Terror At Dawn c-21

by Keith Douglass

  “I’ve got a visual,” he announced a few seconds later, as the dull brown before him resolved into a sloping hill with a concrete building set on the side. It merged into the hill, but his eyes recognized the setup from the intelligence photos.

  “Roger, concur,” his RIO said.

  “Two,” his wingman acknowledged.

  In a few words, Lauren sketched out additional instructions for his less-experienced wingman, hoping that the other pilot was enough of a stick to do some fine-tuning to the release point.

  All once the ESM gear erupted into warnings. “SAM site, SAM site,” his RIO shouted, his voice tight and under control. “Drop it and get us out of here!”

  “No,” the pilot said. “We’re not close enough, and I’ll be damned if I’m going home with these babies on my wings. Five more seconds — now!”

  The aircraft jolted as the five-hundred-pound bombs left the wings, heading down toward the target, following the aircraft’s course and descending in a parabolic arc. Lauren broke off to the right, his wingman following, and kicked in afterburners to clear the area.

  “They’re launching, they’re launching,” his wingman shouted over the circuit. “I have a visual on two — no, three missiles!”

  “Settle down,” the pilot ordered sharply. “Keep your eyes opened, you’ll be okay. The SAMs are slow and clumsy — you can avoid it if you stay on your toes. Just like in school, Joe.”

  He rolled his Tomcat inverted and stared back the way they’d come. Yes, he could see them now, his vision preternaturally sharpened by the knowledge that they were there. Two long, white telephone poles rising up from the ground, beam-on to them now but already turning to follow them, the third one not yet visible. At least they didn’t have fighters. Ground-based missiles were a helluva lot easier to handle.

  “It’s got me, it’s got me,” his wingman shouted as the ESM gear stuttered into a harder, faster tone, indicating that one of the missiles had detected him on its own radar and was locking on. “Chaff, flares — commencing evasive maneuvers.”

  The air around them was suddenly cluttered with strips of metal foil and burning flares, all designed to throw the missile off its target. The countermeasures gear kicked in automatically, intercepting the radar signals from the missile seeker head, delaying them, and transmitting them back, attempting to fool the small computer mind into thinking that the aircraft was somewhere else.

  “It’s got us, too,” his own RIO said. “Wait for it, wait for it — break right, break right!” The pilot did as the RIO ordered, popping out chaff and flares as he did.

  “I lost it — no, it’s reacquiring, coming back on me — break right, break right,” his wingman shouted, swinging his Tomcat around as the missile turned away from the chaff and flares. For whatever reason, this particular missile was tenacious. Lauren had his own problems to deal with, though. His own nemesis had reacquired and was turning to meet him.

  There’s something to be said for the Hornet. Damn, I wish I had their turning radius right now. He jerked his Tomcat around almost in midair and was rewarded with, “It’s falling off,” from his RIO. Evidently their maneuvers had exhausted the missile’s fuel and it was tumbling back to earth. Be damned fine if it fell back on that bastard target.

  “Come on, come on,” he heard his wingman chanting. The G-forces were distorting his words. The pilot was fighting to stay conscious as he put his aircraft into a hard, diving turn. “Joe, easy!” Lauren said. “Change altitude, increase closure without so many Gs — acknowledge!”

  “I’m trying,” the voice said, even more sluggishly. “It’s not—”

  Suddenly, below Lauren and to his right, a fireball exploded where moments before had been a Tomcat. “Joe,” he shouted, as though raising his voice to reach across the distance between them and save his junior wingman. “Answer me!”

  “That was him,” his RIO said softly, shock in his voice. “Those weren’t that hard to avoid.” He began to swear softly.

  Shit, double shit. I’ve got to go see.

  He put his Tomcat into a hard turn that headed directly for the fireball. He had to see if there were any parachutes. The odds of it were slim to none, but as long as there was a chance that his wingman and his RIO had gotten out just before the hit, that somehow he had managed to eject them in the moments before the missile hit, Lauren had to check.

  The air below the fireball was already littered with burning pieces of fuselage that fell through the air like a shower of meteors. Lauren stayed around the edges, careful to avoid the secondary explosions and shrapnel, and rolled inverted to check the air below them. “Anything?” he asked his RIO, already knowing what the answer was. “Anything at all?”

  “Renegade One, States,” the TAO’s voice said over tactical. “Interrogative the status of your wingman?”

  “No chutes,” the pilot said shortly, his voice emotionless. “I’m coming back for another check, but I don’t think he made it.”

  Silence on the circuit, and then the admiral came back on. “Get your ass back here, mister. Now.”

  “Just a few more minutes, sir. Just in case—”

  “Don’t you people understand what orders are? I said now!”

  The silence that followed on the normally busy circuit had an entirely different quality to it. Shock, horror, even more than the death of his wingman had occasioned. It was unthinkable that a pilot leave a wingman before he was absolutely and morally convinced that there were no parachutes in the air. It violated every tenet of the warrior’s code, the one that both he and the admiral had been raised on.

  That could be no explanation, no justification. This was not the time for an argument. Instead, the pilot simply ignored the man with the stars and began his futile orbit once again.

  CVIC United States

  1650 local (GMT +3)

  The intelligence specialists and officers listen to the exchanges closely, each one secretly glad he did not have to deal with the admiral. They saw what the pilot was doing — everyone in the LINK saw Lauren continue his search of the airspace for his wingman or a parachute. They saw and applauded him, hoping that they themselves would have the courage to do just that if it ever came down to it.

  Just then, the telephone rang. The specialist picked it up and passed it to the intelligence officer. “Met, sir.”

  The intelligence officer took the call, saying, “We’re a little bit busy right now for a weather report.”

  “Not for this one,” a grim voice announced. “You guys have any idea what surface winds are doing right now?”

  “No,” the intelligence officer said, dismay on his face. He was no dummy — there was only one reason for the meteorologist to be calling up right now with that particular inquiry. “But—”

  “But, nothing. You better get this aircraft carrier turned around and headed south right now,” Met said. “Because, according to my calculations, if there was any biological agent released in that strike, it’s going to be coming across our deck in about fifteen minutes.”

  Hornet 101

  1745 local (GMT +3)

  Even if he had not known it from Admiral Jette’s voice, by the time the pilot was on final, he knew he was in serious trouble. But he was fresh from a combat mission and losing his wingman, and the kind of trouble he was facing didn’t bother him all that much. Sure, the admiral could shaft him on his fitness reports, recommend that he never be promoted, and even try to relieve him of command. None of it was mortal danger — except to his career. And that seemed a very unimportant matter compared to losing his wingman.

  He could hear the tension in the air boss’s voice as he turned onto final, traced its echo in the LSO’s terse orders, and saw it in the strange, rebellious face of the plane captain who helped him out of his ejection harness. By now, the entire story would have made the rounds throughout the ship. And, as far as he knew, there was not a single aviator — strike that, a single sailor of any type — who would have done anything other t
han what he did. Oh, maybe some of them wouldn’t speak up, worried about the effect on their own careers. But inside, where it counted, he knew that each one desperately hoped that if their situations were reversed, he would have made the same choice that Lauren did.

  Once the post-shutdown checklist was complete, he leaned back against the ejection seat, breathing deeply. The real world came crashing back in. In a few moments, he would have to face the admiral and accept responsibility for disobeying the admiral’s orders.

  But damn it, he never should have asked me to leave. I wasn’t in immediate danger. There was no reason to order me to leave the scene.

  Unless there was something you didn’t know. Maybe he had some intelligence about another attack, maybe there was some reason for his outrageous order.

  No. Because if he had, I would have heard it in their voices now. Nothing stays secret for long on a carrier.

  The plane captain, her face almost completely obscured by goggles and her cranial helmet, was deftly unfastening his ejection harness and inserting the cotter pins into the ejection seat, which would prevent it from accidentally being activated while the aircraft was on the deck. He noticed her in ways that he normally wouldn’t have. The slight curl of hair that escaped from her cranial to hang down over her forehead. The smooth, unlined skin below the goggles, the quick smile that threatened to break out into a full grin at any second. Her mouth was delicate, a deep red color that no cosmetic could mimic. He was seized by the sudden urge to grab her hands in his and kiss her, to feel contact with a woman. It was a natural aftermath of combat, particularly when you’d lost someone.

  She seemed to sense his interest, and a slight flush rose on her cheeks. Her hands moved more slowly, lingering over the straps as she unfastened them. She paused for a moment, then pulled her goggles away from her eyes and settled them on the top of her cranial helmet. Her eyes, he saw, were ringed with red circles where the rubber from the goggles pressed into delicate skin. Her eyes were a dark, tawny brown, deep and full of sympathy. Her face was unmarked yet by life, other than by what the Navy had taught her. Purplish circles under her eyes reflected the long hours she kept.

  “Sir,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Sir?”

  “Yes, Airman Carmichael?” he asked, proud that his voice was kind and level. He remembered her now, the details of his interview with her when she checked on board and reported to the squadron. A smart kid, one with a lot of potential. Her A school had been aviation electronics, and she would soon rotate out of the line division and into her rating work center. He remembered that she seemed to be shy, exceptionally reserved, and he’d thought her rather sweet at the time.

  “Sir, I just wanted to say — what happened up there—” Her voice trailed off. He held up a hand to stop her.

  “What happened up there was—” He stopped suddenly, unable to make the party-line explanation come to his lips. He couldn’t lie to her, not to those dark brown eyes gazing into his, hurt, wanting to know why the world wasn’t working the way it ought to. “What happened up there,” he began again, even more gently but with a tremendous sense of release, “was really shitty.” Both of them knew he wasn’t talking about the loss of his wingman. “We lost two good men today. I searched every bit of the area — there was no sign of them. They never even knew what hit them.” For some reason, that seemed to ease her mind. He wondered whether he could have lived with himself if he had not stayed on station to look one last time for his wingman.

  “It’s hard, isn’t it, sir?”

  For one insane moment, he thought she was talking about his dick, which was indeed demanding to be heard. “Yes, it is,” he said gravely, fervently grateful that he had paused before answering. “It’s always hard when you lose someone.”

  “The admiral is a shit.” Something had changed in her voice, a hard note at odds with the delicate face in front of him. She flushed immediately, all too aware that she was way out of line, and looked away.

  “I won’t tell him you said that,” he said gravely, deeply gratified at some level that even this young airman understood the difference between right and wrong. “As long as you promise not to tell him that I think he’s a shit, too.”

  Her face snapped around to his, a look of shock on her face. Then a hard, tight mile smile crept across her full lips, aging her immediately by a decade. “Our secret, Captain.” Somehow even her voice seemed deeper.

  “Agreed.” Then he looked down at the ejection harness, and said, “Now help me get this damn thing off, okay? I’ve got an execution to attend.” He gave her the same tight smile she’d proffered just moments earlier, cementing the bond between them.

  Later, waiting in the hallway passageway outside the admiral’s office, he held her face in his mind, drawing strength from her expression.

  USS Jefferson

  1755 local (GMT +3)

  Lab Rat stared at the speaker overhead, listening to the horrific details coming across it, each one spoken in a flat, neutral voice with no trace of emotion. The winds across the Persian Gulf had shifted, and now traced a direct line from the recently destroyed biochemical site to the USS United States. Given that the bunker had been lodged in the side of a hill, and that there was no indication of secondary explosions or complete destruction that might have incinerated any biochem weapons, it was possible that whatever hell had been housed there was now being carried by the wind toward the ship.

  “Of course, there are civilian cities along the dispersal path as well,” the admiral continued in a flat, detached voice. “Should there in fact be Iraqi chemical or biological weapons being dispersed, my medical staff advises me that we can expect significant collateral damage. I have already released an OPREP-3 report to JCS summarizing those attacks.”

  “Dear God,” Coyote said, disbelief in his voice. “What do you need? Medical support? I’ll have that coordinated if there’s anything you need.”

  “The offer is appreciated,” the admiral said. His tone deepened and he began to sound even more formal. “The ship has drilled very extensively for this very possibility, and is currently buttoned up as tight as she can get. The captain has every confidence that between the saltwater wash-down system and the positive pressure maintained inside the hull, there will be no danger of exposure.”

  The captain — now why did he say it that way? He should have said that he was confident. Let the troops hear it in his voice, feel it in their bones from the way he talked. That’s why you get paid the big bucks, Admiral — to stand out there in front and give your troops something to follow.

  “Under the circumstances, we have commenced a precautionary emergency destruction of some older material,” the admiral continued, his voice still unnaturally calm. “However, most of the corporate knowledge resides inside the minds of our more senior officers. Rather than risk losing that experience, I have decided to—”

  No. He can’t be thinking that. He wouldn’t dare. He wouldn’t dare.

  “—to evacuate senior staff from the ship’s company and my own staff. There will be three CODs departing in approximately forty-five minutes en route to Kuwait, where we will check in with Fifth Fleet. I would expect that we will refuel and transfer to the USS Jefferson, leaving a portion of the officers at its fleet headquarters.”

  There was dead silence on the circuit. Coyote struggled for words, fighting down his disbelief. Diplomacy had never been his strong point, and any traces of it that he had managed to acquire now deserted him. “You mean you’re going to run?” he asked over the circuit, his voice incredulous. “You’re going to leave your battle group there while you get your own ass to safety?” More silence. Coyote thought that he really ought to be wishing he had not said that, but couldn’t convince himself of it.

  The man was a coward. He had just announced it on a secure circuit that was broadcast to every command center and every commanding officer and captain in his battle group. Faced with the unthinkable, the admiral was going to run. />
  “Pending other orders from Fifth Fleet staff, expect our COD on board early tomorrow morning.” It was as though Coyote had not spoken.

  “No way, asshole,” Coyote said, all traces of civility gone from his voice.

  “I can still coordinate the movements of my battle group, given access to sufficient communication circuits, and—”

  “It will be a cold day in hell,” Coyote said, his voice burning with outrage and scorn, “when I let a coward on board my ship to direct his people from a safe position. When you get ashore in Kuwait, you better plan on staying there, because if you or your aircraft approach USS Jefferson, I will have you shot down. You read me?”

  “Admiral?” Coyote’s TAO said, disbelief in his voice. “I think we have a problem.”

  NINETEEN

  Tombstone’s command post

  2000 local (GMT -7)

  The daylight was starting to fade when the first glitch appeared. Hank Greenfield came up to Tombstone and said quietly, “A word, if you will.” Tombstone followed him out away from the rest of the agents.

  “What’s up?”

  Greenfield shook his head. “The Air National Guard elements won’t support us. Said they’re worried about this federal pursuit issue. That last robbery from the reserve center shook them up some, and they’re claiming that we don’t have any intelligence about what we’re facing. Their CO said it’s too risky for the helicopters to commit.”

  Tombstone swore quietly. “Why didn’t they tell us before?”

  “They said they just found out themselves. Evidently the war is being fought back in D.C. as well. Seems not everyone approves of the President’s idea.” Greenfield shot him a look that said, “And neither do I.”