The Warbirds (50 page)

“I’d like to know what happened to C.J.,” he now said, more to himself than to the waiting Sergeant Nesbit.

“There’s a chance the PSI might have picked him up…”

The sergeant deftly typed a series of code words into the classified command communications set in his charge, waited a few moments, then typed in a series of instructions. A voice came over the transmitter, raspy and broken but understandable. “Hey, Reno, this is Nes, how do you copy?” The answering voice from the Watch Center came through much better. “Do me a favor, check with the analysts on the floor and see if they’ve got anything on a Major Charles Justin Conlan. We lost him today and think he might have been picked up by the PSI.” The sergeant broke the transmission and turned in his seat, “Colonel, what you saw was a test of the voice circuits of the command net, only this one didn’t get monitored or recorded.”

Nesbit had to wait thirty minutes before the printer came to life and spit out that a message from the trawler off Ras
Assanya had been intercepted. When Nesbit read it he wished he’d never asked. He ripped off the sheet of paper and handed it to Waters.

The anger Waters felt did not match the calm in his voice. “Jack, I’ve got a job for you. How’s Thunder with the Pave Spike?”

Jack was puzzled by Waters’ reference to the laser illuminator. The accuracy of the system was phenomenal but the aircraft carrying the laser pod had to orbit while the wizzo kept the laser’s beam centered on the target until another aircraft could toss a “smart bomb” that would home on the reflected energy. The target had to be relatively undefended for them to hang around that long. “Good, but I imagine he’s rusty. Anyway, I think those ships are too heavily defended—”

Waters shook his head. “I want you to illuminate that trawler while Bull tosses a bomb into the basket. We’re going to sink that son of a bitch. Without an air cover you shouldn’t have trouble.”

“But why, Colonel? That trawler isn’t going to help them now and it’s a noncombatant.”

“It
became
a combatant when it pulled C.J. and Stan out of the water and turned them over to a PSI patrol boat. The PSI executed them on the spot. I’m going to return the favor.”

Jack set up a standard pylon turn around the slow-moving trawler, feeling naked, while Thunder illuminated the target. His back seater’s crisp voice came over the radio signaling that he had a lock on and clearing Bull to toss his bomb. Bull Morgan’s precision was legendary, but without some type of smart bomb, hitting the trawler would have been more luck than skill. Jack watched, fascinated, as the two thousand-pound bomb separated from under Morgan’s F-4 and arced downward toward the trawler, and then as it picked up the reflected laser energy and refined its trajectory it showed a series of little jerks and wobbles as it fell toward the trawler. It impacted three feet from the point that Thunder had laid the crosshairs on and penetrated to the keel before its delayed-time fuse activated, and it exploded. The ship buckled upward,
splitting in two and sinking a half-minute later. Jack broke out of orbit and headed for base.

It was twilight when Jack taxied in and swung the Phantom around on the concrete apron in front of the bunker, pointing its tail into the waiting cavern. As soon as he dropped F-4’s arresting hook, one of the waiting crew chiefs connected a tow cable to pull it inside while the other attached a steering bar to the nose gear and signaled for power to the winch, which guided the Phantom into its nest. Since 512’s bunker did not have in-bunker refueling, a fuel truck was waiting for them, hose outstretched and ready. Before Jack or Thunder could climb down, refueling was underway and a dolly had been wheeled under the Pave Spiker laser pod for downloading. A maintenance stand had been pushed up against the tail and a fresh drag-chute was being jammed into its compartment in the empennage. The gun-plumbers pushed a munitions dolly with three Mavericks already hung on a LAU-88 launcher under each wing for upload…The phone in the bunker rang. Jack and Thunder were wanted in the command post.

“The C-130 will be taking off on its fifth shuttle in a few minutes and will be back in two hours from Dhahran,” Waters told the assembled men in the command post. “I want a hundred bodies on board every time it takes off. Have your people ready to go. We should have a second C-130 shuttling in around 2100. We’ll pick the pace up then and should be able to move two hundred people out every two hours. Okay, that’s it. Get back to your troops, tell them what’s going down and make it happen.”

“Jack, Thunder,” Waters called, motioning them to follow him, and the three walked over to the COIC, where they found thirty-six aircrews waiting and eager for their chance to be assigned to a mission. Having an extra crew for every two aircraft should now pay off, Waters figured…the fifty-one mission-capable aircraft the 45th possessed were standing loaded and ready to go, but many of the crews had already flown two combat missions and all were dog tired. A fresh and welcome team was about to be rotated into the fight.

Waters got right to the point: “The ships coming toward
us are about halfway here. We’re going after them with twenty birds as soon as it’s dark. You’ll be using Mavericks so you can stand off, launch and leave. The four Weasels we’ve got left will go in with you and try to suppress their air defenses. Intel says they’ve got shipboard SAMs and Triple A. Your job isn’t to sink them but to get them turned away. As long as they keep coming, we keep hitting them. The other twelve crews are CAP, but they’ll sit alert in the bunkers. Any MiGs supporting those ships will have to come to us now. Our GCI will give us warning to scramble on them. Captain Locke will help you plan and coordinate the attack. That’s it. Any questions?”

There was none, except from Jack: “Sir, can I fly
this
one?”

“No, you’ve flown once. You’ll get another chance. For now I want you to hang around while these crews brief; you should be able to help. Then get some rest, it’s going to be a long night.”

Evening twilight had ended and the quarter-moon would not rise until two in the morning, creating the conditions Waters wanted: use darkness as a cover and at the same time catch the ships away from any coverage the MiGs might give them. Experience told him that Weasel operations forced the PSI missileers to shut their radars off and rely on visual sightings to track and fire, a bad nighttime tactic. Now, at 8:30
P.M.
, the big blast doors on thirty-six bunkers swung open and twenty-four Phantoms cranked engines. The other twelve crews sat in their cockpits, waiting for a scramble order on any MiGs that might challenge them.

The Weasels taxied out, the first pair turning onto the active runway, setting their brakes, the caged power of the J-79 engines driving the nose of each bird down, and rolling at the first green wink from the tower. In less than two minutes twenty-two aircraft followed them into the night sky.

Jack returned to the Command Post, joining Waters in what seemed an interminable waiting game. Both knew the risks without talking about them…The enemy ships mounted SA-N-5, a naval version of the Strela, nasty little missiles, and Intel had established that there were SA-8s
and 9s on the decks. But who knew how many Triple A or Strelas they had to throw at the 45th? It was going to be tough, no question…

The Phantoms’ pilots didn’t have time for such thoughts as they skimmed the surface, eating up the sixty-five miles to the oncoming fleet. None had any illusions about getting onto the ships undetected and all hoped the eight minutes flying time would be too short a reaction time for the ships to bring up their defenses. Three minutes out, the bear in the lead Weasel reported he was picking up a signal. “Probably an SA-8,” he told his pilot. He studied his radar for a moment. “I’m painting a lot of small craft in front of the big stuff.” The pilot started doing easy jinks back and forth, which at their speed should, he figured, defeat Strelas, the small shoulder-held SAM that might be fired at them from a small boat.

The Ukrainian on the Shershen-class torpedo boat leading the fleet pressed his headset to his ears, listening to the constant flow of information being radioed by the
Sirri
, the Alligator-class landing ship that served as the fleet’s flagship. The Soviets had given the PSI the
Alexander Tortsev
, a four-thousand-ton amphibious assault vessel, and the PSI had renamed it the
Sirri
, following the Iranian practice of naming assault vessels after islands in the Gulf. Its main cargo deck was loaded with eighteen T-62 tanks and ten BTR-40P scout cars, all capable of wading ashore.

The radar on the
Sirri
had picked up the fast-moving attackers and was sending out warnings. When he was sure of the incoming track of the Phantoms, the Ukrainian picked up the small heat-seeking missile and waited. He caught a glimpse of the bird moving toward him at over 500 miles per hour. The man barely had time to swing the shoulder-held missile into the path of the F-4 and pull the trigger. He had time, however, to watch with satisfaction as the U.S.-made Stinger homed on the Phantom’s tailpipe, scoring a direct hit. A small explosion then engulfed the rear-half of the Phantom as it tumbled into the water. The Ukrainian silently thanked his Iranian allies and was pleased to know they had more Stingers.

The Phantoms had spread into a wide pattern, converging on the fleet from all points of the compass. They planned to attack simultaneously and for a few seconds saturate the defenders. The crews remembered Jack’s description of the most likely survival tactic: “one pass, haul ass,” or as Thunder put it, “shoot and scoot.” A crew from the 378th zigzagged through the defenders, heading for the
Sirri
. Its Wizzo pinpointed its bright return on his radar and the Maverick’s infrared seeker-head was sensing the unbelievably bright target at six miles. He drove the crosshairs onto the heat-signature and locked on. The pilot grunted when his wizzo told him he was cleared to pickle, then headed into a gap between two small patrol boats escorting the
Sirri
. He popped to twelve hundred feet to fire the Maverick and hit the pickle button, sending two missiles with their one-hundred-twenty-five-pound warheads toward the ship. But before he could jam his plane back onto the deck to escape, a crossfire of Triple A from the patrol boats ripped into the fuselage, building a huge fireball in the night.

The late pilot’s wingman marked the crossfire, teeth grinding, and headed for the two escort boats. He was able to avoid the trap his lead had fallen into and rippled off two Mavericks at the boat on the right, then jinked hard, pulling to the deck and leveling off fifty feet above the water as a stream of tracers etched the sky above him. His wizzo noted that the two Mavericks had blown the patrol boat apart and that the
Sirri
was burning as they ran for home. At least some payback…

A crew from the 377th now arced across the water toward a heavily camouflaged Polnocny-class landing ship in the van of the fleet. The wizzo’s RHAW gear was screaming its loud warbling cry at them, telling them they were in the beam of a guidance radar. He checked the RHAW scope and didn’t see any flashing symbols that indicated a missile was tracking them, so he punched off the system’s audio. Probably a malfunction, he told himself, willing to rely on visual warnings on the scope.

The crew never saw the two missiles that blew them out of the sky…

Wrango, a Wolf from the 378th, was tail-end Charlie.
He circled the fleet three hundred feet off the deck, selecting a target, counted twelve fires and decided to hit a ship that was coming to the aid of a burning freighter. When his wizzo couldn’t make the system lock on as he ran in, Wrango had to break off the attack run. “We’ll have to come back another day,” he told his Wizzo. But neither saw the stream of thirty-millimeter tracers reaching for them from the burning ship as they turned away, presenting their exposed belly to the ship. Two explosions promptly rocked the Phantom. Wrango’s telelight panel flashed warnings at him as the stick shuddered in his hand and he had to fight to control the violently shaking plane as he yelled at his wizzo to retard the throttles while he ballooned to a higher altitude. For three minutes he kept up the fight for control as smoke and fumes filled the cockpit. Finally, unable to take his hands from the stick, he yelled for his backseater to eject them.

It was a clean ejection, the Martin-Baker performing as advertised, and they landed unhurt in the water less than a thousand feet apart. The wizzo had released his parachute risers when his feet touched the water and was pulling himself into his one-man dingy when he felt a sharp tug at his foot. Before he could check it…he figured his boot was caught in a parachute shroud…two more sharks hit him, one ripping off his leg, the other gouging him in the side. The man’s scream carried a quarter-mile over the calm water. Wrango never heard it. Two sharks had hit him before he could release his parachute risers, and now his inflated parachute dragged him, lifeless, through the water.

Sergeant Nesbit handed Waters a note telling him the C-130 from Mildenhall had called in and would be landing in ten minutes with a VIP code-six on board. “What the hell’s a general coming in here for?” Waters said, collecting Jack and heading for the bunker the wing was using to muster the next group to be evacuated. They found Stansell in front of the bunker when they drove up. “Rup, get all the women out quick as you can.” Waters paused and looked at the clipboard Stansell was holding. “Get
most of Intel out too.” If the base was overrun, he sure as hell did not want Intel captured.

“Colonel,” Stansell said, “the women aren’t asking for any special favors, let’s go with the priority we’ve established. Intel, okay, we don’t need them now—”

Their exchange was cut off by the howl of the C-130 as it taxied to a halt in front of the bunker, the crew-entrance door opened and Shaw stepped onto the ramp as the engines spun down. Stansell was rushing the next group aboard the ramp at the rear of the Hercules.