Final Storm (23 page)

“Has it come to this now?” Hunter wondered aloud. “Killing in space? Machines killing other machines? Why do they even bother with us flesh and blood types, sir?”

“Please don’t get philosophic on me, Captain,” Jones said, holding up his hand. “Some human still has to push the right buttons to make it all happen.

“Besides, before this thing is over we’ll have guys knifing each other in muddy trenches even as our ‘space invaders’ are battling it out in orbit, mark my words.”

Hunter drained his drink. “So, what
is
the latest situation, sir?” he asked. “Still bad?”

Jones nodded grimly, leaned back and re-lit his cigar.

“Is it getting worse?” Hunter asked.

Once again, Jones just nodded.

“Any chance it will still go nuclear, sir?”

This time, Jones hesitated for a moment. “Officially, the answer to your question is ‘yes,’” the officer said finally. “Beyond that, everything else is classified …”

Jones poured out two more drinks. Looking at Hunter now, the senior officer was reminded of days long ago on the sweltering jungle airstrips of Vietnam, when he had flown and fought beside Hunter’s father. Flying missions was
really
like a job back then. Take off. Drop your bomb load. Dodge some SAMs and be home for supper. Next day, do it all again.

Now, in this
real
war, every combat mission had to be evaluated in terms of how many young men wouldn’t return, if any. And he, Jones, had the responsibility for all of them. It was no joyride taking the handling of lives other than your own, and having to live with the consequences afterward.

“Now, I do suggest you get some sleep,” Jones told him, abruptly breaking up their drinking session. “
Real
sleep, I mean. You’ll need it tomorrow.”

Hunter didn’t ask him why or what would take place the next day—part of him didn’t want to know. He just stood up, thanked the general and saluted.

“Briefing starts at oh-six-hundred,” Jones said, returning to his data through a haze of cigar smoke. “Be on time, Captain …”

“Yes, sir,” Hunter said, turning to leave.

Jones had been careful not to let his voice betray his innermost feelings. That was part of it, too, he thought as Hunter walked out of the room.

The responsibility of command was not for sharing.

Hunter was the first one to report to the briefing early the next morning.

Alone in the room, staring at the large map on the wall, he realized why Jones had been so reluctant to tell him the news from the front the night before. Many things had happened in the past twenty-four hours. When Hunter had first seen the map before him, it was covered with red and blue opposing arrows slashing across the continent of Europe. Now the center of the map was dominated by just two huge red arrows that carved straight through West Germany in the north and south.

It didn’t take a master tactician to determine the arrows were converging on France. In fact, they were pointing almost directly at Paris.

The original plan was for NATO to let the Soviets plow across the no-man’s-land of West Germany, slowing them up with harassing actions and meeting them in full force somewhere west of the Rhine.

But now it was obvious that the Soviet tide flowing west had not been slowed down much, if at all, despite punishing losses from the slowly withdrawing rear guard forces. A strong stand by NATO had been made at the Rhine River and held back the Red Army’s juggernaut for nearly twelve hours in some of the bloodiest fighting the continent had ever seen.

But it had not been enough.

Now, the entire NATO front was collapsing back toward France.

With the land war going so badly, it was clear that the combined air forces of the West had become the only effective means of stopping the Soviet onslaught. Flying a combination of strategic and tactical bombing runs, close air support, and long-range interdiction missions, it was the air forces that had so far held the Soviets from an all-out successful
blitzkrieg-like
dash to the sea.

How many missions had been flown, Hunter wondered, still studying the map. From allied fields in France, Belgium, Holland, Spain and England? How many pilots had been lost? How many airplanes?

How long would this madness continue?

There was a definite whiff of desperation in the air. The base seemed to be shrinking, as more and more NATO aircraft had come to call it home. On his way to the briefing, he saw an incredible assortment of displaced Free World aircraft had been crowded onto the tarmac, most of them arriving during the early morning hours.

Even the map in the briefing room seemed to be getting smaller, he thought. Or maybe it was an optical illusion, caused by the shrinking of the blue-colored NATO-controlled territory.

But worst of all, the cluster of chairs around the briefing room’s podium was getting smaller, drawing in closer like wagons in a besieged camp. The day Hunter first came to Rota, there had been nearly forty pilots jammed in the briefing room, elbow-to-elbow in the small desks.

Jones would have the chairs removed when pilots didn’t come back, and now, just two and a half days later, there were only fifteen seats left.

What was it Jones had told him about how many ways there were to die in an airplane? It seemed to Hunter that the lost pilots of the 16th TFW had covered all the bases. A pilot named Daly had been shot down by a MiG over Stuttgart. Someone named Bachman had caught a SAM on a bombing mission to Poland. Chang ditched in the Med and was never recovered. Van Dell hit the side of a mountain in the French Alps in a dense fog. O’Neil had run low on fuel and bailed out over Soviet-held Germany, only to be shot by ground troops.

And Teddy Crider, one of the guys that had flown over with him from Langley, had augered in during a raid on the city of Aachen. Of them all, Hunter had only known Crider. The rest were just names to him.

Extras in the war movie …

Yet despite the appalling loss of pilots, there was a small pinprick of good news which Jones brought them as soon as all of the remaining pilots had assembled.

The weary officer, halfway through his breakfast cigar, told them that although it was too early to tell for sure, it
did
appear that the strategy of hitting the Soviets’ extended supply lines was slowly having an effect. NATO intelligence was hinting that the advancing Red Army might be facing an increasingly crucial supply problem in the next twenty four hours. In fact, there was even evidence, though slim and preliminary, that the Soviets had slowed the steady progress westward they had made since punching across the Rhine, because of the stepped-up raids on their rear areas.

But there was no less a price to pay for continuing this tactic.

As Jones explained it, the enemy’s rear areas were, if anything, even more heavily protected by SAMs and AAA guns, as well as fighters, many of which the Soviets had drawn from their top echelon reserves based in Asia.

That was why NATO was about to change tactics.

Jones bluntly told them that the Pentagon was planning “a final push.”

Final
was the word that caught everyone’s attention in the briefing room.
Final for whom?

Jones explained that a sweeping counterstrike was being planned to sever the Red Army’s supply lines that had so quickly extended across most of Europe. The idea was to cut off the head of the Soviet arrows that were poised to pierce the heart of France and complete the evil empire’s conquest of Europe.

Called Operation Rolling Thunder, the plan involved a massive airborne assault of key enemy points stretching back into West Germany and even beyond, to be carried out by a combined force of NATO parachute units, primarily American and British troops. But for such a bold, almost desperate move to work, three things had to be accomplished: 1)NATO had to gain absolute air superiority over the battlefield, 2) the almost-straining Soviet supply lines had to be hit in one massive blow, and with a force harder than the tactical fighters could deliver, and 3) the paratroopers had to land on their targets at the right time in the right place.

Jones told them that they had no control over points 2 and 3. But Point 1, gaining air superiority, was right up their alley.

And that’s what the core of the briefing was all about: the aerial portion of the counter-attack, code-named Operation Chained Lightning. The final push in the air …

“Our plan calls for a non-stop fighter sweep across the entire Western Front for the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours,” Jones told them. “Every NATO fighter from here in Rota all the way up to Oslo and back that can fly is going to be put in the air. They are even transitting over some old National Guard birds from the States. The objective is to draw the enemy’s entire air force into a battle over France—and as we knock off their first-echelon squadrons, they’ll move up their second-stringers, and then the reserves.

“If we can, we’ll make them commit every plane, every pilot, and every SAM this side of the Urals to the defense of the front. If we can accomplish this, we can take the heat off the paratroopers once they are sent in, and we can clear the way for the big attack on the enemy supply lines.

“So, for us of the 16th TFW, that means flying multiple sorties—day and night if we have to—for the next couple of days. And I’m not going to mince words. It’s going to be damn tough.”

The general paused, scanning the pilots again. I’ll never get used to this part, he thought. I’ll never get used to sending young men up to die. But he knew there was no choice.

“General,” one of the junior pilots had spoken up in a slightly shaken tone, “when will the flight schedule be posted?”

“Mister,” Jones answered firmly, “there
will be no
flight schedule. All of us will take off at thirteen hundred hours today, and from that point on, every man will refuel and rearm and take off again as often as possible. You will be flying up to the battle area in pairs or even independently. You will be expected to use your own judgment as to whether or not your aircraft—and you as a pilot—are capable of another sortie.”

The rather bizarre orders were met with many an open mouth or involuntary exclamation for the pilots.

“Now I know this is all very unorthodox,” Jones continued. “But the success of Operation Chain Lightning depends on us flying as many sorties as possible. However, you won’t be helping the effort by flying a badly damaged airplane, or flying when you can’t keep your eyes open.

“But I’ll level with all of you. We’re blowing the wad on this one. If this grand counter-attack fails, then anything can happen. Including the use of nuclear weapons. Either by us, or by them.”

“What about the other part of the operation, General?” another pilot asked. “This attack on the supply lines. If all our airplanes are caught up in the fighter sweep, who’s going to hit the enemy’s supply lines?”

Jones took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“The nature of the rest of Operation Rolling Thunder is top secret,” he answered. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you any more than that. We just can’t take the chance of someone getting shot down with that knowledge. I don’t have to tell you how badly the enemy is going to want to know just what the hell we’re up to, and you can bet he’ll have ways to squeeze it out of you.”

The very thought fell across the room like a shadow, as each pilot saw his own private hell, created for him by his own imagination. Some things, Hunter thought, you
are
better off not knowing.

There were no more questions.

“It is now oh-seven hundred, gentlemen,” Jones said formally, checking his pilot’s chronograph. “I suggest you get some rest before this afternoon’s mission. We’re all going to need it.”

One by one, as they had come in, the pilots left. Some would seek the uneasy solace of a few hours’ restless sleep. Some would choose the distraction of a half-eaten breakfast that would later churn in their nervous stomachs. Some would write letters home. Some would pray.

Hunter had lingered behind the rest, watching Jones as the general began shoving maps and papers back into his briefcase, his brow furrowed as he thought about the orders he’d just given. To provide ground support to the retreating ground troops had been somewhat routine. To plan and execute a series of integrated deep strikes against the Soviet supply lines had been tougher, but not out of the realm of his pilots’ training.

But this Operation Chain Lightning was different …

A fighter sweep was something that hadn’t been used on such a grand scale since World War II. Back when Pappy Boyington and his Black Sheep Squadron had led more than a hundred planes at a time against the Japanese Zeros of Rabaul in the Pacific, bleeding them by using his Corsairs, Lightnings, and Thunderbolts to goad the enemy into dogfights they couldn’t win, or destroying them on the ground with strafing runs.

At least back then, the US had air superiority: better planes, better pilots, better bases than the enemy, and more planes to boot. Now almost the reverse was true. He had better pilots all right, and probably rivet-for-rivet better planes; but there were so few of them! And fewer bases, crowded with the fragments of a few hundred squadrons that lacked the spare parts, trained ground crews, and hardened facilities to do the job right.

But worst of all, Jones had to admit to himself, was the purpose of the fighter sweep—of Chain Lightning itself. Not to win a particular battle, or even really to establish long-term air superiority over the fighting front. No, the 16th and the other NATO fighter units were simply being used as bait for the Soviet fighters.

“Goddamn flying circus,” Jones mumbled to himself.

“What’s all this about a circus, General?”

The older man looked up, suddenly aware of Hunter’s presence.

“Nothing, Captain,” the general said quietly, running his hand through his gray-flecked whiffle-cut hair. “Just talking to myself. Happens when I haven’t had enough scotch. I think it affects my brain cells.”

Hunter knew better. Jones always exuded unalloyed confidence in any mission to which he was assigned, be it training an unruly group of Thunderbird candidates to bombing an enemy fuel dump a hundred miles behind the lines. Something wasn’t kosher about this Chain Lightning stuff.