Z screamed for his NKVD security forces, real soldiers, about eighty men in all, to join with the three dozen Su-34 pilots and immediately confront the attackers on deck. Then he ordered the regular crewmembers to arm themselves with AK-47s and do the same thing inside the ship. Finally, he told his antiaircraft crews to activate their bow-mounted CAD Gatling-type weapons, turn their outward-facing barrels to point inward, and blast the aerial intruders off the deck.
But then, some of the CAD guns along the outer edge of the ship began blowing up on their own. Five in a row along the starboard gunwales were suddenly gone in five puffs of smoke, the debris quickly blown away by the high winds. By this time, more than half of the mystery soldiers had gained entry inside the ship anyway, most by swarming through a hatch at the bottom of the giant under-attack superstructure. Now, running past the mysteriously burning weapons, another dozen of the invaders made it through the hatch and joined their comrades in the first-deck passageway. Another half dozen were right on their heels.
By then, the automated CAD guns on the port side had spun around to point inward. These weapons could fire a hundred depleted uranium rounds a second and there were five of them. Aimed by TV cameras controlled from belowdecks, and unbeknownst to them, their aiming sights were turned on those gunmen still using the wreckage of the last two aircraft as cover while they continued to pummel the carrier’s bridge with tracer fire.
The five Gatling-like barrels actually started rotating, a two-second exercise to get them properly lined up with their firing chambers. In one more second, they would have started firing, and those on the receiving end of the horrific barrage would be reduced to a bloody mist.
But at that last instant, the five weapons also blew up, one right after another. A moment after that, the carrier’s main radio mast was severed in a mighty blast, killing all communications aboard the ship and spraying the deck with a rain of shrapnel. A moment after that, the ship’s huge K4FN satellite dish antenna was blown to bits.
That’s when a jet airplane suddenly appeared out of the storm, only to disappear an instant later.
Z was watching it all as a live TV broadcast being displayed on the phalanx of black-and-white monitors that dominated one wall of his safe room. He was the first to spot the jet. It had come right down the starboard side, not fifteen feet off the deck, strafing the area where the five antiaircraft guns had just blown up. Though it was being battered mightily by the winds and rain, its aim had been perfect. One, two seconds out in the open at the most, and then it disappeared back into the tempest, leaving Z to wonder, What kind of plane was that?
Though the TV reception was not good, it was enough for Z to see the jet’s bright exhaust inside the low rain clouds. A moment later, huge streams of tracer fire came out of those same clouds, now hitting targets all over the carrier’s superstructure. Antennas. Radar dishes. More antiaircraft gear. More deck guns. Z’s safe room shuddered with the impacts; the whole ship was shaking. Every shot fired by the plane seemed to hit its target, leaving just smoky flashes behind.
Another sharp turn inside the storm, and suddenly the jet was coming directly at the control bridge. The multiple cannons in its nose were clearly evident. When they started firing, the flare they caused was so bright, it blacked out some of Z’s TV screens. But on others, he saw the fusillade demolish what was left of the bridge’s windows, killing everyone left inside. Some of these shells hit the exterior of Z’s safe room itself, rocking it violently.
But before the airplane flashed over the ferociously burning bridge and back into the storm, it was caught by a TV camera mounted in the low radar mast, down one level, aft of the main bridge.
Z was able to freeze the frame and finally get a good look at the aerial attacker. His blood suddenly turned cold. Unlike his brother, Z had been spared having to look at a ghostly flying toy and wonder what the hell it was. Once he saw this plane up close, he recognized it immediately—and he knew who was flying it.
The legendary F-16XL.
Hawk Hunter.
The Wingman.
“I despise that guy,” Z growled angrily to his security men. “And everyone thought he was dead.”
The stark realization quickly sank in. Not only had Z heard all the tales about Hawk Hunter, he believed them. He hit his shortwave radio’s all-send button and broadcast an emergency message to the rest of Convoy 56, something he wouldn’t have dreamed he’d be doing just a few minutes ago.
It was just two lines:
ISAKOV UNDER ATTACK BY AMERICANS, POSSIBLY H HUNTER.
RENDER ALL ASSISTANCE POSSIBLE.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hunter had circled the embattled carrier thirty-three times, fighting the storm, looking for targets and trying to provide cover for the 7CAV air-assault team.
The ship’s main mast, all of its radar dishes, and all of its remaining antiaircraft guns and missiles from the superstructure down to the bow were gone, blown away by his six-pack of nose cannons. The control tower was in flames. Smoke was pouring out of hundreds of vents located under the flight deck and fires could be seen sprouting up all over. Meanwhile, the storm had grown worse, the rain had started coming down in sheets, and the enormity of the waves crashing onto the deck had reached biblical proportions.
All this had happened in just five minutes.
The plan to attack the Isakov was as improvised as anything Hunter had ever done—in any universe. There’d been no time to do it any other way. Dozer’s men had somehow patched the Sherpas together in record time. Then out came the new gun stations and in went a lot of padding—mattresses mostly—to soften the crash-landings they knew were needed to make it onto the carrier’s deck. Four planes, about twenty troopers in each plus aircrew, they’d left the secret base in the hands of their twenty civilian techs and 7CAV sentries. They would keep an eye on things while the team was away.
The flight out from the Pine Barrens had been turbulent and terrifying, but the assault force found the Isakov exactly where Hunter said it would be. Still, it was only by virtue of the storm’s high winds and his flying ability that the Wingman was even still alive.
He’d managed to use the high winds to glide his way back home after his initial ocean recon mission. He went not to the Pine Barrens or Vermont, but to his old temporary base on the highway near Trenton, next to the tank full of gasoline. While the stale petrol was not the best fuel for the XL, it was enough to get him back up to Vermont, where he pumped in some real AV-8 gas, loaded his wings down with weapons, and then headed back out to sea.
The storm and the carrier’s own defensive dispersement allowed the 7CAV to come as a complete surprise, slamming aboard unmolested. Flying in low to avoid radar, they’d exploited the direction of the carrier’s AA guns, all of which pointed outward and away from the deck, to land free of any immediate fire.
Now, by monitoring 7CAV’s general operations channel, Hunter knew as many as sixty raiders were already inside the ship. The rest were firing continuously at the superstructure, hoping anything hit up there would result in another lost system for the carrier.
Just as he started his thirty-fourth orbit of the ship, Hunter’s secondary 7CAV radio channel started beeping. It was Dozer, down on the deck, leading the operation, calling him directly.
“We got this for the moment,” he told Hunter over the static. “If you’re going to do part two, now’s the time to go.”
Sailing ten miles behind the huge carrier was the rest of Convoy 56.
From high up through a FLIR sight, it looked like a moving necklace. Five ships made up the outer ring, the destroyers packed with Styx missiles and, from the looks of it, many antiaircraft guns. In the middle was the massive Chekski cruise liner turned troopship, painted in gray sea camo. The secret convoy documents said there were thirty thousand ZBG Chekskis crammed aboard this ship. Carrying tons of medieval horror weapons with them,
they were ready to terrorize America from one coast to the other.
The converted troop carrier was unarmed; it had no way to protect itself. But in theory, it shouldn’t need to. With the Isakov’s big guns and air fleets just a few seconds away, with its ring of destroyers, and no less than two battle cruisers just five miles back, bringing up the rear, there was no reason to put any defensive weapons aboard the ship. This left more room to squeeze in their human chattel.
Only a crazy person would try to run this gauntlet of ships.
But Hunter had come prepared to do just that.
Four Exocet antiship missiles, long stored at his base in Vermont, were hanging off his wings. Two per side, they were powerful weapons. Each carried a massive 350-pound warhead and a homing system that rarely missed anything at sea. The warhead was designed not to simply blow up on the target ship, but to crack its hull in two, causing it to sink under its own weight. If the warhead detonated, it was pretty much a kill shot.
While it might have taken a flock of Exocets to sink a titan like the armor-plated Isakov, the Chekski cruise ship had never been meant for combat. An infrared readout on Hunter’s control screen told him via temperature fluctuations that the vessel had no armor anywhere. Compared to a warship, its hull was paper thin.
He just had to get close enough to ensure a good hit.
While some Exocets could be fired as far as fifty miles away, the missile’s homing systems weren’t infallible. When presented with a cluster of vessels, such as the five Styx missile boats sailing tightly around the huge troop ship, they really couldn’t distinguish one ship from another.
Hunter knew if he fired from true back-off range—several dozen miles or so—there was a good chance his missile would hit one of the escort vessels and not the Chekski boat from hell.
For this attack to succeed, he’d have to get very close to the huge ship.
Hunter had screamed to thirty thousand feet above the huge troop ship, using his FLIR set to map out his best attack profile. This would have been hard to do under the best conditions; the worsening storm below made everything much more difficult.
Finally coming up with the best solution for his missile run, he put the XL into a screaming dive, dropping more than five miles in thirty seconds. Leveling off just forty feet above the roiling ocean, he was now five miles to the east of his target. Three of the five destroyers immediately popped up on his weapons screen. He could see their armament had already gone hot, so he had to make this quick.
He pushed his throttles to three quarters power; the three destroyers started shooting at him an instant later. It was a well-placed barrage, opening up on him with expert fury. Whether warned in advance by the Isakov or just really good at what they did, suddenly thousands of streaks of orange light were coming at him from the escorts, deadly tracer bullets seeking him out in the wind and spray.
Through a series of violent banks and turns he was able to avoid the fusillade. This was not shocking. He’d done these types of maneuvers so many times before, he didn’t even think about it now. He let his hands move the stick whichever way they wanted; throttles up, throttles back, it really wasn’t up to him. Something took over when he was in situations like this, a sort of internal automatic pilot. And he’d learned a long time ago that whenever it happened, he should just go with the flow.
Suddenly, the closest destroyer was only a mile away. With night-vision goggles snapped down, he could see dozens of individual heat sources moving about the ship—crewmen rushing to service the antiaircraft crews that were firing at him. It was mostly cannon and heavy machine-gun fire coming his way, but a few antiaircraft missiles were also evident in the mix.
His run-in to the target lasted just twenty seconds, an eternity when someone was trying to shoot you down. But after just missing a cluster of incendiary antiaircraft cannon shells blowing up right in front of him, he went full throttle and with one great dash of power, and a brutal sonic boom, rocketing right over the escort vessel. Suddenly, he found himself inside the protective ring. The cruise ship was right in front of him, two miles away.
The other ships in the circle quickly became aware of what was happening and started firing at him. This was an unusual tactic because the destroyers were arrayed in a rough circle, and shooting at something inside it meant some of their ordnance would inevitably wind up hitting their sister ships.
No matter. Hunter knew the escorts were under NKVD command, and taking a little friendly fire was of little concern to them if it meant destroying their bogey.
With the cruise ship now just a mile away, Hunter jammed his throttles back down to low. He hit the back of his seat hard, not unlike some of the jolts he’d taken in the clown plane. Antiaircraft rounds were flying all around him, fired by at least four escort ships. And once again, he was letting pure instinct guide him through them. The XL was continuously moving, going up, down, sideways, and once almost banking right into the water. But, as always, someone somewhere seemed to be looking out for him, and he proceeded without a scratch.
One mile from the target, Hunter flipped the B1 switch on his control panel and saw an arming diagram pop onto his readout screen. By touching the screen in the right place, he armed the outer Exocet on his starboard wing. It was juiced and ready to go in two seconds. Hunter looked up at his target, and for the first time, he realized the troop carrier’s decks were lined with people—Chekskis—and they were shooting at him as well. He was not concerned though. They were firing at him with AK-47s, and he was still way out of their range.
At twenty-five hundred feet exactly, he lit off the Exocet. It flashed out from under his wing and flew a straight, ten-second course right into the side of the cruise ship, hitting the waterline about three hundred feet back from the bow. The warhead worked as advertised. There was an initial explosion that lifted the huge ship about three feet out of the water. Then came a tremendous second explosion, many more times powerful than the first, and the ship came back down on itself, splitting in two.
Hunter rocketed over the scene a moment later. Both ends of the giant vessel were already slipping beneath the stormy waves, with hundreds of Chekskis being sucked down into a huge whirlpool created as a result. It was as if a plug had been pulled somewhere deep below and the ocean was draining out. Others tried to swim away, but the vortex just got bigger and quickly caught up with them, pulling them down too to their watery graves in a horrifying scene.
For Hunter, war was about two opponents with opposite points of view battling it out like soldiers. May the best man win. Sinking unarmed ships at sea did not fall into that category. But neither did beheading innocent men, women, and children. Or importing thousands of thugs, along with their barbaric armaments that would be of no use in modern combat, just to terrorize and kill even more innocents. Or blowing yourself up to take even more of the blameless with you to the grave.
The Chekskis were not soldiers; they weren’t even policemen. They were psychotic killers who’d already caused massive misery and carnage in many parts of the postwar world. And if Moscow had its way, they would be unleashed on America.
And Hunter just couldn’t let that happen.
The two halves of the ship quickly disappeared in one enormous gulp, leaving almost nothing left atop the turbulent surface. Hunter took a deep breath of oxygen. One push of the B1 button and more than thirty thousand people were gone? No wreckage, no lifeboats. Nothing.
Just … gone.
“Do we get gold stars in heaven for that?” he asked the cosmos grimly.
It might have been the only time in his life that he jinxed himself, because not a heartbeat later, the water below him became agitated in a way no ocean storm could ever cause. The whitecaps were literally catching on fire.
Someone was shooting at him—and not from the direction of the escort ships, but from behind.
His hands pulled back on the stick and the X
L went straight up, one mile, two, three, spiraling for good measure. That he hadn’t been hit by the well-aimed barrage of incendiary cannon shells was a miracle … or something.
“The feeling” had arrived almost simultaneously with the incoming fire. That sensation telling him trouble was near. His body began buzzing all over again. He checked his weapons suite—every light was solid green. He looped over at seventeen thousand feet and started back down to find who’d tried to kill him.
That’s when he saw them.
Six Su-34 JLRs superjets coming right at him.
They were passing up through twelve thousand feet going at least Mach 1. He looked down at his targeting screen; he’d never seen a Su-34 JLR up this close before. It was a huge airplane. Wide wings, twin engines, twin tails, a flat nose. And a really big cockpit. They looked more like little bombers than big fighter planes.
But Hunter couldn’t believe they were really here.
How the hell did they get off the carrier?
This was not a good situation. Not only was he outnumbered by six pretty incredible aircraft, he was still carrying the three valuable Exocets, two on the port wing and one starboard. They were creating enormous drag and presented him with an unbalanced flight profile, making it difficult to fly at top speed.
Still, he had to fight these guys.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was a strange battle right from the start.
Typically, once an aerial engagement was on, the participants scattered and it became a free for all. But the six Su-34s were flying in a line-abreast formation, almost like an aerobatics team, and they stayed that way. That’s when Hunter realized these were three buddy flights he was looking at. Three full-fledged fighters along with three armed refueling planes.
That answered one question. The planes hadn’t come off the Isakov. They were transiting to it from someplace else—Hunter’s guess being somewhere in Russian-controlled Europe—and joining the air fleet already on the boat. They’d just happened to arrive in the middle of the chaos.
Battle for America Page 17
