Hellfire

TEN

As Tombstone escorted the COD out to the carrier, the hours of boredom passed, broken only by moments of sheer terror during tanking. Tombstone stayed well ahead of the COD, scanning the sky looking for any problems. Behind him, Greene monitored the radar. There was nothing to see.

They refueled for the final time six hundred miles from the carrier, and Tombstone was carefully watching the COD’s position the entire time. Finally, when they had taken on enough fuel, Tombstone disengaged and turned back toward the carrier.

“Stony, this is Home Plate. Be advised four playmates inbound your position. You should hold them shortly.” The operations specialist’s voice was calm and professional. There was nothing in it to indicate that dispatching four fighters to escort an unarmed COD and a fighter flown by a civilian was anything out the ordinary.

“Roger, copy four,” Jeremy responded. He glanced back down at his scope and sure enough, four new contacts positioned directly over the aircraft carrier had just appeared. “I hold our playmates now.”

“Roger. Anticipate COD on deck in four zero mikes. The tanker will top you off, then we’ll bring you in after the COD and the playmates.”

“What’s going on, Home Plate? Why the playmates?” Tombstone queried. There was a moment of silence, static hissing over the secure circuit. Tombstone felt that uneasy twitch in his gut that always seemed to presage trouble.

“Be advised, Stony, that there was an INCOS incident approximately thirty mikes ago. SAR is currently on station. Possibility that there are two casualties.”

“INCOS?” Tombstone said incredulously. “What the hell happened?”

“I’ll brief you when you get down here, Tombstone,” a new voice said, and Tombstone recognized Coyote’s accent. “For now, just hold on to that Greyhound until your playmates get in position. We’ll bring the Greyhound in first, then the playmates, then you. You got enough fuel?”

“Roger, plenty of fuel, Admiral.”

“What the hell?” Greene muttered.

Tombstone said over ICS, “That’s in case I create a flaming datum on their deck. They’ll get the COD and their own aircraft on board and out of the way in case the old guy screws up.”

“Like that’s going to happen.”

“Not everyone has your confidence in me,” Tombstone pointed out.

Suddenly, Greene’s screen flashed bright green. He lost all contacts, even the COD, as the noise blanked out every other signal. “Jamming!” he snapped, and immediately began to try to filter it out. He was able to reduce it to four broad noise spikes, but couldn’t get the screen completely clear.

“All units, Home Plate,” a new voice said over tactical. “Be advised we have airborne and surface jamming, two Mainstays and the Russian cruiser. Attempting to reach the Russian commander for clarification at this time. Set general quarters. Hold fire.”

“Hold fire!” Jeremy swore. “Jamming! That’s a hostile act by definition.” A hostile act was considered an act of war and allowed for immediate retaliation.

“Right. Not our game, though,” Tombstone snapped, although Jeremy could tell he was deeply disturbed. Adrenaline was dumping into his system, and the hair on the back of his neck bristled. Flying through jamming was like flying blind. He had no idea what was in the air in front of him outside visual range.

“I’m closing on the COD. Put our playmates between the cruiser and the COD.”

Twisting around, Jeremy could see the COD now in visual range. He gave the other four Tomcats vectors to take station on the COD to avoid mutual interference.

“All units, all airborne units, set EMCON Alfa. Receive only on link. We have a clear picture, and will control targeting from here,” the carrier TAO ordered.

While the Tomcat was capable of firing any of its weapons on targeting data provided by another platform, no fighter pilot liked to hand over control to someone else. But there was no other choice right now. The cruiser and the carrier, working together, had managed to blank out most of the interference and were transmitting a solid tactical picture. Once Tombstone and Jeremy shut down their own radar, they would have a good picture not broken by noise.

“Stony, Greyhound One. Be advised I am turning north to come within the cruiser’s missile engagement zone.” The voice of the female pilot flying the COD was higher than normal. She was well aware of her own complete lack of defenses.

“Roger, Greyhound One. We’ll see you on deck.” Tombstone put the Tomcat into a hard turn, moving away from the COD. Inside the cruiser’s missile engagement zone, the COD stood a far better chance than under the protection of the Tomcat. While shooting down a missile with another missile was a particularly tricky evolution for a Tomcat, the cruiser’s Aegis system had proved itself up to the challenge many times before.

“Stony, One, be advised that the Russian carrier is launching its fighters. Condition red, weapons tight.” The admiral’s voice was calm and confident. His orders told each aircraft to be prepared to fire at a moment’s notice, and to maintain a continual tracking solution in all contacts, but not to release weapons unless attacked.

“Great,” Greene muttered, his head now buried in the hard plastic screen around his radarscope. This was what he hated most about flying in the backseat, having his attention confined to the radarscope and ESM gear and his actions limited to green pixels on-screen.

On his screen, there were ten symbols indicating hostile air contacts. They formed up just off the Russian carrier’s starboard beam, then turned as one toward the COD scampering for the carrier.

“No,” Jeremy said, not believing what he was seeing. “What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know.” The tactical circuit was now a continuous stream of reports, commands, and information, as every ship in the battle group set general quarters and prepared for what looked like the beginning of a Russian attack. But it made no sense, did it? This was not the Russian way, to attack with just ten aircraft. There should have been waves of aircraft inbound, supported by land-based missiles. Not ten aircraft that stood no chance against the heavily armed battle group and airwing, none at all.

“Targeting radar,” Jeremy snapped, as the ESM warning device at his side began howling. “Tombstone, it’s got a lock on us!”

“Wait one,” Tombstone said, although he was clearly no happier about it than Jeremy was. “Where’s the COD?”

“On final,” Jeremy said, as he watched the symbol for the Greyhound One turn in toward the aircraft carrier.

“Launch indications, launch indications — we have a launch!” For the first time, the air traffic controller’s voice ratcheted slightly higher.

“Weapons free, all Russian platforms,” the admiral snapped immediately over the same circuit.

Four new symbols, each with an impossibly long speed leader, popped into being on Tombstone’s HUD and on Jeremy’s screen. Missiles, launched by the Russian fighters — and all targeted on the helpless Greyhound.

Pamela’s eyes snapped open at the change in the aircraft’s vibration. The pressure of the straps against her chest told her they were in a hard turn, far too hard for normal maneuvers. “What’s going on?” she asked, speaking loudly to be heard over the noise inside the aircraft.

“They didn’t say,” Jeff answered, his voice placid. “No announcements.” Not that they could have heard them anyway, given the noise level.

“They’re kicking her in the ass, aren’t they?” Pamela said. She leaned forward to see outside the window. It was still light outside, although she could see the first beginnings of sunset behind them. Off in the distance, sun glinted off metal. Their escort — probably Tombstone himself, she mused. And what the hell was going on, anyway?

She started to get up and step into the aisle, but Jeff grabbed her arm, holding her down in her seat. He gave her a measured look, and with a sigh, she sank back into her seat. There was really no point in trying to find out what was going on. If they preferred criminal charges against her for being out of her seat during the flight, she could kiss any more COD flights goodbye. Besides, whatever was going on, there was nothing she could do about it anyway.

Off in the distance, she saw the Tomcat peel off and vanish from view as it went toward their stern. The vibration inside the COD increased, as did the roar of the engines. Everything started rattling, and it felt like things were coming apart.

She kept her attention on the window, suddenly scared. Then she saw it, coming up on them from the back. It was a slender white speck against the sky, growing rapidly larger. The sun glinted off it, making it unbearably bright at times, transforming it into a swath of light.

“A missile,” she said, horror in her voice. Unbelievable — who would fire on a COD in the middle of the battle group? But a missile it was, there was no doubt about it.

Jeff had his head turned away from her and his eyes were shut. Surely he wasn’t going to sleep now, of all times? Now, that didn’t make sense — and then she saw it, a small plastic unit pressed between his ear and the hard foam back of the seat. She jabbed him in the side, then grabbed it before he could protest.

“Hey,” he said. “Get your own.”

She pressed it to her ear and listened. “Entering the cruiser’s missile engagement zone,” she heard, as well as a flurry of other reports.

“It’s like a police scanner,” Jeff said, no trace of apology in his voice. “Rigged it up myself. You can only listen to the unclassified conversations — that squeal, it means a circuit is encrypted. But even the unclassified circuit is more than they’re telling us anyway, isn’t it? Like things are really going to shit out there.”

“Weapons free. Break, JPJ engage incoming.”

“Roger, birds away, birds away.”

“Lead, break right! I got him.”

“Fox two, Fox two!”

The chatter on the circuit was heart-stoppingly familiar. Jeff leaned over, cracked his head against hers, then pulled the scanner between them so they could both listen. Pamela turned her neck uncomfortably, trying to simultaneously keep her ear next to the scanner while she watched the air through the battered window.

Far below them, the ocean was a dark, smooth surface, unusually calm even for this time of year. A few distant whitecaps broke the surface, but there were long stretches of almost mirrorlike swells. She saw three new missiles arrow up from the direction of the cruiser, head straight up, and turn slightly toward the missile behind them. As she watched, the distance decreased between them at an alarming rate.

There was no use in denying it. She was terrified. But there was no way she was going to show it, not now. No one else in the aircraft, aside from perhaps the aircrew, knew what was going on. As far as they knew, the COD was simply making a particularly ragged approach on the carrier. If the cruiser missiles did not intercept the ones launched by the Russian cruiser, they would die with no more than a microsecond of warning before the aircraft was ripped apart.

Would she see it coming? Would there be a moment when she stared out at a blue sky, saw metal shredded, saw the fireball race through the aircraft’s fuselage? For just a moment, she envied Winston’s complete ignorance.

The four Russian Forgers split apart into two fighting pairs. They achieved horizontal separation while maintaining the same altitude, and turned to each point directly at the hapless COD. But just as the COD entered the cruiser’s missile engagement zone, they broke off suddenly, as though they were listening to other communications. They wheeled west, ascended, and turned toward Tombstone and the four other Tomcats.

“What the hell are they doing?” Jeremy shouted. “Your dot, Tombstone,” he said, indicating that he’d selected a target and Tombstone was cleared to fire at will.

“Roger. Fox two, fox two,” Tombstone said as he toggled off the AMRAAM.

The AMRAAM was a fire-and-forget weapon, one that could be targeted directly from the Tomcat radar or from any other source. In this instance, the carrier’s targeting data, stripped of the jamming, was fed directly into that missile’s tiny brain. Once it was free of the Tomcat’s wing, it activated its own small radar and maintained an active track on the assigned target. Capable of achieving speeds greater than Mach 4, the AMRAAM could catch anything it was sent after. Other missiles proved more difficult targets than aircraft, not only because of their increased speed, but because the stealth technology resulted in an exceptionally small radar return. That, coupled with the sheer size considerations of the smaller target, made exploding rod or fuel-cloud warheads more effective than a simple explosive warhead. However, in this case, Tombstone’s Tomcat carried only standard anti-air explosive warheads.

“He sees it,” Jeremy said. “It’s got a lock, he’s got a lock — shit, they’ve launched! Incoming, Tombstone!”

“I got it,” Tombstone said as the symbol popped into being on his display. “Activating countermeasures — hold on, Jeremy.”

Tombstone put the Tomcat into a hard climb, rocketing up at nearly a completely vertical angle. The g-forces slammed Jeremy back into his seat, sitting on his chest like a five-hundred-pound tiger. He grunted, tensing all his muscles, forcing oxygen to his brain to prevent gray out. Just when he thought he would lose the battle, even with his anti-G suit, Tombstone pulled the Tomcat out of the climb and into level flight.

“It’s still on us,” Jeremy shouted as his vision cleared enough for him to make out the radar screen. “More countermeasures!” He popped off chaff and flares from the undercarriage of the aircraft. The bright hot spots and confusing metal strips would create additional targets for the missile, be it heat-seeking or radar. “Commencing spoofing.” The test electronics built into the new model of Tomcat enabled it to intercept radar signals and to feed back, with a split-second difference, an identical pulse to the original sender. The transmissions from the Tomcat would look like returns from the missile’s own radar. This would confuse it, causing it to reposition and chase the false target. The false radar returns had to be just right, not so strong that they were immediately obvious as a countermeasure, yet solid enough to override the real returns from the radar’s own signal generator.

This particular Tomcat possessed one of the most advanced spoofing sets ever designed. Tombstone’s uncle had a close relationship with a contractor, the result of all of his years as chief of naval operations, and quietly, without informing anyone else, he had loaded the latest electronics along with signal generators into this particular bird. The problem in using them lay in the fact that they would confuse the carrier as well, who was not expecting to see that particular signal radiating from a Tomcat.

“Got it!” Jeremy crowed as the missile turned hard to the right and was lost in the midst of the flares. “Not sure which one worked, maybe all of them. More incoming!”

On tactical, the other Tomcats were calling out their shots as well, firing the preferred AMRAAM and following it up with heat seekers. The orderly arrangement of Tomcats and Forgers was now a furball of launches, missiles, and countermeasures. The confusion was made worse by the fact that they were all working off the carrier’s targeting data, and the carrier was still having a problem dealing with Tombstone’s Tomcat’s spoofing.

“Jamming is secured,” a surprised voice said over tactical. “Turn on your own radars — stand by for synchronization.”

Jeremy flipped a switch. His radar had been placed in standby rather than completely secured — standard procedure — and was already warmed up and ready to transmit. In moments, their own picture was back on the screen.

Below them and off to their right, a fireball exploded in the air. It was a hard yellow and orange, so bright that it hurt to look at it. Black smoke boiled out immediately, and encompassed the entire area until it looked like a thundercloud with a fire inside.

“Bears,” Jeremy said, noting that all the Tomcats were still present. “And another!” A second fireball, slightly higher than the first one, tore through the sky.

“Stony, Home Plate,” a voice said, and Jeremy recognized it as the admiral. “Change of plans — you’re first on deck. I’m turning you over to the TAO for further instructions, but I want to see you as soon as possible.”

“They’re running,” Jeremy said. The two symbols representing the remaining Forgers had turned away from the port fireball and were going on afterburner toward their own carrier. “Coming to their senses or working off orders?”

“Maybe they finally got it straightened out,” Tombstone said. “It still doesn’t make sense that they went after the COD. Especially not after what happened.”

“Maybe they were trying to retaliate.”

“Maybe.” But Jeremy could tell that Tombstone wasn’t convinced. To tell the truth, neither was he.

Beside her, Jeff was swearing quietly. They could both see the fireballs high in the air, as could a few of the other passengers. Even with the noise in the passenger compartment, she could hear voices raised, and feel the uneasiness crescendoing to fear running through the aircraft.

Suddenly, they smashed into the deck, the motion throwing them all forward hard against their restraining harnesses. After the roller-coaster motion in the roiled air astern of the carrier, it felt like they had crashed.

Someone near the tail of the aircraft screamed, a high-pitched voice clearly well advanced into terror. Drake smiled. “Welcome to the fleet, Winston.” Beside her, Jeff nodded.

“One zero one, call the ball,” the tower said, indicating that Tombstone should sing out when he located the Fresnel lens on the stern of the carrier. From that point on, his flight would be controlled by the landing signals officer, or LSO, who would have visual contact on him and his position relative to the carrier’s deck.

“Ball, 101,” Tombstone said, his voice calm but tense.

“Roger, 101, I have you, sir,” came the voice of the LSO. “One zero one, say needles.” This was a request that Tombstone report on the readings of his automatic glide path indicators. If they agreed with the LSO’s assessment of Tombstone’s position on the required flight path, Tombstone would be told to fly needles, meaning that he could rely on them in making corrections to his flight path. More often than not, the LSO was not satisfied with the needles picture and would proceed to guide the aircraft in by himself.

“Needles high and right,” Tombstone said. That assessment disagreed with his own assessment of where they were, and it was no surprise when the LSO said, “One zero one, disregard needles. I hold you on path, no corrections.”

“Roger, concur.”

In the backseat, Jeremy was silent. Aside from tanking at night and landing on the carrier at night, every landing was a special situation. It required the utmost concentration by the pilot. The backseater’s only role at this point was to avoid distracting the pilot and to keep an eye on altitude and the area around them. Deconflicting the airspace was the carrier’s responsibility, but aviators never liked to rely on anyone else to do that.

“Like riding a bicycle,” Tombstone said, his voice tight. He eased back slightly on the power, letting the Tomcat sink gently down through the turbulent air. “A beer says I nail the three wire.” There were four arresting wires stretched across the deck rapidly rising under them. Intercepting the three wire with the tail hook was considered the optimum landing.

“No bet,” Jeremy said. “I always lose.”

Tombstone chuckled slightly. “Okay, then, we’ll bet on your next landing. I got a beer that says you can’t nail the three wire.”

“Stony, watch your attitude,” the LSO said, unaware of the conversation taking place inside the cockpit, but referring to the angle of the Tomcat in the air. “Drop your nose a bit — yeah, that’s it, looking good, looking good,” the LSO continued, following their progress toward the deck.

“Come on,” Tombstone said as the Tomcat slammed to the deck. “Bet me!”

“Three wire,” the LSO said, confirming Tombstone’s judgment. “Good one, sir.”

As they hit, Tombstone slammed the throttles forward to full military power. There was a remote chance that something would go wrong between the tail hook and the restraining wire, and until the moment that a plane captain was willing to step in front of the aircraft to confirm that he was safely on deck, standard procedure required staying at full power for another takeoff. Jeremy had seen the consequences of ignoring the rule once. A new Tomcat pilot, overconfident after successfully qualifying, cut power immediately after snagging the one wire. The Tomcat tail hook had “kiddy hopped,” or bounced away from the wire, and the Tomcat had started a rollout, but with insufficient power to get airborne. The pilot had not been able to brake in time, and the Tomcat had skidded across the deck, then over the edge. The pilot and his NFO had managed to eject safely but the aircraft was a complete loss. Had it been at full military power when the tail hook failed, the pilot would have been able to take off again and come around for another try.

“There’s our COD,” Jeremy said. The Greyhound had pulled forward into a spot and was in the process of shutting down. The ramp had dropped and passengers were starting to disembark. Two efficient white shirts and a few plane captains were herding them into the ship.

A plane captain stepped in front of Tombstone’s aircraft and calmly held up his fists, indicating that Tombstone should reduce power. He then made the hand signal for retracting the tail hook. Tombstone did so, and the noise inside the cockpit dropped considerably. Then, following hand signals from the plain captain, he taxied the Tomcat to a spot across the deck. When given the engine shutdown signal, he shut it down, and they both pulled out checklists to begin the post-shutdown checks.

Jeremy glanced over at the passengers heading into the ship. One had stopped and was resisting efforts to drag her. She waved, making sure he saw her, and headed back into the ship.

“Yep, that’s our COD,” Jeremy said.