Top Hook

by Gordon Kent

  Harry held him up. “I’ll be long gone in an hour.”

  “Harry—no way you can hide. Never make it on your own.”

  “I won’t be on my own, old boy. I’m going over the mountains to Tashkent.”

  Alan tried to see him.

  “Anna,” Harry said. He smiled and tapped gently on Alan’s shoulder. “Who do you think shot Shreed’s control? God?”

  Alan thought of the Chinese officer’s reeling back and then snapping forward. It all seemed unlikely and far away, as if Harry was telling him a fairy tale. Harry put a hand on his neck and slipped past him. When he returned, he and Soleck had a makeshift stretcher. It took all five available arms to get Shreed up through the hatch and back into the tunnel, and then Soleck wove parachute cord between tiedowns until Shreed looked like the victim of a giant spider. Alan leaned against the frame of the hatch with Harry. He wanted to lie down, and blood loss had taken the edges off his peripheral vision.

  “Anna—” He was trying to think it through. “Do you—trust her?”

  “Ask me in five days, Al.” Harry was rewrapping Alan’s hand.

  “When—I don’t get—?”

  “In the village. She needed professional help. I’m the help. I think she’s looking for a side to be on. I’m willing to be the side. Tell you more at home, over a beer.”

  Alan couldn’t think of anything to say, so he took Harry’s hand and they embraced. In the cockpit, Soleck was already strapping in.

  “You know how to close the hatch from outside, Harry?”

  Harry nodded. Alan picked up his helmet. Stevens was shouting something at him from the front, and Alan could guess that it was about fuel and darkness. It was important, but what mattered to Alan was his friend Harry, filling the hatch. Harry, who was grinning like a maniac. Alan strapped himself in and bent down before attaching the shoulder straps. Long time since Harry grinned like that.

  “Take care, man. Watch—yourself.”

  “You’re the one traveling with the viper, Al. Good luck.”

  They held each other’s eyes. The hatch started to close and then popped back. Harry’s head came in.

  “Tell them the price for Anna’s stuff is now two million, bud.” He slapped Alan’s knee and the hatch slammed shut, cutting off Alan’s reply. Forty seconds later, the plane was rolling.

  39

  Above southwestern Pakistan, 0230 GMT (0630L).

  “Mister Craik’s not responding.” Soleck hadn’t spoken in an hour, and his voice was rough.

  Stevens was groggy, waking disoriented, then stretching to ease muscles cramped by hours in an ejection seat.

  “Not a lot we can do about that, Soleck.”

  Soleck looked out the windscreen at the undulating landscape revealed by the first gleams of morning sun. He had the ESM system up and running on his tiny front-seat screen. He wanted Alan Craik back. The ESM took art to run and understand, and Soleck had to look up every hit on his kneeboard cards. Craik would have known most of the signals by heart.

  “Tall King radar active at, uh, wait. That’s west of Karachi; it’s Sonmiah.”

  “I’m not an intel geek, Soleck. What’s a Tall King?”

  “Air search radar. If I saw it, it saw us.”

  “If we go lower, we run out of gas before we cross the coast.”

  “I know.”

  Stevens was wearier than he had ever been in his life. He felt stretched, somehow, his mind expanded to fit circumstances too wide for ordinary thought. He’d been flying for days, almost all of it at low altitude and a great deal of it in mountains. They’d been challenged twice so far on the return flight, both times by local air traffic control. Stevens had talked gibberish the first time and not responded the second. If either of them had had any adrenaline left to give they’d have used it anticipating the surface-to-air missile that should have followed, but the S-3 had survived. They had no way of knowing how busy the Pakistani operators were that night, watching India.

  Soleck had spelled him twice, each time for an hour, once on the flight north, once south. Soleck piloted the plane well, keeping them low, climbing ridges within hundreds of meters of the stony surface. He could do the job, but he couldn’t keep the plane right down against the ground the way Stevens could. That kind of talent came with thousands of hours of practice.

  Somewhere in Soleck’s second hour, Alan Craik had ceased to communicate. Stevens had been asleep. Soleck hadn’t been able to take his attention off the plane. Now that Stevens was coming back to life, Soleck wanted to go to the back end and check everybody there. He gave Stevens a minute to orient himself and then spoke.

  “Ready to take her?”

  “I’ve got her.”

  “I’m going to check the back.”

  Soleck unclipped the top of his harness, flipped the buckle on the center and stood, stooped by the cockpit’s low overhead but still able to take a luxurious stretch after an hour of immobility. Below them, the Porali River unrolled in the dawn light to the west, the first sunlight sending a dazzle of sparkles off the surface.

  The back end smelled of blood. Alan Craik’s maimed left hand had a trail of dried blood that ran down the armrest and his knee and pooled in the steps to the hatch under his feet. His face was an unnatural white in the dawn light filtering past Soleck from the cockpit. Even his lips appeared drained of color. Soleck laid his thumb along the carotid artery and felt the pulse. A bare flicker.

  The NCIS agent, Dukas, was far down. He had a lot of morphine in him, and he was out cold. His dressing appeared to be holding. Soleck thought that he probably ought to try and get water into him or something, but he had no idea how serious the wounds were. He might have been gut shot. Best to let him be dehydrated.

  The body in the back was still breathing. That was all the attention Soleck intended to pay it. Soleck stood over Shreed’s bound body, held a plastic bottle to urinate, and then stowed the bottle back with the computers. He looked around at the three wounded men and shook his head. Soleck was a very young man. He had a vivid imagination, but the events of the last hours surpassed it. He was part of this, not an observer but a participant, and somehow that was wonderful, in spite of the blood and the pain.

  Soleck went back and squatted by his commander, looking into his face. Craik was farther gone than Soleck, who had never been in combat, had ever seen. He chewed his upper lip, feeling a bubble rise in his throat.

  “He dead?” Stevens sounded matter-of-fact.

  “No. Lost a lot of blood.”

  “He’s full of surprises. He’ll live.”

  Soleck sat down in his seat and started to do up the straps.

  “I just wish there was something I could do.”

  “Flying the plane isn’t enough for you?”

  “He’s going to die.”

  “What’s on the ESM?”

  “Nothing. The Tall King hasn’t radiated again, or we’re back below its coverage. I think we’re too low to have it see us.”

  “Seventy miles to feet wet.”

  “How far to the carrier?”

  “No idea. If they moved into the box they planned on Sunday, another hour after we get gas. I’m going to break radio silence in three minutes.”

  “We’ll still be over Pakistan.”

  “Yeah, but if there isn’t a tanker waiting when we cross the coast, we’re going to have to swim for the boat.”

  “The tanker will be there.”

  “It had better be.”

  Soleck looked down at the little green screen, its characters obscured by the sunlight now washing across it. He held his hand to shade it. He looked away and then looked back to make sure he wasn’t wrong. The information stayed the same, and, as he watched, the long vector changed and resolved into a diamond. The radar had a signature that he knew without reference to his kneeboard cards.

  “Slot Back.”

  “Where?”

  Soleck pushed buttons and put his face right down on the screen. Passive
sensors in the S-3 didn’t give altitude and they weren’t really accurate about range. The bearing was almost directly astern.

  “At least one Su-27, astern. It has a search range of about one-fifty miles, so if we just detected them, let’s call it between one five zero and two zero zero miles.”

  “Does he see us?”

  “We won’t know until we see his radar lock.”

  Stevens didn’t take his eyes off the ground in front of the airplane.

  “Call the boat.”

  Soleck had a comm card three days out of date; the frequencies and call signs would have been changed. He’d have to start on the Guard frequency and hope that he wasn’t alerting every Pakistani site within radio range to their presence.

  “USS Thomas Jefferson, this is AH 902, over.” He watched the green diamond on his screen leap forward almost a centimeter. He keyed his mike again.

  “USS Thomas Jefferson, this is AH 902, over.”

  “AH 902, this is Jefferson, go ahead.”

  “Jefferson, this is, ah, Ranger One. We need gas ASAP and have a—” Soleck read down the old comm card quickly, “Vampire, that’s a Vampire, in close pursuit.” He remembered that the crypto might be no good; that he was talking in the clear.

  “Ranger One, this is Jefferson, I copy need gas and Vampire in pursuit. Wait one.”

  They’d be scrambling for the old comm card. Or maybe they were ready. The Su-27 moved again and this time the new diamond formed while leaving the old one still glowing a little behind. So there were two.

  “Make that two Vampires.”

  “Copy. Ranger One, go up to number four on your old card.”

  “Copy. Roger.” Soleck tore his eyes off the little screen and read digits off his old comm card while pressing them into the radio.

  “Ranger One, this is Tarheel One. Do you read me?”

  “Loud and clear, Tarheel One.”

  “Give me your location, Ranger One.”

  Soleck read coordinates off the GPS and passed their altitude as well. He watched the ESM screen and then spoke to Stevens and the distant voice of Tarheel One at the same time. “I think Vampires have just gone to burner.”

  “Roger.”

  Stevens snapped his head around and looked at the sky above and behind them. Soleck did the same. Neither saw anything.

  Stevens got his eyes down to an instrument scan and then up out of the cockpit, made a minute adjustment and watched the ground blur by beneath them.

  “Ranger One, fly one eight zero. Texaco is waiting.” The voice sounded utterly calm, almost happy. “Stay in the clear and don’t try going encrypted, Ranger One.”

  Stevens smiled. Soleck measured the map by eye. Forty miles to the coast. Eleven miles past that to international water. The gas was going to be really, really close. The gauge wasn’t accurate below two thousand pounds, and they were well below two thousand pounds.

  “He’s going to have to meet us low.”

  “Roger, Ranger One. I’ll pass. He’ll come up when you start to close.”

  The two Su-27s, invisible somewhere behind them, continued to close the gap on ESM, their range accurate to a margin that meant that they could be flying alongside or fifty miles behind.

  “Tarheel, those Vampires are breathing down our necks.”

  Seventy miles ahead, Chris Donitz turned slightly so his nose was pointed directly at the S-3 somewhere to his north. His wingman followed him through the turn. He called the air wing commander on Strike Common and hoped the new crypto was good.

  “Permission to go nose hot?”

  “Granted.” That was Captain Rafehausen on the S-3 tanker.

  Donitz’s RIO fired up the AWG-9, kept in standby for the duration of the flight to hide their activity. The S-3 appeared low, a big radar reflector. The two hostile contacts, tracked passively until now, leaped to the screen. They were twenty miles astern of the S-3 and pressing fast.

  “Big Eagle, this is Tarheel One. Twenty miles and closing. Permission to press?”

  Big Eagle looked at his watch. 0303 GMT. He smiled grimly under his oxygen mask.

  “Players, this is Big Eagle. Open your envelopes.” Throughout his strike package, pilots or their navigators would be fumbling through the process of loading the new crypto. It should, according to the CNO, work now. It was a new set of codes. He waited a moment and then hit his “ENCRYP” button on his comms and then watched his ops display to see who was in the new crypto link. He watched planes appear like fireflies on a summer evening, and the second he had Tarheel One, he made the call.

  “Tarheel One, this is Big Eagle. Go get ’em.”

  “Missile firing!” Soleck thumbed the chaff/flare trigger and started to spray the sky with decoys. Stevens pulled hard on the stick and rolled the plane into a tight turn, adding power and spending their precious fuel like a prodigal. He turned east, straight into the rising sun.

  The first missile, diving from high above them, lost track against the ground clutter and missed them by hundreds of feet. The second missile didn’t buy the first chaff cloud, was misled by the second, and detonated. A giant fist slammed the underside of the plane. Soleck scanned the instruments, felt the new vibration in the yoke, and looked at Stevens.

  “We’re still here!”

  Lots of new experiences for Soleck.

  Donitz crossed the coast on full burner, above twenty thousand feet and descending slowly. The Su-27s were below ten thousand, still well north. Donitz wanted to focus their attention on his F-14 Tomcats immediately. Beyond-visual-range engagement would at least break up their formation, giving his flight the possibility of engaging the newer, faster Flankers one at a time.

  He got a firing solution with his “Buffalo” AIM 54Cs and fired one.

  “Fox One.”

  The half-ton missile dropped off the wing and then leaped forward with a roar that vibrated through the Tomcat even at full speed. After five seconds he fired a second missile.

  “Fox Two.”

  The range was not extreme; under ideal conditions, the AIM 54 could score a kill at one hundred nautical miles, and, given the front aspect and the altitude advantage, conditions were approaching the ideal.

  Then he called his wingman.

  “Tarheel Two. Snot, bracket left.” How a lieutenant named Breslau had earned the nickname “Snot” was lost in history.

  “Roger.”

  “Commit. Take the guy to the east.”

  “Roger.”

  The approaching fighters were now turning away from the AIM 54s and probably jinking. The Tomcats had their opponents in their front quarter and needed only minor maneuvers to keep their AWG-9 radars on the targets. The AIM 54 does not go into self-guidance mode until the last few miles of an intercept, but given the range and altitude difference, the Su-27s had limited maneuver options and couldn’t break lock with a simple turn. The long-range shots and the surprise of coming under fire while hunting a lone S-3 had wrecked their formation.

  Donitz thought that at least one of them was very new. Now they were down around four thousand feet, several miles apart and forty miles away. The S-3 was off to his left, so low that he’d be invisible to their radars. Snot, Donitz’s wingman in Tarheel Two, had rolled to the left and separated the two Tomcats by over a mile. Tarheel Two was adding to the confusion with his own long-range missile at the eastern Flanker.

  “Fox One.”

  AIM 54Cs cost the taxpayer one million dollars a round. They’d just bought the S-3 a new lease on life for three million dollars.

  “Our Tomcats! They’re firing. No lock from the Slot Back.”

  “They’ll never see us again!” Stevens sounded as if he was swearing a vow. He pulled the nose back to the south and throttled down as far as he dared. They descended a few feet lower, so that Stevens’s flying began to seem like a roller-coaster ride. He was low enough to make surface effect winds an issue. His face was covered in sweat.

  The fuel gauge dropped below a thousand po
unds and the numbers started to reel off.

  “Snot, break left!”

  The two Su-27s were well separated coming out of their maneuvers to avoid the AIM 54s. None of the three missiles had hit, but the two Flankers were miles apart and the engagement could now develop as a series of two-on-one engagements rather than a heads-up two-on-two fight. Donitz didn’t want to test the Su-27s in a dogfight; he wanted to beat them with tactics before their superior design and newer, stronger airframes could tell.

  The lead Flanker was just visible and turning to get his radar on Snot, now extending off to the west. Donitz throttled down and turned in on the lead. The lead plane seemed to hesitate and then fired a missile and turned away, the missile losing lock immediately as the radar came off its target.

  New guy.

  “Take the trailer.”

  “Got him.”

  Donitz turned, conserving speed by losing altitude without pushing his throttle. He wanted the other pilot to beat him around the circle. The lead Flanker was turning away from Snot, turning hard to the east. He already seemed to have forgotten that Donitz was there, above him and covering Snot’s backside. His own turn was to the west, just far enough to get a tone on Donitz’s AIM 7 Sparrow missile. Donitz fired one and then followed the Flanker, turning back to the north as the other’s hard turn away from Snot leveled off. At the end of his turn, his opponent was low on speed and low on options, and Donitz’s S-turn had kept the radar-guided missile in aspect all the way home. Way late, the enemy pilot woke up to his danger and pumped chaff, breaking back to the east and diving to get the speed he had wasted in the turn. Donitz gave his plane more power and followed him down, now almost perfectly behind him and four miles away. The Sidewinder growl told him that he had an ideal IR missile shot. He let it growl.

  The enemy pilot never got enough angle of separation between his plane and the chaff to matter. The AIM 7 blew a chunk out of the starboard engine nacelle and shredded the starboard vertical stabilizer. Donitz watched the enemy plane shudder, stand on its nose for a second, and then begin a tumbling fall. He saw the pilot eject.