Armageddon Mode

CHAPTER 28

Lieutenant Commander Greene held the stick steady as warm air currents above the desert set the A-6 Intruder to bumping and shuddering. They were traveling at 400 knots, less than 500 feet above the hot gravel of the Thar Desert.

“Gold Strike Five-double-oh,” he called. “Coming up on Point Charlie.

The clock is running.”

“Copy, Gold Strike, Five-double-oh,” the airborne controller on board the Hawkeye circling a hundred miles to the south replied. “Roger your Point Charlie. Good hunting, Jolly!”

“Roger, Victor Tango. Thanks. Five-double-nuts out.”

Point Charlie was the village of Naya Chor itself, a collection of whitewashed walls and low buildings sprawled along the straight slash through the desert, marking the railroad and highway that crossed the Thar Desert from Jodhpur in India to Hyderabad on the banks of the Indus. Jolly banked the Intruder left, following the road that, in most places, was nothing more sophisticated than packed gravel.

Smoke curled into the sky from the wreckage of a vehicle close beside the railroad tracks. To Jolly’s experienced eye, it looked like a ZSU with most of the broad, open turret peeled back like a steel-petaled flower. Nearby was the broken ruin of an SA-3 Goa launcher, the six-wheeled utility truck upended in the gravel and overturned by a near miss from an air-to-ground rocket. It was evident that Lucky Strike had passed through the area minutes before, smashing anything that looked like a SAM battery or antiaircraft vehicle.

Desert sped past on either side as the Intruder raced west. “Gold Strike Five-zero-zero, this is Five-one-one.” That was Coot Barswell, another member of VA-89.

“Copy, Coot. Go ahead.”

“We’re on your six, Jolly, range five miles. Save some of the good stuff for us, will ya?”

“Eat our dust, Coot!” He laughed. “No guarantees.” He switched to ICS, necessary for clarity even though his BN was sitting right beside him. “How we doin’, Chucker?”

“Range to primary, twelve miles,” Chucker replied. “I’m getting some ground radar now.”

“The primary” had been spotted by a recon satellite at dawn, an enormous ground convoy moving west along the highway toward Naya Chor. It had passed the village earlier that morning, and by now was well on the way to Hyderabad, where Indian and Pakistani forces were gearing up for a major battle. Much of the convoy had been hidden by clouds of dust, but the satellite’s infrared scanners had suggested that the convoy included as many as thirty or forty large trucks: huge Maz-537 flatbed trailers with tanks and heavy equipment, smaller trucks with ammunition and troops, and the all-important tankers carrying fuel or water.

The threat light blinked on, and Jolly heard the warning tone of an enemy lock-on.

“SAM!” Chucker warned. “I see it! Two o’clock low!”

Jolly glanced right and saw it, a white streak rising from the desert.

The Hornets could not possibly have suppressed all of the SAM sites and launchers.

He pressed the chaff button five times in rapid succession and eased the stick forward, letting the Intruder settle closer to the ground, but he kept the strike aircraft steadily on course. As the chaff clouds expanded above and behind the plane, the threat warning stopped its incessant chirping.

“I think we lost ‘em.” Jolly’s mouth was dry, his heart hammering against his seat harness. He kept one eye on the missile as it rose past the starboard wing, traveling at Mach 3 a mile away.

His BN was leaning forward now, his face buried in the hood that shrouded his radar scope. “I’ve got a lock. Solid return … some serious heavy metal up there. Looks like the convoy. Come left a bit … more … there! Hold it!”

Chucker flipped a switch and Jolly’s VDI screen shifted to Attack Mode.

Graphic symbols drifted across the display, outlining possible targets illuminated by the Intruder’s radar, showing position, drift angle, and steering corrections. Numbers flickered off the last few thousands of meters to the release point. Speed was 490 knots.

“Going up,” Jolly reported. He nudged the Intruder back up to five hundred feet, the minimum distance required for arming a Mark 82 General Purpose bomb.

“Gettin’ close,” Chucker reported. “Your pickle is hot.”

Jolly closed his thumb over the release switch, his eye on the targeting pipper on his VDI. The Intruder could be set to release its weapons load by computer, but in a case like this, when the target was strung out over a large area and of unknown composition, Jolly preferred to release manually. A surging, exultant excitement gripped him. Any second now … Suddenly, the empty desert below was transformed into a nightmare out of the Los Angeles Freeway. Trucks, half-tracks, troop carriers, and tanks were crowded on the road or parked alongside. Ahead, the girders of a bridge stretched above the banks of the Nara River.

“Gold Strike Five-double-oh!” Jolly cried. “Bombs away!”

The A-6 Intruder could carry a maximum ordnance load of 15,000 pounds — in this case thirty 500-lb Mark 82 GP bombs. It never failed to amaze Jolly that, during World War II, the immortal B-17 had carried a maximum bomb load of only 17,600 pounds … and that was only for extremely short-range missions. Typical mission ordnance loads for the old Flying Fortress were only 4000 pounds, less than a third of what the Intruder carried.

And the A-6 Intruder could place its high-explosive eggs with far greater precision than the B-17 ever could, and from an altitude of only a few hundred feet.

Thirty quarter-ton bombs spilled away from the Intruder’s hardpoints, a spray of deadly, finned cigars triggered to release in five groups of six along an elongated footprint across the center of the convoy. The retarder fins on each were designed to hold the bomb back just long enough to allow the A-6 to escape the fragments.

The bridge flashed below the A-6 as Jolly pulled back on the stick.

There was heavy congestion on the bridge itself, probably brought on by a breakdown or a traffic accident that had held up the whole column. He almost imagined he could hear the honking of horns, the curses of the drivers … The detonations were like the flashes of a string of Chinese firecrackers, but silent … at least at first. Then the sound caught up with the speeding Intruder, an avalanche of raw, searing, booming noise, thunderclap upon thunderclap rolling across the desert on shock waves that rippled out from the blasts, driving walls of swirling sand before them. Jolly watched the display in his rearview mirror, thirty blasts in the space of less than two seconds. Black smoke, boiling orange fireballs rising like deadly trees, a pall of burning clouds spreading across the desert in a suffocating blanket.

And the explosions continued. White streamers curled out from the epicenter of destruction, flares like Roman candles. An ammunition truck had been hit … and the explosion added to the devastation that was hurling entire trucks, flaming and tumbling end for end, into the sky.

“My God,” Jolly said, awe softening his voice. “My God …”

“Gold Strike Leader, this is Five-one-one. God, Jolly, what are you doing up there? Looks like you just trashed the whole Indian army.”

“Uh … rog, Coot.” He felt none of the earlier urge to banter. “Save your load for the bridge. It’s … easy pickings.”

“Copy that, Jolly. Thanks. Oh, God look at them burn!”

With the drag from the bomb load gone, the A-6 was racing now at almost 600 knots. Antiaircraft fire, scattered and ineffective, was reaching toward him from various sites among the marshes and canals that marked the western edge of the desert. A pair of ZSU-23s that had already crossed the river swung quad-mounted cannons toward the sky and stabbed at them as they hurtled past overhead.

“We’re outa here, Chucker,” he said. The elation he’d felt before was gone. “Job’s over. Let’s go home.”

The Intruder banked left, heading south once more.

Tombstone broke left, bleeding speed with his air brakes until his F-14’s computer brought the swing wings forward. At less than two hundred fifty knots, he held the turn, left wing pointed at the blur of golden sand below, right wing pointed at the heavens.

“He’s still coming!” Hitman called. “Stoney, he’s still coming!”

Tombstone hadn’t gotten close enough to see the Mig-29’s number, but he had a strange feeling he was facing that same Indian pilot who had come close to killing him more than once already. It was a coincidence … but a small one. Good pilots survived longer than bad ones in the tangle of modern aerial combat … and good pilots tended to seek one another out in the closest thing the twentieth century had to a Medieval joust, knight against knight.

The insistent chirp of his radar threat warning sounded in his headset.

“Tombstone! He’s locked! He’s going to take his shot!”

“Hang on, Hitman! Just a little further around …”

“Launch! Stoney! He’s launched!”

“Chaff!”

“Chaff away!”

He’d deliberately gone into a hard, slow-speed turn directly across the Indian Mig’s line of fire, hoping the other man would fire despite the difficult angle. Picturing the radar-homer’s path in his mind, Tombstone waited another three beats … then rammed the stick back to the right, breaking into a hard split-S. His left hand hit the wing control override, folding the wings back to the sixty-eight degree combat sweep, then slammed the throttles forward to Zone Five burner.

The roar of the twin engines kicked him in the spine like a sledgehammer, driving the breath from his lungs.

Tunnel vision closed in. His HUD readout showed seven Gs … eight … nine …!

His whole body hurt, and speech, even breathing, was impossible. He knew he was on the thin, ragged edge of blacking out, but he held the turn as his compass reading spun through the numbers … one-ninety … two hundred … two-ten … The threat warning was off. The enemy missile had been decoyed by the chaff … or simply missed, unable to correct for Tombstone’s wild maneuver.

And then the other plane was ahead, crossing from left to right with his belly facing Tombstone’s F-14. The Indian Mig had held his own left turn a hair too long and was still in the break. Tombstone had snapped around in the unexpected maneuver and slid into position for a launch.

It was a tough shot … as tough as the one the Indian flyer had tried a moment earlier.

Blinking against blurred vision, willing the pain in his throbbing head to subside, Tombstone dropped his targeting pipper across the Mig. No … too close, even for Sidewinders. He would have to go for guns.

The Indian was rolling toward him now … had seen him, less than a thousand yards away. Tombstone turned to keep with him, letting the target reticle lead the Mig.

Tombstone’s sharp eyes picked out the hull number: 401.

He also spotted something else. There were no missiles slung beneath the Mig’s wings. The radar-homer he’d just popped at Tombstone had been his last one. Possibly there’d not been time to rearm when he’d landed earlier. Or possibly he’d loosed five of his six AAMS earlier in the fight.

Mig and Tomcat closed with one another. At two hundred yards, Tombstone could see the other pilot, his helmet visor back. He was making no effort to escape but was watching Tombstone’s approach with what could only be described as professional interest.

The guy knew Tombstone had him and was waiting to die.

Tombstone shook his head. What was it Army had always said. Chivalry gets you dead.

True enough, and the Mig pilot still had his cannon. Still, there came a time when there was simply no point in further slaughter. The Indian Mig pilot was an opponent now, not an enemy … and there was a sharp difference between the two. Tombstone waggled his wings in salute … then broke left, passing behind the other plane close enough to feel the shudder of his jet stream.

“Hey, Hitman? Hitman! Are you still with me?”

There was no response over the ICS. The nine-G turn had knocked his RIO out.

“Viper Leader, Viper Leader, this is Victor Tango One-one.”

Tombstone jumped, wondering if the Hawkeye controller had spotted his rather unprofessional breach.

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

“Viper Leader, please give stores listing, over.”

Stores? “Uh, roger, Victor Tango.” He switched the VDI display to his stores listing and read them off, not trusting to memory in his current, somewhat battle-fogged state. “Two AIM-9Js, two AIM-54s. Six hundred seventy-five rounds.”

He’d taken off with two Phoenix, one Sparrow, and four Sidewinder missiles. They’d already launched the Sparrow and two Sidewinders. What was Victor Tango One-one looking for?

“We copy you have two Phoenix missiles, Viper Leader. What about your squadron?”

Three of the other five Tomcats still had AIM-54 Phoenix missiles on board. Shooter and Ramrod had both already fired both of their Phoenix missiles, while Coyote still had his two and Nightmare and Batman each had one left.

“Viper Leader, we copy you have six missiles remaining in your squadron.”

“That’s a roger,” Tombstone replied.

“Hey, Stoney?” Hitman said over the ICS circuit. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”

“Wish I knew, Hitman. Orders.”

“Viper Leader, we have a new target for you. Ah … be advised that this is an extremely hazardous target … but it is also extremely important. Extremely important.”

“Give us the vector.”

“Roger. Come to new heading zero-four-zero at angels base plus thirty-nine. Make your speed five-five-zero knots. Do you copy that?”

“Copy. Zero-four-zero at five-five-zero knots, angels base plus three-niner.”

“Hold that course and speed for fourteen, that’s one-four minutes.”

“Roger. Fourteen minutes.”

“Endpoint is designated Point Lima. Your target will be at extreme Phoenix range at that time, bearing zero-zero-zero to zero-one-zero.”

Tombstone was doing some fast calculations in his head. He reached down to the clipboard on his thigh and shuffled through the papers and checklists, exposing a map of northwest India.

Their current location was north of Highway 101, close to the Indian-Pakistan border and thirty miles from a border town called Gadra.

He used the stub of a pencil to lightly sketch in lines. Point Lima, if he’d followed the instructions of the Hawkeye controller right, was deep within the Thar Desert, just south of the Rajasthan Canal. The closest settlement marked on the map was a village called Bikampur. He measured north one hundred nautical miles — the approximate range of a Phoenix missile. The end point was across the border into Pakistan, somewhere near a nondescript town called Fort Abbas.

“Okay, Victor Tango. I’ve got all that. Uh … we may have a problem, though.” He was staring at his fuel gauge. “Fuel state eight point five.”

They’d used a lot of JP-5 in the dogfighting over the border. Now the Hawkeye controller was telling them to fly another one hundred thirty miles inland. Then, from Point Lima, it would be almost four hundred more long desert miles before they were back over the Arabian Sea.

Well over five hundred miles before they could refuel, or even before they could eject with any hope of being picked up by friendly forces.

They might just make it … but it would be damned tight.

“Copy your fuel state, Viper. I repeat, target is extremely important.”

He sighed. “Roger, Victor Tango. How many missiles will target require, over?”

“Estimate four, Viper.”

But he already knew he would have to take all six aircraft, just to make sure that at least four AIM-54s made it to Point Lima.

And God help their fuel state if they were forced to dogfight along the way. “Okay, Victor Tango One-one. That’s roger. Viper Squadron is in.” He swung the Tomcat onto its new heading, the other five F-14s matching the maneuver.

The dun and barren wastes of the Thar Desert flashed past beneath them as they accelerated, climbing toward fifty thousand feet.