Arsenal

THIRTEEN

The flight deck was a maelstrom of noise, heat, and wind.

For the last fifteen minutes, aviators had been kicking the tires and lighting fires on a wide variety of aircraft. EA-6B Prowlers were already spooled up and waiting on the catapult; their bulged cockpits and forward radomes, coupled with the distinctive pods mounted aft atop tail fins, marked them as EA-6B variants. The strange pods held both receivers and antennas for the SIR group, a systems integrated receiver for five bands of emissions. Other antennas were mounted on the fins, below the pods, enabling the aircraft to cover all electronic emissions from the A through the I bands.

The two J-52 turbojets flanking the fuselage were generating over eleven thousand pounds of thrust each, and each aircraft was straining at the tieback that held her shackled to the shuttle. The JBDS-jet blast deflectors aft of the catapult shunted the wash from their engines to the side, although the gaggle of fighters clustered farther back on the flight deck was generating more than enough wind across the deck.

Each aircraft carried three jamming pods, one on either side on a wide pylon and one on the centerline fuselage hard point. Additionally, AGM-HARM anti radar missiles graced their wings from the other pylons.

Each aircraft weighed in at slightly over sixty thousand pounds.

Overhead, two E-2 Charlie Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft orbited, each under the protection of two F-A18 fighters. The Hawkeyes and their escorts had launched an hour earlier, and were keeping a close watch on the airspace in the vicinity of Cuba’s coast. Should anything launch, either aircraft or missiles, the E-2 Hawkeye would catch it on its ALR-73 PDS radar and relay it instantly to the carrier Combat Information Center through a two-way Collins AN-ARC-34 HF or ARC-58 UHF data links. Since the installation of the joint tactical information distribution system (JTIS), the E-2 had become capable of controlling and vectoring the air picture for any combat aircraft in the U.S. inventory.

The catapult officer, a lieutenant who had been on board Jefferson less than six months, shook his head as he looked at the cluster of aircraft queuing up behind the JBDs. Even during workup operations, he’d never seen so many turning at once, never had an opportunity to appreciate the delicate ballet orchestrated by the handler and the yellow-shirted deck crew. Most of the plane captains had already scampered away from the hot tarmac, taking cover in the vicinity of the island to avoid being inadvertently sucked down the throat of one of the screaming engines.

“Get your head out of your ass. Cat Officer,” his earphones thundered.

The lieutenant glanced up at the tower and nodded his head at the air boss, invisible behind the dark glass. It all came down to this, the one moment when he, the catapult officer, released the first aircraft for flight.

Even from his position in the enclosed bubble protruding up out of the flight deck, he could sense the tension.

“Roger, sir.” He made his words sound as calm as possible. In the present mood the air boss was in, it wouldn’t do to irritate him unduly. Not that he blamed the junior captain ensconced above hell, they were all nervous right now.

The catapult officer shifted his attention back to the flight deck and studied the Prowler straining at the shuttle in front of him. A plane captain held up a grease-penciled Plexiglas board to the pilot, showing the aviator his field state, weight, and weaponry. The pilot nodded, and the catapult officer saw the control surfaces on the Prowler waggle up and down. It was called cycling the stick, the last check of control surfaces that a pilot made before being launched.

“Now.” The catapult officer authorized release of the aircraft on deck. He saw the yellow shirt come to attention, snap off a quick salute, and drop to his knees, pointing down the deck toward the bow.

The pilot in the Prowler returned the salute, then leaned back slightly, bracing himself against the seat for the shot.

As always, it seemed to start impossibly slowly. The first few seconds of a cat shot were a study in tension as the massive aircraft slowly gathered speed. Soon, though, the expanding steam behind the shuttle overcame the aircraft’s inertia and the Prowler accelerated from a leisurely roll to a thundering bolt down the deck.

Fourteen seconds later, it was over. The catapult officer stared toward the bow, watched the aircraft disappear from view as it briefly lost altitude, then saw it reappear as it struggled for airspeed. The angle of ascent was minimal at first, gradually steepening as the Prowler overcame gravity.

Seconds later, another Prowler shot off the bow cat, gained altitude, and joined its wingman as they ascended.

Two down twenty-seven to go. The catapult officer turned his attention aft. The JBDs were already lowered, and two Tomcats were taxiing forward eagerly.

It was going to be a long morning.

Thirty minutes later, the deck was still and quiet. The carrier had launched two Prowlers, fourteen Tomcats, and ten FA-18s. Additionally, another EA6 had gotten airborne to replace one that was experiencing difficulties with its CAINS system. Add to that total two KA 6 tankers, and the carrier had a full alpha strike package in the air.

Back behind the carrier, a SAR helo kept station. The catapult officer glanced down at his schedule and frowned. One helo was already airborne why did the schedule call for another?

He wasn’t entirely certain, but he suspected it might have something to do with the small boat launched in the wee hours from the carrier’s aft deck. No matter he hadn’t been briefed on it; therefore, he had no need to know. All he did was launch ‘em-it was up to someone else to decide the whys. He glanced up at the tower. And to get them back on deck.

The second helo’s launch was markedly anti climatic after so many jets.

It quivered slightly on the deck, jolted once, then crept up into the air. It moved slightly to port, away from the carrier and over open water, and began gaining altitude. The catapult officer watched from his enclosed bubble as it headed out due west until it was merely a speck on the horizon.

Not that it ought to be flying at all, the catapult officer thought.

As an F/A-18 pilot himself, he took it as an article of faith that a helicopter had no more right to be airborne than a bumblebee. Only problem was, no one had bothered to tell either the bug or the helo. A collection of one thousand parts flying in close proximity to each other. He shuddered at the old gibe it was too close for comfort. No, give him speeds in excess of Mach 1 and two wings full of weapons over a helicopter anytime. Speed meant safety.

“No, I didn’t bring any doggy biscuits. So shoot me.”

Huerta’s voice sounded sharp for the first time since the mission had begun. “How the hell was I supposed to know?”

“Well, do something,” Pamela hissed. She gestured toward the east.

“When does the sun come up, anyway?”

None of them bothered to answer the question. They still had some time. Not enough, but the covering darkness would last at least another hour. After that, the first traces of light would start illuminating the compound, increasing the danger of detection logarithmically.

“We’re going to have to wait for a moment, then,” Sikes said, his voice low and quiet. He glanced at his watch.

“Another eight minutes, I think. Then we use the silencers.”

“Why not use them now?” Pamela demanded.

Sikes saw the tension in her face, and saw her start to move before she even shifted her weight by much. He grabbed her by the elbow, his hand a steel band around her upper arm, and dragged her back down to the ground. “You shut up and stay under cover or you’ll jeopardize the whole mission. I don’t want you here but we’ve got a job to do.

You’re not gonna screw it up, not like you did before. Now shut up.”

“But what are you,” she began.

Huerta slapped one massive hand across her mouth, catching her head in the crooK of his arm.” you heard the commander,” he said. “You stay quiet voluntarily or I crush your larynx.” He smiled congenially. “I can do that, you know. Wouldn’t even kill you, just make you mute for the rest of your life. You got that?”

Huerta felt her head move in his tight grip as she tried to nod. He rewarded her by loosening his hold slightly, while still keeping his hand lightly over her mouth. “We wait eight minutes, like the commander said. When I want you to do something or say something, I’ll tell you.”

Garcia took out his silenced pistol and checked it for the thirtieth time, even though they all knew they were as ready as they would ever be. Eight minutes. They waited.

“Everybody’s here. Bird Dog,” Gator said impatiently.

“What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?”

“Nope,” the pilot said cheerfully. God, it was good to be airborne again! And on a strike mission, too. Nothing could match the heady feeling of a Tomcat with wings dirtied, antiair missiles and five-hundred-pound bombs slung up under the wings on hard points, just waiting to be used. It made the Tomcat a bit more ungainly, true, but the added inertia during turns and maneuvers kept him conscious of the enormous firepower now under his command. “One more guy’s gotta finish tanking a Hornet, topping off his tanks, of course. I’m telling you.

Gator, if I ever get out of the Navy, I’m going to invent a fuel line that spools out from the carrier and runs straight up to those bastards.

Thirsty little motherfuckers you can’t even run a strike without giving them time to suck down the fuel.”

“Lightweights,” Gator agreed. “Can’t even carry enough bombs to do any serious damage. But that’s what we’re here for. Anyway, you wanna get the rest of us headed in? The Tomcats are a little slower we can start and the Hornets will catch up.”

“Roger.” Bird Dog flipped the communications switch to tactical.

“Okay, people, let’s make it happen.” He heard Gator moan in the background. He’d catch hell back at the carrier later for his lack of circuit discipline, but for the moment, he didn’t care. It was his plan, his mission, and he was about to see it work. One disgruntled captain hell, even a pissed-off admiral!couldn’t change that.

Behind him, the Tomcats broke up into groups of two, flying a close formation in tight station-keeping circles.

Once they left the sponge, the area where an attack force clustered to meet unexpected threats or to wait for ingress onto a target, they’d break into high-low pairs, one taking station at altitude to back up the lead down lower. It was a method of aerial combat that the Americans had perfected as no one else in the world had.

Finally, the last gas-sucking Hornet was ready. “Better get inbound before they have to go again,” Bird Dog grumbled. He gave the signal over tactical.

Twenty minutes until feet dry, the transition from flying over water to flying over ground. But before that happened, it all went according to plan “Got the first one,” Gator said suddenly. “Solid radar contact on contact breaking off from USS Arsenal.”

“Good blackshoe,” Bird Dog said approvingly. “Take your shot we’re next.”

In addition to its vertical launch system for Tomahawks and antiaircraft missiles, the USS Arsenal had two four-missile Harpoon assemblies on either side of the ship. The longrange antiaircraft missiles, originally developed for launch against surface Echo 2-class Soviet missile submarines, were thick cylinders tapering into a pointed nose, wind and control surfaces folded during its storage in the selfcontained launch box and popping out after it was ejected with pressurized air. It was controlled from Combat using the Harpoon shipboard command and launch control set (HSCLCS, pronounced “sickles”). It was a fire-and-forget missile, and a potent anti ship threat.

“We’ve never fired one, except in tests,” the captain remarked to no one in particular. No one answered. This was the first of many first launches for the Arsenal, and proving the operational capabilities of the Harpoon from it was almost as important as validating its land attack capabilities.

The captain watched the small camera screen mounted to the left of the large-screen display. It showed that the quad launcher was silent and passive. “Now.”

The launcher shuddered once, then a thick cylinder emerged, its pointed nose slowly emerging, followed shortly by the seventeen-foot body. As it popped out, cruciform fins unfolded from both the centerline and the booster section. It seemed to take forever for the missile to launch.

As it cleared the launcher, the missile picked up speed. It arced straight up, cleared the ship within seconds, then tipped over at a lesser angle.

“One away.” The technician’s voice was jubilant. “Successful launch; all stations report no damage. Captain.”

“Very well.” He waited for a few more seconds while the missile remained visible on the remotely controlled television camera, then shifted his gaze to the large-screen display. The potent SPY-1 radar had already picked it up as a target, and was tracking it on its northwesterly course. The SPS-64 surface search radar also held contact on its intended target, a small coastal command and control communications ship owned by the Cuban navy.

“I’ll be on the bridge.” The captain unbuckled himself from the seat and strode quickly forward and up to open air.

He was just in time. A flare of light on the horizon, followed by a pressure wave of sound, washed over the ship. Fire spiked into the sky, then quickly died out as the sea ate the remains of both missile and ship.

“It worked,” the OOD murmured. “Oh, boy, did it work.”

The captain turned a stern eye on him. “You didn’t doubt it would, did you?” From his superior’s tone of voice, the junior officer could never have guessed that his captain was just as relieved as he was.

“I’ll be in Combat.” The captain chided himself for his break from discipline in running out on the bridge to watch the first attack.

Still, it would be his only opportunity the rest of the missiles were after targets too far away to be observed by the naked eye. Any sense of achievement would come only after aircraft armed with TARPS overflew the land sites for battle damage assessment.

The Tomahawks took longer to launch, but six of them still left the ship in a rapid ripple of noise, fire, and smoke.

The ship shuddered as tube after tube shot out the lighter, land attack missiles.

Each Tomahawk was of the TLAM-C variety, configured with a conventional warhead of high explosives. It was capable of achieving speeds in excess of five hundred knots, and cruised at an altitude of fifty to one hundred feet above the sea, making it a difficult target to detect at long range.

It could be launched over two hundred and fifty nautical miles away from the target, and used a combination of digital sea mapping area correlator radar along with optical viewing of the target area for terminal flight. For these missiles, the target package took them on a slight detour to the east to insure that they cleared the inbound fighter raids.

“And now we wait.” And if that were news, the captain thought. If there’s one thing every sailor in every navy learned how to do, it was hurry up and wait.

“The atmosphere’s lousy with the shit,” the E-2C radar intercept officer complained. “They’ve got more radars on that island, especially on top of that mountain range, than we’ve got on all the aircraft out here. Just try to get through that stuff.”

“Well, we’re going to have a little help this time. It’s not all up to the Prowlers,” the other RIO responded. “And here it comes.”

His radar screen lit up with a barrage of sharp green blips tracking rapidly to the east, then veering in mid-flight back to the west. They were traveling at four hundred knots at first, then quickly adding another hundred to reach Mach.75. “Good thing we’re up so high. We’d never see them otherwise.”

“And the Cubans aren’t going to see them until its too late, either,” the other RIO said. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his feet, trying to work a kink out of his neck.

“Nice to have somebody else doing the nasty work for a change.

Especially when it’s not the Air Force.”

“Especially not the Air Force,” the first RIO echoed.

Dealing with the Wild Weasel missions and anti radiation strikes by the Air Force always proved to be a complicated matter of coordinating communications and commands. Not that they were incompetent, mind you just different.

“Deep dive,” the first RIO announced. “And we should see … ah, yes.

There it is.” He toggled his ICS switch and called to the pilot.

“Lost contact on all missiles.”

“Roger.” The laconic tones from the aviator in the forward half of the aircraft indicated what he thought of the traditional pilot disdain for his passengers. “Can we go home now?”

“Not yet,” the RIO answered. “We still got the strike inbound, and the egress after that. Don’t worry, that rack will be waiting for you when we’re done.”

The missile streaked in over land and began comparing the terrain with the memory of its flight path stored in its fire control circuits. So far, a good match. It made one, minute course correction, then descended twenty feet to continue skimming forty feet above the gently rolling terrain.

One thousand meters from the target, it switched over to optical guidance, relaying a picture of what it saw through the nose camera back to the carrier. If necessary, the technician aboard the aircraft carrier could have made another course correction but it wasn’t. This Tomahawk knew exactly where it was going, and didn’t need any help getting there.

Seconds later, it was over. The Tomahawk burrowed through the cement, pausing for two seconds after impact before it jerked the final firing circuitry. The warhead exploded into a firestorm of high explosives inside the concrete bunker, immediately blowing out all four walls and the roof. The contents were incinerated instantly.

Six hundred feet away, Pamela Drake screamed. Huerta clamped his hand hard over her mouth and threw her to the ground, landing on top of her.

Debris rained down on him, partially blocked by the overhang of the roof they were under, but still splattering the walls above their heads. All four SEALs and their civilian guest were flat on the ground, heads tucked reflexively under their arms, waiting on the edge of life and death for the firestorm and downpour of shrapnel and debris to end.

The world went silent. Huerta shook his head, and kept his hand firmly clamped over Drake’s mouth. Temporary deafening from being close to ground zero was normal stuff for him, but he could count on the civilian to panic. He could feel her lips moving beneath his hand as she tried to scream. He clamped down tighter.

Finally, he felt her body wilt. He eased his hand off gently and spun her around to face him. Her face was pale and beaded with sweat. She opened her mouth, and he raised his hand warningly. She nodded and fell silent.

Sikes flipped his hand toward the target compound. The dog had erupted in a paroxysm of motion. Probably barking its fool head off, Sikes figured. Not that anyone was within earshot to hearthey’d all be as deaf as the SEALs were.

Still, best to put an end to this quickly before the acoustic shot wore off. Garcia lifted his pistol, sighting carefully, and nailed the dog through the skull with a nine-millimeter round. The dog dropped to the ground instantly and lay motionless.

Sikes gave the “go ahead” signal and led the way toward the small compound. The fence was partially torn from the nearby explosion, providing a convenient ingress point for the team. Huerta took the second position, his hand firmly clamped around Drake’s wrist, dragging her along.

They were inside the compound in seconds, and Garcia put another round into the lock on the door. He burst through the door and saw a large, short-haired man in a green flight suit hunkered down under his rack.

He motioned sharply at the man. “SEALs,” he said, feeling the word leave his throat but still unable to hear it except as a vibration in his bones. He hoped the other man’s hearing was better, but doubted it.

The pilot appeared stunned. He gazed at them blankly for a moment before comprehension began to dawn. He scrambled out from under the single bed and lurched to his feet.

Good. Uninjured. Sikes nodded approvingly, then spared two seconds to shake the man’s hand. It quickly turned into a hard, quick embrace.

Getting out was just as easy. Whatever remaining Cuban forces had been in the compound were significantly distracted by the destruction raining down on them. Sikes tried to remember the mission was briefed as a six-missile strike, all impacting their targets simultaneously.

If things went according to plan, there would be no more inbound missiles to jeopardize the team’s escape. Not that the SEALs should have ever been there in the first place by now, they should already have been back in their boat and headed for the carrier. Still, the Cubans didn’t know that more missiles weren’t coming. There was a ten-minute window between the Arsenal attack and first strikes by naval aircraft.

He hoped it would be enough.

“Oops. Here comes trouble.” The RIO’s voice over the ICS brought everyone back to full alert. On each screen, just at the outer edge of the detection capabilities, six small blips appeared. “Where the hell did they come from?” the RIO muttered under his breath. “It would be too good to be true if we had air superiority without a fight, don’t you think?”

The second RIO reached for his mike. “I’m going to let strike leader know, if he hasn’t already seen them on his AWG-9.”

“Intercept time?” the first RIO asked.

“About six minutes.” The second RIO left unspoken the obvious conclusion there wasn’t enough time for the inbound strike to dump weapons and disengage. They’d have to take the MiGs on while still fully loaded or dump their weaponry harmlessly in the ocean. A helluva choice to make, and one the E2C RIO was glad he didn’t have to entrust to his pilot.

Bird Dog swore softly. Why the hell couldn’t the MiGs have waited another ten minutes? By then, he’d be wings clean and at his most maneuverable. As it was, air combat maneuvering against the nimble Soviet-built fighters would be problematic, not only for the fighters but for the smaller Hornets accompanying them. And the EA-cBs carried no antiair weaponry except the HARMs. “Why didn’t we have the Arsenal neutralize that land base and airfield?” Gator asked. “I would have thought that would be the perfect mission for them.”

“You don’t understand conflict. Gator,” Bird Dog said hotly. “This is an operational air problem. This is a limited war we don’t want it spreading into a full out-and-out conflict between the United States and Cuba. See, if we conducted an attack on the other base, we’d be sending a signal that” “Maybe they don’t read sign language. Bird Dog.

Did you ever think of that? All your fancy operational art has gotten me so far is fighters inbound.” Gator sounded tired. “Okay, let’s figure out how we’re gonna get out of this one.”

“We outnumber them,” Bird Dog observed. “You got the contacts relayed by the E-2?”

“Affirmative. We definitely outnumber them, but they’re moving like greased lightning. Tight formation, good flight discipline. They should beah, there they go. High-low formation now.”

“Let’s give them something to shake up that tight discipline a little,” Bird Dog said. He toggled over to tactical. “Red Dog Three, this is Red Dog Leader. Vector zero-four-five and take bogeys with Fox One.

Hold them off for a while, Fred, until we can get rid of this load we’re carrying.”

“Roger. Coming right now.” Two aircraft peeled off from the formation and headed toward the incoming MiGs.

“Fox One, Fox One,” Red Dog Three announced seconds later, indicating that he had fired Phoenix missiles at the intruders.

The Phoenix missile was the longrange attack weapon of choice for the United States Navy. Designated the AIM-54, it was the most sophisticated and longest-range air-to-air missile in service in any nation. Over thirteen feet in length, with a diameter of fifteen inches, it weighed almost one thousand pounds and was capable of achieving speeds of up to Mach 5. With a maximum range of 110 nautical miles, it gave the F-14 Tomcat, controlling with an AWG-9 post Doppler radar, an extended standoff engagement range.

The primary problem with the Phoenix was that it required continual guidance from the Tomcat and had a long history of unreliable fusing problems. But even with its shaky performance, the Phoenix had one big plus going for it. It made any intruder stop and think and go on the defensive. The expanding continuous rod and control fragmentation warheads did work sometimes, and when they did, the results were devastating. An adversary aircraft could not afford to count on the Phoenix’s not working. It did, just often enough.

Bird Dog listened to the chatter of tactical engagement over the circuit as Red Dog Three sighted the missile in on the two lead aircraft. At the last moment, both MiGs jigged violently, shaking the Phoenix off. Hard thrust maneuvers coupled with chaff and jamming were often enough to confuse the post-Doppler radar terminal homing.

“Well, what did you expect?” Gator said when it became obvious the two missiles had missed.

“Yeah, but check their combat spread. It threw them on the defensive.

Now Red Dog can close in with Sparrows and Sidewinders. Maybe take out a couple of them hell, two Tomcats can take on six MiGs any day.” Bird Dog tried to sound confident.

It was a bold statement, and one that had little basis in fact. The MiG was a smaller, more maneuverable aircraft.

At best, the Tomcats could possibly take out two MiGs each, and that was only if everything went well. The possibility that the MiGs would down a Tomcat was not even mentioned.

“Fox Two, Fox Two.” The second call indicated that Red Dog Two had launched a Sparrow, a radar-guided, medium-range air-to-air missile.

The Sparrow was not the dogfighting missile of choice, and was much more effective in a nonmaneuvering intercept. Though more reliable than the Phoenix, there were still problems with the solid-state electronics and the missile motors.

“Fox Three, Fox Three.” And now the Sidewinders.

Bird Dog nodded in approval. It was every pilot’s choice of weapon for a close-in dogfight. The annular brass fragmentation was wrapped in a sheath of preformed rods and used infrared homing to provide all-aspect tracking for the missile. It was a fire-and-forget weapon, one that could be off the rails and on target without distracting the firing pilot from critical evasive maneuvers.

“Got one!” Red Dog Three’s voice was jubilant. “And there’s another oneoh, shit, Fred, he’s on my ass! Get him, get him!”

“I can’t” The transmission ended abruptly but without the noise blast and squeal that would have indicated a deadly shot on the Tomcat.

“Damn it, why aren’t we in that?” Bird Dog swore.

“We’ve got more combat experience than all of these other pilots put together.”

“Don’t even consider it, asshole,” Gator snapped. “You’re flight leader your job is to get them in, all of them, and put ordnance on target. Not pick off fighters on your own.

Get used to it, buddy.”

“But I could’ve” “You don’t know what he did until the debrief,” Gator cut him off. “Get your head back in the ball game.”

Gator was right. Bird Dog tamped down his temper and concentrated on the tactical mission around him. “Red Dog Four, roll off and assist Red Dog Two.” An odd feeling of heaviness settled into the pit of his stomach. He hadn’t expected this, being left out of the actual fight, ordering other crews off on an intercept. He knew he shouldn’t feel so bad so guilty. Still, sending men and women off to die in dogfights while he bore in on the grand target? It shouldn’t be like that.

“They’re down to three MiGs,” Gator reported. “One Sparrow, two Sidewinders. Red Dog Four just took a Phoenix shot at the trail aircraft.”

“Where are we?” Bird Dog demanded. In concentrating on the air battle going on to the east, he’d temporarily lost the big picture.

“Feet dry in ninety seconds,” Gator answered.

Hearing the familiar voice of his RIO provided an unexpected amount of comfort. After all the missions they’d flown together, the MiGs they’d shot down over China and the hair-raising assault on the Aleutian Islands, it meant something to have the right man in the backseat. Or woman, he amended, one part of his mind worrying over that as another fought to regain the tactical picture. “I’m descending now,” he said.

Gator clicked his mike twice in acknowledgment.

From five hundred feet above the ground, the terrain was suddenly familiar. God knows he’d studied the topography maps often enough, and it was starting to pay off now. It was like making a run on Chocolate Mountain in southern California, a familiar, predictable terrain.

The early morning sky suddenly lit up with fireflies. No, not fireflies, they were “Tracers,” Bird Dog yelped. “Shit, Gator, we’re taking antiaircraft fire!”

“Damn it. Bird Dog, don’t lose it now. That was briefed you knew about it. Just get us in on target.”

Bird Dog fought the almost visceral urge to grab altitude and climb to safety. At five hundred feet, he had little room for error, and less for maneuverability. They were so close to the target point now that any twitch off course would put ordnance on the wrong targets with his luck, probably a hospital or orphanage, more grist for the news media to castigate the American military establishment. He gritted his teeth, focused in on the terrain, and pressed on. Another seventy seconds until he could climb to safety.

Unexpectedly, he thought of Callie. His relationship was fucked up, but at least he’d do something right something he was trained to do, something he’d practiced millions of times. And there was no chance the Cubans would send him a Dear John letter over this attack.

“Those are ours,” Sikes said, pointing up to the sky. “You can tell by the Tomcat engine.”

Huerta nodded. “Are we clear?”

Sikes shrugged. “I don’t know. It depends on how accurate they are.”

They’d left the Fuentes Naval Base perimeter the same way they’d come in, dragging Pamela Drake through the hole in the perimeter fence.

Suddenly, she’d seemed convinced of her own immortality, and had actually argued that she should remain in the compound during the air attack on the base. He shook his head. Women and reporters. No sense at all.

“Let’s put a little more space between us and the IP,” he ordered. “I want to be on the beach in five minutes.” He turned to the Marine Corps pilot. “Think you can keep up?” he asked, deliberately ignoring Pamela Drake.

The Marine major seemed to swell slightly. “I’m a Marine. You wanna race me to the beach?”

Sikes shook his head. “No, the real question is this how well can you swim?”

“Twenty seconds,” Gator said. “Almost there. Bird Dog we’re almost in.” The backseater sounded like a football coach calling a routine play. “And hurry up!” The RIO’s voice took on a new note of urgency.

“We’ve got company.”

Bird Dog’s head snapped up. He’d been staring down at the terrain, tensing himself for the moment that he would release the five-hundred-pound bombs. “Where? And who?”

“Dead ahead. Ten miles. Looks like more it is. MiGs, from the radar.

Bird Dog, we can make it. Hold steady on this course, dump the bombs, then we’ll take care of the MiGs.” Gator’s voice was insistently urgent.

“How many?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

“How many!” Bird Dog heard Gator sigh.

“About twenty so far. And the E2 says there’s a second wave behind them. It looks like the six inbound from the east were just a diversion.”

Bird Dog toggled his tactical circuit on. “Red Dog Might, this is Red Dog Leader. You see it now, guys MiGs, dead ahead. We’ve got time just enough. Dump your ordnance, then combat spread. All flight leads acknowledge.” A quick flurry of acknowledgments followed.

“No one flinches,” Bird Dog said, a hard, deadly tone in his voice.

“We finish their base, then we finish them.”