Strike Force Alpha

by Mack Maloney

  Once the Blackhawks were safely over land, Ryder and Phelan turned back over the Med and went their separate ways. Ryder would have no wingman for the second half of this night. Phelan went off to a point southeast of Ocean Voyager, to fly a sort of flanking picket duty. Ryder meanwhile had headed southwest, toward Algeria.

  He went under the Algerian radar net with no problems. His radar signature was less than that of a bird. Once over the coast, finding the target was easy, thanks to the coordinates supplied by Murphy and his hand-drawn map. The camp was in the middle of a large, bare valley, bordered on three sides by coastal mountains. There were about twenty buildings sitting on the edge of the large oasis, most of them pink stucco structures, set low among hundreds of palm trees and other North African fauna.

  Ryder came over the top of the mountain 15 miles north of the camp and went down to 200 feet. No one would hear him coming, not until he made his first pass over the camp. He clicked on his FLIR mount. This device gave him a thermal image of the camp, now just 10 miles away. He could see the smoke from a few campfires and some thermal ghosts, actually a bunch of guards, sitting at the edge of the oasis. A quick scan of the rest of the compound showed no SAMs in evidence, no big antiaircraft weaponry at all.

  He screeched in at treetop level and put the first bomb right on target. He would later swear he saw the 1,000-pounder go through the front door of the House of Martyrs. The bomb exploded and the building blew apart. The kinetic energy alone of a half-ton of steel hitting something at high speed could cause an enormous explosion. This was a half-ton of high explosives. The fireball was so intense, it flicked Ryder’s tail as he climbed out and exited to the east.

  All hell broke loose inside the camp. Suddenly people were running everywhere. And lights were coming on all over the village, not a smart thing to do when someone was bombing you at night. Heart pounding, Ryder went up and back and over. He boosted the FLIR screen. All he could see now was the flare from the huge fire he’d just started, with many thermal ghosts running through the flames. He located the second target—the No Smoking house—and locked it into his weapons delivery computer. He left the FLIR hot this time, allowing him to stay on target despite the thickening smoke.

  Many people were running near the No Smoking house, but no one was running out of it. So Murphy had been right; this was the Holy Army’s ammo locker. Ryder prepped the second bomb drop. He put his speed at 245 knots, a fast approach guaranteed to knock some socks off. He queried the weapons release system; it came back as green and ready. He was now 10 seconds from target. He checked his airspeed again and then looked back down at the FLIR screen. Something had changed…. Now there were heat images pouring out of the No Smoking house. But they weren’t adults. The images were too small. They were kids, dozens of them. They were scrambling out the door, climbing out the windows; they were even coming out of the roof. Ryder froze. Why were kids sleeping in an ammo locker?

  The bomb went off his wing and slammed into the building a second later.

  He pulled up and out but saw no secondary explosions behind him. He roared over the target again, taking some small-arms fire but seeing nothing but flames coming from the second building. Had this been the Holy Army’s ammo bunker, it would have been blowing up like a fireworks display by now.

  He buzzed the camp twice more, strafing with his cannon and making sure the Holy Army’s fleet of SUVs and motorbikes was reduced to cinders. He took out the water tank and some water pumps, too. He wanted these guys to know what it was like to be out in the middle of the desert, all cut up, under the hot sun, with no way out and no one coming to help.

  Finally, he pulled out and turned north. Once up to 200 feet, he shut down his weapons computers and snapped off the FLIR. Only then did he have a moment to think. Had Murphy been wrong after all? Could the second target have been marked a no-flame zone not because it was an ammo locker but because it was a kids’ nursery?

  Damn….

  He sucked in some oxygen, hoping it would settle him down. It did. He surprised himself by not plunging immediately into a deep black depression, back to the blackest part of his soul, though the image of the building just before the bomb hit would probably be burned onto his retinas forever. He swallowed a pep pill and gulped some more O. This was war. He had to remember that. And in just five minutes he’d put more hurt on the Army of God than the Algerian government had in 15 years. This wasn’t a screwup. This was another good night’s work.

  But kids? What were they doing there? And how many did he actually kill?

  Another deep gulp of oxygen. From his lungs to his brain, he calmed down again. The dark landscape streaked by below him. The Med was in sight up ahead. Those kids never knew what hit them—and that was a blessing. How much warning did the passengers onboard the 9/11 planes have? At some point, they all knew they were going to die. How long did Maureen have to sit there, terrified that this would be her last day?

  Fuck them, Ryder thought, surprising himself again. What would those kids have grown up to be anyway? What airplanes would they be snatching in 10 years? What ships would they be trying to sink?

  Or would they just walk into Macy’s with a belt full of explosives wrapped around their waists someday?

  Fuck them….

  It was better to rid the world of them now.

  Ryder passed over the mountains and, still hugging the terrain with his fingernails, was back out over the coast 90 seconds later. No one was in pursuit.

  He flew about thirty miles out to sea and turned northeast, back toward the ship. It was now 3:00 A.M. He opened his communication link and started monitoring Ocean Voyager’s radio frequency. It was down near the end of the short-wave band, the domain of the mid-Mediterranean’s secondary shipping.

  As usual, these airwaves were a traffic jam of voices, languages, accents, and static. Ryder was waiting for a sequence of phrases purportedly about the weather, broadcast by a prerecorded tape loop from Ocean Voyager. A good weather report would tell him that everything was OK and he could make a normal return to the ship.

  But instead of clear skies and high-pressure areas, he heard a report of fast-moving thunderstorms, and maybe a squall. This sequence was used to indicate that one of the team’s aircraft was in trouble. A chill went through him. They’d been operating full-time for six weeks and nothing had ever gone wrong. Until now….

  He had to switch communication devices immediately. He turned down his radio, reached into his boot, and came out with his Nokia sat-cell telephone. This was the most secure way for the team to speak to one another in a crisis, though some code phrases still had to be used in the non-scramble mode.

  He slipped the phone into position on his right leg knee pad, then switched on his helmet speakers. He hit the first speed-dial button—this was to the Blackhawk gunship. There was no answer.

  Second speed dial: the Blackhawk troop mover. The pilot picked up on the second ring. He was an Air Force captain named Ron Gallant.

  “Are you having car trouble?” Ryder asked him.

  “Not us,” Gallant replied. “We’re about to put the car in the garage. It’s your brother.”

  Ryder cursed under his breath. In this language of double-talk, his “brother” meant Phelan. The new guy was in trouble.

  “How do you know?” Ryder asked Gallant.

  “Because he just called,” was the reply. “He said something about the cops trying to pull him over.”

  Ryder didn’t need a codebook to decipher that phrase.

  Phelan had been spotted by unknown aircraft and they were trying to chase him down.

  Ryder hung up and pulled out his mission book. Phelan had been tasked to fly a CAP—a combat air patrol—50 miles southeast of Ocean Voyager. Essentially he was to put himself between the secret floating base and Libya, which, despite a recent thawing in relations, was still the most probable source of any mischief during the night. Running a CAP was a smart thing to do if the team’s air assets were out on s
eparate missions. Having a jet already in the air should trouble arrive was better than trying to launch one when it was probably too late.

  Ryder followed procedure and called the ship directly; Martinez was soon on the line. They had a difficult conversation, spoken in the imprecise and impatient language of decidedly American code words and phrases. As best as he could understand, Phelan had reported at least two jet aircraft flying in the vicinity of Ocean Voyager. There was no mention of whether these planes were “unfriendly” or not. But there was no need. Every aircraft the team encountered had to be considered unfriendly until proven otherwise.

  Ryder disconnected from Martinez and tried calling Phelan. His line was busy. He tried again. Same result. No more time to waste. He swung around to the southeast and pushed his throttles forward. In seconds he was streaking toward where Phelan was supposed to be.

  It was a coordinate about 45 miles off the coast of Tunisia and now just 22 miles south of Ocean Voyager’s position. As Ryder approached the invisible point in the sky, he knew he was facing a real concern here: How would Phelan react his first time under pressure? Everything Ryder had seen so far indicated that the kid was a good flier; his cool while hooking up to the Extender was proof of that. And so far Bobby Murphy had a 1.000 batting average when selecting the right people for this unusual job. Still, Ryder was dealing with an unknown quantity, not the best of circumstances when combat might be imminent.

  He arrived at Phelan’s last known coordinate three minutes later to find the sky empty. He slowed, circled, went up, went down—nothing.

  He called the ship again. They were in the process of recovering the two Blackhawks—both running low on fuel—and had shut off their hot radars to avoid suspicion. They’d heard nothing further from Phelan. As Ryder was talking to Martinez, his cell phone got a beep. Someone else was calling him. Ryder pushed the talk button. It was Phelan. He said just four words: “Look out behind you.”

  In the next second the sky around Ryder’s aircraft lit up bright as day. The blue-orange flash told the tale: someone was firing a 23mm cannon at him.

  He peeled right and let the bottom drop out from under him. He yanked back on his throttle and lowered his variable jets. In a jump jet, this was like stepping on the brakes. His forward thrust was immediately directed downward; Ryder heard everything but the screech. The aircraft shooting at him roared by a moment later.

  It was an Su-24 Fencer, a huge two-seat Russian-made fighter-bomber similar to the American F-111. There was an enormous brown-and-green emblem plastered on its side. The plane was a Libyan. No surprise there. They were just 20 minutes’ flying time off the Khadafi Coast.

  Now this was an interesting problem. The Harrier was a great airplane in many ways. Versatile as hell, and this stopping on a dime thing couldn’t be beat. But it was not a dogfighter. It wasn’t a fighter at all. It was an attack craft. Something best suited for carrying bombs to a target. During the Falklands War, the Brits rigged their jump jets with air-to-air missiles and the woggies paid the price. But Ryder wasn’t carrying any air-to-airs tonight. The big Libyan plane, however, had a half-dozen slung under its wings.

  Ryder pushed his plane into forward flight again. He saw the big Fencer, bathed in the light of the full moon, pulling out of its attack dive a half-mile away. It looked like a city bus trying to take a wide corner. Ryder sucked in some oxygen, his old friend. It had been years since he’d seen anything resembling air-to-air combat, but some things never change. The immediate confusion and body rush. Heart pumping, palms sweaty. He’d dodged the Libyan’s first barrage, though, thanks to his wingman’s warning. That meant his chances of survival were now up to about 50 percent.

  The phone rang again. It was Phelan. He was using his scrambler this time.

  “We’ve got at least two of these guys up here,” he told Ryder directly, no need for doublespeak now. “I’ve been dancing with them for ten minutes. I don’t know what they are up to. But when they came upon me, they were heading directly toward the ship. And now they’re chasing me around in circles.”

  Phelan had done the right thing. His job up here was to protect the exposed flank, and when he saw two mooks heading toward Ocean Voyager he’d exposed his position and distracted them. Then he warned the ship. Two correct moves in a pressure-packed situation.

  But both Blackhawks had to be down and hidden safely belowdecks by now. So while the delay had protected the ship’s cover from being blown, Ryder and Phelan were still up here, involved in something like a dogfight, causing a ruckus that they would have been better off avoiding.

  Ryder asked Phelan to give him his position. He followed his directions and saw him blink his taillight once about 500 feet off to his right. Meanwhile the Libyan fighter had finally recovered and was now climbing again. Even though he and Phelan were stealthy, there were in such close quarters, the Fencer pilots might get a visual on them at any second. And that would not be good. If the big Sukhoi switched off its cannon and started throwing missiles around, they’d be in real trouble. Even if they turned and ran, it would be difficult to get away from a well-placed missile shot.

  The next decision was easy. If the big plane was climbing, there was only one direction the Harriers could go: down. Down to the deck. Phelan read Ryder’s mind. He started diving even before Ryder did.

  But then another complication. As Ryder was falling through 1,000 feet, he saw another flash go by, down near 500. It, too, was a large warplane, the second of the duo Phelan had encountered earlier. But it was not the same type as the first. This was a MiG-25, a grandfather in the twenty-first century but still a formidable warplane. The strange thing was the MiG did not have a Libyan emblem emblazoned on its fuselage. Instead it was wearing white-and-yellow meat-balls on its wings. What country was that?

  Phelan came back on the phone. “Sillakh Al Jawwiya As Sudaniya,” he said in perfect Arabic. “Translation: the national air force of Sudan.”

  “Sudan?” Ryder exclaimed. “Since when are we near Sudan?”

  Both Harriers slowed their descent and let the big MiG go by. If its pilot saw them, he never made any indication of it. He stayed down close to the water and disappeared into the night.

  So now they had two jet aircraft, from two different countries, flying around in the middle of the Med and acting very strange. Had they been fighting each other when Phelan came upon the scene? Or had they been doing some kind of joint operation?

  But just then something else caught Ryder’s eye. Right below him he saw a group of cargo ships, moving northwest. They were sailing in a straight line, very close to one another. It was like a scene from a World War II movie—but it didn’t make any sense. When was the last time cargo ships had to travel in convoys? An odd thought came to him: Could these two fighters, from two different countries, be up here acting as aerial bodyguards? Were they riding shotgun for the half-dozen ships below?

  Ryder always carried a small low-light camera in the cockpit with him, just in case he came upon something interesting to show the boys back in the White Rooms. He pulled the camera out and with one hand snapped six quick shots of the convoy. Then it, too, vanished into the night.

  Meanwhile, the big Su-24 had looped and was bearing down on them again. And off to the right, the MiG-25 had turned toward them as well. Clearly, it was time to go.

  Ryder got Phelan back on the phone.

  “I think the only way we lose these guys is to scare them,” he said through the scrambler.

  Phelan replied: “Roger that.”

  They both waited until the big fighters were within 2,000 feet of them. Then, on Ryder’s count, they opened up with their cannons. The twin spray of 25mm shells lit up the night—and no doubt scared the piss out of the Su-24 pilots, as well as the guy flying the MiG. The plan worked. The two Arab planes quickly peeled off to the left. Ryder and Phelan quickly went right. They booted up to full power, a real kick in the pants, and were soon rocketing away from the area, flying as fast and low a
s possible.

  Only when they were a couple miles away did Ryder strain his neck to look back to see if either of the bigger, more powerful fighters was in pursuit.

  But for whatever reason, neither of the Arab warplanes chose to follow.

  Chapter 8

  Evansville, Indiana

  Tom Santos had packed three bags.

  One contained essentials. Underwear, socks, pajamas, shaving kit, deodorant. The second held his suits, his ties, his shirts, his good shoes. Bag three held his Air Force dress uniform. He hadn’t worn it in almost a year. It still fit; in fact, it was a little loose on him, not a good sign. He’d been told to bring it with him.

  He carried the three bags down to his front door and checked the time. It was nearly 10:00 A.M. He would be leaving soon.

  Ginny had run to the drugstore, to fetch him his pre-chemo medication, which he wasn’t using. She still knew nothing of this. Knew nothing of the girl he’d encountered in the medical building last week, knew nothing of the man who had waylaid him in the very same drugstore, the day before, and handed him a list of things he had to do to continue in the very strange, secret government project.

  That’s what he was involved in, the stranger in the Walgreens explained to him. Top-secret. Level Five security. The details of the operation would be given to him only on a need-to-know basis. The man also handed him another bottle of the bright yellow pills. They tasted like candy, but they were helping, Santos was convinced of that. Take as many as needed, this label said, and he’d been following those instructions. Anytime he felt a twinge, he’d pop a pill and the twinge would go away. Simple as that. Was this some secret government cure for his kind of cancer? A reward for the service he was about to provide for them? Santos really didn’t know, and on a certain level, he didn’t care to know. He was willing to keep an open mind about the whole matter. The bottle of yellow pills was never very far from his reach.