Final Storm (12 page)

Now there was only one left …

Hunter sliced through the air at Mach 2-plus to overtake the hapless Forger, who was maneuvering near the flaming deck of the
Brezhnev
, trying frantically to signal the ship to activate the autoguidance system that would link with his on-board autostabilizer to land the cumbersome jumpjet.

Another bolt of anger shot through Hunter as he watched the Soviet interceptor hovering over the carrier’s burning deck, its hot exhaust gases merging with the flames and smoke, blowing them out and fanning them in a large circle around where the plane was to touch down. This was one of the guys that iced the defenseless transports, he thought. Without hesitation, he clamped down on his cannon trigger and let loose a long burst of fire.

The shells immediately tore into the length of the hovering Soviet airplane. Its forward lift engines instantly blew out and failed. The pilot, caught in the middle of the furious barrage, slumped forward on his control stick, causing the stricken Forger’s nose to drop sharply. It hung there, suspended for a brief, terrible moment as the rear engine struggled to keep the plane aloft.

Then the pointed nose of the plane plunged straight through the burning deck of the
Brezhnev
, propelled by its still-firing rear engine and burrowing down to the second deck of the big ship. A muffled explosion shook the Soviet carrier as the Forger’s weapon loads and remaining fuel supply blew up deep within the ship’s interior.

High above, Hunter’s wings were buffeted by the force of the blast as the ship’s main magazine was touched off three decks below by the burning plane.

The
Brezhnev
settled back into the water now, her back broken by the powerful explosions. Flaming fuel and oil from the fires raging on deck now poured onto the sea around the ship, creating a series of floating bonfires.

At that awesome and frightening moment, all of the Soviet gunners stopped firing and all of the American airplanes stopped attacking.

It was as if someone had blown a whistle—the battle was over …

The surviving AC-130s turned eastward and gunned their engines. Close behind were five F-16s.

Only Hunter remained, circling the battle zone at 10,000 feet.

As he stared down at the flaming, oil-slickened water, he wasn’t thinking about the destruction that had just been wrought—No, his mind was filled with thoughts of the first Soviet pilot he’d shot down earlier while trying to protect the airliners. He had destroyed the Forger—and its pilot—with such workmanlike precision it scared him.

Was that really all there was to it? Was that how easy it was to kill a man? And could the situation have been reversed? Would that Soviet flyer have blown
him
out of the sky so coldly, so efficiently? Would he have watched as Hunter plummeted downward into the frigid Atlantic waters? Would he have felt the same strange emptiness that was inside of Hunter now? Why was it okay for Hunter to kill and not the other way around?

Maybe Jones was right … this
was
the way it had to be: kill or be killed. Get the other guy before he gets you. Reduce it all down to numbers and technology, and guaranteed you’ll factor out the human equivalent. Understand that and it gets easy—too damned easy. Jones had explained the killing all right. But he never told him how to live with it afterward.

With that thought firmly entrenched in his psyche, he booted in his afterburner and streaked off to rejoin the air convoy group as it headed for Rota.

Far below and not a half mile from the battle scene, Captain Spaulding was just hauling himself aboard his inflated life raft.

He had watched the titanic battle from a dangerously close vantage point, bobbing in the sea, not daring to inflate his raft for fear the angry Soviet sailors would try to shoot him.

Now that the battle was obviously over, he clambered aboard the raft and forced-vomited the seawater from his stomach. Then, completely exhausted, he simply let the raft drift, not quite believing that he was still alive or that he had witnessed one of the most awesome air-sea battles in history.

Two hours later, still only a few miles from where four Soviet ships lay dead and smoking in the water, he watched as the carrier
Brezhnev
exploded once again and finally slipped beneath the waves.

At Rota

R
OTA NAVAL BASE SPRAWLS
along the Spanish coast near the mouth of the Mediterranean.

A “home-away-from-home” port for the US Sixth Fleet in peacetime, Rota was now the choke point for incoming supplies to NATO’s southern flank. The first flight of the “air bridge” had landed, and the tons of cargo, machinery and materiel that had been so frantically loaded at Langley hours before was now being just as frantically off-loaded.

Truck convoys streamed through the airfield in endless green lines of chugging diesel smoke and grinding gears, picking up supplies for the long hazardous road trip to the fighting front, hundreds of miles away. Navy trucks ferried cargo loads to the docks, where ships of all kinds from the Sixth Fleet were jammed into the harbor, filling their holds with the supplies and ammunition that would support the Navy’s Mediterranean operations.

Huge containers rolled out of giant transport planes onto flatbeds, and were picked up by towering cranes that lowered them into the gaping holds of the big supply ships.

On the flight line, loading crews swarmed each plane almost before it had stopped taxiing, popping airlift doors and opening loading hatches to disgorge the big planes’ hastily packed cargo to the waiting trucks.

As soon as one transport had been relieved of its burden, another would be hurried along the runway to take its place in the long line of stuffed birds waiting to be gutted. This was the first stop in the air bridge that stretched back across the Atlantic, to Langley and the mountains of supplies in warehouses and supply depots across the United States.

All the while, the sky was swarming with helicopters, shuttling in and out. Some were big workhorses like the Chinook, taking on supplies that could not wait to be driven to the front. Others were gunships, returning to this—one of the only true “rear areas” in the war—for re-arming and/or repair. Other choppers carried messengers, cameras, the wounded, doctors, even an occasional civilian casualty. Still others simply orbited the big base, watched the ground below like hawks for prey, ready to thwart any possible terrorist-like attack.

Still farther up, two E-3 AWACS planes were keeping watch for any enemy air strike or missile attack.

On other runways below, the decimated airliners had limped in to the airbase with tattered wings and shredded fuselages, burning engines trailing smoke. At least two had pancaked into the runway, snapping their landing gear as they touched down.

Streaks of foam drying on the surface traced the path of a DC-10 that had landed wheels-up and flipped over, its wreckage pushed out of the way by the ground crews. And everywhere there were ambulances and stretchers and wounded men.

The survivors of the A-10 flight had landed nearby, and the pilots looked over their planes with the ground crews, fingering the bullet holes and noting other battle damage. Each pilot, some furtively and others openly, had taken a look down the now-shortened line of Thunderbolts, and wondered how Captain Spaulding would have told the pilots’ families …

In the cold, but sunny Spanish skies overhead, the six F-16s flew in a tight formation over the air base.

First three of the fighters peeled off and landed, then the second group mimicked the maneuver. Although in light of then-decisive victory against the Soviet task force, tradition may have dictated a victory roll or two, neither Hunter nor the other pilots felt this was the time or the place. They had witnessed not just a battle but a disaster in which thousands lost their lives. As such, they had no desire for grandstanding.

Hunter set his plane down last and taxied over to where the rest of his squadron was parked. As he shut down the engine and popped the canopy, the ground crews began their work, chocking the wheels and helping him unstrap.

He climbed out onto the wing and then down to meet the rest of the squadron.

For the first time, they all shook hands and formally introduced themselves. Crider, DuPont, Christman, Rico, and Samuels. They had just been names to Hunter back at Langley. The “extras” in the unfolding war epic. Now, as he took in their faces, he felt as if they were his brothers.

After the planes were secured, the pilots made their way to the briefing room near the base’s command center. It was a small auditorium, rows of chairs with small desks attached to their right armrests assembled in front of a stage where a single lectern stood in front of a series of maps hanging from the wall.

The map on top was of Western Europe, with concentric rings traced in increasing diameters around the focal point, a small dot on the south coast of Spain labeled “Rota.” The rest of the maps showed the various points on the European continent where fighting had broken out.

Drained and exhausted, Hunter had shuffled into the darkened briefing room and slumped into the nearest chair. The last thing he thought he’d hear was a familiar voice …

“Hey, flyboy, don’t I know you?”

Hunter looked up to see JT Toomey and Ben Wa, Hunter’s old Thunderbird buddies, standing over him. “Jesus Christ …” was all Hunter could say, standing up to shake JTs hand.

“Welcome to sunny Spain, my man,” Toomey said, his ever-present sunglasses reflecting the room’s subdued lights. “You’ll like it here. It’s just like Nellis, except that the Vegas hookers were expensive and the casino booze was cheap; Here, the Spanish hookers are cheap and the booze is expensive …”

Ben Wa, the so-called “Flyin’ Hawaiian,” was right behind JT, furiously pumping Hunter’s hand and beaming.

“Glad to see you could make the party, Hawk,” he said. “Can’t have any fun without the Wingman.”

Wingman. Hunter’s nickname had been bestowed upon him the first day he’d been at Nellis, when General Jones had assigned him to fly on his wing even before Hunter had sat in the F-16’s cockpit. At first the Wingman label had been uttered sarcastically, but after he had proved his unique flying abilities, the cynics had become believers, and the name was almost reverently connected with Hunter’s from then on.

“It’s great to see you guys …” Hunter said sincerely, looking around the room. “But where’s the Jones Boy?”

Suddenly someone yelled: “Atten-
shun
!”

At that moment, a small, wiry but sturdy figure walked onto the stage, carrying with him a fistful of paper and an undeniable sense of drama. Setting his briefing papers down on the lectern, he stared out at the small audience.

“At ease, gentlemen,” Jones said. Then he nodded toward Hunter and added: “Glad you could join us, Captain. Same for you other men. Crider, DuPont, Christman, Rico, Samuels. Glad you all made the trip in one piece …”

General Seth Jones was the picture of what an Air Force general officer was supposed to look like: his posture ramrod straight, blue flightsuit festooned with ribbons and wings, the trademark cigar clenched between his white teeth.

“First of all, that was top-notch work out there, men,” Jones said, referring to the battle at sea. “Extraordinary, even. If and when this thing is over, you boys may be looking at some Air Medals, or maybe even something higher …”

With that, the accolades ended. They all knew Jones had the latest intelligence data from Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, commonly known as SAUCER, which was NATO’s high command. The pilots quickly took chairs nearer the front of the room as Jones pulled down a map of Central Europe with the current disposition of forces highlighted in red and blue.

“The purpose of this briefing is to update you new men on the situation,” Jones said, speaking clearly and distinctly despite the cigar in his mouth. “Gentlemen, in a word, that situation is grim. Possibly even worse than we had first imagined …”

He stopped to flick an ash and let his words sink in.

Then he began again: “Although the war has been on for more than twenty-four hours now, we really don’t have much hard information beyond what you probably already know. According to the latest reports, West Germany was hit pretty hard. We know that major SCUD missiles hits landed here, here, here, and here in the heaviest concentrations.”

His listing of the locations was punctuated by taps of his pointer at Frankfurt, Bremerhaven, Bonn, and Stuttgart.

“In Bremerhaven, they lobbed in persistent nerve agents with the SCUDs, rendering the whole damn port and city useless for months, thereby denying us a route through which we could have re-supplied the central ground units in Germany,” Jones continued.

“The rest of the gas was a nonpersistent nerve agent, probably GD, which will likely disperse in forty-eight hours or less. As far as we can tell, there has yet to be any major enemy troop advance into these areas, or along any front as yet. Just probing actions so far. They are most likely waiting for the gas to dissipate at least to the point where they can send in some armor with a forward decontamination team. Of course, we are under the same limitation, with the added problem that, sorry to say, NATO troops are woefully underequipped for this type of chemical warfare.

“But our spy satellites show us that the invasion is coming—soon.”

“What’s the status of our operating bases in West Germany?” DuPont asked. “Is anything flying up there at all?”

Jones shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not,” he said, turning back to the large map of Western Europe. “We’ve been forced to abandon all the forward German airfields. The main ones have been gassed, and the ground forces have been torn up so badly we weren’t sure how long we could hold them even if we’d stayed.

“Fortunately, we had enough warning to fuel up the aircraft and get the gas masks and CBW gear handed out at the airfields before the strikes hit. We managed to save most of the aircraft and some of the ground and support personnel.”

“What about civilians? Dependents? Service families?” Hunter asked, not really sure that he wanted to hear the answer.