Brink of War c-13

by Keith Douglass

  Sheila's head shot up and she fixed me with a glare. "All you have to do is drive," she said, reminding me of our respective roles in life. "The timing is up to me. And I can handle my end of things just fine, thank you."

  Brent shot a puzzled glance back between the two of us, then shrugged.

  "I understand there won't be much to see, though," he said.

  Sheila shook her head. "No, you won't be close enough to see ordinance on target, not unless you're in the observation plane. And I don't think you can wangle that." Brent smiled. "Well, I guess I'll just have to rely on you to tell me all about it when you get back down."

  Oh brother. He was really laying it on.

  "That's not true, is it?" Anna said mildly. "Skeeter says he has a lot to do with whether ordinance gets on target. Don't you?" She turned those big, doe-like eyes up at me, smiling slightly.

  "That's right," I affirmed. "Back in the old days, most of the ground attack aircraft were single seaters. One man can do it all," I said, letting my voice emphasize the word man slightly.

  "One man still can," a new voice chimed in. I looked up to see Illya Kyrrul standing over me, smiling broadly. Geez, what was this? Everybody in the world seemed to be having a hell of a time around me, all taking potshots at my Tomcat. Well, I didn't have to put up with this.

  "We'll see what the best way to do it is this afternoon," I said, pushing myself away from the table. I turned to Anna. "You were going to show me those historic etchings out in the front passageway, weren't you?"

  Her puzzled eyes met mine for a moment, then her face cleared and she nodded enthusiastically.

  "Of course ― the etchings."

  As we paced off toward the door, I turned to shoot a victorious smirk at Sheila. I guess that proved where she stood in the pecking order of things. I had a real life Russian spy after me, whereas all she could muster up was a stupid old American civil servant. Once we left the banquet hall, Anna could no longer contain her amusement. Her light, silvery laughter seemed to tinkle against the walls inside the cavernous entrance. "These etchings ― I have heard about that!" she said, as though delighted to find a quaint American expression in actual use. "It is a joke, yes?"

  "A joke of sorts," I agreed. "But I was interested in these pictures." I pointed to the massive gilt frames lining the walkway down to the banquet hall. "Tell me about them." "All heroes of the Mother Land," she said briskly. "Afghanistan, of course. Even World War I and World War II. The Great War, we call it, the first one." She began to walk me down the hallway, telling me the little she knew about the men in the pictures. At the end of the hall, she turned back to me and laid one hand on my chest. "I must thank you ― you are helping my reputation as a spy immensely," she said mischievously. "My superiors will be convinced that I am so clever in getting secrets from you, meeting alone with you like this. But of course, there is nothing to it, yes?" She shrugged helplessly, as though acknowledging the absurdity of our positions. "We managed to fool my superiors ― and your girlfriend."

  "She's not my girlfriend ― she's just my RIO," I said.

  She paused to consider this. "Then why do you care if she acts foolish over the other American?" "Just because she's looking stupid," I said. "That guy ― hell, he's nothing. She could do a lot better than that if she wanted."

  "Perhaps I could scare up a Russian spy for her." Anna twinkled, then laughed again at the horrified expression on my face. "Oh, don't be so silly. It is hard enough these days to justify one's job. I am grateful that you have made it that much easier for me. Now, these other pictures…"

  I couldn't figure it out. Maybe what she said was true, that everyone was so desperate to look like they had a job in this new Soviet economy that simply being alone with an American aviator was sufficient to secure her reputation as a devious Mata Hari in this new pecking order. But she hadn't asked me anything about flying, anything about tactics or my squadron, or anything at all that might possibly relate to military intelligence. Sure, she'd mentioned the bombing run, but it was evident from her questions and her comments that she really didn't know anything about military matters. Maybe she was just what she said she was ― an agricultural spy, like industrial espionage or something.

  Anyway, I was glad to be away from Sheila and Brent. We'd have some words when we got alone in the cockpit. She could be sure of that.

  All too soon it was time to make our way back to the airfield and go through our very thorough preflight. Even though she'd been acting like an ass over lunch, I knew Sheila was as determined as I was not to get caught with another stupid trick like the altimeter. We preflighted everything, even the things that weren't on the checklist. Like the altimeter. Like the clock. After a while, I felt pretty stupid staring at the digital face and comparing it with the sweep of the second hand on my fake Rolex.

  Finally, we were both satisfied. We motioned to the ground technicians that we were ready to strap in.

  This time, we'd be judged not on ACM ― Aerial Combat Maneuvering ― but on our performance at both the MiG and the Tomcat's secondary mission ― bombing. The pods slung on our wings were also capable of recording all the relevant data for a bombcat, as our aircraft was formally called when in this configuration.

  In addition to the simulator pods on our wings, our bombing runs would be monitored by an observation team airborne over the IP ― the Impact Point.

  The MiG and the Tomcat each had one real five-hundred-pound bomb slung under the wings, and this time Illya was going to see just how badly outclassed he was. I'd scored first in every bombing practice run on the range since I left the training pipeline, and I wasn't about to let some Commie bastard show me up this time. Not after the cheap tricks he'd pulled on me so far, for I was convinced that he was behind the altimeter reset as well.

  The Tomcat is even better on bombing runs than a MiG. It's like comparing a Hornet with a Tomcat. The sheer power and massiveness of the Tomcat, which makes it less maneuverable in the air than either of those, makes it the preferred platform for carrying ground ordinance. The Hornets and the MiGs simply don't have the power to carry much, and that's the real reason that Hornets will never replace Tomcats completely in the battle group. They drink too much gas and they don't carry enough weapons.

  I'd studied the charts of the area extensively and knew the approach to the IP was surrounded by low hills and a couple of higher peaks. Sheila had used her tactical decision aids to plot in the best course, allowing for evasion of the imaginary SAM sites that ringed the area and giving me some room to maneuver in case we ran into any surprises. I'd looked it over and signed off on all of it, although in truth she was the better mission planner of the two of us.

  As soon as the cockpit was secured over our seats, Sheila said, "You want to tell me what all that was about?"

  "Well, we still want to make sure they haven't tampered with anything," I said, deliberately misunderstanding her question and answering as though she was referring to the extended preflight. "Can't be too careful around these Russians, you know."

  "You're the one who ought to be careful," she snapped. "And don't think the admiral doesn't notice you playing patty-cake with that Russian.

  Didn't Lab Rat warn you about that? When are you going to quit thinking with your little head?" "There's nothing going on with her," I said hotly. Partly because it was true, and partly because it pissed me off that there wasn't. Anna had given every indication that there could be, and I was a little annoyed that the current circumstances ― like being inside Russia, for God's sake ― prevented me from following up on the clear signals she was giving off. The things a man has to do for his country.

  "Besides, what about you and Brent?" I pitched my voice a little bit higher as I said his name, imitating her Minnesota accent. I've always been good at that, and it drives her up a wall.

  "What, the career American diplomat?" she snapped. "And just what could be suspicious about that?" "Oh, nothing," I said airily. "He sure seems to be sucking up to y
ou, though."

  "Sucking up? Since when do you care who I talk to?"

  "And since when did you become my own personal hall monitor?" I demanded.

  That settled it for a while. The yellow shirt gave me the signal to taxi, and I let off the brakes and jammed the throttles forward, not caring if it jolted her in the backseat. After all, she'd agreed on one thing ― I got to drive, not her.

  Sheila subsided into an angry muttering, but I could feel her movements in the back of the aircraft ― sharp, short, and staccato.

  Clearly, she was pissed. That made me come to my senses a little.

  "Listen, it's none of my business," I said. "Let's just forget about it and fly the mission, OK?"

  "I will if you will," she answered, a sweetly saccharine note in her voice. "Just be careful about which stick you're grabbing up there, OK?"

  "That was a shitty thing to say," I snapped.

  "Can dish it out but can't take it?"

  I gave up my attempt to restore harmony in the cockpit. Regardless of how she pissed me off, Sheila was a pro. Let her deal with her own snit, as long as it didn't affect the mission. I took off well short of where I had the time before, rolling into the air with a sharp, crisp motion. I grinned, wondering whether Sheila or Tombstone would give me the most grief if I pulled a hot-shit approach when we came back in, waiting until the last minute to lower my landing gear. Sheila, probably, I decided. Based on Tombstone's earlier reaction on our first engagement with Illya, he'd probably find at least some public reason to claim it had all been part of the plan. I knew Sheila wouldn't let me off so easily.

  We ascended to eleven thousand feet, circled for a moment, then at the signal headed off for the IP. The Tomcat was its normal, beautiful self, purring under my fingertips like ― hell, don't start thinking like that, I told myself. This was a Tomcat, not a cute little Russian agricultural spy.

  I descended smoothly to six thousand feet, following Sheila's directions smartly, almost anticipating each command. The heads-up display was feeding me information from her plot, showing me when the turns were coming up. The radar detection envelopes of the imaginary SAM sites were painted in yellow on the display, indicating that they were all in normal search patterns. If and when the game controllers decided we were entering the fringe of a detection envelope, we might see the indicators turn red as they switched into a track mode.

  "Down another one hundred feet," Sheila ordered. "Put a little bit more of the hill between us and the site."

  I complied immediately, nosing down even farther to the ground.

  Now, this was more like it. No imaginary deck to come up and smack me in the face, just the sheer pleasure of flying low enough over the countryside to get a good look at it. Even at almost Mach One, you can make out the general details. It seems like you're going so much faster when you're this near to the earth.

  Now, what I really like is flying nap of the earth, so close that you can almost reach out and touch the trees. The Tomcat, at least on the later variance, has excellent terrain-following radar that can keep you locked at practically any altitude near to the earth. The only thing you have to watch out for then is power lines and telephone poles, which can increase the pucker factor by the next order of magnitude during night bombing runs.

  "Problems," Sheila said. The yellow envelope of the easternmost SAM site turned red on my display at the same time. Her ALR-67 receiver beeped out its warning.

  "I thought we were low enough," I said.

  "We are ― it shouldn't be getting us." Sheila's voice was calm, a shade more terse than normally.

  "Well, evidently it is," I said. This is one of my great failings as a member of the team, my tendency to point out the obvious to someone who already knows it.

  "You think I can't see that?" she snapped. "Get down a little lower ― you comfortable with that?"

  "Your wish is my command." I nosed the Tomcat down, a gradual descent rather than a sharp one this close to the ground. Finally, at two thousand feet I steadied up. "How's that?"

  "It's still got us ― I can't figure it out ― wait! It's got to be there." She clicked in a targeting symbol that was reflected immediately in my heads-up display. "It's part of the game," she explained rapidly.

  "It's got to be ― an unbriefed SAM site, just to test our reactions."

  "Well, get me the hell out of here," I said. "I'm not carrying any HARMS."

  HARMs are specialized missiles that weren't part of our normal load out. Instead of being heat-seeking or IR, a HARM would home in on a hostile electronic emission and blow the hell out of the transmitter.

  Sometimes it was just a soft kill, but a soft kill was good enough. You'd knock out the radar in a SAM site and the crew, if there were any left alive, would be reduced to manual targeting. It's a hell of a problem against a high-Mach aircraft.

  "Hard right ― you see those hills ahead? Cut in between the two middle ones. I think that'll give us shielding, but we won't be in the envelope of the northernmost site."

  I complied, following her directions as quickly as she put them into the heads-up display processor. "Will we get there on time?"

  "I think so ― goose it a little bit, will you?"

  Now that was impressive. I knew that in the backseat Sheila was quickly recalculating our inbound route, redoing the time-distance problem in her head without the assistance of the detailed planning charts she had earlier. But I had some degree of confidence ― if anybody could pull it off, she could.

  "Back to two three zero," she ordered.

  Sure enough, as soon as I executed the last turn, the red fire-control radar signal subsided into a cautionary yellow. Nothing else lit up either, indicating we were clear of everyone's detection envelope. I breathed a sigh of relief. "How far off are we, timewise?"

  "About ten seconds. I think we can make it up."

  I eased the throttles forward a little more, exceeding our briefed speed. The terrain was still familiar, although I was seeing it from a different angle than we'd planned. Our computer-aided decisioning tools are really incredible these days. The bombing run simulator allows a pilot, in essence, to prefly a mission, maneuvering the computer screen with his joystick through the terrain surrounding the IP. You can program it to paint in SAM sites and detection envelopes too. Back on the Jefferson when we first briefed this mission, I spent a fair amount of time on the computer flying all around the briefed IP. I knew this alternate route pretty well, at least enough not to be confused by the change in terrain.

  "Ten seconds," Sheila warned. "Descend to eight hundred feet."

  Now, this was more like it. We were skimming along now, still well clear of the forest and the low surrounding hills, but my sensation of speed increased dramatically.

  "Five seconds." I could see it now, just as it had been briefed the concrete bunker surrounded by a number of trucks, obviously old derelicts that they pressed into service for realistic training. I made a course correction, lining up solidly on the bunker.

  "Two seconds," she said.

  I kept my finger poised over the weapon selections switch.

  One-Mississippi. Two-Mississippi. I toggled off the bomb.

  The Tomcat jolted upward as five hundred pounds of dumb steel left its wing, and I corrected immediately to maintain level flight. As the weapon peeled up, I jerked the Tomcat up hard, rolling away from and out to the side of the missile's lofted flight path. This close to the ground, it's important to put as much distance between you and the impact point as quickly as possible so that you don't get caught up in the shrapnel or blinded by the cloud from the explosion.

  "That looked solid," Sheila said from the backseat. I could hear the relief in her voice.

  "Good on putting us back on course," I said.

  I felt the Tomcat burble as it descended, returning to ground from the realm that was rightfully hers. As I started my lineup, I saw the MiG parked on the flight line, heat still wafting off its wings, a bird of prey on the ground.
>
  We ran through the shutdown checklist quickly but thoroughly. An enlisted man mounted the boarding ladder to help us out of our ejection harnesses, and it wasn't until his face was close to mine that I realized he was one of our own.

  Sheila left the aircraft first, but I wasn't far behind. I jumped down off the aircraft, skipping the last step, and started my triumphant approach on the waiting gallery. Brent, Sheila's diplomatic trained dog, and Anna, my very own personal Russian spy, were waiting.

  As was the MiG pilot, that asshole that had tripped me just after we'd arrived. He wasn't any better looking on the ground than he had been in the air.

  "Nice going, buddy," I said, and offered him my hand. "Too bad you were off course."

  These Russians, man. What sore losers. The guy spat out a stream of Russian at me and started to grab me. Sheila and Brent intervened. I started toward the guy, then caught sight of Anna's pale, stricken face.

  "What, we got some sort of cultural misunderstanding here, Sheila?" I said.

  "You think that new boyfriend of yours can explain just what the hell's going on?"

  Brent still had one arm on the Russian puke's upper arm. The guy was struggling ― like I said, real sore losers. "It's you who're going to have to do some explaining, mister. Big-time and now."

  I laughed. "I'm supposed to let him win? That wasn't part of the deal, no way. If that's what diplomacy is about, then you can just-"

  Sheila turned around and clamped one hand over my mouth. Say what you will about the chicks, this one had a grip that wouldn't quit. She found the same spot in my gut that she'd roughed up before and planted her elbow there again. Harder, this time.

  "Shut the fuck up, Skeeter, and let me handle this." When she gets that tone of voice going, she gets dangerous.

  I shut up. Sheila turned back to Brent. "Explain." At least there was no lovey-dovey stuff in her voice that time.