* * *
The three American jets came from the north, from the sea. Far below, the airmen saw the city of Palermo and they saw the thin, irregular line where the land surrendered to the sea. The land was rough, convoluted, and as the sun crept over the rim of the earth the ridges cast long shadows into dark, misty valleys.
With his throttles pulled back to max conserve, Jake remained at 25,000 feet and watched Joe Watson’s plane fall away toward the city below as he listened to yet another transmission from the Gettysburg on Guard. The tanker was behind and to Jake’s right. Both fighters had topped off just before they made landfall. In the rear cockpit Toad was scanning the sky with the radar. Nothing. At dawn on a Sunday morning in September, the sky over Sicily was empty.
“That’s the seventh time they’ve called,” Toad said, his voice revealing his irritation.
“Persistent beggars, aren’t they?”
“Goddamn, CAG, Sixth Fleet! You can’t give the finger to Sixth Fleet. For the love of—”
“I’m not in the mood for you today, Toad. A lot of good men died trying to stop these assholes, and you’re whining. Now shut the fuck up.”
The sun was a fireball just above the horizon. As his plane turned through the easterly heading Jake was blinded by the glare coming straight through his heads-up display. He squinted behind the green visor of his helmet and tried to see the instruments. They were almost indecipherable. His eyes couldn’t look from brightness to darkness and accommodate anymore. It irritated him, as Toad did. So much at stake and nothing going right. What would Joe and Corky find down there? Was Qazi still there? Even if he was, where were the weapons? It was an impossible problem. He engaged the autopilot, knowing it would fly the plane more smoothly than he could and thereby save a few pints of fuel. A few gallons. He unfastened one side of his oxygen mask and swabbed his face with a gloved hand and let the mask dangle. Come on, guys. What’s down there?
“There’s a chopper here on the mat beside a hangar with the door closed, CAG. As near as I can tell, it looks exactly like one of those that was on the ship. No one in sight. Not a solitary soul. Nothing down here but light planes, Cessnas and Pipers. What do you think?”
Jake refastened his mask. “How many hangars?”
“Two.”
“How about big trucks? Any semis parked around?”
“Empty as a politician’s promise.”
Had the bird flown? Jake had to make a decision and make it fast. Joe Watson was down low, burning gas at an appalling rate.
“Could they be in the hangars?”
“It’s possible, I guess,” Watson said, his voice dubious.
Jake cursed to himself and swung his F-14 to the south. He leveled the wings and pushed the throttles full forward as he trimmed the stick aft. “Joe, climb to about five thousand and orbit the field as long as you can. If anybody gets nervous and tries to drive off in a van or semi, or if they open a hangar and you see a big plane parked in there, shoot it up. Understand?”
“Roger.”
“Watch your gas and get back to the ship. Keep your eyes peeled. Belenko, I want you to go down to Cape Passero, on the southeastern tip of the island south of Syracuse, and orbit overhead at forty grand. Wait for me there.”
“Red Ace Two roger.”
“Shotgun roger.”
“Good luck, Joe,” Jake said.
The mike clicked twice.
As they knifed upward through 30,000 feet headed southeast with the unfiltered sunlight filling the cockpit Toad murmured over the intercom. “Qazi got away, CAG, and you know it.”
He did know it. Qazi had two nuclear weapons that belonged to the United States Navy and he was gone. Gone where? Tripoli or Benghazi or somewhere else? If he was on his way to Africa, he was talking to Air Traffic Control. Jake began frantically flipping through the bundles of cards on his kneeboard, looking for the Air Traffic Control sector and frequency list. Why hadn’t he thought of this sooner?
He selected the frequency for the southeastern coast of Sicily and, after turning off the scrambler, dialed it in on the radio. His radio was UHF, and a transport, even a military one, would be using VHF. But the controllers normally transmitted on both VHF and UHF. Jake leveled at 40,000 feet. The throttles were in high cruise and he was clipping along at.86 Mach.
“See anything?” he growled at Toad.
“No, sir. Empty sky.”
How about that frigate that went through the Strait of Messina last night? It was supposed to be off the east coast of Sicily now. Jake looked up the frequency on another kneeboard card and dialed it into the second radio. He gave them a call and got an answer. They assigned a discrete IFF code, and he squawked it. He wondered how much help he would get if Vice-Admiral Lewis was talking to them. He had to use his real call sign because the frigate could read the classified IFF code, which was specific to this aircraft. Here goes nothing. “Buckshot, we’re running a little intercept exercise this morning and I wonder if you’ve observed any traffic out of Palermo in the last several hours headed south or southeast, over.”
“Wait one.”
Mount Etna was off to his left, spectacular with the sun on its flank. Normally Jake Grafton would try to make a mental note of every detail to include in his next letter to Callie, but this morning he glanced at the mountain, then ignored it.
“Red Ace, Buckshot. We can’t see quite that far, but we had a North African Airways flight cross the coast southbound from Palermo about fifteen minutes ago, speed about three five zero. And we had a TWA flight cross Catania eastbound six minutes ago. He’s about fifty miles east, apparently on course for Athens. Then there was a Red Cross transport eastbound past Syracuse twenty minutes ago.”
“Any destinations?”
“Not specifically, but the controller asked the North African Airways flight if their trip was going to become a regular one. I gathered it was some kind of a one-time deal.”
“Thanks for your help, Buckshot.”
“For further assistance, give a shout. Buckshot, out.”
“Just what the world needs, another clown,” Toad grumped on the ICS.
With another anxious glance at the fuel readout, Jake shoved the throttles into afterburner. If Qazi was up ahead, he was going to have to catch him. He flipped the switches on the radio panel so he could monitor the Air Traffic Control frequency. Static! Someone was transmitting! He turned down the squelch and heard words in English, but they were too garbled to understand. Then the transmission ceased. Okay! Someone was on this frequency this morning. It could be anyone, but maybe, just maybe …
“North African Airways Three Zero Six, you are departing Italian airspace. You are cleared to leave this frequency. Good day, sir.”
“I may have ’em, CAG,” Toad said. “Right on the edge of the scope, heading south. We’re following them. They’re headed for Africa all right. Tripoli if they hold this heading.”
Jake nudged the throttles deeper into afterburner. The Mach meter indicated 1.5. He could go faster, but he was using fuel at a prodigious rate.
“He’s below us, about twenty-five thousand feet or so, making three hundred fifty knots, the computer says. No, about three hundred sixty knots. Pretty slow for a jet.” They crossed the coast of Sicily and headed out to sea. Malta was off to the left there, someplace.
At forty miles Jake pulled the throttles back slightly and lowered the nose. Toad turned on the Television Camera System and Jake punched up the picture on his Horizontal Situation Display. “Looks like a C-130 Hercules to me,” Toad said. “Same high wing. Right speed for a turboprop.”
“There aren’t any Hercs going to Africa this morning,” Jake said as he studied the picture. The image was still so small and it shimmered as the light was diffused by the atmosphere.
“Maybe an An-12 Cub? Didn’t the Russians sell those things all over North Africa?”
“Yeah.”
“What’re you going to do?” Toad asked.
“Re
ndezvous so you can give the pilots the Hawaiian good luck sign.”
“Well, we can’t just shoot ’em down,” Toad said acidly. “We can’t just blast ’em out of the sky.”
At ten miles Toad said, “Looks like this guy has a gun turret or something in the tail. That’s no Herc.” It’s no airliner, either, Jake thought as he looked through the heads-up display and picked out the speck in the sky near the symbol that was the transport.
He came out of burner and let his speed drop as he approached the turboprop from the stern. There was a man in the gun turret, but the twin barrels remained pointed upward as the fighter rapidly traversed the last mile and Jake pulled the engines toward idle and cracked the speed brakes to kill his speed.
He slid up on the right side of the transport. A four-engine turboprop. An Antonov An-12 Cub, all right, with a glass chin for the navigator to peer out of. The Americans hadn’t put a chin like that on a plane in forty years. This plane was painted in desert camouflage but lacked markings of any kind. That’s curious, Jake thought. Not even a side number.
He let the fighter drift forward so he could see directly into the transport’s cockpit. Both pilots were looking this way. He used his left hand to signal a turn to the left. Nothing. They just stared. Jake flipped the switches on the armament panel and triggered a short burst from the Vulcan 20-millimeter cannon mounted in the port side of the F-14’s forward fuselage. He could feel the weapon’s vibration as the tracers shot forward and disappeared from sight.
The Cub continued on its heading. Jake signaled vigorously for a left turn. Nothing. “They’re a thick bunch,” Toad muttered.
Jake triggered another burst. Still the plane continued on course. “What if the weapons aren’t in there?” Toad demanded.
“What do you want me to do? Let him go to Africa and drop the bomb next week on New York?” Jake reduced power and let the transport pull ahead. Maybe a few rounds right over the wing would change this guy’s mind.
He glanced left just in time. The twin barrels in the tail turret were swinging this way. He rammed the stick forward and orange fireballs flew across the top of the canopy. The negative G slung the two men upward as far as the slack in their harness restraints allowed. Jake dove under the transport and added power and kept the nose down.
“What do you want to do now, Tarkington, you goddamn flea on the elephant’s ass. Got any ideas?” When Jake was several miles ahead of the Cub, he began a turn. “How many people have to die before you’re willing to get your hands dirty?” He craned his neck to keep the transport in sight. It turned the opposite way and dove, trying to flee, a fatal mistake. Jake relaxed his turn and reset the armament switches. “No smirches on your lily-white soul. What do you think Farrell was fighting for?”
The Cub was in the forward quadrant now, several miles ahead as Jake completed the 270-degree turn. The tailgunner was blazing away but the shells were falling short. Jake put the pipper in the heads-up display on the plane, and got a rattling tone in his ears, the locked-on signal from the heat-seeking Sidewinder that had given the missile its name. He squeezed the red trigger on the stick pistol grip. A missile leaped off the rail in a blaze of fire. It tracked. Jake got another tone and squeezed the trigger again. The second missile shot after the first.
The gunner shot at the missiles. It was futile. They slammed into the engines of the Cub at two and a half times the speed of sound. Their 25-pound warheads flashed. The Cub rolled onto its right wing and began a spiral. The nose fell steeply.
Jake dipped a wing and watched the transport going down. It was going too fast. A piece of wing came off and the plane began to roll about its longitudinal axis, out of control, going down, down, down. Jake added power and eased the Tomcat into a climbing turn toward the north, still watching the falling plane far below. Then it exploded.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Toad said.
Jake took off his oxygen mask and wiped his face. He felt like he was going to be sick. “I’m sorry, too,” he muttered to the Gods, who were the only ones who could hear.
* * *
“Do you think they had the bombs?” Toad asked.
When Jake had his mask back on and adjusted, he said, “I doubt it.” Qazi didn’t seem the type to let himself be waylaid quite so easily. “Get on the radio. Find out where that frigate thinks that Red Cross plane is and ask the tanker to fly straight east at top speed. We’ll rendezvous with him and get some more gas, then try to catch the east-bound jet.”
“You don’t think it’s a Red Cross plane?”
“That has the earmarks of our colonel friend. An airline flies certain known routes every day, so you can’t just pretend you are an airliner without confusing the controllers. He needed a one-time flight plan.” Toad did as requested.
Or, Jake thought, Qazi could do what Jake was doing right now, which was fly around illegally without a flight plan and hope the controllers had their radars tuned to just receive transponder codes, not skin paints. But Qazi didn’t run risks like that. Oh, no. He would be covered, with a perfectly legal international flight plan filed days in advance. For a one-time trip.
* * *
The II-76 with Qazi, El Hakim, and the weapons aboard was circling, waiting. The fighters were late, Qazi heard one of the crewmen say. They had been circling for ten minutes. Out his defective window he could see only the blue of the ocean and the changing shadow of the wing as the transport flew a lazy circle.
El Hakim had never understood the importance of timing in clandestine operations, Qazi reflected. This ocean was an American lake, with missile-carrying surface combatants sprinkled at random. There was a carrier battle group off Cyprus. When the Americans sorted out the mess aboard United States, they were going to be in a very pugnacious mood, and Sovietbuilt transports wandering erratically in international airspace were going to attract unhealthy attention, especially if escorted by fighters. El Hakim’s time was fast running out, and he didn’t know it.
Noora and Jarvis were in the last row of seats in the module, their heads only occasionally visible. The guard with the Uzi had looked that way four or five times and was showing an increasing interest in their activities. That Noora, she could be relied upon to put her pleasure first. Qazi permitted himself a hint of a smile. He had not considered the possibility that she would be attracted to Jarvis. I am getting too old, he thought ruefully.
He sighed and watched the guard crane his neck, trying to see. The sexual curiosity of the Arab male could also be relied upon. He folded his hands across his lap and closed his eyes and tried to relax. The plane continued to circle.
The guard stood. It was too noisy to hear him, but Qazi sensed it. He opened his eyes to slits. The man was at the end of the aisle, looking aft. Then he passed behind the row of seats Qazi was in. Qazi lifted his right leg and drew the Walther PPK from his ankle holster. He thumbed the safety off. He laid it on his lap and covered it with his left hand.
* * *
Jake approached the tanker from the stern. The refueling drogue was extended. He flipped the refueling switch, and his refueling probe came out of the right side of the fuselage just under and forward of his cockpit. He added power and began closing on the tanker.
The drogue on the end of the fifty-foot hose hung down and behind the tail of the Intruder. Looking exactly like a large badminton birdie, the drogue oscillated gently in the lower edge of the tanker’s slipstream. The air displaced by the nose of the Tomcat would push the drogue away if Jake closed too slowly, so he used the throttles to make his closure brisk and sure. But at this altitude, at this low indicated airspeed, only 210 knots due to the tanker’s capabilities, the Tomcat was sluggish, responding sloppily to the controls. There, he snagged it. He pushed the drogue toward the tanker until the lights above the hose exit in the tanker’s belly turned from amber to green. He was getting fuel.
“How much do you want, CAG?” the tanker pilot asked.
“All you can give me and still make it to Sigone
lla.” They were flying east at 40,000 feet. The island of Sicily lay over a hundred miles behind them.
Toad was talking to the frigate on the other radio, as he had been for five minutes. Apparently he was conversing with one of the enlisted men in the watch section of the frigate’s CIC, all very low-key, though with the scramblers engaged. Toad handled it well, seeking aid on an “oh, by the way” basis, a few traffic advisories for a Tomcat crew out for a spin and some practice intercepts this fine Sunday morning.
“Here’s something interesting, Red Ace,” the sailor on the frigate said. “The spooks say we have some MiGs airborne north of Benghazi. We picked up the radar emissions and some radio traffic.” The transmission broke, then resumed, “And this is funny. There’s an airplane circling about a hundred ten miles or so north of Benghazi.”
“Ask him if he can pick up a squawk,” Jake said to Toad, who made the transmission. He checked the fuel readout. Twelve thousand pounds aboard. The tanker’s light was still green.
“Uh, it’s that Red Cross flight. Pretty weird, huh? You guys may want to return to Sicily or turn northbound to avoid the MiGs, over.”
“Yeah,” Toad said. “Thanks a lot, Buckshot.”
“That’s it, CAG,” the tanker crew said as the light over the hose hole turned red: 13,200 pounds of fuel. That would have to do.
“Thanks guys.” Jake backed away from the drogue and watched his probe retract. He eased up onto the tanker’s right side and gave the pilot a thumbs-up when the drogue was completely stowed. Then he pushed the throttles forward to the stops and flapped his hand good-bye. The tanker’s right wing came up and the plane turned away to the left as it fell behind the accelerating fighter.
Final Flight jg-2 Page 41
