With Hostile Intent

Chapter Six Al-Kharj

CAG Boyce rapped the pointer — Whap Whap — on the illuminated chart.

“Al-Kharjh air base,” he said, whapping the chart once more for effect. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is our target.”

The overhead fluorescent light in the ready room reflected off Boyce’s shiny pate. He peered out at his audience — thirty flight-suited Hornet and Tomcat crews. “Our force of F/A-18s and F-14s will conduct a simulated strike against the Saudi base at Al Kharj. The strike package planning was done by Commander Maxwell as part of his strike leader qualification.”

A ripple of applause, whistles, cat calls rose from the room.

“This better be good!”

“Another Hornet fiasco!” said a Tomcat pilot from the F-14 squadron.

Boyce aimed his pointer at the map. “The Navy force — called Blue — will be opposed by the Orange force consisting of U.S. Air Force and Royal Saudi Air Force F-15s. Both the Blue and the Orange forces will be controlled by the same American E-3C AWACS, using different controllers. Blue will present a dual-axis attack at altitude, until the orange fighter cover has committed to the respective threats. With the orange fighters committed, the blue strikers will turn away and drag the orange fighters eastward.

“Meanwhile, down on the deck, along a third axis, two divisions of Blue fighters led by Commander DeLancey will sneak in undetected and engage the orange fighters from below. If the deception works, the blue stinger package will kill all the orange fighters, allowing the blue strike package to continue to the target.”

Boyce lowered his pointer. “Questions?”

A Hornet pilot named Dawg Harrison raised his hand. “What if the deception doesn’t work? If the Blue fighters down on the deck get caught by the Orange defenders, looks to me like the strikers are dead meat.”

Before Boyce could answer, Killer DeLancey spoke up. “Leave that to me. You suck ‘em toward me, I’ll kill ‘em. I’ve never lost a fight to an F-15 yet.”

That sparked a round of cheering and whistling.

Boyce shoved a cigar into his mouth while he waited for the cheering to settle down. He wanted to tell DeLancey to knock off the goddamn grandstanding. This was a large force exercise, not a solo mission. But Boyce knew he couldn’t rebuke DeLancey, at least in front of his adoring fan club.

Settling into his cockpit, Maxwell gazed around the flight deck. The afternoon sun blazed down on the flight deck, making it hot as a griddle. It was always that way in the Persian Gulf, he reflected. Just different gradations of hot, depending on the season.

Maxwell could see all his strike pilots manning their jets. Opposite them, spotted behind catapult one, were the Hornets and the Tomcats of DeLancey’s stinger package — the fighters assigned to engage the Orange defenders.

He thought again of the four weeks of planning he had put into the exercise, the late nights, the hours spent alone up in the Intel room. CAG Boyce had been impressed with the depth of detail in the strike plan, especially the complex pincers attack that was designed to lure the Orange fighters into the trap.

This was Maxwell’s single shot at refuting the prima donna astronaut reputation that he knew DeLancey had been spreading about him. DeLancey wanted everyone to know that Maxwell lacked the fleet experience to carry his weight as a senior squadron officer.

If Maxwell somehow pulled the strike off without any major glitches, he would receive his Air Wing Strike Lead qualification, which was requisite to eventual command of his own squadron. If the mission went to hell and Blue Force failed to nail its target, he could kiss it goodbye.

It was exactly what DeLancey was hoping. He would have an excuse to replace Maxwell as his operations officer.

Maxwell finished his pre-start check list. He closed the canopy, sealing out the wind and din of the carrier flight deck. Inside the cockpit, the digital display screens glowed at him like miniature billboards. On signal from Ruiz, the enlisted plane captain on the flight deck below, he started the right engine, then the left. He swept the control stick through its full range, moving every control surface on the wings and tail. The stabilator — the big horizontal tail slab — he ran to its take off trim setting. The flaps were cycled through their full range, then set to half-extended for take off.

Five minutes later, he was taxiing forward to the number one catapult, on the carrier’s starboard bow. Wisps of steam poured back down the catapult tracks. All four catapults — the two on the angled deck and the two on the bow — were busy hurling fighters one after the other into the hazy Gulf sky.

He eased the jet forward, feeling the nose of the Hornet lurch as the nose-tow bar dropped into the shuttle slot. The yellow-shirt standing by the jet’s nose gave Maxwell the signal to release the brakes. In the center of the flight deck, between the two catapults, the catapult officer was signaling Maxwell to power up.

Maxwell shoved the throttles forward. One last time he “wiped” the cockpit with the stick, making sure the controls were free. He shoved his head back against the head rest and wrapped his left hand around the throttle grip. His right hand came up in a salute to the catapult officer. The ready signal.

Maxwell waited, tensed as always. A second elapsed… waiting…. another second…

KaaaWhoooom! The catapult fired.

The Hornet hurtled down the track, accelerating from zero to a hundred-forty miles per hour. Maxwell was rammed back in his seat. He felt his eyeballs flatten in their sockets, felt his guts pressing against his spine. Ahead he could see the edge of the deck, then blue empty sea.

The force of the catapult abruptly stopped. The Hornet’s nose lifted. He was flying.

“Ninety-nine Gippers on station,” Maxwell said in his mike. “Gipper” was the collective call sign for the Reagan air wing strike force.

“Roger, Gipper, your Orange playmates are on station and ready.”

Maxwell recognized the voice of Lieutenant Commander Butch Kissick, who would referee the exercise from aboard his orbiting E-3C AWACS.

One by one his strike force jets had launched, then headed for the rendezvous point to join up on the Air Force KC-10 tanker. Two of his jets had gone “down” on deck for maintenance problems, and the two ready spares were launched in their place.

The big three-engine tanker, a military derivative of the Douglas DC-10 airliner, looked like a giant swan with the swarm of sharp-nosed fighters appended like baby chicks behind it. When the last jet had completed its aerial refueling, Maxwell took one last look around, then commenced a gentle bank away from the tanker’s orbit. He keyed his mike, transmitting the signal that would commence the exercise: “99 Gippers, COMEX, COMEX.”

The game was on.

On Tracey Barnett’s radar screen aboard the AWACS, the strike package looked like a solid cluster of blips. They were aimed on a tangential course toward the Orange home base.

Her boss, Butch Kissick, had assigned her the task of controlling the Blue Force raiders from the Reagan, as she had requested. It gave her a chance to compete with her counterpart, First Lieutenant Wade Harper. Harper was a freckle-faced computer nerd and, in her opinion, a world-class dork. Already she and Harper had made a wager — dinner and unlimited booze — at the club tonight.

Glancing across the control cabin, she could see Harper hunched over his console, talking to the defending Orange Force. On her own scope, she was picking up the Orange fighters, three groups of them, taking up their CAP stations.

“Gipper One,” she radioed to the Blue leader, “you have three groups heavy, capping north, middle, and south of Al-Kharj.”

“Gipper One copies,” came the voice of Brick Maxwell.

Seconds later, Tracey saw the cluster of Blue fighters accelerating to nearly supersonic speed. They were still on a course that would take them nose-to-nose with the enemy jets. Only a hundred fifty miles separated the two forces.

Tracey began to worry. These Navy jockeys had better have something better in mind than to bore into a head on fight with the F-15s. They would get hosed like pigeons on a skeet range. Already she could see that nerdly little dork, Harper, gloating over his margaritas back at the bar.

A hundred miles. No way the Orange groups would miss painting that big cluster of ingressing jets. Any second now they would be making their move.

And they were. They were leaving their stations, taking up intercept courses. “North and South groups committing,” she warned the Blue leader. “Range one hundred, closing.”

Still, the Blue force continued inbound. The two forces were closing at a relative speed of nearly two thousand miles per hour.

Come on, Blue, Tracey implored. Do something clever or you guys are dog meat. The Blue strike leader was a guy called Brick. She knew nothing about him except that he had been the second section lead during the MiG shoot last week. He was the only one out there who seemed to understand the rules of engagement. He didn’t shoot from the hip.

But what was the guy doing? Actually, she thought, this would be a great time to shoot from the hip.

“Range eighty.”

No response. Still merging.

“Range sixty.”

Then, from the Blue leader: “99 Gippers, stand by…. Action now!”

Tracey had no idea what the command meant. Action now? What action? But something was definitely happening. The tight cluster of Blue jets had become a milky, indistinct blob on her scope. It probably meant that they were dispensing chaff — a cloud of radar-deflecting metal foil. She was picking up the warbling electronic sound of radar jamming, which she knew had to come from the pair of EA-6 Prowlers off the Reagan, out there to provide electronic warfare support for the Blue strike force.

Chaff, jamming — something was going on. What?

The Blue cluster was no longer a cluster. They were splitting, one group to the left, the other right, diverging at a right angle. And something else…Tracey squinted at the scope… something else going on… concealed in the cloud of chaff and the murkiness of the radar jamming.

Tracey stole a glance over at Harper. He, too, was staring at his scope, wondering what the hell was going on. A smile crept over Tracey’s face. She didn’t know what the hell was going on either, but she liked it. This was going to be interesting.

Maxwell waited, counting the seconds. This was the crucial part of the plan. Would the split-up of the Stinger package show on the Orange radar screens? Everything depended now on the effectiveness of the chaff cloud and the radar jamming from the Prowlers. DeLancey’s Stinger group would now be in their supersonic vertical dive for the deck.

Ten seconds.

Twenty. Maxwell waited, counting.

The fighter section should be leveling off in a few more seconds, ripping along down in the weeds. And, if everything was working right, hidden from the Orange radar.

Thirty seconds. Time for the next surprise.

“Buick and Rambler sections, execute…. Now!”

Maxwell rolled his Hornet into a hard ninety-degree turn back to the right. His half of the strike force — “Buick” section — turned with him. The right half — “Rambler” section — led by Craze Manson, wheeled into a ninety-degree turn to the left. Behind each section streamed more clouds of chaff.

The strike package was split into two parallel clusters, headed directly for Al-Kharj. The defending fighters would have to split their own forces to intercept the two Blue groups.

Or at least that was the plan.

Come on, guys, Maxwell said to himself. Take the bait.

They were taking it.

“Complex tactics,” called Harper, the Orange controller in the AWACS. He was trying hard to keep his voice calm. Harper had enough adrenaline in his system to jumpstart a locomotive. “Blue groups diverging now, azimuth split north and south.”

“How many groups?” called the Orange fighter lead, an Air Force major. “Two or three? How many, Sea Lord?”

Sweat was trickling down Harper’s neck. It was hard to make sense of that mess with all the goddamn chaff and jamming. He squinted into his scope. “Two groups. South group beaming south, north group beaming north.”

That was good enough for the Orange lead. He was seeing exactly the same thing on his own radar — two groups separating, obviously setting up to attack on different azimuths. Not very imaginative, really. But what did you expect from people who lived on boats?

“Roger that,” replied the Orange lead. “Orange fighters are committing. Exxon flight will take the northern bandits. Mobil flight, target the south.”

The Orange lead was also leading the northern, or “Exxon” flight. The “Mobil” flight lead, on the southern CAP station, acknowledged the call. Both groups of fighters, north and south, were turning toward the two inbound enemy groups. The middle fighter group, a flight of Saudi F-15s, would remain on station in case things went to hell and the intruders managed to get too close to Al-Kharj.

In the AWACS, Harper studied his scope. It looked like the bandits were turning again. Just as he predicted, the intruders were turning back toward the target. Nose on with the defending fighters.

“Bandits coming nose hot,” he called. Bearing one hundred, range sixty, thirty thousand. Weapons free, Orange lead. Acknowledge.”

“Roger, weapons free,” replied the Orange lead. It meant they had the go-ahead to fire simulated missiles as soon as they were in range. He was getting solid radar hits now. Not quite in AIM-120 range, but getting close. This was going to be a turkey shoot.

“Stinger flight is sorted.”

It was the message Maxwell had been waiting to hear. DeLancey was reporting that he and his stingers were down on the deck — and they had the enemy fighters located and identified.

Maxwell made one last situational check: His strikers had good separation — ten miles. The Orange fighters were coming at them, probably in afterburner, judging by the closure speed. Supersonic and accelerating.

Time for the next move.

“Ninety-nine Strikers, go cold,” Maxwell radioed, ordering his flight to turn away from the enemy.

In unison, the two Blue groups executed a hard right turn to the east, which placed them in a trail formation perpendicular to the oncoming Orange fighters.

Rolling out of his turn, Maxwell peered again at his radar — and he saw exactly what he had hoped to see: The Orange fighters were coming after them. Like leopards chasing an antelope, they were in a classic pursuit curve.

Almost in firing range.

Thirty thousand feet below, the Blue fighter package — four F/A-18 Hornets and four F-14 Tomcats — were in a full afterburner vertical climb, streaking upward like rockets from a launcher. Neither group was using radar. They were emitting no electronic warnings to the Orange fighters or to the AWACS.

Directly above them, specks against the milky Arabian sky, were the two groups of F-15s.

The first warning came from Harper, in the AWACS. His voice sounded like he’d been goosed with a cattle prod. “Exxon! Pop-up bandits inside five miles, altitude unknown!”

A second later, more bad news. “Mobil! Threat, snap vector zero-one-zero for ten miles nose hot, climbing!”

The F-15 pilot leading the Exxon Group craned his neck, frantically searching. Where the hell were they? Under him? How could they get here without putting out a radar warning…?

Suddenly he knew. Shit! The red radar warning scope light was flashing on his panel like a beacon from hell. Where the fuck did they come from?

He whipped his Eagle into a nine G turn. “Exxon One, spiked at eight o’clock!” Then he saw it — the distinctive delta shape of an F-14 Tomcat. Coming up at him. Locked on so tight the guy could be shooting spitballs.

A second later he heard the inevitable call: “Splash one F-15, southern group, angels 29, in a hard left turn.”

The Eagle pilot was officially “dead.” But maybe the rest of his flight would engage the bandits…

“Splash two F-15s, southern group.”

Two F-15s down. Aw, hell. But they had two more still alive —

“Splash three!”

“Splash four!”

It took less than ten seconds. All four F-15 Eagles in the southern group were dead. For them the exercise was over.

The Exxon leader rolled his wings level and glumly acknowledged. He and his entire group were out of the game. It occurred to him that it was probably the shortest air-to-air engagement he’d ever been in. The worst part was that he knew he’d be hearing about this from the swabbies every time they came ashore. Those Navy assholes were merciless.

But he still had the Mobil group. They were in their own furball with another gaggle of Blue fighters. He could hear them chattering like magpies on the radio, calling out targets, yelling that they were spiked.

Maybe the war wasn’t over yet.

Killer DeLancey knew even before he flipped on his acquisition radar that he had committed too early. He should have waited another ten seconds, fifteen maybe, before going vertical and popping up. He’d given the F-15s a precious few seconds of reaction time to counter the attack.

His second section, led by Flash Gordon, had managed to get a quick kill on the nearest pair of F-15s. But the second two, with a few more miles of maneuvering room, had turned hard and fast into their attackers — Killer and his wingman, Hozer Miler.

“Take the trailer, Hozer!” Killer barked in his radio. “I’ve got the leader.”

“Copy that,” answered Hozer, grunting against the high G load. Hozer would engage the wingman while DeLancey killed the leader.

Delancey could see it was going to be an old-fashioned turning fight, a classic Lufberry circle with the lead F-15 on one side of the circle, his own Hornet on the other. Nearby, Hozer and the second F-15 were engaged in their own separate turning duel.

This wasn’t DeLancey’s style of fighting. It was primitive, flying supersonic fighters in a hard G-pulling flat turn like this, trying to get inside the other guy’s radius. This was World War I Richtofen and Rickenbacker stuff. DeLancey preferred to use the spectacular vertical capability of the Super Hornet to swoop and pounce on the enemy like a hawk plucking a mouse.

But it was okay with DeLancey. He had never lost a fight to an F-15 puke, and today wasn’t going to be a bit different. It was just more work this way.

Pulling hard, sweat pouring down from inside his helmet, DeLancey kept his eyes on the lead Eagle across the circle. He could see the puffs of vapor spewing from the fighter’s wings, a product of the high G load the Air Force pilot was pulling.

But DeLancey could see the angle between them decreasing. In tiny increments, he was gaining the advantage. He knew that in a turning fight, almost no supersonic fighter in the world, including an F-15 Eagle, could beat a Super Hornet. It was just a matter of time, a few more turns of the circle… he would have his nose on the Eagle’s tail pipes. The F-15 would be dog meat.

In his peripheral vision, DeLancey caught an occasional glimpse of Hozer Miller, flying his own Lufberry circle, closing on the second F-15. Hozer’s target was high, pulling hard, trying to evade the missile-firing cone of the pursuing Hornet.

Suddenly the second Eagle stopped trying to evade. Instead, he shallowed his turn, dropped his nose and pointed his jet across the circle.

At Killer DeLancey’s Hornet.

DeLancey had no time to react. “Hozer! Shoot the sonofabitch—”

Too late. “Fox Two! Splash one Hornet,” came the voice of the Eagle pilot.

Killer was dead.

A second later: “Splash the F-15.” Hozer killed his target — but not before the Eagle pilot had fired his simulated Sidewinder missile at Killer DeLancey.

In his cockpit, DeLancey slammed his fist against the canopy rail. A surge of fury flashed over him like heat from an explosion. He couldn’t believe it. That goddamned Air Force prick! It was a cheap shot — totally unexpected and illogical. Stop defending, kill the lead Hornet, sacrifice yourself. A stupid decision in real combat. But this was a war game, and it was perfectly legal.

Ten seconds later, Flash Gordon’s section of Hornets dispatched the surviving F-15. “Splash the lead Eagle,” reported Gordon.

The fight was over. Four Mobil defenders were shot down. And so was Killer DeLancey.

Maxwell waited until he heard that DeLancey’s fighters had engaged the F-15s. Then he called, “Strikers, take heading two-seven-zero.”

His strike package was inbound once again to the target. Both groups of strikers — Maxwell’s Buick flight and, ten miles abeam, the Rambler flight — accelerated to attack speed.

Thirty miles out, they heard from Tracey Barnett in the AWACS: “Rambler One, bandits on the nose, thirty miles, hot.”

Maxwell could see them on his own radar, the four remaining Orange defenders. The Royal Saudi F-15s were committing. They were leaving their CAP station, making a head-on attack against the entire strike package. They were Al-Kharj’s last defense against the Blue strike force.

“Blue force, go air-to-air,” Maxwell transmitted. His Hornets were ready for a face-to-face with the F-15s. The Saudis were good, he knew, but not very imaginative. Four Eagles against eight Hornets, who also happened to be armed with the same AIM-120 radar-guided missiles.

Determined but outgunned, the Saudi pilots came blazing into the fight with the suicidal panache of the Light Brigade. The lead F-15 managed to score an out-of-range shot on Maxwell’s dash four, who was flying too wide and stepped down.

It was B.J. Johnson, Maxwell realized. He made a note to himself to debrief her about flying proper combat spread.

It was the last Orange kill of the day. Seconds later, Maxwell reported: “Splash the lead F-15.”

“Splash two,” called another Hornet pilot.

“Splash three.”

“Make that four.”

The Orange air defense had been eliminated. Twenty miles ahead, Al-Kharj lay exposed like a ripe garden.

“99 Gippers,” Maxwell said, again using his group’s collective call sign, “push it up.”

His Hornets formed a wide combat spread.

“Weapons hot.”

Maxwell shoved his throttles into afterburner, rolling into his dive. On either side, he could see his strikers doing the same, each acquiring his respective target on the big sprawling air base.

Streaking downward at supersonic speed, the Hornets ripped over Al-Kharj, dropping their make-believe weapons.

“Buick One off,” called Maxwell, flashing past the orange-and-white checkerboard-painted water tower.

“Buick Two.”

“Rambler One off.”

Each jet reported off, his simulated bomb load delivered on one of the base structures. One by one the fighters screamed over the concrete-and-sand-and-grass patchwork of the air base at nearly nine hundred miles per hour.

Inside Maxwell’s oxygen mask, a wide grin spread over his face. He knew the thunder of the sonic booms was reverberating across the air base like the hammers of hell. Glasses were probably shattering, a few windows breaking, someone’s china vase cracking. War was hell.

Maxwell knew that when their nerves stopped twanging from the booms, the Air Force blue suits down there would figure out what happened. They had just gotten schwacked by the swabbies.