruise. Maybe, some night when they were all tired and on edge, he would ask the chief to bring french fries for everyone. Yes, that would do it.

  Outside his cabin, in the admiral’s conference room, he could hear a low murmur of voices. There was an occasional victory cry. He smiled at that. They were ready to go, had been since the news was announced. They would be polishing their plans to cope with any last-minute requirements from the president, but in his heart he felt unleashed.

  USS Seawolf

  1100 local (GMT-4)

  Forsythe studied the crew. Red-rimmed eyes, willing but exhausted, stared back at him. After three days, the men were starting to look unkempt. Not that their appearances were a reflection of what was in their hearts. Forsythe knew that they would willingly follow him anywhere.