Joint Operations

FIVE

IWA Captain Henry Mitchell stared down at the fuel indicator and ran the figures one more time. It was hopeless. Back in the old days, he would have had enough fuel to divert completely out of the area. But cost-cutting measures and penny-pinching bureaucrats had set up a new protocol. After examining the weather between San Diego and Hawaii, and allowing a comfortable margin for safety, the flight was fueled with a partial load.

Mitchell’s second in command, Commander Liam Nevins, glanced over at his captain and said, “It’s not like we have a choice, is it?”

“No, it’s not.” Captain Mitchell resigned himself to the conclusion both of them had reached independent of the computer program. “We’ll divert sixty miles north of Oahu and come in from the west. It’s the best I can do.”

Landing at another island wasn’t something that either of them felt comfortable with at all. But certainly they couldn’t go into their primary divert since there wasn’t enough fuel left at the time they first heard the news to divert back to San Diego. Consequently, after discussion with his ops center in San Diego, Mitchell made the decision. He would try to stay clear of the area with the fighter aircraft, consistent with fuel constraints, and still land somewhere in the windward chain. Over the last hour, the possible landing sites had been narrowed down to two.

Additionally, during his discussions with flight control, another problem had surfaced. His hydraulics indicator light was flickering and the computer printout indicated that there might be a problem with the braking system. Of course, there were backups upon backups, but if he couldn’t say for sure that he had a functional braking system, there was no way he was going to divert to any shorter airfield. Regardless of the military situation, he was responsible for these passengers and he needed safety equipment, foam trucks, and immediate repair parts and expertise available.

How was this all possible, anyway? Captain Mitchell had grown up during the days of the Cold War when there were still generations of soldiers who remembered Pearl Harbor. Hell, even today, there were people around who were there during the first attack. If asked, he would have said that foreign troops would never set foot on American soil. It was, even after Pearl Harbor, simply inconceivable.

Still, there had been indications throughout the world that the concept of the all powerful United States, respected throughout the world and virtually invulnerable, had been crumbling. It had begun, he thought, with the taking of the U.S. Embassy in Iran. It had degenerated since then, as America expended her military might on a series of small conflicts that really made no major differences he could tell in the state of the world. For every ethnic conflict that the U.S. or NATO stopped, another one sprang up. The much-publicized activity in Kosovo had gone on while the world ignored decades of ethnic cleansing operations in Africa. Now, with its assets and energy frittered away on inconsequential causes, the United States no longer demanded the respect of the rest of the world.

“Why did they do it?” he asked, shooting a look over at his younger second in command. “Why?”

Nevins shook his head. “I can see no good reason for them to do it,” he said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if there are recall orders waiting for me when we get back to the U.S. mainland.” While Captain Mitchell was a retired Air Force fighter pilot, Commander Nevins still had a few years remaining on his reserve commitment. As often as his civilian flight schedule would allow, he flew KC-135 tanking missions for the California National Guard.

The National Guard was completely funded by the federal government, although nominally under the command of the governor of the state of California. If so requested, however, the governor was obliged to federalize the troops immediately and transfer them to the Department of Defense. During any conflict, the tankers were among the first units recalled, as they had been in Kosovo.

“I don’t like it,” Mitchell said flatly, voicing the concern that was on both of their minds. “This aircraft has no business being anywhere near the combat region. We’ve got 320 souls on board — and they don’t even know what happening.” At the first hint of the conflict, Captain Mitchell had elected to terminate direct feed of news radio channels into the passenger compartment. “We’re taking them into a danger area, and they don’t even know it.”

Nevins smiled wryly. “Well, it’s not like we give them a vote, will we? Besides, no matter what they want — or what we want — fuel is still the main constraint. We’re out of options, Captain, and we both know it.”

“Don’t remind me. So, just for the sake of argument, what do we do if we run into any hostile activity? Or even a Chinese air patrol?” Mitchell’s voice had taken on a more strident military tone. It was the voice of a senior officer quizzing a junior one, not of one uncertain as to what he himself would do.

“Evasive maneuvers first,” Nevins said promptly. “We go low, get down to the surface of the ocean. Hope we can distract any missiles by wave action. In a worst-case scenario, at least that gives the passengers a better chance of survival, too. At low altitude, we can ditch fairly safely.”

They spent the next ten minutes discussing the unthinkable, planning how they would react if they ran into what they were beginning to call delicately “any problems.” Finally, when they both were certain they’d exhausted the short list of possibilities, they fell silent.

“Keep an eye on the radar,” Mitchell said, knowing that every moment he’d been talking to Nevins the man had had his eyes glued to it anyway.

“Roger, sir.”

Mitchell kept his hands poised lightly over the throttle quadrant, his gaze roving over the compartment and the airspace around him in a continuous scan. Old habits were coming back quickly, and he could feel the familiar thrill of adrenaline surging through his body. This might not be a fighter aircraft, but he was still a combat pilot. If there was anything that could be done to keep their passengers safe, it was up to him.

Chan leveled off at 31,000 feet. The MiG-33 felt superbly responsive under his hands, as though she had no need of the powerful engines to remain airborne. This was her natural element, where she belonged. Not sweltering on a hot deck of a merchant ship deck outfitted as a combat, nor baking on the tarmac under the sun. The MiG belonged airborne, far from the surface of the earth.

He would have thought of her as a butterfly, had she not been so deadly. Antiair missiles bristled under her wings, each one with a range of almost sixty miles. They were fire-and-forget weapons, each with miniaturized computers on board as well as a radar seeker that kept them “on target on track” even if the firing platform lost radar contact. Once launched, the missile would proceed to the designated contact, or, if contact lost, the last known position. It would then execute a search pattern, looking for its quarry, until it found an appropriate target or ran out of fuel.

Chan’s mission orders had been relatively simple — prevent any aircraft from entering the airspace around Oahu. Exactly what comprised the interdiction airspace, or how Chan should handle intruding aircraft had not been explicitly defined, but Chan was capable of determining his superior’s orders. When his boss said no incoming aircraft, that’s exactly what he meant.

His fingertips caressed the throttles, feeling the sheer raw power surge through the fuselage and linkages and up to his fingertips. It was by far the sweetest aircraft he’d ever flown, and this airframe in particular was the best of all onboard the ship. He made certain of that, watching carefully the technicians who maintained her, ensuring that no speck of corrosion or grease was allowed to mar her aerodynamically perfect form. Sure, there had been some resentment, criticism from the other pilots, but he made sure his bird got attention first, even if at the expense of others.

A small blip crept onto the edge of his heads-up display. Simultaneously, a soft chime warned him that his radar was holding a new contact. A blip appeared on his HUD. Next to the tactical symbol was the transmission from the contact’s IFF. Passenger liner, according to its modes and codes.

Or was it? The United States had made no secret of its ability to commandeer civilian aircraft to transport troops into troubled areas. An aircraft that size could hold nearly a brigade.

But that was unlikely, wasn’t it? He did the mental calculation quickly. Just barely enough time — if the United States had had any advance warning, had known what was coming, then they could have gotten the troops on the aircraft in San Diego and sent them enroute the Hawaiian Islands.

It wasn’t likely. Every aspect of operational security had been closely monitored. There had been no warning, none. The contact was really what it seemed, a passenger liner plying the airways between mainland and the most distant state.

But what about the position? The contact was well north of the established international airways transiting at speeds and altitudes lower than that allowed for westbound aircraft, according to the briefing that he received before launching.

No, no, part of his mind argued. You know what is happening here.

For most of his life, Chan had been a civilian aircraft pilot himself, and he knew well the dilemma the captain of the IWA flight would be facing. All those passengers, fuel constraints — perhaps he had no choice but to continue on to the Hawaiian Islands, diverting from his original destination tour more distant — and perhaps more secure — location. Yes, that is exactly what Chan himself would have done, had their positions been reversed.

But the obvious wasn’t always the correct answer, was it? Yes, with a bit of warning, the aircraft could very well have been converted to military use. Not that that mattered, in the end. Chan had his orders, and they were explicit. The United States had been warned, and it chose to ignore that warning.

Just then the modes and coats radiating from the contact’s transponder changed to 7777 — the international IFF signal for air distress. At the same time, his ESM gear picked up the weak pulse of the civilian airborne radar. So the airliner had detected him, and was now radiating the distress frequency.

Or trying to deceive me. Pretending to be on an innocent, peaceful mission, even as the pilot ferried troops into Hilo for a short hop over as part of an assault force.

Though Chan understood his superior’s orders, one part of him quailed at what he knew he must do. He knew too well what the missiles under his wing would do to the airliner, no matter how solidly built. It would sheer through metal and the delicate contents like chopsticks through rice. The missile would find a heat source, one of the engines. It would spiral part of the way up the intake, destroy the turbine before it exploded. Shrapnel from both the missile and the engine turbine blades would spin outward, penetrating and shredding the fuselage. Most likely the aircraft would break into two pieces along the line of the initial explosion, probably fracture along its upper surface before the lower edge gave way. It would spill its human contents into the air, and at least a portion of them would still be alive. Many of them would be unconscious within seconds, those who were already seriously injured or dying from the explosion. The oxygen was simply too thin to support life. They would tumble helplessly down toward the surface of the ocean, completely oblivious to what lay below them, accelerating at thirty-two feet per second squared.

The aircraft might remain nominally intact for a few seconds later, but soon the fracture in its sides would meet on the underbelly of the aircraft. Then it would most probably break in half, dumping the contents of the passenger compartment into the air. By then, if not earlier, a spark from metal scraping across metal would ignite the now free-floating cloud of aviation fuel into an all-encompassing fireball.

By then, the true horror would be taking place 10,000 feet below. As it plummeted through the atmosphere down into thicker air, any passengers or flight crew still alive would begin to regain consciousness. They would have seconds, maybe even a full minute, to watch the earth speeding up gracefully toward them, growing ever closer and closer. Swaths of color would become mountains, trees and structures. Their view of the islands would grow smaller and smaller as they descended, until eventually the horizon shrunk down to a few square miles of land. By then, they would be able to see the details clearly. But they would have only seconds to appreciate the view before they smashed into the hard, unyielding earth.

No, better to die as a fighter pilot would, merging with his aircraft and in an instant of eternity, obliterated before he ever knew what was happening.

Chan pushed the thoughts away as he pressed the firing trigger. It was dangerous to be distracted, even with easy targets such as this. Although the sky around him was clear, there was still the American aircraft carrier to contend with. Traveling at speeds in excess of Mach one, well over six hundred miles an hour, an American fighter could be in the game at any time. Any time.

Get it over now. Do it. He felt a surge of sympathy for his American civilian counterpart, then pressed the trigger.

The missile leaped off of his wing, arrowing straight for a moment before it curved off to the right. He heard the tone in his headset telling him it knew where it was going, had activated its own radar seeker head, and was hungry for prey. Chan avoided the temptation to become fixated on his own missile’s exhaust, and instead kept up a scan of both cockpit and sky.

His ESM warning gear caught the first sign of trouble, and its strident, insistent beeping soon confirmed his worst fears. He glanced at the signal parameters display, and agreed with the classification that the system had assigned it — it was an AWG-9, the tracking and targeting radar associated with the F-14.

And how far away? He resisted the urge to scan the sky around him, and instead kept his gaze fixed on the heads-up display. The computers onboard were capable of detecting and classifying the targets far more quickly than he could.

Two seconds later, he saw it. It popped up on his display, already labeled with a track number and a hostile symbol. Chan banked his aircraft away from the airliner. The missile was on its own now, a fire-and-forget weapon that require no further guidance.

The American pilots normally fought in a loose deuce position, one high, the other low and forward. The formation had proven its worth in countless battles, enabling the high position to keep a close eye on the overall picture and back up the low aircraft as necessary.

In aerial combat, altitude was safety. As the situation warranted, he could quickly exchange altitude for speed, and sometimes that was all it took to make the difference between life and death.

So where was the second Tomcat? He pointed the nose of his MiG back toward the American, hoping to increase radar coverage slightly. It should be somewhere along the same line of bearing.

There. Another blip, another warning from the ESM. The pulses were coming tighter now as the Tomcat switched from search to tracking and targeting mode.

Where was the rest of his squadron? The last thing he wanted to do now was take on two Tomcats by himself. Although the MiG 33 was lighter and more maneuverable than the Tomcat, more like a Hornet in performance characteristics, the Tomcat was a formidable foe.

He could see them now, two silver blurs flashing against the sky. He took his eyes off them for a moment to glance down, and was horrified to see how far out over the ocean he was. How could he have been so careless? They had briefed safety precaution endlessly, and certainly the range of his missile had not required him to move in so close to the civilian airliner.

What had he done? Professional suicide, or some deeper need to actually have a strong visual on the civilian aircraft he was about to destroy?

A new tone beat in the cockpit, and simultaneously a missile symbol flashed up on his heads-up display. AMRAAM — the new, long-range replacement for the Phoenix. A fire-and-forget weapon, one with an improved secret head.

He thought he could see figures inside the black canopy of the American airliner. There was a pale oval as the pilot turned to watch him, and Chan even imagined that he could see the man’s mouth open slightly as though in protest. Against the bulk of the airliner, the missile seemed minuscule, a mere sliver of metal that posed no threat to the complicated airframe it was tracking.

Chan knew better. And, he suspected, so did the airliner pilot.

For the merest second, the missile was a bright white lozenge against the side of the silvery body. Then it penetrated the fuselage and it was all over.

Captain Mitchell saw the white contrail crawl across the sky toward him and knew immediately what it meant. He jammed the yoke forward, putting the airliner into a steep dive. The airframe shuddered, protesting against G-forces it had not experienced since the days of its final acceptance trials. Loose gear in the cockpit slammed forward against the windows, virtually obliterating his view.

The needle on the altimeter unwound at a furious rate. Auto-alarms and indicators howled their warnings. The only thing silent in the cockpit was his copilot, who knew as well as Mitchell did just how close they were to dying.

They had no chance, absent divine intervention or serious mechanical malfunction in the missile. Even if it didn’t detonate, it would surely crack open the fuselage and spill both cargo and passengers into the thin air. Mitchell could see in Nevins’s pale face a full acknowledgement of that fact, and he saw Nevins’s lips moving silently as though in prayer. He hoped his copilot offered up one for him as well, and he hoped whatever God Nevins prayed to would understand just why Mitchell was a little too busy right now to ask for help himself.

Even with no possibility of survival, though, he had to try. Had to challenge the fate that was looming up in front of him, blocking out any possibility of a future. His wife, his children — they flashed through his mind for a split second, and then he concentrated on watching the altimeter and the alarms. If the wing nuts held, if he kept power and hydraulics for just a few seconds more — now.

He stamped down on the controls, throwing the airliner into a hard, breaking turn to the right. For just a moment, he thought he’d overdone it, and that she’d go into a wingover. But the control surfaces bit into the air and hauled her around in an impossibly tight turn. The debris that had crowded his windscreen now pelted Nevins.

Descending again, with no spare time to try to catch a glimpse of the missile headed their way. Heat-seeking? Would it find the jet exhaust or would it impact the fuselage? For some reason, it seemed important to know that.

As the ocean rushed up to meet them, Mitchell pulled up hard, manhandling the airliner out of both the turn and the dive simultaneously. Air speed peeled off at an alarming rate, and he caught the look from Nevins that warned him to avoid a stall. They were three thousand feet above the ocean, still descending as they waited for a miracle.

In the last few seconds, a strange peace swept over the captain. He looked up at the voice recorder microphone mounted high on the cabin and said, “I love my wife, my children, and my country. God bless us all.” Perhaps, he thought, the message would be of some small comfort to them in the days that would come.

Nevins started to speak, but too late, far too late. A sharp crack interrupted him, followed immediately by the whooshing as the air spilled out of the cabin. The airliner slued around in mid-air, pivoting on its center of gravity. The aft section spiraled off to the left, the forward part to the right. Whatever message Nevins had wanted to leave was lost in the fiery incandescence of the explosion that followed.