Acts of Vengeance

CHAPTER FIVE FEET DRY

He lay awake, the questions flowing through his mind in an endless stream.

What if they have SAMs that we don’t know about?

Air defense radar?

MiGs?

A hundred what-ifs.

At half past four Maxwell gave up trying to sleep and went to the shower. Standing under the hot water, he thought about the mission. Why were air strikes always launched in the morning? It meant that pilots got to lay awake all night in darkened rooms thinking unthinkable thoughts.

After he’d showered and shaved, he donned the camouflage flight suit. Sitting on the bunk, he pulled on the steel-toed leather boots. Unlike the flight suits they normally wore, this one bore no squadron or air wing patches, no symbols of rank. The desert-colored camouflage scheme was intended to blend into the Middle East landscape if a pilot went down.

He was almost ready. One item to go. He unlocked the door of his desk safe and pulled out the leather gun case. He removed the Colt .45 and held it under the light, feeling the heft and density of the big pistol. The bluing was faded, and the pearl handle insets were yellowed and worn. It was a Model 1911 military issue. On the slide action was the inscription Lt. Harlan Maxwell, USS Oriskany, 1965.

The Colt had been his father’s sidearm during two combat tours in Vietnam. It was a gift on the day Brick won his Navy wings, delivered not by his father but by Josh Dunn. He’d worn it ever since.

He checked that a fresh magazine was loaded, then shoved it into the grip. When had he last fired it? He couldn’t remember. Not for years, and he’d never been able to hit anything with it anyway.

It didn’t matter. He’d gotten used to the heft of the gun, even though the Navy had long ago switched to the smaller and more accurate Beretta nine millimeter. He slipped the pistol into its leather shoulder holster and headed out.

By 0730, the ready room was filled with pilots. Maxwell stood up in the front and said, “Seats, gentlemen. Lieutenant Johnson has a briefing that might just keep you alive.”

B.J. clomped up to the lectern that faced the rows of chairs. Like the others, she was dressed in a desert-camo flight suit, wearing a holstered sidearm. For today’s strike, she was assigned as the skipper’s wingman.

As she rolled down a map of Yemen, several pilots exchanged amused glances. The alien.

She began with a discussion of Yemen’s history, from the Ottoman Empire to the creation of the Suez Canal and British rule, until the present.

“The Republic of Yemen was created in 1990 by unifying the two warring countries of South Yemen and North Yemen. In 1994, fighting broke out again between government forces and southern secessionists. Since then the government has had to cut deals with different factions in order to stay in power.”

“Al-Fasr being one of them?” asked Hozer Miller.

B.J. nodded. “Terrorism is to Yemen what drugs are to Colombia. It’s their number one exportable product. It protects the government and provides a cottage industry for the peasants.”

While B.J. went on, Maxwell watched the pilots’ expressions. It had been his idea to have B.J. deliver the in-country briefing on Yemen. Since she had downed the MiG in Iraq, the squadron pilots had developed a grudging respect for her. Most had gotten over their entrenched bias against women fighters, but not all. To a few, the women would always be aliens.

Now they were wearing a new expression. They looked perplexed.

Bud Spencer raised his hand. “Excuse me, B.J., where did you learn all this stuff?”

“Ship’s library. The Internet. The intel office. When I heard we were headed into the Arabian Sea, I dug up everything I could find about the place.”

Maxwell could see what they were thinking now. Maybe this chick knows what she’s doing after all…

She went on, talking about the prevailing weather, which at this time of year meant monsoon winds that howled in from the sea. Sometimes, at least along the coast, it even rained.

Then she got into the part nobody wanted to think about.

“The highlands of northern Yemen, where we’re going, are rugged but habitable. There’s plenty of vegetation, terraced fields cut into the hillsides, even stands of forest. If you go down, you’ll find cover. Stay in the hills, hide in the brush. Don’t approach the farmers or villagers. Most will be carrying a curved dagger called a jambiyya. They will probably be sympathetic to the terrorists, or at least be frightened enough to slice your throat just to save themselves.”

At this, several aviators stirred in their chairs. A few felt compelled to check the magazines on their service pistols.

At 0800, Spook Morse’s face appeared on the ready room television monitor. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. the Reagan is currently steaming ninety miles from the coast of Yemen, abeam the port of Ahwar. The coordinates of our launch and recovery positions for today’s strike on Al-Fasr will be on the screen at the end of the brief. Now, here are your entry and exit routes.”

The camera switched to a colored chart of Yemen. Large arrows defined the path over the Yemeni shoreline, northwestward to the Al-Fasr target in the highlands. Another arrow leading due southward described the exit route from the target.

“The strike package will be led by Commander Maxwell. It consists of four elements — an element of HARM shooters composed of sections from all three Hornet squadrons, an LGB-dropping element from VFA-36, another LGB element from VFA-34, a cluster bomb element provided by VFA-35.

“Tanking will be provided by four KS-3 Vikings, who will shuttle from a pair of Air Force KC-10s on station over the Gulf. Note that the only CAP assigned will be the Tomcats on MIGSWEEP, due to the remote likelihood of enemy air opposition.

“The surface-to-air missile threat is considered negligible. Any sites that light up will be taken out by the HARM element that precedes the strike package. You might get some small-bore antiaircraft fire. Respect your minimum release altitudes, and it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Morse then went over the fine points of the mission: mode one and two transponder squawks, the avoidance of collateral damage to nearby villages, lost-communications procedures, bingo fuel requirements, bull’s-eye navigation reference points, code words, weapon loads, search and rescue contingencies.

From the Roadrunner ready room, Maxwell watched Morse’s briefing. A cut-and-dried operation, he thought. Almost like one of the scripted air wing exercises they ran monthly while the Reagan was at sea.

Something nagged at him. It was too cut-and-dried. The target was too accessible. He couldn’t get over the uneasy feeling that something was missing. What the hell was it?

She caught him in the passageway to the flight deck escalator.

“Hey, sailor,” Claire said. “Leaving without saying good-bye?”

“Just taking a little airplane ride.”

“That’s not what I hear. You’re going off to bomb terrorists.”

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough to figure out what you’re doing. Your Mr. Babcock has been very cooperative. I think he likes me.”

“He wants to be sure this glorious show of American power lands on every television screen. And for the record, he’s not my Mr. Babcock.”

“Okay, the President’s Mr. Babcock. He let me watch the briefing and he promised that I could hear the poststrike reports.” She put her hand on his sleeve. “I know, for instance, that Commander Maxwell is leading the strike.” Her face turned serious. “You’re not going to do anything crazy, are you, Sam?”

“Flying off carriers is crazy. Everything else I do is sane.”

“I mean something really crazy. Like taking revenge on whoever killed Josh Dunn.”

He almost said the truth, that he was going to kill that sonofabitch. Seeing the look on her face, he caught himself. “No, nothing that crazy.”

She eyed him for a moment. She looked at his flight gear — the helmet he clutched under his arm, the oxygen mask snapped to the harness. She took a close look at the pearl-handled .45. “Good lord, what is that? It looks like something Patton would have carried.”

“His was a revolver. Two of them, actually, but they were inlaid with ivory. Patton thought pearl handles were for brothel madams.”

She touched the white inlay with her finger. “I can almost understand why men love these things. They’re beautiful — in a deadly sort of way. Like the fighters you fly.”

Maxwell thought of the week they almost spent together in Dubai. He remembered all the things he wanted to talk with her about. They were still strangers, still learning about each other.

The peculiarity of the situation struck him again. Here he was, ready for combat, about to launch from an aircraft carrier, saying good-bye to the woman he cared for most of all in the world. This ought to be a time to hold her close. To say good-bye, just in case.

But he was still a naval officer. Not here, not now.

“Do you love me, Sam?”

He looked at her in surprise. After an awkward silence, he said, “Yes.”

“Why don’t you ever say it?”

“I just did.”

“No, you didn’t. I supplied the question, and you filled in the blank.”

She had a point. “As you may have noticed, I’m not very good at expressing how I feel.”

“Or not willing.”

“I’m willing. Just out of practice.”

“Then you should practice.”

He nodded. “Okay, how’s this?” He cleared his throat and said, “I love you, Claire. Even when you don’t hear it from me, it’s true. I love you.”

She smiled. “You’re definitely getting better.”

He glanced around, then gave her a quick kiss.

Not quick enough. He felt another pilot in flight gear shuffle past him, heading for the escalator. He glanced up at the moving stairway to the flight deck. B. J. Johnson was glowering back down at them.

“Contact, Captain.”

Manilov was instantly alert. He looked over at the sonar operator, Borodin, a bespectacled young warrant. “Range and bearing?”

“Thirty-five kilometers, bearing zero-six-four. Speed fifteen knots. Frigate-size.”

Manilov nodded. A frigate was an escort ship. It was the advance vessel of the main battle group.

Manilov felt his pulse rate accelerate. At least two, perhaps three hours remained before the battle group reached the scheduled point of intended movement. He could smell a change in the atmosphere inside the Mourmetz. Ilychin, his executive officer, was sweating profusely, his shirt stained beneath each sleeve. Borodin was hunched over his control station, breathing like a man who had just run several kilometers.

Everyone in the crew knew that they were in dangerous waters. They all trusted the Mourmetz’s captain to keep them safe, to correctly assess the risks and make the right commands. To succeed in his mission, Manilov knew he must keep their trust. He must not let them know the entire truth — that he was not afraid to die. He was a man in the grip of destiny.

No one in his crew, including Manilov, had ever seen combat. Not in decades had a Russian naval vessel fired a shot in anger.

Today all that would change.

The first to launch were the Prowlers — EA-6B electronic warfare jets that would detect and jam any enemy radar. Then the KS-3 Viking tankers that would rendezvous with the Air Force KC-10s, top off their own fuel loads, then take their stations to refuel the strike group.

The HARM shooters — Super Hornets carrying high-speed anti-radiation missiles — went next. If an enemy air defense radar was foolish enough to target the inbound strike aircraft, the HARMs would lock like homing pigeons onto the emitted radar signal. Behind them went the F-14 Tomcats, climbing directly to the tankers, then heading north to their CAP stations.

Last to launch was the strike package — sixteen Super Hornets in all — led by Brick Maxwell. In rapid succession the jets sizzled down the Reagan’s four catapult tracks. Half the Hornets were loaded with thousand- and two-thousand-pound GBU-16 and GBU-24 laser-guided bombs. The other eight F/A-18s carried Mark 20 Rockeye cluster bombs, designed to decimate vehicle and ammo depots.

In addition to its bomb load, each strike fighter bristled with air-to-air missiles — an AIM-9 heat-seeking Sidewinder on each wingtip rail, and AIM-7 and AIM-120 radar-guided missiles on the wing and fuselage stations. Each carried a full magazine of twenty-millimeter ammunition for the nose-mounted Vulcan cannon.

Already on station was the Air Force E-3C Sentry AWACS ship, high in its orbit over the Arabian Sea. Though the strike into Yemen was to be a Navy show, the ACE — Airborne Command Element — aboard the AWACS would be coordinating the operation. The ACE not only maintained a datalink with the strike fighters and the Reagan’s Combat Information Center, he had a direct line to the three-star Air Force general in Riyadh who had overall responsibility for U.S. Forces in the Middle East.

CAG Boyce settled into his padded chair in CIC. The Combat Information Center was the battle nerve center of the ship, located in the command spaces in the forward part of the ship. The room was dark as a cavern, eerily illuminated by the spectral glow of the monitors and the large situational displays on the bulkhead. Sitting at their terminals, controllers and special warfare officers wearing headsets and boom mikes peered into their screens.

As he always did when he came down to CIC, Boyce was wearing his battered old leather flight jacket with the squadron patches dating back to his nugget days. Not only was the jacket a talisman — he had worn it during every combat event of his career — it was his defense against the numbing cold. The electronics geeks insisted on keeping the place frigid as an icebox to keep their precious equipment from overheating.

Boyce let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He peered over his shoulder, toward the elevated platform behind the consoles where a row of chairs lined the bulkhead. Through the red-lighted gloom he saw several observers in their padded chairs, looking down at the control room.

Claire Phillips waved to him. She had followed his advice and was wearing a parka. Claire’s press clearance, strictly speaking, would not get her through the door of CIC during a combat operation. Even her current patron, Whitney Babcock, had stopped short of authorizing her to observe the show.

So Boyce had gone to the source of almost all authority aboard the Reagan — the captain. He and Stickney had been contemporaries — and rivals — for twenty-five years. Though Stickney had an attack and fighter background, A-7s and F/A-18s, his career path had taken him to surface deep draft, culminating in command of the world’s mightiest warship, the Reagan.

“Look at it this way, Sticks,” Boyce said. “If the strike goes okay, she’s gonna make us all look good. If, God forbid, it turns into a goat rope, the woman will be objective and not write a lot of military-bashing bullshit like those guys from the networks.”

As Boyce expected, Stickney warmed up to the idea of getting fair treatment from the media. “Your call, Red. If you don’t mind a news snoop peering over your shoulder, fine. I’ve got important stuff to worry about.”

He put on the Telex headset and scanned the situational display on the bulkhead. The entire strike force was airborne now. Only one jet — a Tomcat from VF-32 — had been a no-go. The pilot reported a hydraulic fault while he was still taxiing on deck. Boyce ordered the hot spare launched, and five minutes later the replacement F-14 was thundering down the number one catapult.

From the pocket of his flight jacket he produced a fresh Cohiba. Wetting the end of the cigar, he clamped it between his teeth, then peered again at the situational display. The data-linked symbols of the strike elements were merging off the coast of Yemen like flocks of geese.

So far, so good.

He called the strike leader. “Gipper Zero-one, Alpha Whiskey.”

“Go, Alpha Whiskey,” answered Maxwell.

“Geronimo is in place,” said Boyce. It was the signal that the Tomcats of the CAP element and the HARM shooters were on station. “You’re cleared feet dry.”

“Gipper Zero-one copies. Cleared feet dry.”

Showtime. The strike force was cleared into Yemen.

A milk run, Boyce thought to himself. No enemy air opposition. No SAMs lighting up. Not even any radar-tracking AA positions locking onto the inbound strikers. The only radar emissions were coming from the air traffic control facilities at the airports in Aden and San‘a.

This strike was a walk in the park.

He saw light pouring through the open door of CIC. Whitney Babcock strolled into the room, trailed closely by Admiral Fletcher and Spook Morse. Boyce noticed that Babcock was wearing a leather flight jacket just like his. It even had an assortment of ship and squadron patches sewn onto it. Babcock was chatting with Fletcher, giving him a lecture on geopolitics.

In that instant, it came to him. Boyce knew why he had elected to be in CIC and not out there in the cockpit. These two — a pseudowarrior and a policy wonk who had never fought in a real war — had no concept of what strike fighter pilots did. He didn’t trust either of them.

Rittmann ran his hand over the leading edge of the sweptback wing. In the stark, artificial light of the underground revetment, the MiG-29 looked like a prehistoric creature. With its long beaklike nose, its sharply swept wings, it seemed poised to kill.

“Have you changed your mind?” asked Al-Fasr.

“No.” The question irritated Rittmann. It was more of that same old condescension, that verdammt superiority. This brown-skinned Semite liked to pose as if he were some kind of aristocrat, removed by several degrees of breeding from the likes of Rittmann and the other mercenary fighter pilots.

Oberleutnant Wolf Rittmann, formerly of the German Democratic Republic Air Force, considered himself the equal of any fighter pilot in the world. Or so he had been before the union of the two Germanys and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Since then life had been uncertain. Unlike several of his colleagues, he had not been invited to join the new MiG-29 Staffel of the German Luftwaffe. He was forced to seek employment as a MiG instructor first in Bangladesh, then Libya, and most recently in Iraq. In each case they were shit jobs, low-paying and dangerous. Low-paying because the compensation was always in the worthless local currency. Dangerous because the incompetent peasants whom he attempted to train were not qualified to drive oxen.

“Are you frightened, Rittmann?” A half smile played across Al-Fasr’s lips.

Rittmann felt like telling the Arab to go fornicate with sheep. No matter how long he stayed here, he would never shed his feelings about this inferior race of people. To him they would always be desert dwellers whose circumstances had changed only because vast oil deposits existed beneath their feet. Otherwise they would be huddling in their miserable tents, cooking over camel-turd fires.

“Frightened? No.” Rittmann gazed over at the sleek shapes of the other MiG fighters. “Am I worried? Ja, bestimmt. With only three of us to counter an entire strike force, what do you think? Of course I am worried.”

“It will proceed exactly as I planned it,” said Al-Fasr. “Carry out your orders, and you will be a wealthy man.”

Rittmann had no idea how it would feel to be a wealthy man. Very nice, he suspected, but it didn’t matter. Wealth was not the reason he had come to Yemen. Fixed in Rittmann’s mind all these years was a different motivation. He wanted to fly in combat against a Western adversary. Not in simulation, not in training as they had done for decades in the East Bloc. He wanted to witness at close range the fireball from an American fighter that he had shot down.

For over ten years his theater of operations had been East Germany and its Warsaw Pact neighbors. Never had he actually confronted a foreign adversary. Instead, he had skimmed the edges of the three air corridors into Berlin, tightening the sphincters of American and British airline pilots. Once he had roared across the rooftops of West Berlin at supersonic speed. According to the newspaper reports, he had shattered shop windows for three kilometers along the Kurfurstendamm, the city’s main artery. It was the closest he had ever come to inflicting damage on an enemy.

Until now. Al-Fasr was giving him an opportunity. His compensation — if he lived to collect it — was on deposit in an account in Luxembourg. A hundred-thousand-franc retainer, with another thirty thousand for each combat mission flown, plus a fifty-thousand-franc bonus for each American aircraft downed. It exceeded the total of everything Rittmann had earned in his life.

The plan was deceptively simple. A strike force from an American aircraft carrier would be arriving to pound what they thought was Al-Fasr’s base, but what in fact was a collection of empty tin-roofed structures that Al-Fasr had erected in the highlands. As the strike fighters were entering their weapons-delivery profiles — when they were most vulnerable — Al-Fasr, Rittmann, and the Czech pilot, Novotny, would come blasting out of underground revetments. Using the old British Petroleum access road as a runway, they would stay low and accelerate, pouncing on the Americans without warning. Three more MiGs would remain concealed in the revetments, to be committed in later battle.

Three against a force of forty or more. Al-Fasr, he suspected, might be crazy. If so, he was also brilliant. Despite Rittmann’s deep-seated ethnic bias against Arabs in general, he had to admit that this one was a competent fighter pilot. In their initial training sorties in Sudan, Al-Fasr had impressed Rittmann and the other mercenaries in one-versus-one air combat.

Their survival today depended on the element of surprise. Al-Fasr had assured them that the presence of the MiGs had not been detected. Rittmann found this hard to believe, but since Al-Fasr himself was leading the mission, Rittmann tended to believe him. If nothing else, Al-Fasr’s intelligence network was superb. He had timed the delivery of the MiGs from Libya, via Chad to the old BP complex here in northwest Yemen, precisely during the window in which the Americans’ Big Bird surveillance satellite could not peer down on them.

Standing next to the MiG he would soon be flying, Rittmann ran his hand along the slick leading edge of the wing. For all its complexity, the MiG-29 was suited to primitive environments like this. Designed as a self-contained fighter, the big jet could be loaded, started, and launched with a minimum of ground equipment. Despite its outdated technology, the MiG-29, with its brutishly powerful Klimov engines, was faster than the Super Hornet, more agile than the F-14 Tomcat. Its weapons were dated but deadly. The AA-11 Archer heat-seeking missile, with its broad off-boresight capability, was superior to the American Sidewinder.

He noticed Al-Fasr looking at him. That condescending smile still played on the Arab’s lips.

Rittmann bristled. “When the Americans learn about these bunkers, they’ll blow your compound to hell.”

The smile stayed frozen on Al-Fasr’s face. “Do not concern yourself with matters beyond your responsibility. Your task is to kill enemy fighters. Nothing more.”

Rittmann wasn’t willing to drop it, but then he heard a pulsing beep. It came from the transceiver attached to Al-Fasr’s flight suit.

Al-Fasr turned away and put the handset to his ear. He listened for a moment, his head nodding. “Very well,” he said. “Inform all stations.”

He turned back to Rittmann. “This discussion is ended. Go man your aircraft. It is time for you to earn your money.”