For those accustomed to two-seat Phantoms and the Navy’s F-14 Tomcats, however, no one seemed to appreciate the efficiency of having one backseater in the Kappa Kat serving six to twelve fighters.
What was more, as far as the Phantom was concerned, the F-4 was utilized by the United States Air Force, Navy, and Marines. That was almost unheard of; the three military services normally fought like bear cubs to have their own distinctive, mission-dedicated aircraft.
The Alpha Kat and the Kappa Kat had been designed to take the stress of shipboard catapult launches and arrested landings, though they had not yet built a naval prototype. The airplanes were intended, like the Phantom, to be tri-service. And that capability, because of the in-born interservice jealousies, was a negative.
Another negative, as far as the reviewing committees had fed back to them, was that the Alpha Kat could not stand alone. They liked the price, but they didn’t like the lack of electronics. The Indian Air Force, a large one with forty-five squadrons, had experience with Sukhoi Su-7, French SEPECAT Jaguar, and MiG-21 fighters. Pilots and commanders who liked the idea of solo flight wouldn’t take kindly to the Alpha Kat’s reliance on an airborne control craft.
Hamilton had found one sympathetic ear in an Indian Navy admiral. India was the first country on the tour which operated an aircraft carrier, the INS Vikrant, with a current aircraft complement of Hawker Siddeley Sea Hawks and Harriers. While the admiral appeared excited, Kimball and McEntire had been less so. A sale of, say, two squadrons of Alpha Kats to the Navy might undermine any sales to the Indian Air Force if the normal interservice rivalries were maintained.
Kimball and McEntire, and all of them for that matter, were banking on the downsizing of defense forces and the shrinking of budgets to overcome tradition, rivalry, and customary operational tactics to sell the Alpha Kat concept. All of those traits of air defense organizations were deeply ingrained and would be difficult to combat.
“Bengals, Hawkeye,” Soames called on Tac Two, jolting Gander into a quick scan of his panel and the autopilot.
The five Alpha Kats chanted their numbers.
“Let’s take it down to angels six and make a right turn to one-three-five.”
Gander clicked his mike twice, reduced his throttle setting, and eased the controller over. On his right, Keeper, as Bengal Four, matched his turn.
The Kappa Kat and the two C-141s were ahead of him and lower by a thousand feet.
He assumed that somewhere along the way, Soames had received permission to enter Bangladesh’s air space because the wide expanse of the Brahmaputra River could be seen about five miles away. The sun reflected nicely off the water’s surface, and the jungle along its banks was a deep green.
Hiding the real Bengal tigers, no doubt. They’d be calling for Bengals Six through Ninety-Nine.
The two squadrons of the Bangladesh Defense Force (Air Wing) were based at Tezgaon and Jessore, but the demonstrations were scheduled to be mounted out of Dacca. Gander figured the Air Wing didn’t want the visitors to see anything supersecret, but doubted that Kimball would be shooting photos of ancient Shenyang F-4s or MiG-19s.
The letdown and approach into Dacca was uneventful, and by eleven o’clock, all of the tour aircraft were parked, as had become customary, in a separate section of the airport. There were some military brass on hand to greet them, and Kimball, McEntire, Soames, and Hamilton were whisked away. Gander didn’t think they were going bar-hopping.
Everyone pitched in to tie down the airplanes and run post-flight checks.
Everyone was subdued. The normal horseplay and macho jokes were absent.
Everyone knew this was the twenty-sixth of July.
Combat night.
Even Jimmy Gander was nervous.
*
Henry Loh sat alone in his office in the Quonset hut. In the outer office, he could hear Jake Switzer talking to his pilots, laying out their patrols for tomorrow morning. They would take off at six o’clock. Arrangements had already been made for them to land for refueling in Mandalay.
He picked up the telephone and asked the switchboard to get a number in Rangoon.
It was Mauk’s home telephone, and he answered on the third ring.
“Good day, Colonel.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Our preparations are complete.”
“That is excellent,” Mauk said. “And timely. The anticipation has created something of a morale problem. It will be rectified by action.”
“At five o’clock in the morning,” Loh said, “I will call you with the final signal.”
“I will be waiting.”
Loh depressed the cancel bar, then told the switchboard to get him the number in Bangkok.
Lon Pot, also, was waiting by the telephone.
“We are ready,” Loh reported.
“I have talked to the other chiefs,” Lon Pot said, “and they also are prepared. We will proceed.”
“After so many months of preparation, I am relieved.”
“As am I, my friend. I will be near this telephone if anything unexpected should arise. On the morning of the twenty-eighth, I will be at Don Muang Airport.”
“And I will pick you up there,” Loh promised.
He hung up and sighed deeply. He really did not know how well the operation would develop. Colonel Mauk was not to be trusted fully. If the man wanted the remaining four hundred thousand dollars committed to him, he would deliver the Union of Burma Air Force.
If Mauk betrayed Lon Pot, he would eventually die, and slowly. If Loh’s squadrons were ambushed by UBAF fighters, Loh would simply disappear.
And arise in Australia, or perhaps Tahiti, taking his long-deserved vacation. Later, he would find additional action elsewhere in the world.
The telephone rang and he picked it up.
As ever, he did not identify himself. “Yes?”
“I thought of one more thing,” Mauk said.
“What is that?”
“The defense ministry, purely without the consent of the air force, has scheduled a demonstration flight on the twenty-eighth.”
“A demonstration of what?” Loh asked.
“An American fighter called the Alpha Kat.”
“I have never heard of it.”
“It is a stealth-technology airplane. I have seen the specifications.”
“Why did you not tell me of this earlier?”
“It did not seem important,” Mauk said. “The country cannot afford new aircraft anyway.”
While Loh considered the timing, he asked, “How many aircraft are involved?”
“From the schedule I received from the ministry, six fighter planes and one AWACS aircraft.”
“They are to arrive on the twenty-eighth?”
“In the morning, yes. In Rangoon.”
“Very well,” Loh said, “if they do not cancel after the news breaks, let them come. We can always nationalize them and add them to our inventory.”
“Excellent,” Mauk said. “That is excellent.”
*
For the afternoon portion of the presentation, Kimball sat in the audience of air force officers and defense ministry officials and let Alex Hamilton carry the ball.
Hamilton had missed his calling, Kimball thought. His professorial air gave him a facade of competence and knowledge, and yet, he didn’t flaunt it. No arrogance, there. He had lost nearly twelve pounds since leaving the states, probably from lack of donuts and Danish as much as the heat, and in New Delhi, had had to have his suit taken in.
He looked smooth, and he spoke with a quiet, assured voice. He maintained nice eye contact with the audience, and even Kimball felt like he was welcome to buy a couple Alpha Kats. No rush, though. No pressure.
They were several miles north of Dacca, transported to the site by buses. Their rows of folding chairs were lined up under the fringe of jungle canopy, facing an open field. Several stewards moved about, offering cold drinks.
Out in the field, Walt Hammond a
nd Elliot Stott had inflated one of the weather balloons from a helium cylinder. As he watched, the balloon lifted away, trailing its target package and a thousand-foot, slim nylon tether. The foot-square box suspended from the balloon contained a simple radio that emitted signals on the radar K-band, giving the radar-guided missiles something to home on. Additionally, the box contained a remotely fired flare, providing heat for the infrared seekers.
Kimball’s portable radio burped with static, then reported, “Lion, Hawkeye.”
Kimball raised the radio as a couple of his neighbors watched and said, “Go, Papa.”
“Any time you’re ready.”
“Stand by.”
Kimball signalled Hamilton, who departed from the holding pattern he had maintained with his presentation.
“As I mentioned a little earlier, gentlemen, the price of the Alpha Kat is kept as low as it is as a result of moving all of the high-cost electronics to the Kappa Kat. The fighter is, if we get down to earth about it, nothing more than a very maneuverable weapons platform. All it does is deliver the weapons. In the ground attack role, it can aim and release on its own.
“In the aerial defense role, however, in order to maintain its stealthy characteristics, there are shortcomings designed into the performance. Those shortcomings are made up in the control craft.
“The purpose of the exercise this afternoon, gentlemen, is to prove to you that two Alpha Kats can deliver missiles against an aerial target, utilizing the data links from the Kappa Kat. The weapons system officer is aboard the command craft, and he will make the target acquisition. That data is then fed to the attack aircraft, which will deliver the ordnance.
“For reasons of our visibility, the first fighter in will launch the AIM-9L missile from two miles, although as you know, the range could be up to eleven miles.”
Kimball watched Hammond and Stott preparing the second balloon for launch.
“The second strike aircraft will launch the AMRAAM active radar-targeting missile, which has an effective range of seventy miles. Again, so that we may see the performance, the launch will be made from two miles out.”
Hamilton raised a forefinger in Kimball’s direction.
“Hawkeye, Lion. Send Bengal One.”
“Roger that, Lion. I’ve already acquired the target.”
Hamilton swung an arm toward the east. “Gentlemen, you’ll have to watch closely since the Alpha Kat’s coloring is difficult to see even in daylight. You will want to watch the area of sky to your two o’clock, and in perspective, about three meters above the top of the jungle.”
Kimball spoke to Hammond on the radio. “Kickapoo, light the candle.”
“Roger, Lion.”
Out in the field, Hammond used his remote control to set off the flare. Abruptly, a bright white fluorescence blossomed below the balloon, which was high above them.
“Don’t look directly at the flare, gentlemen,” Hamilton cautioned. “It may affect your vision for a moment. There! We have visual on the incoming airplane.”
“What? Where … I don’t”
“Look slightly to the right, around two-thirty on our clock face,” Hamilton said.
Kimball spotted the Alpha Kat and heard others speak up as they finally found it. It was low, two thousand feet off the ground, and moving slowly, at around four hundred knots. They had decided to keep the speed down, to give the audience more than a couple of seconds of visual contact.
“The aircraft is moving at four hundred knots, gentlemen. The altitude is two thousand feet above ground level.”
The fighter was a pimple on the sky for several seconds, visible because she allowed herself to be backlit against the clear sky, then she rapidly grew in size. At two miles of distance, her canted rudders became discernible.
And two missiles lanced away from her, streaking thin white plumes of vapor behind them.
Both missiles appeared to spiral for a moment, as if their heat-seeking heads had lost contact with the target, then they locked on and whistled straight across the sky, rapidly accelerating to their top end of Mach 3.
They didn’t have to hit the target actually. The proximity detectors would detonate them within twenty feet of the objective if they didn’t hit.
One struck the box, and the other went off a few yards away.
A thousand feet up, with thirty pairs of eyes watching, the Sidewinders exploded.
There was only six ounces of explosive in the plastic case of each warhead, and not much of the detonation sound reached the audience. The balloon absorbed a few thousand plastic splinters, lost its buoyancy, and took a dive toward the far side of the field.
The Alpha Kat passed over a second later, already beginning a vertical climb.
Damn, she’s beautiful!
Hammond let go of the second balloon.
“Once again, gentlemen, if you’ll look to the east, we’ll find our second fighter.”
“Hawkeye, Lion. Number two,” Kimball said into the radio.
“Roger that, Lion. Bengal Two’s on the way.”
The launch of the radar-seeking AMRAAMs went off without a hitch, and Alex Hamilton pointed out to the audience the fact that, immediately on launch, the Alpha Kat turned off and headed north.
“The AMRAAM has an active radar-seeker,” Hamilton explained, “rather than semi-active. The missile is Fire-and-Forget. Our Alpha Kat is already looking for her next target while the AMRAAMs are taking care of this one.”
The second balloon also took two hits.
As they headed back toward the buses, one general asked Kimball if he could take another close look at the Alpha Kat, to assure himself that it did not have targeting radar. Kimball promised him that he could poke all over the plane. And he would stay close beside the man.
Climbing the steps into the bus, Kimball told Hamilton, “Nicely done, Alex.”
“Think so?”
“Damned right. You’re a natural.”
“That’s good, because I’m considering going into a television ministry.”
Kimball grinned at him. “Which one?”
“MLBM Club.”
“What’s that?”
“My Lord has Bigger Missiles.”
*
Six-and-a-half miles north of Dacca Airport, Derek Crider, Wheeler, Del Gart, Corey O’Brian, and Alan Adage worked quietly in the dark.
Gart opened both of the back doors of the rented van, climbed inside, and pushed the elongated canvas bags out to his cohorts.
Crider took his bag, weighing thirty-two pounds, found the canvas handles, and carried it off the road, down through a drainage ditch, and into the trees. The undergrowth grabbed at his ankles as he trudged along.
He could not see much, and he banged into the boles of several trees before he reached the tiny clearing thirty yards from the road.
The clearing was less than twenty feet across, but the stars were visible, and that was all that mattered.
The rest of the team emerged from the trees, and as his night vision became better, Crider could see their outlines as they knelt in the mixed grass and weeds and dirt and opened the bags.
Crider went to his own knees, found the big zipper with his hand, and pulled it open the length of the oblong case. Reaching inside, he withdrew the Stinger carefully.
He heard jet engines approaching and looked up. The clearance and strobe warning lights of an airliner appeared suddenly over the clearing. The silhouette blocked out the stars. That made it a clear enough target.
Having a couple of days planning time made all the difference. He had been able to reach his contact in Sri Lanka, and by the time Lujan put the Lear down at Dacca, the shoulder-fired Stinger surface-to-air missiles were already in-country.
He had used them before, as had Wheeler, Gart, and Adage. The whole unit weighed thirty-one pounds, and the missile itself weighed only twenty-two pounds. It carried a smooth-cased fragmentation charge, and it was guided by passive infrared targeting. The effective range was thr
ee miles.
He removed the protective covers and pressed a button to test the battery circuit. A green light told him the weapon was ready.
“You’re absolutely sure we’re in the right place?” Wheeler asked.
“Wind’s out of the north, and will be all night long,” Crider said. “They’ll take off right over us. You saw the commercial airliner.”
“We don’t want to shoot down anything with three hundred people on it,” Wheeler said.
“Why not?” O’Brian asked. “The panic would help us disappear.”
“I’ll tell you when to fire,” Crider said.
Crider spread them out in a long row, Adage on the far left, and they all sat down to wait. Crider took the right end of the row and cradled the Stinger across his lap.
“This sure as hell won’t look like equipment failure,” Gart said. “If we manage to hit all five of them.”
“They’ll take off the same way they did in New Delhi,” Crider said. “The command craft will go first, and we let it go. The fighters will take off as a pair, followed by three more. Alan, you and Del take the first two. Wait as long as you can, so the second flight doesn’t scramble on us.”
“It’s not going to look like an aircraft failure,” Gart repeated.
“At this point, I don’t give a shit. But to get down to it, Del, it’s a system failure. The infrared radiation on these planes is supposed to be low. When we hit them, they’ve failed, and no one’s going to buy a plane that can be taken out that easily.”
“You sure we can hit them, Crider?”
“The wavelength on these babies is less than four-point-four microns,” Crider said. “They track on an exhaust plume, rather than hot metal. The other thing to remember, they’ll be taking off under full power, producing more heat than they would at cruise. Another thing, on takeoff, I’m pretty sure they won’t have activated the infrared threat receivers. We’ll hit them. I want at least three of them to feel good.”
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