by Dale Brown
As soon as the ground team confirmed that the school was deserted, Breanna pointed Fort Two toward A-1, the airstrip close to the Gulf of Aden.
“I don’t know, Bree,” said Chris. “They could be anywhere. I’m thinking Mogadishu.”
“Mogadishu’s five hundred miles southeast of here.”
“My point exactly.”
Breanna didn’t think they would be lucky enough to find them on the ground. But she did want to see if her theory was at least possible. A-1 was a little more than seventy-five miles away, straight line back toward the northwest. While they didn’t have particularly fat fuel reserves, she figured they could get close enough to get a look at the airstrip before turning back to shepherd the Ospreys home.
“We’ll be within FLIR range in five minutes,” she told her copilot.
“Four and a half. I’ve already computed it,” he told her. “Man, I could go for a cigarette right about now.”
“I thought you gave up smoking.”
“Stuff like this tickles my throat,” he said. “Shit, we got something in the air.”
Chris seemed to be operating on a sixth sense, picking up something before the high-powered detectors had sniffed out the radar. But he was right – a Jay Bird radar had flicked on ahead. The computer poked a green puff in the radar-warning screen. It was below them, which seemed impossible since they were at only a thousand feet.
“The source is far off,” said Chris, hunkering over the screen and working the computer to refine the read. “This is on the ground, Bree. Shit, this has to be a MiG-21. Off, it’s off.”
“On the ground? Has to be A-1.”
“Yeah. Like it was a maintenance check or something. Or a decoy.”
“We’ll be close enough to find out pretty soon.”
“Be nice to have a pair of fighters covering our butts about now,” Chris said.
“We can deal with a MiG-21 ourselves,” said Breanna. “Ground radar?”
“Negative. Scope’s clean. No ground stations. Nothing. Of course, they could take off and turn it on once they were in the air. We’re sitting ducks here.”
“The MiG radar can’t find a standard B-52 at twenty miles,” said Bree.
“What I’m worried about are those MiG-29’s we saw before,” said Chris. “Maybe they’re Libyan fighters. Qadafi’s got a bunch of them.”
For once, his fear was well-founded. The passive sensors on the MiGs could theoretically allow the interceptors to target Fort Two from long range, possibly even before being detected by Fort Two’s own passive arrays.
“I think those MiGs we saw before are out there,” said Chris. “I think they’re waiting to ambush the Ospreys. They could be in those mountains ranges to the west.”
“If they came from Libya, they’d never have the range to linger,” said Bree.
“What if they launch from A-1? If it’s long enough for a MiG-21, they’d have no problem.”
Breanna leaned closer to her stick. They were above thirty miles from the airstrip.
“I think there’s something stalking us, maybe twelve miles off,” said Chris. “What do you think of turning on the active radar?”
“If there is something out there, it’ll tell them we’re here,” said Bree. “And it’s expressly against orders.”
“Well, there is that,” said Chris. “But getting shot down is too. If we hit the radar we can get a clear picture. We see something, we launch the Scorpions. I swear something’s watching for us, Bree. They’re to the west, right there.” He pointed across the cockpit. “I can feel it.”
“We’ll see them first,” said Breanna.
“Maybe. They could circle out through the hills, duck around us, go for the Ospreys. The rotor engines are monster signals for any IR seeker. They’ll be sitting ducks.”
Less than sixty seconds now separated them from the small airstrip where Breanna believed Smith and the others had been taken. Turn on the radar and they might never reach it.
On the other hand, if the MiGs were where Chris thought, the Ospreys would be sitting ducks.
“Go to search and scan,” she ordered.
“On it.”
Chris was wrong. The MiGs weren’t in the mountains to the west.
They were hugging the ground forty miles to the east, running south like all hell. There were four of them, and while two were within striking distance of Vector, they didn’t seem to be interested in the Ospreys – they were going for the F-117’s, just arriving on target with their Paveways as Breanna clicked the radio to broadcast a warning.
Northern Somalia
23 October, 0430
As the bus wound down out of the hills, they could smell the scent of the sea through the open window. The moon and stars were fading, the sky blending into early dawn.
“There’s an air base down there,” said Gunny, who was at the window. “Shit, Major, come tell me what I’m looking at.”
Smith pull himself up from his seat and stepped over Jackson, who was sleeping in the aisle. Howland was hunched two rows back, snoring into the seat back. Mack’s head had stopped hurting, but his ribs throbbed worse than ever. He slid in the seat behind Melfi, his leg irons clanking as he pushed his face to the window.
A long strip of black jutted roughly parallel to the sea, lit by the full moon. A phalanx and leveling. On the other, crews were erecting a shelter of some sort; from here it looked like a curved pizza box. There were planes lined in a neat row near the middle. They were far away and the light was poor, but one was definitely an airliner or similar transport. There were at least two others, smaller military jets, possibly MiG-21’s. The buss bounced and turned around the road, its path taking them out of view.
“The strip’s being extended. They’ve paved it pretty recently,” Mack told Gunny. “We had a small airstrip on the map up north here somewhere when we briefed the mission; I think we had it pegged as a dirt strip. It’s a lot bigger than that now.”
One of the guards at the front of the bus grunted an instruction to keep quiet. Mack held up his hands as if he would, then leaned close to Gunny.
“There’s a transport down there, an airliner. I can’t tell in the dark what it is, but I’d bet they’re going to fly us out.”
“I say we don’t,” hissed Gunny. “I don’t think they’re going to be taking us home. And I don’t want to star in this trial the raghead is talking about.”
“I agree,” Mack said. he felt his ribs tug at him, as if to remind him they weren’t exactly loaded with options. “I don’t know what sort of chances we’re going to have, though.”
“Were you thinking of that when you slugged the raghead’s guard?”
“No,” said Mack. “But I should have.”
“You make a move, we’ll follow,” said Melfi solemnly. “Should we stall getting off the bus?”
What would that get them? A few more minutes? For what?
Odds were the Iranian would just shoot them and be done.
Preferable to being turned into cowards and traitors. That was where this was headed.
Mack grunted noncommittally, unsure what to say, much less do. He put his head back against the stiff seat top. The anger that had exploded inside him had disappeared; it seemed foreign now, as if it belonged to someone else – Melfi most likely. He was a pilot – logical, careful, precise.
Except when he let himself get shot down. That had been a fuck-up, despite what Gunny had said.
Unlike him. He was too damn good to get whacked so easy. Too damn good to do something stupid.
So what the hell was he doing sitting here?
As the bus started down the winding road, the moon stabbed his eyes. Mack sighed, but didn’t close them.
Northern Somalia
23 October, 0430
Fort Two squealed as it tucked and rolled through the air, almost as if the Megafortress welcomed the seven-g back flip. Breanna felt her world narrow to a small cone as she rolled into a dive and recovered in the opp
osite direction. She had become the plane, pushing through the air like a force of nature, turbines spinning, wings slicked back. It took several seconds for them to gain momentum in the new direction; she rode the air current gracefully, plunging her nose down and picking up speed. By the time the MiGs reacted to their radar, they had narrowed the gap to thirty miles, the outer edge of the AMRAAMs’ range.
“Open bay doors, prepare to launch,” she told Chris.
“Bay. They’re taking evasive maneuvers.”
Breanna’s HUD showed the radar’s air-combat-mode projection, with the enemy bandits displayed as triangles with directional and speed vectors. Confident that it could nail each of the aircraft, the combat computer displayed red hatch marks over each plane.
“Which ones are near the F-117’s?”
“Good question. Hold on.”
The stealth fighters were too far away to be detected directly; Chris set the computer to look for atmospheric anomalies – essentially canceling some of the correction it normally did to erase interference from the wind. He managed to find two of the F-117’s, just starting their attacks.
“One MiG within theoretical visual range,” said Chris.
“Targeting.”
A box appeared around the triangle. The tiny symbol blinked, as if the computer were jumping up and down, yelling at them to nail it.
“Fire,” said Breanna.
The Scorpions AMRAAM missile slipped out of its launcher so easily that only the launch indicator told Breanna it was gone. With a one-hundred-pound explosive warhead, the Scorpions packed roughly twice the explosive power of a standard AMRAAM, while retaining its high speed and superb active radar capabilities. Once launched, the missile took care of itself.
“Tracking,” said Chris. “F-117’s have buttoned up. I can’t see them at all. Okay. One MiG heading north. They’re out of it. more evasive maneuvers. They’re looking for us. SAMs are up! Shit. We’re spiked by that MiG. They’re targeting us for air-to-air.”
“Vector One to Fort Two, what’s your situation?”
“Hold tight, Vector,” said Breanna. The threat screen painted the sky ahead yellow, overlapping radrs probing for them. two fingers of red appeared at the sides; Breanna snapped the Megafortress ninety degrees, trying to beam the MiG that was now targeting them. the computer, meanwhile, began emitting electronic fuzz to confuse the ground-intercept radar that had snapped on.
“The open bay’s going to give us away,” Breanna reminded Chris.
“Having trouble picking out the MiG that’s spiking us,” he replied.
“Can we get the SAMs?”
“Two MiGs heading for us. Twenty miles, dead-on. They’ll nail Vector if they take off.”
“Get the lead MiG,” Breanna directed. “They we’ll go for the SAMs.”
“He’s too low. They’re firing.”
“Missile type?”
“No ID. No radar.”
“Impossible. They wasted heat-seekers from that range head-on?”
“Lost the missile. We’re still being spiked. Missile launch.”
The RWR buzzed a warning; the second MiG had fired an AA-10 Alamo radar missile at them. Breanna pulled the Megafortress into a hard bank, unleashing tinsel and then pushing the plane into a dive. The strategy essentially provided the enemy missile with an easy – but nonexistent – target.
She sensed what the Iranians were doing, and fired dirversionary flares as she cut a series of zigs in the sky.
“Yeah,” said Chris, catching on. “Three missiles tracking. The first much have been long-range heat-seekers, looking for our butts when we turned. I have a target.”
“Fire!” Breanna steadied the Megafortress as the missile dropped from the bay.
“We’re boxed. Damn it,” said Chris. His voice went up several octaves. “Okay, I’m firing. Shit. Here’s another Alamo –”
“Close bay. Hold on,” said Breanna calmly. She nailed the Megafortress nearly straight down, goosing off chaff and flares. At a thousand feet she rolled inverted and turned ninety degrees into the Doppler radar, in effect making the plane invisible in the eddy of the radar waves. The carbon fiber wings strained at their design tolerance as the massive plane twisted.
The Russian missiles realized they had missed, and blew up a thousand feet overhead. Shaking off the shock waves, Breanna rolled the mammoth plane upright, nudging her even lower.
“Splash One MiG!” said Chris. “Scorpion got it.”
Breanna grinned, then went back to trying to sort out their location as well as that of their enemies. They were north, heading in the direction of A-1. One of the MiG-29’s was running north toward the Red Sea.
“F-117’s got something,” blurted Chris. “Shit. Lots of secondaries. Wow! Big-time explosions. Nailed those mothers!”
“What happened to that SAM that was tracking us?” Bree asked.
“Lost it. Nighthawks got it or it just turned itself off without firing anything.” Chris clicked the radar into long-distance scan, searching for the MiGs. “We may have the scope. I have two, moving out at warp speed into the Red Sea. Spooked ’em good.”
“Go back to passive systems.”
’Damn straight.”
Breanna checked the bearing and speed that ghosted in the screen against the instrument readings in the MUD. She punched the Megafortress’s selt-test circuits, having the computer run its diagnostic as if they’d been tooling around Dreamland for the past hour.
The computer congratulated itself with perfect scores. All systems green and growing. Time to go back to the barn.
Almost.
“Let’s make it hard for the SOB to land,” she told Chris.
“Bree?”
“We still have the JSOWs in the bay. We’ll be within range of A-1 in zero-two.”
“What about that MiG-21 on the ground?”
“Something to aim at,” said Breanna.
Chris sighed deeply, but turned back to his displays without saying anything. He had meant that they were out of air-to-air weapons, which Breanna already knew.
“We have plenty of fuel,” she told him.
“We’ll be into reserves on the trip home,” he said.
“You’re not going after A-1 because of Mack, are you?”
“What?”
“I mean, you’re not getting emotionally involved here?”
“Screw you, Chris. I’m trying to do my job.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Fort Two, this is Vector. Situation.”
“We’ve chased a flight of MiGs away,” Chris told the Delta leader. “We’re proceeding north to check on A-1. We believe it may be their base.”
Breanna stared at the terrain ahead, rendered green and gray by the starscope panel. Mountains gave way to a dark black that would turn into the sea in about ten seconds. There was a road through the hills on the left. The base should be beyond that, over the next set of ridges just before the water.
“Fort Two, this is Vector. Advise us on the situation at A-1. Are you passengers there?”
“They’re nuts too,” said Chris over the interphone circuit. “We’re pushing this too far.”
“Vector, this is Fort Two,” said Breanna. “Stand by.”
She glanced quickly at the threat indicator. No radars.
“Chris, are you just nervous?”
“I’m not nervous, I’m sane,” he told her. “We’ve been flying for a shitload of time, just getting here. We’re flying over a base that launched four MiGs at us. You don’t think there are ground defenses?”
“We’ll see what defenses there are in a second,” said Breanna. “I won’t take unnecessary risks.”
She could practically hear his teeth grinding. But he nonetheless hunkered toward his display screen, where he selected the FLIR and began a close scan of the base, which was just now appearing beyond the hills.
“One Zeus antiair gun, right on the coastline. Machine guns, something, I don’t know, light, near the
road. There’s a ship off shore. Tanker of something. No, no, I’m wrong – patrol boat. Has a gun. Bulldozers – man, this looks nothing like that satellite photo we saw.’
That was an understatement. The Iranians had expanded and widen the strip, making it nearly three times as long as it had been, undoubtedly strengthening it as well. They were building hangars at the far end. Three aircraft – two older MiG-21’s and one DC-8 or 707 – sat on a ramp area, their tails almost hanging over the water.
