Hunter spun over the base once, nimbly avoiding twin streams of fire from two Oerlikon 20-mm antiaircraft weapons hidden in the bush on the far edge of the enemy field. He banked hard, sprayed the pair of AA guns with his quad-pack of cannons and then came around on the MiG base’s main runway. Calling up his weapons available screen, he saw nothing but Durandals.
Two Foxbats were just in the process of taking off when the XL roared over the runway, coming right at them at 10 o’clock. They saw the Durandals dropping off the XL’s cranked wings but as they were committed to lifting off, there was nothing they could do.
The lead MiG made it into the air and immediately fled the scene. His wingman wasn’t so lucky. A Durandal landed in the runway right in front of him, boring through the concrete and exploding just as the MiG passed over. A small storm of broken concrete was sucked into the Foxbat’s engine intakes, instantaneously exploding them and driving their remains into the flight compartment. The MiG pilot was skewed with searing engine parts and highspeed pieces of concrete. He was dead before his MiG went out of control, toppling end-over-end and slamming into the weather lights at the foot of the runway.
Hunter continued on the runway-busting attack, dispensing all of his Durandals, and strafing the control tower for good measure. Flipping the futuristic jet over on its back, he could see the entire complement of antirunway bombs go off, tearing up more than fifty percent of the runway.
Though it took less than one minute, their mission was complete. The surviving MiGs had no way to take off and were thereby useless.
And another path was thus cleared.
Frank Geraci was anxious—to say the least.
He was sitting in the back of the C-5 known as Triple-X, no less than three restraining belts hooked to his legs, waist and shoulders. His four best men—Matus, McCaffrey, Cerbesi and Palma—were with him. They were similarly restrained.
They were flying at 21,000 feet, about sixty-five miles out over the Gulf of Tonkin. Before them sat an enormous dark shape, covered in black canvas. It was a bomb—a 35,000-pound bomb to be exact. It was bulbous, crude-looking and smelled of grease and cordite. Its nickname “Big Boy” was very apt.
Geraci and his combat engineers had done many missions in their careers, but nothing so strange as this. The Triple-X was heading for the massive railroad yards at a place called Long Dik. Just forty miles east of Hanoi, and stretching into the port city of Haiphong, the railroad lines not only carried weapons and supplies into North Vietnam, they were also the home of dozens of mobile antiaircraft guns set up on railroad cars.
Putting AA guns on moving stock was a trick that went way back to Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Though the guns were usually low in caliber, due to weight restrictions, there were always plenty of them. Their mobility and their massed firepower was enough to bring down any size airplane—including a mammoth C-5.
A few miles east of Long Dik, there was a railroad marshalling yard, complete with a turn-around house and refueling facilities. It was here that the rolling AA guns were dispatched and rearmed.
And it was here that Geraci and his men would attempt to drop the Big Boy.
They flew along for another hour, waiting for the sun to dip below the western horizon.
They’d made the entire flight under radio silence, and there had been no contact at all between the NJ engineers and the Triple-X pilots way up in the C-5’s flight compartment. The engineers passed the time mostly in silence; there were few windows in the fuselage, no way for them to look out and see where the hell they were.
What was taking so long? they wondered constantly. Had something gone wrong?
Suddenly, red lights began flashing all over the huge cargo hold, followed by a frightening number of warning buzzers. All five engineers would have left their seats in alarm had they not been wrapped in the restraining straps. A few seconds later, the huge vertical doors at the rear of the C-5 began to open.
A hurricane-force wind shot into the enormous hold; the change in air pressure caused the C-5 to dip with stomach-turning suddenness. When the engineers looked out of the rear of the airplane, they saw the three Tigersharks and Hunter’s F-16XL riding right off the tail.
“Jessuz, this is it,” Geraci yelled even though the others could not hear him.
The four fighter planes were so close to the rear of the C-5 he could clearly see the faces of Hunter, Ben, JT, and Frost. They seemed to be urging him to hurry up, to get this thing going.
The C-5 went into a wide bank; the huge airplane turned over almost 90 degrees, so that Geraci and the others were suddenly on their backs looking up at the Big Boy. The chains holding the seventeen-ton bomb started to buckle and Geraci horribly imagined what would happen if the weapon suddenly detonated. He closed his eyes and waited for the great airship to right itself.
When it did, they saw they were now over land. Below them was North Vietnam, the lush green terrain broken only by an occasional river, rice paddy, or small village.
The warning buzzers went off again, and ZZ Morell, the Triple-X pilot, climbed down into the hold.
He was characteristically all smiles.
“OK, guys,” he said. “Time to get it on.”
Geraci and the others reached up and unlatched the bolt that was holding their restraining straps to the fuselage wall. Suddenly they were free—relatively so. Though they could now get up and walk around, they were still harnessed in. Which was a good thing. With the wind whipping around the inside of the cavernous hold, it would have been fairly easy to get sucked out the back of the airplane to a long, terrifying death below.
It took all six of them to push the Big Boy back towards the open rear of the plane. The bomb was on a steel pallet which in turn was attached to a small rail. A series of levers served as the brake for the load, the squealing of these brakes was loud enough to hear over the scream of the C-5’s engines, the roar of the wind and the racket of four jet fighters flying just a few feet off the end of the airplane.
After much pushing and pulling, they finally got the Big Boy to the last juncture on the rail. It was now but ten feet from the open back of the airplane.
ZZ checked his watch and then held up his right hand and showed four fingers. “Four minutes,” he was yelling.
It would turn out to be the longest four minutes of Geraci’s life.
The first indication that something was wrong came when Geraci looked up and saw that Hunter’s F-16XL was gone.
Leaning forward, he could see the red-white-and-blue fighter spin straight down, a long plume of flame roaring from its tailpipe. Suddenly, both JT and Frost also dropped out—the two Tigersharks split and went into opposing 360s, lowering their altitude to about 1500 below the C-5.
“What the hell is happening?” Geraci yelled to ZZ. The Triple X pilot wasn’t smiling anymore.
Before ZZ had the time to reply, the C-5 began shaking violently. Suddenly the sky beyond the open cargo doors seemed extremely dark; an instant later, they found out why. No less than 12 MiGs—Foxbats and Floggers—had suddenly descended on the C-5. They were all painted pale blue, indicating a coastal unit called to action inland. They massed so closely together they were like a huge mechanical cloud, blotting out what was left of the light from the sinking sun.
As the enemy formation streaked behind the Triple-X, the C-5 began dropping like a stone. Geraci and the others found themselves hanging on to the Big Boy, a dubious choice if there ever was one. Ben was still on their tail, his mission obviously to take care of the big cargo ship, no matter what.
As the C-5 continued to lose altitude, they could see off in the distance, Frost and JT streak right into the heart of the enemy formation. There was the sudden flash of cannon fire as the pair of Tigersharks opened up on the massed MiGs. The daring attack served one very important purpose: the MiGs began to scatter. Within seconds, the sky was filled with twisting, turning, high-speed fighters.
Suddenly it was every man for himself.
Tha
t’s when they saw the XL again. One moment it was just JT and Frost battling the MiGs; the next, the Cranked Arrow was streaking through the buzzing enemy airplanes, its quad-pack cannons firing madly, even as it was launching Sidewinders.
Way below, Geraci could see five smudges of smoke and flame, lining the paddies and jungle. That’s when it struck him. The MiG formation had originally been much larger; Hunter had detected it before anyone else and had smoked five enemy airplanes even before they knew what happened.
But now the surprise was over—and an old-fashioned furball was in full swing. As the Triple-X still descended rapidly, those in the hold of the C-5 had a frighteningly close view of a high-tech dogfight, one which pitched three against ten.
Geraci was no expert in aerial combat, but he did know a few basic rules. One was, Speed is Life. The pilot who knew how to control his speed—as opposed to being the fastest on the block—was usually the winner in a dogfight. The second was Lose sight, Lose fight. A pilot had to keep his enemy in sight at all times; it was the one you missed who usually gets you.
The third rule was, roughly speaking: If you ain’t cheating, you just ain’t trying hard enough.
As Geraci and the others watched open-mouthed, they saw Hunter engage all three of these axioms, seemingly at once. He had somehow managed to get himself into position behind two Foxbats. Predictably, the MiG pilots accelerated and banked up and over the XL. But they did so way too fast, thinking that more power was better. Hunter on the other hand, decreased his throttles, causing the enemy planes to come out of their turns and streak by him. Two right-on barrages from his four nose cannons dispatched both Foxbats. They were spiraling down, all flames and smoke, mere seconds later.
The F-16XL then went into an incredible high-energy climb, rolling over on its back roughly level with the C-5. It paused there for a few seconds, an eternity in the middle of the supersonic dogfight—but Geraci knew exactly what Hunter was doing. He was surveying the battle—taking care not to lose track on any of the eight remaining enemy fighters.
At the same time, they could see JT’s Tigershark spin over, and right on the tail of a climbing Flogger; it was obvious that Hunter had directed JT to the enemy’s vulnerable six o’clock position. A Sidewinder flashed out from the Tigershark’s left wingtip and hit the MiG-23 square on the tail. The resulting explosion was so intense, it shook the air around the C-5, and thus the men inside.
Almost simultaneously, they saw Frost’s Shark streaking in from a high altitude, its cannons blazing. At first it appeared as if he was shooting at nothing but the air. But soon enough, they saw the two Foxbats simply break up in flight, caught in Frost’s incredibly accurate barrage. Once again he had been directed to the kill by Hunter; once again, the Wingman was able to exploit the enemy’s weakness: They had completely lost sight of Frost’s Tigershark, and they had paid the ultimate price.
Hunter dove back into the fray. Two of the remaining Foxbats had spotted him coming down at them and turned to meet him. But once again, Hunter used his speed—or lack of it—to best his opponents. He simply slammed on his brakes—flaps down, airbrakes up, throttles yanked back—and seemed to suddenly come to a complete halt in midair.
Stunned for a moment, the Foxbats instantly collided; Hunter had cheated—and the enemy pilots killed each other as a result.
Throughout the fight, Ben had stuck to the tail of the Triple-X, watching the dogfight over his shoulder. Suddenly a rogue Flogger came streaking up from underneath the C-5, its nose ablaze with cannon fire. Next thing Geraci knew, the inside of the C-5’s hold was filled with sparks and shells, all too familiar from their days on Bozo during the Minx attacks.
This is crazy, Geraci thought even as he and the others held onto the Big Boy bomb.
Suddenly they heard a burst of power from Ben’s Tigershark and it went straight up, pursuing the offending Flogger. The C-5 hold was still full of smoke, and a few electrical lines were sparking, but it didn’t seem like any critical damage had been done.
Seconds later, they heard a huge explosion and were treated to the sight of the Flogger coming down in pieces just behind them. Within seconds, Ben was back on station, guarding the C-5’s rear.
The next thing Geraci knew, ZZ was right beside him, holding up one finger. The dogfight was over, the surviving MiGs pilots retreated and the pair of Tigersharks and the XL were pulling back into position alongside Ben. The combat engineer couldn’t believe it. It seemed as if an hour had gone by—in actuality, it had only been three minutes and change.
Finally the C-5 leveled off and went into a wide left bank—they were now at about 7,500 feet. Down below, through the clouds they could see the gaggle of railroad lines, looking from this height like an unruly, multiarmed octopus. Once again the red lights in the cargo hold began flashing.
“There’s the target!” ZZ yelled to them.
Sure enough they could see the middle of the octopus: the huge marshalling yard at Long Dik Ha directly below them.
“Ten seconds!” ZZ yelled.
Geraci looked up at his colleagues and took a deep breath.
“Five … four … three …”
They all secured their grips and got ready.
“Two … one … Now!”
With all their might, the six men pushed the 35,000-pound piece of iron and explosive. The brakes were no longer squealing as the huge bomb rolled out the back of the airplane, pallet and all. At that moment Geraci realized the true necessity of the restraining devices: his momentum very nearly carried him out of the airplane with the behemoth bomb. Only the straps, and a tight grip by Matus saved him from the long plunge down.
The Big Boy was floating right behind them for what seemed like a long time. Then its drag chute opened and it was jerked backwards. They watched it gradually start to sink into the cloud cover and towards the ground below.
The C-5 continued twisting to the left, its fighter escorts with it, thus giving those in the back of the big plane a distorted angle of the Big Boy’s descent. It took about a minute for it to break through the clouds. When they picked it up again, it was falling even faster than before, its seventeen tons of encased explosive winning the battle of gravity against its drag chute.
Then it hit.
There was no noise—not at first anyway. There was only an incredible flash of bright light, followed by what only could be described as an instant hurricane of smoke and dust. To Geraci’s amazement, a mushroom cloud began to rise up into the sky. He was stunned—they all were. It looked just like a nuclear explosion.
ZZ saw their expressions and laughed. “Scary, isn’t it?” he yelled.
The combat engineers could only nod in numb agreement. Even the pilots of the fighter planes behind them were looking back at the explosion in awe. As the mushroom cloud rose higher into the sky, they got a glimpse of the ground beneath it.
And this might have been the most startling thing of all.
There was nothing left. The railroad turnhouse, the railway lines, the moving gun cars, were all gone, swept up in the flame and smoke of Big Boy.
The C-5 jerked to the right, turning sharply to the south. ZZ pushed a button and the big doors of the C-5 began to close.
“Time to go home,” he yelled.
Chapter Fifty
Da Nang Air Base
Eight hours later
HUNTER WAS EATING A candy bar as he took off from Da Nang. It was a MRE concoction, a chocolate and almond combination, with maybe a raisin or two thrown in—or at least he hoped they were raisins.
It was way too sweet for his tastes—but he hadn’t had time to eat anything in the past twenty-four hours, so the mushy confection would have to do.
He put the XL right on its ass and roared up to 20,000 feet. Leveling off, he did a surface radar scan of the perimeter around Da Nang. It was all clear—there was no indication of any enemy activity anywhere. Hunter let out a whistle of relief. There had been no Minx activity around the base for forty-eight
hours.
He turned east, out to the sea. He checked the time. It was just 1400 hours. A fierce anticipation rose up in his bones. They were closing in on the final act of this play—he wanted to get it over with, and move onto other things. Specifically the pink jet’s black box and where it would eventually lead him.
He increased power to 700 knots and soon the water of the Gulf of Tonkin was below him. He owed a tip of his hat to both Roy from Troy and Ironman. Though their merger was rather frightening—like two enormous insurance companies coming together to squeeze even more money out of their victims—it had apparently paid off in spades for the First American Airborne Expeditionary Force. It was just two days before that he sent the germ of his idea to Jones in Washington, emphasizing the major parts that Roy and Ironman had to play. Now if the coded message he’d received from Jones just thirty minutes before was only half true, then Hunter knew that the two “businessmen” had pulled off nothing short of a small miracle.
Timing was everything though—and if this timetable got screwed up, even by a few minutes, then Hunter knew the whole plan could go down in flames, literally and figuratively. He shook away thoughts of such a disaster. What he was trying to accomplish here had never been tried before—not in real combat anyway. There was no room for any negativity at all then. Worrying was just praying for things you didn’t want.
Besides, the plan would be hard enough to pull off even if everything did go as scheduled.
He rose up to 55,000 feet and put his threat-warning radar to work. He had to make sure the airspace within 100 miles in all directions was clean. It took about five minutes to confirm this. He checked the time again. It was 1415 hours.
Time to get going.
He pushed the F-16XL up close to its maximum full military power; with thirty seconds he was topping 2,200 knots. The thin air at ten miles up provided little resistance as he streaked along at more than a half mile a second. The blur of the clouds were a comforting sight; the bright sun felt good on his face. He’d done a lot of flying lately, but he hadn’t been enjoying it very much.
Ghost War Page 36