see, if nothing else, war has taught me a little bit about being
prepared.” He leaned forward, pushed a button on the speakerphone.
“Senator, did you hear that?”
“I surely did,” Senator Thomas Dailey said. The strong Midwestern
drawl was unmistakable. “So did the rest of us, Admiral.”
“And Arsenal is taking the appropriate action?” Loggins said, a savage
good humor fighting its way up out of the depression that had plagued
him for the last several months.
He glanced at Williams, saw the man wilting visibly in the chair. “Has
it?”
“The chairman gave the order three minutes ago,” Dailey said. “The
warhead is disarmed. Too bad they didn’t build a self-destruct
function into it. As it is now, it will impact the target as strictly
a conventional warhead.”
“Thank God for the pickiness of nuclear triggering circuitry,” Loggins
said.
“You knew all along,” Williams said, his voice defeated.
“Where did I screw up? What made you think I’d really do it?”
“Just a promise I made to myself a long time ago,” Admiral Loggins said
softly. “And whatever else happens, those men and women on the front
line will know I kept the faith.”
0702 Local (+5 GMT) Tomcat 202
“It’s below us,” Tomboy warned. “Altitude, two thousand feet.”
“Roger.” Tombstone nosed the Tomcat down slightly, quickly trading
altitude for speed. Lower altitude, lower speed, as the air created
more friction. The airspeed he’d gained by descending would be quickly
bled off fighting the thicker air. Still, it wasn’t as though he had
much time. Or choice.
He craned his head aft, searching through the clear bubble of the
canopy for some sign of the weapon. According to Tomboy’s radar
picture, it was almost on them, less than one mile aft. He’d matched
altitude with it, though he had no hope of ever matching its speed.
“Twenty seconds.” Tomboy began counting down the time to intercept.
Tombstone kept his hand glued to the weapons selector switch. There it
was, a tiny black speck on the horizon, barely discernible to the naked
eye. His gut tightened down into a thin hard knot, and more intimate
parts of his anatomy attempted to snug up to the rest of his body. The
thought of the sheer destructive power contained in that tiny object
that could’ve been a dirt speck on the canopy was overwhelming.
“Ten seconds.” The moments clicked by inexorably, the missile growing
larger with each ticktock of eternity.
Finally, he could see it all. The slim, almost graceful looking fuselage of the missile. White, with cruciform fins standing out from
the body. It was moving fast, so fast had he ever encountered
anything so awesome in the air?
Even normal air-to-air combat weapons couldn’t match the sheer grace
and power of this devastating land attack missile.
It was by him in a flash, almost too quick to see. His retinas shone
with the afterimage of it, white against the brilliant sunrise behind
him.
“Two seconds,” Tomboy said.
Tombstone’s finger tightened, then initiated launch. Two Sidewinders
leaped off the wings, one from each side, and started streaking out
into the empty air in front of the Tomcat Although the missile was
still behind him, there was no way he would ever catch it once it was
past. No, the only option was to shoot before it got to him and hope
he’d calculated the intercept correctly. It was a long shot, maybe the
longest one he’d ever taken. And the most important.
As the missile shot through his field of vision, he automatically
toggled the weapons selector to guns and ripped the atmosphere apart
with a continuous barrage of pellets from his gunport. It had little
chance of downing the titanium-cased missile, but there was a chance
the impact would jar some delicate triggering mechanism inside it,
maybe prevent it from detonating or maybe detonating it early, it
suddenly occurred to him. If that happened, he’d never know it. For a
moment, the thought of the hellfire fireball that would erupt so close
to the Tomcat shook him.
An instant later, he was certain that was what had happened. A
brilliant flash of white light filled the air, brighter than the rising