Choosers of the Slain

by James H. Cobb

  Buffeted by the shock wave, the surviving Argentine airmen stared in horror at the churning firestorm falling away beneath them. Someone whispered a supplication to God into the radio circuit.

  Cristobal forced his shock-numbed mind to work, analyzing the attack, reconstructing how it must have been set up. The bitch had done it to him again! His curse came out almost as a sob.

  His left hand stabbed at the ordnance-control panel, jettisoning his missile load and arming his cannon. Ordering his wingman to do the same and to follow him down, he rolled his Tornado into a split-S maneuver and dove for the sea. His honor had been shattered along with the air strike. This time Cristobal intended to demand a blood price in exchange for it.

  "Primary target has blown up!"

  Every hand in the Combat Information Center could see and recognize the distinctive "blossom" and rapid fade of a midair explosion on the Large Screen Display.

  "Massive RCS dropoff on the target," Dix reported. "Looks like a couple of the fast movers were taken out along with the tanker. Way to go, Vince!"

  A ragged cheer started to grow, only to be cut off abruptly.

  "Belay that!" Amanda's voice rang out like a rifle shot. "Save it until we get our people home."

  Retainer Zero One fled southward out of the intercept zone, its composite frame shuddering from the overload of its racing turbines. Officially, the LAMPS IV Boeing/Sikorsky SAH-66 Sea Comanche helicopter was rated at a maximum airspeed of 195 miles per hour at full war power. If the aircrew was scared badly enough, it could reach 200.

  "Pick up your visual scanning, Gus. We still got a couple of fighters out there."

  "I know it," Grestovitch replied. He was twisted around as far as his harness would allow, attempting to peer aft past the helo's fantail into their blind spot. "Begging your pardon, Lieutenant, but just how did you figure on getting us out of this?"

  "Well, speaking frankly, Gus, I was hoping that the bad guys would just sort of go home."

  "Begging your pardon again, sir, but I don't think very much of your friggin' plan."

  "I'm willing to concede that this may be a definite flaw in an otherwise sound concept."

  Grestovitch's threat board began to flash a warning. "Heads up, we're being painted. Two Tornado air-search systems. No locks, but they're coming up fast."

  "Right, I'm going to fishtail. Try and spot 'em."

  Vince rocked his rudder pedals, slewing the helo slightly to give his systems operator a better view aft.

  "I got 'em, Lieutenant! Two fast movers at seven o'clock descending... Hell! They're turning in on us! They got us spotted!"

  "Right. We're going evasive."

  Arkady enabled and lit off his own radars and radios. No sense in fooling around with emission control now. He started tracking the incoming bandits on his HUD and tried to call up what he could remember of the Army's helicopter air-combat course he had taken TOY at Fort Rucker.

  "Engagements with enemy fixed-wing assets are not to be undertaken lightly..."

  No shit, Dogface.

  Arkady continued to seesaw lightly on his rudder pedals, maintaining his wavering flight path as the Argentine jets bored in. If they had missiles, he could counter with flares and his anti-IR systems. If they went to guns, all that he had was his maneuverability.

  As the range closed to critical, Arkady flared the Sea Comanche into a hard right pitch-out. He held the rackingly steep turn for a couple of heartbeats, then dumped gee and reversed back onto his original heading.

  Whom! Whom! The Tornadoes blazed past overhead, buffeting the helo with their passage as they pulled out of their run. A short distance off to port, a quarter-mile-long curtain of spray was starting to disperse. It had been struck off the ocean's surface by the cannon shells of the strafing Argentine fighters.

  "They're starting to come back around, Lieutenant!"

  "Rog. Stay on 'em and call 'em out. I'm going to start yelling for some help."

  "Retainer Zero One to Gray Lady. Be advised we've got a problem out here." Arkady's voice rasped from one of the overhead speakers. "I confirm one tanker and two fast movers are down. I also confirm that I've got the two survivors all over me. I am on the deck and fully defensive. Can you give us some cover?"

  "Push the primary and Airborne Early Warning arrays to full output," Amanda snapped. "Give me a tactical of the engagement area. I want to see what's going on out there!"

  An electronic outline appeared around the block of space on the Alpha Screen that contained the air battle winding up. The image showed Retainer Zero One's beacon hack crawling southwest with agonizing slowness, while the blips of the two Argentine fighters buzzed around it like angry hornets.

  "Dix, do we have range on those aircraft yet?"

  "Yes, ma'am, they are within the LORAIN engagement envelope."

  "Very well, then. Designate the Tornadoes and commence firing."

  The Missileer bent over his console. Seconds passed, too many of them.

  "Dix, what in the hell is the problem?"

  "She won't lock up!" Beltrain replied feverishly, his hands playing across the fire-control matrix. "They're too damn low. They keep dropping out of our line of sight and we lose designation."

  "What about Zero Two? Can we target over the horizon through her?"

  "Negative. Her AEW pod is search-capable only. It doesn't have designation capacity and her integral radar systems don't have enough range."

  Amanda slammed her palm down onto the arm of her chair in frustration. Overhead, the speaker came on-line again.

  "Retainer Zero One to Gray Lady. The Argys just made another run on us. I don't want to be an alarmist, but we could really use some help out here."

  Amanda had the answer to her question. Arkady's voice was level and controlled, yet she could hear the fear underlying it. He knew that he could die. At that moment, he was expecting to.

  She let her reasoning mind race, assessing potentials and assembling possibilities.

  "Dix, fire a flight of LORAINs across the engagement zone. Four missiles at ten-second intervals launched on fixed bearings at medium altitude. Fan them out across the entire area."

  "Captain, I don't have target designation!"

  "Just do it, Dix! Communications! Give me a patch through to Retainer Zero One."

  Arkady slammed up on both the pitch and collective levers. The helo flared back like a startled partridge, using the full lift of its main rotor to kill off its forward speed. A split second later, the sea ahead of it boiled into foam under another storm of cannon fire. The Aeronaval jet veered off like a disappointed barracuda.

  "To evade fighter attack, execute a tight figure-eight flight pattern around two adjacent hilltops..."

  If somehow he got out of this alive, Arkady was going to kick the living hell out of the next army flight instructor he ever laid eyes on.

  He nosed the Sea Comanche down and started to regain his airspeed, trying to ignore the flashing "Transmission Overheat" warning. The Argentines had split up and were coming in on him independently, reducing the time he had to recover between attacks. Sooner or later, one or the other of them had to get lucky. The SAH-66 had Kevlar armor protecting most of its critical systems, but it was proof only against rifle-caliber gunfire. It wouldn't take many hits from an autocannon to knock them down.

  "Retainer Zero One, this is Gray Lady." Pushed by the Cunningham's powerful transmitter, Amanda Garrett's voice came through into his helmet phones with amazing clarity. "We can see your situation and we are sending you something to fight with. We are launching a flight of LORAINs over your position. You will have to provide target designation and terminal guidance. Time to target will be about three minutes. Do you understand me, Arkady? You have got to stay alive out there for another three minutes!"

  The small solid-fuel booster of the Raytheon/General Dynamics LORAIN (LOng RAnge INterceptor) ignited as it shot clear of its VLS cell. Six seconds and six hundred miles per hour worth of acceleration later
, the booster burned out and was jettisoned. Bat-ear air intakes opened at the base of the missile's forward set of cruciform fins and the sustainer engine fired. A high-efficiency, high-thrust ramjet, burning an exotic boron-slurry fuel, it smoothly pushed the missile through the sound barrier and up to its 3,000 miles per hour cruising speed.

  The LORAIN was one of the showpieces of the current American arsenal, the most advanced, naval area defense SAM in operational deployment. But as it arced out over the South Polar sea, followed at intervals by three of its sisters, its sophisticated hunter/seeker systems were inert. It was only a machine. It still required a human to aim it and to tell it to kill.

  Captain Cristobal had found the American helicopter to be a frustrating target. First, he had discovered that its stealth characteristics had rendered his radar gunsight useless, and then its pilot had proven to be a superb combat aviator.

  Repeatedly the Norteno had reversed back under his fire streams, or had danced his machine laterally out of his sights. Already Cristobal had expended over half of his ammunition futilely.

  It was time to shift tactics. He ordered Tigre Two to orbit above the copter, keeping it in sight while he swung wide to the north. Bringing the wings of his Tornado full forward, he dropped his flaps and landing gear and throttled up to full war power, converting the strike fighter into a comparatively slow and stable gun platform. Dropping down low over the waves, Cristobal began his final run in.

  "That's the game plan, Gus. The Duke will give us a countdown as the missiles come in overhead, then we turn into the Argys and designate them with our own radar."

  "It'd help if we had more altitude, Lieutenant."

  "Yeah, but that would turn us into a sitting duck. You'll have to do the best you can."

  "Aye, aye, sir. They seem to have backed off a little. Do you think they might be packing it in?"

  "Nope. More than likely they're setting up something new."

  Arkady gave himself a second to sweep the horizon ahead, another to check his instrumentation, and a third to try to analyze the vibration starting to feed back through his controls. Feels like a possible rotor hit. Sure hope a blade doesn't go. Then a check of the tail guard radar.

  Somebody was back there, but he was coming in slower than before. Arkady skidded the helo a little and took a look aft. There was a pair of glowing landing lights on the horizon, aimed dead-on at them.

  Uh-oh, he thought, this guy's been staying at home, reading his manuals, when he should have been out chasing the hot women.

  A hundred and fifty miles away, Dix Beltrain reported. "First missile closing on engagement zone. Time to give them the count."

  "Make it so," Amanda replied tonelessly.

  "Gray Lady to Retainer Zero One. First round coming in.

  We are giving you a ten count."

  Arkady didn't bother to acknowledge, he just threw the helo into the tightest possible pedal turn it could make. Instead of the 20mm Galling gun carried in the nose of the Army's RAH-66 attack helicopter, the SAH-66 Sea Comanche mounted a variant of the same Hughes APG-65 multimode radar used by the F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter. The system had search and target-designation capacity, but

  it covered only a 270-degree forward arc. They had to face their enemy to fight.

  "Okay, Gus, light him up as soon as she bears."

  In the rear cockpit, Grestovitch stared into his tactical display, struggling with his joystick controller to lay a targeting box on the blip of the attacking Tornado. Succeeding, he keyed in the lock and heard a confirmation tone.

  "We got designation!"

  "All right! Now let's see if we can get us a missile!"

  Over the radio circuit, the distant TACCO droned down the count.

  "... four... three ... two ... one ... zero."

  "Shit! Missed it!" Grestovitch yelled.

  "Second round coming in. Three ... two ... one ... zero."

  "No capture! Still no capture!"

  The combined speed of the two aircraft annihilated the distance between them. There was no pursuit curve to cut inside. No jinking or dodging that would make the least difference now. The Tornado would open fire in a matter of seconds.

  "Third round coming in. Three ... two ... one ..."

  "Shit! Shit! Wait a second.... We got capture. We got capture!"

  Twenty-five thousand feet up and five miles to the southwest, the LORAIN detected a familiar preceded pattern and frequency of radar impulses reflecting off an airborne target. Its onboard guidance package activated and fixed on it. The target's close proximity to the moving wave pattern of the sea complicated the lock. The LORAIN compensated with Doppler shift scanning and by sensing the passive microwave emissions radiating from the Tornado's own metallic structure. Its nose dipped and the missile dove.

  The combined pull of gravity and the thrust of its engine pushed the LORAIN to the near hypersonic. The leading edges of its composite fins were starting to char as it punched down into the lower atmosphere. So great was its velocity that the warhead's proximity fuses didn't have the chance to function properly. It made little difference. The missile scored a direct hit.

  There was a blue-white glare like a stroke of heat lightning and Cristobal's Tornado disintegrated, shredded wreckage spraying out across half a square mile of ocean.

  Arkady got rid of a long-delayed breath. "Got capture? Offhand, Gus, I'd say you killed that puppy."

  "Gray Lady, this is Retainer Zero One. Splash the third Tornado. The sole survivor is bugging out for home, and so are we. Resuming EMCON and proceeding to point item for recovery."

  Amanda made no attempt to stop the cheering this time.

  In the fading gray glow of the Antarctic twilight, Arkady spotted the Cunningham's distinctive shark's fin silhouette ahead of him. As he circled it, the big destroyer turned across the wind and the marker strobes outlining the helipad began to pulse, welcoming him home.

  He popped his landing gear and got three green indicators down and locked. As he began to ease in over the rail, he saw the slender figure in the heavy duffel coat watching from the top of the superstructure, her red-amber hair whipping in his rotor wash. He grinned and flared his landing lights at her, and she replied by lifting a clenched fist over her head in a salute of mutual victory.

  BUENOS AIRES

  1920 HOURS: MARCH 25, 2006

  "Bullshit, sir!"

  Harrison Van Lynden's words exploded within the Argentine President's office like a hand grenade.

  "The proposition that your aircraft were acting in their own self-defense deserves no politer terminology."

  "I do not enjoy being called a liar, Mr. Secretary," Sparza replied stonily from behind his desk.

  "I do not enjoy calling a national leader and statesman of your caliber a liar, Mr. President. Could it be possible that your own military command has failed to fully inform you of the reality of this situation?"

  "On the contrary, Mr. Secretary. I am quite aware of what has occurred off our coasts, and I completely stand behind the press release issued by our Ministry of Defense. Allow me to quote ..." Sparza lifted a sheet of paper from his desktop and read aloud from it: " 'Realizing that the United States vessel was taking hostile action against them, the flight leader ordered his aircraft to open fire.'

  "Those are the facts, Mr. Secretary."

  Van Lynden's voice was controlled as he replied. "I have been informed by our own Department of Defense that a complete data download of the attack has been received from the USS Cunningham's Aegis computers. Analysis of that data will show that your warplanes and not our ship initiated aggressive action. The Cunningham did not return fire until she was fired upon and was in imminent danger of being sunk."

  Sparza let the press release flutter back to the desktop.

  "Perhaps we have a problem in semantics here. Our pilots did indeed see your ship conducting hostile acts against them. They are Argentine, and your ship has been interfering with Argentina's lawful freedom of the seas. Th
is is clearly an act of aggression against their homeland; thus their actions were taken in defense."

  "You might be able to sell that particular brand of sophistry to your own people, but the United States government isn't buying. I must warn you, President Sparza, that you have greatly escalated an already serious situation. My government will not accept having its ships fired upon and its sailors endangered!"

  "Then withdraw your ships from waters where they do not belong! It was the United States that triggered this escalation with its reckless and unlawful blockade of the San Martin Peninsula!"

  Sparza caught himself. Taking a deep breath, he cooled his temper. Van Lynden grimly waited for him to continue.

  "Mr. Secretary," the Argentine finally said. "This kind of shouting match is as futile as the clash between our armed forces. This is a matter best dealt with by open and honorable negotiations among all of the involved nations. Argentina desires this above all else. Can we not put aside this childishness and proceed along more constructive paths?"

  "The United States would welcome open and honorable negotiations, if they were in fact 'open and honorable.' However, we are aware of your plan to sow discord among the Antarctic Treaty states, and of the scenario by which you intend to seize power in Antarctica. It won't work, Mr. President."

  Van Lynden rose from his chair and picked up his briefcase. "I have been in communication with my President. He wishes me to inform you that he condemns the Argentine attack on our vessel in the strongest possible terms. He also wishes me to inform you that he is authorizing the captain of the Cunningham to utilize whatever force is necessary to defend her ship and to maintain the blockade.

  "Good day, sir!"

  DRAKE PASSAGE

  1941 HOURS: MARCH 25, 2006

  "Sorry to keep you waiting, ma'am," the Duke's senior Hospital Corpsman said apologetically, brushing through the curtained doorway that separated the small, four-bed ward from the equally tiny sick bay office-cum-examination room.