Armageddon Mode

CHAPTER 8

“Tally-ho!” Tombstone yelled, using the age-old call that meant the quarry was in sight. He could see the other plane as a starlit shape approaching in the darkness, marked by twin pencils of flame as the other pilot kicked in his afterburners. “He’s climbing for us.”

“Hot damn!” Dixie replied. “We’re goin’ head-to-head!”

“AIM-9.” At close range, a Sidewinder launch gave them their best shot.

“What’s he flying anyway?”

“Can’t tell,” Tombstone said. “It’s damned hot, though. Look at him jink!”

Tombstone watched the bandit’s approach narrowly as he cut his engine back to eighty percent. Standard tactical doctrine for ACM — Air Combat Maneuvers — called for passing an opponent as closely as possible when meeting him head-on, not giving him room to turn and latch onto your tail.

The Indian pilot was good, he thought. Way too good for Tombstone’s peace of mind. By jinking his aircraft up, down, and sideways during the approach, he was making it impossible for Tombstone to calculate how much leeway to give him. The darkness didn’t help. The other plane was almost invisible … and there was no way to judge distance by eyeball alone. “Two thousand,” Dixie warned.

Tombstone felt himself tense as the other plane loomed close.

Munir Ramadutta watched the oncoming aircraft swell in his Fulcrum’s HUD. This American was good … but he’d expected no less. U.S. Navy aviators had a worldwide reputation independent of the militant posturings of their government.

He thumbed the switch arming his short-range AA-8 Aphid missiles. He was at a sharp disadvantage for close-in combat. The Aphid was not an all-aspect missile, meaning it had to “see” the enemy’s engine exhaust in order to achieve target lock.

In any case, he was too close to the American now, approaching too quickly to allow any time for thought or action. He would pass the Tomcat close on his left, then pull a half-loop-and-roll to get on the enemy’s tail.

The American drew still closer …

… and then the other plane was past, flashing close by the Tomcat at supersonic speed. Tombstone immediately pulled into a vertical climb and went to Zone Five burner, hoping to do a half-loop-and-roll that would drop him on the other pilot’s six, squarely behind him and a mile to the rear.

“Damn it, Stoney! Watch out!”

Tombstone yanked his head back at the warning, looking through the top of his canopy. The other plane was there, also climbing, cockpit-to-cockpit with the Tomcat.

It happened so quickly that he didn’t have time to react to the icy fear that struck him in that instant. The other plane was eerily illuminated by stars and the glow from Tombstone’s own afterburners, and so close that he could make out the other pilot’s helmeted shape in the light of his cockpit instrumentation, could see the bold numerals 401 on the other plane’s nose.

The other aircraft was close enough he could clearly identify it as a Mig-29, a Fulcrum, though his first impression had been that the nimble, twin-tailed aircraft was an American F/A-18 Hornet. The Indian pilot’s skill had saved them both. He’d been pulling the identical maneuver as Tombstone, but at the last moment had recognized the danger and avoided a midair collision. For perhaps two seconds, the fighters climbed, canopy to canopy, a scant ten meters apart, aimed at the stars … and then the Indian Mig rolled left and vanished into the darkness.

Tombstone reacted instantly, breaking right. He was now less interested in getting on the Indian Mig’s tail than he was in disengaging. A wrong move in the darkness at such close quarters would end in fiery disaster.

ACM was especially hard when you couldn’t pick up visual clues about the other pilot’s attitude, speed, angle of attack, or energy state.

“Blue Viper, Blue Viper, this is Victor Tango One-niner.” The Hawkeye’s call came over Tombstone’s headset as he started angling back toward the Indian Jaguars.

“Victor Tango, this is Viper Leader. Go ahead.”

“Blue Viper, you’ve got new targets entering your area. Be advised they are friendly, repeat, friendly. Over.”

“Hot damn,” Batman said. “Cavalry to the rescue!”

Tombstone glanced at his VDI. He saw the new blips … and apparently the Migs had seen them as well. They were turning, making for the mainland at high speed.

Which left the Indian Jaguars, dead ahead and in the clear, range thirty miles.

Colonel Singh checked his radio frequency. “Mountain, this is Krait Attack, inbound. Estimate range now sixty-five kilometers. Beginning attack run.”

He glanced left and right at the other Jaguars in his flight, faintly visible on either side of his aircraft as they skimmed the black ocean toward the southwest. The Exocet missiles they carried were just within range of the target now clearly painted on his radar screen, dead ahead.

“Krait Leader to all Kraits,” he said over the tactical frequency.

“Initiate targeting procedure. Gyros up now.”

They would launch in thirty seconds.

“Victor Tango, this is Blue Viper,” Tombstone said. “We’ve got four Alpha bandits lined up in our sights. Commencing Phoenix run.”

“We copy, Viper Leader,” the Hawkeye tactical officer replied. “Message from Homeplate. Green light. You’re go for missile release.”

“About damned time,” Tombstone muttered. He didn’t even stop to think whether the missile-release order referred to the attack planes ahead or his earlier request to fire on the Indian Migs.

Time enough to sort that out later. “Copy that, Victor Tango.”

Tombstone reached out and flipped a switch on his console. “Master arming switch on.” He opened the ICS. “Dixie? How about a solution on those bogies.”

“Got it, Tombstone. We’ve got four targets, range now three-oh nautical miles. On track-and-scan. Acquisition. AWG-9 locked in. We’re hot.”

“Phoenix armed and hot,” he confirmed. He flipped the target-designate switch with his left hand, watching the computer-generated graphics on his Vertical Display Indicator. “Okay, Dixie. Punch it!”

“Fox three!” Dixie announced. The Tomcat bumped as the heavy missile cleared and ignited. “Missile away!”

“Line up another one, Dixie.”

“Set! Acquisition! Locked and hot!”

“Punch it!”

“Fox three! Fox three!” The second Phoenix roared into the night.

“Krait Attack, Krait Attack, this is Mountain! Be advised we have small, high-speed targets, bearing two-seven-three your position on intercept course.”

Singh searched the sky through his cockpit. He could see nothing around his aircraft but stars partly blocked by a line of clouds behind him and the acquisition lights of the other Jaguars of his flight.

“Mountain, Krait Attack Leader. I don’t see-“

Suddenly, a Warning tone sounded in his headset. “Mountain, this is Krait Leader! We have missile-lock warning! Repeat, missile-lock warning. Someone is tracking us!”

“Krait Attack, we read two long-range air-to-air missiles. Range one-zero! Evade! Evade!”

“Krait Flight!” Singh snapped. “Do not evade! Maintain course … fire.”

He thumbed the release switch. There was a two-second pause. Then his Jaguar leapt skyward. Exocet weighed 660 kilos — well over 1,400 pounds — and he had his hands full for a moment battling to control his aircraft as the weapon dropped clear.

The missile’s engine kicked in as its autopilot brought it down to an altitude of fifteen meters above the wave tops. Cruise speed was just under Mach 1.

At that speed it would reach its target in a little less than three minutes.

“Batman!” Tombstone called. “Get in the game!” The VDI showed the other Tomcat five miles to the west.

“We’re in! Looks like the bad guy CAP decided to get out of Dodge!”

“Rog,” Tombstone said. “Let’s splash these attack planes before they-“

“Tombstone!” Dixie interrupted. “Targets scattering. I read six … no, ten bogies! Ten bogies!”

“Shit!” His VDI was set to repeat the tactical data from his RIO’s screen. He could see the close-grouped radar targets separating now, just beyond the computer graphic representations of the two Phoenix missiles already on the way. The bandits were launching on the Biddle.

Tombstone had two AIM-59s left, and Batman had four. The Indians were launching their Exocets, and there just weren’t enough Phoenix missiles to go around.

The maddening tone of missile lock continued to sound in Singh’s ears as he pulled the stick to the left. He looked again. Still nothing … A pinpoint flare of light came out of nowhere, twisting in a sharp, left-hand corkscrew as it bore down on Lieutenant Colonel Nijhawan’s Jaguar from the west.

“Himmat!” Singh shouted, “Watch-“

Orange flame fireballed against the night. For an instant, the glare illuminated the front half of his friend’s aircraft and one shattered wing as the Jaguar crumpled, folding up on itself as though it were a balsa-wood model crushed by a child’s hand.

The second explosion came a pair of heartbeats later, blasting the left wing from Krait Four before the flare of the first explosion had faded away. Singh glimpsed a secondary flash as the pilot rocketed into the night on his ejection seat.

Colonel Singh had first learned fighter combat while attending a special air combat training school for foreign pilots at Frunze, in the Soviet Union. Later, he’d flown with the RAF while learning to handle the SEPECAT Jaguar. He was one of the best pilots in the IAF, but this was beginning to feel more like target practice than combat … with his squadron as the targets.

“All aircraft, launch and return to base.”

The missile-threat warning was off. Perhaps there had been two, and only two missiles. If they had a few more seconds …

“Victor Tango One-niner, this is Viper Leader,” Tombstone radioed. “We have air-to-surface launch … probable Exocet. Six ASMS …” Two more blips appeared, moving quickly behind the others. The two surviving Indian planes had released at maximum range, then turned away. “Make it eight ASMS in the air, targeting Biddle.”

“Confirmed, Viper Leader,” the Hawkeye replied. “We have them. Protect Biddle. Target priority is Exocet launch.”

Tombstone had already arrived at the same conclusion. Wings laid back along its flanks, Tombstone’s F-14 howled along an intercept course. At his instructions, Dixie had already timed the lead of two closely spaced missiles. The Tomcat’s AWG-9 had what is known as “look-down/shoot-down” capability, meaning it could track objects below the F-14, moving only a few feet above the water. At a range of ten nautical miles, Dixie announced a target lock and stabbed the launch button. Their last Phoenix dropped clear, then ignited, rocketing into the darkness on a vivid comet tail of flame. Tombstone watched the graphics on his VDI, counting off the seconds as the AIM-54 closed the gap on the lead Exocet. Ten seconds after launch, the two blips merged.

“Hit!” he called.

“Target destroyed!” Dixie confirmed. “Holy … Second target gone! We nailed ‘em, two for one!”

The twin detonation of almost five hundred pounds of high explosives on the two missiles a few feet above the water had created a terrific shock wave. The second Exocet had flown into the blast and either been torn apart or driven into the sea.

“Two-one-six, fox three!” Batman’s familiar voice sounded over Tombstone’s headset. “Don’t be greedy, Stoney. Save some for us! Fox three!”

Tombstone’s VDI was becoming a confused tangle of targeting symbols and radar returns. He felt a sinking sensation as he watched the wave of missiles crawling across the screen. “Viper Leader is dry.” With no more Phoenix missiles slung under his Tomcat’s belly, there was little more he could do to halt the storm.

“Viper Two,” Batman added. “Down two. Firing two. Fox three! Fox three!”

Batman’s last two Phoenix missiles joined the clutter of radar blips.

Four more incoming Exocets died.

Two Exocets remained, vaulting the last small gap to the American frigate at the speed of sound.

The terrifying aspect of modern naval warfare is its sheer speed. In 1805, when Admiral Nelson faced the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar, the enemy had been in sight for hours by the time they finally opened fire; Nelson could have taken the better part of an afternoon deciding on tactics or changing his plans had he wanted to.

Modern warfare did not give the combatants that kind of luxury. Blows were exchanged, casualties taken, within a space of minutes, sometimes of seconds.

Biddle’s Close-in Weapons System, or CIWS for short, commonly pronounced “sea-whiz,” housed its tracking radar, six-barreled Gatling gun, magazine, and control electronics inside a prominent, white-painted silo fifteen feet high; hence, its other popular nickname, “R2D2.” The weapon, also called Phalanx, was mounted aft on Perry-class frigates, high atop their helicopter hangars and overlooking the helo pad on the fantail. As soon as the Indian Jaguars had launched, Captain Farrel had immediately ordered the ship turned away from the oncoming missiles in order to give the CIWS an unobstructed view of the targets.

The only problem was, Phalanx had been designed as a last-ditch, close-defense weapon, its effective range limited to about twenty-one hundred meters, less than a mile and a half.

An Exocet could cover that distance in something like seven seconds.

The missiles came in from Biddle’s stern, ten feet above the water. The heavy thump of her chaff launchers sounded like cannon-fire as they attempted to divert the deadly Exocets. On the frigate’s hangar, the Phalanx tower slewed about sharply on its axis, the six-barreled cannon swinging into line as the target came into range.

The barrels spun, rotating over one another like eggbeater blades, accompanied with a short, sharp, buzzsaw shriek. The flare of light from the muzzle flash lit up Biddle’s afterdeck like a stream of liquid fire.

“Firing phasers!” one sailor yelled, shouting above the screaming weapon, his hands pressed against his ears.

Phalanx fired depleted-uranium rounds, spin-stabilized slivers manufactured from the waste product of various nuclear programs. Neither explosive nor radioactive, each round was two and a half times heavier than steel, 12.75 millimeters thick, and was hurled from the gun at a velocity of 1000 feet per second. With a fire rate of fifty rounds per second, the CIWS was capable of dropping what was in effect a solid wall squarely in a missile’s path. The Phalanx’s J-band pulse-doppler radar simultaneously tracked target and projectiles, correcting the aim for each brief burst.

The CIWS fired again, corrected, then fired once more. A blossom of living light erupted in the darkness of the frigate’s starboard side, illuminating the ink-black sea. The Phalanx slewed again, its computer tracking the second target. Again, the shriek like a living thing … and a second flash lit up the night. Total engagement time: 5.2 seconds. And Biddle would survive to fight again.

“Tomcat Two-oh-one,” the voice in Tombstone’s headset intoned. “You’re clear for approach. Wind fifteen to eighteen at zero-four-five. Charlie now.”

“Roger, Homeplate,” Tombstone said, acknowledging the call to come in for his trap. He was tired. The weight of his flight helmet seemed intolerable, and the inside of his pressure suit was clammy with old sweat And fatigue.

They’d been summoned back to the carrier almost as soon as it was clear that the IAF aircraft were on the run. The Americans had been the clear victors in that nighttime dogfight, with at least four kills to their credit and no losses. It had been a close-run thing, however. One of the Indian Mig pilots had been a real pro, and only the rapid approach of more Tomcats had convinced the guy to break off and run for home.

Tombstone found himself wondering who that pilot he’d briefly seen was … where he lived, what he thought of the orders that had sent him against the U.S. battle group. That was never a particularly healthy thing to do, not when your life or the lives of others in your squadron might depend on your shooting that other pilot out of the sky, but Tombstone had always found it difficult to think of the enemy as unmanned drones, as lifeless targets to be racked up and taken down.

His thoughts complemented his mood. He’d become involved in a savage dogfight in pitch darkness, guided only by the impersonal flickers of light on his radar screen and the tersely coded guidance of his computer. With that one terrifying exception he’d not even seen the other aircraft in the battle, including the ones he’d chalked up as kills.

Well, such questions were pointless anyway. Tombstone kept his eyes on his instrument displays, especially his VDI where the ILS needles were guiding him through the night toward Jefferson’s deck. The carrier was completely invisible in the darkness, an unseen speck of life somewhere ahead in that black ocean. Of all maneuvers performed by Navy aviators, traps on a carrier’s steel deck at night were unquestionably the most disliked, the most feared. According to the flight surgeons keeping records of such things, a night trap tended to elevate heartbeat, respiration, and blood pressure more than a dogfight.

Tombstone, though, was past caring. The dogfight had left him drained, his reactions as automatic as the navigational guidance information from his Instrument Landing System. They had rendezvoused with a tanker for air-to-air refueling after the battle, and he’d gone through the motions like a machine, had not even remembered the problems he’d had in a similar maneuver … had it only been yesterday?

“Two-oh-one,” Lieutenant Commander Ted “Bumer” Craig, Viper Squadron’s LSO, called. “We have you at three miles out, altitude one-four-double-oh. Looking good.”

“Rog.”

“Hey, Skipper?” Dixie said over the ICS. “You see the bird farm yet? I can’t see diddly in this soup.”

“No sweat,” Tombstone replied. “We’re almost in.”

But he couldn’t see the ship either. During the past hour, a thick layer of clouds had moved in from the northeast, as though the Indian subcontinent itself were conspiring to drive the American ships and planes from her shores. The wind was picking up as well. He imagined that Jefferson would be a bit lively with a fresh breeze blowing across her flight deck.

And then the Tomcat dropped through the cloud deck and Tombstone saw the carrier’s lights. Perspective during a night trap was always a curious and stomach-twisting thing. The flight deck’s center line was lit up, and a vertical strip of lights hanging off Jefferson’s roundoff provided a clue to the vessel’s three-dimensional orientation. From the sky, the lights seemed no brighter than the stars overhead.

“Two-oh-one,” sounded in his ears. “Call the ball.”

It was time to stop flying the needles and bring his ship in. Tombstone glanced at the meatball, saw that he was a little low, and corrected automatically. “Tomcat Two-oh-one, ball,” he said. “Four point two.”

The F-14 slid down out of the sky, the nearly black mass of the carrier deck expanding to meet it. At the last moment, Tombstone saw the green cut lights go on by the ball, the nighttime signal that he was clear to land. There was a momentary illusion that he was flying into a hole outlined by lights … that the deck was winging up into a vertical wall dead ahead. Then the Tomcat slammed into the deck at one hundred thirty knots, the arrestor hook snagging the number-three wire in a perfect night trap as Tombstone first rammed the throttles forward, then brought them back to idle.

“That’s an OK,” Tombstone heard the LSO say over the net. “Two-oh-one down.”

Ahead of the Tomcat, deck crewmen moved in nearly total darkness, their hand signals revealed by colored light wands eerily visible suspended against the black. Carefully, Tombstone followed a pair of wagging yellow wands across the flight deck,

“Commander Magruder, this is the Boss,” Dick Wheeler’s voice said over the radio. “CAG wants a word with you as soon as you unstrap your turkey.” Turkey was popular carrier slang for the Tomcat.

“Copy that,” Tombstone replied. He glanced up toward the rounded, glassed-in protrusion from high up on the island, Pri-Fly, where the Air Boss reigned supreme.

There was no sense asking the man further questions, for he’d be concentrating already on Batman’s 216 bird due in forty seconds behind Tombstone’s. He was expecting to be debriefed, certainly. Aviators were always grilled after a combat engagement. But this sounded like something more.

Perhaps, Tombstone thought, the real fight was still to come.