The Circle War (22 page)

"That's the guy . . ." Hunter said quickly. Outside the particularly intense gunfight was going full tilt.

"God damn asshole he was!" the woman shouted. "Owes me money. He comes into town a few years back. He buys dope. He takes his piece of me. He 225

doesn't pay. Instead, he gives me this box, with a red light blinking on it.

Then he's gone. Vamoosed. So I got this box with a red light. Hey that's my business, so I put it in my window. To help my customers know I was . . .

available."

Hunter had guessed right. This was the monster Travis had wrestled with.

Suddenly the gunfight outside got louder and closer. He could hear several explosions going off just a few blocks away and screams coming from the street outside the room's window. Inside the house, bullets were ricocheting off the walls down the hallway. Scary Mary however seemed oblivious to it all.

"So where's the box?" Hunter said.

"Well, Jesus, aren't we in a hurry?" she quickly lit a cigarette, swallowed a handful of pills then pushed herself up off the bed. Unlike the scenery in the Grand Canyon, Hunter had no trouble averting his eyes as the big woman bent over and reached underneath her mattress. Seconds later she came up with the box, its red light still blinking.

"Here you go, fella," she said, handing him the precious black box. "That's been holding up this bed for more than a year now. Don't need no sign anymore.

Everyone knows where I am."

Hunter took the box and for the first time smiled. He reached into his pocket and gave her a handful of real quarters. "See ya, Mary. Take care of yourself," he said.

She looked at him as he was about to turn and leave. "Hey, hold on," she said, squinting her eyes to get a better look. "Aren't you that 'Wing Man' fella 226

everyone's always talking about? The guy with the famous airplane? You look just like him."

Hunter smiled again, leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Then he was off, running down the hall, dodging stray bullets as he went.

Hunter landed at the Denver airport early the next morning after being directed there from New Mexico. Jones met him in the base's makeshift situation room, taking possession of the two additional black boxes and making arrangements to get them to Eureka immediately.

Then they sat over a pot of coffee and talked. Both knew instinctively it was the last time they'd be able to have a normal conversation for a while.

"We know we can't destroy all the SAMs right now," Jones told him. "But we have to act, to get them to start thinking defensively."

Hunter's mind flashed back to the Big War.

"We're up against the same type of thing as in Western Europe," he said. "The Soviets had superiority in men and weapons, just like now. But we beat them not so much on the front line, but behind the lines. We went after the rear echelons. Their supply dumps. Their means of communications. There wasn't a bridge left standing between Paris and Moscow by the time we were through.

They definitely had the quantity but we had the quality. We forced them into a fight near Paris and they had no backups. No supplies. No way to get their reserves through. We kicked their asses.

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"It's really no different now. Between them and the Circle ground forces, they've got us on numbers. But all the time I was flying over the 'Bads, I kept thinking: 'Where the hell are their rear areas?' The answer was, they didn't have any. Nothing between the eastern edge of the SAM line and the Circle troops moving east.

"That area is like a limbo now. No civvies, that's for sure. But plenty of bridges, highways, railroad tracks. Lines of communications they're counting on to move the Circle troops on."

Jones thought for a moment, "What you're saying is that if we can get in there, behind the SAM line and in front of the advancing ground troops, we can make it difficult for them."

"Exactly!" Hunter said. "We'll force them to fight somewhere, but only after we've taken our measure of them."

Thus, the strategy for beating the Circle was born . . .

It was time to go. Hunter had to load up his F-16 and make arrangements to meet a Free Canadian Air Force tanker plane over Saskatchewan to get the fuel needed to make the long trip to New York City.

But Jones had one more subject to discuss. He pressed the photograph of Dominique and Viktor into Hunter's hand, expressing total mystification of what it all meant. But Hunter seemed to totally block out everything. Jones would never forget the transformation that came over the pilot as he studied the

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photograph. Hunter's mouth narrowed and his fists clenched in rage. A new color roared into his face —a crimson associated with an adrenaline rush. His whole body began to vibrate, as if some inner strength was threatening to burst out of him. But it was Hunter's eyes that got to the senior officer.

Normally blue, they seemed to turn almost white with anger . . .

What seemed like an eternity later, Hunter looked up from the photo and said to Jones: "I'll be back . . ."

Then he walked briskly from the room and toward his F-16, carrying the crumpled photograph in his hand . . .

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Dawn broke unevenly over the Badlands that nex day. There were rain showers extending from centra Nebraska on up to the Canadian border. At the sami time, Kansas and Oklahoma had clear, if typicall; hazy, skies.

For the Russian soldiers stationed at the largi missile site concentration near Broken Bow, Ne braska, the day began as any other. They were on th< edge of the bad weather-;, it had rained during th< night, but had stopped just before first light. Thi meant that all the tarpaulins that had been placet over their missiles when the rain started the nigh before had to be taken off and the missiles literall; wiped down. But this would not happen before a dul hour of calisthenics at five in the morning, followe< by an even duller fare for breakfast. Then woul< come the daily political lecture that followed th morning meal —an assembly that all the soldier loathed. Most of them had been hidden away in th Bads for nearly a year and thus had been hearing th same boring Marxist indoctrination day after da} week after week. But in the lock-step regimen of th

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Soviet Armed Forces, the daily speech would be held as planned. Only after that would the missiles be attended to.

The soldiers —SAM technicians mostly —were filing into the briefing tent when six PAAC A-7 Strikefighters suddenly burst through the permanent smoky haze.

The jets came in very low and two abreast, covered from above by Captain Crunch and the F-4Xs of the Ace Wrecking Company. Before any of the Russians could act, one of the lead A-7s deposited a laser-guided antipersonnel missile directly in the center of the briefing tent, destroying it and everyone inside. The second lead Strikefighter took out the missile installation's all-important communications hut, before streaking away off to the east.

The next pair of A-7s concentrated on two of the six SA-2 missile launchers at Broken Bow. Again using laser-guided munitions, both pilots fired at the same time, and watched as their missiles smashed into the sides of two rocket launchers, each hit creating an enormous explosion. These two airplanes then also disappeared to the east. The tail end pair of attackers each deposited a missile into two further SA-2 sites, again scoring laser-guided direct hits.

By this time, the lead jets had circled back around and commenced to strafe the remaining two SA-2 sites with their Vulcan cannons. The second pair of A-7s followed their leaders in, cannons blazing. First one, then the other SA-2 launcher took hits and exploded. By the time the tail-end of the flight 232

returned, all of the installation's missile launcher; were in flames. Each of these trailing jets made < strafing run on several support buildings before link ing up with the rest of the strike force and headinj back to their Colorado base. During the lightning attack, the Russian soldiers failed to fire a single sho in defense of their tarpaulin-covered missiles. An< the F-4

pilots of the Ace Wrecking Company sav nary a Yak in the area.

The attack on the eight SAM sites near Dodg< City, Kansas also came as a complete surprise. No expecting any enemy action, these Russian missil handlers had neglected to leave on their low-altitud phased radars during the night. Thus, when fou PAAC A-10s appeared out of the morning sky, th Russian defenders didn't know what was happenin; until the first A-10 dropped a 2000-pound block buster right on the installation's central radar house creating a huge fireball and leaving nothing in it wake except a smoking crater half the size of football field.

As two PAAC F-106 "Delta Daggers" watche from above, the A-lOs swept in one at a time an deposited a potpourri of bombs and missiles onto th eight SAM sites.

Again, the Soviets had no time t mount a defense. Those who found cover simpl hunkered down as the A-10s swept in again an again, taking a deadly toll on the SAM sites. Wit most of the targets destroyed or burning, the attacl ers finished up the strike with two strafing rur

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apiece, then broke off and streaked off to the west.

At about the same time, a makeshift squadron of PAAC fighter-bombers with fighter protection attacked a string of Russian missile installations set up along the Smoky Hill River 50 miles north of Dodge. There were 22 missile sites altogether. The strike group — made up of eight PAAC San Diego A-4 Navy Skyhawk attack aircraft, and a half dozen souped-up PAAC-Oregon T-38s — was being covered by four PAAC-Oregon F-104 Star fighters. As soon as they arrived over the target, the strike force was met by a barrage of heavy antiaircraft fire thrown up by Soviet troops along the river. One A-4 and a T-38 were shot down immediately. The Starfighters' flight commander—who also acted as the strike's overall leader—ordered the attackers to clear the area, then led his F-104s in to take out the ack-ack battery with missiles and napalm. But this time, the SAM sites were going hot and missiles were launched at the attacking A-4s and T-38s loitering nearby. Two more T-38s were shot down within seconds.

While the Starfighters destroyed the antiaircraft position, one of their group was lost to a SA-7 shoulder-held missile fired by someone on the ground.

Ten minutes into the attack, five of the PAAC jets were downed and not a single missile site destroyed. At this rate, the attacking force would be decimated before anything on the ground could be hit. That's when the Starfighter flight commander

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called in the Spookys . . .

The C-130 gunships were on station above the Colorado-Kansas border ready to be vectored wherever needed. The two big airplanes arrived near the Smoky Hill River within ten minutes of receiving the call from the strike leader.

As the gunships started a wide arc around the target area, the strike leader coordinated a second attack on the objective. Once again coming in low to best avoid any SAMs fired at them, the remaining A-4s and T-38s as well as the three F-104s, concentrated on the missile batteries located on the far flank of the positions. At this altitude the major threat from the ground was from the shoulder-launched SA-7s and the mobile antiaircraft batteries. One by one, the attackers braved the withering fire being sent up at them and came in on the target, each dropping a single bomb or firing a single missile, then streaking away. The action caused the Soviet troops to concentrate their missiles —and their undivided attention — to their northern flank. That was their mistake; the second attack was simply a feint.

Just as the last of the attacking jets dropped its single token bomb and cleared the area, the Spookys had completed their wide turn. Now they approached the riverside base from the south, practically unseen. Each airplane sported three GE Galling guns poking out of its port side. Each gun was capable of firing 6000 rounds per minute and was equipped with a computer aiming-and-firing device.

Like most Spooky attacks, this one nearly defied description. With a total of six powerful Gatling

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guns firing at a rate of 3600 rounds a second, the two planes swept over the missile installation pouring out a curtain of flaming lead that cut through Soviet positions like a sickle. Secondary explosions followed in the wake of both airplanes. Buildings around the central command center of the missile base —mobile trailers mostly —were sliced in two by the awesome gunship barrage. Fuel supplies were hit, adding to the conflagration. Anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the path of the gunships was perforated with bullets where he stood.

By the time the two gunships completed their run, half the missile base was in flames. Once again, the strike leader brought his remaining aircraft around and went in on the missile sites. It was a bold move, sending in gunships to attack SAM sites —a tactic worthy of a court martial in the normal earlier times. But these weren't normal times. These were the times to innovate, to use whatever was at your disposal. And the idea worked. While the Soviets were still reeling from the unexpected barrage by the Spookys, the attack jets swept in and laid down their ordnance all around the target area.

With the majority of the targets destroyed, the strike leader ordered his airplanes to return to their Denver, Colorado base.

Later that morning, F-105 Thunderchiefs from the Aerodrome squadron led by Mike Fitzgerald himself and flying out of a secret base in Manitoba, destroyed six missile sites near the Black Hills in South

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Dakota. Two squadrons of mixed Texas Air Force F-4s and exiled Football City F-20s bombarded 10 more Soviet sites around Oklahoma City and Tulsa. However, this time, the Russian missiles were waiting for the attackers. In a swirl of laser-guided bombs and flying SA-3 missiles, three F-4s and a valuable F-20

were downed.

By noontime, 15 separate attacks were launched against the Russian SAM

installations. More than 50 SAM launch sites were destroyed or heavily damaged at the cost of 14 attacking aircraft. But the grim total was just the tip of the iceberg. The commanders of the Western Forces estimated there were still as many as 2000 to 3000 more operational missile sites scattered throughout the Badlands. And there would be no more "sneak" attacks —the Russians would be waiting for the attackers from now on.