by Mack Maloney
The returning pilots gathered in the situation room and discussed the air strike with Heath.
“The S-3A is up now and taking pictures of the damage,” Heath told them. “But, from your reports, it sounds like we’ve accomplished our first objectives—that is, hitting them hard on the first try and blocking the canal.”
“That we did,” Hunter said, speaking up. “By my count, we sank or disabled more than two dozen ships. And we bottlenecked the canal at two points.
“But we still have two problems: one, they’ve got more than three hundred more ships; and two, they can clear the Canal in very little time.”
“That’s correct, Hunter,” a voice boomed from the back of the room. The pilots turned to see Sir Neil, sitting in a wheelchair being pushed by Clara. “That’s why we must hit them again, hard!”
“My God, Sir Neil!” Heath about shouted. “Are you well enough to be moving about?”
“Well enough?” the jaunty Englishman asked, motioning Clara to push him to the front of the room. “I’ve never felt better!”
His bandages and accompanying intravenous bottle notwithstanding, Hunter did notice that the Brit looked better than at any time since his wounding.
Heath stepped down as Sir Neil took center stage.
“All aircraft returned safely?” Sir Neil asked.
“Yes, sir,” Hunter answered.
“And the Moroccans have landed?” the British commander asked. “The Aussies and Gurkhas deployed?”
“Yes, suh!” Heath called out.
“Smashing!” the Englishman said. “And we’ve taken a measure of them in our first attack. Then we’ve done what we came here to do.”
The group of pilots broke into a spontaneous round of applause. It was Sir Neil’s show all the way.
“Now, let’s get serious,” the Englishman continued. “Hunter, what can we expect if they counterattack?”
Hunter thought for a moment, then said, “I think it’s really not a question of if, but when. They’ve got at least four squadrons of Hinds and I’m sure a lot of small surface-attack craft.”
“Any guess as to when they’ll strike back?”
“Could be within the hour,” Hunter said, slowly looking around at the assembled pilots. “Could be tomorrow. Could be as soon as night falls.”
Chapter 40
“READY! AIM! Fire!”
The firing squad obeyed and unleashed a barrage at the four men standing on the stern of the battleship. The bullets hit the men in the heads and chests with enough force to knock them off the back of the ship and into the water.
High above, looking down from one of the ship’s catwalks, were Lucifer, three of his bodyguards, and the captain of the battleship. Lucifer was absolutely livid with rage.
“Do you see that, captain?” he asked, sneering at the naval officer. “That will happen to you and any other officer who betrays me!”
“I understand, Your Highness,” the nervous officer answered. “But surely you know that I had nothing to do with what happened to our ships—”
“I understand nothing!” Lucifer spit back at him. “You are supposed to be naval officers. Yet did any of you at least mention to me that the cursed carrier was in the middle of the Canal, and not floundering somewhere off the coast of Egypt?”
“But Your Highness,” the captain, a heady Brazilian, came back. “We don’t have the air-recon capability that the carrier has. Plus they must have found some way to propel the ship. Surely, they didn’t tow it that distance in such a short time.”
“Excuses!” Lucifer screamed at the top of his lungs. His bodyguards had seen him swallow a handful of pills earlier and now they knew the amphetamines were taking affect. “We are the most powerful fleet in the world. They are a bunch of misfit, underpaid mercenaries, foolish enough to haul a carrier across the Med. We should be able to crush them! Yet, because of this … this conspiracy of ignorance among my top officers, these English glory boys sink some of the best ships in our fleet!”
“But, Your Highness,” the captain pressed on, perhaps foolishly. “We are certain they have this pilot—Hunter—with them. His airplane has been spotted. The … ah, action at the pyramid might have been his doing. If this is true, he is a formidable foe.”
“More excuses!” Lucifer screamed. “Don’t tell me of this Hunter! I’ve fucked his woman! Understand? He’s no match for me. For the power I have at my disposal.
“Now immediately launch a counterattack! You are personally in charge, captain. Send the Hinds! Send our fastest ships up past the wreckage of those fools and attack! Attack! Attack! Wipe out those comic-book heroes. Send all of our battleships after them if necessary!”
The captain looked at Lucifer strangely. “All the battleships?” the captain asked. “Including this one?” For all he knew this was the first time the leader had mentioned putting himself near the battle.
“If necessary, captain,” the man answered snidely. “I will tolerate no more delays!”
The black-cloaked man was pounding his fist on the battleship’s railing.
“And if you don’t succeed, captain,” Lucifer continued, “you can be sure you’ll be down there next!”
The captain gulped once and watched as four more officers were lined up and executed, their bloody bodies dropping into the water like four stones.
Chapter 41
“HERE THEY COME!” THE radar man in the Saratoga’s CIC called out.
Instantly, Hunter and Heath were looking over the man’s shoulder.
“Fast attack craft, just as you guessed, Hunter,” Heath said, hitting the carrier’s battle stations’ klaxon as he spoke. “Looks like about sixty of them! Thirty miles and closing.”
It was an hour past sundown. The flotilla was under strict blackout rules. Photos from the S-3A had confirmed twenty-three ships were sunk or damaged in the air strikes, but also that there was enough room between the hulks for the smaller fast-patrol craft of Lucifer’s fleet to squeeze through. And now they were here …
Heath was on the radio immediately, sending a predetermined coded message to the Commodore. He knew, as soon as it was sent, the Freedom Navy would be on the move. Four of Olson’s helicopters would also go into action.
“They’re off,” Heath reported as he heard the confirmation messages coming back from the armed yachts of the Commodore’s fleet. “The choppers too.”
Hunter shook his head. “Now, all we can do is wait … ”
Hunter stood on the bow of the carrier and watched the flashes of the spectacular battle off in the distance. He knew the fighting would be at too close quarters to risk sending any of the jets into action. They had to hope that the Commodore’s “reformed” pirates could stop the attack.
He watched the flares and explosions off to the south for the entire night, knowing that each hour that passed indicated an increase in the brutality of the fighting. He saw pieces of debris and bodies float by the carrier, even as the fires on the horizon grew brighter. He heard loud blasts similar to sonic booms, and occasionally, when the air was calm, the sound of high-powered deck guns chattering back and forth at each other.
Finally, just as the sun came up, the noise to the south ceased. Now dozens of separate funnels of smoke rose to meet and create one huge black cloud. He waited, scanning the horizon for returning survivors of the Freedom Navy. Heath and Sir Neil joined him and still they waited, saying that many of the Commodore’s ships were probably low on fuel and therefore returning at the lowest speed possible.
A full hour went by and still they waited. They shared a powerful pair of binoculars and took turns scanning the horizon. But all they saw was the smoke.
Finally, Hunter spoke the words none of them wanted to hear. “I don’t think any of them are coming back … ” he said slowly.
One of Olson’s choppers confirmed it. Launched to survey the battle area, the pilot landed on the Saratoga less than twenty minutes later and reported to Sir Neil directly.
/> “There is nothing, no one left,” the Norwegian pilot told them. “None of them. None of us. Ships burning everywhere. Some jammed together. Like they were ramming each other. Our helicopters all gone too.”
“No survivors at all?” Sir Neil asked, not quite believing it.
The Norseman shook his head.
“The Commodore gone?” Heath said, thinking of the colorful, Napoleonic figure.
“Those brave, crazy bastards … ” Hunter said, sadness in his voice.
“They died for our cause,” Sir Neil said. “So did those chopper crews. We’ve got to make sure they didn’t go down fighting for nothing!”
“One more thing,” the chopper pilot said. “They have crews further down the waterway, clearing it from the battle yesterday. Big ships right behind them. It looks like what they can’t tow out of the way, they are blasting. With their deck guns.”
“They’re making their move,” Hunter said. “We’ve got to go after them, right now!”
Hunter bore down on the cruiser, four Shrike missiles strapped to his wings. He was somehow flying through a wall of fiery lead as it seemed every gun on the ship was firing at him. He didn’t care. He knew he wouldn’t be shot down. Not yet.
His body was rippling with intensity. His eyes were burning with hate. The valiant demise of the Freedom Navy had lit a fuse inside of him. Suddenly his questions were all answered. Fighting for freedom knew no bounds or borders. There were no degrees of liberty or desire in dying for it. He was here, fighting Lucifer, but he had no doubts that if the demon weren’t stopped here, America again would be on his target list—and many more would die in the process. Now the Commodore and his comrades were gone, fighting for freedom on a bunch of armed yachts in the middle of the Suez Canal. They had showed them the way. Hit! Hit hard! Do everything possible to stop tyranny in its tracks.
Or die trying …
He launched the Shrike and pulled up, feeling a half dozen AA shells pepper his starboard wing. No matter. The missile homed in on the cruiser’s radar-control room and exploded. Two secondary explosions soon followed. Judging by their intensity, Hunter knew he had put the cruiser out of action.
He had sent twenty of the Saratoga’s airplanes out to attack the large contingent of ships moving up the Canal toward Ismailia. Ten of them were with him; the other ten were attacking targets further down the Canal. When Hunter’s force had arrived over their target area, they had seen that Lucifer had sent no less than four battleships, eight cruisers, a dozen frigates, and many more destroyers and corvettes. Behind this task force were dozens of troopships of all kinds and shapes.
At once Hunter had realized what Lucifer was doing. He was concentrating on destroying the Saratoga and its flotilla. It was a typical emotional decision by Lucifer, totally devoid of any military value. It was the same kind of thinking that the madman had displayed back in The Circle War.
So, in a way, Sir Neil’s dream of a delaying action was coming true. The time and effort that Lucifer had apparently decided to expend on the small carrier force would delay his breakout into the eastern Med, possibly long enough for The Modern Knights to arrive in the area. The bad news was that now the Saratoga flotilla would bear the brunt of an attack by a fleet many times its size and carrying close to 900,000 soldiers.
Hunter was back down at wave-top level in seconds. Ahead of him was a guided-missile frigate. Its gunners too had him in their sights, but he pressed on. One hundred and fifty feet out he launched his second Shrike. He followed its path as it rose and struck the ship’s mast, exploding with a great blam! and raining flaming death down on the compartments below.
Hunter pulled up, did a tight turn, and came in on the ship again, his Vulcan cannon Six Pack going full blast. The ship was rocked with the withering, concentrated fire, hundreds of puffs of fiery smoke indicating hits all over the vessel. He turned once again, saw he had started at least a half-dozen fires on the frigate, then turned his attention to the troopship next in the line.
He knew by the radio chatter on his intercom that many of Lucifer’s troopships further down the canal were landing their troops on the eastern side of the Canal rather than be caught out in the open by Saratoga’s attack planes. This troopship in front of him was a converted tramp steamer. He could see the terrified troops were firing their rifles at him as he screeched towards them, his cannons blazing. Once again he felt some of the enemy fire find its mark, bullets pinging off his canopy and nose. But, still, Hunter ignored the enemy fire.
His cannon shells found the ship’s boiler room and destroyed it, causing the rear end of the ship to blow up and break apart. The ship went down quickly, horribly, carrying at least 2000 of Lucifer’s soldiers to their deaths.
All around him, the Saratoga’s airplanes were attacking the ships. The waterway was a mass of confusion, ships exploding, missiles being fired, AA guns going off.
Suddenly one, then two of the Tornados got hit. The battleships were loaded with antiaircraft missiles and it appeared to Hunter that the gunners were launching their rockets in waves, hoping to hit something.
He felt a pang in his heart as his saw the two precious Tornados go down in flames. Two Jaguars bravely attacked the guilty battlewagon, and they too found themselves in the midst of a rocket barrage. One went up from a direct hit, the other caught a missile on its wing and then kept right on going, slamming into the big ship.
Four airplanes in one minute. Christ, Hunter thought. All this way to lose a sixth of his air force in sixty seconds.
But the battle went on. He turned and lined up a cruiser. He pushed his launch button and a Shrike streaked out from under his wing. The missile impacted just behind the ship’s bridge, destroying it immediately. Its captain and steering crew dead, the ship caught fire and was soon burning out of control.
He was out of missiles and running low on cannon ammo. So were some of the other aircraft. He hated to leave the battle area. The two remaining Jags had the longest loitering time, so Hunter knew they would be able to stay on station a while longer. He and the remaining attackers—two Viggens and two Tornados—would return to the Saratoga.
He put the F-16 into a screaming loop and rocketed away from the fight, the four other planes right on his tail.
As they followed the Canal back to the ship, he saw the effects of the recent battles were giving the waterway a nightmarish quality. Everywhere there seemed to be burning ships, floating debris, dead bodies. The area where the Freedom Navy made its last stand was particularly gruesome—wreckage was scattered along the Canal banks for miles.
But now, although he was still forty miles away from the carrier, his instincts told him something was wrong. Dead wrong. He switched his radio to the carrier’s frequency and immediately heard a confusion of chatter he knew meant only one thing: the carrier was under attack.
“It’s those goddamn Hinds,” he swore.
He radioed the other pilots and made them aware of the situation. They took a quick inventory of their weapons’ status. All five airplanes had some cannon ammo left and Hunter had two Sidewinders. Trouble was, both Tornados and one Viggen were dangerously low on fuel. Hunter’s tanks were also low; the AA hits he’d taken on his wing had started a moderate fuel leak.
He knew immediately that they would have to perform what had to be the most difficult maneuver in warfare: landing on a carrier that was under attack.
Soon they could see the carrier off in the distance and sure enough a fight was going full tilt. The Soviet Hind helicopters—more than three dozen of them—were buzzing around the carrier like bees. A wall of defensive fire was being thrown up at them by the Spanish Rocketeers, the French Gatling team, and the AA crews on the Norwegian frigates. Hunter knew that, somehow, they would have to dodge all that fire and lead and set their airplanes down.
The five jets roared into the middle of the battle, surprising the attacking Hinds. A melee broke out, with the Hinds dropping down to a lower attack level, and the jets following
them. Hunter dispatched two of the choppers instantly courtesy of his two remaining Sidewinders. One of the Viggens blasted another Hind with a cannon burst. The scattering choppers made easier targets for the Rocketeers and the Phalanx crews. Several more enemy choppers were downed.
But still there were at least twenty-five more Hinds pressing the attack. Hunter could see more than a few fires burning on the carrier, and one of the frigates was burning out of control. The Moroccan troopship, docked on the eastern side of the waterway, was also burning.
Hunter shot down another Hind, but now there were buzzers and lights going off all over his cockpit control panel. He wasn’t just low on fuel—he was running out. He radioed the four airplanes to check on their fuel supply. He determined that the two Tornados would have to go in first, then the 16. The Viggens could stay up just a little longer and give them covering fire.
The first Tornado landed without much trouble—concentrated fire from the Rocketeers held off the Hinds long enough for the British jet to set down. But the second jet ran into trouble immediately.
As the plane was making its final approach, a Hind shot an air-to-surface missile at one of the frigates. The missile crossed right in front of the slow-moving jet, clipping its nose and forcing the pilot to abort the landing. Its nose smoking, the pilot had trouble controlling the airplane. As Hunter watched, the jet shot straight up, its engine straining. An opportunistic Hind laced the plane with a burst of cannon fire. The pilot ejected. Seconds later the airplane exploded. “Damn!” Hunter seethed. “There goes another one!”
Now it was his turn to land. He made his way through the buzzing Hinds and the smoke, rockets’ glare, and AA fire and set the 16 down. The deck was a scene of mass confusion. The deck hands were struggling to get the first Tornado onto the carrier elevator to get it safely to the hangar area.
