Alpha Kat

by William H. Lovejoy

  “That’s it? We’re getting paid to make you feel good?” O’Brian asked.

  “Fuckin-A.”

  Plus, he’d come out of it nearly a million ahead. That had made him feel good already.

  *

  The Kappa Kat had disappeared by the time Kimball received his takeoff clearances from Dacca Control. He was lined up on Zero-One Right, with Halek on his right wing.

  On Tac Two, he said, “Let’s roll, Barnfire.”

  Two clicks in reply.

  Kimball shoved the throttle to the forward stop, watched his RPMs come up, then released the brakes.

  The fighter slammed him back in the seat and played tricks with his facial muscles as it shot forward.

  The HUD airspeed readout climbed quickly, and though he was loaded to the max with fuel and ordnance, he still got off the ground way short of the runway’s end.

  Halek was right beside him, his left wingtip light less than twenty feet away.

  Passing over the outer boundary markers, Kimball retracted his flaps and landing gear. The airspeed rose quickly to 350 knots.

  “Bengal Three rolling,” McEntire reported on Tac Two as he started his takeoff run with a flight of three.

  Kimball kept his rate of climb nominal, reading 150 feet per minute, as the lights of Dacca fell behind.

  “Kill the lights, Two,” he ordered, and he and Halek shut down their running lights and anti-collision strobes. They would continue transmitting their IFF signals for the next five minutes.

  Kimball was trimming his elevator and ailerons when Billingsly’s deep voice calmly reported, “All Bengals, IR threat. Go passive.”

  Sixteen

  “Son of a bitch!” Wheeler yelled.

  Crider could not believe it.

  He had seen the shadows of the first two planes blot out the stars. As soon as the next three appeared, he had soberly said, “Fire.”

  He had had the Stinger trained on the far right aircraft in the second flight. The earphones chimed a lock-on, and he squeezed the trigger. The missile had leaped from the launch tube, hesitated a microsecond, and then the solid rocket engine ignited.

  It had zoomed away, homing on the invisible vapor trail of the fighter.

  Then began an erratic dance.

  Five red dots of Stinger exhausts whipped haphazardly around the sky, looking for something to home on.

  Then, one by one, they had exploded harmlessly as their rocket motors were spent.

  The Alpha Kats were no longer there.

  The shadows had evaporated.

  Gone.

  He leaped to his feet and started running through the trees back toward the road and the van.

  “Come on, goddamn it!” he yelled at the others. He heard feet pounding behind him.

  And slammed into the trunk of a tree.

  *

  With Hawkeye’s warning, Kimball had automatically pulled the throttle back, immediately reducing the turbofan’s heat output to nearly nil.

  He watched the airspeed readout and eased the controller forward, putting the nose down in an attempt to maintain airspeed.

  Counting.

  Losing altitude fast.

  Flipped on the infrared threat receiver.

  Heard nothing.

  No blinking visual alarms on the HUD.

  Counting.

  No one saying anything.

  Reached fifteen in his count and began to increase power.

  His altitude was down to three hundred feet above the jungle canopy.

  Slowly, the nose came up. He added more power.

  “Bengals, Hawkeye. I read five explosions. Give me a count.”

  Kimball keyed the transmit button. “One.”

  “Two.”

  “Three.”

  “Four.”

  “Five.”

  The relief coursed through him.

  “They were surface-to-air, infrared-tracking,” Billingsly said. “Probably infantry weapons.”

  “One, Two here. I want to go back and plant a missile up their asses,” Halek said.

  “Negative,” Kimball said. “You’d give us away.”

  “Shit.”

  “Maintain protocol, Two,” Billingsly said. “Let’s go hot mike.”

  Kimball locked in his transmit mode.

  “What do you think, Cheetah?” McEntire asked.

  “Same bunch that has been playing tag with us. They’re getting more aggressive.”

  “Getting desperate, you think?” Billingsly asked.

  “Looks that way,” Kimball said, scanning the HUD to see that he was climbing through eight thousand feet. His speed was up to five hundred knots.

  “One thing we know,” McEntire said, “there’s at least five of them.”

  “We want to do anything about it?” Billingsly asked.

  “Not now, Papa. We’ve got an exercise to run.”

  “Roger that. Bengals, go to zero-eight-five, continue climbing to angels two-zero. At altitude, take it to Mach 1.5. I read you in close proximity to each other at this time. Now, kill the IFF.”

  Kimball checked both sides of his canopy, blinked his wingtip guidelights once, and saw four low-wattage blinks in reply. Halek was on his right wing, and McEntire had brought his flight, with Gander and Makura, up on the left side.

  “Roger that, Papa.” He shut down the IFF transponder.

  “I’m taking my radar off the air,” Billingsly said. “Dart, take it to angels three-zero. Bengals, maintain course, altitude, and speed.”

  The target was 435 miles away. At Mach 1.5, approximately 1,100 miles per hour at their altitude, the target was 23 minutes away. With a decrease in speed for the approach to the target, and a time on target of less than thirty seconds, the round trip was going to take them about fifty minutes.

  Kimball checked his watch. A.J. Soames and Alex Hamilton would just now be headed to the Bangladesh target area to brief the observers. He could count on Hamilton to while away the time in an interesting fashion.

  The strategy for this demonstration had been changed. They had taken off an hour before the planned strike on the dummy target in order to give the Bangladesh air force a large block of time to try and find them.

  He could imagine the F-6s and MiG-19 Farmers taking off from Tezgaon and Jessore right now. They would blunder around the Bangladesh skies, hoping to bump into their adversaries, if only by accident.

  The adversaries, however, were no longer in Bangladesh air space.

  Kimball checked the fuel load. Fuel consumption was right on the money. They had much more fuel than necessary for the mission, but he liked to keep tabs on it.

  “Bengals, go to one-one-five.”

  “Roger one-one-five, Papa.” Kimball eased the controller over, and when the new heading came up on the HUD, locked in the autopilot.

  The course change meant they were now over Indian territory once again.

  Seventy miles to the south-south-west would be the Bay of Bengal. He checked over his shoulder, but it was too dark on a moonless night to make out water. There were clouds to the south, too, but he couldn’t see them.

  He checked the armaments panel. He had two Mk 84 five-hundred-pound bombs on the centerline hardpoints. On the inboard pylons were four Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, and on the outboard pylons were four Sidewinders.

  The other four aircraft were armed identically.

  With the panel selectors, he chose the aft bomb and Hellfires one and three. Carl Dent had very carefully loaded the simulator weapons labeled Mk 84B and System Two in those positions. Two of the Sidewinders on the outboard pylons were also live weapons, just in case they ran into opposition from interceptors.

  “Bengals, we’re at eight minutes and counting,” Billingsly said.

  “Bengals, One. Select weapons.”

  Kimball received four affirmative responses.

  “Papa,” he said, “I want weapons release.”

  “Bengals, weapons are released.”

&nbs
p; Kimball armed his selected weapons, then deployed the laser and infrared targeting lens. He selected both the night vision and infrared modes. At six minutes out, he pulled the infrared reader down over his visor. The irritating yellow square appeared in his vision. “Bengals, One. Trail formation.”

  Kimball switched off the autopilot and turned on his wingtip guidelights for a minute, to allow the others to fall into a single line behind him.

  Billingsly would be double-checking his navigation equipment now, feeding in the coordinates that Wilcox had given them. The supposedly hidden airfield that Lon Pot called Shan Base had at least four Maruts, one Mirage, two Aerospatiale choppers, and five or six transports in residence. According to Wilcox’s sources, the commander was an American deserter named Switzer. His record as an Air Force pilot stateside and in Vietnam was dismal, and Kimball didn’t give a damn whether the man survived the raid or not. He and Sam Eddy had discussed the advisability of telling the others they knew about Switzer, then decided against it.

  “Bengals, Hawkeye. I’m giving you a data-link.” Kimball switched on his primary receiver and took a few seconds to orient himself with the display on the CRT. His blinking blue blip was centered on the screen. Near the top was the target, shown in orange.

  They did not have map overlays for this part of the world, but Billingsly had programmed the target’s coordinates into the computer and the GPS navigation data placed the target in the correct location on the screen.

  Kimball turned slightly to the right, centering his path toward the target.

  “Bengals, no airborne traffic to speak of.”

  A minute went by.

  Very slowly.

  “Bengal One, Hawkeye. Begin your approach. We want four-zero-zero knots. Start your dive.”

  Every step of the attack had been planned during the briefing, but Billingsly would keep them on track with a checklist.

  “Roger, Papa. Initiating approach.”

  Kimball retarded his throttle, and when the airspeed indicator dropped out of the Mach numbers, eased the nose over and deployed the speed brakes.

  A glance through the canopy gave him only the impression of jungle. He couldn’t really see it.

  “Bengals, Hawkeye. Select sequence.”

  On the armaments panel, he set up the sequence of weapons selection, the two Hellfires first and the bomb last.

  The orange dot moved down the CRT.

  “Bengals, one minute,” Billingsly said. “I’m going active for two sweeps.”

  The air controller checked the immediate air space with his radar, then switched it back to passive.

  “Two unidentifieds to the south, six-zero miles,” he reported. “Nothing airborne in the immediate vicinity.”

  Kimball switched the screen to night vision.

  His blip and the target blip disappeared, replaced by a green-hued image of the jungle top. He raised his head, moving the lens upward, seeking something.

  He eased the controller backward, pulling slowly out of his dive.

  Flashed his wingtip guidelights once.

  There.

  A rent in the jungle.

  Lighter green on the screen.

  Coming up fast.

  Checked his rate of descent.

  Jinked to the left.

  Behind him, Halek would be going to the right a trifle, to attack the right side of the field.

  With a thumb wheel on the control stick, he magnified the camera’s image.

  The clearing in the jungle leaped at him.

  Aircraft parked along both sides of the pierced steel plank runway.

  He dropped his head slightly. The yellow square found a fighter.

  Marut.

  Fingered the commit button.

  LOCK-ON flashed on the HUD.

  Raised his head.

  C-123?

  Commit.

  LOCK-ON.

  The first Hellfire leaped from its rail, trailing a white hot exhaust that would have dimmed his vision if he had been looking through the canopy.

  He eased to the right, centering on the runway.

  The second Hellfire whooshed away.

  He centered the yellow square on the middle of the steel plank airstrip.

  Commit the Mk 84.

  Ease back on the control stick.

  The clearing, the runway, everything disappeared from the screen.

  “One’s clear.”

  As he pulled the nose up and advanced the throttle, the jungle in his rearview mirror erupted.

  Pinpricks of yellow-red light. Bright spouts of yellow-blue-orange. Very quiet. He couldn’t hear the detonations.

  “Two’s clear.”

  He dropped his right wing and went into a shallow right turn, peering out the right side of the canopy.

  There were more explosions shattering the deadly darkness of the jungle.

  “Three’s clear.”

  Fires began to rage out of control. He saw streaks of white light as more Hellfires poured into the clearing.

  “Four’s clear.”

  A tremendous volcano of red and yellow spouted near the east end of the runway. Probably fuel storage.

  “Five’s clear.”

  The HUD compass reading came up on 280, the heading selected at the briefing for the climb out, and Kimball leveled his wings, then added more power.

  “Let me have a light, One,” Halek called out.

  Kimball gave him two flashes, and he sensed, more than saw Halek closing up on his right wing.

  “Well done, Bengals,” Billingsly said. “Now, let’s go see if we can’t show our hosts what the Alpha Kat can do.”

  *

  Jimmy Gander, as Bengal Five, had been the last one through. He pulled out of his turn, calling to Makura, “How about a hint, Falcon?”

  As soon as Ito Makura flashed a light for him, he eased up behind and above Makura’s wing, then jockeyed the throttle until his speed matched.

  “Bengals, Hawkeye. Sitrep.”

  One by one, they reported fuel and weapons status. All of the planned ordnance had gotten off, and none of the five reported damage of any kind.

  Gander couldn’t wait. He rewound the video tape for the nightsight camera and played it back at half-speed. The CRT gave him his moment in history.

  He didn’t remember seeing half of what the camera said he saw. His adrenaline had been as high as the first time he had soloed.

  “Hawkeye, Five.”

  “Go Five.”

  “You want a bomb damage report?”

  “Damned right,” Billingsly said. “It’s tough being in the dark up here. First, everyone up to Mach 1.5?”

  After they all checked off on the speed, Gander said, “I’m on the replay. Coming in. Freeze. Before I let go, I see … well hell, there’s a lot of smoke, fire everywhere … a 123 with a wing blown off; one, no two Maruts in flames; a truck in pieces. Advancing tape.”

  The green tinted images were difficult to interpret with the thick haze of green smoke swirling around. He saw men running, some as if they were in panic. He hadn’t noticed them at all on his run. After glancing ahead at the dim outline of Makura’s Alpha Kat, he looked back to his CRT and continued, “There’s a Mirage on the south side of the strip with its nose blown off, flaming. C-47 on fire. There’s a DC-6 that looks okay, but I fired on it. My Hellfire’s frozen just before impact. Jeep on its top. Big damned holes in the runway, debris still flying through the air. Advancing tape. The Hellfire hit the DC-6. Another Marut on fire. Small single engine, maybe an old Aeronica, in flames. Aerospatiale that I launched on. Another chopper in pieces. Jesus! They were shooting at us!”

  “Who?” Kimball asked.

  “Couple guys with rifles. Maybe they saw us in the light of the flames. I don’t think I was hit. Coming on through. Whoo! That had to be a fuel depot. Nice shot, Falcon. I went through the flames, so they must have been a couple hundred feet high. That’s it.”

  “I count three Maruts, a Mirage, two chopper
s, three transports,” Billingsly said. “That’s an expensive night for someone.”

  “Think we put a crimp in their plans, Cheetah?” McEntire asked.

  “If I was in charge back there, Irish, I’d spend the rest of the night reevaluating.”

  “Bengals, Hawkeye. We’re fifteen minutes away from the target. I want everyone to pull the audio and video cassettes and store them. Insert fresh cassettes. Do it now.”

  After Billingsly received affirmative responses, he said, “Secure the two Mod-two Sidewinders now. I won’t allow accidents.”

  Gander checked his armaments panel and de-selected the live AIM-9s.

  “All right, Bengals. One, take your element to two-six-five. Three, go to three-one-zero.”

  “One, roger two-six-five.”

  “Three going three-one-zero.”

  Gander counted to two, then banked right into the new heading.

  The excitation level of his blood had just about come back to normal. This was going to be a boring run.

  *

  A.J. Soames and Alex Hamilton were at the demonstration site with around twenty Bangladesh air force officers and two civilians. They were under a large canopy illuminated with red lights. Most of the observers were gathered around two large tables loaded with sandwiches.

  Hamilton seemed to be at ease as he mingled in the crowd, talking to anyone who wanted to talk.

  Soames was fidgety. The portable radio was slippery in his hands, coated with his own sweat.

  The radio came to life. “Lion, Hawkeye.”

  He raised it to his face and said, “Lion.”

  “I think we’ve given them enough time to try and find us. We’re commencing the exercise with five.”

  At the crackle of radio static, Hamilton had looked over at him.

  Soames smiled and nodded.

  “Gentlemen,” Hamilton said, “I hate to disrupt the excellent meal, but I believe we’re under attack.”

  He got some smiles in return.

  “If you all would like to step outside and look toward the target, I can promise you that in a few minutes, there will not be a target.”