Air Battle Force (7 page)

And they still had the gauntlet of the Pakistani air defenses, now on full alert, to run.

“We've worked the numbers as best we could, Muck,” David Luger said, “and the best we can figure is, it'll be close. The winds aren't helping you—you have a twenty-minute deficit. But if you can make it up to at least thirty-nine thousand feet and then do a very shallow idle-power descent, we think you'll make up the deficit. How's that slipway looking? Anything fly off yet?”

“Still looks like someone left a wad of scrap metal in there. Seems like we might lose part of the left side of the radome, too.”

“Roger. If the slipway still looks blocked, we'll have to send the tanker home. He doesn't have enough fuel to wait for you.”

“Send him home,” Patrick said. “Have him gas up and then launch after us. Maybe we'll move into precontact in the descent and have the boom operator take a close look.”

The Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier was a jumble of search radars and frantic radio messages in several different languages. “We may have lucked out,” Patrick said. “Sounds to me like everyone's running out of fuel and heading home. The Iranian SA-10s are still active, but they're intermittent. They might be afraid of shooting down their own aircraft or firing on a Pakistani jet over the border.”

“Great,” Rebecca said, putting more saline drops in her stinging eyes. “Maybe we'll avoid getting caught in the crossfire long enough to splash down in the Indian Ocean.”

“Wait, they're not going home—they're chasing another target!” Patrick exclaimed, studying the datalinked composite tactical display. He switched to his own laser-radar display and took a two-second snapshot. “There's a big target at our one o'clock position, eighty-three miles, low. It's huge—it looks as big as a 747, and it's radiating on several VHF, UHF, and some navigation search frequencies.” He switched radio frequencies. “Tin Man, this is Puppeteer.”

“Hi, boss,” Hal Briggs responded. Air Force Colonel Hal Briggs was an Army- and Air Force–trained commando and security expert, a longtime partner of Patrick's, and a close friend. He was now assigned as the commander of a secret unit at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base called the Battle Force, comprising highly trained and heavily armed commandos that supported special-operations missions all over the world.

“What do you guys think you're doing?” Patrick asked.

“Just trying to clear a path for you,” Hal replied. He had launched in the MV-32 Pave Dasher tilt-jet aircraft off the deck of their covert-operations freighter as soon as he saw Patrick's turn inland to pursue the errant StealthHawk. Loaded with extra fuel as well as electronic warfare jammers, Hal and his crew sped inland and established an orbit right along the Pakistan-Iran frontier, then activated their jammers and decoy transmitters. The decoy transmitters made the MV-32 appear a hundred times larger than its actual size on the Iranian and Pakistani radarscopes—too inviting a target to be ignored.

“We appreciate it, Tin Man,” Patrick said, “but we see at least a half dozen Iranian and Pakistani fighters within thirty miles of your location and one less than twenty miles that might have detected you. Get as low as you can and bug out to the southeast.”

“We're outta here, Puppeteer, but not to the southeast,” Hal responded. “You head southeast. We'll draw the bad guys away until you're clear. Save your fuel.”

“Are you armed?”

“Negative,” Hal replied. Normally the MV-32 carried two retractable pods that held laser-guided Hellfire missiles, Maverick TV-guided attack missiles, Stinger heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles, Sidearm antiradar missiles, or twenty-millimeter gun pods—but they also held three-hundred-gallon fuel tanks, and that's what this mission required. The MV-32 had a chin-mounted twenty-millimeter Gatling gun—that was its only defensive armament, almost completely ineffective against high-speed aircraft. “I need you to give us a heads-up on where the bad guys are, Puppeteer—and remember the third dimension.”

“I hear you, Tin Man,” Patrick replied. He switched his display to one that accentuated terrain even more—the laser-radar view was so detailed and precise that it looked like a daylight photograph. “Head south and stay as low as you can. Nearest bandit is at your four o'clock, moving in to fifteen miles, high. He's painting you with his radar. You have your jammers on?”

“Roger that.”

“There's a pretty deep crevasse at your one o'clock, eight miles. See it yet?”

“Negative.”

“He's counterjamming you—looks like he's got a solid lock on you,” Patrick said. “Turn right twenty degrees,
hard
.” Patrick knew that the MV-32 was fitted with infrared suppressors on the exhaust end of its fanjet engines, but they would still create very hot dots against the night sky that made easy targets for heat-seeking missiles. The first important task was to turn those hot exhausts away from the Iranian fighter's infrared sensors. “He's descending and slowing. He's trying to line up a shot.”

“Terrific.”

“He's too far away for us to reach you in time, Tin Man,” Patrick said. “Turn ten more right. He's closing to max IR missile range. Get ready to—”

“He fired!” Briggs shouted. “He fired again! Two incoming!” The MV-32 carried a tail-warning receiver that tracked the heat of enemy aircraft behind it—when the system detected a flash of heat from the same target, it assumed that the target fired a missile and issued a missile launch warning. “We're maneuvering . . . popping flares.” Patrick could hear the tension in Hal's voice, hear him grunt as the MV-32's pilot maneuvered hard into the missile. Once the Pave Dasher turned toward the missiles, the decoy flares would be the hottest dots in the sky, and the enemy missiles would go after them instead—he hoped.

“Translate positive Z!” Patrick shouted. “Now!”

The Pave Dasher had one feature the Iranian fighters lacked—the ability to fly vertically. As Patrick watched the pursuit unfold on his multifunction display, the MV-32 Pave Dasher suddenly stopped in midair, turned directly toward the incoming missiles, then flew straight up at five hundred feet per minute. Now there were two objects in the sky even brighter than the decoy flares—two fat, red-hot, yet invisible columns of jet-engine exhaust. It was too irresistible a target. Both missiles headed right for the tubes of heat and exploded harmlessly more than a hundred feet underneath the MV-32.

Patrick didn't see that. What he saw was the Iranian fighter still barreling directly at the MV-32. Either the Iranian was “target fixated”—so intent on watching his quarry die that he ignored his primary job of flying the airplane—or he was closing in for another missile attack or a gun kill. “Bandit's at your twelve o'clock, five miles, slightly high, closing fast!” Patrick radioed. “Lock him up and nail him!”

The MV-32's pilot immediately activated his own infrared targeting sensor and aimed it where Patrick told him. At less than six miles, the fighter was a huge green dot on the pilot's targeting scope. He immediately locked up the fighter into the targeting computer, slaved the twenty-millimeter Gatling gun to the target, and at three miles opened fire.

The Iranian pilot decided to fire his own thirty-millimeter cannon at two miles—that was the last mistake he'd ever make. The MV-32's shells sliced into the fighter's canopy and engines a fraction of a second before the Iranian pilot squeezed his trigger. The jet exploded into a fireball and traced a flaming streak across the night sky until it plowed into the mountains below, less than a mile in front of the Pave Dasher.

“Good shooting, guys,” Patrick said when the fighter disappeared from his tactical display. “Now start heading southwest. Your tail's clear. Nearest bandit is at your five o'clock, thirty-seven miles, not locked on.”

“Thanks for the help, boss,” Hal Briggs radioed. “See you back at home plate.”

“Don't hold breakfast. We're going to be up here awhile,” Patrick said. Rebecca Furness groaned but said nothing.

Five hours later, with the bomber still over three hundred miles from home, the Sky Masters support aircraft—a privately owned DC-10 airliner converted as a launch and support aircraft by the StealthHawk's designer, Jon Masters of Sky Masters Inc.—maneuvered slightly above and ahead of the Vampire. The DC-10's pilot, flight engineer, and boom operator, sitting in the boom operator's pod in the rear looking out through the large “picture window” underneath the boom, all came to the same conclusion: “Sorry, Puppeteer,” the boom operator reported. “The whole left side of the slipway is pushed in, and the slipway door is crumpled up inside there.”

“Any way you can use the boom to pry the door away from the slipway?” Patrick asked.

“It's worth a try,” the boomer said. Slowly, carefully, he used the refueling boom as a pick, trying to push and pull pieces of metal away from the receptacle at the bottom of the slipway. Twenty minutes later a large piece of metal bounced off the windscreen—thankfully, not cracking it. “Let's give it a try, Puppeteer.”

Patrick had to do the flying—Rebecca's eyesight was still too marginal for her to perform this delicate task. Patrick switched the flight-control computers to air-refueling mode and maneuvered the Vampire bomber up into contact position. The boom operator extended the probe. They saw the probe bounce and skid around the broken slipway, then finally ram against the receptacle. “No contact light,” the boomer said. “Toggles aren't engaging. But I'm right in there.”

“Start the transfer,” Patrick said.

The boomer started the transfer pumps—and immediately the windscreen iced completely over as hundreds of gallons of jet fuel gushed out of the receptacle, streamed back across the windscreen, and froze. “I lost contact with you,” Patrick said, activating the windshield de-ice system. “But I think we took some gas. I'll keep it as steady as I can—you just keep plugging me.”

It was the weirdest, scariest, and most violent aerial refueling Patrick had ever done. Time after time the refueling nozzle slammed into the damaged slipway; every time the probe reached the receptacle, the boom operator forced the nozzle tight against it, then turned the pumps on low. More fuel streamed out—but some
was
going into the Vampire's tanks.

One hundred miles away from Diego Garcia, the small island in the Indian Ocean leased by the United States Navy from Great Britain as a forward operating air base, the DC-10 unplugged for the last time. “We transferred two hundred thousand pounds, guys—but I have no clue how much actually went into your tanks.”

“At least you stopped the needles from moving to ‘E' for a while,” Patrick said ruefully. “Thanks. See you on the ground.”

“Good luck, Puppeteer.”

After putting the flight-control system back on its max endurance program, Patrick and Rebecca discussed the approach and landing. There was only one choice: a straight-in approach to the downwind runway. The winds near Diego Garcia would be pushing them toward the island, but the Vampire wouldn't have the fuel to try to turn into the wind for landing. Patrick would have to do the flying—and he would get only one shot at it.

Patrick tuned the number-one radio to the Navy's approach frequency. “Rainbow, this is Puppeteer.”

“Puppeteer, this is Charlie,” the U.S. Navy captain in charge of air operations at Diego Garcia Naval Air Station responded. “We've been monitoring your flight progress. State your intentions.”

“Straight-in approach to runway one-four, full-stop landing.”

“Will this landing be under full control?”

“Unknown, Charlie.”

“Stand by.” Patrick didn't have to stand by long: “Request denied, Puppeteer,” the captain said. “Sorry, Puppeteer, but we can't risk you shutting down the airfield with a crash landing—too many other flights rely on us for a dry strip of concrete. We can vector you to a ditching or bail-out zone and have rescue and recovery units standing by. Advise your intentions.”

“Charlie, we can make it,” Patrick replied. “If it looks like we won't come in under control, we'll divert away from the island. But I think we can make it. Requesting permission to land.”

“Request denied, Puppeteer,” the captain responded. “I'm sorry, but that answer comes from Hemingway.” “Hemingway” was the four-star commander of U.S. Central Command, who had overall operational authority over this mission.

“Sir, Puppeteer is declaring an emergency,” Patrick announced. “We have fifteen minutes of fuel and two souls on board. Our intentions are to attempt a full-stop landing on the downwind runway. Please have men and equipment standing by.”

Charlie was already talking—no,
shouting
—on the frequency when Patrick let go of the mike button: “. . . repeat, you
will not
attempt a landing on Diego Garcia, Puppeteer, do you understand me? Your aircraft represents an extreme hazard to this base. Accept vectors to the ditching zone. Acknowledge!”

“I copy, Rainbow,” Patrick said. He knew that the ops officer at Diego Garcia knew that Patrick was going to go over all their heads. He didn't care. The Vampire was in trouble, big trouble, and they weren't going to make it unless they got permission to land at Diego Garcia.

But a few minutes later Patrick got his answer from the secretary of defense himself—permission to land at Diego Garcia denied. It was too risky closing down that important Indian Ocean runway.

“What do we do now, General?” Rebecca said, remarkably calm for an aircraft commander who was going to lose her plane in just a few minutes. “We brief these contingencies for days before these missions. I can't believe we actually have to do it.”

A pair of U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bombers rendezvoused with the Vampire bomber to look it over and take pictures. Patrick thought the fighter pilots would try to crowd the bomber off its final approach path—they were tucked in tight, but they weren't going to try to bully the bigger jet away. “Puppeteer, don't do it,” one of the Navy pilots radioed. “If you shut down that runway,
I
might have to punch out. I won't take kindly to that—neither will my wife and kids.” Patrick did not reply.